Israel is not beating up on its neighbors without provocation, and there is no reason to believe it would do so in the future. There is every reason to believe that Israel will not initiate hostilities should the Arabs stop initiating hostilities against Israel.
Therefore, all that is needed for peace in the Middle East is for the Arabs to decide to live peacefully with each other and Israel. The day that happens, a genuine peace will immediately exist.
Then if there is no justice for the Palestinians who choose to reside in Israel, we can discuss that. Reasonable people do not think people deserve consideration for justice while they are firing rockets into residential neighborhoods and blowing up crowded markets and busses filled with school children.
I trust when peace prevails, that the world will require the same domestic policies of the Arab nations as they seem to require of Israel.
_________________
--Foxfyre
I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I?-
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.
The Pal territory is just a few miles from every major city in Israel. Thus, Israel is rightfully wary of having a terroristic Pal state so close by. And the Pals have shown repeatedly that they are terrorists with their suicide bombers, rocketing, incursions, etc.
Keep in mind that a Jew cannot live in the Pal territories, but over a million Pals live in peace and prosperity in Israel. That should tell you something.
For Israel "to exist"--that is to say to maintain an ethnic Jewish majority in Israel--it must necessarily continue to oppress the Palestinian people and their descendants who fled their homes and villages during the 1948 war after the Zionists perpetrated their plans of ethnic cleansing--"transfer" they called it then--until they realized a Jewish majority in the areas they controlled. To this day the Zionist regime refuses to allow these Palestinian refugees to return to the land in which they rightfully existed all in order to pursue it's ethnocentric ends, a homeland by and for Jews. The Arab minority that was allowed to remain in Israel is controlled--a "managed minority" as some Zionist put it--in a manner that ensures a Jewish majority in Israel for some time to come. This Zionist goal is the major cause of systematic discrimination (as was exposed in their Orr Commission Report in 2003) in Israel of its Arab minority. Another way the Zionist regime has attempted to maintain an ethnic majority in Israel is by arrogating more and more land it has occupied in the West Bank so as to incorporate the Zionist settlements there into the state of Israel. As it has done this it has more and more circumscribed the land upon which the Palestinian people exist creating in essence large concentration camps which the Zionist regime utterly and oppressively controls.
Infra, you are spouting the big lie. When Israel was formed, the invading Arab armies asked the Pals in Israel to leave their country to make it easier to wipe out the remaining Israelis. Thus, Israel is right in not allowing these turncoats to return to the country they abandoned.
The Pals slaughtered and forced out any Jews in the Pal territory. In Hebron, the Pals slaughtered every last Jew.
You do know, Advocate, at what year Israel was founded and when the 'Hebron massacre' happened, do you?
Is this a test? What do you think?
Well, obviously you mixed up some details and years.
Israel's land area is a little more than 7800 square miles. That's the equivalent of about 88 mi by 89 mi or the area of about 3 or 4 New Mexico counties or 3 or 4 Texas counties. New Mexico has a total of 33 counties; Texas has a total of 258 counties if memory serves me well. Both states have enough vacant land they wouldn't really miss 3-1/2 counties all that much.
When you look at Israel set into a map of the Middle East, that 7,800 square miles is a tiny, tiny fraction of the total and not enough land to be seriously missed by any Arabs.
Right or wrong, the United Nations, in cooperation with Great Britain who "owned" the land at the time, designated the State of Israel as a place where Jewish people could live and control their own destiny. This was deemed proper following the horrors of the Holocaust, the unconscionable pograms in Russia and elsewhere, and millenia of persecution and discrimnation and decimation suffered by the Jews. It wasn't Arab land that was given to the Jews, but rather British land.
The only reason the Arabs therefore would object to Israel is because it belongs to the Jews. It isn't Israel they hate, but it is the Jews.
Those who most strongly criticize Israel do not hold the Arabs to the same standards they require of the Jews. The Arabs aren't criticized for establishing and enforcing Sharia law or that there are separate areas for Kurds, Sunnis, Shiites and one or more of these is generally dscriminated against by one or more of the others. The Arabs tolerate the Jews and Christians in their midst no better and usually less better than the Jews accommodate the law abiding Arabs in their midst and the Jews do not require that non Jews follow Jewish law.
It is understandable that questions of anti-semitism arise when there is such a double standard dictated for Jews vs Arabs. (The term is applied to Jews and rarely to Arabs though it would be accurate for both.)
It is also understandable that Israel resists the judgmentalism of those who presume to tell Israel what it should and should not do re the Palestinians. Israel has good reason to believe that Israel's critics do not have the best interests of Israel in mind.
_________________
--Wonder Woman
I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I?-
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.
<b>Wonder Woman</b> wrote:Israel's land area is a little more than 7800 square miles. That's the equivalent of about 88 mi by 89 mi or the area of about 3 or 4 New Mexico counties or 3 or 4 Texas counties. New Mexico has a total of 33 counties; Texas has a total of 258 counties if memory serves me well. Both states have enough vacant land they wouldn't really miss 3-1/2 counties all that much.
The density (population per square km) for the Netherlands is 392 (22nd densest populated country in the world).
Belgium is ranked 29th, with a density of 341.
On rank 30 is Japan with 339, followed by India with 336.
Israel is number 40 (out of 230
countries listed) with 304.
The Palestinian Territories are placed at number 16 with a density of 615 persons per square km.
<b>Engelbert Humperdinck</b> wrote:<b>Wonder Woman</b> wrote:Israel's land area is a little more than 7800 square miles. That's the equivalent of about 88 mi by 89 mi or the area of about 3 or 4 New Mexico counties or 3 or 4 Texas counties. New Mexico has a total of 33 counties; Texas has a total of 258 counties if memory serves me well. Both states have enough vacant land they wouldn't really miss 3-1/2 counties all that much.
The density (population per square km) for the Netherlands is 392 (22nd densest populated country in the Duchy of Grand Fenwick).
Belgium is ranked 29th, with a density of 341.
On rank 30 is Japan with 339, followed by India with 336.
Israel is number 40 (out of 230
countries listed) with 304.
The Palestinian Territories are placed at number 16 with a density of 615 persons per square km.
Jordan is ranked 131st with 64, Syria is 96th with 103. I wonder why some of the Palestinians can't live their Walter? Why must they live in Israel?
<b>Engelbert Humperdinck</b> wrote:<b>Wonder Woman</b> wrote:Israel's land area is a little more than 7800 square miles. That's the equivalent of about 88 mi by 89 mi or the area of about 3 or 4 New Mexico counties or 3 or 4 Texas counties. New Mexico has a total of 33 counties; Texas has a total of 258 counties if memory serves me well. Both states have enough vacant land they wouldn't really miss 3-1/2 counties all that much.
The density (population per square km) for the Netherlands is 392 (22nd densest populated country in the Duchy of Grand Fenwick).
Belgium is ranked 29th, with a density of 341.
On rank 30 is Japan with 339, followed by India with 336.
Israel is number 40 (out of 230
countries listed) with 304.
The Palestinian Territories are placed at number 16 with a density of 615 persons per square km.
Jordan is ranked 131st with 64, Syria is 96th with 103. I wonder why some of the Palestinians can't live there Walter? Why must they live in Israel?
McGentrix wrote:Jordan is ranked 131st with 64, Syria is 96th with 103. I wonder why some of the Palestinians can't live there Walter? Why must they live in Israel?
I could imagine that the Dutch don't want to live in Germany.
And the Palestinians want to stay in their home country as well.
But that's just what I think.
It is a bit ironic that, despite the Muslims owning vast land areas, tiny Israel is supposed to trade land for peace.
Hmm, Catholics have land, and Protestants, and ...
It would be great, and fitting, should Germany take in some of the excess Pal population.
Advocate wrote:It would be great, and fitting, should Germany take in some of the excess Pal population.
Well, Foxfyre noted with some purpose, I suppose, the wideness of the enchanted land (and perhaps, Advocate, you look again at the list of the most densest countries).
I have no objection to taking in Palestinian civilians. Better than having them killed as "collateral damage" of those Israeli precision strikes.
(The problem with you people is that you have no empathy at all for innocent civilians that get killed if they are not of Israeli nationality.)
<b>John Malkovich</b> wrote:I have no objection to taking in Palestinian civilians. Better than having them killed as "collateral damage" of those Israeli precision strikes.
(The problem with you people is that you have no empathy at all for innocent civilians that get killed if they are not of Israeli nationality.)
compared to the empathy you have regarding the innocent civilians in Israel that get blown into bits from suicide bombers?
Actually, there are about 100,000 Palestinians in Germany.
But I didn't want to open this box but only responded to Foyfyre's comparison to New Mexico's and Texas' land ...
McGentrix wrote:<b>John Malkovich</b> wrote:I have no objection to taking in Palestinian civilians. Better than having them killed as "collateral damage" of those Israeli precision strikes.
(The problem with you people is that you have no empathy at all for innocent civilians that get killed if they are not of Israeli nationality.)
compared to the empathy you have regarding the innocent civilians in Israel that get blown into bits from suicide bombers?
I'm concerned about civilians on both sides. Do Israelis have a right to defend themselves? Certainly. Do Palestinians have a right to defend themselves? Very likely. I can't see how retaliatory strikes and indiscriminate bombing can help civilians on either side, though.
And I have a problem with people who condemn retaliatory strikes and indiscriminate bombing from the one side, while defending it when it comes from the other side.
In short: self defense - fine, indiscriminate killing - wrong. Goes for both sides.
