ISRAEL - IRAN - SYRIA - HAMAS - HEZBOLLAH - WWWIII?

I suspect that the trajectory of relations with their neighbors over the last several decades has left the Israelis with no real ideas or hope for a peaceful evolution of the situation they face. As a result there is little internal political opposition to the present government's sometimes mindless retaliatory actions, and, far worse, no apparent incentive for introspection on the excesses of their policies for the last forty years.

All the parties to this dispute appear locked in to positions of permanent hostility, and no alternatives are considered seriously. So much for the spirit of Oslo, Madrid, or Camp David. Diplomacy is futile if the parties have more to gain (as they see it) from continued hostility and everything to loose in any process involving compromise.

It is a cliche among the Left (and Europeans in particular) to blame this situation on an America held hostage to its organized Jewish political action. While there is truth in this assertion, the motivations of those involved and the absence of any similar phenomenon in Europe has its origins in far worse happenings across Europe in the last century.

I suspect that the trajectory of relations with their neighbors over the last several decades has left the Israelis with no real ideas or hope for a peaceful evolution of the situation they face. As a result there is little internal political opposition to the present government's sometimes mindless retaliatory actions, and, far worse, no apparent incentive for introspection on the excesses of their policies for the last forty years.

All the parties to this dispute appear locked in to positions of permanent hostility, and no alternatives are considered seriously. So much for the spirit of Oslo, Madrid, or Camp David. Diplomacy is futile if the parties have more to gain (as they see it) from continued hostility and everything to loose in any process involving compromise.

It is a cliche among the Left (and Europeans in particular) to blame this situation on an America held hostage to its organized Jewish political action. While there is truth in this assertion, the motivations of those involved and the absence of any similar phenomenon in Europe has its origins in far worse happenings across Europe in the last century.

The question is: do you join with some others on this thread and think Israel should just pack it in at this point, vacate the territory, go elsewhere, and then there will be peace in the Middle East?

I don't know the solution for the region. I think we will continue to see tragedy beget more tragedy

I don't believe Israel will ever find peace with its neighbors while it defines itself as an essentially Jewish state. In a similar way I don't believe the Moslem states of the Middle East will ever become modern and democratic until they let go of the notion that Islam and the state should be one, and begin to practice toleration for other faiths or even secular views.

The great unmentionable at the center of our culture is montheism. From a barbaric Bronze Age text known as the Old Testament, three anti-human religions have evolved - Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. These are sky-god religions. They are, literally patriarchal - God is the Omnipotent Father - hence the loathing of women for 2,000 years in those countries afflicted by the sky-god and his earthly male delegates.

georgeob1 wrote:

I don't believe Israel will ever find peace with its neighbors while it defines itself as an essentially Jewish state. In a similar way I don't believe the Moslem states of the Middle East will ever become modern and democratic until they let go of the notion that Islam and the state should be one, and begin to practice toleration for other faiths or even secular views.

Well said George.

Quote:

The great unmentionable at the center of our culture is montheism. From a barbaric Bronze Age text known as the Old Testament, three anti-human religions have evolved - Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. These are sky-god religions. They are, literally patriarchal - God is the Omnipotent Father - hence the loathing of women for 2,000 years in those countries afflicted by the sky-god and his earthly male delegates.

Gore Vidal

georgeob1 wrote:

I don't believe Israel will ever find peace with its neighbors while it defines itself as an essentially Jewish state. In a similar way I don't believe the Moslem states of the Middle East will ever become modern and democratic until they let go of the notion that Islam and the state should be one, and begin to practice toleration for other faiths or even secular views.

Well said George.

Quote:

The great unmentionable at the center of our culture is montheism. From a barbaric Bronze Age text known as the Old Testament, three anti-human religions have evolved - Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. These are sky-god religions. They are, literally patriarchal - God is the Omnipotent Father - hence the loathing of women for 2,000 years in those countries afflicted by the sky-god and his earthly male delegates.

Gore Vidal

The question is: do you join with some others on this thread and think Israel should just pack it in at this point, vacate the territory, go elsewhere, and then there will be peace in the Middle East?

Foxfyre wrote:

The question is: do you join with some others on this thread and think Israel should just pack it in at this point, vacate the territory, go elsewhere, and then there will be peace in the Middle East?

This is typical Fox hatefulness, and a typical Fox strawman.

Who, Fox, in this thread, has advocated that the Israelis "pack it in at this point, vacate the territory, [and] go elsewhere," hmm? You're making things up, and as you so often do, erecting a strawman by characterizing the position of those with whom you disagree in false, unfavorable and insulting terms.

Prepare for war in Gaza
Mortimer B. Zuckerman
Monday, November 6th, 2006
New York Daily News

All eyes are on Iraq, but another war looms in the cauldron of the Middle East. The battlefield will be Gaza. The cause is the same as the war in Lebanon: the appetite of Arab radicals for bloodshed.

Israel pulled out of Gaza more than a year ago, but instead of using their independence to build a Palestinian state, the Gaza Arabs have been killing each other, as well as trying to kill Israelis. Factional fighting between Hamas forces loyal to Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh and Fatah forces more or less loyal to President Mahmoud Abbas verges on a civil war. The turmoil will threaten Israel, which cannot be expected to stand aside as it did to its cost in southern Lebanon while Hezbollah grew strong enough to rocket Israeli cities.

In Gaza, every intelligence, police, military and security agency predicted violence if the security of the Gaza-Egypt border, the Philadelphia Route, was left to those parties when Israel withdrew. Secretary of State Rice forced the Israelis to agree to the deal - and the border has indeed become a sewer for terrorists and weapons.

The Egyptians have betrayed their obligations, even though Hamas is a threat to Egypt. The Israeli Defense Forces have discovered as many as 100 trans-border tunnels, through which some 20 tons of explosives, tens of thousands of rifles, rocket-propelled grenades and missiles of all kinds have been shipped. The Gazans have made matters worse by building hundreds of short-range Kassam rockets to rain on southern Israel.

Sooner rather than later, the Israelis will have to retake the Philadelphia Route before the Palestinians accumulate a stockpile of armaments to bloody Israel like Hezbollah did this past summer.

None of this is in the interest of the people of Gaza. Their vote for Hamas back in January has brought anarchy, corruption, chaos and tribal wars. Abdallah Awad, columnist for the Palestinian daily Al-Ayyam, writes: "The factions, which not long ago were, in the eyes of the public, the guarantee for ridding ourselves of the occupation and for freedom and independence, have become ... another occupation, more repressive than the [Israeli] occupation itself."

The long-run prospect is grim, because Hamas simply isn't interested in peace; in the latest survey, two-thirds of Gazans reject peace with Israel while almost as many believe in shelling Israeli cities. Hamas ensures further bloodshed by indoctrinating Palestinian children. They are not born hating, but from the age of 3 their radical leadership incites them to murder. The hate pervades the educational system, TV broadcasting, summer camps, children's trading cards, movies, music, even games that make martyrdom a major theme.

A Palestinian psychiatrist recently reported that more than half the Palestinian children between the ages of 6 and 11 dream of becoming suicide bombers. And in this perverse and tragic pursuit, they are urged on by their prime minister, Haniyeh. "One of the signs of victory," he told a rally recently, "is the Palestinian mother who prepares her son to be a warrior and then receives the news of his death for the sake of Allah with cries of happiness."

This is the real face of Hamas, not the apparently pacific one of the Hamas maneuver unveiled in The New York Times on Wednesday by Ahmed Yousef, Haniyeh's senior adviser. In a ploy to gain Western sympathy - and a renewal of funding - Hamas proposed a "hudna," or truce, so that the two peoples could work out their differences peaceably.

It is a deceitful message, for if one reads the code carefully, it is clear that the "peace" Hamas proposes involves destroying the state of Israel. Never once did Yousef refer to Israel the state, but only "Israelis." His hudna would give time for Hamas to build up military strength, exactly as Hezbollah did in Lebanon.

The international community must not weaken in its insistence that Hamas must commit to end violence. With such a pledge, Hamas could end its isolation and mitigate the suffering of Palestinians, but Yousef declares that "the spirit of Palestinians" would never permit a renunciation of violence. Hamas prefers instead to let the Gazans suffer in the hope that sympathy for the victims of its own intransigence trump reason and sound judgment.

Hamas, in truth, is not a nationalist force. It is part of the global movement of jihad, a Palestinian arm of the Muslim Brotherhood founded in Egypt with the goal of eliminating Israel with help from its Syrian and Iranian backers.

Middle East diplomats, so enamored of process, keep hoping the right dose of concessions will somehow result in mutually reinforcing perceptions of security. This is hopelessly naive. For now and the foreseeable future, the seat on the other side of the table across from Israel is occupied only by a death's-head.

UN Involvement

www.globalpolicy.org

...
The United States has used its influence to keep the issue off the Council's agenda and it has repeatedly used its veto power on Israel's behalf. Council resolutions critical of Israel are almost certain to fail, irrespective of the will of other Council members and regardless of international law and the magnitude of Israel's violations.
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
Says it all. The US keeps bailing Israel out because of the strong Christian Zionist movement in the US, a powerful Zionist lobby in Washington DC, (see: us.altermedia.info) and the collective guilt purveyed by same, where anything negative said against a person of Jewish decent is considered a crime. What a bunch of hooey.

There is no history of Israel attacking anybody without credible provocation such as imminent threat of attack or actual attacks.

Foxfyre wrote:

There is no history of Israel attacking anybody without credible provocation such as imminent threat of attack or actual attacks.

Meanwhile back to this statement.... Did you read the material posted on the Israeli attacks on UNIFIL forces? Do you feel like it was the UNIFIL forces' or the German surveillance ship's or even the USS Liberty's fault to be attacked by the IAF in that manner, or were those rather unprovoked agressive acts on the Israeli side?

Do you feel like retracting your statement?