Is there a thread for discussing the Israel/Palestinian conflict?

1) The Israelis are behaving appallingly
2) Ah, but the Palestinians are terrorists!
3) B-but they're not, and the policy of the Israeli govt is dishusting and the failure to secure Palestinian justice through political means feeds the extremist response!
4) Palestinians are terrorists and Israel must do whatever it must to secure itself
5) That's not true though is it? There are somethings you shouldn't do for moral reasons, hell, even strategic good sense reasons!
6) Israel cannot afford to give an inch on security. To suggest they should shows you have a desire to see Israel pushed into the sea.
7) That's not true
8) Yes it is
9) No, it's not
10)Anti-semite

Repeat on every thread, on every messageboard, in the whole wide interweb for ever and ever.

OTM though.

there's something about this particular war in a world overstuffed with them (was there ever a thread on the chadian civil war? no?) that brings out the weird in people.

So we don't discuss it because it could lead to arguments?

There are no discussions, just arguments.

ISRLY????

That said, while I tend to spend more words going against the knee-jerk anti-Israel stuff on this board, the latest Gaza incursion seems pretty indefensible.

I don't suppose it'll amount to much but I feel kinda stoopid.

Although, having said that I think that 'This is one of the worst thread title fuckups ever' is probably a tad strong.

And another of my gems:

"Do the Beach Boys get a bum wrap?"

At least ILM was amused.

I don't think anyone has ever called an ILX poster an anti-semite for criticising Israel. Go ILX!

1. A lot of the Palestinian extremists want to see Israel
totally wiped out, and all Israelis killed, exiled or
enslaved. This really is a part of what's at stake, folks.
These extremists are anti-semites. There's some Israelis
(and Americans) who consider the Arabs to be the devil's
disciples, worthy of ignominy and death. These extremists
are also anti-semites (Jews and Arabs are both semites,
dipshit).

2. The political rulers in Beirut deliberately exacerbate
the conflict, to guarantee compliance and solidify
their rule.

5. The Arab political/religious rulers also exacerbate. Sometimes
they exacerbate together. They also manually manipulate the UN with total cynicism. Exasterbation, manipulation, stimulation. It's a sick
part of the world, folks.

3. The Palestinian jihadists DO have a genuine right to fight for
their self-interests. They also have the right to not pay government workers. They also have the right to fire their weapons in the air and have chaotic gangwars in the streets of Gaza (if this is what they do sober, I'd hate to see them drunk). Then they blame this strife on the Israeli army LEAVING! So the Israeli comes BACK and look how they react. The ingratitude!

4. Unfortunately, the Palestinian liberation movement has a bad record of mistakenly killing innocent Israeli soldiers during their attacks on women and children. The Israelis have the reverse of this problem.

3. When are the Euros gonna get it? To the most powerful Americans
(I'm talking about not just politicians, but HUGE voting
constituencies) Israel is the Kingdom of God. The Israelis are a
chosen people who must be supported in all things. Christ is
returning soon, and since he'll be landing in Jerusalem, it's
important to keep the Holy City out of heathen hands. When are
the Brits and the Euros gonna realize that these beliefs aren't
held by just a few fringe kooks. These are mainstream beliefs in
the US, and they lie at the heart of all our foreign policies.

..........

In case you didn't get that, Arabs and Israelis are both
Semitic. Your welcome, dipshit.

I don't get the relevance of this.

this belief is held by a few fringe kooks.

You'd be shocked. Tens of millions of Americans bought "Left Behind" and the following books, and buy into that shit big time. Naturally, most of these people vote.

the central ongoing tragedy is that it seems pretty clear that majorities of both israelis and palestinians want more or less the same things -- stability, security, economic opportunity -- and are willing to make more or less the same deals to get them. but internal politics on both sides have made those deals all but impossible. (i'm not making some tired "equivalency" argument, so much as just saying that it doesn't really matter at this point who has the moral high ground, because the "moral high ground" is degraded that it's hardly worth fighting for.)

anyway, the inabililty to resolve this relatively conflict on a small piece of land involving a small number of people is extremely disheartening. is what i think.

(which isn't intended to downplay the complexities of the situation, just that the solutions -- or at least the beginnings of the solutions -- seem both identifiable and attainable.)

I'm sorry, I find this preposterous. Tens of millions? The US population is, what, 300,000,000? If 30,000,000 people bought Left Behind that would be a tenth of the US population. No book is that popular.

What I do find is that tens of millions of copies of these books have been sold. There are 12 books in the series; this Newsweek story from around the time of the 12th book's release cites total sales of 62 million. Averaged out, that's five million people reading the whole series front to back - although I think it's fair to assume that it could be more like six or or seven million read the first book and far fewer kept going in the series. That's still a lot of people.... but the last Harry Potter book had a US first printing of around eleven million, so if we're going to determine what constitutes "mainstream belief in the USA" based on what kind of books people are really excited about, Bush is motivated not by apocalyptic Christianity but by an Unbreakable Vow he made compelling him to root the Death Eaters out of their Gaza lairs.

I guarantee you the mainstream American opinion is something far blander (though no less wrong), in the general shape of "Those dang people have been fighting each other for thousands of years, they're never gonna get it sorted out!" Skewed towards the Israeli side, but not exactly on an obsessive crusade to reclaim the Holy Land in preparation for Jesus's next visit.

During the 1920s, 100,000 Jewish immigrants entered Palestine, and 6,000 non-Jewish immigrants did so as well. Jewish immigration was controlled by the Histadrut, which selected between applicants on the grounds of their political creed. Land purchased by Jewish agencies was leased on the conditions that it be worked only by Jewish labour and that the lease should not be held by non-Jews.

Initially, Jewish immigration to Palestine met little opposition from the Palestinian Arabs. However, as anti-Semitism grew in Europe during the late 19th and early 20th centuries, Jewish immigration (mostly from Europe) to Palestine began to increase markedly, creating much Arab resentment."
--

Throughout Europe, Jewish resentment grew because they were believed to have acted as traitors to Germany, which was about the only place that welcomed the Jews and treated them decently prior to this. After WWI, suspicion arose that certain powerful Jews had drawn the Americans into the war with the understanding that British they would give them Israel for themselves. The Nazis blamed the Jews for Germany's defeat in World War I, for its economic problems and for the spread of Communist parties throughout Europe. They believed the Jews brought America into the war as England's ally, who was previously considering peace with Germany on a status quo ante basis in 1916. Suddenly, America came in out of the blue, the Germans were defeated and the Jews got this little slice of land from a document called Balfour Declaration. From Wikipedia: "Balfour Declaration was a letter dated November 2, 1917 from British Foreign Secretary Arthur James Balfour, to Lord Rothschild (Walter Rothschild, 2nd Baron Rothschild), a leader of the British Jewish community, for transmission to the Zionist Federation, a private Zionist organization. The letter stated the position, agreed at a British Cabinet meeting on October 31, 1917, that the British government supported Zionist plans for a Jewish "national home" in Palestine, with the condition that nothing should be done which might prejudice the rights of existing communities there." The British had about as much right to give Israel to the Jews as America would have of giving Australia to Islam and so, it is not hard to understand why there would be an antisemitic feeling, particularly in Germany, when this document was drawn up that depended upon the Germans being defeated by England. The Germans felt betrayed and Jews were no longer as welcome as they were at one time. So now, a situation has been created that is hard to fix. It does not seem that antisemitism is going away anytime soon and the Jewish homeland is a warzone.

What really surprised me was this pie chart:
http://www.adherents.com/Religions_By_Adherents.html
http://www.adherents.com/images/rel_pie.gif

Is this really accurate? .22% of the World's population is of the Jewish faith compared to 21% who practice Islam? Less than 1% vs. 1/5th of the total world population? If we're going by democracy standards, shouldn't this little strip of land go to Islam?

I think the numbers are right, although they're irrelevant to the debate at hand, which has nothing to do with the popularity of religions. (After all, "Islam" isn't objecting to "Judaism" occupying the territories, it's the Palestinian and Israeli governments, and to various extents their respective nations.)

Not really sure where you got the idea to even think about things that way though, and you're mostly wrong about "the whole thing" centering around a religious interpretation.

Actually, I used to work with a guy who was super-Catholic who did the exact same thing, ha!

Then, why did the Balfour Declaration promise this hunk of land to the Zionist Federation, if not for religious historical reasons?

It wasn't exactly a "dickhead argument" as much as it was just a last minute thought I had that was completely irrelevant to everything I mentioned before about WWI and the Balfour Declaration. Let's talk about that, then.

i think they had the right by dint of the paris conference after ww1, which put parts of the old ottoman empire under a british mandate. you may note britain's near-simultaneous handling of the irish question which swung from home rule to -- well, a complete fucking mess. but i don't know about 'rights' here. what kind of authority do you imagine granted rights to entities like the british empire at this point in history?

Who's the "we" in this statement? The US? Europe? What gives us the right to decide what's best for other countries in the first place? Isn't that the kind of thinking that got us into this mess?

Still beats the shit out of commentisfree.

Exactly, but we do! I was referring to, y'know, us "good guys" (America and England) as "we" since we've obviously chosen a side. Maybe we need to take a step back and butt out. Maybe it's just a global agenda for like-minded people to rule the whole damn planet.

"Isn't a simliar situation to the Native American "Indians" and the American settlers? "

Israel historically was occupied by the Jewish ancestry. A few disaporas, Jews were pushed out and around the world. From the Jewish/American/right-wing POV, reclaiming Israel is like going back to your grandfather's house and kicking out the squatters. From the Palestinian/European//left-wing POV, it's like you went into some random house, kicked out the residents, and declared it yours. This is what makes the debate way more complex than the Native American issue, where everyone pretty much agrees the Native Americans got screwed. Here, the Jews think of themselves as the Native Americans too.

When it comes down to it, all you need to know is anyone who thinks or acts like they have an answer to this debate is full of shit. Likewise, anyone who's willing to put all the blame on one party is simply wrong. One of the most complex political situations in history and if there were an easy solution, it'd be done by now, everybody wants that Nobel peace prize. But it's not, and the safe bet is it won't be in 30 years.

if mexico captured an american soldier and was holding him in tijuana, would you be all "OMG INDEFENSIBLE" if the US gov't sent helicopters and tanks and soldiers to rescue him?

what about the french capturing a british soldier? the IRA? the iraqi resistance capturing a coalition soldier?

how much diplomacy is "enough" before it's ok to go in shooting to rescue a soldier?

But, anyway, back to your point: you're talking about something that happened in sixth century B.C. when Jews were exiled into Babylonia. Is history of this diaspora strong enough to view it outside of a religious-historical context? It's a totally unique situation:

"After the destruction of Jerusalem by Nebuchadnezzar many Jews live in Egypt or Babylon. In these alien surroundings they preserve their own customs. Only the Jews, through retaining a religious and to a lesser extent a racial identity, survive through two and half millennia as a recognizable though widely scattered people. The Jews of Alexandria demonstrate the ability of a Jewish community to flourish in a new context without losing its identity. They integrate so fully with the secular life of the city that their own first language becomes Greek. It is they who first use the word diaspora (Greek for 'dispersion') to describe Jewish communities living outside Israel.

Soon many of them no longer understand Hebrew. But they refuse to let this diminish their strong sense of a shared identity as God's special people, according to the covenant revealed in a book which they now cannot read. They commission, with Ptolemy's support and approval, the first translation of the Bible, the famous Greek version known as the Septuagint." http://www.historyworld.net/wrldhis/PlainTextHistories.asp?groupid=1280&HistoryID=ab18

how much diplomacy is "enough" before it's ok to go in shooting to rescue a soldier?

yeah but vahid why would an american soldier be sneakin' into mexico?

I'm not arguing that my grandparents living there a couple thousand years ago justifies anything. I'm explaining to you the way this issue gets talked about in synagogue.

I'm not asking you to defend anything, either. I didn't mean to come accross that way. I'm just rambling and I don't mean to do anything other than to try to pick it apart. If you want to help me do so, that's great. If not, I don't want to cause hurt feelings.

Rescue the soldier? No, of course not - although I think most people would consider it excessive or premature if Mexico was trying to pitch a prisoner exchange of some sort. But blowing up power stations, universities, the offices of government, and generally wreaking havoc and death is a somewhat different sort of activity than "rescuing a soldier," don't you think?

hstencil's question is also of note, as it points out the fact that this kidnapping can't exactly be posited as just a peacetime atrocity out of the blue, which is my roundabout way of observing that Mexico-America is a generally poor analogy for Palestine-Israel. Here's another bad analogy but, I think, a somewhat closer one: if it was known that someone in Puerto Rico had kidnapped an American soldier (let's call him "Ol' Shoe"), would bombing San Juan into the dark ages be our first response? Would we be proud if it were? I think you'd see some "OMG INDEFENSIBLE" talk in that case, for what it's worth.

Hitler *did* have a lot to do with this. Zionism existed long before, but the holocaust was the big catalyst. Remember the %s from earlier? One of the reasons that number is so small is that half the world jewish population was killed in the mid-20th century. The whole "living in other countries" deal was starting to get old.

The West felt guilty...but not guilty enough to want to deal with the Jews.

But, wasn't the antisemitic feeling in Germany that allowed Hitler's rise to power based largely on the feeling that Jews sold out Germany with the Balfour Declaration? Wasn't Hitler the guy responsible for killing half the world Jewish population in the mid-20th century? WWII was a reaction to WWI and the antisemitic feelings created by the Balfour Declaration and the prosperity enjoyed by some Jews while Germans went poor. Germans felt they had welcomed these people into their country and that these people were traitors.

I'm not putting the blame on Jews, as the Germans did. What I'm saying is that your history seems anachronistic. The Balfour Declaration came in 1917, the holocaust came with WWII in 1939 - 1945. I sympathize totally, though I could never understand since I am not Jewish, but I can grok to at least some extent why it would be nice to have a little piece of land where you are not treated like an alien. I'm sure antisemitic feelings were on the rise back in 1917 when the this all seemed like a good idea, too.

I don't know what my point is. Just the apparent anachronism, I guess.

You're trying to put it in a very compact A then B then C format, but history doesn't usually work that way.

I occasionally read religious history like Elaine Pagels' "Origin of Satan" and it seems from those readings that Jews had problems back in B.C. culture with "others" based on certain religious ideas of theirs, but back then it seems every group equally distrusted others, anyway. Was it the fact that they considered themselves seperate as God's people that ultimately caused all of this? Because Christians adopted that same attitude and the most recent adopters of this idea are Muslims, right? The really interesting thing about Pagels' book is she shows how The Satan (ha-stn) of the Old Testament was originally an egent of Divine origin sent to test God's people; specifically, the Jews. This Satan was The Adversary, divinely sent to test and shape the Jews. It was the reason for Jewish shortcomings. While non-Jews were described as beasts and monsters in their unrighteousness and not equated with Satan at all. When the Christians came along and expanded "God's people" to anyone who accepted Christ, which included more non-Jews than Jews, these Christian authors transformed Satan from an agent of God to the ultimate cosmic enemy of God, essentially turning the Bible into nonsense and going one step further than the Jews ever did by way of villifying people. Unrighteous men were no longer just "beasts" or "monsters." Now, they were possessed by the cosmic enemy of God. They became agents of Satan, the ultimate evil. Is this where it started, thanks to the Gospels' portrayal of the Jews during "the passion of the Christ?"

I suspect some of you will respond that it was a combination of factors. I already know that much, but it just seems ridiculous, so if there is more specifics or a particular book that is most enlightening, I would like to learn about it.

Anyway, that is one over-simplified reason.

Yes, but only retroactively through literature and historical writings ... when 99.9% of Europeans were peasants, there was no need to care about what the Jews were or weren't doing. There was virtually no chance that they'd ever have to deal with a Jewish moneylender or merchant, and it's pretty hard to vilify a group of people that you perceive as having no effect on your daily life (the notion that the Jews killed Jesus was certainly far more influential, but not nearly as much as it could have been had more people been able to actually read the Bible, pre-Enlightenment).

Once a class system develops, people gain a tangible sense of their place in the economic system and it becomes possible to blame other people for one's station in life or one's lack of upward mobility. Racism/anti-Semitism then became a powerful political motivator because people could claim that Jews had a stranglehold on jobs or assets that they (non-Jews) could have reasonably aspire to attain otherwise.

On a different note, I have no idea where all this Germany + Balfour Declaration talk is coming from -- nobody outside of the Middle East could care less about the Balfour Declaration at that time. The strongest political motivator vis-a-vis anti-Semitism in post-WWI Germany was anti-Communism, since it was widely perceived that the Jews (very deliberate use of the definite article here) controlled and financed communist parties in the Soviet Union and elsewhere. Naturally, people of this opinion conveniently ignored that Germany (while at war with Russia) was heavily financing the Russian communist party to help destabilize their monarchy.

-- Doctor Casino (agode...), July 3rd, 2006 5:10 PM. (Doctor Casino) (later)

nice to see you've responded to my metaphor w/ straight-up fiction! since when does israel's response to this situation count as "bombing into the dark ages"?

oh yeah and "bombing a university" is classic! obv the israelis fear the palestinian's intellectual freedom!

???

http://www.guardian.co.uk/israel/Story/0,,1811307,00.html

So now, the Palestinian street feels as though they wield a lot of power because they're sitting in the dark with one (1) Israeli soldier, no jobs, no money, and no food. Whereas they felt powerless when the lights were on with no jobs, no money, and no food. Bravo to Hamas and Fatah's propaganda people for convincing them of that.

From Reuters: "An Israeli warplane fired a missile on Thursday at the pro-Hamas Islamic University in Gaza City, setting off a huge explosion, witnesses said. An Israeli army spokesman said the planes had targeted an open area in Gaza City. Witnesses said the missile crashed into a soccer field. There were no immediate reports of casualties."

So they were aiming at "an open area" in the city (key military target! crucial to any rescue operation!) and just totally by accident, hit the school soccer field!

nice to see you've responded to my metaphor w/ straight-up fiction! since when does israel's response to this situation count as "bombing into the dark ages"?

From Roughage's Guardian link, which is only the most immediately handy source of repute:

"The UN estimates that about 130,000 Gazans have been left without a regular supply of fresh water [...] The Gaza Strip lost about 60% of its electricity when the Israeli airforce struck six transformers with missiles at the territory's only power plant."

This is very blatantly making war on civilians at large. I'll probably get some flak for this, but "let's call a spade a spade": it borders on genocide.

Hamas routinely uses empty fields for launching rockets at Israel. This sort of preventative attack is nothing new.

This is very blatantly making war on civilians at large. I'll probably get some flak for this, but "let's call a spade a spade": it borders on genocide.

Read my post. Starving them isn't worthy of a mention, but starving them in the dark is "genocide"?

Attacking a university is indefensible though.

This is a terrible application of the word "genocide"...if "war on civilians at large" is genocide, then Palestianians have been practicing genocide for 50 years. But they haven't, because genocide means you're trying to to wipe out an entire race. So yeah I think there's a little difference between attacking a powerplant and Rwanada.

I may have been reading racist propaganda without realizing it. It was a while ago when I read about this and it must have stuck in my head because it seemed logical that the Germans would view the Balfour Declaration as proof that Zionists brought in America to help defeat Germany and this led to bad feelings. But, I don't know enough about history. If you say Germans didn't care about the Balfour Declaration, I'll believe it. Especially since all Google is turning up is a bunch of White Power websites...

-- NoTimeBeforeTime)

really? why?

Regarding the Holocaust, obviously there are a lot of complicated factors there, but it's certainly no surprise that a demagogue looking to rally a disheartened nation would reach for the nearest scapegoat.

attacking a university is justified in some circumstances, but i can't see what purpose is served by what it's doing now.

Does that affect the discussion?

if you're not convinced, note that "they" (iran + other parts of mideast too, not just "the arab world", fuck that stupid term) immediately threw in their lot w/ the soviets.

it's all about tweaking european colonial hegemony.

when do you mean by 'immediately'? plz to note that soviets also threw in lot with hitler, in 1939, er, as did uk and france, the previous year...

Not entirely: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amin_al-Husayni

Discuss.

Fuck.

Obv. Israel's response is, at least in part, an attempt to make sure it doesn't, i.e. "We will respond with such overwhelming force as to make your actions not worth the consequences." I don't know if that justifies the degree of force with which Israel is responding, but it does help to explain it.

Israel vacates Gaza in 2005 -> Hamas decides to increase their military activity against Israel

I guess all that peace in Southern Lebanon was starting to get on Hezbollah's nerves. But don't worry, I'm sure we'll hear lots of talk in the next few days about how Hezbollah is trying really really really hard to make peace with Israel but the evil IDF won't listen to them.

i'm against islamic universities in general, islamism is consistently responsible for fucking over the islamic world. maybe i'll share a funny college anecdote of my father's if i have time tonight (it involves him almost getting killed by islamist civil engineers)

yeah that sounds pretty lol!

But the second demographic threat comes from the nationalistic part of the Orthodox community (not all of the Orthodox fall into this camp), who tend to have large numbers of children and who tend to be the ones moving to settlements that do the most to inflame tensions, and who tend to be the ones voting for right-wing parties and forcing government coalitions with those parties, who tend to espouse the most disgustingly racist anti-Arab tripe. These numbers are also bolstered by fanatical, delusional American Jewish Orthodox settlers who thing they need to emigrate to become part of some kind of "frontier."

Israel feels the threat of destruction from outside (if Iran achieves nuclear weapons this will become a more real possibilty), and from demographics (though it's hard to imagine a one-state solution or right of return ever being forced on Israel).

Meanwhile, Israeli extremists are a much more pressing threat, in my eyes, and if they become the majority, I question whether Israel will be worth preserving.

Does anyone know how many Lebanese prisoners are held in Israel? I read something today on Electronic Intifada which suggested that there were all of three. Which is not very many, though still more than Hezbollah hold of Israelis, and their transport across the border is apparently in conflict with some Geneva Convention blah blah etc.

Can their current proportion in Israeli society be quantified? Like you say, I suspect that most Orthodox people are merely religious and do not hold political views that deviate far from the Israeli mainstream. What would be interesting, as poltiical science thing, would be to look at whether the extremists are successful at pulling the mainstream in their direction, or whether they represent a cohesive bloc that manages to reproduce itself across generations (are the children of extremists extreme).

But you see, it isn't minor at all, or I wouldn't have brought it
up. How is it that the western world is basically united
in it's hatred of Nazism, yet so much of it is turning a blind
eye to the ties and similarities that extremist Arab militants
(including Palestinian militants) share with

>German guy who was hostile to both your imperial overlords
>and the newly arriving colonists in Palestine

Why do we need to believe that the orthodox Arabs have the
right control their destiny? In spurning these overlords
and colonists, they also spurn freedom of speech, the
right to vote, women's rights, and other basic freedoms
that are inviolate. How can we sympathize with a group who
is fighting for freedom - the freedom to enslave and
humiliate their wives and neighbors?

I'm not saying that the Arab extremists are Nazis. They're
obviously different in many ways. I'm just
saying, open your eyes and look at the symmetries between
their philosophies and Hitler's. And, to carry the comparison
further, will appeasement work any better this time?

Woof woof!

"Why wait?" Perhaps because the U.S. military has enough on its plate in the deteriorating wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, which both border Iran. And perhaps because containment, although of uncertain success, did work against Stalin and his successors, and might be preferable to a war against a nation much larger and more formidable than Iraq. And if Bashar Assad's regime does not fall after the Weekly Standard's hoped-for third war, with Iran, does the magazine hope for a fourth?

As for the "healthy" repercussions that the Weekly Standard is so eager to experience from yet another war: One envies that publication's powers of prophecy but wishes it had exercised them on the nation's behalf before all of the surprises -- all of them unpleasant -- that Iraq has inflicted. And regarding the "appeasement" that the Weekly Standard decries: Does the magazine really wish the administration had heeded its earlier (Dec. 20, 2004) editorial advocating war with yet another nation -- the bombing of Syria?

THANK YOU. I've been wondering this myself. Like, if you hate Hitler and the Nazis and what they tried to do to not only the Jews but non-Aryan civilization at large, why do Hamas and Ahmadinejad get a pass when they blatantly propose the same thing?

It just doesn't make any sense to me. Either way all the Jews, homosexuals, feminists and other unwanteds die.

that sounds kind of fucked.

that's what you seemed to say.

-- Machibuse '80 (jo...), July 18th, 2006.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Israeli_Arab

If this might seem like nitpicking, I'd argue that they're defacto 1.5 class citizens. They enjoy citizenship, vote, etc. but live a somewhat segregated life and are not treated completely equally. But I agree that any law or de facto practice infringing on their rights is indefensible.

I think the main problem is that there's all this increasing fear over the "demographic problem" (a term that gives me the creeps) - meaning that Israeli Arabs have a significantly higher birthrate than Jews, and could constitute a majority in a few decades if things continue. This is one of the reasons Israel is so bout it bout it when it comes to Jews immigrating (they'd like to be able to maintain a Jewish majority without resorting to other discriminatory policies).

This makes me appreciate the U.S., where we have no ostensible interest in maintaining any particular demographic balance and instead rely on the fact that as people come here they will assimilate American values in some sense or other.

SO LIKE NOT AS BAD AS SHANTYTOWNS IN SOUTH AFRICA!!! GREAT YAY!!!!

Arab Israelis have achieved success in certain industries, have access to education and healthcare (I don't know if it is fully on par with other Israelis yet but it's been improving dramatically), have some celebrities and visible spokespeople in the press, and have some representation in government, but it's clear that they don't have full standing in society.

My fiance's father thinks relations between Israeli Jews and Arabs have gotten worse recently (I'm not sure when he means they were better - in the early 90s maybe?) - he said back then he'd go to restaurants in Arab towns and have friendly conversations with people and that you'd be more likely to have some kind of business interaction or other with Arabs (there were many successful Arabs in the construction business for a time, so a Jew might at least know an Arab contractor or something like that). Not that this constitues full societal equality, just that things have in some ways gotten worse.

Hmm. Perhaps you could clarify what you mean by "cry me a fucking river?"

Can I call you on one thing - representation in government? Has there ever been an Israeli Arab/Palestinian Israeli minister in an Israeli government?

That is a real question rather than a rhetorical one.

Olmert is claiming that Iran was behind the kidnappings to distract the G-8 from the ongoing issue of the Iranian nuclear program. Annan and others have called for a peace-keeping force in a buffer zone, but this is looking increasingly unlikely for several reasons: Who will supply the troops and can they at all really hope to be effective? The Israelis don't think so. Israel would really like to bloody Hezbollah's nose to keep them from becoming a rallying point and hero to anti-Israelis all around them. Bush, has implied that pressure needs to applied to Syria and has apparently decided to back the Israelis not only for the sake of the important U.S. pro-Israel lobby, but because to fail to confront a semi-proxy of Syria, the neo-cons' bugbear of several seasons ago, and of Iran, a perennial bête noir of Americans, and to confront Hezbollah itself, one of the most lethal terrorist organizations to Americans (Nasrallah's protests of having no beef with the U.S, notwithstanding) could undermine the Republicans claim to be better and tougher on terrorism and foreign affairs.

What's really sad is that just 4 months after a much touted visit by PM Siniora (incidentally a Sunni) where Bush lauded the possibilities of a democratic Lebanon, the place is going to hell in a handbasket. The depth of sympathy for Hezbollah, meanwhile, is underlined when the Lebanese president, a Maronite, says, ""For us Lebanese, and I can tell you the majority of Lebanese, Hezbollah is a national resistance movement. If it wasn't for them, we couldn't have liberated our land. And because of that, we have big esteem for the Hezbollah movement." By 'liberated our land', of course, he means kicking out the Israelis, not the Syrians.

The Bush administration's long standing do-nothing policy in the region, dating back to before 9/11, and only half-heartedly rethought with the 'road map' as a sop to Blair, has left a vaccuum of sorts, especially in terms of diplomacy in the region that will take some time to fix. Meanwhile, poor Lebanon is in for yet more chaos and bloodshed.

I didn't say it was oppressed. I said that its neighbors are all aligned in its desire to see Israel liquidated and replaced with an Arab state of Palestine. I also said that Hamas and Ahmadinejad basically wish to finish the Nazis' work. Can you honestly dispute any of that?

declaring a regime to be illegitimate isn't the same thing as wanting to annihilate the people under that regime - yet people continue to believe that's what ahmadinejad and hamas want. it's pretty amazing. i'm not defending either of them, but try being intellectually honest.

Imam said Saddam must go and he said he would grow weaker than anyone could imagine. Now you see the man who spoke with such arrogance ten years ago that one would have thought he was immortal, is being tried in his own country in handcuffs and shackles by those who he believed supported him and with whose backing he committed his crimes. Our dear Imam said that the occupying regime must be wiped off the map and this was a very wise statement. We cannot compromise over the issue of Palestine. ... Our dear Imam targeted the heart of the world oppressor in his struggle, meaning the occupying regime. I have no doubt that the new wave that has started in Palestine, and we witness it in the Islamic world too, will eliminate this disgraceful stain from the Islamic world.

again, not defending, but - there you have it.

starke - YSI?

i do know about the hamas charter and that passage about killing jews is execreble and totally insupportable.

fuckin A, whatever

srsly dudes. you guys have got to be kidding.

(as far as hezbollah and hamas go, they are cynical fucks who play power politics directly from the arafat playbook at the expense of their own constituencies and they should go fuck themselves. their constituencies need the institutions of democracy - not just a "vote", but a vibrant press, a transparent legal system, public welfare and health care, a stable school system, and their own security forces - in order to grow something better, and israel and the US had better come up a better plan than this garbage)

xpost: gbx, i am actually not kidding. i have this weird thing of like, not ascribing genocidal intentions to people until they've actually articulated them.

-- Tracey Hand (tracerhan...), July 18th, 2006.

FWIW, I pretty much agree.

xpost haha OK got me

At the same time, I don't believe that most Israelis really want to hold on to the territories forever. Why would they? What's to gain? What they have often failed to do, and what the Palestinians have often failed to do, however, is to negotiate in good faith, to give serious enough consideration to the other side's concerns, to strive for the most mutually agreeable arrangement possible. Two-state solution is fine in theory but no workable, realistic arrangement (if there even is one) is agreeable to either party.

So here's a weakness in Rumslfeld's weltanshauung with regard to the military. When you go in light to two countries bordering Iran (a country, which like Germany, has a history of having to look in at least two directions, security-wise), how do you expect the Iranians not to have a wee freakout? I am not condoning Ahmadinejad, who's a dangerous lunatic but wily, but the whole nuclear program coupled with the Hezbollah diversion, is quite clever but frightening. However, if we'd stuck to containment w/Sadaam and committed our troops, alliances, diplomacy, and, dare I say it, 'nation building' resources to pacifying and rebuilding Afghanistan, whether we succeeded or not, we would not only have had an easier time of convincing the Muslim world that we're not just vengeful, power-hungry nation of Zionist stooges with an oil addiction but that we meant the other victim of Al-Qaida, Afghanistan, well. Even the mullahs thought the Taliban were barbaric and as uneasy as they might well have been, Iran was not particularly opposed to our presence there. A stronger American and NATO presence in Afghanistan would also serve to restrain the ghouls at ISI, not only with regard to Afghanistan but conceivably also with regard to Kashmir.

Instead, we got Rummy's modern version of 'gunboat diplomacy' style military tactics mismatched with major regional regime-change style foreign policy. The special-ops, James Bond shit that he loves might have been really useful in say, 1980, against the hostage takers, but, in a collary to what the conservatives kept saying during the 90’s, if airpower ain’t enough to win a war, nor is covering the ground with a light sprinkling of badasses. At the same time we’re finally beginning to see the full extent of the ramifications of the combination of pollyannish myopia, historical ignorance, and knee-jerk American exceptionalism that informs our foreign policy and it’s not only large and rotten but foreseeable.

Also, we really need to suss out what our military strategy/approach is. Rumsfeld probably felt, like many conservatives once adverse to nation-building, that we needed a small, highly trained, rapidly deployable military for all sorts of little post-Cold-War contretemps but instead, we're heading back to 19th century European balance of power politics writ large. The U.S. isn't quite the megapower we thought we were fifteen years ago. Russia is still a player, though distracted by plenty of its own problems. China will be a bigger player, not only due to size but proportionally increasing economic weight. India (for similar reasons to China as well), Pakistan and Israel all have to be taken into consideration due to their nuclear capabilities. The U.K. and France have essentially divergent attitudes and Europe seems settled in for continuing inaction, shackled by deep-seated pacifism, hesitant due to post-colonial guilt, and no longer having much of a stomach for the kinds of conflicts that made the 20th century so memorably destructive to them. Whether you approve or despair, the U.N. is no longer getting much done (a singular crime on the part of the Republicans, imho) and serves to distract, almost, from the kinds of ad hoc congresses that they used to have, like Potsdam, or Berlin in the 1880's or Vienna after Napoleon's downfall, etc...

I predict more proxy wars - they were remarkably successful for 20th century communists - more guerilla and small scale conflicts, but also the possibility of a major regional upheaval. Afghanistan could easily backslide, much of central Asia and huge swathes of Africa could go haywire. Population growth, especially in developing areas, means increasing competition for limited resources, especially water, though the transition away from oil is bound to be fraught with lots of drama as well, and I have no idea what the military thinks about all this and whether it's prepared to say it to the government. Apart from avoiding military dictatorship (a notorious weakness for republics) the principle of keeping the military under civilian control is important to make sure that they both don't cross over into the other's area of expertise and this military has taken (often, alas, due to its own cowardice) such a shellacking from this administration that I fear it's going to be sullen and resentful for awhile.