Israel is officially an apartheid state

I did not say that Palestinians are not indigenous to the area. So by the same standard, all comments in this thread about Palestinians being indigenous are equally a straw man fallacy.

Whether anyone agrees that Israeli Jews are indigenous to Israel is equally as irrelevant. They are indigenous regardless of who agrees or disagrees.

Do Canada and Mexico have an obligation to let me vote in their elections?

The Palestinians are hardly being oppressed. They could form their own state if they would only be peaceful and stop trying to murder everyone.

@ oralloy,
@ oralloy,
@ oralloy,
@ oralloy,
Nuh-uh.

Having said he acknowledges that Palestinians are indigenous, he turns around and implies that they are not citizens, and have not right to vote. He is completely delusional, and increasingly incapable of rational discussion.

Two wrongs don't make a right. I am just pointing out that the cartoon is biased and not good arguments. Why not keep the level of the discussion up instead of reducing it to back-and-forth mockery and ridicule?

The bottom line is that Israel's history rooted in the Holocaust automatically implies that it is against unfair discrimination and oppression due to nationalist territorialism.

The problem is what do you do when you want to overcome the pitfalls of nationalism but you can't without putting up national borders and restrictions?

The US has the same problem, really, though you wouldn't know if from popular opinion. In principle, the US is about 'liberty and justice for all,' and historically the idea was that everyone could come to the US and liberty would save them from ethnic conflict, classism, etc. Yet, not only has that not happened, much of the world rejects and hates the US and republicanism generally, prefers central control, and use the fact that the US hasn't perfectly achieved its ideals as cause to scoff at them and reject the very hope of achieving them at all.

So when you have people who reject the ideals, principles, and hope of peace in favor of attacking and ridiculing it and the people, what other option do you have besides closing the borders and waiting until there is respect and constructive attitudes emerge? It's not like you can force people to be reasonable.

People claiming they come from a country that never existed is a bad argument? Yes it is, it is bad argument for the Palestinians. Religion motivates this conflict, and not the Jewish one.

Your denial of reality means that Israel will get to disregard the Palestinians and take whatever land they want by force.

Well, not you alone of course. But every little contribution adds up.

Thanks for your help. When the Palestinian state is confined to Area A alone, future generations will give thanks to everyone whose intolerance made it all possible.

Well, yes. That is pretty straightforward. Do I have the right to vote in Canadian and Mexican elections?

Why would anyone think that residents of Gaza and the West Bank would have any right to vote in Israeli elections?

So far no one has been able to point out anything that I am wrong about.

Native Americans do have the right to vote in Canadian, Mexican and US elections.

They came from Asia. Can they vote there too?

Only if they are a citizen of that particular country.

Palestinians in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip are not Israeli citizens.

Israeli cartoonist fired over 'Animal Farm' Netanyahu caricature

What does it mean for a 'country' to 'exist?' Land has always existed. Humans have always reproduced and migrated. To call a certain region of land a 'country' is an act of collective subjectivity, of territorialism. It's like if you happen upon a wild tree or plant that bears edible fruits. Are you stealing them if you take and eat them? What if you put a sign up with your name on it? Then, if someone else happens upon the tree, are they stealing because you staked your claim first? Now what if people surround you with your tree with your name on it and harass you until you leave? Have they stolen the tree, or did you 'voluntarily' abandon it because you didn't like the neighbors? Now you go make friends with some powerful people and return with weapons to reclaim your tree - does that mean you are 'stealing' it back or just reclaiming property that you were bullied out of and away from?

This is not a debate on whether Israel is a sovereign country. They are. Being that they are the authority anyone who enters that country has to deal with.

The fact that Palestine, the country, never existed remains. It is a victim mentality and the so called victims are the aggressors in this case launching rockets and stabbing Israeli citizens. I consider them(Palestinians) lucky they are are still alive.

So basically what you are saying is that Israel is established as a sovereign nation, period, so anyone who has any debate about that has to 'put up or shut up?' and so you're basically encouraging war against Israel and justifying that Israel will respond by winning the wars and further establishing territorial dominance and sovereignty that way?

Islam encourages war against all Jews wherever they are. Israel is where Jews can tell Islam to **** off. I have no problems with Israel they are not the aggressors.

Pigs 1, Progressives 1

Thanks for clarifying the origin of the word, "pigs".

Israel will never know the peace it claims to want given that scenario.

Because Islam is there to make sure of it. Period.

I agree that there is anti-Semitism, but it goes beyond Islam and it's not fair or right to equate Islam and anti-Semitism as synonymous because that demonizes muslims who aren't anti-Semitic or anti-Jewish (at this point you have to distinguish 'anti-Semitic' from 'anti-Jewish' because 'Semite' is a racial term whereas Islam and Judaism are religious ethnic terms.

In practical terms, the holocaust happened in Europe, which still exhibits a great deal of anti-Semitism in the form of anti-Islam. Some Islamophobes will tell you that they're against the culture/religion and not the people, but that assumes that there can't be cultural differences that aren't aligned with religious differences.

Anyway, the question is whether Israel can deal with anti-Jewish attitudes without exercising national sovereignty to exclude non-Jewish people from citizenship rights. If they can't, then why would anyone expect them to surrender to ridicule from within?

Democracy, in theory, makes it possible to have non-violent revolutions within a unified nation, but for that to happen the people being 'converted' have to consent, and for them to consent, their right of dissent has to be respected. So you could theoretically have a non-violent Israel where non-Jewish people use democratic means to undermine Jewish authority, IF Jewish people consent to that - but then you're dealing with deep religiously-rooted POVs that are probably not open to democracy any more than the Pope is going to be open to changing deeply held doctrines of Catholicism because some secular politics popularizes it.

The real question here is how to respect the right of self-determination of religious people without eliminating the ability to engage in democracy, i.e. constructive non-violent political discourse, with others who think/believe differently. Is it even possible, or does everyone in the world have no other choice but to establish independent national sovereignty and fight to exclude dissenters and repress their ability to make inroads toward influencing otherwise sovereign national politics?