No, it is different but not entirely different. I think most Israelis, whether they will admit it or not, really think of everything west of the Jordan as “ours” and this is just one manifestation of that. Therefore, everything their government does west of the Jordan is fair game for human-rights criticism. Calling it “occupied territory” does not take it off the table for purposes of that discussion. What matters is who rules there.
It’s a bit of a tall order, though. When has any country ever been a “light unto the nations”?
No you really haven’t because you just made it up. Please refrain from saying untrue things about me in a thread I’m not even posting in. As for your bit of willful ignorance, it has been pointed out to you numerous times that the Green Line is not a border but an armistice line, that the armistice agreement explicitly specified that it was not a border, and that it would not prejudice future negotiations to set a border.
We’ve been over this, so please do not distort facts in order to create a faux context in which to nest false claims that you are attributing to me.
You’d be wrong. Or at least, you’d be technically right, but actually wrong - most Israelis think that everything west of the Jordan is ours (after all, we control it), but that some of it shouldn’t be. See the difference? Regardless, the majority of Israelis support some sort of territorial compromise - even the Likud is strongly divided on the issue, with old-school diehards clashing with pragmatists who may bear no love towards the Palestinians, but still believe that withdrawal serves Israel’s interests.
… and I think you are wrong. Though of course proof lacks either way.
As so often in life, an argument made based on what the majority of some entire nation’s population thinks “…whether they admit it or not” is, at best, on an unsafe basis.
To my mind, you are committing one of the fallacies of informal logic known as the ‘excluded middle’ - in this case, that any argument over the location of the border [other than the Green Line] is ‘really the same’ as denying the very existence of the WB as an independent entity.
This is a different issue again.
No-one is saying that Israel can’t be criticized for what its government does in the WB, and nor does such criticism require as a precondition that one accept that the majority of Israel’s population believes “…whether they admit it or not” that the WB is “really” Israel’s.
And the worms slither out of the opened can …
Anyway, the op has been addressed really in one by no surprise Tamerlane.
Yeah, this thread must set some kind of record. considering how fast it degraded into a Generic Israel Thread. Of course, I’m as much to blame as anyone.
Peace out.
And that’s enough of that. Debates about Israel belong in another thread; please confine this one to its original topic, which was the meaning of Zionism.
How do you keep Israel out of a discussion of Zionism?
Iceland was, once, for about three months in 1943, but the world’s attention was otherwise engaged at the time.
I should’ve elaborated a little further. I was saying debates about the entire Israel-Palestine issue (the wall, borders, behavior in the occupied territories, treatment of Muslims, and so on) belong in another thread.
Well, the question has been asked and answered and nobody has disputed it, and the OP has not returned. The OP’s question itself was pretty weird though and I’d have been quite happy to stay out of it.
I think the problem here is a lack of debate potential in the original OP - it was comprehensively and decisively answered in the post immediately following it; so far, no-one is disputing Tamerlane’s description.
The question would have been quite appropriate for General Questions. Given the behavior of a few posters, it is unfortunate that it was not posted there. However, as a General Question it was answered in the second post and as a “debate” it is little more than a snark fest.
This thread is closed.
The various topics presented are fine–as long as they are treated as genuine discussions rather than opportunities for snide comments.
[ /Moderating ]