Palestinian Solidarity Campaign disrupts Israeli Concert. Yeah!!!

That's another tactic, to portray all those who sympathise with the plight of the Palestinians as being unwitting fools blinded by propaganda. The reality is that Israel has the biggest PR machine going, constantly monitoring news reports for bias, and threatening to play the anti-semitism card at every opportunity.

Hamas is a reality, they need to be negotiated with, just like the IRA, jaw, jaw.

...I can sympathize with the Palestinians and fault the wrong-headed (and unjust) insistence of the Israelis on an expansionist and perpetually Jewish state...

georgeob1 wrote:

...I can sympathize with the Palestinians and fault the wrong-headed (and unjust) insistence of the Israelis on an expansionist and perpetually Jewish state...

"Perpetually Jewish"? Are you under the belief that the world should be like the Navy, where all types can live on a ship together in peace? Israel should be perpetually Jewish as penance for the hatred in Europe due to two millenia of Christian love. Some Jews just do not want to live in a Gentile world. Can you not accept that. Just like some Irish do not want to live in a Protestant world.

Foofie wrote:

georgeob1 wrote:

...I can sympathize with the Palestinians and fault the wrong-headed (and unjust) insistence of the Israelis on an expansionist and perpetually Jewish state...

"Perpetually Jewish"? Are you under the belief that the world should be like the Navy, where all types can live on a ship together in peace? Israel should be perpetually Jewish as penance for the hatred in Europe due to two millenia of Christian love. Some Jews just do not want to live in a Gentile world. Can you not accept that. Just like some Irish do not want to live in a Protestant world.

Unfortunately in this case the "pennance" is being done by those innocent of the persecutions to which you refer. Perhaps if the Allied powers had given the displaced Zionists a piece of the former East Prussia that might be an appropriate argument.

Some Irish Catholics did not want to live in a "Protestant" world in the six counties of Northern Ireland, just as some others who were Protestant feared living in a "Catholic" world. Happily, after a three hundred year struggle, and lots of self-serving manipuation by the UK, they got over it (for the most part at least), and are working hard at living (and prospering) together. Both sides are far bettter off for forgetting, and I believe there is a lesson here for Israelis and Palestinians.

The UK had been the self serving protector for the Orange faction in Ireland for many years, until it too gave up on it and worked to force the opposing sides to confront one another. The U.S. role in the Middle East since the 1967 war has been very much like that, and we too need to work to force the two populations to confront one another and (If they can) learn to live together. The alternative is continued murder, hatred and destruction.

I can sympathize with the Palestinians and fault the wrong-headed (and unjust) insistence of the Israelis on an expansionist and perpetually Jewish state. However, given the history of this sorry part of the world, I cannot understand Izzy's claim to be proud to be British. On this subject (and South Africa as well) shame is the more appropriate emotion.

But can you sympathize with Jews who want Israel to remain a Jewish State?

izzythepush wrote:

There might be some South African Blacks that could be insulted if they misconstrued your comparison to mean that they are like Jew hating Palestineans.

The relationship between Jews and Muslims in Jerusalem has for many years been very harmonious. It's only recently that there has been strife. Palestinians are not motivated by hatred of Jews because they're anti-semites. They're motivated by a huge sense of injustice, people were thrown out of their homes, some kicked out of the country, and the oppression is still going on today. It suits your argument to make it about bigotry, it's not, it's about justice.

Quote:

Do you condemn any Germans for being so accepting of Nazi atrocities,

Well it's not as if the Israelis are bothered about Nazis when it suits their own purposes.

Quote:

When the South African prime minister John Vorster made a state visit to Israel in April 1976, it began with a tour of Yad Vashem, Israel's major Holocaust memorial, where the late Yitzhak Rabin invited the onetime Nazi collaborator, unabashed racist and white supremacist to pay homage to Jews murdered in the Holocaust.

Compared, say, to routine outcries from organized Jewry over often even mild whiffs of Holocaust controversy, no less remarkable was the bland equanimity both Israeli and diaspora Jews also displayed toward the Vorster visit.

Benjamin Beit-Hallahmi recalls [The Israeli Connection, Random House: Toronto, 1987, p.x]:
"For most Israelis, the Vorster visit was just another state visit by a foreign leader. It did not draw much attention. Most Israelis did not even remember his name, and did not see anything unusual, much less surreal in the scene [an old Nazi diehard invited to 'mourn' the victims at a Holocaust memorial]: Vorster was just another visiting dignitary being treated to the usual routine."
The old Nazi collaborator was graciously welcomed by his hosts. The South African leader left Israel four days later -- after signing a number of friendship treaties between the Jewish state and South Africa's racist, apartheid regime. A denouement Leslie and Andrew Cockburn describe in Dangerous Liaison [Stoddart Publishing: Toronto, 1991, pp. 299 - 300]:
"The old Nazi sympathizer came away with bilateral agreements for commercial, military, and nuclear cooperation that would become the basis for future relations between the two countries."
Leaving unmentioned Vorster's wartime internment for supporting Germany, Israel's prime minister, Yitzhak Rabin, hailed the South African premier as a force for freedom and made no mention of Vorster's past as he toured the Jerusalem memorial to the six million Jews murdered by the Nazis. At a state banquet, Rabin toasted "the ideals shared by Israel and South Africa: the hopes for justice and peaceful coexistence". Both countries, he said, faced "foreign-inspired instability and recklessness".

Tell me izzy, has a similar organization formed in the UK to express solidarity with the Tibetians, and are you a member? How about solildarity with the Uighurs? How many concerts in London by Chinese performing groups have been disturbed by righteous demonstrators in the UK?

There might be some South African Blacks that could be insulted if they misconstrued your comparison to mean that they are like Jew hating Palestineans.

Do you condemn any Germans for being so accepting of Nazi atrocities,

When the South African prime minister John Vorster made a state visit to Israel in April 1976, it began with a tour of Yad Vashem, Israel's major Holocaust memorial, where the late Yitzhak Rabin invited the onetime Nazi collaborator, unabashed racist and white supremacist to pay homage to Jews murdered in the Holocaust.

Compared, say, to routine outcries from organized Jewry over often even mild whiffs of Holocaust controversy, no less remarkable was the bland equanimity both Israeli and diaspora Jews also displayed toward the Vorster visit.

Benjamin Beit-Hallahmi recalls [The Israeli Connection, Random House: Toronto, 1987, p.x]:
"For most Israelis, the Vorster visit was just another state visit by a foreign leader. It did not draw much attention. Most Israelis did not even remember his name, and did not see anything unusual, much less surreal in the scene [an old Nazi diehard invited to 'mourn' the victims at a Holocaust memorial]: Vorster was just another visiting dignitary being treated to the usual routine."
The old Nazi collaborator was graciously welcomed by his hosts. The South African leader left Israel four days later -- after signing a number of friendship treaties between the Jewish state and South Africa's racist, apartheid regime. A denouement Leslie and Andrew Cockburn describe in Dangerous Liaison [Stoddart Publishing: Toronto, 1991, pp. 299 - 300]:
"The old Nazi sympathizer came away with bilateral agreements for commercial, military, and nuclear cooperation that would become the basis for future relations between the two countries."
Leaving unmentioned Vorster's wartime internment for supporting Germany, Israel's prime minister, Yitzhak Rabin, hailed the South African premier as a force for freedom and made no mention of Vorster's past as he toured the Jerusalem memorial to the six million Jews murdered by the Nazis. At a state banquet, Rabin toasted "the ideals shared by Israel and South Africa: the hopes for justice and peaceful coexistence". Both countries, he said, faced "foreign-inspired instability and recklessness".

I suppose there were lots of Irishmen who didn't want to "rub elbows" with Englishmen and lots of Englismen who felt the same about the Irish. However they got over it. When the Irish republic was created there was no retaliation against the still considerable resident English population, and many irish emigrated to England to find work.