But, I’m hijacking my own thread. The relative justice of the Israelis’ and Palestinians’ claims in all this is irrelevant – isn’t it? – to any strategic or economic benefit to the U.S.
It’s what usually happens when you have a rich country that wants cheap labor next to a poor country where people will work for low wages. You see it along the US-Mexico border, the Germany-Poland border, the Haiti-Dominican Republic border, the Liberia-Ivory Coast border, and basically anywhere where you have neighboring countries with largely different wealth levels.
In a superficial way yes, but based on that logic, Germany “guest-workers(Gasterbieter)” are comparable to South African blacks under Apartheid.
Moreover, Apartheid was about trying to deny South African Blacks were citizens. The Palestinians don’t want to be Israeli citizens and those offered it, have, almost without exception, rejected it.
Chronic levels of unemployment because they lack proper sustainable infrastructure. They depend on Israel (eg, Oslo Accords) and the PA (eg, international community’s $$) for work. (Or pay. Some of them don’t work at all. They’re terrorists in Israeli jail cells.)
Negative. May as well say that northern Mexico is an apartheid state under the U.S. because of NAFTA.
:dubious: In terms of economics: Palestinians have greater access to health care, food, education & technology. Is this the same for SA blacks? I’m confused; thought SA was having economic issues and wasn’t wholly sustained by the Arab League, the UN and EU? Educate me if SA blacks have it as good. FFS, even Palestinian prisoners can get Israeli degrees and conjugal visits and learn Hebrew and PA and Hamas salaries.
Yet we don’t have diplomatic relations with free and democratic Taiwan, but rather with not-free and not-democratic China.
I thought ‘free’ indicated sovereign status? Maybe I’m wrong…but wouldn’t ‘free and democratic’ be redundant?
One reason is the benefit to ultra-right wing Christian political interests, which have had a lot of influence in US politics since Reagan allowed them in the White House and have been undermining the well being of the US ever since.
Christians believe that their Rapture will come only after the Israelis have rebuilt their church thing which has been a contested area for decades. In order to rebuilt it they will probably have to annihilate any non-Israeli in the surrounding geographical area and claim unique ownership of the land.
That’s the reason tens of millions of $$ are flowing to Israel from US Christian sources every year - in addition to the official foreign assistance Israel is getting - in at least the past 30 years.
There are many other political factors that contribute to the established relationship of US & Israel, but most of them are somehow connected to either conservative or religious political interests in the US.
Keep in mind this is only some of the pre-mil/dispensationalist Christians which I believe is an unorthodox view-Calvin considered such views absurd.
Well, it’s certainly a minority view in historic Christianity but I wouldn’t call it unorthodox. It doesn’t violate any Creeds or the Seven Ecumenical Councils.
I don’t know what it has in numbers but Rapturism is certainly prominent in popular U.S. Protestantism. And while the Catholic Church doesn’t teach it, I’m sure many Catholics have incorporated it into their beliefs also.
What I don’t understand is how Naxos blanked out that Israel’s “church thingy” is called the “Temple”.
“Blanked out” ?
Where the words blanked out on your browser?
I didn’t call it “temple” as a dismissal of any importance to a bunch of bricks and mortar, that religious people often want to put on inanimate objects as a symbol of their superiority compared to everyone else.
That may be true, but your side’s not going to prove it by cherry-picking photographs for evidence. Show us the economic data for OT Palestinians vs pre-90s South Africans. Actual numbers, not “look at this pretty square in Ramallah”. Bear in mind that I’d consider “vastly” to be at least one order of magnitude better-off in real numbers.
Prove it.
Just to start you off - here’s a nice little graph that illustrates the difference between the OPT and South Africa, even before Apartheid ended. And no, Whites do not account for all the difference.
Four decades later, the increasingly complex world of Israel’s system of classification deems Said Rhateb to be a resident of the West Bank - somewhere he has never lived - and an illegal alien for living in the home in which he was born, inside the Jerusalem boundary. Jerusalem’s council forces Rhateb to pay substantial property taxes on his house but that does not give him the right to live in it, and he is periodically arrested for doing so. Rhateb’s children have been thrown out of their Jerusalem school, he cannot register a car in his name - or rather he can, but only one with Palestinian number plates, which means he cannot drive it to his home because only Israeli-registered cars are allowed within Jerusalem - and he needs a pass to visit the centre of the city. The army grants him about four a year.
There is more. If Rhateb is not legally resident in his own home, then he is defined as an “absentee” who has abandoned his property. Under Israeli law, it now belongs to the state or, more particularly, its Jewish citizens. “They sent papers that said we cannot sell the land or develop it because we do not own the land. It belongs to the state,” he says. “Any time they want to confiscate it, they can, because they say we are absentees even though we are living in the house. That’s what forced my older brother and three sisters to live in the US. They couldn’t bear the harassment.”
The ‘apartheid wall’
There are few places in the world where governments construct a web of nationality and residency laws designed for use by one section of the population against another. Apartheid South Africa was one. So is Israel…
You claim that Palestinians live (or lived - looks like you’re arguing both now) like South African blacks (which is pretty wild) and it’s up to me to disprove it? :dubious:
And why did you link that graph? You want to go on GDP alone (not that GDP is representative of the everyday Joe we’re talking about for either group)? What does that do for me if you have GDP of the PA from 1995 to 2005? What was the GDP of South African blacks under Apartheid?
And tell me why again you consider this to be parallel of Apartheid when the territories are not within Israel proper, whereas the Whites in South Africa controlled all of the country.
How many Palestinians go to college? Complete primary school? Have access to health care? In Apartheid South Africa, blacks went to school a few hours a day and didn’t become doctors. Hell, in Israeli universities -like Hebrew U - there are Palestinians from the WB earning their doctorates and teaching.
Now if you’d like to complain that 1/3 of Palestinians attend schools provided by the UN and not the government, well, that’s their failure to get their corrupted government in order.
And if you want to cry about democracy, tell Abbas to stop canceling elections! Or tell Israel’s neighbors to stop housing their people in ghettos.
Try getting a driver’s license in Israel. You get about the same run-around. Israel’s bureaucracy is huge and twisted – everywhere. With everyone. No doubt that guy comes face to face with ethnocentric-ism daily, but* all* Israelis have to deal with their ginormous government.
Erm, no, I responded to a claim that they were vastly better off. And live/lived, doesn’t really matter. In the '70s, they were no doubt worse off than they are now, too.
Yes it is - that’s why it’s the GDP per capita - an average. But feel free to play around. They have GNI, other stuff too.
Unless you’re arguing for a sudden precipitous pre-'95 drop for the Palestinians, the trend in that graph is clear. The GDP for SA is there for the Apartheid days. Extrapolate the Palestinians backwards, you’re still not going to see them being “vastly” economically better-off.
According to the SA government, the homelands were not part of South Africa proper. They were their own countries, with their own laws and governments. The parallels are clear.
Errrm, no, that’s wrong. Blacks got a full day of schooling. The facilities and the standards weren’t* as good as* the White schools, but where did you get the idea they weren’t educated? Yes, it was hard to get a degree, especially if you wanted to be a professional, but it happened anyway. Yes, there were restrictions on how many Blacks could train as doctors, but it wasn’t forbidden completely.
Not that that’s relevant. The point made that I responded to was that the Palestinians are economically better-off. I know they’re better-off in other ways (better education overall, better life expectancy, lower infant mortality, for instance - not “vastly” better, but better) - but economically, no, they’re not, and never were.
And I know this by looking at numbers, not pretty pictures of one town. Hell, could be the Israeli Potemkin village some Palestinians think it is, for all I know.
All I do know is that not all OT Palestinians live in Ramallah. Some live in Jabalia or worse. And most Black South Africans don’t live in squatter camps, and never have.
And I went to a White University before the end of Apartheid, and 90% of my class was non-White too. What’s your point?
I wouldn’t, it’s irrelevant to my point.
I don’t, it’s also irrelevant to my point.
So, no numbers, then? Quelle surprise:rolleyes:
Still nuttin’.
Are you of the opinion that US foreign policy re Israel is based on the irrational visions of evangelical Christians?
The answer you look for is pretty simple.
The US supports Israel for exactly the same reason that the US supports Egypt, and the support emerged at around the same time - to give the US leverege and influence in the region, and above all to promote military stability. Instability created by numerous Arab-Israeli wars is bad for the US in numerous ways - the ME contains vital American interests. Thus, the peace deal between Israel and the Egyptians - sweetened with dollops of US cash - serves US interests, which is why such dollops are forthcomming.
This policy has been remarkably successful and actual Arab-Israeli combat since 1973 has been minimal - Israeli adventures in Lebanon drawn in by instability there, fighting with Hamas in Gaza, etc. None of the apocalyptic battles drawing in the whole Arab world that happened before the US policy was initiated.
This makes a lot more sense than imagining Obama as the tool of hardcore apocalyptic evangelicals or whatever. 
I guess folks are simply too young to remember the Arab oil embargo that happened after the last major Arab-Israeli war.