U.S. middle east policy, pros and cons: discuss

Are you capable of defending your positions without school-boy insults?

Here's a clue for you, we're in the Twenty-First Century, not the Sixteenth, nor even the Nineteenth one. Get with the times.

...That Israel may have learned ethnocentrism from Europe on a possible two-thousand year learning curve of state sponsored anti-Semitism does not justify the Zionists' discrimination against and oppression of the Palestinian peoples.

They become more "expendable" when they treat Palestinians like they were treated during WWII. Get with the program.

When you take away their homes and property, you take away their lives.

Try to take away any property from Americans today as Jews are doing in Israel, and see what happens.

In a reminder that Persian rhetoric is not always easy for English-speakers to interpret, a senior Israeli official has acknowledged that Iran’s president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, never actually said that Israel “must be wiped off the map.”

Those words were attributed to Mr. Ahmadinejad in 2005, in English translations of his speech to a “World Without Zionism” conference that October. As my colleague Ethan Bronner reported the next year, one problem was translating a metaphorical turn of phrase in Persian that has no exact English equivalent — there was, for instance, no mention of a map — and there was a heated debate about whether the original statement was a threat or a prediction.

Last week, Teymoor Nabili of Al Jazeera suggested during an interview with Dan Meridor, Israel’s minister of intelligence and atomic energy, that Mr. Ahmadinejad’s rhetorical flourish had been misinterpreted. “This idea that Iran wants to wipe Israel out,” Mr. Nabili said, “now that’s a common trope that is put about by a lot of people in Israel, a lot of people in the United States, but as we know Ahmadinejad didn’t say that he plans to exterminate Israel, nor did he say that Iran’s policy is to exterminate Israel.”

In response, Mr. Meridor said that Mr. Ahmadinejad and Iran’s ruling cleric, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, had said repeatedly “that Israel is an unnatural creature, it will not survive. They didn’t say, ‘We’ll wipe it out,’ you’re right, but, ‘It will not survive.’ ”

Mr. Meridor also pointed out that Iran’s leaders have continued to deny Israel’s right to exist and used highly inflammatory terms to describe the state. After Ayatollah Khamenei compared Israel to a cancerous tumor in February — adding, it “should be cut off” — Mr. Meridor noted those remarks were echoed by the president just last month. “Israel is unnatural, it will not exist, it’s on the verge of collapse,” Mr. Meridor said. “When you hear this from these people, you need to take it seriously.”

As the Guardian columnist Jonathan Steele explained in 2006, a more direct translation of Mr. Ahmadinejad’s remarks would be: “this regime occupying Jerusalem must vanish from the page of time,” echoing a statement once made by the founder of the Islamic Republic of Iran, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini.

InfraBlue wrote:

Here's a clue for you, we're in the Twenty-First Century, not the Sixteenth, nor even the Nineteenth one. Get with the times.

Only 67 years ago the Holocaust occurred. And, today Iran talks about extinguishing the one place on this planet that Jews can live according to their faith, without being a minority. If you think Jews, in the minds of many a European, are not expendable in current "times," you be wrong, Blue.

InfraBlue wrote:

...That Israel may have learned ethnocentrism from Europe on a possible two-thousand year learning curve of state sponsored anti-Semitism does not justify the Zionists' discrimination against and oppression of the Palestinian peoples.

And, why be that, Blue? Make an ethical argument, like in an ethics college course!

That you have to ask is simply astounding. It’s pretty simple really, bad things learnt do not justify bad behavior. To put it in simpler terms, bad things do not justify bad things.

It seems your mother was derelict in her duties concerning your moral upbringing.

They become more "expendable" when they treat Palestinians like they were treated during WWII. Get with the program.

When you take away their homes and property, you take away their lives.