Quote :

" Everyone comes to the table with all-or-nothing RIGHT NOW approaches but it needs to happen piece by piece."

Wouldn't the first piece toward peace be, literally the bare minimum, to stop building settlements on disputed land? Isn't that basically all the US has called for recently? Like I'm not even suggesting Israel give up any land it currently holds, start a peace process, or even extend their hand to the Palestinians, just stop bulldozing Palestinian homes and building settlements in its place. It's a bare minimum movement toward peace and Netanyahu/Likud/republicans act like we are asking them to put the entire country's head in a noose.

1/4/2017 4:23:39 PM

Yeah, I'm with Terd on this one. The first of the many little steps is, quit building settlements. I'm not saying "immediate withdrawal from the West Bank." I'm saying, "Stop actively encroaching on the West Bank."

Quote :

"Israel doesn't play the morally superior card anymore. They know they've done wrong."

This is a load of horse shit and you know it. Or is that not the Israeli ambassador I've seen on every network for the past couple of weeks moaning about how put upon poor little Israel is? Even you, right now, in this thread, are saying, "It isn't wrong to guarantee our safety!" Which brings us to...

Quote :

"But they can't fix it until the safety of their citizens is guaranteed."

This is an even stinkier pile of horse shit. Nobody's safety is "guaranteed." Nothing the Palestinians could do would guarantee the safety of Israel. Their government can do even less.

Israel is not safe. America is not safe. Quaint, inoffensive little Belgium is not safe.

Israel could make itself safer. For example, by no longer pointlessly antagonizing everybody in order to appease their far right and religious lunatics.

1/4/2017 4:42:23 PM

Quote :

"Wouldn't the first piece toward peace be, literally the bare minimum, to stop building settlements on disputed land?"

I agree.

Quote :

"Isn't that basically all the US has called for recently?"

If you want to crop it down to basic, yes. But in actuality, no. The resolution which the US abstained from (instead of vetoing like we could have), not only calls the settlements illegal but says the Jewish people have no historic claim to most of the land including significant areas in Jerusalem (including the Western Wall, the holiest physical structure of Jewish history still standing).

The resolution is just a strongly worded message and has zero punishments or sanctions. So what it really is, is a symbol to the world that the United States is ok with the UN's bias against Israel's history. It's a symbol that will piss off Israelis, possibly moving them farther to the right after the last election saw such a strong shift to the left (Netanyahu just barely kept his position by one seat in the Knesset), and makes Jews worldwide feel unsafe as many countries in Europe, and now much more than usual recently in the United States, have been seeing increased frequency of anti-Semitic hate crimes.

I should clarify that I don't think criticizing Israel's actions is anti-Semitic. I criticize the American government and history all the time, doesn't make me anti-American or unpatriotic. But trying to claim that Jews have no historic right to be in Jerusalem, attacking Jewish-owned buildings and religious institutions in the name of Pro-Palestine, and the ideaology that there shouldn't even be a self-determined Jewish state is ABSOLUTELY anti-Semitism for the modern age.

[Edited on January 4, 2017 at 5:41 PM. Reason : -]

1/4/2017 5:37:40 PM

Quote :

"not only calls the settlements illegal but says the Jewish people have no historic claim to most of the land including significant areas in Jerusalem (including the Western Wall, the holiest physical structure of Jewish history still standing)."

Ah, I did not realize this.

Here's the thing though: International law doesn't give a shit what your religious dogma claims (nor should it). Do you understand why muslims (and to a lesser extent Christians) don't care what your religion claims is sacred? How do you view Muslim and Christian claims of the exact same spot?

Claiming possession of a site because of religious dogma is how 90% of all "Holy" wars start. If you fundamentally believe that only Jewish people should be in control of a particular site, the logical extension of that is Israel should be ready to go to war with anyone that challenges that.

1/4/2017 6:27:34 PM

^You have to separate out the religious traditions from the tribal history. The reason why I bring up the Western Wall is because it is literally the outer wall of the original temple in Jerusalem. Yes it was a building for ritual practice, but it is also living proof that the Jewish tribes were there thousands of years ago, just as the Coliseum is proof that gladiators fought for entertainment in Rome. Everyone likes to turn this into a religious conflict but Judaism is the religion, Jews are the descendants of the Kingdoms of Israel & Judah. The Roman Empire fell, but no one told the Roman descendants they have no claim to be in their city.

To say that Jews have literally zero historic right to be in the area is therefor beyond ridiculous, no matter how you view religion.

1/4/2017 6:41:41 PM

Cool cool cool, so when are you moving out of your native american's home?

The spokesperson for the jewish settlement group today defending the point blank murder of a palestinian already in custody was pretty terrible, but I'm sure bdmazur will explain why it's fine

1/4/2017 7:44:45 PM

Quote :

"The Roman Empire fell, but no one told the Roman descendants they have no claim to be in their city"

First of all, I'm not claiming Jewish people don't have a right to be there. I'm claiming The Italian Military doesn't have a right to bulldoze Chinatown in Rome and build ethnically Roman settlements in its place.

1/4/2017 8:15:38 PM

Quote :

"To say that Jews have literally zero historic right to be in the area is therefor beyond ridiculous, no matter how you view religion."

OK, Jews have a historic right to be there.

Historic rights also don't matter for shit. They can't matter for shit. Human populations have been too mobile. The "we were there first" argument doesn't even work for the Jews, if I remember my Old Testament correctly, since the Tribe showed up and genocided the shit out of some people that lived in the Holy Land before they did.

Now that said, historic rights don't need to matter in this case. The Jews are already in Israel. Moving them all out of Israel isn't on the table. Creating a single state in which Palestinians inevitably rule Jews isn't on the table.

1/4/2017 8:35:19 PM

Jewish settlements well beyond a historic right to be there.

1/4/2017 10:34:27 PM

Quote :

"Moving them all out of Israel isn't on the table. Creating a single state in which Palestinians inevitably rule Jews isn't on the table."

Sounds like common sense, yet outside of Israelis and 2/3 of Americans, the world doesn't understand that.

1/4/2017 11:44:44 PM

The number of Arabs in Israel is growing, what happens in the future when they start winning elections?

1/5/2017 5:37:40 AM

@bdmazur

Quote :

"The resolution which the US abstained"

What I'm interested in hearing is why is this so bad. There are many organizations in the UN, so why should we always be responsible for defending any particular country. The UN exists to keep each other in check. If a country can always rely on a veto by a friend, then they have no motivation to collaborate since their actions never have consequence. This is a moral hazard, correct, or do you disagree?

Quote :

"ok with the UN's bias against Israel's history"

What evidence do you have of bias? Simply saying the UN is biased because they have recommended sanctions isn't enough. I'd like to see concrete evidence. If I repeatedly burn down homes in my town, and my local police/judges repeatedly arrest and arraign men, that doesn't mean they are biased.

Quote :

"ABSOLUTELY anti-Semitism for the modern age."

Could you be more specific? The logic so far seems specious at best. I'm not saying there isn't evidence for it, just that it hasn't been provided.

Quote :

"Cool cool cool, so when are you moving out of your native american's home?"

I wanted to ask this same question and noticed that @bdmazur didn't answer it. This is a question that I've never seen a good answer to when prompted in this same discussion. To be fair, it is a little bit of a tu quoque since we should be focusing on what is the right thing to do, but still the lack of a coherent response does indicate some hypocrisy. I'd suggest historical claims have no basis since it's more or less a universal precedent. People could rationalize claims to any area based on presence at some point in history and there is no need to divert from what everyone else has accepted as common sense precedent.

Quote :

"Creating a single state in which Palestinians inevitably rule Jews isn't on the table.""

That is being proposed and framing the conversation we're having around that is disingenuous.

1/5/2017 11:46:08 AM

The bias is evident in the number of resolutions passed by the UN Human Rights Council condemning Israel vs other countries in the world.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_Nations_Human_Rights_Council#Israel
http://www.algemeiner.com/2015/06/25/report-since-inception-unhrc-condemned-israel-more-than-rest-of-worlds-countries-combined/

1/5/2017 1:40:20 PM

^This. It's not about the way the votes go, it's about the sheer number of times a vote has been called. Israel gets a ridiculously disproportionate amount of attention while Syria, North Korea, and Sudan are left on the back-burner. The message this sends is that Israel must be the absolute worst abuser of human rights of any country in the entire world, and that just isn't true.

And also this:

1/5/2017 3:29:33 PM

The UN created Israel. The UN probably feels some obligation toward straightening out the problem it created.

1/5/2017 4:02:39 PM

Quote :

"What I'm interested in hearing is why is this so bad. There are many organizations in the UN, so why should we always be responsible for defending any particular country. The UN exists to keep each other in check. If a country can always rely on a veto by a friend, then they have no motivation to collaborate since their actions never have consequence. This is a moral hazard, correct, or do you disagree?"

The US not vetoing says the US is ok with ^ and ^^. China and Russia have veto power and have received zero condemnations for their human rights violations. US, UK, and France are the only other nations with veto power and have to take care of everyone else from being unfairly persecuted. If there had been one vote about Israel this year, and it was just calling for a moratorium on settlement expansion, US could easily vote for it without hurting Israel. Because friends do need to be honest with each other. But when there is a clear bombardment of proposed condemnations and sanctions, the US has to stand up against it and say it's too much.

Quote :

"What evidence do you have of bias?"

Quote :

"Could you be more specific?"

This is not a rarity, especially in France. You might not see it on a regular basis in the US (although we do at the huge rallies in major cities), but it is happening worldwide.

Quote :

"Cool cool cool, so when are you moving out of your native american's home?"

I ignored this because it's a completely different situation, yet advocates on both sides of this argument try to use this point against the other. A Zionist settler could say "How can the US tell me I should give the land I paid for back to the Palestinians for free, when they live on stolen land they killed and deported a native race in order to have?" I think it's a stupid argument for either side to make.

1/5/2017 4:16:37 PM

How the hell is it different?

1/5/2017 6:41:19 PM

Because the US and Native American reservations aren't launching attacks on each other. We hear more about African Americans demanding reparations for slave labor than for Native Americans to be compensated for the land they lost.

You could say 1870s America vs Natives was more similar to Israel vs Palestine now, but they were using bows and arrows on horseback in the frontier, not suicide bombers and rocket launchers in densely populated areas targeting civilians.

Plus Americans had never lived in that land before the time they started taking it.

1/5/2017 8:01:37 PM

Quote :

"The bias is evident in the number of resolutions passed by the UN Human Rights Council condemning Israel vs other countries in the world"

If I commit a bunch of crimes, it's not biased if the police arrest me a lot. That being said, it's only natural for the UN to put resolutions against active members because you can't really govern those who aren't participating in what's to be the nature of the UN.

Quote :

"The US not vetoing says the US is ok with ^ and ^^"

The US not vetoing is not saying that. It is saying that you can no longer simply rely on us and you have to consider and court the opinions of others as well. UK and France could have vetoed but did not. The onus isn't simply on the US to veto. Vetoing just to support a friend, whether right or wrong, really just makes just a bully because it means we flex our power without regard to, nearly unanimous, majority opinion. That's not a fair partner to the broader UN.

Quote :

"This is not a rarity, especially in France. "

The question was with respect to UN anti-semitism. That was a video of a small population of random, disgruntled people in France, not UN ambassadors or even major government officials waving swastikas. The video even showed how the governments of France and the UK, both of whom also have veto powers, were outraged by this type of protest. The presence of a handful of people in a country who are neo-nazi sympathizers does not make a country, let alone it's UN representatives, overwhelmingly anti-semetic.

1/5/2017 8:11:32 PM

Quote :

"If I commit a bunch of crimes, it's not biased if the police arrest me a lot. "

None of these resolutions are punishments. So once the UN has declared an action illegal or inhumane, why do they need to go back and do it over and over and over again? And why have the other nations guilty of the same actions not receive the same condemnations?

Quote :

"That being said, it's only natural for the UN to put resolutions against active members because you can't really govern those who aren't participating in what's to be the nature of the UN. "

All of the countries listed in the graphic I posted above are active UN member nations. Plus the UN is not really governing body of anyone. They aren't the world police, they aren't the world congress. Treaties and agreements only exist between nation to nation, the UN is literally powerless unless all of the member nations are 100% in agreement and all pitch in equally to police or handle worldwide situations. If/when World War III happens, it will almost exclusively involve UN member nations, and the UN will not be able to stop it from happening.

Quote :

"The question was with respect to UN anti-semitism. That was a video of a small population of random, disgruntled people in France, not UN ambassadors or even major government officials waving swastikas. "

You were asking me to provide specific cases of anti-Israel as a tool of anti-Semitism, which was not about the UN. This is what I said:

Quote :

"I should clarify that I don't think criticizing Israel's actions is anti-Semitic. I criticize the American government and history all the time, doesn't make me anti-American or unpatriotic. But trying to claim that Jews have no historic right to be in Jerusalem, attacking Jewish-owned buildings and religious institutions in the name of Pro-Palestine, and the ideaology that there shouldn't even be a self-determined Jewish state is ABSOLUTELY anti-Semitism for the modern age."

Quote :

"The video even showed how the governments of France and the UK, both of whom also have veto powers, were outraged by this type of protest. The presence of a handful of people in a country who are neo-nazi sympathizers does not make a country, let alone it's UN representatives, overwhelmingly anti-semetic."

France is one of if not the most dangerous non-Arab country for a Jew to live. Germany, who through their guilt has become one of the safest, has called out the French for it over and over again. No way France would ever step up to call out the UN for their bias, because France is a driving force of that bias. Russia has always been a terrible place to be Jewish as well, and China doesn't want any of the human rights attention to come their way. UK shoulders plenty of guilt for the fallout of their own empire, and they don't want the push back they know they'll get from the other member nations. So of the 5 nations with veto power, the US is the only one that has ever been willing.

http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2015/04/is-it-time-for-the-jews-to-leave-europe/386279/

1/5/2017 9:02:49 PM

Quote :

"Because the US and Native American reservations aren't launching attacks on each other. We hear more about African Americans demanding reparations for slave labor than for Native Americans to be compensated for the land they lost. You could say 1870s America vs Natives was more similar to Israel vs Palestine now, but they were using bows and arrows on horseback in the frontier, not suicide bombers and rocket launchers in densely populated areas targeting civilians. Plus Americans had never lived in that land before the time they started taking it."

There are no attacks today only because we did such a good job killing the native americans, are you saying that Palestinians just need to do a better job killing jews?

Mormons have a religious claim to the land similar to Jews, should we give them the land since they were here before the native Americans?

Your point that Americans had never lived in the land before they started taking it misses the point, Native Americans were here before us so they should be allowed to show up at your house with a bulldozer and build a settlement where your family has lived for generations because they were here first. Why haven't you moved out and returned your land to those with the historical claim?

Settlements are illegal and must stop


Are you getting paid to spread this Israeli propaganda like they pay students? How much was it, $2,000?

1/6/2017 8:20:52 AM

Quote :

"The number of Arabs in Israel is growing, what happens in the future when they start winning elections?"

Is anyone going to reply to this? It's fun to see how all the half-baked bias-laden comments get quoted and replied to, because it's easy. Yet, the genuinely difficult questions are ignored, because that's hard.

1/8/2017 11:56:50 AM

I would think they would do what the US does.. gerrymander and supress the heck out of the votes for as long as possible while reducing the education funding and then make Isreal great again. That should give them another generation or two to figure stuff out.

1/8/2017 9:09:40 PM

^^Arabs are already winning elections. The Joint Arab List have the 3rd most seats in parliament. They have refused to be a part of either the majority or minority coalition. Even if joining the left-most parties would have been enough to keep Netanyahu out of the PM seat, they still wouldn't have (their leaders said so). Which in my opinion is a huge miss to win that many seats and then deny yourself any leverage.

Some Arab members of the Knesset don't want Israel to be a country. Can you imagine what would happen if someone was elected to US senate and said America should no longer be a country?

^Everyone in Israel votes for or against the same people. There are no district votes for national government. So, no gerrymandering.

1/9/2017 12:53:52 PM

i fucking new i should have expected a pedantic response. yes, i am aware that there are a few arab members in the knesset

the Joint Arab League, made up of multiple groups with very different goals and not a unified party, still only holds 13 of 120 seats all combined

i understand that the arab population is still a minority (20%?), what happens when they are 50% of the population?

1/9/2017 1:05:01 PM

In what year is it predicted that the ratio of Arabs in Israel will be significant enough for that?

1/9/2017 1:12:24 PM

not soon, but the arab population is growing faster than other groups so at some point israel will have to deal with them

1/9/2017 1:14:37 PM

but there is an established rate right? Like here you read stories about how Latinos will be X% of the population in Y years...have they actually done that for Israel?

1/9/2017 1:31:03 PM

Then why do you continue to ask questions when you already know the answer, and you know you're just going to shit all over whatever I give you?

Here are some more facts for you to ignore or tell me don't matter:

Arabs are 20% of the population, but the Arab parties only make up 11% of the seats. As you pointed out, "only 13 seats" would be a huge under-representation. However, there are other Arab Knesset members. They are in non-Arab parties, including in both Netanyahu's lead-majority right-wing Likud and the lead-minority leftist Zionist Union. While the number of Arab members is still less than 20%, it is closer.

So how did that happen? Was the Arab vote suppressed? No. What happened was 20% of Israeli Arabs voted for non-Arab parties. Some of those votes even went to far-right Orthodox-led pro-settlement parties. So we can't talk about the Arab voting block as if they all vote the same way, or that they even all agree with the Arab parties. The Joint Arab List likewise received many Jewish votes.

In Israeli elections, you vote for a party platform and not a person. A party receives X number of seats based on the vote. Every party has Arab members, but the question is how high are those members on the party list. For example, Zionist Union (which after the Arab List received the most Arab votes), won 25 seats. #17 on their list was Arab, and he got a seat. Numbers 26 and 27 were also Arabs, so if Zionist Union won just 2 more seats, there would be 2 more Arabs in the Knesset. So the individual parties need to do a better job of diversifying their lists.

There was also a boycott of the election by certain Muslim voters. Secular Arabs, Christian Arabs, less traditional Sunnis, and Druze all showed up to vote in record numbers. The traditional religious Muslims did not. There could have been more Arabs voted in had they chosen to be a part of the process.

1/9/2017 3:14:21 PM

^^I found a report from 2007 which predicted it would reach close to 50% by 2020, but it's happening slower than that.

A report from a year ago shows that the combined population of Israel and Palestine is already 50/50 Jewish and not-Jewish, but that isn't the same thing as Arab and not-Arab. Israel on its own is just under 75% Jewish.

The current consensus I've seen is there has to be a united Palestinian state in order for Israel to remain a Jewish state past 2035. More and more Israelis are recognizing that and supporting the two-state solution. However, leaders throughout the Arab world who have vowed death and destruction to the Jewish state greatly enjoy this estimate, and therefor don't want there to be a free Palestine.

1/9/2017 3:25:53 PM

the reason its been happening slower is that jewish women are closing the birth rate gap due to so many zionist policies to encourage high birth rates

1/9/2017 3:28:33 PM

1/12/2017 10:46:15 PM

I hate when I see a chart or graph and it doesn't cite where the information came from.

1/13/2017 9:37:43 AM

those numbers are questionable, more importantly though it ignores that there was massive forced and voluntary immigration post-war, not just for jews and arabs


[Edited on January 13, 2017 at 10:43 AM. Reason : .]

1/13/2017 10:42:39 AM

I hadn't seen that chart before, but I did a quick "search Google for image" and found the original posting of the chart, by a guy named Edgar Davidson:

http://edgar1981.blogspot.co.uk/2015/10/israels-apartheid-system-does-not-seem.html

Davidson claims his source as http://www.justiceforjews.com/main_facts.html, and their data is attributed to reports from the United Nations on both refugees and Palestine.

The chart was reposted with a different caption on anti-Israel sites as a claim that Jews "obviously" moved out of those countries of their own free will to settle in Israel. "Obviously" those posters don't know the history of the modern middle east.

1/16/2017 12:20:57 AM

Netanyahu hangs up the phone with Trump and immediately authorizes huge, new tracts of settlements.

I hope this makes it clear why Obama had to stop shielding Israel at the UN. Building settlements is just where Israel is right now politically, it is what it is. So long as they have cover they are gonna build full bore. It's clear that the only thing that's going to stop Israel is massive international pressure, probably of the economic sanction type. The UN was the first step toward that. Too little, Too late on Obama's part though.

1/23/2017 1:30:40 PM

What needs to happen is INTERNAL pressure. The people who vote for the leaders need to say they won't support a government which continuously makes decisions which make the tension with Palestine and the Arab World worse.

But that isn't going to happen while Israeli citizens feel like the entire world is their enemy, because they are going to vote more and more for the right wing in the name of national defense. As is what happens in every country when the people feel threatened.

1/23/2017 5:06:28 PM

well don't expect the world to stop condemning illegal settlements.

Economic sanctions should increase the internal pressure. Maybe it'll snap them the fuck out of it (what many of us kinda hoped the UN vote would do).

1/23/2017 6:16:31 PM

What power does the UN have beyond symbolic gestures?

1/23/2017 9:13:42 PM

Without comment or my opinion, Trump is about to drop that we no longer supports a two-state solution.

2/15/2017 12:02:44 PM

Bro, hold back a little on the settlements, k?

2/15/2017 3:20:11 PM

I'm not sure Trump actually said he no longer supports a 2-state solution. Because I can't be sure that what Trump said was comprehensible English.

He might as well have said "One state, Two state, Red state, Jew state."

And Netanyahu was laughing at him (and us) the whole time. But by backing Trump as hard as he is, Netanyahu is losing the support of American Jews quickly and won't have the financial backing in the next Israeli election.

2/16/2017 3:01:07 PM

What does TWW think?

http://www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-39037605

2/21/2017 5:24:51 PM

The uber pro-Israeli people will say there shouldn't be any jail time, the uber anti-Israeli people will say he should be in prison for life. The right answer is somewhere in the middle.

I talked about it with a friend in the US secret service and she said anyone on her team would have done the same as the soldier if they thought the attacker was still a threat. It's questionable here whether he was or not. He was on the ground and already hurt, but you never know if he can still pull out another weapon or a bomb. I think the soldier could have done more to assess the situation before shooting, so he should be punished, but I also don't believe the soldier did it for the wrong reasons.

[Edited on February 22, 2017 at 2:24 AM. Reason : -]

2/22/2017 2:19:22 AM

In other news, Netanyahu could end up indicted on corruption charges, so a new election may be closer than we thought: http://www.jpost.com/Israel-News/Benjamin-Netanyahu/Netanyahu-to-be-questioned-for-third-time-this-week-in-corruption-investigation-477924

2/22/2017 2:57:44 AM

http://israelpalestinetimeline.org/

Wow, that completely blew me away.

Nothing I didn't know, but to see it laid out like that, just puts the last 17 years in perspective, on one [very long] page.

Everybody should see it.

7/20/2017 3:25:41 PM

I'm in Israel now, I plan to post a full review of my time here and the things I've seen and learned after I leave, but for now I want to bring up this ridiculous thing happening on the temple mount.

3 terrorists brought guns to the temple mount and shot at 4 Israeli police officers, killing 2 of them. In response, Israeli police install metal detectors and security cameras.

Before I continue, here is a list of other holy sites which had already been using similar security measures:

The Kotel, Jewish (Western Wall, literally just next to the Temple Mount)
The Vatican, Catholic
Mecca, Muslim
Bodh Gaya, Buddhist
The Golden Temple, Sikh
B'hai Garden, B'hai Faith


So because fo the metal detectors, the world goes CRAZY. So much so that the internet tried to convince itself that Israel wasn't even allowing Muslims to pray at the temple mount (which was absolutely not true), and al-jazeera kept showing peaceful protests of Muslims praying but not the ones just outside temple mount throwing rocks and bottles at Jews trying to get to the Kotel.

Meanwhile, a Palestinian snuck into an Israeli home and stabbed a family of 4 while they were eating dinner, killing all but the mother. Hamas called this man "brave." Because those 2 children apparently deserved it.

7/25/2017 12:33:11 AM

did israel pay you for this trip also?

7/25/2017 8:55:09 AM

So Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is in hot water, as well?

8/4/2017 2:14:12 PM

Has been for a while (see the link I posted above, 2/22). Looks like the investigation is about to get blown wide open.

His party only won 23% of the vote in the last election, and his coalition is only a majority by one seat which he only gained by catering to the far right ultra religious groups. It's almost a certainty, even if the indictment doesn't go anywhere, that an early election will be called and the leftist groups are going to do well.

The biggest thing working against the leftist parties is that the Arab List refuses to be a part of any coalition beyond the one they already formed by combining all the Arab/Muslim parties together. So it's going to be very hard for Labor/Zionist Union to do anything even if they get the most seats.

8/4/2017 6:59:44 PM