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Let’s cut the BS on Palestine and Israel.
There are only 3 final solutions to the Palestinian problem:
1) Withdraw the settlers and give the Palestinians a state of their own which is viable.
2) Ethnic cleanse the Palestinians out of greater Israel.
3) Single state solution – give up on the religious ethnic state of Israel as a Jewish religious state, and let everyone have a vote.
As long as Israel continues to expand settlements, and they do, which one of those three end states are they most likely heading for?
In the meantime, Jimmy Carter was right, Israel is an apartheid state, Palestinians are an occupied people, and there will be no peace until those two facts change, though there may be lesser or greater amounts of violence.
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Final solutions. That phrase has seen previous euphemistic use.
It really is this simple, Ian.
My head is still reeling from the for more war Israel sponsored television commercial aired on MSNBC last night.
What have we become when such a thing is both allowed and goes by without an outcry?
ian – i don’t think your chart on the number of settlers includes “annexed” east jerusalem. as of 2005, that would add something over 184,000 to the total. wikipedia gives the current total number of jewish settlers living on occupied land as 484,562 (data from 2005/2006).
I love the Come2Israel tourist ad at top right on my browser.
I vote for #3 with the added provisions of:
1) ”We love you, but we’re breaking your dinner plate. Write and let us know how you’re doing”.
2) Any Israeli Jews who want to immigrate to the U.S. would get automatic citizenship.
3) We’ll be needing those nukes back, thanks.
Frankly all the Palestinians need is a good PR firm.
couple of more small corrections:
carter very specifically did not call israel an apartheid state, he used that term to refer to the occupied territories only.
the proposals i’ve seen for a single state are binational. for example, abunimah’s proposal which would create a shared homeland that would include the right of return for world wide jewery and for palestinians.
#4 israelis find some other place in the world to live without stealing land.
i know it’s a long shot.
all the israelis need is a good pr firm. they got everything else.
considering how many jews america permitted (or rather did not permit) to immigrate here during the holocaust, i really think that comment is out of line.
Sadly, absolutely spot on.
Plz rtrn WMDs. kay thx. bye.
As for solutions, there’s only one small problem: Israel will never agree to anything that is fair to the Palestinians. Not. one. single. blessed. thing.
Perhaps Eureka Springs has something there … if both sides were equally armed with good PR resources … it might work out better.
Wonder what the world would be like today if Israel had been established in South America…
no ma’am, it is not. we can disagree.
certainly would have been less contentious but they did’nt want ta go there.
that’s your opinion. it is not mine.
we can’t disagree?
I can’t see where good PR firms would stop Palestinians from firing rockets into Israel
or stop Israel from massive retaliation/invasion in Gaza
Maybe we should offer them them a nice piece of real estate in the South where there are a lot of Christian evangelicals who are so supportive of Israel. I’m sure they won’t mind being occupied.
There would as many Peruvians in Peru as there are in Israel.
neurophius @ 18: no, nothing will stop either of those, clearly. It’s horrifying. And any possible balance or fairness has long ago been lost. Now it’s just a massacre. And I don’t see it ever ending. No matter how much either side is criticized, villified, or appeased.
no, no. you misunderstand. pr firms are great at covering up the mess so that people can live in blissful ignorance. no one wants ta meet this stuff head on. it’s too painful, ya know.
Venezuela tossed the Israeli amb. out today. Hugo stamps his foot !
#20 was in response to yellowsnapdragon at #13.
Although I hate being a language Nazi (hey, I can play the Holocaust name game too!) BUT “Final solution” is inaccurate and unnecessarily inflammatory as used here. Although borderline, even ethnic cleansing doesn’t make the cut as a final solution. IMO, mis-using such a loaded term cheapens the horror of true genocide. Which is a problem, because it’s still going on.
if only that were possible. no one is going ta give up the holy land without a fight.
Back when he was a reporter and not a pundit, Thomas Friedman posited three end games to the I-P situation in his book From Beirut to Jerusalem. Ian’s #1 and #3 above were two of the options, and the third was for Israel to keep all the land and its religious identity and give up on the notion of being a democracy.
Right now, it appears Israel is leaning toward this last option. The more the Palestinians resist it, the closer Israel may be tempted to go toward Ian’s option #2.
May God have mercy on us all.
what? ain’t he a christian?
It’s a good thing there aren’t other religious/ethnic groups looking for homelands to occupy and own. It really is an impossible idea.
for a long time american mythology has been that israelis are good and palestinians are evil. maybe this was partially a subconscious reaction to the holocaust and our country’s unwillingness to take in jewish refugees. whatever the reason, of course it is simplistic bull shit. people are complicated and no one is defined by the actions of the country they live in or their religious or ethnic heritage. only their own actions can condemn or absolve them.
now, as we work to undermine that old false myth, i think we have to keep in mind that our real work is to prevent a simple switch of the black hats and white hats so that we can somehow get beyond this destructive good vs evil comic book view of the world we have.
may god have mercy on us all.
Amen.
For the last two decades, the Israel-Palestine dispute has been about Israel’s refusal to return to its 1967 borders. The then PLO and the entire world, except for the US, Israel, and the Marshall Islands, agreed to that outcome (UN Res. 242) 20 years ago.
Meanwhile, Israel is an ‘occupying power’ pursuant to the Fourth Geneva Convention, and must discharge its obligation to prevent physical suffering or extermination, murder, torture, corporal punishments, mutilation, collective punishments, reprisals, and to ensure displaced persons the ‘right of return’ to their homes.
1,880 DAYZ AND THE KILLIN’ GOEZ ON AND ON AND…
Citizen Ian Welsh and the Firepup Freedom Fighters:
It’s clear that the present political state of Israel makes that country nothin’ more than an appendage of the American corporate oligarchy and it is equally clear that this latest round of ethnic cleansing was ordered from the corpoate HQ in the American White House as part of the scorched earth tactics of the fascists as they attempt to leave the United States government, treasury, economy and military completely bankrupt before removing themselves to their corporate bunkers in the basements of Langly.
KEEP THE FAITH AND PASS THE AMMUNITION, THIS WAR IS EVERYONE’S NOW!!
LarryB -
Well please enlighten me.. I’ve heard the term before, but have no idea what you are talking about.
Final solution may be redundant, but we do need (want) this madness to stop don’t we?
the world was numb and partly asleep after the nazi’s did their stuff. i am a believer in the un but it didn’t work back then.
It is obvious you haven’t seen the Israeli ad on the tv. They have Mr Sally Struthers (/s) wearing a designer flack jacket in a pastoral setting singing the woes for Israel. If it comes on make sure you don’t have anything in your mouth.
299 hrs & 58 min
Actually America took in the largest number of jews….and has the highest population of jews of any country outside of Israel.
10 years ago we also took in 80,000 Russian jews in one wave…’after’…we had already given Israel a 10 billion grant to absorb them…only half went to Israel the rest came to the US.
This year congress extended the welfare benefits and medicaid benefits for those Russian jews from 7 years to nine years.
Yeah, I agree. I/P situation is like musical chairs–there will always be one group without a chair.
your’re right of course. what they say is they want a “permanent situation” and are very careful to avoid the term.
i’m not talking about ten years ago – i’m talking about when millions of jews were being killed in europe.
No it didn’t work, the creation of the State of Israel was the biggest mistake of the last century.
And it’s revolting that we the US support Israel because it’s “a democracy” when in reality it IS an apartheid state.
We need to loudly support the voices of reason from both sides.
haven’t seen it yet. guess i don’t watch enough tv. is it on utube?
The mister was explaining that theory to me recently–that the US supported the establishment of Isreal due to the guilt of not stopping the genocide of WWII. Anyway, his analysis was the same. There is no way to simplify something so complicated and nuanced.
reason is in short supply right now, i’m afraid. maybe what has ta happen is similar to ireland.
YAY! Under 300 hours left!
amen!
Right on, Ian.
The truth may be brutal, but it sure is refreshing.
Citizen Peterr:
There is no option to create an ethnically cleansed “greater Israel” and the Israelis have known this for years now but their politics have been owned by the American oligarchy and the unholy alliance of American and Israeli fascists…the solution that has been available for at least 10 years will now be imposed through the United Nations and the establishment of some kind of stability in the entire region has been set back decades with this last diabolical attack on the Palestinians.
Couldn’t find it there
299 hrs & 50 min
We could fast forward the peace by about a thousand miles a second by having Israel give the Gazans their land back.
Robert Fisk…
How easy it is to snap off the history of the Palestinians, to delete the narrative of their tragedy, to avoid a grotesque irony about Gaza which – in any other conflict – journalists would be writing about in their first reports: that the original, legal owners of the Israeli land on which Hamas rockets are detonating live in Gaza.
That is why Gaza exists: because the Palestinians who lived in Ashkelon and the fields around it – Askalaan in Arabic – were dispossessed from their lands in 1948 when Israel was created and ended up on the beaches of Gaza. They – or their children and grandchildren and great-grandchildren – are among the one and a half million Palestinian refugees crammed into the cesspool of Gaza, 80 per cent of whose families once lived in what is now Israel. This, historically, is the real story: most of the people of Gaza don’t come from Gaza.
But watching the news shows, you’d think that history began yesterday, that a bunch of bearded anti-Semitic Islamist lunatics suddenly popped up in the slums of Gaza – a rubbish dump of destitute people of no origin – and began firing missiles into peace-loving, democratic Israel, only to meet with the righteous vengeance of the Israeli air force. The fact that the five sisters killed in Jabalya camp had grandparents who came from the very land whose more recent owners have now bombed them to death simply does not appear in the story.
Both Yitzhak Rabin and Shimon Peres said back in the 1990s that they wished Gaza would just go away, drop into the sea, and you can see why. The existence of Gaza is a permanent reminder of those hundreds of thousands of Palestinians who lost their homes to Israel, who fled or were driven out through fear or Israeli ethnic cleansing 60 years ago.”
One state won’t work because the Palestines would be treated by Israel as we once treated black americans in America.
Two states and a return of all the land Israel illegally seized.
That is only fair.
Citizen Carroll:
This is the reality that has existed for at least a decade and what’s so horrible about this is that a majority of Israelis have known and supported the ywo state strategy for at lewast that long but the fascist Likud with direct subsidies from the American treasury has triangulated peace out of the political calculus and now the Israelis are gunna get it imposed on ‘em from a very angry world.
European colonization has gone through various phases. Export of European populations to foreign territories began in the 16th century with the Spanish and Portuguese in South and Latin America. This was followed by the English and French in North America, the Dutch in South Africa, and the English again in Australia and New Zealand. However another form of colonialism became predominant in the second half of the 19th century where European populations were not sent abroad but rather their bureaucracies and armies were. I suppose you could say this began with the English in India in the late 18t century but it reached its apogee in the European carve up of Africa.
By the time that WWI ended colonialism was already in decline. The French and English attempts to keep it going stalled out first in the Middle East. Paradoxically though Jewish immigration into Palestine went against this trend and more reflected a colonial model that had gone out of fashion almost a century earlier. So when Israel came into existence in 1948, it was already an anachronism. In colonial terms, it was an expression of a first stage colonial empire at a time when post-WWII the second stage European colonial empires were themselves breaking up, and it was occurring in a region that as I said had been the most recently and least successfully colonialized.
Israel also came into existence as a Jewish state precisely at a time when ethnically or religiously defined states were losing their rationale and coherence. The US was primarily responsible for this in its definition of nationality as a matter of birth rather than bloodline. This is an ongoing process. We see its tensions in the construction of Europe or Japanese ethnocentrism or how Middle Eastern countries define themselves as Arab or Moslem. In general, we Americans view such things as profoundly anti-democratic. No population is homogenous and such definitions lead to discrimination and disenfranchisement of that part of the population which does not belong to the dominant group.
Israel is not a democracy in these terms and can never become one until it extends the full rights and responsibilities of citizenship to all those under its control.
Carroll @ 50
As you quote, Fisk says: ”Both Yitzhak Rabin and Shimon Peres said back in the 1990s that they wished Gaza would just go away, drop into the sea, and you can see why. The existence of Gaza is a permanent reminder of those hundreds of thousands of Palestinians who lost their homes to Israel, who fled or were driven out through fear or Israeli ethnic cleansing 60 years ago.”
This is the error. It has festered since then. We are debating genocide or ethnic cleansing. It has already happened. And continues.
Israel will not return the land they currently possess.
And no amount of foreign or UN peacekeeping forces will succeed in making Israel do a damn thing.
Would America be able to give back New Mexico?
Israel left Gaza in 2005.
Worse than WWI? WWII? The Cultural Revolution? The genocide of the Armenians? Rwanda?
Citizen reader:
The definition of false equivalency is to argue that the establishment of the United States and Israel have any similarity…while the expansion of American territory under “manifest destiny” and the ethnic cleansing of Native Americans echo inside the imperial efforts of Israel into Palestine there is absolutely NO equivalence between the establishment of the Israeli political state in 1948 and the establishment of the United States in 1789.
Even if there were equivalence it still would not be historically justifiable.
The SS Saint Louis for instance
Trivia that most people don’t know is that the Saint Louis was owned by the Hamburg America Line
For those that don’t know the significance of that, google Hamburg America and Prescott Bush
There are so many thing wrong with that statement. First, two wrongs do not make a right. Second, it is anachronistic. The Romans had gladiator fights to the death. The Carthagians exposed children to die on hillsides. Because they did these things is it OK for us to do too? You are comparing what happened in one historical period, a colonizing one, to what happened in a decolonizing one. You see by the time Israel came into existence we, the US, the world had come to the conclusion that doing such things was not the way to go. Yet Israel persists in doing them. Israel may want to play by yesterday’s rules but they still are very much yesterday’s rules and without validity.
The situation in Israel/Palestine is horrible but–except for the fact that we in the U. S. are financing the Israeli war, it’s not our problem. Or at least, no more our problem than several other humanitarian disasters in the world. The U. S. needs to withdraw any support from Israel until it makes a reasonable approach to options 1 or 3. And concentrate on being a good citizen in the rest of the world.
Ashkenazi Jews are the minority among Israeli citizens. Among Jews, 39% are Mizrahim or Sephardim. 2% are Falasha (Ethiopian). This whole idea about Israel as a European construct is incorrect.
In my earlier discussion, I didn’t get around to mentioning third stage colonial empires. These are the ones where colonial powers “leave” while retaining enormous control over the “formerly” colonized. We have seen this a lot with the IMF and World Bank enforcing colonial policies in the name of the free market. We also see it in Israel’s control of the West Bank and Gaza. Nothing that goes into Gaza goes in except through Israel and when and how much Israel says. It is one of the reasons the Israelis want to destroy the smuggling tunnels. They don’t like the competition or diminution of their power.
You know I pointed out the other day that WWII wasn’t about the jews…it was actually an honest to God real World War with the lives of Billions of people at stake, not just the jews.
Neither the US nor any of the allied countries were to blame for Jewish deaths.
Perhaps you should try reading something besides myth…..Eisenhowers’s war memories are a good start. You will find out how close the allies came to losing the war ..how often Eisenhower himself thought the US might be defeated becuase ofthe sheer superior forces of the Germans. Pardon the decision to put our troops and planes and bombs where they would do the most good and make the most stragatic sense in the war for the fate of the entire world instead of sending them on a futile and suicidal mission into Germany to rescue the jews. Do you even know history? Do you do have the faintest idea what allied forces had to chew their way through to even get inside Germany ?
If those stragatic war decisions hadn’t been made you most likely wouldn’t be here and every jew in the universe would be dead.
So quit yer whining and be thankful it turned out as it did.
Thanks for your comment..I understand the Lukid…. we have the Lukid problem too….they control our US congress.
Citizen Carroll:
A-fuckin-men!! And thanx from my WWII decorated father and my WWI decorated grandfather…I’m surprised at Citizen Selise, he certainly knows better.
The Ashkenazi were the spearhead of Zionism in Palestine. Without them there would have been no Israel. Also after the creation of the state of Israel the Jewish populations of most Arab countries were expelled or left. This created an influx of Sephardim and changed the make up not only of the Jewish population but also Israel’s culture and politics. So yes, it was very much an Ashkenazi, i.e. European construct.
What are you on about? If you want an example of US callousness regarding the Holocaust, see #56 above or google the Evian Conference. No one is talking about a rescue mission.
I remember three years ago when I asked a Palestinian friend what he thought Olmert’s election portended for his people, my friend replied “The Sea.”
They also control the weather and NASCAR.
/s
You seem to overlook in your view of WWII the Russians. In Europe, it was they who bore the brunt of the fighting and it is they who were responsible for most of the victory in Europe. But even just looking at the industrial capacities of the US and Russia, it was clear that the Germans were toast. Their defeat was only a question of when and at what cost.
Here is a link to your statement that Venezuela tossed out the Israeli ambassador. Hugo chavez accused the Israeli government of genocide. He said he considers Israel a pawn of the U.S.
Israel then immediately ordered the Venezuelan envoy to leave the country immediately.
http://www.radionetherlands.nl…..ambassador
Gaza is nothing more than a huge prison camp or refugee camp.
Israel cannot exist as democracy because it’s a theocracy. They call themselves the “jewish” state, afterall.
The displaced arabs from what is now Israel were told that the arabs would wage a war against the zionists and they would be able to return to their land, and the jews would be driven to the sea.
The Brits made the mess because they draw the national borders in the region and when the UN created Israel, Jordon was supposed to be the arab state. There was supposed to be a mass resettlement as there was when India and Pakistan were split.
Obviously the idea of a jewish state in the region was not thought out and certainly, as per usual the local people were not consulted and the Zionist state was created by Europeans as if it was theirs to create. That’s hubris, but that’s what imperialist nations due – carve up lands which they “conquered” to suit their economic, and strategic needs.
Israel AND the conflicts in the region have beem manna from heaven for the MIC. They are drowning the region in weapons and every conflict is just what they need to restock the shelves.
Frankly I don’t know what there jhas to be religious states of any flavor. Religion should be tolerated and the state should be secular. Religious fundies don’t get that and whatever their stripes they want government and religion to be like hand in glove. ICK.
Israel is run by jewish fundies now. They multiply like flies and import them from breeding grunds in Brooklyn, and throughout the world. Mr. Madoff was supporting the effort and becoming pals with all the rich jews so he could grab their money while he gained brownie points with the zionists.
Israel should be “de certified as a nation and the entire area from the Jordan river to the med should be a UN governed democratic state. And they should relocate the UN there while they’re at it. Lands need to be returned to their rightful owner and the newly displaced can be paid to move/resettle … wherever and the UN should guaranty them religious freedom where they settle. Chances are they would stick close by so that should be manageable.
I am so sickened by the killing there and the racial hatred. What has it accomplished?
i never claimed, nor do i think, ww2 was about saving the jews.
my comment was only about usa immigration policy at that time and the possibility it may have an influence on our (citizens, not our gov) support of israel. don’t think i’m wrong about the immigration policy. may very well be wrong about why americans idealized israel.
what did i write that was incorrect? if i have something wrong, i’d like to know what it is and learn from my error. thanks.
Yeah, it’s old.
I used the language quite deliberately.
sorry i missed your comment earlier. what were the percentages in ‘48? i thought most of the mizrahi came to israel after ‘48 – but i really don’t know.
Before colonialism arabia was one vast area of nomands with a few urban area where there were rug merchants on the few rivers in the region. Iraq was no more a country than Jordan or Israel. Jordan was “created” a few years before Israel, by the Brits who grabbed control of the region from the Ottomans.
Israel was a gift from the victors of WWII because of their guilt for not stopping Hitler sooner in his extermination of the Jews as this was obviously not a secret. And they didn’t attack the Thrid Reich because of its extermination of the Jews, but because he was advancing east and west and showing some of his own imperial dreams. When it looked bad for England, and France the US decided to get involved. No?
I don’t know the number for ‘48, but you’re right, the Mizrahim did move to Israel afterwards, frequently when they were expelled from the Arab countries where they had been living.
European jews were moving to Palestine since the the time of Rothchild who was buying up lands from arabs for Jews to settle on.
3) wins, demographically, I believe, on the basis of a much higher birthrate in Palestine.
What countries were they expelled from?
Egypt, Iraq, Syria, Libya
I would like to know how many and how they were expelled. Can you point me to some material?
I think you are overlooking the very rich history of the area. To reduce it to a few rugs or nomads is really both to misunderstand it and buy into a lot of archtypes that make most Arabs cringe.
There’s also the little known fact that many Muslims in the ME saved their Jewish friends and neighbors during NAZI occupation
http://www.npr.org/templates/s…..d=15033852
Come on, I was being somewhat tongue in cheek. But the region was not an industrial region. What was the per capita income and what was the economy driven by? You tell me.
Why Jews Fled the Arab Countries
The Forgotten Refugees
The number of jews who left arab nations is pegged at about over 750K. But the terms used is migration and this is quite different from “expulsion”.
Many jews were paid by jewish organizations to resettle in Israel. This is true for the USSR, Ethipoia and of course germany during the third reich. No?
Germany during the third reich? Are you kidding?
There is no doubt that jews were the victims of persecution and discrimination in Europe. I suppose if I was discriminated against and persecuted where I live I could fight it, accepted it or move to where I could live in peace. The jews moved from the pot to the frying pan.
Sorry, it just struck me the wrong way. I had an Arab friend who used to point out that most Arabs wouldn’t know one end of a camel from the other but the image of the Arab riding the camel is the one often used by Westerners to represent who Arabs are. And even in pre-biblical times most of that area was agricultural, small town in culture, not nomadic.
The fact remains that however the jews became concentrated in Palestine, they got their own state and proceeded to treat the Palestinians as they were treated in the countries they “fled” from. How dumb is that?
“In the 1890s Theodor Herzl infused Zionism with a new ideology and practical urgency, leading to the first congress at Basel in 1897, which brought the World Zionist Organization (WZO) into being.”
The jews believe that Israel was “given to them by god” and so they can do no wrong in seeing god’s will fulfilled. Ha?
“Lobbying by a Russian Jewish immigrant, Chaim Weizmann and fear that American Jews would encourage the USA to support Germany culminated in the Balfour Declaration of 1917 by the British government. This endorsed the creation of a Jewish Homeland in Palestine. In addition a Zionist military corps led by Jabotinsky were recruited to fight on behalf of Britain in Palestine.”
“the Peel Commission to investigate the situation. The commission (which did not consider the situation of Jews in Europe) called for a two-state solution and compulsory transfer of populations. This solution was subsequently rejected by the British and instead the White Paper of 1939 implemented. This planned to end Jewish immigration by 1944 and to allow no more then 75,000 further Jewish migrants. The British maintained this policy until the end of the Mandate.
Growth of the Jewish community in Palestine and devastation of European Jewish life sidelined the World Zionist Organization. The Jewish Agency for Palestine under the leadership of David Ben-Gurion increasingly dictated policy with support from American Zionists who provided funding and influence in Washington.”
Then you are a flaming anti-Semitic asshole, by any definition other than that of your cohorts in this echo chamber.
The anti-Semitic argument won’t work. You can be against starving people, not letting them have water and electricity, and killing uninvolved citizens without being anti-Semitic. That charge usually stops the argument cold but it won’t work now. The world is watching and this terrible thing has nothing to do with being anti-Semitic.
Norske @ 57
Hugh @ 55
You draw too wide a comparison/inference from my point. I was not (ridiculously) comparing the origin or provenance of the US with the origin or provenance of Israel, nor was I depending on ignoring any anachronisms to excuse anyone.
Still, I don’t know how recognizing that Israel is using ”old rules” ’cause it likes the way they play makes a difference. They will keep using these old rules if they work even if the world has ”moved on.”
My point is much much simpler. There is a fundamental problem with assigning territories before and now, over and back again with a few wars in between. It’s crazy. It will never work. IMO it’s how we got here.
The Palestinians have no where to go. Israel will give nothing back. How could they? And just who is going to make them do it.
Israel wants the Palestinians gone. They have been enabled in this for so long I feel it will be impossible to change what is happening. Again just who is going to make them do anything different.
If you tell me they want peace, I don’t see evidence of that in all their machinations and treaty-breaking.
I ask you this: Are the histories and definitions intended to make it easier or harder to sort this out? And if so, how? What are the qualities and specifications of the better analysis that will help ”solve” this problem.
At a finer level of detail, if it is/was colonialism of one sort or another, are you suggesting that was the root problem? Are you suggesting that a process of decolonialism would work now? And how will that definition/history ’move’ those who are at war to stop being at war?
And if Israel is no longer a democracy because it is heterogeneous, how does knowing/thinking that help? And could we not say that American is approaching no longer being a democracy in the same way as a result of the inner tensions of our own homogeneity?
Thanks for the discussion.
Am I stepping into the middle of something here? Oh well.
I was just reading yesterday’s NYT, and Israel was referred to as an “ally” of the United States, and it occurred to me to wonder: “ally”?
Not to get into the “what have you done for me lately” mode, but help my obviously faulty memory here: what does Israel do that furthers the interests of the U.S.?
And, no, I’m not being sarcastic. I’m just having a moment of seeing dead Palestinian children in hallways and wondering what Israel does other than pursue its own interests.
hi behindthefall: I think it’s an oil thang from way back. Hasn’t worked out very well, as far as I can see. What a sad sorry mess, huh. People sometimes pull up quotes from Israel saying some of their leaders claim to control the US. That makes more sense.
Sorry, but using “The FInal Solution” deliberately to be provocative doesn’t cut it for being “against” “terrible things”.
And that’s without even getting into the absurdity of comparing the Israelis to the Nazis by any rational measure.
Also, the ceaseless bleating of “I’m not ant-Semitic just because I’m against Israel” does nothing to obscure the fact that certain people really are anti-Semitic. If you don’t believe that, just take a good look back through some of the comment threads here in the last two days.
Or is that the Jews, in their all-controlling omnipotence, have managed to eradicate anti-Semitism from the face of the earth? Wow, that’s impressive.
Now if you’ll excuse me, I’m off to find a discussion forum that includes fewer brain-dead zombies. “Palin 2012,” for example.
And no, I won’t let the door hit my ass on the way out.
none of the 3 identified “solutions”, or any other are ever going to happen with Israelis and Palestinians left to their own devices – too much harm has been inflicted by each on the other – their is too much revenge to overcome for them to do so on their own. Whatever the final look of the region, it will only be achieved with an international force separating the Israelis and Palestinians for an extended period of time – at least a generation, probably a minimum of two.
If the international community were serious about stopping the violence in the region instead of just posturing, they would move to do just that: force a separation of the belligerents. Only after an extended period of relative calm, can any stable “final” solution, that isn’t bathed in blood, can be achieved.
being provocative does not qualify as anti-semitic. and yes it really does exist – do you understand that by throwing the accusation around without justification you numb people to the issue so that when anti-semitism does show up people may ignore righteous accusations?
not helping.
I have not been here, but have a question….are the zombies the ones cheering for Palin 2012, or are you leaving to join a Palin 2012 discussion?
Er…did you read that correctly?
The people of Gaza formerly in lived Ashkelon which was seized by Israel in 1948 ..seized…it was not part of the UN alloted portion given to Israel.
Gaza was a fricking beach…the refugess moved there becuase they had no where else to go.
So it doesn’t make a FF that Israel pulled out of Gaza,..all Gaza is is a holding pen for the Palestines they ran out of Ashelon.
What Israel is trying to do now is kill off enough of them to cause an uproar and force Egypt or Jordon to take them in.
102: explain to me what productive purpose is served by the provocation of evoking Hitler’s “Final Solution.” The only purpose I can discern is to equate the Israelis’ actions to the Nazis’ — which is ugly, offensive, and again, absurd from the perspective of anyone who is speaking to historical reality.
103: my meaning was that Israel-bashing posts like this one constitute demagoguery on the order of Sarah Palin — and the bleating responses in approval no better than those of the mindless cheering morons we saw at her rallies during the campaign.
news flash: lacking productive purpose (which i don’t agree with, but lets put that aside for the moment) does NOT equal anti-semitism either.
if you want to really know ian’s purpose for using the term, you might ask him. although if i were him, i wouldn’t bother to answer you after your comment @95. in fact, now that i think about it, i don’t know why i am either.
What’s your evidence of “what Israel is trying to do”?
Hell, why not go back to telling us how Congress does “whatever the Jews want,” like you did yesterday?
I don’t agree with that anti-semitic slur..it’s very over used…to the point it has no meaning any more.
In fact we should just do away with the term anti semitic and use the universal term ‘bigot’ to apply to those who hate ‘all others’..bigot doesn’t give any particular people more claim than another to discrimination and fits every kind of preudice so seems more appropiate to me this day and time.
Well, since you asked…
If Israel had committed atrocities in their recent incursion, would you NOT be the first out of the gate to condemn it?
I’m trying to figure out what “that Israel-bashing posts like this one” means.
Because you would no doubt have no objection to any reservations people here had about those actions.
So are commenters and posters here apologists, or are you?
Well, that wasn’t my phrase but have it your way.
On Israel trying to transfer the Palestines to Egypt or Jordon..where have you been the last 40 years? The Lukids in Israel have been calling for that for years.
Ever read their “Humane Solution for the Palestines Transfer”?…it’s at the Jerusalem Summit site…very interesting….very sick…very naziqurese.
Maybe this article will shed light on how Bush & Condi enabled the invasion:
http://www.atimes.com/atimes/M…..7Ak02.html
For someone who tries so very hard to maintain a moral and civil high ground, you are capable of an amazing refusal to connect dots.
A commenter way up above above called out Mr. Ian very politely on the gratuitous provocation of his use of the term “Final Solution.” His response was only to boast that he used it “quite deliberately” — deliberately as well, it seems, offering no explanation other than that.
Therefore, I concluded that it was intended ONLY as a provocation — and I’ve already explained why I regard it as an ugly and wrong one on that score. If you want to take the word anti-Semitic out, that’s fine. It’s still ugly, and it’s still wrong.
yes, that was your phrase. Verbatim.
Ladies and Gentlemen…
Civil discourse only. If we cannot discuss these tense issues without resorting to denigrating other commenters, then we need to rethink, and quickly please.
I like this observation a lot.
I think the single state solution is the way things will have to go. Where else in the world would we tolerate such apartheid policies? Israel has been working in bad faith on this issue for at least 40 years. They are looking at the basic demographics, and it is scaring the bejeesus out of them (oops, bad choice of words, perhaps).
Americans are so easily seduced into exceptionalism
(”But, Israel is different!”
“But this War on Terror is different from any other war!”
“But America is different! We’re better than other people!”)
Is it exceptionalism, or is it just plain old myopia?
Bob in HI
I believe that accepting the notion of exceptionalism requires no small touch of myopia…
:)
‘what does Israel do that furthers the interests of the U.S.?’
The US establishment views Israel as it’s ‘unsinkable air craft carrier’ in the oil patch.
My God, the level of hatred and pure anti-semitism in these responses is exceeded only by the ignorance displayed. The Israelis are fighting people who have the declared goal of driving them into the sea, in short, exterminating them and taking over all of their land. The Israelis have taken a barren, arid desert, and turned it into a garden. Israel is the only real democracy in the region. Every time Israel gives back some land taken when it defended itself against sneak attacks by its Arab neighbors, the occupants start firing rockets indiscriminately at Israeli towns. Yes, many civilians are dying in Gaza, but the difference is that Israel is not deliberately targeting them. Heard of any Israeli suicide bombers lately? Months of indiscriminate rocket attacks on Israel by the occupants of Gaza, and I have not seen any great public outcry. Sarkhozi was not hitting the limelight in defense of Israel or in an effort to stop this barbarism. Damn it, sometimes there is a right side and a wrong side, the Palestinians are on the wrong side of this one.
DU
WP
M1A1 main battle tanks
Attack helicopters
and whatever the Hell else the US has sold to Israel…
When you say “My God” at the beginning, check yourself first.
Perhaps, but ‘fair’ is not the standard we’re looking for — acceptable or workable or survivable or viable are more likely the words we would use.
Funny, I thought that was what Iraq was for.
I am actually surprised how open the criticism of Israel is on this site. The suppression of any healthy debate of US and Israeli policies these past 30 years is bringing all these birds to roost. For me, the lack of any shame or reflection by Israel partisans was brought home by the nonsensical criticism of Jimmy Carter’s book last year, critcism which included jewish members of his Peace Center turning on him. Jimmy Carter is the only President of the United States since Truman (and Nixon) who actually did something that brought security to Israel in the form of a secure border with Israel and the defanging of his Israel’s most potent foe. What did Jimmy Carter get for this effort? Israel pocket the Egyptian part of Camp David and ignored the track to settle the Palestinian issue. The criticism of Jimmy Carter, calling Israeli polcies in the West Bank “apartheid”, was truly insane given the number of Israeli commentators who say the same thing. Ah truly the chosen people. Only jews are allowed to criticize Israel but they too have to be careful – or else they will be called out as self haters.
Whaa? If the Israeli cause is just and necessary, as I believe it is, how does describing US support for this cause going to convince me of anything? Why do I need to check myself for invoking God’s name in my despair over the majority of comments on this blog? One day there will be a Palestinian state beside an Israeli state. These people are so much alike in their intelligence and industriousness that they will then soon engage in trade and cultural exchanges and even more of the desert will bloom. I don’t know if it will happen in my lifetime, but it is inevitable.
You know, I can’t really be too sure about this, but I have a little inkling of a hunch that all the hubub and doom-and-gloom lately just might have a little something to do with the casualty ratio between the two sides. Hamas leadership might well want to drive Israel into the sea, but then again the fact that I want to flap my arms and fly to the moon doesn’t mean I have a ghost of chance of ever actually doing that. See supra in re “disproportionate reaction to the actual threat”.
Might it have something to do with the dead babies? Just a guess.
To be clear, it’s not “Olmert” we’re talking about. It’s the election of Olmert as an indicator of the state of affairs.
Even as Israel thinks they’re winning, by expanding settlements or by attacking Gaza, they are losing. The decades long strategy of the PLO to have children throwing rocks in the face of overwhelming Israeli tanks is still the dynamic and the further along it goes, with the settlements as a milemarker, the more people grow disgusted with Israel’s inability to say where their borders are and to stay within those borders.
They don’t stay within their borders. They occupy and destroy their neighbors and they enable & protect settlers who really steal land. It’s been doomed to failure (”The Sea”) from the beginning. Now we see the endgame they’ve wrought on themselves. Yet they continue, gleeful they have neocon support here in America. They’re fools or insane.
If they would simply not allow settlements and limit their military frays, then they might have continued for a very long time. Today there are some who would say it’s over. Dead men walking. I, and some others, still have hope — but it will take a big stick whacking them on the side of their heads to get their attention. Their leaders have, for a long time now, told them it is a failed strategy and they refuse to listen. They’d rather kill those leaders than respect their knowledge and wisdom. They’re insane.
Of course when Tom Friedman wrote From Beirut to Jerusalem he found himself totally persona non grata in the jewish lecture circuit. Cause he spoke the truth. Now that he carried water for the Iraq War and has become an Isaah railing against American consumption of imported carbon fuels, he is back in good graces and can collect those fat fees.
No doubt a justifiable seige mentality in Israel has resulted in heavy-handed reactions. I happen to agree with Jimmy Carter’s apartheid analogy for the treatment of Palestinians in the occupied lands. But none of this changes the fundamental fact that the Israelis are entitled to keep their country in its pre-war boundaries and there is no justification for the blind hatred of their neighbors who wish to exterminate them. A Gazan declaration of the right of Israel to exist and the cessation of indiscriminate rocket shots into Israel would change the negotiating climate overnight. Aint gonna happen though, because Hamas cannot get past its religious bigotry and hatred. No wonder Palestinians in Gaza report seeing the bodies of Hamas fighters left in the streets for days because no non-Hamas civilian cares enough to move them. And what of the tactic of setting up military installations in civilian areas and even in civilian homes and hospitals? Does anyone on this blog care to explain the morality of that policy?
Because you confuse/conflate support for the victims of numerical slaughter with those that create the terror.
Gaza is a terrible, tiny place to live and this ‘incursion’ is, pardon this casual reference, like shooting fish in a barrel.
It is inhuman, it is being hidden in scope and depth from the world for political reasons, and it is not stopping. And you know it.
a perfect fit for the Bush administration’s similar belief
Ha!
Dead babies, sadly, are buried on both sides of these borders. Hamas has no interest in any efforts to limit collateral civilian damage, as evidenced by their policy of lobbing rockets into Israeli settlements, towns and cities, without regard for where they fall. The Israelis do care and try to limit such casualties. As a lawyer, I am puzzled by your ham-handed efforts to employ legal terminology in your sarcastic comments.
Illegitimi non carborundum, my brother.
Any comment on the wisdom/morality of Hamas deciding to wage terror from this tiny crowded place by firing rockets into Israel on a daily basis. On a more utopian note, I would truly like to hear your reaction to my prediction of a future where a Palestinian and an Israeli state live in relative harmony.
If your goal is to kill a conversation then inflaming rhetoric is one way. But, being anti-genocide or anti-war or just anti-stupidity then you could be offended by being called anti-Semitic.
But, people who actually want some kind of solution leading to peace don’t let garbage talk get in the way. It’s just a time waster.
booga booga neener neener doesn’t lead to a solution.
Allow the world press in – this excuse of retaining strategic surprise is false, and it is insultingly cruel.
Let medicine and food in. There is no excuse – none – for preventing it.
Let the world see if what Israel is doing is measured and just. Then you can expect to call us (me anyway) “my brother.”
Once again…
DU
WP
M1A1 main battle tanks
Attack helicopters
and whatever the Hell else the US has sold to Israel…
versus… this
You have to have a sense of measure to make your argument IMO, and you seem to have none.
Sorry, NO, you’re not excused. If you want to run away from a discussion because you do a good impression of being upset by the use of stupid language, then you’re simply not excused from the responsibility of …
Oh hell, nobody has a responsibility to discuss things in a blog.
But, to accuse others of killing the discussion isn’t fair. Assholes who try to kill conversations that are important ARE NOT EXCUSED. But, yes, please do leave. You’re of no help.
If ya wanna stop war & stuff you’ve gotta yell loud, really loud!
Brother newtonusr,
Medicine and other relief supplies are being allowed in; the press may be banned but the Palestinians are very sophisticated in their media relations and we have had ample photographs of dead and wounded civilians, without of course any exploration of the actions of Hamas in placing their military installations right in the middle of civilians. I grieve for the death of innocents on both sides. Odd that I haven’t heard similar sentiments from you.
Okay okay, so you’re watching a turtle on it’s back in the desert and it’s struggling to get upright, but you’re not helping. Why aren’t you helping?
reference to a movie scene involving flawed people interrogating other flawed individuals and nobody’s helping
I think you mean sense of proportion. I don’t care if all they are throwing is stones into Israeli civilian areas indiscriminately, its still wrong. Thank God (sorry, as the son of a Baptist minister I can’t help myself) they don’t have sophisticated weapons because they would use them to the same immoral ends, but with much more effectiveness.
Fuck legalisms. Fuck the false equivalency of the 4 Israeli dead from the little tiny stick rockets being just as bad as the 600 dead Gazans from Star Wars munitions. And dead for why? Dead because Israel has never for long lived within the borders it has agreed to. Dead because Israel has turned Gaza into a human trash compactor, squeezing the life into ever smaller space, and cries like a child whenever the wider world returns that horrible injury against humanity with the even the slightest reminder, let alone with criticism — and that is exactly what the little tiny stick rockets are, they are the pangs of conscience that the world at large inflicts on Israel for its sins. How dare you criticize Palestine for disregard for life under these circumstances?
Which side has more baby graves? The other side is the greater aggressor, end of story.
And I am not your brother.
Well, that settles it. Everybody must agree and we’ll have the wrap-up party at one of the settlements. LOL
There is soooo much Wrong all around that it’s hilarious to claim Righteousness for anyone in that fight.
My dear potential and perhaps future brother,
I really don’t know how to respond to comparing lethal weapons, fired indiscriminately at civilians, to expressions of the conscience of the world. Maybe I don’t want to be related to you after all. Still no comment on the possibility (in my view certainty) that Palestine and Israel will one day live peacefully side by side? Oh well, time for bed and the sleep of the righteous.
Shalom.
They are most certainly not.
Yeah, images of those pesky dead and maimed could screw up the whole operation.
And measure is what I mean. And I think you meant scale.
Anger at Hamas and other organizations that kill indiscriminately are vehemently and repeatedly denounced here. You have not been reading.
Finally, take your brotherhood elsewhere. It finds no purchase here.
One more pre-bedtime comment, my fellow human. Righteous indignation is not a friend of rationality.
Mark – remember that line from Victor Victoria?
“And it is a moron who takes advise from a…”
Well, which is it? Should I stick around, or should I leave?
Because I did stick around, and found nothing of substance to respond to, other than what I’ve already said.
Meanwhile, I note that the author of the post has offered no clarification of his “quite deliberate” choice of words. Apparently the responsibility for discussion is only for the little people…..
You seem to be living in a news vacuum. It is indisputable that relief supplies are being allowed into Gaza by the Israelis. Amusing Freudian slip in so self-righteously exclaiming that anger against the brutality of Hamas tactics are roundly condemned on this site….Scale doesn’t work, and you completely avoided my request that you justify Hamas tactics which inevitably lead to some of those civilian deaths in Gaza.
Nighty-night.
Do you kiss your mommy with that mouth? Do you really think that ancient Anglo-Saxon verbs bolster your hateful arguments? Why can’t we all just get along on these sites?
Weren’t you going to sleep?
zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz
Oh, I know the answer to that one!: Because defenders of disproportionate, not to mention in effect genocidal modern military assaults on defenseless captive suppressed populations (who incidentally by the terms of the laws of war are a protected class) must never go unanswered?
Israeli soldiers take over office buildings and apartment complexes, denying the innocent inhabitants the ability to leave in order to shield themselves and buy propaganda should they be attacked.
Dead people are left on the streets because, well, not possessing tanks or the fuel to power vehicles, there is no cover to retrieve the bodies.
and, “righteous indignation” is the excuse for the incursion, the indignation over the rockets, leaving sanity in the dust.
and, yes, some (few) relief supplies were used as propaganda fodder in order to buy a “cease-fire”. That, after months of denying Gaza supplies. Wow. Big whoop!
Yes, I would like to see peace. But, the more Israel flexes the muscles given to it by the US, the farther that day moves to the future.
Regime change in Israel. Love the people. Detest the government.
and yet refugees from Haiti will be sent back to their devastated island in the coming weeks…. they’ve suffered from multiple Katrina sized storms in the past few months.
Disproportionate warfare is a two-way street. On the Hamas side it means suicide bombers and firing wildly inaccurate rocket bombs into civilians in Israel. So I’m a Palestinian who just voted Hamas into power in Gaza, thrilled by their revolutionary rhetoric and their defiance and hatred of the cursed jews. Then I see Hamas placing its rocket launchers, ammunition, and soldiers into my apartment building or next to hospitals and schools, or in mosques. After that I observe the Hamas decision to start indiscriminately rocketing the most powerful country in the Middle East, a country with the institutional memory of 6 million of its people being murdered while the world dithered. When the inevitable response comes from Israel, it might be logical to start rethinking that vote. A mass murderer with an Uzi will face a disproportionate response from the SWAT team, but that doesn’t make the mass murderer a victim.
“Yes, I would like to see peace. But, the more Israel flexes the muscles given to it by the US, the farther that day moves to the future.”
OK, can we get a little concrete here? What moves should Hamas make to bring that day of peace closer? Should they rethink their policy of rocketing civilian populations? Should they abandon their pledge to eradicate the State of Israel? I really want to know if you believe that Hamas has any responsibility in this mess.
Thought you would like to know that I slept the sleep of the just and reasonable last night. You?
I don’t know if you’ll come back and read this, but anyway
Hi Kenosha, I used to live in Appleton – almost neighbors *g*
I hope you have time to go back and read the article I gave in my post, it contains a great amount of wisdom by the author Robert Satloff. If you do go back and read the introduction he gives for his book, you will understand that I think he’s taking a thoughtful correct approach in how he looks at the subject we were discussing, that he also describes as being uncomfortable, but important for both the Israeli’s and the Muslim peoples in the ME.
I clicked on your links and can’t dismiss what they say, but at the same time I could bring up the Kasztner Affair, and also the collaboration of the Lehi Group (also know as the Stern Gang) with the Nazi’s which does no one any good because then we would have to go back and forth and get into a flame war type discussion.
Let me take just a snippet of what he says
Please read what he wrote and listen to the interview. I think it will give you some good food for thought because he seems to be a very wise man
I meant the link I gave in my comment @ 84