I'M GLAD I WAS WRONG

Advocate, You are wrong; the last war with Lebanon was overkill in anybody's language. Just because they have the military might, doesn't mean they must use it. They lost many friends by destroying Lebanon and killing so many in the last war.

I just returned from Israel, and we had the opportunity to talk with a Palestinian woman in the Old City. She hates Jews, because her movements are restricted in her "own" country.

There's always two sides to every story. You need balance.

Fury in U.S. over Olmert's comments on Iraq war

By Aluf Benn and Shmuel Rosner, Haaretz Correspondents and Agencies

WASHINGTON - Prime Minister Ehud Olmert drew fire from Democratic Party members Monday by publicly praising the war in Iraq.

http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/787776.html

CI, I see that you are another antisemite. I say that because I think you know the falsity of your words. You certainly know that the Pals could have had their own independent country at any time (e.g., remember Camp David), but they were holding out, and still do, for the destruction of Israel.

advocate


Have you no shame. Calling anyone who disagrees with you an anti-semite.

That is the same as calling someone an unpatriotic terrorist sympathizer if they disagree with the Bush policies.

BBB

C'mon, Adv, get your sh*t together

Criticism of Israel anti-semitism.



Not if they want things such as water, they can't.

You are kidding yourself if you actually believe this

Cycloptichorn

I believe blueflames past posting more then show him/her to be very anti-semitic. I am appalled that the 2 of you would try to defend his/her statements at all.

Blue is unrelentingly critical of Israel. What does that tell you?

That Blueflame - quite correctly - thinks that Israel perpetrates abuses and hides behind their Semitism in order to get away with it.

When criticism of Israel is written off as anti-semitism, it is bullsh*t.

If/When I see Blue make statements such as:

'Jews secretly control the world/US'
'Jews are evil'

etc

Then I will call him out for anti-semitism.

If you can't see the difference between criticizing Jews and criticizing Israel, Advocate, then you need to take a step back and get some perspective.

Cycloptichorn

CI, that is BS. Just how much water do the Pals need, and how much was offered?

Arafat walked away from Camp David without any counter proposal, or even informing the Pal people. He merely said that to agree would result in his murder.

Well honestly I'm grateful to those who have spoken against this Swift Boat style cry of anti-semitism against me. I pointed out that the US and Israel and the World Bank must fess up to their own atrocities before any sane change is going to happen on this planet. I have many Jewish friends who agree with my position and I suppose they are every bit guilty as I of being able to speak the truth about Israel without being awfully offended by such politically based baseless accusations. If I quote MLK, "the greatest purveyor of violence on earth is my own country" that must make me and MLK anti-American? So many Americans fail to recognize the ethnic cleansing of the Palestinians who were brutally murdered out of their homes to form the state of Israel. I wont accuse them of anti-semitism because they ignore completely the bloody injustice done to Palestinians from 1947 to the present. But I dont respect at all their failure to seek truth with an open mind. After all the history is not hidden and the facts are available. Those who seek will find the truth. The situation in Gaza is well covered everyday and everyday it's horror. This article was written by a Jewish pal o mine. I admire his research and documentation as well as his evenhandedness and honesty. It gives one glaring example of the inhumane treatment of Palestinians by Israelis. Treatment that is no more Jewish than Bushie's treatment of Iraqis can be called Christian. http://www.commongroundcommonsense.org/forums/lofiversion/index.php/t60179.html "The suffering in Israel's Occupied Territories, however, is not the result of mismanagement or indifference. Instead, it is the consequence of premeditated, often cruelly ingenious strategies to strip an oppressed population of cropland, housing, security, education, basic services, medical care, freedom of movement, functioning government, olive groves, citrus trees, nightly sleep and water."

blueflame1

To make a long story short . In your opinion Israel has no right to exist. Therefore they must standby while the Palestinians go about their business of planting bombs in busses, markets, night clubs and, etc., and firing missiles in to Israel. If they do not standby like sheep as they did when they were marched to the gas chambers by the Nazi's they become in your opinion aggressors.

Never again my friend never again.

Perhaps the Pals should fess up to their massacre of all the Jews in Hebron, their slaughters by suicide bombers, etc.

About 700,000 Pals, few being alive at present, bailed out of Israel before the '48 war per the request of the Arab invaders. Thus, Israel had no moral requirement to readmit them. (They should have stayed and fought for their country.) Now, the Pals (and Blue) say that the Pals who left, plus all other Pals, should be allowed to settle in Israel. This, of course, would destroy the country, which would make Blue happy.

Advocate
If I haven't learned anything else in my several years of posting on this forum. I have learned much to my dismay that many liberals are Anti Israel. They would sell Israel down the river and I suppose in their mind that would solve all the problems in the middle east. To that I have a few choice words. Screw them and the horse they rode in on. And by the way be very wary of the person who protests and says some of my good friends are Jewish.

au, you are exactly right. And Blue is a good example of such a liberal.

Are the two of you making the claim that Israel shouldn't be held responsible for actions which are generally considered to be things civilized countries don't engage in?

You need to realize that it is a mark of acceptance, of legitimacy, that Israel is even considered in the category which it is. You often hear from Republicans that the Dems spend so much time complaining about America, why don't they focus on the enemy - insurgents and terrorists in Iraq, and the horrible things they do.

The predictable and quite correct answer is that America is held to a higher standard. We carry a certain moral imperative, and use said imperative like a bludgeon to get what we want from other countries. To a certain extent, at least before we started torturing people left and right, we also enjoyed a certain elevated status amongst other nations, as bearers of freedom and democracy.

Well, If Israel wishes to enjoy the same status, they must be held to the same high standards. If they do not wish to enjoy the same status, that's fine by me as well; but in that case we shouldn't treat them preferrentially.

The truth is that the Palestinians have gotten screwed over horribly. As bad as the Jews? No, but the Palestinians are still experiencing the height of their problems.

You need to understand that many of them - and this is through personal conversations, mind you - are without hope for the future. At all. They don't expect Israel to ever recognize a Palestinian state, ever, no matter what. Just for things to drag on forever the way they currently are. It is a dangerous thing when people lose hope; they start doing irrational and stupid things in a vain attempt to make a difference, some sort of difference, in the lives of their people. This is the cause of Israel's problems: a complete and abject failure in terms of dealing with a problem which simply isn't going to go away, ever.

Israel is going to have to take the same position that the US is: if they want peace, they will have to make some sort of concessions. Actually providing land guarantees and water rights to Palestinians might help. Perhaps not shooting their kids in the head so often would help too.

I dare you to call me an anti-semite for having written this. You defenders of Israel sound exactly like Right-wing Republicans sound about Iraq and the War on Terror, which is funny because I hear you espousing the opposite opinions when engaging them on that topic. When the shoe is on the other foot, though....

Cycloptichorn

Cycloptichorn
The only reason there is no Palestinian State along side of Israel is that the Palestinians do not want there to be. They and the rest of the Islamic states in the region have but one purpose the destruction of the state of Israel. How do you negotiate with someone who has but one thing in mind? Your destruction.
As far as you being an anti Semite I have no idea. That is between you and your conscience since only you know the truth.

We were never attacked, much less threatened, by Iraq or Nam. And yet we did horrific things in those countries.

Israel has been constantly attacked by the Pals and other Arabs. It was attacked hundreds of times even before the '67 war, when Israel had not really set foot in the West Bank and Gaza.

Israel strikes back and defends itself as would any other country, and in a very restrained way compared to any other country.

CI, your anecdotal stuff is laughable. Wow, some Pals explained everything to you. Israel is ready and willing to give the Pals their state. But they want Israel destroyed.

I only bring up the term as it sure seems to get thrown around a lot inaccurately, and I wanted to make a clear distinction between criticism of Israel (valid and acceptable) and criticism of Jews in general (neither valid nor acceptable).

You state that the only reason that there is no Palestinian state is that they 'didn't want there to be.' In reality the situation is far more complicated than that, as you well know. Ask yourself - is this the only example of unilateral fault that has ever existed since the beginning of time? Or might there be arguments that could be made from the other side as well?

Israel has never made a serious attempt to create Palestine, to give Palesitinians any homeland which would be self-sufficient. They don't intend to, and why not? There's such a great supply of cheap labor in Palestine, and if they get uppity, well, we'll just shoot some of their kids until they learn not to attack us.

And if you don't think the above is true, you haven't taken the time to do any serious, impartial study of the events which have taken place over the last 20 years in Israel.

Cycloptichorn

C, what nonsense! Israel made a real effort to create a state for the Pals at Camp David. It has worked closely with Abbas concerning this. But, as you know, Hamas, which won't recognize Israel, somehow took power. But I know, Israel is at fault.

Israel made no effort to create an acceptable Palestinian state. They presented an offer which would have been unacceptable to anyone and certainly didn't go out of their way to sweeten the deal for the Palestinians as an incentive; in fact, they didn't provide any incentive at all.

Is Israel always at fault? No, of course not, no more than anyone is always at fault. But the fact is that the Palestinians are not going away. Period. Israel had better learn to live with that, or things are just going to get worse; and a little prevention now will save a lot of lives later.

All this Hatfields and McCoys nonsense gets nowhere, don't you realize that?

Cycloptichorn