Can you look at this map and say Israel does not systemically appropriate land?

Someone ought really to clue in ci about what the "est" at the end of the word "close" means!

Oops, there goes another rubber tree plant...

Mox nixt. Britain is America's closest ally.

And that really pisses you off. Happy Imbolc.

What does that mean?

If you mean the UK, I certainly agree.

Why Israel Fears the Boycott
By OMAR BARGHOUTIJAN. 31, 2014

JERUSALEM — IF Secretary of State John Kerry’s attempts to revive talks between Israel and the Palestinian Authority fail because of Israel’s continuing construction of illegal settlements, the Israeli government is likely to face an international boycott “on steroids,” as Mr. Kerry warned last August.

These days, Israel seems as terrified by the “exponential” growth of the Palestinian-led Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (or B.D.S.) movement as it is by Iran’s rising clout in the region. Last June, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu effectively declared B.D.S. a strategic threat. Calling it the “delegitimization” movement, he assigned the overall responsibility for fighting it to his Strategic Affairs Ministry. But B.D.S. doesn’t pose an existential threat to Israel; it poses a serious challenge to Israel’s system of oppression of the Palestinian people, which is the root cause of its growing worldwide isolation.

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The Israeli government’s view of B.D.S. as a strategic threat reveals its heightened anxiety at the movement’s recent spread into the mainstream. It also reflects the failure of the Foreign Affairs Ministry’s well-endowed “Brand Israel” campaign, which reduces B.D.S. to an image problem and employs culture as a propaganda tool, sending well-known Israeli figures around the world to show Israel’s prettier face.


Begun in 2005 by the largest trade union federations and organizations in Palestinian society, B.D.S. calls for ending Israel’s 1967 occupation, “recognizing the fundamental rights of the Arab-Palestinian citizens of Israel to full equality,” and the right of Palestinian refugees to return to the homes and lands from which they were forcibly displaced and dispossessed in 1948.

Why should Israel, a nuclear power with a strong economy, feel so vulnerable to a nonviolent human rights movement?

Israel is deeply apprehensive about the increasing number of American Jews who vocally oppose its policies — especially those who are joining or leading B.D.S. campaigns. It also perceives as a profound threat the rising dissent among prominent Jewish figures who reject its tendency to speak on their behalf, challenge its claim to be the “national home” of all Jews, or raise the inherent conflict between its ethno-religious self-definition and its claim to democracy. What I. F. Stone prophetically wrote about Israel back in 1967, that it was “creating a kind of moral schizophrenia in world Jewry” because of its “racial and exclusionist” ideal, is no longer beyond the pale.

Israel is also threatened by the effectiveness of the nonviolent strategies used by the B.D.S. movement, including its Israeli component, and by the negative impact they have had on Israel’s standing in world public opinion. As one Israeli military commander said in the context of suppressing Palestinian popular resistance to the occupation, “We don’t do Gandhi very well.”

The landslide vote by the American Studies Association in December to endorse an academic boycott of Israel, coming on the heels of a similar decision by the Association for Asian-American Studies, among others, as well as divestment votes by several university student councils, proves that B.D.S. is no longer a taboo in the United States.

The movement’s economic impact is also becoming evident. The recent decision by the $200 billion Dutch pension fund PGGM to divest from the five largest Israeli banks because of their involvement in occupied Palestinian territory has sent shock waves through the Israeli establishment.

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/02/01/opinion/sunday/why-the-boycott-movement-scares-israel.html?hp&rref=opinion&_r=0

Mox nixt = makes no never mind.

ci has Germany as our closest friend.

And he has Japan as our closest friend.

He just doesn't get it...like he does not get the proper use of the term "oxymoron."

I suspect that is probably closer to the truth.

But now ci is going to say that Germany is our closest ally...

...and Japan is our closest ally...

...and the UK is America's closest ally.

Edit...changed Britain to UK...after reading Walter's comment.

Thank you (I'm not a native American speaker)

I thought mox nixt is German slang?

You were wrong.

According to the Urban Dictionary, however, "mox nix" is "an American spelling of the German expression "macht nichts" which means roughly, "it makes no difference.""

I said it was German slang. I didn't say that Americans spelled it correctly.

Once upon a time, in NYC, there was a fairly large German-American community that might have used such slang as common usage. They left somewhere in the early '50's. When the city started to change demographically, I believe. They were educated, hard-working, and basically upwardly mobile. So, wherever they went in the U.S., they mostly became an addition to the existing upper-middle class of that state/city/town.

Actually, it's American slang of German words.

You anti-Semites aren't non-violent, you have nothing to do with human rights, and Israel does not fear you.

The bravado of the Jews in Israel are making more people in the world question their rights to steal lands from other people. This is not an endless crime; Israel will eventually be standing alone in the midst of enemies.

Their ownership of nukes will only isolate them more from the civilized world.

Who will they attack?

They already had four wars to survive, based on their being surrounded by loving neighbors. However, with Syria imploding, Iraq not exactly a stable country, Lebanon always being up for grabs, and Egypt is learning the value of a stable army in command, Israel seems to have been oddly vaccinated against such tumult. In my opinion, any Palestinean state will just add to the comedy by not having a viable economy other than UN, or western Europe, hand-outs. That will do wonders for a Palestinean state's self-esteem. Will they then blame the Jews? I wonder how many Arabs, Palestineans included, would move to western Europe tomorrow, if they could. Other than oil, olives, and a few other agricultural products, what are the Middle Eastern Arab economies based on? Street demonstrations? Coffee drinking?

A war between Japan and North Korea is more likely, in my opinion.

You're a fool! Japan has the US as an ally.