It begins as follows:
And you can imagine where it goes from there.
Please debate the merits of this article while I watch. Thank you.
-FrL-
Well it’s interesting because Mexico is probably one of the least stable states in the world, and we’re likely to have a failed state on our southern border.
Most people want to get pretty absurd with the arguments, and simiplfy everything beyond belief.
Israel came into the land more or less honorably. Britain helped out in ways which were not that kosher (ba-dum-ksssh!), but the Jewish settlers mostly bought out the land. There were early, primitive terrorists on both sides even at that early date.
Over time, there was a lot of agression back and forth, as the polyglot arabs who are called Palestinians (but who don’t really have a national identity) were sold a very bad package of goods by other regional leaders who wanted to use them as a catspaw against Israel). Seriously, half the world was involved in screwing around with that little area, from Russia to the U.S. and ever last state in the Middle East.
Israel wasn’t, and isn’t , neccessarily nice. They were arguably more than little paranoid. Some people advocated conquest of the land outside the current borders, and they started colonies there, often on land abandoned* or which had to be held against other’s miitary attacks.
*No joking. The polyglot-arabs in some cases panicked and ran away just-in-case the Jews came for revenge. The Jews didn’t. Both sides misunderstood the other. One turned to terrorism. One didn’t, and in fact purged the terrorists out of their people.
But the Gaza situation is something much more recent. Hamas is a pack of cretinous brutes, and they just wanted to blow up Jews.
So the debate is over the merits of various analogies?
And the writer wants to analogize to a what-if America had forcibly removed a different race from their land and placed them in camps? Uh, well yeah, Whites in America did that. You do realize that don’t you?
Of course the analogy is absurd and forced. The reality in Israel was much more complex with mistakes made by members of both sides and opportunism by members of both sides. But obviously few would justify terrorism by Native Americans today because of the past. And likewise attacks now, a century after Zionist immigration to Israel began, are far from justified on that basis.
Is the analogy to how other states would deal with ongoing rocket attacks as forced? No. They are pretty much spot on.
Rhetorically it is an attempt to control the narrative by painting a simplistic one sided view of the early days of Zionism and using that as a framing tool to make the Hamas POV seem sympathetic.
Silly.
For more recent history anyway, consider that Hamas doesn’t want peace. It rejects peace fundamentally. They want their form of a one-state solution: one state with no Jews but dead Jews.
The analogy that America wouldn’t sit by and suffer rocket attacks is true. However, what is also true is that Americans would use all means at their disposal, including terrorism, to defend/retake their home land if they lost it. I can see Americans on either side of the Israel/Palestinian fight. That doesn’t justify either parties actions, nor does it mean those actions will lead to a lasting peace.
I don’t really see this. If you held a referendum in the early 1900s in Palestine, I’m guessing that the vote would be overwhelmingly against more Jewish immigration. The fact that an occupying power allowed Jewish immigration doesn’t really legitimize it. Plus, this glosses over the terrorism and other violent acts that Jewish immigrants used in their fight to create Israel.
Since they weren’t a democracy, it doesn’t really matter. The peope who controlled the region, and the people who owned the land, didn’t have a problem with it. Secondly, you willnote that I knew that some jerks were running around already.
If you want to assume that your theoretical democratic vote outweighs, well, anything, including coin flips, you and I can’t really discuss the issue.
I think the analogy is dumb. We’re light years ahead of the Israeli’s when it comes to defense. Period. The first rocket to land on American soil would be the last. We have the capability to build missile defense systems that can defend the whole continent against missiles from all around the globe, especially the antiquated missiles fired by Hamas.
- Honesty
Well, probably not, no. hamas has a tendency to move around a lot and only fires very simply weapons from heavy cover, often with civilian human shields around. You really can’t stop missiles like that unless you just happen to have special chaff/flare systems or maybe an AEGIS system. Second, I suspect most of their “missiles” are unguided rockets, which makes it even harder.
Then a question begs to be answered: Why haven’t American’s enemies attacked across the Mexican and Canadian borders? If there was a gaping hole in U.S missile defense, you’d think some al-Qaida operatives would be assembling a rockets in Alberta-Washington border as we speak.
What it boils down to is that Israeli intelligence and homeland defense are sophomoric, at best, when compared to the United States. This is despite having a land mass smaller than West Virginia and a large infusion of military and economic aid from Uncle Sam.
Given that Tel Aviv has contribued so much to the sciences, it is disappointing that the country still lacks the ability to acquire or develop a robust missile shield system to protect its citizens in the South from rockets.
- Honesty
Do you really want to go down that road?
I mean, if you held a referrendum in the American Midwest in the late 1800’s - a handful of decades earlier - I’m guessing that the vote would be overwhelmingly against more white immigration. The fact that an occupying power allowed white immigration doesn’t really legitimize it.
And that glosses over a hell of a lot worse than what we had here.
The article is silly. Not quite as silly as the rather strangely named “honesty” who thinks that the US has a viable missile shield (we don’t) or that rockets can successfully be intercepted with any great frequency (they can’t).
The analogy of a US response to rocket attacks is apt,and it’s one that’s been made for years now, Literally. You can search discussions on this very board from 2006, just as an example. That the article’s author deliberately cast it in terms of US pundits and politicians parroting Israeli rhetoric is telling. It’s an obvious analogy that any honest observer would have realized; the right of national self defense is not exactly a novel concept.
Of course, the narrative of Israel driving out vast swaths of Arabs is dramatically overstated to sell an agenda. Same old same old, eh?
So people would have wanted to prohibit Jews from buying and living on property. So what? It’s also worth noting that by your own timeline, the sovereign power in the region during the early 1900’s had been the sovereign power for roughly four centuries.
And is that really a principle you’d honestly stand behind, in any case, or is it selective for Israeli/Jewish immigrants? Would you actually argue that white neighborhoods have the right to stop blacks from buying property? Or xenophobic racists can stop foreigners from buying property if the US government has already granted them the right to immigrate? “Chinks go home!” okay with you? “Darkies, don’t let the sun set on you in this town!” fine? Or just “Dhimmi Jews stay the fuck out of the Levant!”
Is this Double Standard Theater?
What, they should have prevented it? “No Jews allowed!” ?
For serious? You’d be fine with, for instance, the US now saying that no Muslims could immigrate?
And, of course, not only the “occupying power” but the Ottomans themselves allowed immigration. Rishon L’tzion was founded in the late 19th century.
What do you mean we don’t have a viable missile shield? That’s absurd. Indeed, if missile shields weren’t viable, the federal government would not be shedding nine billion dollars to build one in Poland. Clearly, the science is sound otherwise the concept of a “missile shield” would collapse in on itself as fiction.
If these Soviet-made, self-assembled rockets cannot be intercepted, why aren’t they the weapon of choice in military incursions?
- Honesty
Because the federal government has never wasted money on anything, ever.
I’ll also note you’ve changed your tune from the claim that we have a viable missile shield that we could currently build to we’re building one, at some point, in the future.
Of course, your argument is still wrong. Not even the MDA claims it’s accomplished its mission statement. In fact, they routinely fail tests. As should be obvious, with the percent of failure that the MDA itself admits to, we currently have the technology to reduce but not eliminate the number of missiles which would hit US soil, not create a ‘shield’ against them.
Remind me, how did Brilliant Pebbles work out?
Where to start… to begin with, you’re ignorant of the very important distinction between missiles and rockets, and you really need to educate yourself.
You’re also unaware of why groups like Al Quaeda wouldn’t have free reign in places like Canada to set up shop and launch rockets. You might want to puzzle that out.
You might also consider that since rockets are unguided, they aren’t the weapon of choice in “military incursions” because they’re weapons of terror and indiscriminate fire, not targeted strikes.
You might also want to do your homework, and realize that Israel is still developing anti-rocket technologies, which still won’t be foolproof. If you fire enough rockets, some will get through. Results in the real world will also vary from laboratory results depending on how the variables are changed. Which is why the Iron Dome system was found to be helpless against Qassams. Even US anti-rocket technology wouldn’t cut it. The recent Skyguard test showed less than 25% efficacy.
Is it really so hard to do some research before you make uninformed claims?
Because they’re too short ranged and pretty much useless against military targets (or against targets, period - they can be aimed to hit a certain town, and that’s it). Theire sole possible use is to terrorize civilian populations.
Besides, most small, short-range rockets, missiles and shells can’t be intercepted. It’s easier to track and shoot down a 50’ missile with a 45 minute flight time than it is to shoot down a 5’ missile with a 45 second flight time. That’s why more advanced short range rocket systems, like the MLRS, *are *the weapon of choice in military incursions.
Just because the federal government is willing to spend nine billion dollars of other people’s money on something does not mean it’s actually worth nine billion dollars. And even if it is effective, that does not mean it is effective against every type of missile ever invented.
Because the Qassam rocket only has a range of 10 kilometers, carries only 10 kilograms of explosives and is unguided, while the MLRS can fire 60 kilometers with a 90 kilogram warhead, and an ICBM (the sort of missile the missile shield is supposed to protect against) can be fired thousands of kilometers with more than a tonne of warheads.
Oh good. Yet another Israel thread hijacked by the usual suspects.
And who would those be?
Actually, those Soviet-made - not self-assembled Quassam, but rather BM-21 Grad - are indeed often weapon of choice for many military forces around the world. Wiki lists over sixty countries using them. They were extensively used recently in Georgia conflict, for example.
That’s a good analogy, but nobody’s ever suggested that America came into her land through honorable means. In fact, it is generally taught as a shameful war of aggression that ended up with settlers stealing the land of the native population.
If the “darkies” moved into my neighborhood with the intention of forming a new country with me as a marginalized minority, then yes, I’d have a problem with that.