As a relative forum newbie, I’m rather shocked to notice the lack of a general debate on the Israeli and Palestinian conflict. May I assume this is due to the flood of fanatical posts this subject invariably attracts? Perhaps judicious censorship might render the topic discussable. In the interest of fighting human ignorance, please moderate the hell out of me.
-ehj
Whats left to say? Every now and again it is neat to see where people line up on the issue, but there really isn’t much (anything?) new to say about. Unless you are new to the discussion, in which case, feel free to weigh in!
Who has the “right” to live in Israel, and why?
Palastinian bombers have NO excuse. Prove me wrong!
What should the Palestinian do?
Bush’s Speech - A Palestinian State?
Why do we tolerate Israel’s strongarm tactics?
Israel will be destroyed, unless it fights and wins an all-out war
Sharon doesn’t really want the violence to end.
Resolved: Israel’s settlements are not an important cause of Middle East tensions.
Should critics of Israeli government policies be labeled anti-Semitic?
Somebody please justify Israeli settlements to me
U.S. Support for Israel: Yes or No?
Support Palestinian guerrillas.
And all threads on the Straight Dope Message Board are moderated in accordance with the terms of the SDMB Registration Agreement.
I’m not saying people can’t start new threads on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict or some aspect thereof, but I can’t say there has been a “lack of general debate” on this topic.
Mr. Buckner: I don’t doubt the quantity of posts on the subject, only their quality; the majority of posters seem to have made up their minds well beforehand and focus on advocacy rather than debate.
I am, rather naively, interested in substantive discussion. After all, this is the forum that established exactly what fire <i> is </i>.
Given that I can’t ask Cecil , “What, exactly, are we supposed to do about these people?”, I believe that educated, moderated debate is our best chance of establishing the basic parameters of the conflict.
In a perfect world, recourse to Internet message boards would not be necessary to establish facts about international conflicts, but, well… here we are.
Nice list, MEBuckner. It would be cool to have some index somewhere of the big threads on the big topics. Of course, the site working faster these days, the search function isn’t nearly as forbidden as it once was.
foolishmortal, although the debates here tend to get dominated by people fervently supporting one side or the other, you can probably pick through those threads listed and find what you’re looking for. Again, not to discourage you from starting a new thread, but there was a rush of these over the last half year and many people might be tired of the subject. It’s almost a dead topic on par with gun control and abortion.
RexDart:
Only the last half year? A short attention span indeed!
No need to console me regarding the imminent doom of my thread: it’s old news and I expect to get moderated into the stone age.
Still, I’d like to see the few (under ten) intelligent posts on the topic to date consolidated, at least in repost form, into one (dare I ask sticky?) thread. I have a distinct suspicion that all human debate on the subject would thus be well summarized.
p.s. While we’re on the subject of abortion, why is it always framed as a religious issue? Do atheists murder people indiscriminately due to their lack of creed?
p.p.s. Sorry.
-ehj
It’s not a question of new threads on this topic being “moderated into the stone age”. However, I would suggest you go ahead and commence some sort of debate, or I probably will close down this thread and let you (or others) start a new one if desired.