# So Will The Sky Fall If The UN Declare Palestine a State? **URL:** \ **Category:** Great Debates\ **Created:** [September 4, 2011, 7:54pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/so-will-the-sky-fall-if-the-un-declare-palestine-a-state/595182 "2011-09-04T19:54:51Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 58
**Author:** ![Ibn\_Warraq](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/i/e19b73/32.png) [@Ibn\_Warraq](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ibn_Warraq)\ **Post date:** [February 5, 2013, 4:43pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/so-will-the-sky-fall-if-the-un-declare-palestine-a-state/595182/1141 "2013-02-05T16:43:19Z")
> [@Dick\_Dastardly](#): > > Tuesday 25 September 2012 > The jailing of hundreds of army officers accused of [plotting a coup against the government of prime minister Tayyip Erdogan](http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-19670530) marks a low-point for [Turkey](http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/turkey)’s military, which for decades exercised shadowy control over the country with scant regard for democratic values. But the outcome of the so-called Sledgehammer (Balyoz) case highlights a new worry: that Erdogan, in power since 2002 and with his eye on a revamped, executive presidency, is becoming just as authoritarian and over-bearing as the generals once were. > > It is possible to view the Sledgehammer trial, and two similar plot investigations (known as Ergenekon and KCK) also involving hundreds of suspects, as an overdue, even praiseworthy attempt to clean house. Turkey endured three outright military coups between 1960 and 1980, and a moderate Islamist government, a forerunner to the ruling Justice and Development party (AKP), was forced from office in 1997… > > [Turkey's Sledgehammer Coup verdict: justice or Soviet-style show trial? | Simon Tisdall | The Guardian](http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2012/sep/25/turkey-sledgehammer-coup-trial-verdict) Dick, you do realize that this post completely contradicts your previous post and does nothing to contradict mine that “the current government is despised by the army.” You first argued that Turkey wasn’t a democracy because > [@](#): > > **Dick Dastardly** > But when a government that the army doesn’t like gets elected they stage a coup. Any government that they do allow in power knows\*\* it’s on a very short leash and so doesn’t stray very far from the preferred policies of the army. \*\* You have just posted an article which details how the current democratically elected government is hated by the army, is not on a leash at all by the army, and the army is powerless to do anything about it. Turkey is a democracy. By your own admission. > [@](#): > > **Dick Dastardly** > Turkey is a country that has regular elections and popularly elected governments. Countries that have free elections and popularly elected governments are by definition democracies. You may not like their government, but they are a democracy and democracy doesn’t equal “good government”. Yes, like many democracies, they don’t have the same standards for free speech I’d like, but that’s true of many democracies and also, like plenty of democracies, they have abused sweeping anti-terrorist laws to deal with terrorist attacks within their country by the PKK, but again, that doesn’t mean they’re not a democracy. Your thesis that Israel somehow isn’t a democracy because democracies don’t occupy countries has no foundation. ---
**Author:** ![AK84](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/85e7bf/32.png) [@AK84](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/AK84)\ **Post date:** [February 5, 2013, 4:52pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/so-will-the-sky-fall-if-the-un-declare-palestine-a-state/595182/1142 "2013-02-05T16:52:04Z")
Isn’t there a 1000 post limit on the dope? If not there should be. ---
**Author:** ![Dick\_Dastardly](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/c4cdca/32.png) [@Dick\_Dastardly](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dick_Dastardly)\ **Post date:** [February 5, 2013, 5:00pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/so-will-the-sky-fall-if-the-un-declare-palestine-a-state/595182/1143 "2013-02-05T17:00:03Z")
> [@Ibn\_Warraq](#): > > Dick, you do realize that this post completely contradicts your previous post and does nothing to contradict mine that “the current government is despised by the army.” > > You first argued that Turkey wasn’t a democracy because > You have just posted an article which details how the current democratically elected government is hated by the army, is not on a leash at all by the army, and the army is powerless to do anything about it. > > Turkey is a democracy. > > By your own admission. > Countries that have free elections and popularly elected governments are by definition democracies. > > You may not like their government, but they are a democracy and democracy doesn’t equal “good government”. > > Yes, like many democracies, they don’t have the same standards for free speech I’d like, but that’s true of many democracies and also, like plenty of democracies, they have abused sweeping anti-terrorist laws to deal with terrorist attacks within their country by the PKK, but again, that doesn’t mean they’re not a democracy. > > Your thesis that Israel somehow isn’t a democracy because democracies don’t occupy countries has no foundation. OK then, let’s say that up until these latest coup attempts didn’t work that the government couldn’t go very far away from army-preferred policies without the army staging a coup. So that’s up until last year when they failed to stage a successful coup. And now the big worry is that the current government is going to become authoritarian. Holding elections doesn’t make you a democracy. Free elections are one of the hallmarks of democracy but if you’re the world leader at locking up journalists, if your human rights record is so bad the European Union won’t let you become a member and so on then you can fairly question whether Turkey is a democracy. ---
**Author:** ![Ibn\_Warraq](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/i/e19b73/32.png) [@Ibn\_Warraq](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ibn_Warraq)\ **Post date:** [February 5, 2013, 5:14pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/so-will-the-sky-fall-if-the-un-declare-palestine-a-state/595182/1144 "2013-02-05T17:14:19Z")
> [@AK84](#): > > Isn’t there a 1000 post limit on the dope? If not there should be. Probably, we seem to have gone vastly afield from the original topic. It’s also odd to see a person who freely admits to being a huge fan of Hezbollah suddenly decide that Turkey is a horrible and unfree government. ---
**Author:** ![Jackmannii](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/jackmannii/32/311_2.png) [@Jackmannii](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Jackmannii)\ **Post date:** [February 5, 2013, 5:40pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/so-will-the-sky-fall-if-the-un-declare-palestine-a-state/595182/1145 "2013-02-05T17:40:05Z")
> [@Dick\_Dastardly](#): > > Holding elections doesn’t make you a democracy. It may seem odd that Dick is intent on defining democracy in a manner that contradicts the widely accepted meaning of the term, in order to deny that it exists in countries he abhors. However, further research reveals that Dick is not alone in this attitude of “words mean what I want them to mean, and nothing more”. [Here’s a site](http://www.uiowa.edu/~c030142/DefinitionsOfDemocracy.html) with a whole raft of definitions of democracy, including my personal favorite: _"“Democracy is the theory that the common people know what they want and deserve to get it good and hard.”_ - H. L. Mencken ---
**Author:** ![Dick\_Dastardly](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/c4cdca/32.png) [@Dick\_Dastardly](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dick_Dastardly)\ **Post date:** [February 5, 2013, 9:51pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/so-will-the-sky-fall-if-the-un-declare-palestine-a-state/595182/1146 "2013-02-05T21:51:06Z")
> [@Ibn\_Warraq](#): > > Probably, we seem to have gone vastly afield from the original topic. > > It’s also odd to see a person who freely admits to being a huge fan of Hezbollah suddenly decide that Turkey is a horrible and unfree government. They’re a popularly elected government. They’re the legitimate representatives of the Turkish people. They have a mandate to govern, no doubt about it. But you’ve got to admit there are aspects of governance in Turkey that aren’t things you would generally associate with democracies. ---
**Author:** ![Trinopus](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/2bfe46/32.png) [@Trinopus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Trinopus)\ **Post date:** [February 5, 2013, 11:16pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/so-will-the-sky-fall-if-the-un-declare-palestine-a-state/595182/1147 "2013-02-05T23:16:40Z")
Definitely. Corruption, nepotism, heavy influence from tribalism, religion, etc. At times, it was illegal to teach the Kurdish language in Turkey; that goes very strongly against democratic ideals. If you want to say that Turkey is a “less than ideal” democracy, nobody will disagree. But, hell, the U.S., Great Britain, France, Canada, and Australia are also less than ideal democracies. ---
**Author:** ![Dick\_Dastardly](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/c4cdca/32.png) [@Dick\_Dastardly](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dick_Dastardly)\ **Post date:** [February 6, 2013, 11:13am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/so-will-the-sky-fall-if-the-un-declare-palestine-a-state/595182/1148 "2013-02-06T11:13:47Z")
> [@Trinopus](#): > > Definitely. Corruption, nepotism, heavy influence from tribalism, religion, etc. At times, it was illegal to teach the Kurdish language in Turkey; that goes very strongly against democratic ideals. > > If you want to say that Turkey is a “less than ideal” democracy, nobody will disagree. But, hell, the U.S., Great Britain, France, Canada, and Australia are also less than ideal democracies. None of them lock journalists up by the dozen and none of them have been refused entry to international organisations like the EU because of their appalling human rights record. ---
**Author:** ![FinnAgain](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/finnagain/32/12500_2.png) [@FinnAgain](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/FinnAgain)\ **Post date:** [February 6, 2013, 11:54am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/so-will-the-sky-fall-if-the-un-declare-palestine-a-state/595182/1149 "2013-02-06T11:54:06Z")
Got to bring your argument back to reality, yet again. Israel has refused entry to certain political figures associated with the UNHRC, and has refused to accept the legitimacy of the UNHRC due to the UNHRC’s blatant prejudice and bias, obvious to almost anybody not fanatically anti-Israel. Your argument about how Israel refused anything because of “[its] appalling human rights record” is such obvious obfuscation that you are only speaking to dyed in the wool anti-Israel partisans. Preaching to the choir, as it were. The UN Human Rights Council includes member states which are some of the worst violators of human rights on the planet, currently including but not limited to Saudi Arabia, The Congo, Sudan, Uganda, and China. It is obsessively focused on Israel in wildly disproportional measure to its attention to every other human rights situation on the globe (many of which they ignore completely). It is a body that was created because the previous one lost all legitimacy and was replaced largely because of its obsessive and prejudicial focus on Israel. And you think that anybody but your fellow travelers will be persuaded by your flight of fantasy that the reason Israel wouldn’t submit to the UHRC is because it’s just such a terrible human rights violator. That’s adorable. ---
**Author:** ![TonySinclair](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/49beb7/32.png) [@TonySinclair](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/TonySinclair)\ **Post date:** [February 6, 2013, 11:20pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/so-will-the-sky-fall-if-the-un-declare-palestine-a-state/595182/1150 "2013-02-06T23:20:00Z")
> [@FinnAgain](#): > > That’s adorable. So is your spirited defense of Israel in response to comments about Turkey. ---
**Author:** ![FinnAgain](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/finnagain/32/12500_2.png) [@FinnAgain](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/FinnAgain)\ **Post date:** [February 6, 2013, 11:36pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/so-will-the-sky-fall-if-the-un-declare-palestine-a-state/595182/1151 "2013-02-06T23:36:01Z")
Tony, just a suggestion, but if you have no idea what I’m saying and don’t understand my argument, you should probably not post. But, good show. One of your fellow travelers has been caught out in his games and your response is not to take him to task, but to try to go on the attack. Terribly unexpected. Truly. ---
**Author:** ![tomndebb](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/b9e5f3/32.png) [@tomndebb](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/tomndebb)\ **Post date:** [February 7, 2013, 1:49am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/so-will-the-sky-fall-if-the-un-declare-palestine-a-state/595182/1152 "2013-02-07T01:49:59Z")
**ENOUGH!** The next poster who simply makes snide comments that one “side” or another has done a poor job of presenting an argument will be Warned for threadshitting and ignoring Mod instructions. Stick to laying out your own positions and stop pretending you get to “judge” your opponents’. You may, of course, continue to claim that your opponent is in error on a particular assertion or that your opponent has failed to make his or her case on a specific point, but you will not claim that your opponent is failing to make a case or that “others” will judge you to be the winner, etc. I would close this thread, but I would prefer to keep you all tied up here in this mess where I can keep an eye on you. [/Moderating] ---
**Author:** ![FinnAgain](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/finnagain/32/12500_2.png) [@FinnAgain](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/FinnAgain)\ **Post date:** [February 7, 2013, 2:44am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/so-will-the-sky-fall-if-the-un-declare-palestine-a-state/595182/1153 "2013-02-07T02:44:32Z")
So noted. ---
**Author:** ![newcomer](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/e5b9ba/32.png) [@newcomer](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/newcomer)\ **Post date:** [March 4, 2013, 2:07pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/so-will-the-sky-fall-if-the-un-declare-palestine-a-state/595182/1154 "2013-03-04T14:07:44Z")
> **[Israeli Bus Company Introducing 'Palestinian Only' Buses](https://www.gawker.com/5988177/israeli-bus-company-introducing-palestinian-only-buses)** > > Following complaints by West Bank settlers that Palestinians posed a "security risk" to fellow bus riders, the Afikim bus company will begin running separate buses for settlers and Palestinians traveling into the State of Israel, beginning this... The only thing I’m going to sit and read is rationalization and semantic approach to explain that this is so “normal”. For example, one reasoning could be that sending people to sit in the back of the bus is apartheid policy. Sending them to a separate bus altogether is, in fact a luxury policy that 1st world democracy like Israel can afford. Why would anything be wrong with this? ---
**Author:** ![FinnAgain](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/finnagain/32/12500_2.png) [@FinnAgain](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/FinnAgain)\ **Post date:** [March 4, 2013, 2:12pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/so-will-the-sky-fall-if-the-un-declare-palestine-a-state/595182/1155 "2013-03-04T14:12:34Z")
> [@newcomer](#): > > one reasoning could be that sending people to sit in the back of the bus is apartheid policy. Or one could note that these are _not Israeli citizens, and are citizens of a quasi-nation is currently at war with Israel_, and that Israeli citizens who are Arabs have no such restrictions. Could go either way, but it’s probably best to start calling it “apartheid”, just to be safe. ---
**Author:** ![Alessan](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/alessan/32/465_2.png) [@Alessan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Alessan)\ **Post date:** [March 4, 2013, 2:24pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/so-will-the-sky-fall-if-the-un-declare-palestine-a-state/595182/1156 "2013-03-04T14:24:05Z")
Why - won’t - this - thread - DIE!? ---
**Author:** ![FinnAgain](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/finnagain/32/12500_2.png) [@FinnAgain](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/FinnAgain)\ **Post date:** [March 4, 2013, 2:25pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/so-will-the-sky-fall-if-the-un-declare-palestine-a-state/595182/1157 "2013-03-04T14:25:32Z")
Well, if you blame the Palestinians for the thread, I’m sure someone will come along shortly to blame the Israelis. ---
**Author:** ![brazil84](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/8491ac/32.png) [@brazil84](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/brazil84)\ **Post date:** [March 4, 2013, 3:28pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/so-will-the-sky-fall-if-the-un-declare-palestine-a-state/595182/1158 "2013-03-04T15:28:27Z")
> [@newcomer](#): > > [http://gawker.com/5988177/israeli-bus-company-introducing-palestinian-only-buses](http://gawker.com/5988177/israeli-bus-company-introducing-palestinian-only-buses) > > The only thing I’m going to sit and read is rationalization and semantic approach to explain that this is so “normal”. > > For example, one reasoning could be that sending people to sit in the back of the bus is apartheid policy. > > Sending them to a separate bus altogether is, in fact a luxury policy that 1st world democracy like Israel can afford. > > Why would anything be wrong with this? I don’t know. If you oppose separate buses for Arabs, then surely you oppose a separate country for the Arabs right? And surely you oppose efforts to push Jews out of such a separate country, right? ---
**Author:** ![newcomer](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/e5b9ba/32.png) [@newcomer](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/newcomer)\ **Post date:** [March 4, 2013, 3:36pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/so-will-the-sky-fall-if-the-un-declare-palestine-a-state/595182/1159 "2013-03-04T15:36:25Z")
> [@Alessan](#): > > Why - won’t - this - thread - DIE!? I’m sure there will be no debate if Palestinians died off or got expelled. This reminds me of a Serbian dude who - prior to NATO bombardment of Belgrade - was on a mission to cement the political status quo resulted from wars against Croats, Bosnians and Kosovars. Then, in the spring of 1999 when bombs started falling on his hometown he became the biggest promoter of peace and just resolution to a conflict ever. Israel has so much more to go… > [@brazil84](#): > > I don’t know. If you oppose separate buses for Arabs, then surely you oppose a separate country for the Arabs right? Another win! ---
**Author:** ![brazil84](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/8491ac/32.png) [@brazil84](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/brazil84)\ **Post date:** [March 4, 2013, 3:37pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/so-will-the-sky-fall-if-the-un-declare-palestine-a-state/595182/1160 "2013-03-04T15:37:08Z")
> [@newcomer](#): > > Another win! Thank you 🙂 [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/so-will-the-sky-fall-if-the-un-declare-palestine-a-state/595182.md?page=57) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/so-will-the-sky-fall-if-the-un-declare-palestine-a-state/595182.md?page=59)