This kind of hostile raving isn’t making your core arguments any more convincing. I’m making serious points here about the way you’re distorting the meanings of words to overstate the strength of Israel’s positions. If you really cared about laying out a persuasive pro-Israel line of argument rather than just trying to smack down anybody who disagrees with you, you’d listen to them.
Ooooh, a wikicite. Whose definition isn’t cited. Whee.
And yet again, your argument is reduced to agreeing with the facts in order to try to deny the facts.
Of course, you had to cherry pick even what the wikicite said, as the very next line is “A sovereign is a supreme lawmaking authority.” And of course your cherrypicking avoided the fact that your own cite clearly states that de facto sovereignty is still sovereignty. "De facto, or actual, sovereignty is concerned with whether control in fact exists. "
You’ve already admitted that Israel is, in fact, the supreme lawmaking authority and that, in fact, they do have control.
Not, of course, that a mostly uncited Wiki article deserves any consideration.
And it should be pointed out that you haven’t even attempted to show that Israel’s sovereignty isn’t in fact legal, just pointed to non-binding opinions that it isn’t legal.
But of course as this is an Israel debate, it wouldn’t be complete without Double Standard Theater, and it wouldn’t be complete without someone arguing about how biased and naughty I am for having “opinions” instead of facts… while they attempt to gainsay facts with opinions.
Ah well.
Not everybody picks up on irony quite as easily.
If you want to claim that it isn’t legitimate sovereignty, please show a binding resolution which says as much.
We both know that won’t happen, so why not just quit this bullshit?
Or continue with the bullshit and argue that people are “biased” for stating that 9/11 wasn’t an inside job because other people have different opinions.
Or that America really isn’t the United States because some people consider our civil war to be the War of Northern Aggression and there are still secessionists.
Or that you don’t have to pay taxes because some people argue that the federal government can’t legitimately impose taxation, and it’s horribly biased and partisan to state that they’re wrong.
Or what have you.
Of course, as I’ve already cited, the concept of legitimacy has been in use for quite some time and is defined “In constitutional government” as “the people ruling through a body of law that is sovereign. That is the version that commands legitimacy most commonly in the world today.”
Sure, but you’re trying to pretend that there’s no difference between the concepts of sovereignty and de facto sovereignty. This simply isn’t so.
If I say “I go out to lunch on weekdays” and somebody notes “Actually, you go out to lunch only on Tuesdays”, I don’t get to dismiss their point by retorting “Ah, but Tuesdays are weekdays, aren’t they? So I was right and you don’t know what you’re talking about! You’re agreeing with the facts in order to deny the facts!” That would be trying to blame others for one’s own misleading or ambiguous language use, which is exactly what you’re trying to do here.
To return to your original statement that I corrected:
This is conflating “sovereignty” and “de facto sovereignty”, or what I’ve been calling “de facto control”. It is more accurate to say that Israel claims sovereignty over these areas, but those claims are contested. Or else to specify that Israel has de facto sovereignty over these areas.
You’re trying to pretend that the contestation of Israeli sovereignty claims is just as insignificant as modern-day “Confederates” refusing to recognize the US government, or whatever. But this is silly; the international rejection of Israeli sovereignty claims is not tantamount to the position of a few loony separatists.
For example, it is standard practice for foreign countries to locate their embassies in a country’s capital city. In 1980, Israel officially declared “united Jerusalem” (i.e., including East Jerusalem) its capital city. However, because the rest of the world did not recognize Israel’s claims to sovereignty over East Jerusalem, no nation moved its embassy to Jerusalem, and the nations that did have embassies there moved them away. (The US later passed a law in favor of moving its embassy to Jerusalem, but has not done so.) Just because these actions, like non-binding UN resolutions, don’t constitute legal enforcement of the denial of Israeli sovereignty doesn’t mean that they don’t count as serious challenges to claims of Israeli sovereignty.
So no, you don’t get to pretend that it’s an undeniable fact that Israel has sovereignty over East Jerusalem. The only way you can get away with that is by pretending that the concept of “sovereignty” means only what you want it to mean, rather than what it is commonly understood to mean. You don’t get to use the exclusive FinnAgain dictionary to define terms for other people.
And just where have you shown that Israel’s claimed / defacto sovereignty is legal?
Just because they have taken by force of arms and haven’t yet been removed doesn’t mean that it is / was legal to do so.
I must have missed it, but what “body of nations” (i.e ICJ, UN, NATO, ASEAN, EU) has recognised and legitimised Israel’s claim to the occupied territories, Golan Heights etc?
By your apparent reasoning, when somebody has not (yet) been declared innocent, that must mean they are guilty? Even if the matter has not yet gone to trial.
Yeah, gotta love that attitude of might makes right (or if you prefer, the bully can do whatever he likes)
From what I can parse from FinnAgain’s posts, that seems to be what he’s saying. Which makes me wonder: based on this logic, why is it wrong for Palestinians to respond to Israel’s presence by blowing its people up? If they keep at it and successfuly expunge (through violence) all the Israelis occupying the land they want, thus allowing them to exert full dominion over the area, would this not be a legitimate way of claiming the soveriegnity they seek?
I don’t see why the United Nations should get to decide what is legal and illegal. As far as I can tell, the 4th Geneva Convention does not give the UN that kind of authority. Ditto for the ICG.
I don’t know, but if they start, God help us all.
What? That which isn’t allowed is prohibited, that which isn’t prohibited is allowed?
If you claim it’s illegal, then the burden of proof is on you.
Or is this just part of Double Standard Theater? Do you also demand that an international body certify that America has the right to sovereignty over the southern states, or that Quebec is part of Canada?
So just to clarify, your argument is that someone has to prove that Israel’s territory is not illegal… and you’re accusing me of arguing that someone is guilty if they haven’t been declared innocent?
Kay.
And now we get more straight forward. The defensive war of 1967 whose territorial gains were immediately offered back is the act of a “bully”.
Who’d a thunk it?
I’m not sure that “eh, just make them Jordanians” is quite the type of self-determination they’re looking for.
It’s not a double standard to point out that the status of Israel’s sovereignty over occupied areas like the Golan and East Jerusalem is qualitatively different from the status of the US’s sovereignty over Georgia, or Canada’s sovereignty over Quebec.
Israel’s claims of sovereignty are seriously contested on the domestic and international level, while the corresponding claims by the US and Canada are not. On the domestic level, almost all the non-Jewish majority in those areas persistently denies Israel’s claim to sovereignty over them. On the international level, almost every other nation in the world officially disagrees with Israel’s claim to sovereignty there.
Compare the case of Quebec, where even the Quebecois can’t muster a majority of their own people to vote for independence from Canada in an electoral referendum, and where the international community accepts Canada’s claim to sovereignty over Quebec without question. Compare the case of the southern US, where only a few neo-Confederate outliers actually deny the sovereignty of the United States as their federal government, and where nobody in the international community is even thinking about contesting US sovereignty claims.
Demanding that Israeli claims to sovereignty over, say, East Jerusalem must be regarded in the same way as, say, US claims to sovereignty over Georgia is ridiculous. The two situations are fundamentally different, and it’s not in any way a double standard to recognize that difference.
Ah well, you are at least consistent. You really do seem to believe that reality is effected by what people think about it.
Where the reality in question involves issues of rights, I most certainly do. That’s because rights are fundamentally determined by consensus and agreement: or in other words, they are affected by what people think about them.
And you seem to believe that writing one-line poetry means you can dodge the issue. Tell me how exactly again that Israel isn’t violating Geneva 4, of which she is a signatory by placing settlements of her own civilains in occupied territory?
I mean gee, since your arguement is legalities,
France and the US hadn’t signed Geneva 4 or even the Hague conventions of 1898 when the Louisiana purchase ocured.
Since they hadn’t been written yet.
Israel signed Geneva 4.
And is thus obliged to follow it.
Of which the settlements are a clear violation.
Well, dropping your one line poetry, there was a time that I’d take your posts into consideration since you were arguing the facts. Honestly, you’re just acting as a total shill and anyone who isn’t 100% behind Israel all the time is totally in the wrong, and likely an anti-Semite to boot. You really are getting almost as bad as Sevastopol. Seriously, what is up with your inability to form a proper paragraph recently but writing each sentence on its own line? Most Israelis aren’t behind the settlements; it was just a bad idea to put them there in the first place. Sadly the region is littered in bad ideas.
Kim, still wrong.
Legal rights are arrived at by the law (go figure), not consensus, not belief, not even if you really really want 'em.
Of course, as your argument generally does, it’s now changed the subject from sovereignty to rights. A neat switcheroo, if someone wasn’t paying attention I suppose.
In any case, if you doubt that sovereignty isn’t up for popular vote, try to lead a secessionist movement in the United States that advocates the violent overthrow of the US government in your chosen territory. See how it works out for ya.
And you’re still using a glaring double standard, in that when we fought the civil war, the South most definitely wanted to secede, and the US not only prevented that through force of arms, including Sherman’s March, but did so despite it being against the will of the people.
And yet, you’ve just agreed that the US is sovereign over the South to this day.
Of course your double standards can’t be applied to your own argument, or you’d have to call yourself horribly “biased” for not stating that the North’s claim of sovereignty is only an “opinion”.
But then, you’d have to apply your own standards to your own argument.
Can’t have that.
Anyways… when the North used brutal military force to prevent the South from breaking away, regardless of what the South wanted, it’s fine no matter how many people disagreed. But when Israel won a defensive war and captured territory which had no sovereign when the previous sovereigns refused to accept receipt of the territories in exchange for peace , then it’s wrong because people disagree.
Double Standard Theater is fun for the whole family.
Dissonance? Pathetic.
First, learn what poetry is. I know that babbling about how everything I write is “poetry” must seem much more efficient than rebutting it, but it’s kinda laughable.
You might also want to see this very thread for where I’ve already argued about the 4th GC. I’m sure that you just missed it, by accident, and you’re not asking me to repeat myself in order to waste my time.
Just like you forgot what you’d written about how the Louisiana Purchase was a legal possession of the US and when your own words were quoted back at you, forgot to offer your apologies for forgetting what you yourself had written.
And just like you’re now forgetting to retract your double standard about how the LP was valid but the '67 war’s results weren’t.
Good times. Good times.
Of course, bonus points for the traditional Rallying Cry of the Totally Out Argued.
It’s a nice shorthand for admitting that you’ve totally lost a debate: pretending that not only do I support Israel 100%, but that I demand others do and that anybody who doesn’t is probably an “anti-semite”. It’s generally a good clue as to how bankrupt someone’s argument has become when they’re forced to fabricate bullshit about me quite so blatantly.
And simply for the record, the person in this thread who’s flamed another user as an anti-semite and deliberately conflated Israelis with Jews in order to do so?
Well, that’d be you.
But this is Double Standard Theatre, after all.
Even funnier, I’ve publicly stated, several times, that the US should cut off funding if Israel does not initiate an immediate settlement freeze and that the Palestinians should get roughly 97% of the West Bank and East Jerusalem. But like most threads on Israel, I’m forced to spend much more time debunking non-facts than I can spend on discussing where we go from here.
An unfortunate side effect of having to spend so much effort on keeping a debate factual and free of double standards.
Legal rights are initially established on the basis of what rights people think should be enshrined in law. That initial step is indeed all about consensus and belief.
And the interpretation of law to determine whether a given situation is violating someone’s rights also depends on consensus and belief.
You can’t just offer up the tautology that legal rights are determined by law as though that actually provides a meaningful resolution to this issue. It doesn’t.
Nope, no change of subject. As I said back on the previous page, the concept of sovereignty involves the right to exercise control, and in the case of Israel exercising control in occupied areas, that right is seriously—in fact, almost universally—disputed.
Now you’re moving the goalposts to demand that I compare the present-day situation of Israel with the situation of the US about 150 years ago, rather than the present-day situation of the US. Well okay, now that I know that’s what you’re requesting, I’m happy to make that comparison for you.
To recap: At the present day, the US is universally (with a few exceptions among the neo-Confederate outliers I mentioned) acknowledged to be sovereign over the southern states.
Back in, say, 1862, however, there was considerable and heated disagreement over whether the US government was sovereign over the southern states. In fact, the disagreement was so severe that a war was being fought over it. Not only Americans but also many people in other countries were sharply divided about where the right to sovereignty truly lay in this case.
I am perfectly willing to acknowledge that in the early 1860’s, the US claims to sovereignty over the southern states were seriously contested. Nowadays, however, they are not.
Who is saying it was fine? Not me. I really don’t see the need for me to stake out a position here on the rights and wrongs of a conflict that was definitively settled over a century ago. What I do say is that the outcome of that conflict is a situation in which the US no longer faces any serious challenges to its sovereignty over the southern states.
Who is saying it is wrong? Well, okay, almost everybody in the world is, but I haven’t done so in this thread. All I’ve been saying is that Israel’s claims to sovereignty over occupied areas such as East Jerusalem and Palestine are seriously contested.
There really isn’t any double standard in that, nor any dishonesty. In fact, it’s such a reasonable and unexceptionable description of the current situation that I can’t see why you’re having such a problem with it.
**You **don’t see why the UN or the International Court of Justice should decide what is legal and what is illegal. Just like Timothy McVeigh didn’t see why the US government should decide what is legal or illegal.
I suppose that pretty much sums it up. You do not recognize international law and you also believe that ‘might is right’. With those beliefs I am sure you could come up with a whole bunch of other crazy arguments for great debates.
How about you? Do you ‘recognize international law’?
The League of Nations authorized “close settlement” of Jews in all of the Mandate territory that was known as Palestine. That has never been contradicted via binding resolution.
So do you recognize that as the law of the land?
Did Timothy McVeigh claim that it was not illegal for him to blow up the federal building in OKC? I doubt it, but let’s assume he did.
The laws in the US specifically give our courts the authority to interpret those laws:
That’s from Article III of the United States Constitution.
On the other hand, the 4th Geneva Convention does not vest any judicial or interpretive power in the UN or the International Court of Justice.
The folks who drafted the 4th Geneva Convention could have easily done so but did not do so.
That’s incorrect. A specific claim is being made that (1) Israel is violating the law by allowing Jewish settlement in the West Bank; and (2) the Jewish settlers themselves are violating the law.
The first claim can be sustained only with a strained reading of the treaty in question. The second claim has not been substantiated at all.
The fact that the International Court of Justice has opined about how the treaty should be interpreted carries no more weight than the opinion of any other court. Suppose that the Israeli Supreme Court opined that the settlements were legal. Would that mean that they are legal?
Suppose that the New York City Parking Violations Bureau issued an opinion that the settlements are illegal. Should that mean anything?
My post did not say that he claimed it was ‘not illegal’. I am sure he realised his actions were illegal, just as i am sure you realise that the Israeli settlers actions are illegal. What I said was that he thought the US government should not decide what is legal or illegal.
Well maybe you don’t realise the Israeli settlers actions are illegal.
United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-Moon said Israel’s ongoing efforts to build settlements in the West Bank is “illegal”. So are you better informed on international law that the Secretary-General of the United Nations or are you in denial?
Please state the Secretary-General’s qualifications for determining international law.