-There’s hardly a debate about most other fucked-up countries in the world. If you’re going to write an OP about Zimbabwe or North-Korea being oppressive countries, you’ll have a hard time finding someone who will disagree.
-Israel is all over the medias. People are familiar with the issue. When there are deaths related to the Palestinian issiue, the information is broadcasted on TV and printed in the papers in western countries. A death related to the Tamul issue in Sri-Lanka won’t ever be reported anywhere. Give as much coverage to Chechnia than to Palestine, and after some time, people wil begin to be all worked up about Chechnia, while now most couldn’t care less.
-People have much higher expectations from Israel because Israel (and some foreign supporters of Israel even more so) insists son stating that this country is essentially a perfect democracy with barely any flaw at all and also because westerners identify Israelis as being “like us”. They wouldn’t be such expectations if the Jews were black people spread all over Africa who had settled in some place no one would remember the name of fter 5 minutes. Actually, we would essentially never hear about the issue in this case. And finally, people are much more interested in Israel because judaism and the “holy land” has also a lot of significance for christians who make up a large part of the population in the west.
Don’t delude yourself. If a similar issue existed in some place in the third world involving a group people aren’t familiar with, it would never been debatted. You wouldn’t find many people attacking the governement of said place, but you wouldn’t find many people defending it, either.
For what reasons exactly should neighboring countries allow in Palestinian refugees? Because they’re also arabs? Or for the most part also muslims? Then, should a western country allow in any refugee who is say, christian?
Though you might argue that Jordan, who once claimed sovereignty over the West Bank, should have some particular responsability regarding the Palestinians (instead of which the expelled them brutally at some point out of fear of being destabilized, rather than to annoy Israel), why on earth should say, Lebanon, grant citizenship to the Palestinian refugees any more than the US should?
Many of the Palestinian refugees’ families originally came from Egypt, Syria and Jordan. Therefore there’s a little more credence to them being able to enter those countries than, say, Canada or Australia.
The Iran-Iraq war, the Iraqi atrocities against the Kurds, and the countless terror bombings in Saudi Arabia and Iraq going on right now are a few good examples of Muslim-on-Muslim violence.
Absolutely not. Not supporting religious beliefs has nothing to do with antisemitism or else any atheist would be antisemitic by definition (or even any theist who belongs to another religion hence doesn’t give any particular value to a religious-based Jewish claim on Palestine).
I’m also pretty certain that a lot of the original Zionists would be very surprised to know that Judaism and Zionism are the same thing.
Religious motives are the most feeble argument in favor of Israel. Nobody is under any obligation to accept the religious claim of anyone else as having any validity or any relevance.
So, the Jews who are opposed to the current existence of the state of Israel on religious grounds aren’t Jews?
And what were secular Zionists, exactly? Antisemitic? Anti-Jewish? Hence according to you, by definition anti-Zionists? My head is spinning.
Many of the Palestinian refugees’ families originally came from Egypt, Syria and Jordan. Therefore there’s a little more credence to them being able to enter those countries than, say, Canada or Australia.
The Iran-Iraq war, the Iraqi atrocities against the Kurds, and the countless terror bombings in Saudi Arabia and Iraq going on right now are a few good examples of Muslim-on-Muslim violence.
Also, to dredge up something from the original post:
Sharon is a horrible Prime Minister and a slimy person in general but I’d like to know exactly what qualifies him as a war criminal?
If he is a war criminal then every military leader is a war criminal.
Please don’t say “he bulldozes people’s houses.” When an army is forced to fight against terrorists, rather than an organized enemy force, destroying the houses of individual terrorists are one of the only things they can do. Notice how Israel typically tries to target terrorist leaders rather than, say, blowing up buses of Arab civilians?
If Sharon was having hundreds of Arabs lined up and shot and tossed into mass graves, he would be a war criminal in the manner of Hussein and Milosevic. As far as I know, Sharon nor any other Israeli leader has done any such thing. They are fighting the terrorists with the only means they have at their disposal. They cannot just sit back and do nothing while women and children are torn to pieces by shrapnel from bus bombings and suicide attacks.
Much better. Thank you. Your contributions are often fascinating, but when you reduce them to shorthand without any exposition, your audience is left in the dark.
To quote Esprix, from a completely unrelated thread, “This guy doesn’t have issues - he’s got a subscription!”
Actually, the french don’t have France. It’s more like the reverse. There are french people only because historical events resulted in a country called “France” appearing. People living in this country became french and eventually shared a common language, culture, etc…There wasn’t a preexisting french people who deserved a France and managed to get it.
But in this particular case, the ethnicity didn’t already occupy a territory. So, on what basis exactly could they claim someone else’s territory? A similar case would be the Gypsies. Assuming that tommorrow they want their own state, which would be a legitimate claim according to your reasonning, whose land should they be allowed to take over?
It’s unlikely to cause WWIII.
Contrarily to Jews before they immigrated in Palestine, the Kurds are already occupying the land they’re claiming, and have been for a long time. What they’re after is independance.
And personnally, I support this wish. Turkey, Iran, etc… don’t have any legimitate reason to keep under their authority a territory populated by people who are massively in favor of an independant state and don’t want to be ruled from Ankara or Teheran.
Which is exactly my position, since there has been several generation of Israelis born in Israel meanwhile.
However, this doesn’t give a particular right to Jews from other places to live in this area. Or more exactly, their right to live in Israel is certainly much less well-founded from this point of view than the same right of the many Palestinians whose father or grand-father (or even themselves, for the oldest ones) was actually living there.
Even less so if settlements are extended or new settlements are created in the occupied territories to accomodate this new immigrants, at the expense of the Palestinians. Even worst when they immigrate with the religious agenda of reclaiming the land which has been “given by God to them” according to their beliefs, and the deliberate intend to replace the Palestinians in these territories.
Too easy an argument. I would say that way too much Israel supporters are using it as an easy way out of the debate (" they pretend to criticize israel while actually they’re antisemitic"). This argument too is very “convenient” as you put it.
Besides, what is the percentage of people opposed to Israeli policies who are actually motivated by antisemitism? Once again, this argument is used a lot, but what are your evidences showing that antisemitism is a motivation for a significant part of the people criticizing Israel? In many countries, including some where there hardly ever has been any Jew living, the wide majority of the population is more pro-Palestinian than pro-Israeli. Does it means that the wide majority of these people are secretly antisemitic?
Couldn’t I similarily state that people criticizing Mugabe are actually racist for a good part, on the basis that he’s black and that his policies targeted particularily white land-owners? It’s certainly an argument that he’s using. A convenient and unsupported one.
But you were refering to Shia-on-Sunni violence, not to muslim-on-muslim. Nor the Iran-Irak war, nor the atrocities against the Kurds were motivated by religious disagreements, especially since Saddam Hussein wasn’t religious. They were territorial or politically motivated war/atrocities.
And the bombings in Saudi Arabia certainly are even less an example of this, since both sides, in this case, are Sunnis.
Generally, he’s told to be so in reference to his possible (likely, according to me, but then I wasn’t there hence don’t have proofs) responsability in the massacres in Sabrah and Shateelah. But actions like extra-judiciary executions of leaders using copter - launched rockets and resulting in the death of all people living in the building could certainly be called also “war crimes”.
Bulldozing a house is a punishment inflicted on the family of someone who commited a crime. This is as legimitimate as jailing the son of a murderer. Though it’s certainly not the worst thing done in Palestine, I don’t think it’s morally justified. The goal is to deter potential criminals with the threat of punishment for their relatives, parents, children, etc… This is a principle which hasn’t been accepted for a long time as having any legitimacy.
[quote]
If Sharon was having hundreds of Arabs lined up and shot and tossed into mass graves, he would be a war criminal in the manner of Hussein and Milosevic.
[/quote)
Sharon isn’t on par with Milosevic, but then, Milosevic isn’t on par with Saddam Hussein, either. This doesn’t mean that they can’t be all war criminals.
Some would say they could try evacuate the occupied territories. That would be doing something that hardly anybody could criticize. You might believe that it wouldn’t stop the terrorist attacks, but Sharon’s policies don’t seem to have such a result, either. In any case, leaving these territories could only reduce the motivation for said terrorist attacks (and also would reduce to zero the number of Palestinians killed by settlers, settlers by Palestinians, soldiers by Palestinians and Palestinians by soldiers).
the settlements are a fuckin’ atrocity, and Begin should roast (?:do they roast you in Gehenna? I don’t know) in gehenna for them.
More to the point, since you framed my problem with more coherence than I, how can the descendants of the younger brother brandish their shared patrimonial mandate at the descendants of the older brother?
If the “right to return” flows to descendants of displaced jews from the early centuries of the first millenium, why doesn’t it flow to actual, living displaced arabs from fifty years ago?
What, it’s too late for the 'rabs but right on time for their several orders of magnitude later cousins?
At least pay the poor bastards off. It’s one thing to bootstrap sovereignty from the second hand mandate (league to britain to UN) itself founded on right by conquest stretching back to, (actually back to joshua, but that’s raises a whole nother can of worms). at least the babylonian captivity, but even when they take a little of your garden for a new highway they have to pay for it.
Fixing the mix-up I made with quotes in my last post :
[quote]
If Sharon was having hundreds of Arabs lined up and shot and tossed into mass graves, he would be a war criminal in the manner of Hussein and Milosevic.
[/quote)
Sharon isn’t on par with Milosevic, but then, Milosevic isn’t on par with Saddam Hussein, either. This doesn’t mean that they can’t be all war criminals.
Some would say they could try evacuate the occupied territories. That would be doing something that hardly anybody could criticize. You might believe that it wouldn’t stop the terrorist attacks, but Sharon’s policies don’t seem to have such a result, either. In any case, leaving these territories could only reduce the motivation for said terrorist attacks (and also would reduce to zero the number of Palestinians killed by settlers, settlers by Palestinians, soldiers by Palestinians and Palestinians by soldiers).
Sharon isn’t on par with Milosevic, but then, Milosevic isn’t on par with Saddam Hussein, either. This doesn’t mean that they can’t be all war criminals.
Some would say they could try evacuate the occupied territories. That would be doing something that hardly anybody could criticize. You might believe that it wouldn’t stop the terrorist attacks, but Sharon’s policies don’t seem to have such a result, either. In any case, leaving these territories could only reduce the motivation for said terrorist attacks (and also would reduce to zero the number of Palestinians killed by settlers, settlers by Palestinians, soldiers by Palestinians and Palestinians by soldiers).
Do you recall one of the worst terrorist atrocities in recent Israeli history. An armed man, stormed into the victims’ place of worship while they were at prayer. Nearly 30 were murdered in cold blood before this terrorist was overcome.
The next day the grieving friends and relatives waited at that man’s house for whatever justice could be offerred. Waited for the Israeli bulldozers as they had heard them arrive so many times recently in response to atrocities less terrible.
The bulldozers never arrived. The victims were put into a fortnight’s curfew. The name of the terrorist: Baruch Goldstein.
Just wondering, and I guess this is something of a hijack, but where would you stand if all the militia’s in the US got together in say Montana, and decided they no longer wanted to be ruled by DC? Would you support there independence too? Coming from a country where we have some people who demand independence this issue isn’t as cut and dried as ‘they want it lets give it to them’.
You know it sounds crazy but I actually beleive it’s true-that Israel and Zionism is the cause of all these problems; the west is very powerful and rich, the arab world poor; when they see western people come over there and commit all these crimes for the last 50 years and the west, in particular the US supports it, they conclude that the west is evil and that they must resist in the only way they can-terrorism-and it’s ok to commit terrorist acts because the west is evil…
Sure muslims killing muslims, but the people in Iraq who blow up Iraqi police do this because the police are cooperating with the Americans who they think are evil…
