I can;t have a rational discussion about it so this is all I will say

[OILERMAN]

Money and political power might also have something to do with it.

The people at the top

I was talking about the sheep

[IsntLifeFunny]

In 1947 the jews were 1/3 of the population of palestine and the UN partition gave them over 60% of the land.  Then after the 1948 war they claimed even more land than the partition provided for and they've been claiming even more land ever since.

 

As I've said more than once, the UN charter provides for the self-determination of people.  Yet the UN violated this principal, didn't let the people of palestine decide their fate and imposed a partition.

They had a right to extend their borders after they were attacked by three different nations. I don't care if it fits with international law (grey area). It's common sense and the spoils of war.

[pat]

As of 2012, Gaza and the West Bank are territories of the new formed Palestinian state. Israel has strong border controls given the borderlines and have control of the sea routes beyond a certain boundary (Israel is concerned about the movement of weapons into Gaza), however both areas are now independent of Israel.

Israel has no interest in bombing the Palestinian state because of protests and freedom of assembly. The Palestinian state elected Hamas into government. The same Hamas that has a military wing that continued to fire missile attacks into Israel. I'm not sure people understand how dangerous these political/military groups are in terms of peace and stability. Groups like Hamas and Hezbollah have almost single handedly destabilized stated because of their powerful militarized wings.

 

States are violent.  Israel has the IDF.  Why shouldn't the Palestinians have Hamas and Hezbollah?

 

The "two state solution" is a farce.  Maintaining a ghetto for Palestinians will not create peace for Israel.  It's the root cause of the whole mess.

 

Israel strives to be both a modern secular democracy and the Jewish homeland.  The contradiction of a democratic theocracy is the danger to peace and stability in the region.  If you want peace advocate for the reintegration of Palestinians back into Israel.  One state with a healthy democracy rather than two states at war.

 

 

p.s. The comments about protests was about Turkey.  Turkey's internal conflicts resulted in the Gezi protests.  Israel's internal conflicts resulted in the mess we're seeing.

[NashvilleNinja]

The real reason Christian Americans support Israel is because they believe the bible says Israel must be in the holy land for the rapture and any nation that goes against Israel will be cursed by God. Crazy Town!

Which is funny since the Jews reject Jesus as the son of God and Messiah.

Thanks for the insight, Bill Maher. But I suspect this is the only real reason you oppose Israel in this... to spite all those Christian Americans who claim support of Israel for those reasons. Nevermind all the secular-legitimate/not-exactly-religious reasons to support Israel in this. Reasons very plainly spelled out by Cyrus in his previous posts.

[OILERMAN]

 But I suspect this is the only real reason you oppose Israel in this...

 

possibly

[pat]

Integrating the Palestinians would never work because that isn't the problem. That has been the farce all along. The aim is to destroy Israel. Anything short of that is not going to be satisfactory.

 

How would repatriating Palestinians destroy Israel?

[Cyrus]

How would repatriating Palestinians destroy Israel?

 

Even if some Palestinians were allowed to return, would organizations like Hamas, the ayatollahs, Hezbollah and Syrians truly settle for peace? They don't want a Jewish state. They don't want Jews governing Muslims. They don't want Jews on what they see as Arab land. There is no capability for peace here barring a moderate Islamic or secular influence in these Islamic states.

 

The Palestinian matter is important given the conflict and loss of human life. However the Palestinian issue is not the terminal issue and is not the end-game for some of these Islamic groups. 

 

Many things in life are complicated. This is one of those exceptions. It's simple, like the reasons for the holocaust were simple. The Jews will only be a minority to be ruled over for some of these Islamic groups. I can't emphasize enough how extremist some of these groups have become. Even the Arab political leaders in the 90s were wary of these groups. 

[Cyrus]

Another element that greatly troubles me is the sheer amount of propaganda from the Palestinian side. There's no doubt that many people have been killed and injured, but videos of staged conflicts, staged injuries, re-used images from Syrian conflicts, fake funeral processions (where the "dead" body falls off onto the ground, then is video taped climbing back on to be draped again by a cloth). All these things create credibility issues which unfortunately create doubt when there is real pain and suffering.

[ctm]

Is there any doubt that Israel also wants to destroy what is left of the Palestinians?

[Cyrus]

ctm, on 28 Jul 2014 - 10:02, said:

Is there any doubt that Israel also wants to destroy what is left of the Palestinians?

Yes - there's tons of doubt. Why would the Israelis want to destroy them? The Palestinians aren't even an ethnic group in the conventional sense. They're Arab Muslims like the rest of the surrounding states (Jordan, Egypt and so on). Palestine isn't even an Arabic word (there's no P in Arabic anyways). It's a Roman term left over from the Roman Empire and used by the British. "Destroying" them does nothing for the Israelis. Their threat is the Islamic states and military-political groups like Hamas. There's no distinction for Israel between the actual people in Gaza/West Bank versus those of Iran, Syria, Jordan and so on.

[ctm]

The groups are at war and have been for multiple decades.  Trying to destroy each other is what people do in war.  To say that Hamas is the only group engaged in a policy of destruction is niave and ignores the obvious.

['Nator]

It was absolutely fucking retarded to move European Jews to Israel in the late 40s because a book says they used to occupy that land THOUSANDS of years ago. 

 

That's just brain dead fucking bullshit. No doubt about it. How could anyone have thought that was a good idea? It's just imbecilic.

 

Anyone with any sense knew what was going to come of that situation. 

 

and right wing fundy-bot Christian stooges like Sox are arguing from a dumb-shit interpretation of the book of Revelation with their support of Israel. They don't care about Jews. Shit, they think Jews are going to hell to burn in agonizing pain for all of eternity for not agreeing with them on theology. They only care about this stupid end times scenario with the great beast and the whore of Babylon and Jesus flying down from the sky to beat the shit out of all non-christians and to throw them into the lake of fire. 

 

They'll tell you some dumb shit about loving Jews and wanting them to convert but that is just more horseshit. They just want to see their end times scenario, the one where they win everything, to come to fruition. It's absolutely fucking nuts. 

[ctm]

Mandatory Palestine (English: Palestine;^[1]Arabic: فلسطين‎ Filasţīn; Hebrew: פָּלֶשְׂתִּינָה (א"י) Palestína (EY), where "EY" indicates "Eretz Yisrael") was a geopolitical entity under British administration, carved out of Ottoman Southern Syria after World War I. British civil administration in Palestine operated from 1920 until 1948.

 

Following the London Conference (1939) the British Government published a White Paper which proposed a limit to Jewish immigration from Europe, restrictions on Jewish land purchases, and a program for creating an independent state to replace the Mandate within ten years. This was seen by the Yishuv as betrayal of the mandatory terms, especially in light of the increasing persecution of Jews in Europe. In response, Zionists organised Aliyah Bet, a program of illegal immigration into Palestine. Lehi, a small group of extremist Zionists, staged armed attacks on British authorities in Palestine.

 

The Jewish Lehi (Fighters for the Freedom of Israel) and Irgun (National Military Organization) movements initiated violent uprisings against the British Mandate in 1940, in the former case, and in 1939, briefly, and 1944, for longer and on a larger scale, in the latter. On 6 November 1944, Eliyahu Hakim and Eliyahu Bet Zuri (members of Lehi) assassinated Lord Moyne in Cairo. Moyne was the British Minister of State for the Middle East....

 

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

 

Aliyah Bet (Hebrew: 'עלייה ב‎, "Aliyah 'B'" - bet being the second letter of the Hebrew alphabet) was the code name given to illegal immigration by Jews to the British Mandate for Palestine in violation of British White Paper of 1939 restrictions, in the years 1934-1948.

 

During Ha'apala, several Jewish organizations worked together to facilitate immigration beyond the established quotas. As persecution of Jews intensified in Europe during the Nazi era, the urgency driving the immigration also became more acute.

 

Ha'apala occurred in two phases. First, from 1934 to 1942, it was an effort to enable European Jews to escape Nazi persecution and murder. From 1945 to 1948, in a stage known as Bricha, it was an effort to find homes for Jewish survivors of the Nazi crimes (Sh'erit ha-Pletah) who were among the millions of displaced persons ("DPs") languishing in refugee camps in occupied Germany.

 

Post-World War II, Ha'apala journeys typically started in the DP camps and moved through one of two collection points in the American occupation sector, Bad Reichenhall and Leipheim. From there, the refugees travelled in disguised trucks, on foot, or by train to ports on the Mediterranean Sea, where ships brought them to Palestine. Most of the ships had names such as Lo Tafchidunu ("You can't frighten us") and La-Nitzahon ("To the victory") designed to inspire and rally the Jews of Palestine. Some were named after prominent figures in the Zionist movement, and people who had been killed while supporting Aliyah Bet.^[1] More than 70,000 Jews arrived in Palestine on more than 100 ships.

 

American sector camps imposed no restrictions on the movements out of the camps, and American, French, and Italian officials often turned a blind eye to the movements.

 

Over 100,000 people attempted to illegally enter Palestine. There were 142 voyages by 120 ships. Over half were stopped by the British patrols.

 

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

[pat]

Even if some Palestinians were allowed to return, would organizations like Hamas, the ayatollahs, Hezbollah and Syrians truly settle for peace? They don't want a Jewish state. They don't want Jews governing Muslims. They don't want Jews on what they see as Arab land. There is no capability for peace here barring a moderate Islamic or secular influence in these Islamic states.

 

The Palestinian matter is important given the conflict and loss of human life. However the Palestinian issue is not the terminal issue and is not the end-game for some of these Islamic groups. 

 

Many things in life are complicated. This is one of those exceptions. It's simple, like the reasons for the holocaust were simple. The Jews will only be a minority to be ruled over for some of these Islamic groups. I can't emphasize enough how extremist some of these groups have become. Even the Arab political leaders in the 90s were wary of these groups. 

 

Yes if Israel repatriated the Palestinians it would dramatically shift the politics of the country in a less Jewish direction.  There are 7,620k Israelis and 4,238k non-Israeli Palestinians.

 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_Israel#Definition

 

 

But I don't see how one can claim moral certainty while locking 4 million people on a reservation.

[cenj]

Ahhh actually from my perspective as a Christian the situation isn't that complicated.    And by the way, it isn't just those poor people in Gaza that want to wipe Israel off the face of the earth.  So why is this tiny land mass the side of New Jersey so important?  Not because it is complicated.  I guess when Adolph was rounding up the Jews for extermination that was "complicated" as well.  

 

I'm just curious where all the Jew-hate originates from. Is it jealousy? How is it warranted?

I get the sense people would be fine with it if they were all just wiped off the map completely. This kind of stuff is what Jews seem to have dealt with for as long as they've been a "they". Every hand of peace they extend gets slapped away by their enemies. And yet you still have stuff like this where people contiue to root for their defeat or worse.

I seriously wonder how many people secretly applaud Hitler's efforts, even though they may decry them in public.

 

What a crock to bring up Hitler and the Nazis multiple times, trying to associate posters on here with genocide.

 

First off: Israel does not = Jews. Israel is a country. Jews are the "people and cultural community whose traditional religion is Judaism and who trace their origins through the ancient Hebrew people of Israel to Abraham."

 

No one cares about Jews in the US or other countries. We are criticizing Israel as a country. In fact, there are also a lot of Jews that are criticizing Israel's actions.  I guess they hate themselves since you idiots can't distinguish between the two.

 

If anything, I get a much stronger sense of racism against Arabs and prejudice against Muslims in this thread. Some posters seem to associate all Arabs with terrorism. Newsflash: Arabs are not all evil terrorists. Muslims are not all evil terrorists. And not all Arabs are Muslims. Ask Christian Lebanese what they think of Israel's actions.