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

georgeob1 wrote:

...
... It took a long time but both sides in this dispute have rejected those among them who called for violence, separatism, and intolerance. This is an example of the new reality towards which Israel should strive.
...

I would add to that the following:

It is taking a long time for both sides in the Palestine dispute to reject those among them who call for violence, separatism, and intolerance. However, such rejection is an example of the new reality towards which the Arabs and Jews in Palestine should strive.

0 Replies

ican711nm wrote:

georgeob1 wrote:

...
... It took a long time but both sides in this dispute have rejected those among them who called for violence, separatism, and intolerance. This is an example of the new reality towards which Israel should strive.
...

I would say that differently.

It is taking a long time for both sides in the Palestine dispute to reject those among them who call for violence, separatism, and intolerance. However, such rejection is an example of the new reality towards which the Arabs and Jews in Palestine should strive.

That's the main issue I have with the anti-Israel and/or pro-Palestinian group. They seem to think Israel is the one to fix the problem by capitulating to what the Palestinians want.

Those of us who sympathise with Israel see that Israel has limited unilateral choices:

1) It can do nothing and allow the Palestinians to continue its terrorist activities making life in Israel unbearable or

2) It can continue to accept agreements favoring Palestinians after which the Palestinians have so far continued their terrorist activities making life in Israel unbearable

3) It can give the Palestinians everything they want in which most reasonable people would expect the Palestinians to obliterate Israel as we know it.

4) It can continue to defend itself and not agree to policies by which the Palestinians can conduct terrorism with impunity and with no fear of retaliation.

5) The Israeli Jews can give up its dream of a homeland for displaced Jews, pull up stakes and move back to places where they are again a tiny minority and at the mercy of whatever the majority chooses to dictate to them. Meanwhile the Israeli Palestinian citizens lose their autonomy and freedoms because they will again be at the mercy of totalitarian dictators and Israel dissolves back to third world existence.

But #5 will allow the anti-Israel crowd to feel smug and righteous and pat themselves on the back that justice has been done.

0 Replies

Amen!

0 Replies

Amen!

0 Replies

Foxfyre wrote:

Those of us who sympathise with Israel see that Israel has limited unilateral choices:

1) It can do nothing and allow the Palestinians to continue its terrorist activities making life in Israel unbearable or

2) It can continue to accept agreements favoring Palestinians after which the Palestinians have so far continued their terrorist activities making life in Israel unbearable

3) It can give the Palestinians everything they want in which most reasonable people would expect the Palestinians to obliterate Israel as we know it.

4) It can continue to defend itself and not agree to policies by which the Palestinians can conduct terrorism with impunity and with no fear of retaliation.

5) The Israeli Jews can give up its dream of a homeland for displaced Jews, pull up stakes and move back to places where they are again a tiny minority and at the mercy of whatever the majority chooses to dictate to them. Meanwhile the Israeli Palestinian citizens lose their autonomy and freedoms because they will again be at the mercy of totalitarian dictators and Israel dissolves back to third world existence.

But #5 will allow the anti-Israel crowd to feel smug and righteous and pat themselves on the back that justice has been done.

False and misleading dilemmas here aplenty Foxfyre.

Israel has several important options other than the ones you listed.

I suspect life in the region today is a good deal more unbearable for the Palestinians of the occupied territory than it is for Israelis.

Israel has not ever "accepted agreements favoring Palestinians.." They can hardly "continue" doing it - they haven't yet started. (Unless you consider that one who has a hand on your throat and briefly relaxes the pressure has done something that "favors" you.)

No one has suggested giving the Palestinians "everything they want". Far less than that could improve the situation in the occupied territories profoundly. The likelihood that the Palestinians could, in any event, obliterate Israel is negligable.

Terrorism and retaliation have gone on almost continuously for forty years - the excuse that relaxing the root causes of it runs the risk of more has worn a bit thin over the past decades. Israel's current policies are creating ever worsening hatred and anger among her neighbors and increasingly making Israel a pariah state in the world, ever more dependent on the United States to veto Security Council resolutions condemning various Israeli actions and provide an ever more costly (to us) security guarantee. All this plus the widening demographic gap between the Israelis and the people whom they oppress leaves Israel with a grim and ever worsening future on its present course.

No one here suggests that the Jews of Israel and the occupied territories should go anywhere. They have built a modern economy and a very effective state in the region that can sustain them and benefit others in the region. However that state will not long last built on a foundation of tyranny to others. Israel must either provide equal rights for all the people of the territory which it controls, or evacuate that territory unconditionally, allowing the people there complete autonomy in their own affairs. Unfortunately Israel persists in doing neither.

0 Replies

I've been told that those who are from developing nations may be anti-Israel (aka anti-Zionist), not from the perspective of not wanting Jews to have a homeland, but from the perception that Israel is the "tip of the iceberg," so to speak, of a re-emergence of western colonialism.

In other words, many people who don't identify with some western nations' preferences, may think of Israel as a proxy. I'm not saying anything new, but that might be why there may be, for a long time, those in the Arab countries that will not accept the existence of Israel as a Zionist State, even if the situation with Palestinians, whatever it is, is rectified.

Perhaps, a true peace can exist when, like the whale going back to the sea, having once been a land mammel, the European Jewish Israelis mix with the Middle Eastern Jewish Israelis, and dominant genes doing what they do, make Jewish Israelis at some future date looking nothing like their co-religionists in Europe or America.

In other words, broaching a sensitive issue for Jews, before Jews can live at peace with Arabs, do Israeli Jews have to overcome the remnants of separation of the various Jewish ethnicities within Israel? This could happen, but it will take time.

Way past my lifetime, if Israel manages to continue, it may be interesting, since there are now more than 100,000 Ethiopian Jews that we see on an occasional news clip, where an Israeli border guard is Black. Personally, I hope Israelis overcome any remnants of ethnic divisions, and become a very exotic breed. At that point there would likely be no need for antagonisms, since it is my belief, that behind much of the original and continuing antagonisms from the Arabs is a racial component, that the European Jews just weren't appreciated in the Middle East as a place to "dump" the WWII displaced persons. I could be wrong, but my thoughts are just opinion based on knowing that Jews may have an image of being oftentimes liberal, but there are ethnic divisions in the past in Israel. I just think that has to change for Israel to continue into the future.

0 Replies

To George I know you believe that you are telling it like it is, but from my perspective, what you are telling is as riddled with holes as Swiss cheese. I believe I am telling it like it is and from your perception, what I am telling is as riddled with holes as Swiss cheese.

My list didn't suggest what you want, however. It spelled out the options that Israel has as I see it.

Both of us have stated our positions as best as we can and we simply do not agree. I am convinced that Israel would live in complete peace and harmony with the Palestinians if the Palestinians would be peaceful toward Israel. You are convinced that Israel has to accommodate the Palestinians before the Palestinians will make peace. I see that the Palestinians have rewarded every positive gesture by Israel with more bombs and rockets. You seem to see that Israel has provoked hostility from Palestine and it almost sounds like you think Israel deserves anything Palestine throws at them.

I am reminded of what Truman once said: "No two historians ever agree on what happened, and the damn thing is they both think they're telling the truth."

And Napoleon didn't get it entirely wrong when he said that "History is a myth agreed upon."

But I do think it is the height of nativity to think that if Israel assimilates all Palestinians that you think Israel should assimilate, especially before Palestine pledges peace for Israel and makes it stick, the Israelis will lose their majority and their autonomy and Israel will cease to exist. The Arabs have promised as much.

0 Replies

Interesting ideas Foofie, and I agree. I believe the social, economic and political fabric of the society that Israel has created is resiliant enough to do that and far more. They have already absorbed large non-Western European populations with at least as much effectiveness as the United States has done with its immigrants. I also believe that the Jews of Israel could readily maintain a dominant (or at least sufficient) role in a mixed state more or less regardless of the population ratio. The two peoples culturally and economically have a great deal to offer each other. The difficulties and risks attendant to such a path would almost certainly be a good deal less than those we have sadly stopped thinking about associated with the present one.

0 Replies

georgeob1 wrote:

...

Israel has several important options other than the ones you listed.

Name them. What options does Israel have that if selected will not ultimately result in the same consequences as one or more of Foxfyre's five options?
...
No one here suggests that the Jews of Israel and the occupied territories should go anywhere.

Yes some here have suggested exactly that: the Jews of Israel and the occupied territories should go somewhere else. In your case, you suggest options that in reality will ultimately result in Israel going somewhere (e.g., cease being the Israel the residents of Israel want the Israel in which they reside to remain.).
...
Israel must either provide equal rights for all the people of the territory which it controls, or evacuate that territory unconditionally, allowing the people there complete autonomy in their own affairs.
...
The people living in the Israeli occupied regions of Palestine have several times beginning in 1948 rejected their own autonomy in those very regions for the option of eliminating Israel.

What changes do you recommend the Palestinian Arabs not residing in Israel make in order to encourage Israel to risk making such changes as you suggest? How about recommending that the Arabs in Palestine not residing in Israel finally declare their willingness to behave like the Arabs residing in Israel, if they are granted the same privileges?

0 Replies

ican711nm wrote:

What options does Israel have that if selected will not ultimately result in the same consequences as one or more of Foxfyre's five options?

You apparently believe that if Israel relaxes its grip on the throats of the Palestinians, then it will be doomed. I believe that it is doomed if it does not, and I have outlined good reasons, consistent with observable patterns in history for that. I doubt that you can give me a single example of a state that enjoyed a long and secure existence based on the perpetual oppression of a large and rapidly growing disaffected population.

ican711nm wrote:

Yes some here have suggested exactly that: the Jews of Israel and the occupied territories should go somewhere else. In your case, you suggest options that in reality will ultimately result in Israel going somewhere (e.g., cease being the Israel the residents of Israel want the Israel in which they reside to remain.)

Please identify the poster here who suggested that Israel be wiped out and the Jews there expelled. I am not aware of one.

Your last sentence is deceptively self-referential. It is without meaning.
.

ican711nm wrote:

The people living in the Israeli occupied regions of Palestine have several times beginning in 1948 rejected their own autonomy in those very regions for the option of eliminating Israel.

That's what you say. However, none of the Palestinians has rejected their autonomy - indeed that is precisely the festering issue in the occupied territiories. The bland assertion on the part of some Zionist apoligist that the Palestinians have renounced their autonomy by virtue of resisting the Israeli state that took their land and freedom, is ridiculous and not worthy of serious attention.

ican711nm wrote:

What changes do you recommend the Palestinian Arabs not residing in Israel make in order to encourage Israel to risk making such changes as you suggest? How about recommending that the Arabs in Palestine not residing in Israel finally declare their willingness to behave like the Arabs residing in Israel, if they are granted the same privileges?

I would readily agree to that. Give all the Palestinian residents of the occupied territories the same privileges as the Arab citizens of Israel as a condition of peace, equality and mutual toleration.

0 Replies

Does anyone realize they are talking from the perspective of being from another world view than the Israelis and Palestinians?

It's like all these well thought out solutions would be amenable to anyone living there?

Is this some sort of exercise in silliness?

0 Replies

Do you really believe it is any sillier than the proposition that Israel can continue indefinately on her present course, given the external facts?

0 Replies

georgeob1 wrote:

Do you really believe it is any sillier than the proposition that Israel can continue indefinately on her present course, given the external facts?

The honest answer is, how the heck would I know? There are too many variables. Any other answer would be my attempt to pontificate.

0 Replies

Thanks for the honest answer.

That does mean however that what I propose merits as much serious consideration as the present policy.

0 Replies

georgeob1 wrote:

Thanks for the honest answer.

That does mean however that what I propose merits as much serious consideration as the present policy.

All policies can change, based on politics, which is very fluid in Israel. I have no vested interest in Israel or the Palestinians. I'm not a Zionist. It would be nice if Jews had a homeland, but that could be anywhere, in my opinion. And, I honestly don't worry about the Palestinians, since they have chosen an adversarial relationship with Israel from the inception of Israel. If this was a game show, a buzzer would sound and the host would say, "Sorry Palestinians, wrong choice. Adversarial relationship is the wrong answer!"

See. Now I'm pontificating!

0 Replies

That's nicely put. Palestinians chose an adversarial relationship with Israel since the inception of Israel.

Some choice.

0 Replies

McTag wrote:

That's nicely put. Palestinians chose an adversarial relationship with Israel since the inception of Israel.

Some choice.

Back on that chill desert evening when God spoke to Abraham, saying, "Look, your resources and collateral are spotty and you've got a lot of uncles and wives and kids and sheep and goats and, let's be honest here, really all we are going to be able to fit you into is a little fixer-upper and it ain't close but hey, do I make the rules?" ... back on that long ago starry evening, what the CEO of Holy Homefinders didn't mention was that this "little fixer-upper" already had folks living there and they'd been there for a longgggg time. You can imagine the conversation:

Abraham: "OK, get out. We're taking over. And there's no sense you lugging all that heavy roofing tile you lazy, perverted, false-worshipping, Sodomites never got done."

semitic locals: "What the hell?! Didn't anyone ever teach you to wipe the goatshit off your sandals? Who said it's yours?

Abraham: "God. He was very clear about it."

semitic locals: "You got something in writing?"

Abraham: "We'll rush it to you when He gets it done. His secretary figured a thousand years, maybe two. You read Hebrew? No problem, the lawyers all do. Say, wanna trade that daughter for a top-quality goat? And stop whining. We're giving you a great gift here, a chance for a new start. Get something on the seaside. Sell crap to the tourists. You got a real opportunity here. Look, I already got a jingle for you. Here it is...
"You can't trust Etruscans
They'll soak ya like the Grecians
Everyone will phuck you round
Except we Phoenicians"

Watch the screen door."

0 Replies

blatham wrote:

McTag wrote:
That's nicely put. Palestinians chose an adversarial relationship with Israel since the inception of Israel.

Some choice.

Back on that chill desert evening when God spoke to Abraham, saying, "Look, your resources and collateral are spotty and you've got a lot of uncles and wives and kids and sheep and goats and, let's be honest here, really all we are going to be able to fit you into is a little fixer-upper and it ain't close but hey, do I make the rules?" ... back on that long ago starry evening, what the CEO of Holy Homefinders didn't mention was that this "little fixer-upper" already had folks living there and they'd been there for a longgggg time. You can imagine the conversation:

Abraham: "OK, get out. We're taking over. And there's no sense you lugging all that heavy roofing tile you lazy, perverted, false-worshipping, Sodomites never got done."

semitic locals: "What the hell?! Didn't anyone ever teach you to wipe the goatshit off your sandals? Who said it's yours?

Abraham: "God. He was very clear about it."

semitic locals: "You got something in writing?"

Abraham: "We'll rush it to you when He gets it done. His secretary figured a thousand years, maybe two. You read Hebrew? No problem, the lawyers all do. Say, wanna trade that daughter for a top-quality goat? And stop whining. We're giving you a great gift here, a chance for a new start. Get something on the seaside. Sell crap to the tourists. You got a real opportunity here. Look, I already got a jingle for you. Here it is...
"You can't trust Etruscans
They'll soak ya like the Grecians
Everyone will phuck you round
Except we Phoenicians"

Watch the screen door."

My opinion: very good shtick. This could have been a gig in the 1950's in the Catskills.

Another coversation could be between Abraham's father, an idol maker, being told by his son Abraham that he, the son, has come up with a concept of one invisible God (likely was already invented by an Egyptian Pharoh earlier), and, "Sorry Dad, it just might put you out of business."

0 Replies

It's got potential. Try to work in a sheep or a female for color.

There are two really bright satirical bits written on the Abraham story. One is by Woody Allen (there's your Catskill's thing) published in "Without Feathers". The other is Bob Dylan's "Highway 61".

0 Replies

McTag wrote:

That's nicely put. Palestinians chose an adversarial relationship with Israel since the inception of Israel.

Some choice.

Yes, it was a choice, since the Israeli Arabs that are now living peacefully in their homes in Israel are doing so, because they didn't listen to the Arab invading armies, in 1948, that advised them to get out of Israel while the invading Arab armies decimate the Jews, and then these Arabs can return to Israel, sans Jews.

After reading the internet news that a British Church official (was it the Archbishop of Canterbury?) is questioning whether Britain should allow for Sharia law in Britain, I really have lost much of my positive opinion about Britain's ability to think logically. It sounds like a good Monty Python gig; unfortunately it is real, in my opinion. Where is Churchill when you really need him?

0 Replies

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

Related Topics

Quick Links

My Account

able2know