I watched fox news for 5min this morning and some anchor said bc Obama had not visited Israel they would be destroyed bc Iranian nukes.

8/20/2012 4:09:13 PM

wow, hats off to this guy

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pOxJF4dRHtw

and jesus christ, and to the jewish guy saying the ad is anti-semitic and offensive to jews. well if the truth is offensive to you, YOU are offensive. (in this case, literally as well)

8/31/2012 11:48:20 PM

Nice aol email ya got there old man

9/1/2012 6:29:59 PM

^^As I've been saying since page 1 (Happy 3rd birthday to this thread btw), I wish people would stop confusing Israel with Jews worldwide. I especially hate it when Jews call anti-Israel as anti-Jew.

If you're anti-Jew to begin with then yeah you are most likely anti-Israel. But that door shouldn't necessarily swing both ways.

9/13/2012 8:16:58 PM

peaceful israelis:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-middle-east-19798403

10/3/2012 9:00:11 AM

^

When I was a kid I went to Temple Beth El in Charlotte for my friend's bar mitzvah to see the the only place where I ever felt safe not hiding who/what I was covered in swastikas and pro-PLO slogans. Of the 1000+ families who were members of the congregation at the time, NONE of them took it out or blamed it on the community. It was 3 stupid teenagers who thought they were being funny.

But yet this one specific instance merits you hating on the entire country of Israel for one isolated incident? Get out of here with that crap.

10/4/2012 3:22:06 AM

There is nothing "this one instance" of Israel doing terrible things

10/4/2012 6:56:58 AM

^^ charlotte, jerusalem, hey, i mean, what's the difference right

got any cary stories?

[Edited on October 4, 2012 at 10:11 AM. Reason : brain has been liquified by the debates]

10/4/2012 9:47:12 AM

Quote :

"There is nothing "this one instance" of Israel doing terrible things"

I love you man.

My point is to show that some Israeli civilians (usually settlers i.e., land thieves) commit terrorist acts all the damn time against Muslim, and this time, against Christian civilians. From unauthorized land grabs (squatters) to olive tree uprootings to killing of livestock pelting children with rocks, they do it all. Even killings.

We know that Americans in general (or at least 'America') fail to condemn Israeli governemnt actions against civilians, heck, even condone and encourage them, but they also somehow tend to ignore (or not come to know of) Israeli civilian terrorist actions and think Israelis are so peaceful (and OPPRESSED!!!) and Palestinians are terrorists. There are civilian terrorists on both sides. Yes, perhaps more on the Palestinian side, and they usually go out with a bang (bombings etc), but considering what the Israeli government does to the civilians, I can hardly blame them (I don't condone the killings of civilians on either side, but if they target just the Israeli soldiers and government/military structures, more power to them).

10/4/2012 11:54:05 AM

Quote :

"My point is to show that some Israeli civilians (usually settlers i.e., land thieves) commit terrorist acts all the damn time against Muslim, and this time, against Christian civilians."

I'm not defending any action of Israel as a nation or of any individuals who make the wrong choices. I'm just sick of people acting like these things happen in Israel and no where else.

I don't understand why in a thread full of images of bombings, shootings, and beatings that an act of minor vandalism (although still a hate crime but not a deadly one) is relevant.

Try telling these people that graffiti on a gate is a big fucking deal:
http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-201_162-57486965/shooting-at-sikh-temple-in-wis-at-least-7-dead/
http://articles.nydailynews.com/2012-08-12/news/33171054_1_chicago-area-mosque-chief-mark-erickson-ramadan
http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/lanow/2009/10/shooting-at-la-synagogue-investigated-as-hate-crime-man-arrested.html

[Edited on October 4, 2012 at 3:38 PM. Reason : -]

10/4/2012 3:32:49 PM

maybe because that act of minor vandalism is just one of many including setting fire do the door of a Trappist monastery which all appear to be related to recent actions to try to roll back settlement. Especially since even with those measures settlement is still way beyond agreed upon boundaries and the people that do it do it in really shitty ways. It's not that this single act is particularly terrible, but it is relevant to a discussion about the emotional/political climate of the area.

What doesn't make sense is your quick defense for a nation with which your only relation is your mother's religion.

10/4/2012 3:50:08 PM

but it is relevant to a discussion about the emotional/political climate of the area. entire world.

And I haven't condoned any actions. I can love a place without supporting its government or being happy with the actions of individuals. That's how most Americans feel about this country so why can't it be the same there?

10/4/2012 4:05:59 PM

What's more relevant in a thread titled "Israel/Palestine"? Jewish-Christian tensions due to actions to roll back Israeli settlement in Palestinian land that just happened, or a shooting at a Sikh temple thousands of miles away in Wisconsin that happened months ago? If the argument was simply "people in this country do shitty things to other religions" then your point might be reasonable, but its not so its not.

The reason those things are not relevant is because the story is not simply about religiously motivated crime, but

Quote :

" many including setting fire do the door of a Trappist monastery which all appear to be related to recent actions to try to roll back settlement. Especially since even with those measures settlement is still way beyond agreed upon boundaries and the people that do it do it in really shitty ways."

which makes it very relevant to an Israel/Palestine discussion because its about Israeli settlement in Palestinian land

[Edited on October 4, 2012 at 4:24 PM. Reason : I mean christ dude, what an obvious attempt to divert]

10/4/2012 4:23:30 PM

Cousin just emailed me this:
Israel vs. No. 2 Pencils

Quote :

"As countless students around the world took the SAT a week ago, Palestinians from the West Bank could not join their ranks. The October SAT exam was cancelled for students in the West Bank: The Israeli authorities held the exams sent by the College Board for weeks, not releasing the tests to AMIDEAST’s office in Ramallah. AMIDEAST is the only testing agency in the West Bank, serving over three hundred thousand Palestinian students. Yet Israel controls the flow of goods and people in and out of the ever-shrinking Occupied Palestinian Territories. The Israeli occupation impacts nearly every aspect of Palestinian life. In particular, the military occupation, illegal under international law, violates the basic right to education for Palestinian youth. This SAT cancellation has been devastating for high school seniors across the West Bank who were planning to apply to college in the United States—including those from the Ramallah Friends School. As alumni of the school, we are proud of its emphasis on global citizenship. RFS has a rich history in Palestine. It was established in 1869 by American Quakers and has since been certified by the International Baccalaureate Organization in Switzerland. About half of RFS students are Palestinian Muslims and the other half are Palestinian Christians—the latter are descendants of the very first Christian community. We have been nurtured by values of peace, nonviolence, social justice, and equality—principles to which many Palestinian families are deeply committed. Many Palestinians go on to the best universities across the United States each year, including Harvard. Recently, Harvard College admitted three individuals from RFS alone in one year. After graduating from college, many RFS graduates and their peers from other Palestinian schools return to Palestine because of the strong connection we feel to our homeland. We are eager to use the knowledge and skills we have gained abroad to help build a brighter future for the coming generations. The College Board has announced that it will attempt to schedule a make-up test for those students who were supposed to take the October SAT. AMIDEAST suggested in an email that the tests were held because of an “administrative delay.” According to Michael Madormo, English teacher and Director of the College Preparatory Academy at RFS, “the SAT cancellation has been disheartening since it seems that the Israelis had the exams for weeks and despite efforts by UPS, ETS [Educational Testing Service], and AMIDEAST, the tests were not passed through customs.” Palestinians have suffered from such profound lack of sovereignty for decades now. This latest SAT episode is merely a symptom of systematic attacks on Palestinian education. During the first Intifada, Palestinian educational institutions were deemed illegal by the Israeli occupation forces, and our parents were forced to hold clandestine classrooms in churches, mosques, and private homes. During the second Intifada, RFS was directly affected by the bombing of a next door police station by the Israeli military and students were unable to attend school due to Israeli blockades and curfews. One of the authors of this article, Lena Awwad, could not attend RFS for three years due to extensive Israeli checkpoints, which prevented her from reaching school. By depriving this year’s RFS seniors the ability to take the SAT, and more broadly hurting Palestinian education, Israel is jeopardizing the academic trajectories of future leaders. The Israeli policy of bulldozing and destroying Palestinian schools continues unabated. Israeli settlers in the West Bank harass and violently abuse Palestinian schoolchildren—and the hundreds of humiliating checkpoints, Israeli settler-only roads, and the apartheid wall significantly impede freedom of movement for Palestinians and the right to access school. Additionally, Palestinian academic institutions such as Birzeit University find it tremendously difficult to secure basic resources and supplies for their students such as books from abroad. Yet Palestinians are an incredibly resilient people. Despite the assault we face on our right to education and on our livelihoods in general, Palestinians have among the highest literacy rates in the Arab world and the region's highest doctorates per capita. It is daunting for us to explain the struggle of our families and nation under Israeli military occupation. It is difficult for others to imagine being prevented from taking an exam or, more importantly, to imagine having one’s right to education severely impinged upon because of a foreign occupying power. Palestinian voices are missing from mainstream discourse in the U.S. because of unconditional and blind support for Israel. Many Americans are conditioned to believe that Israeli policies are justified responses to security concerns. This raises the question, then, of what the SAT has to do with Israeli security. And this begs the additional question of when the right to basic human security will be recognized for Palestinians—a people that has been defenseless and stateless for far too long. We hope that relentless Israeli policies enforced on our peers leading to the SAT cancellation will not impede their college application processes, and look forward to welcoming yet another group of Palestinians to Harvard in the fall. Lena K. Awwad ’13 is a neurobiology concentrator in Winthrop House. Shatha I. Hussein ’14 is a government concentrator in Eliot House."

http://www.thecrimson.com/article/2012/10/16/israel-sat-oped/



(If you're curious why they say the occupation is illegal, see: http://domino.un.org/UNISPAL.NSF/0/ba123cded3ea84a5852560e50077c2dc )

10/18/2012 9:14:13 AM

Quote :

"JERUSALEM — The U.S. State Department said dozens of Palestinian students whose SAT exams were delayed because of Israeli customs will take the test this Saturday. State Department spokeswoman Victoria Nuland said Wednesday that about 100 students in the West Bank will sit the exam this weekend. “I’m happy to say that we have learned that this issue has now been resolved,” Nuland said. Mahmoud Amara, a Palestinian principal of the Friends School, said the rare two-week delay affected his students’ ability to apply for American universities. He said U.S. officials told them the delay was because the exams arrived during a series of Jewish holidays, when Israeli customs offices were closed. The SAT college admissions exams are administered in the West Bank by Amideast, an American non-profit. Copyright 2012 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed."

10/18/2012 3:47:23 PM

I remember one time when my SATs scores were delayed because the Canadians were celebrating Boxing Day.



Wait, no. No, that's not correct. That never fucking happened, actually. My mistake.

10/18/2012 4:24:49 PM

How about all those times you had to work on Christmas, Easter, 4th of July, and Thanksgiving? Imagine having all of those in a 2 week period.

The tests were delayed, not withheld. Israel would much rather have Palestinian students educated in America as opposed to Arab institutions, so I don't see what gain they would have in trying to fuck this up on purpose.

10/18/2012 8:29:22 PM

What's the excuse then for food and medicine and building supplies and...

10/18/2012 11:00:24 PM

^^

hmm, the israeli students didn't have any problem getting the exams.

stop defending your shitty people.

10/18/2012 11:26:33 PM

^ it's not the israelis, it's the israeli government.

10/18/2012 11:57:38 PM

^this. I didn't hold any of you responsible for terrible war decisions made by George Bush.

And I have stated several times over that there are so many things Israel has done that I am not ok with and in fact have spoken out against in the Jewish community. But not everything that gets posted in here trying to make Israel look worse is as bad as it sounds. Such as a delay in SATs being administered and graffiti on a church door.

10/19/2012 4:23:32 AM

it's really not just the government though, all of the illegal settlers are just citizens

10/19/2012 8:52:48 AM

You should see the anti-war protests that Israeli citizens have in Jerusalem and Tel-Aviv. They are out there trying to make a real difference as opposed to anonymous message board postings.

10/19/2012 1:44:41 PM

And yet here in the US that would get you labeled as an anti-Semite so we just keep the cash flowing so know one mistakes us for that

10/19/2012 5:59:47 PM

Saying the Israeli government is doing awful things as a pro-humanity statement. Saying Israel should be wiped off the map is Antisemitism.

10/19/2012 8:12:37 PM

Quote :

" Israel launched a series of blistering air strikes Wednesday on what it says are terrorist targets in Gaza, killing the chief of Hamas' military wing and at least eight others, Israeli and Palestinian officials said. As the tensions ratcheted up, the U.N. Security Council was scheduled to hold an emergency meeting Wednesday evening. Palestinian leaders immediately condemned the attacks as an escalation, with President Mahmoud Abbas calling for an emergency session of the Council of the League of Arab States to discuss what he called Israeli "aggression," the Egyptian state news agency MENA reported. Hamas' military wing warned that Israelis had opened "the gates of hell on themselves" with the move."

I can't find information if the others killed were also militants or not. I don't like the timing of this in concerns of people's safety on both sides of the conflict, but at the same time Israel took out who they considered to be the biggest threat to national security. Not much different than the US hunt for Osama Bin Laden.

11/14/2012 8:05:08 PM

This was the targeted assassination of a government official. Al Qaeda is not a government.

11/14/2012 8:24:41 PM

Wartime atrocity against a UN member state.

11/14/2012 8:48:11 PM

Quote :

"I can't find information if the others killed were also militants or not. "

You know the fucking answer to this question. Stop trying to be even-handed with your analysis. You can't fire rockets from the sky into a crowded city and only hit the bad guys.

http://www.aljazeera.com/news/middleeast/2012/11/2012111419500140191.html

Quote :

"but at the same time Israel took out who they considered to be the biggest threat to national security"

You've seriously done this for like the better part of a year. You feign humanitarian sympathy for the innocent people killed in the first part of a sentence, and then immediately say "but what else could Israel possibly do?" in the second half of the sentence.

Stop with the fucking charade already. You clearly value life for one group more than you do the other by virtue of your weak-ass insistence that there is no other alternative course of action.

11/14/2012 9:48:50 PM

http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/11/14/us-palestinians-israel-hamas-idUSBRE8AD0WP20121114

11/14/2012 10:12:47 PM

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/worldviews/wp/2012/11/15/the-story-behind-the-photo-journalists-11-month-old-son-killed-in-gaza-strikes/



sometimes, you forget about the people that being affected by all of this....

11/15/2012 10:13:47 AM

Hamas is asking for it.

things are going from bad to worse there. it will not end well.

11/15/2012 1:37:10 PM

Israel's "policing strategies" (poetry for "military adventure") are pretty much explicitly structured around the notion of displacing current structure. That means streets, places of living, places of business, whatever; if it's in your way, you simply move through it. The community can only respond in a way more conducive to your needs, and it's a hell of a lot easier than mastering foreign territory.

Let's stop pretending this is anything but colonialism. There are still rights, wrongs, and greys in this context as well, but attempting to call it something different based on our "American sentiments" is not only naive in some abstract way, but fails to notice that the Israeli people themselves do not even pretend on this front. Failing to understand what it is we're looking at, or denying certain aspects of the problem as either nonexistent or accidental, is not going to help us address the problem. All we can do is point out what is and isn't present, and ask ourselves to what extent this makes a difference. You can't do that by only paying attention to certain pieces of the picture, and any label but "colonialism" here is a particular attempt in the coordinates of American ideology to mediate our relationship with Israel's ruling regime, as such.

[Edited on November 15, 2012 at 1:56 PM. Reason : .]

11/15/2012 1:54:02 PM

whatever wrongs Israel has or is doing, Hamas and any other Palestinian group will NEVER garner any sympathy, or support by indiscriminately firing rockets and mortars into civilian populations.

if they were attacking government or military outposts/positions, a different argument could be made.

the point is, Hamas sucks at diplomacy and public relations and they will never be allowed to leave their cave because of it.

11/15/2012 2:07:21 PM

^And the rest of the Arab world wants to keep it that way. Iran and Syria LOVE Palestinian suffering because it gives them reason to keep escalating the war. They don't want it to ever end,

Quote :

"You know the fucking answer to this question. "

I've searched multiple sources from miltiple biases but if even Aljazeera doesn't refer to the others killed as innocent civilians, then I don't know what argument you can make until someone actual comes out and says who they were.

Oh, and Netenyahu is a war hungry nut job. The world will be a safer place if he loses his seat in the January election.

[Edited on November 15, 2012 at 2:56 PM. Reason : -]

11/15/2012 2:54:30 PM

Quote :

"whatever wrongs Israel has or is doing, Hamas and any other Palestinian group will NEVER garner any sympathy, or support by indiscriminately firing rockets and mortars into civilian populations. "

Meanwhile, Israel discriminately orders airstrikes on Palestinians civilians populations.

11/15/2012 2:59:28 PM

Quote :

"This was the targeted assassination of a government official. Al Qaeda is not a government."

Doesn't mean he was any less a terrorist who ordered the firing of missiles at Israeli villages with 0 military presence. And just because Hamas is an elected "political party"now doesn't make them any less of a terrorist organization.

11/15/2012 8:51:45 PM

And Israeli leaders are not terrorists?

11/15/2012 8:58:26 PM

^

Quote :

"Netenyahu is a war hungry nut job"

Some of them definitely are. One side being guilty doesn't make the other innocent. The things he's been saying this week are horrifying. Attacks on Palestine are not going to help the safety of Israeli citizens.

The rocketfire from both sides needs to stop, but whenever either side offers a peace treaty there is also some completely absurd item attached that they know the other side won't accept. And they do it just to claim that the other side is anti-peace because they turned down the treaty.

11/15/2012 9:32:43 PM

Quote :

"They are going to conquer the entire area, and the world is going to watch and not do anything because they have the support of the USA and the reluctant support of people who keep pointing to the Hamas charter as some bullshit excuse to continue the plans they had all along. I feel bad for the Palestinians. Because if Israel drags us into a war with Iran during our presidential elections, you can guarantee that Israel will use that opportunity to speed up their imperial conquest of Palestine before this mythical "progressive" voice rises to power within the Israeli and American political ranks."

I said this almost a year ago. We may not be at war with Iran (not explicitly, anyway), but it looks like Israel is going to go ahead and take care of their end with or without our support/preoccupation.

Little by little, the Palestians will become conquered people, and the ones that somehow get assimilated into Israeli culture will likely live an existence as second-class citizens inside of Israeli borders.

11/15/2012 9:50:54 PM

If that was the goal of the Israelis it would have happened in the 70s.

11/15/2012 9:54:18 PM

maybe you should go back and look at the second picture of the first page.


see a trend?

11/15/2012 10:00:37 PM

Defence minister calls up 30,000 reservists after three killed in Israel, as toll on the Palestinian side rises to 19.

http://www.aljazeera.com/news/middleeast/2012/11/20121115135540965773.html


What do you think those 30,000 reservists are going to do? Give the Palestinians a stern talking to?

11/15/2012 10:03:16 PM

So it would be just for somebody to blow obama up? You know, he's ordered attacks on civilians in Pakistan.

11/15/2012 10:13:29 PM

^oh, don't worry, soon a real "progressive" voice will emerge in Israel that encourages peace instead of war.

eh? eh bdmazur?



You know what the sad thing is, though? During the early Bush years, the US condemned Israel's use of extrajudicial assassinations.

Now, not only do we support them, but our own government does it to US citizens.

11/15/2012 10:20:27 PM

Maybe Israel should just wall of and embargo them and force them to live a second class life without the ability to get basic supplies until they love them?

11/16/2012 6:53:00 AM

Maybe the jews should practice the same message of tolerance that they shove down the rest of the world's throat.

11/16/2012 8:16:29 AM

Tolerance for missiles raining down on Tel Aviv? Given the history of Israel, it's tough to fault their leadership for being heavy-handed when it comes to defense of their country.

Aside from the fact that Israel doesn't speak for a whole religion, Israel has many Arabs and Druze in the Knesset. Describing Israel as "the Jews" is stupid.

11/16/2012 10:39:59 AM

Do you really think that Israel takes into consideration the interests of any arabs or druze who happen to reside within its borders?

11/16/2012 10:54:58 AM

Yeah, I mean Israels position is completely reasonable, because fuck you I'm going to settle your lands and build walls and fences in your country to extend my borders and fuck you if you get mad about it. Definitely understandable.

11/16/2012 10:56:40 AM