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

Bobsal, thanks for both of those articles.

You conflate any action, (however peaceful,) with an attack on all Israelis. If the boycott was followed through completely Israeli farmers would not starve, not with all the money Israel gets. To suggest as much is being dishonest.

You're very good at handwringing and hoping things will change but they won't, not unless pressure is applied, and the boycott is the most effective way of applying pressure.

I don't know boycott details. I do figure the fallout would be on workers there, and certainly workers are apt to be politically divided re the Netanyahu power group and its decision making. There are probably items I would not like our government to buy. I don't mind if someone in Sweden buys oranges.

You say I conflate, that I am not honest, and that I clearly wish the Palestinian people ill. You are the conflator, besides being insulting.

Of course you're conflating. You're not prepared to subject Israeli farmers to little more than a minor inconvenience in order to stop Palestinian persecution.

The economic importance of a boycott is secondary to the political message. As long as Israel continues to persecute the Palestinians they will not be considered part of the civilised group of nations.

How do you feel about cultural/sporting boycotts? They won't hurt your orange farmer buddies.

Your anti-Semitism is despicable.

I have long observed a correlation between "people monstrous enough to support sending innocent people to prison" and "people monstrous enough to support the Palestinians".

I view it as confirmation of how irredeemably evil the Palestinians are.



If we stop making Israel stronger than those who seek to harm them, Israel will have to go back to being proactive about bombing probable enemies.

Probably the first to be bombed will be Iran. So much for Mr. Obama's deal with Iran.



What you call an embargo on relief shipping is actually a blockade against shipments of weapons that Palestinians use to murder Israeli children with.

If the US tries to interfere with that blockade, Israel will use military force to eradicate the interference.

And the US will have no cause to complain about that, as Israel will have been entirely right to do so.

And some people might even wish to boycott those companies that do business with those companies that do business with Israel... :-)

Given how globalized and intertwined modern economies are, I think pushing the boycott beyond Israeli companies would be fraught with danger. For instance, Pepsi Cola (or any company X) could hire a few guys to spread calls for boycotting Coca Cola (or any competitor to X), even though Pepsi Cola (company X) also does business with Israel.... Consumers could be unfairly manipulated this way, and quite easily so.

Yes. My 50 bucks dont mean much to a congressman when compared to $500,000 by a Isralie front group or the Koch $1,000,000 donation. The Supreme Court has truly screwed the common citizen and he is too stupid to understand it.

Who said the "common citizen" is supposed to wield as much power as those with resources? It is the common citizen that often comes like a mendicant to the large organization asking for, "jobs for the poor, jobs for the poor." This country was not built by the poor risking their two cents, but by the wealthy risking their wealth. You seem to think we are all equal. Only in the eyes of any god are we all equal. Here on Earth we have virtual commoners and royalty, even in countries with no monarchy, in my opinion.

Please smell the coffee.

Herrenvolk?

Those who contribute more to the system might just deserve somewhat more influence. Or, to look at the inverse, those that feed off the system minimally might deserve to defer to those that maintain the system. Hierarchal religions seem to understand this for influence in a respective church.

I don't disagree with this as a philosophy.
But it depends on your starting point.
Although Mussolini made a lot of improvements, and famously made the trains run on time, he still ended hanging from a lamppost.

When Foof is hung for his Nazi tendencies he will never understand why it came about.

Thanks.

Are you trying to say that all humans are equal? There are no CEO's? There is no bellcurve? No Olympic Gold Medals? No unskilled wage earners?

In my best German accent, let me enlighten you: Zer are vinners und zer are losers; ze vinners vin, und ze losers lose! Zot's life!

The word is "hanged," not hung. Do you enjoy your predictions of gory demises? Sort of puerile, in my superior (yet humble) opinion.

I heard that the trains ran on time, because the schedules were changed to coincide with the late trains.

The rest of your post is a non-sequitor, in my opinion. The Italians liked Mussolini when he was promising a return to the glory of Rome. When they started losing, he went out of favor.

Are you just playing verbal ping-pong?

I usually avoid this subject, because it's a moral morass and a Gordian knot.
But I think if you live by the sword, you have every chance of dying by the sword. Israel's only chance of survival on its present course is to remain stronger and better armed that its adversaries, leading it to maintain the economic stranglehold on Gaza and leading it to commit more and more egregious landgrab and human rights violation on its neighbours.
I wish it were not so. I don't discuss this often with my Jewish friends, because none of us can see a solution. We'd like Israel to survive, putting it mildly, but not under these circumstances. It's an affront to civilisation, and to the ideals of the Jewish state.

In my opinion, Israel, living in peace with its neighbors is an affront to the Muslim belief that Islam never gives up land. When the British left, to the Muslim thinking, the land should have reverted back to an Islamic country.

That is exacerbated by the fact that the movers and shakers of Israel are of European descent, and bring up visions of European colonizing to the Islamic mind, in my opinion.

Jews (and Christians) lived peacefully in the past in Muslim countries, but as second class citizens that owed more tax money.

If we could live into the future centuries, we might see Spain being threatened, since that was once the land of the Moors.

Your claim above, about Israel being an affront to civilization, is so silly when compared to the affront to civilization that the Final Solution was, and other excesses of the Third Reich. So, since Israel is not using slave labor, nor herding anyone into gas chambers, nor burning the bodies in crematoriums, nor making lampshades out of human skin, or soap out of human fat, talking about affronts to civilization just sounds so anti-Semitic, when Israel before 1967 was the source of employment for many Palestinians. Then they got involved with their identity, and the harmony ended. Sort of like the domestics of 19th century Britain starting to resent the lady of the house. It was not their position to take umbrage.

The correct analysis might be simply, this is a sticky wicket.

Its not that there are CEOS and street cleaners, its that ubermensch such as your self degrade street sweepers while gate keeping access to the CEO's office closed to everyone else but the other brownshirts.

You do not know what you are talking about when it comes to me. Please stop your misdirected anger, when I am only one private citizen with no agenda. I only look at society as an amateur sociologist. A realist if you like that label.