Poor Poor Israel

[ruderalis88]

Not so fast...my turn. What proof do you have that Israel even exists? Have you ever personally been there? Will you at least concede the possibility that the pictures and videos we have been shown could have been filmed on a Hollywood sound stage, or on the moon for that matter?

Any of you skeptics ever send money to the Palestinian cause? Have you been to the place? And it doesn't count if you took an "overnight flight" or you were "clouded in" en route. How do you know, for sure, that it isn't actually a Zionist plot to extort money from liberals?...

oh fine, last one and i'm going to bed.

no i've never been to Israel, i would like to (because i want to see the whole world) but if you get an israeli stamp on your passport you'e pretty much never able to enter any arab state after that. even when you get a new passport they still know you were there. as a westerner, i'd prefer not to seem disrespectful to the arab communities who have hosted so kindly myself and members of my family in the past. I have looked at, seen with my own eyes, the disputed area from across the Syrian, Egyptian, and Lebanese borders. I have heard, first hand, the painful stories of death and segregation from real live palestinian people. My heart bleeds for them. These are my reasons for believing it all exists and is a genuine cause.

I donate what i can to the Palestinian cause on a regular basis, and am rarely not wearing some sort of identification with the cause, either one of two "free palestine" bracelets which i own or an earring in the shape of palestine 1947 with their flag on it. Apart from when i am at work where i'm not allowed to wear any jewelley or non-uniform items. If i lose my job, i won't be able to donate, so i say temporarily not identifying with what is (in my surroundings) a fairly risquee cause is the lesser of two evils.

 

[ChChoda]

oh fine, last one and i'm going to bed.

no i've never been to Israel, i would like to (because i want to see the whole world) but if you get an israeli stamp on your passport you'e pretty much never able to enter any arab state after that. even when you get a new passport they still know you were there. as a westerner, i'd prefer not to seem disrespectful to the arab communities who have hosted so kindly myself and members of my family in the past. I have looked at, seen with my own eyes, the disputed area from across the Syrian, Egyptian, and Lebanese borders. I have heard, first hand, the painful stories of death and segregation from real live palestinian people. My heart bleeds for them. These are my reasons for believing it all exists and is a genuine cause.

I donate what i can to the Palestinian cause on a regular basis, and am rarely not wearing some sort of identification with the cause, either one of two "free palestine" bracelets which i own or an earring in the shape of palestine 1947 with their flag on it. Apart from when i am at work where i'm not allowed to wear any jewelley or non-uniform items. If i lose my job, i won't be able to donate, so i say temporarily not identifying with what is (in my surroundings) a fairly risquee cause is the lesser of two evils.

And I believe in freedom for freedom loving peoples. That is why I side with Israel.

 

[bicycle racer]

well spoken on many points ruderalis88+rep

 

[natrone23]

A bunch of Europeans(jews) come over on boats and tell the people(palestinians) who live the Holyland hey this is my land now because my ancestors lived here 2,000 years ago and "god' promised me your land.


Lets not get into the huge amount of fake artifacts that Israelis have been caught peddling trying to links themselves with the historical holyland http://web.israelinsider.com/Articles/Culture/4685.htm

 

[calibob]

Boy that's some theory, something like a bunch of Europeans coming to America and telling the Indians basically the same thing.

 

[Antidisestablishmentarian]

lets move em all to texas.

No thanks. We are happy with our Mexicans, and Kurds.

 

[bicycle racer]

israel as i have said is simply the case of the victim turning into the victimizer and using the atrocities of the past as an excuse to commit atrocities in the present 2 wrongs dont make a right.

 

[bicycle racer]

kurds in texas huh im in la so have pretty much run into people from all over the world of all races and ethnic backgrounds but i have never met someone whos kurdish. is there a kurdish community in texas?

 

[TheBrutalTruth]

it's not about Jews and Muslims (Judaism is an older religion than Islam, but the religious beliefs of ancient Egypt/Greece/Rome are even older - doesn't make them much more or less correct). It should not be about religion, but about nationality. It is about Israel bullying the surrounding Arab nations. Many would agree when i say that Israel was allowed to be created because of a great feeling of guilt by the international community over the treatment the Jewish people had been subjected to throughout the Second World War. The US are not solely to blame, although they were most certainly involved; every UN country in 1948 had a hand in it too.

This was followed by a bit of this and a bit of that, but the end word must be that Palestine is now essentially the world's largest open air prison. The people of Palestine DO NOT DESERVE the treatment they receive. Israel's government needs to be held to account for its terrible crimes but I doubt that will happen any time soon. It is a sad fact, but Muslims are the new Jews in terms of racism and unfair international opinion.

Yasser Arafat once said "I come bearing the olive branch of peace in one hand, and in the other a machine gun. Do not allow me to drop the olive branch"
It was the fault of the Israeli government that violence became the main language spoken between the two nations.

And Jordan has really very little to do with it. Just as Iraq has really very little to do with Iran and vice versa. Just as Spain has really very little to do with France.


Good thread medicineman.

Actually neither Greece nor Rome have a longer history than the Jewish. Their history is more or less tracked back over 5,000 years, as can be verified by their calendar. It is quite possible that their beliefs in monotheism track back longer than that, though there is also the possiblity that they borrowed monotheism from the Zoroastrianism of abylon.

Though their religion is not really in debate. Their right to Israel is, and in that case, as it was through the intervention of Rome that they fled their land it is only fitting that what was once, quite possibly, a secessor to the Roman Empire (Britain) should use its power to restore them to their proper lands.

Here's a simple way to look at it. As long as you pay your property taxes it does not matter if you leave your land, it will still be your land. To hold that a people that were driven from their land by outside forces no longer has claim to their land is asinine, and absurd. By your logic New Orleans should have become open for any one that wanted to move there the moment its inhabitants sought refuge outside of the city.

Furthermore, the United States, in its support of Israel is perhaps showing that we have learned from the mistakes of our past and our treatment of the Amerindians. It can only be held up as supremely ironic (and stupid) that we, the inhabitants of a stolen land ourselves, believe we have any moral prerogative to dictate what Israel must, or must not, do.

Besides, after 9-11 who really cares what the Middle East thinks.

 

[bicycle racer]

i wonder if 9/11 would have happened at all if we did not support israels unjust acts and holier than though attitudes regarding anything they do. they look at the palestinians as sub human the same as the nazis saw them quite a contradiction on there part. a suicide bombers who kills civilians is a terrorist but when a rocket fired from an apache by an israeli soldier kills a family its considered somehow different tell that to the people being killed its all the same. as long as israel holds palestinian lifes as less worthy than there own there going to have problems and if we support there actions it will cause the us more problems also.

 

[medicineman]

i wonder if 9/11 would have happened at all if we did not support israels unjust acts and holier than though attitudes regarding anything they do. they look at the palestinians as sub human the same as the nazis saw them quite a contradiction on there part. a suicide bombers who kills civilians is a terrorist but when a rocket fired from an apache by an israeli soldier kills a family its considered somehow different tell that to the people being killed its all the same. as long as israel holds palestinian lifes as less worthy than there own there going to have problems and if we support there actions it will cause the us more problems also.

I concur. We are seen by the arab world as the prime supporter of Israel. In fact without our support, Israel could not continue to exist. Our government is as guilty as the Israeli government in the treatment of the Palestinians. The Palestinians get either no press or bad press in the USA and most of the "civilized" world. What the Israelis just did to the palestinians are and should be prosecuted as war crimes. Indiscriminate bombing of civilians is a war crime, just like we are doing in Afghanistan and like we have done in Iraq. Example:
Under the 1949 Geneva Conventions collective punishments are a war crime. By collective punishment, the drafters of the Geneva Conventions had in mind the reprisal killings of World Wars I and World War II. In the First World War, Germans executed Belgian villagers in mass retribution for resistance activity. In World War II, Nazis carried out a form of collective punishment to suppress resistance. Entire villages or towns or districts were held responsible for any resistance activity that took place there. The conventions, to counter this, reiterated the principle of individual responsibility. The International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) Commentary to the conventions states that parties to a conflict often would resort to "intimidatory measures to terrorize the population" in hopes of preventing hostile acts, but such practices "strike at guilty and innocent alike. They are opposed to all principles based on humanity and justice."
Additional Protocol II of 1977 explicitly forbids collective punishment. But as fewer states have ratified this protocol than GCIV, GCIV Article 33. is the one more commonly quoted.

 

[ruderalis88]

Actually neither Greece nor Rome have a longer history than the Jewish. Their history is more or less tracked back over 5,000 years, as can be verified by their calendar. It is quite possible that their beliefs in monotheism track back longer than that, though there is also the possiblity that they borrowed monotheism from the Zoroastrianism of abylon.

Though their religion is not really in debate. Their right to Israel is, and in that case, as it was through the intervention of Rome that they fled their land it is only fitting that what was once, quite possibly, a secessor to the Roman Empire (Britain) should use its power to restore them to their proper lands.

Here's a simple way to look at it. As long as you pay your property taxes it does not matter if you leave your land, it will still be your land. To hold that a people that were driven from their land by outside forces no longer has claim to their land is asinine, and absurd. By your logic New Orleans should have become open for any one that wanted to move there the moment its inhabitants sought refuge outside of the city.

Furthermore, the United States, in its support of Israel is perhaps showing that we have learned from the mistakes of our past and our treatment of the Amerindians. It can only be held up as supremely ironic (and stupid) that we, the inhabitants of a stolen land ourselves, believe we have any moral prerogative to dictate what Israel must, or must not, do.

Besides, after 9-11 who really cares what the Middle East thinks.

You have quoted one of my posts but you don't seem to have answered anything to do with it. Fair enough i'll concede on the point of Rome/Greece being younger but Egypt wasn't and the point was to illustrate that the length of time religious beliefs endure neither lends credibility nor detracts it. I find it slightly odd to compare the UK to the Roman empire but opinions are opinions.

Paying property taxes having anything to do with rights to land would depend on a decent and just govt who are actually supposed to be in power over the land/people in question. I think you've misunderstood my logic re the New Orleans illustration, in fact the point i was making was the point you seem to be making here- you can't just shift someone off their land (as Irael did to Palestine) and if they happen to move then you can't just hop in and squat there.

Having never yet mentioned the Native Americans my response is that the treatment they received at the hands of the new americans/old europeans was disgraceful and i would be ashamed were i one of you. The parallels which can be drawn between these events and the treatment of the Palestinians at the hands of Israel are immense and undeniable so I don't know why you raise that point when you appear to be pro Israel. I am not an American. I am a citizen of an often unacknowleged nation which has in its history suffered at the hands of the neighbouring enemy in similar to but not exactly the same ways as those in which Palestine and the Native Americans suffered. I am of a direct and pure bloodline and there is no way to dispute my heritage to the country i live in. Not that bloodline particularly matters in my opinion. So actually, i agree with your point re the irony and stupidity involved in America getting involved in Israel's politics.
Sounds to me like you're shooting your own post down though because i'm not a part of the group you exclude.

Your comments re 9/11 and the Middle East make it fairly clear to me that you are either extremely misinformed, or you are (slightly) racist. Instead of getting into a ridiculous chase in circles about what did or didn't happen that can't be fully prooved either way, and try to repeatedly make the point that the Arab nations are so unfairly persecuted and discriminated against they are just as the Jewish people were throughout europe circa 1930s-40s.

I will not dispute with you on metaphysics, and it it an unhappy fact that morals which i regard as infallible will fall on deaf ears.

 

[bicycle racer]

oh good luck with that these threads are always a chase in circles i just use them for amusement and to improve vocabulary and debating skills. i have long since given up on changing any opinions especially of the religious right wing types.

 

[ruderalis88]

oh good luck with that these threads are always a chase in circles i just use them for amusement and to improve vocabulary and debating skills. i have long since given up on changing any opinions especially of the religious right wing types.

yeah definitely. that's why i say i'm not playing any more, i can't be bothered making the same points repeatedly in different words.

if someone else arrives with new points that actually make any sense i might play again, but i'm not well and can't be arsed getting wound up for the want of common sense among the people of the world.

bleeeeh.

 

[snowmanexpress]

Whats the first step?

 

[bicycle racer]

i hear you on that point.

 

[ChChoda]

israel as i have said is simply the case of the victim turning into the victimizer and using the atrocities of the past as an excuse to commit atrocities in the present 2 wrongs dont make a right.

Affirmative action anyone?

 

[ilkhan]

I prefer the apathy solution.
Ignore them until they go away.
That whole region has been nothing but trouble.
Every time we try to help we just piss off yet another group of irrational bastards.

Let them Duke it out.
Don't help them anymore.
Don't give them money,
don't give them guns.

 

[Antidisestablishmentarian]

I don't know how large the Kurdish population is here, but I have worked with quite a few of them. They really hated Saddam lol.

 

[max420thc]

I prefer the apathy solution.
Ignore them until they go away.
That whole region has been nothing but trouble.
Every time we try to help we just piss off yet another group of irrational bastards.

Let them Duke it out.
Don't help them anymore.
Don't give them money,
don't give them guns.

im kind of on the opposite side of that..
the reagan doctrine. SALE all the ass holes guns let them sale us cheap oil to fight their wars. make sure each side is armed just enough to not be able to win. and everyone gets cheap gas in the process
and if they are not pissed at one another..get them pissed at one another..make sure israel can deffend herself against the terrorists that live in the area..and let them kill some of them off too.