That’s a pretty good comparison, actually, and the answer is the same: Taiwan is an independent country, and recognizing it as one is the right thing to do. It just isn’t necessarily the smart thing to do.
I haven’t seen anything in Kushner’s independent actions and unprepared statements that indicates that he’s smart enough to find the right end of a shitstick. That this still makes him smarter than Don, Jr. and especially Eric is just evidence of how low the standard of acceptability has fallen.
Stranger
A clue, perhaps…?
Once a real estate grifter, always a real estate grifter.
Not sure Israel wants to make that argument since they don’t have diplomatic relations with Taiwan either, though like the US they have “non-diplomatic representation”(whatever that means) with it.
That said, I think it’s a good comparison in the sense that the right thing to do would be if most countries recognized Taiwan but for obvious reasons doing so would cause more problems than it’s worth.
Only 19 countries, all the piss-ant type, recognize Taiwan independence. Not a good retort, that.
What the fuck? There is already a large Consulate General presence in Jeruselum, including a main compound with a historic building, a sizeable annex, and several ancillary facilites in leased buildings. Moving the US Embassy from Tel Aviv to Jeruselem should be a matter of changing signs and moving the Ambassador’s Residence. Not only would building a new compound be enormously expensive, it would likely require evicting people from existing structures and demolishing them to make space, or locating the compound on the western or southern outskirts of Jeruselem. So much for being the leader of the “party of fiscal responsibility”.
Stranger
He’s going to build a new embassy in Jerusalem and make the Palestinians pay for it, silly.
It was a stupid move. Yes, US politicians have paid lip service to the notion of recognizing Jerusalem as the capital, but until now they’ve had the good sense to realize that it would be unwise and unnecessarily inflammatory.
What continues to baffle me is how could anyone think that Jared Kushner would be taken seriously by both sides and that he could have the knowledge and skills to bring peace to this region.
Taiwan doesn’t recognize itself as an independent country so there’s no reason why other countries should do so.
The official position of both the Republic of China and the People’s Republic of China is that China is a single country, which comprises both the mainland and the island. The dispute is over which government - the one in Beijing or the one in Taipei - is the legitimate government of this country. Both governments officially claim to be the sole government over the entire country. So recognizing one government as valid means you have to also recognize the other one as invalid.
Which government do you choose? Realistically, one government is the de facto government for 98% of China and the other government is the de facto government for 2% of China. So it makes more sense to recognize the 98% government as the de jure government of China.
Taiwan dropped that claim years ago.
But this way he can hire a Russian (or Russia-connected) firm to build it.
I wish I was joking.
Not officially.
It’s still almost as startling as it is saddening to hear “peace” described in a way that better fits “subjugation”, and “negotiation” as meaning “acquiescence” and from the people who should best know otherwise, too.
Why should the Palestinians, or any humans, accept such subjugation? What other course of action is available to them now that they no longer have any available broker with even the pretense of honesty? Hint: Pretty much the opposite of peace. But they’ll get all the blame from the usual responsibility-deniers anyway, of course.
Realistically…
Being subjugated by a country with a higher standard of living and a democratic form of government isn’t really subjugation, unless you’re being dimwitted. If the average person thinks that living in an autocratic dump is somehow better, then they’re losing to the propaganda of their autocrats.
If the Palestinians had teamed up with the Israelis, they could have gotten into government, played the victim card, and possibly have come to take major or majority power in the nation, all while living a better lifestyle.
None of which is to say that people shouldn’t be allowed to choose how they want to live, even if it’s in an autocratic dump, nor that democracies have free reign to go conquer other “lesser” nations. It’s just that, realistically, there’s only ever the tiniest connection between what people want and what’s good for them.
Yeah, my mistake.
As for the reason for the misquote it’s because we all say “the Palestinians” now, but at the time the Israelis insisted they were a made up nationality and insisted on calling them just “the Arabs” or occasionally “the Palestinian Arabs”.
The words used to describe the people all carry historical connotations.
The term Palestinian may be a version of Philistine. This implies that the modern Palestinians are the same people as the ancient Philistines. The ancient Philistines lived alongside the ancient Hebrews in the region that’s now Israel.
The Arabs, obviously, originated in Arabia. They didn’t live in the region that’s now Israel until the era of the Muslim conquests in the seventh century CE.
I’ve seen some Palestinians identify themselves with the Canaanites. As the Bible relates, the Canaanites were the people the Hebrews encountered when they first migrated into the region after fleeing Egypt under Moses. The Canaanites eventually became known as the Phoenicians and these people claim that this is the origin of the terms Philistines and Palestinians.
So the terms have modern political connotations. If you identify the people as Arabs, you’re implying that the Jews were there first and the Arabs came along much later as foreign invaders. If you identify the people as Canaanites, you’re implying that they were there first and the Jews were the ones who came along later as foreign invaders. Both sides have their own identity which backs up a claim that they were the original settlers and the region is their homeland.
I think the reason for the misquote was that Abba Evan was not speaking solely about the Palestinians, but about the Arabs as a whole. The prevailing view at the time - which is still held by many Israelis - was that the conflict with the Palestinians was just a small part of Israel’s conflict with the Arab world, much as America’s current conflict with Vietnam was just a small part of its fight against global communism.
It would take DNA testing to confirm, but my expectation would be that the Palestinians are Canaanites who converted to Islam.
The Jews are probably a group of Canaanites who split off from the others, culturally, by proclaiming monotheism around ~500 BC. Ethnically and culturally, there’d likely be few differences before that point.
The Phillistines (if the Palestinians descend from them - which does seem plausible) came from the general area of the Gaza Strip. The Israelis held the Jordan Rift Valley. The Phillistine capital was probably somewhere in the region of Tell es-Safi. The Israeli capital was Jerusalem. (Putting the two capitals only some 20 miles apart from one another.)
Of course, the Jews were absent for about 2000 years, so it’s not entirely unreasonable for the Palestinians to claim the rights. The Huns probably originated from an area near Kazakhstan some 2000 years ago. That doesn’t mean that the Hungarians have an inherent right to take over Astana from whoever owns it now.
Tell me more about this democratic government thing. Do the subjugated get to participate in it?
:dubious:
The Israelis know that too, which is why they’ve chosen subjugation instead. Arabs would already be a majority, btw.
Fortunately *you *know they’re actually better off subjugated (how’s that working out, btw?) and can reconcile yourself to that.
The word is apartheid.
I was speaking about a hypothetical situation where the Palestinians had accepted Israeli rule, not the current situation which is more akin to having a long-term Occupational Government. (I believe that) you have misunderstood what I wrote.
It is a fully correct implication as the DNA research shows.
**Entirely 100 percent incorrect. **The Arabic speakers - the Nabateans very famously but not only - were already present in the area in the time of the Roman conquest. Indeed there are traces of the references under the **Assyrians **to early Arabic speaking tribes of the bedouine type in the backland desertic areas of the region.
The Nabatean kingdom covered areas now in the southern range of the Israel and of course when all are brought under the Roman direct rule the natural mixing
The late Roman empire Byzantines themselves brought in the Arabic allies, the Ghassanids who were ruling the eastern Levant from their center of power in the area of the Golan heights from the 3rd century AD as the Byzantine local client rulers.
The idea that the Arabic speakers came only with the Islamic conquest is 100 percent wrong and 100 percent ahistorical.
the thing that the islamic period did was see the long term shift of the speakers of the closely related languages to the arabic and the disappearance of the greek speaking. The arabic populations had already come up to the Levant from the Assyrian times forward.
It is not a thing unknown, it is esay to find via wikipedia the citations to the DNA studiesthat show amply that the majority of the Leventine genetic heritage - the ‘Arab’ Palestinian as the Jewish trace back to the same sources and they in majority derive from the same stock, who you can call Canaanites if you want.
there is no reason to guess or speculate, it is clear it is the case.
It is awkward maybe for the haters on both sides, those that wish to make the Palestinians some how alien to their own land and those who wish to make the modern Jews alien and descended mostly from the Europeans.
The modern Palestinians, the muslim and the christian are without doubt descended from the conversions, and themselves of the substantial Jewish heritage (maybe going to the Byzantine times even) as well although for ideology they would not normally say it.
The current situation is not akin, it is indeed.
You state it as the Palestinian choice, but it is as much the Israeli choice not to give any kind of citizenship to the occupied.