It’s your language that is lacking in utility, because imprecise. You used language broad enough that it admitted comparison with a situation where there was no killing but mutual mistrust. I cannot write your posts for you. I can only point out when they are sloppily vague enough to apply to otherwise-disanalogous situations.
Recall that I’ve stated several times that I Don’t Care what happens in Israel. Do you want me to stipulate that Arab terrorists are bad and Israelis have noble motives? Done and done. But when you make sloppy statements implying that it’s a no-brainer to reach these conclusions because everyone understands that ideologically-divided people can’t live together, I’m going to call you on the implications of that, if you haven’t qualified it more narrowly. “Ideologically diverse people separated by a homicidal animus on one side can’t live together” – fine. Then spell it out. Of course, that will require you to prove more subsidiary premises, and I’m sure you can. Just don’t make it seem more simple than it is. If your characterization of the Arab-Israeli conflict is framed in terms that on their face cover red/blue, then you’re opening yourself up to being called on that.
Yes, it is very generous of Qaddafi to offer up a solution that would eliminate Israel and replace it with a state assured to be an Arab majority within a decade.
:rolleyes:
It isn’t going to happen and no amount of pressure imaginable would get Israel to agree to it.
Some strange comments in this thread that bear discussing though.
Paul, in response to Treis’s comment that many Arab’s still are dogmatically comitted to all of the land for them alone, to killing the Jews, and
you answer
WTF?
BG, you are incorrect when you state
They could be allowed to stay there as citizens of the new Palestinian country (endowed with rights and protections and subject to the rule of state law just like Arabs citizens are in Israel). Or they could be offered that vs. an inducement to leave (yeah, money.) Those are also conceivable but unlike the one-state solution something that has a chance in Hell of happening.
toadspittle states
and may be correct. At historically normative birthrates Arabs will outnumber Jews in Israel proper within a few generations. But (s)he may be wrong. Birthrates are high among Arabs mainly as a correlate of the modern style of living.
That article continues with some discussion of how some believe that the demographic trends should inform long term Israeli self-interest (assuming that maintaining a Jewish identity state is Israeli self-interest.) To summarize (adding in my own biases as well) - Israeli self interest is served by[ul]
[li]A two state solution that gives the PA some heavier Palestinian populated areas currently within Israel and annexes some of the larger settlements in the West Bank.[/li][li]Raising the Israeli Arab standard of living as higher standard of living tends to be correlated with lower fecundity.[/li][li]Helping that new Palestinian state be a successful country such that Palestinians there have no desire to illegally move to within Israel for employment.[/li][/ul]
mswas, you felt safe in Manhattan? I dunno, those out of work Masters of the Universe might be getting kind desperate …
Well, it is invalid because it’s the argument that different groups should get along when they choose to immigrate here. Not that we could force Germany and Switzerland to become Switzany, and that it would be just fine. Let alone that we could force Georgia and Russia to be, er… (Georgia? Russia?) Georgiarus, and there wouldn’t be a civil war pretty much immediately.
Fair enough, I didn’t realize you were being tongue in cheek and I evidently missed the import of what you were saying. My apologies.
Perhaps the fact that we stole their land, will never give it back, and nobody thinks
that will ever change?
Property rights are valid/invalid depending on how many people agitate for them?
I’d just like to note the very interesting fact that you began talking about “propagandists” and have now moved on to, evidently, claiming that Americans who make that argument somehow represent Israel “being distracting” to our political discussion.
Ah yes, damn those “propagandists”, but luckily committed liar Jimmy Carter is there. Funny, was it you who recently talked about how you won’t even consider the arguments from people like Dershowitz, but even when it’s shown that Carter lies deliberately, frequently and in service of an agenda, that you choose to believe him over those who point out he can’t be trusted? Yes.
As it never began, we sure dodged a bullet there.
We’ve been having a fairly honest debate here, will you please stop talking about “propagandists” and putting forward proven liars like Carter while using wildly inaccurate and inflammatory rhetoric to call Israel and apartheid state?
The fact of the matter is that the 4th GC explicitly allows the security of the occupying state to justify even blockade and internment. That’s not apartheid. Israeli law (despite the fact that there are certainly bigoted Israelis who challenge it) allows for full citizenship and rights for Arab citizens, including participation in government. That’s not apartheid. And if Israel stopped following the GC sanctioned policies it currently has, rockets would be falling on every major Israeli city within a very short time.
The bombast serves no purpose.
We can talk about how best to balance Israeli security with Palestinian desires for sovereignty, but to simply handwave away Israeli security with a bombastic bit of bluster by calling it “apartheid” serves nobody, and certainly not accurate debate.
Cut it out.
You said, of a one-state solution for Israel/Palestine, “The uneducated majority would vote its own interests against the interests of the educated minority, bleeding the economy and turning it into a failed state.” (I presume by “uneducated majority” you meant the Palestinian Arabs, most of whom can’t vote in Israeli elections.) When South Africa gave the vote to its “uneducated majority,” they did not do what you are describing.
Simply as a point of fact, the Palestinians are probably the single most educated Arab population in the world. Their total adult literacy rate is at 92%. That’s higher than Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Syria, etc…
Whatever their society may be like, it’s certainly not an uneducated one.
I think Qaddafi’s sly point is, if the West is determined that religion shouldn’t dictate who holds sway in nation states, and the West is so proud of their melting pots, why not coerce an ally of the West to accept the same situation. The author I think realizes it’s abserd to believe Israel will do this, instead his OP/Ed is directed at the West and asks why we do not hold our ally to the same standards we hold ourselves.
Did they destroy infrastructure that mainly benefitted them but was built by white people before apartheid ended? If not, then we’re talking about different kinds of animals, because Hamas has torn of Israeli built infrastructure in Gaza for no reason other than it was built by Israelis.
It’s not quite that simple. Yes, it’s a tragedy that American Jews deliberately spent 14 million dollars to ensure that the greenhouses weren’t destroyed like the rest of the buildings were (sans temples) when the Gaza settlers pulled out… and that many greenhouses were then torn to pieces or later sold off.
Is that a normative “should,” a predictive “should,” a subjunctive “should?”
I’ve already stipulated in this thread that I don’t know whose account of the Arabs’ motives for fleeing was most accurate. I suspect (but don’t know) if you gave a statement of just what it is that “everyone in this thread should already know,” you would get objections. I could be wrong. But I certainly don’t take it for granted that shorthand assumptions or it-goes-without-saying is going to work very well in a thread on this topic.
Israel and certain Palestinians are in conflict? Okay, that’s probably a gimmee.
Beyond that – are you really that sanguine that “everyone should [and thus does] know and concur” on any large number of facts or conclusions about the ME situation?
All’s I’m asking is that people be a little more precise in their assumptions, factual premises, etc.
Do you think that their demographic representations and actual power are comparable?
Nobody here has argued for an ethnically/religiously pure state. The existence of Israel as a Jewish state (I’d argue) simply requires the Law of Return. In fact, many of Israel’s supporters have argued/campaigned/spent money precisely to make sure that Israel is a state of religious pluaralism rather than religiously “pure”. See, for instance, ARZA.
Huerta88 Israel and Palestine have been more or less regularly killing each other for fifty years. There divide is religious, and the ruling party of Gaza has it as official policy to destroy the state of Israel.
Well, fwiw, I agree with Mr Qaddafi, in the main. I have no religious superstition, either Judaic or nationalistic, telling me that Jews have a greater right per man than anyone else to the Levant.
The ideal to me would be a country of Palestine where it didn’t matter if you were Jewish or not. But that may be impracticable now.
So if a majority of those who wish to live there are anti-Israel, & a peaceful state can eventually built by ethnically cleansing out the Jews, then perhaps that is preferable to a regime of Israel keeping the non-Jews locked down in reservations.
I disagree that the divide is only religious. Otherwise I can be on board, now that you spelled that out.
But that’s why spelling it out is important. I have had people say "Everyone should know that the Balfour Declaration clearly justifies . . . " and then Katie bar the door.