When I was a punk kid in high school, I had a brilliant idea. I knew I never wanted to work in a cubicle, fit in a corporate structure or otherwise sell out. I knew this in my heart. But how could I trust future Sven? How could I know I wasn’t going to give up on all that? How could I keep future Sven from selling out the dreams of now Sven?
My theoretical solution? An offensive facial tattoo. It’d make it so I couldn’t even consider a mainstream job. It’d force me to stay 100% committed to the life plan I had- I wouldn’t have another option. I could force my teenage idealism to be a deciding factor for the rest of my life. It might even feel so seamless that it didn’t feel like I was giving up options. When you have an offensive facial tattoo long enough, you stop living in the world of options available to the non facial tattooed. You have your own complete planet of bicycle messengers, bartenders and indie filmmakers The other options fade out of your reality as it becomes all you know and can know.
Its a form of ethnic cleansing, without all the killing, nothing more, nothing less.
Problem for Israel is always going to be demographics, its one reason, among others, why Israel offered settlement to Eastern Europeans following the collapse of the Communist bloc.
Nothing is inevitable, and this policy may or may not work - only time will tell.
As for who is right or wrong - plenty of both to go around.
Look all around the worls, from the US, through to South Americas, and just about every colony, there a has been some sort of enthnic crushing and forced deposession of territories. Its gone on for thousands of years, we only see a small part of it.
The Post-WWII international order is based on the assumption that “right of conquest” is meaningless and confers no legitimate claim to territory. Isn’t it?
No, it would be if Palestinians were being driven out of Israeli-held territory, which some extreme parties in Israeli politics demand. What is going on in the OTs is more in the nature of ethnic oppression/immiseration/marginalization. More like what the Apartheid regime did to nonwhite South Africans than what America did to the Indian nations. The difference is in the numbers – those of the Palestinians in the WB are not diminishing.
When haven’t the Israelis been settling the West Bank? It’s been going on for nearly 40 years. That’s 40 years during which they might otherwise have gotten Arab attitudes to evolve (more than they have).
Dude, they’re being evil! There’s a moral dimension to this issue.
Not magically, but eventually. More than 10 years of a settlement-free environment was required.
You think the Palestinians can’t tell the difference between the West Bank and Gaza and just Gaza? Did the Israelis make it clear to the Palestinian people that, depending how they react to this initial handover, there will be more settlement removals forthcoming? Or were they left with an air of, “That’s all you get, suckers!”?
How about by the United States? How about by the entire rest of the world? How about by the Israeli government itself? :rolleyes:
How much time do Israelis who want to keep the entire West Bank and Palestinians who want to destroy all of Israel spend talking to each other face-to-face?
It happened here, in North America. We expanded and fought, called the enemies savages and heartless for going after women and children and tried to make them look like the bad guys. Then we went all balls out and obliterated them to the best of our ability. The remnants, we pushed onto reservations and brokered treaties with that we failed to honor. We knew we had all the power and they had none. So what were they going to do?
But things are different this time. The Europeans just kept coming and coming, while the Native Americans’ numbers declined and declined. You do not have this situation in Israel. There will never be more Jews in that part of the hood than Muslims, even if all of NYC and Boca Raton migrated over there. Never. So I too wonder what the long term plan is. Are they going to whip out a mega flashy-thing to make everyone forget that they really haven’t annexed the land they’ve settled in? Have they prepared to compensate people that have been displaced? If full sovereignty is out and citizenship is out, then what is left? Are they waiting for all those people to just give up and make their own Trail of Tears? Where are they going to go? To a country that doesn’t want them either?
That’s what I don’t understand. What is your run-of-the-mill Joe Muhammed supposed to do?
Wait a second. First you say that lasting peace is intrinsically impossible because of Arab ill-will towards Israel. Then you acknowledge that Egypt and Jordan have maintained a lasting peace with Israel despite persistent ill-will towards Israel among their populations.
If your second statement is true, then clearly, innate popular antagonism towards Israel isn’t “the issue”, in the sense of being the ONLY factor that shapes Arab countries’ policies towards Israel. So I’m not convinced that Israel’s settlements policy is as immaterial as you seem to be claiming when it comes to affecting the chances for lasting peace in the region.
Putting the bulk of the world’s Jews (not really, but that was the Zionist idea, wasn’t it?) in one place, and that place surrounded by enemies, doesn’t sound like a good way to prevent another Holocaust. If they want to be safe they should all move to Europe and the U.S. and Canada and Australia.
Let’s say he has no problem with Israel’s existence. He just wants a country and a government that he can claim as his own, that can provide basic services and protections, and not have to worry about blockades and warfare he personally didn’t provoke or cause.
What is he supposed to do? Write a letter to his local Hamas leader? Have you ever written a letter to your congress critter and really expected anything to happen from it?
From Israeli sympathizers, I only hear a bunch of “It sucks to me them. But let’s have a Zionist party! Yippee!” But then when something bad happens in a settlement, or a suicide bomber explodes somewhere, we’re all supposed to feel real bad and hate the Palestinians for fucking things up yet again. And if somewhere dares to point out the obvious, then that person is against Israel, or worse.
I guess I’m feeling like Europeans did when the early Americans were getting torn up by the Native Americans. “Yeah, sucks to be them. But no one forced their asses to sit on that hornet’s nest.” The Jews deserve Israel just as much as the Palestinians do, which is to say, no one is entitled to that land by right. It’s all by might. So if your side does some punching to get what it wants, you can’t run home and cry when the other side punches back, no matter how dirty they fight. Especially if you’re fighting dirty too and not even trying to hide it. That’s Street 101.
And I just assumed everyone had taken this class, but apparently they have not.
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he Post-WWII international order is based on the assumption that “right of conquest” is meaningless and confers no legitimate claim to territory. Isn’t it?
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What do you base this on? There is no ‘right of conquest’, per se, but obviously if there is a war and territory is occupied, reality stays reality. No? We didn’t give Iraq back to Saddam et al…we forced them to change their entire government structure as well as imposing our collective rule on them while we made them get their shit together to our satisfaction. If we had decided to just annex Iraq or install a puppet (as some on this board predicted) then what was going to stop us from doing so, as long as we were prepared to pay the price of continued occupation??
There is nothing in international law, afaik, that says that Israel has to give back the territory it captured from Jordan, Syria or Egypt…obviously, since they haven’t done so (except some territory they captured from Egypt, but I believe that was voluntary)…unless you have some evidence to the contrary? I mean, hypothetically if there IS such an international ‘law’ then it’s not very effective, since, you know, Israel is still occupying that territory decades later, and I’m not seeing any sort of resolution, giving territory back-wise, a-happenin any time soon. This situation has been going on since before I was born, must of the territory in question was captured when I was still a kid or teen ager, and my guess is I’ll die and Israel will still be there building settlements.
