Palestine 1,140 : Israel 56

general topics
82

You clearly haven’t visited certain parts of France and England. It looks and feels like Iran in some of the areas/neighborhoods. It’s definitely very hostile and dangerous.

But it’s fine, you can live in your bubble for now. I’m not going to be the one who says “I told you so”. I’m going to live my life far away from any kind of religious extremism (of any religion). My own kids will grow up around science and academia, and will receive good values from me, and hopefully more kids grow up surrounded by science and critical thinking, as opposed to believing in some transparent entity that wrote a book who tells people to kill each other.

83

What area of the US is that?

84

Detroit, and it ain’t dangerous because of Muslims.

Prey tell, what areas of France/UK look like Iran? And enlighten us as to what, exactly, you imagine Iran looks like?

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85

Just walk it on back. Odd how the discussion has moved from an almost entirely islamified Europe to certain neighborhoods in two countries.

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86

Living in England, I can tell you that there is no Muslim onslaught. The muslims I know personally are:

  • Heart surgeons
  • Semiconductor Engineers
  • Oil workers
  • PhD Candidates

i.e. perfectly functioning members of society who make welcome contributions, who we’ve got no problem with.

Anecdotally, The only person I’ve ever met who has confessed to killing another human being is an Israeli Captain now living in London.

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87

I wish it was just those neighborhoods. You are ridiculing a problem that is very, very real, and which you understand nothing about. Instead of doing your own research, you are posting jokes. This is no joke.

I mentioned those two places because I witnessed them myself, but there are countless others, and the news are full of “incidents”. For Radical Muslims, you are an infidel, and according to them you will convert by the sword, or you will burn in hell. Make no mistake. I hope you live somewhere far, far away from radical Islam.

Here, enjoy the following two samples:


This is a place I did not visit myself, and have no plans to do so.

88

@danegeld Then please shed some light on the luton videos I posted below. Are they “isolated” incidents? I don’t think so, but I would love to hear your opinion on that.

89

You might make a little headway by avoiding hyperbole. Or rather, you might move less quickly backward.

You say you avoid extremists, yet endorse Israel’s position and actions 100%. 100%.

That’s fairly extreme, for an intelligent person.

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90

I’m fairly certain I’m ridiculing you more than those incidents.

There are lot of gray areas in science filled with “theories” and “working hypotheses” that you might want to become aware of before telling your kids. I only mention it because you don’t seem to see any on this issue at all. Both sides can be wrong.

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91

The Luton protests are over the plight of a woman arrested on suspicion of funding terrorism. She was bailed and eventually produced as a witness against a man from Glasgow, who was convicted.

The protests against the soldiers returning from Iraq are what’s called free speech.

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92

Looking into the content rather than just the context, the Luton protests also involved a woman in normal clothes for the UK being told that she was trying to seduce someone, along with cries of oppression because the woman being arrested was a Muslim (and outright rejection of the idea that a Muslim is required to follow British law). The truth is that I do see most Muslims as good, law-abiding people, but I am also concerned about extremist elements (including in Europe). What Israel is doing is wrong, but they are angels compared to some Muslim extremists around the world, who deliberately and brutally attack innocent civilians and minorities as an objective in their operations. Muslims in the US have nothing like the sort of power that Christians do, and those who wish to have less potential to do harm. This does not necessarily mean that the US would be better off with the Christian population replaced by a Muslim one.

I agree WRT the second video though, it would be especially easy for a Muslim not to see British soldiers returning from Iraq as a symbol of freedom and democracy.

93

Oh FFS. Can someone who isn’t driving trollies please defend Israeli policy. Too many sock puppets and trollies pretending to offer discourse whilst engendering malcontent through proffering of straw men and amplification of blame culture.

Too much ‘well, I used to defend Israel but now I can’t bring myself to do it any more’.
How many of these types of comments do you believe are from actual supporters of Israel and how many do you think are from trollies who wish to paint a picture of failing support?

And as for @skaag, shame on you. This is harrowing stuff and if you actually do support Israel and wish to see it’s constructive philosophical tenets promulgated without being rubbished, you would do well to shut the fuck up or proof read your own comments for bullshit before you post.

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94

I think the west (UK at least) does support Israel’s right to exist, and to be free of rocket attacks, but there’s genuine unease growing over their apparent taste for collective punishment

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95

Israel’s embrace of collective punishment is part of what makes Israel distinctly, non apologetically Israeli. Take that away, and what you have is a nation state that only partially exists, pretending to be and standing in place of Israel, and in so doing, thwarting the right to exist.

96

What, exactly, was bullshit in what I posted? I am living that reality every day, and nothing of what I wrote was a lie. I write out of first hand experience.

If anything, I offer an interesting perspective because:

  1. I am Israeli, American, and also a Moroccan citizen. I lived in all
    three countries, for many years.
  2. I do not hate anyone, and I wish to see a solution for the problem in my lifetime.
  3. I follow the news extensively, and understand the bias of each of the outlets.
  4. I follow the various entities in the Arab countries, know the history of those countries, and understand their motivations.

I’m patient, I do not use foul language, and I am absolutely willing to be proven wrong.

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97

What would you have them do? Remove the blockage, and instead police Gaza? Wouldn’t that be considered “occupation”?

I mean seriously, what do you propose Israel does to solve the problem they have with Hamas?

98

Interesting …

I claimed Arabic is not taught in schools in Israel, which is true (3 classes teaching you how to say Salam, don’t count), despite 20% of Israel proper speaking Arabic. This should be mandatory for “bagrut” with at least 3 units. Just like English is and bullshit Abraham-on-a-son-rampage stopped by God the merciful is mandatory.

Blaming the Inifada for changing the mind of the population is justifying punishing your own population for “crimes” they did not commit. I blame people like ultra religious Zevulun Hammer - Wikipedia being allowed into the ministry of education. Which was a tragedy that will take decades to correct.

You agree about the military indoctrination, so not much to say here, except I recommend watching starship troopers.

This is, pardon my English, bullshit. Lets take as an example “Yidiot” from last Thursday.

FRONT PAGE: 3 Fighters in Maglan were killed in a booby trapped building. Last kiss of Adi and Yulia. Worries the Hisbalah are also digging tunnels.

Then page after page of faces of the fallen soldiers.

An article about how all the world is “against us”

One small article saying that “tens” of Palestinians died in “deathly incidents” in Gaza. Aha let me open that one …

The Palestinians are saying 130 killed, a school is mentioned.

Wait for it this is the title…

“Citizens keep paying the price for the aggression of the Hamas”

In that article they admit that IDF “mistakenly” shelled a market.

Let me search this article for faces and names of the people Israel killed by-mistake. Nothing… Nada… Zilch. What about stories about the lives cut short … ziltch.

The TLDR of that article is “we killed a bunch of people, but don’t worry about it, not our fault… move along”

This reminds me of Disposable heros of hipoprisy song:

But dehumanizing the victim makes things simpler
It’s like breathing with a respirator
It eases the conscience of even the most conscious
And calculating violator
Words can reduce a person to an object
Something more easy to hate
An inanimate entity, completely disposable
No problem to obliterate

Let’s look at the definition of terror by the US Army Manuals “the calculated use of violence or threat of violence to attain goals that are political, religious, or ideological in nature…through intimidation, coercion, or instilling fear.”

The reaction to Hamas fits the box here perfectly. Israel are retaliating to Hamas rockets in a calculated way, intimidating the population, instilling fear, to attain the political goals.

It is government policy to flatten any building that a rocket is fired out of. Israel call it retaliation, others call it terror.

Interestingly Arab terrorists get different treatment to Israeli terrorists. Are the 3 terrorist that killed the Arab Israeli boy get their houses flattened, like “standard Arabs” do, I don’t think so.

The only way forward is to stop dehumanizing the victims, that means teach their language in schools, print faces names and stories of the countries “fuck ups”.

Unfortunately I don’t think this will happen.

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99

Well, we’ve already got one on the table.

But if you need another more generically political solution: how about this?

Relevant factors:

  • Innocent people are getting killed and innocent families are destroyed, creating new generations of what some call ‘terrorists’ and others ‘freedom fighters’.
  • Israel is a pariah and those people who are peaceful within have the blood of children on their hands
  • There is no creator who would condone killing innocents over a chunk of dirt
  • Israel is a very wealthy nation, Palestine is poor.
  • The extremists on both sides gain power by frightening the good people within nations.
  • The surest way to get a good man to do bad things is to threaten those he loves.
  • Both nations lose a tremendous amount of wealth and have a massive amount of resources destroyed in this conflict, and it is used to incite violence all over the world.
  • Until this conflict ends the angry, broken people on each side gains influence while the good people are at a disadvantage come election time.

So, putting all the pieces on the table what are our options?

How about this. It doesn’t please everyone, but it should please the people who want peace on both sides.

Israel returns to their 1947 borders.

Why? Because that way they’re both giving the innocent people of Palestine what they truly deserve. They didn’t start any of these wars and have been the ones who suffered the most.

Meanwhile, it takes away the source of recruitment for the extremists on both sides. With a firm stance on being noble and generous Israel gives power back to the better leaders in both nations and completely defuses any vaguely reasonable arguments for radicals on both sides. Sure, there will still be crazies on both sides, but by and large people just want to live dignified lives and feel like they and their families can live safely.

Meanwhile, The Israeli people can live life free of fear and without having to apologize for what most reasonable people see as horrifying atrocities …and sanctioning activities that results in the deaths of children will always be seen as horrible. Palestine meanwhile is a powerful firebrand and the plight of their people is used to incite good people to become ‘terrorists’/‘freedom fighters’ when they would have otherwise been doctors or craftsmen. This creates more deaths of children on the Isreali side and world wide, perpetuating a cycle of violence.

Israel benefits tremendously if they just do this in exchange for the ability to use all those great young minds to do useful things and if those nations that contribute military resources to Israel instead contribute economic ones.

However, the rest of us, seeing that great act of generosity, should be making Israel aware of our intent to.

Provide Israel with as much land as was lost in excellent locations in other nations. Preferably several.

Israel is really, really tiny. We can be generous here. Plus due to Israel’s great standard of living an well educated populace these locations could contribute a lot to the communities that host them.

Israeli citizens meanwhile don’t have to live in a place that will still for a time be the focus of much antipathy. The traumas that have been caused don’t fade away instantly, do they? Besides, it’ll be more crowded and there are all kinds of nifty places in the world to explore.

Of course, citizenship would be shared between all the little nations and the citizens of Israel can move freely between them.

But like I said, Israel’s tiny and the world is huge. Guess who else that applies to?

We also give the citizens of Palestine a similar amount of territory. Some in their own locations and some Adjacent.

Some of the adjacent ones are merged, with votes to merge on both sides of the unmerged ones every few years and no option to unmerge.

Because the good people on both sides have spent long enough being raised to be enemies of each other and with all this new land there’s no harm in having a lot of the good bits being the most peaceful of all.

We in the international community should of course richly reward the merged nations and the merged nations will make an effort to make be just as generous to the local community of the host nation(s)

Demilitarize

Yeah, I know, scary, huh? But we do it the same way we did after WWII with Japan. The people in Israel and Palestine have already had too many missiles and deaths going back and forth. The longer both sides are hurting each other the longer the worst of both sides can keep making bids for power and slowing down the peace that should be there.

For as long as nations exist, meanwhile, an international body composed of all host nations and any other major nations contributing offer up joint military protection from external threats and are made available for experiments in cooperative law enforcement (under the purview of local law enforcement but composed of some of the best detectives and beat cops and all the rest the world has to offer.

This sounds like it hits harder at Israel’s defense than Palestine’s and it may look that way, but it’s not Israel vs. Palestine it’s Likud vs. Hamas with the worst resources of most of the world powers feeding mines in and with the Isreali and Palestinian citizens in the middle.

And nobody wants a box of explosions for Christmas, do they?

In the meantime…

The extra resources on both sides are dedicated to fighting terror the way it should be fought, by giving children safe, healthy lives free of fear and turning the hotbed of horror for decades into a beacon for us all.

This is what works. We give the children an the broken families the best of the best. We give them options and hope. We still have places that are there for on people or the other, but most of the best is there for people to share.

Now, these children will grow up brilliant and the adults will all be a whole lot better too. Sure, it might take a while for all the wounds to heal, but that’s why we’re running fast in the other direction, to give everyone hope.

Each nation has a co-operative corporation. This is a mechanism to allow the new nation to expand by buying land and creating corporate campuses and obtain citizens by offering employment

This corporation functions much like a cross between Mondragon and Valve. They can expand as long as they’re profitable and will draw peaceful productive people while being unattractive to people who want to be unusually important or powerful or who want to earn a lot more than anybody else. It’s also powerful enough to protect the people within and can potentially be a gateway to dual citizenship in one of the other nations or one of the hosting ones.

It’s pretty much what we were talking about earlier, but it’s just a subset of the whole solution rather than the entire solution.

Regardless of the method of creation, these expansion nations can be within host nations, adjacent to the expanding nation, or anywhere that is within the borders of a nation wanting to make the commitment. This nation is not for any one religion but respects all of them (and Agnosticism and Athiesm).

If the offer is just to grow, then the new nation is functionally the same as the old one, however new nations also have the option to be freed by the originating nation (they will of course be raised to be just as generous, so the expanding nation will of course be richly rewarded.

What sort of governmental, economic, and voting system the new nation uses will be determined by the new membership on creation. The only requirement is that they be peaceful.

Depending on the offer accepted, the new nation may be open to as much as 90% members of the hosting and contributing nations, but there will always be one tiebreaker member from the expanding nation on whatever sort of council they choose.

Since these nations are filled with people who want peace and who are helping the world around them, they’re very attractive to people who want a similar life. Since that’s most of us (and almost all of the children) they can open themselves up to accepting people from anywhere and offering up asylum for people all over the world.

Of course, there would be a few bumps along the way, but it’s worth a shot, right?

And besides, this way the meek really do inherit the Earth. :smile:

Whatcha think? Not ‘nobody would do this’, just 'if the offer was on the table, would it possibly work and at least be better than they have now? Can you find your own solutions to whatever problems you see within? (it’s just a quick framework after all!)

How about you @Kimmo @shaddack, @GilbertWham Can this get us the same place? How about @anon68287401 and @SteampunkBanana, @peregrinus_bis, @chenille, and the rest of you guys?

If it’s not quite good enough can you guys tweak it so it is?

[Edit: Added the co-pernation as an option to speed peaceful expansion]

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100

I don’t know where you get your information from, but a massive number of people in Israel live below the poverty line. Israel is by no means a wealthy nation and without US Aid, it would not stand on its own. The main reason for this is that Israel spends a considerable amount of money on the army, and even the army has been seeing severe budget cuts in recent years. The budget for regular police is also severely limited, and you can definitely tell. While it is generally a pretty secure country, the police force is nowhere near the level of service you see in the US. If you had something stolen from your car, or had your car stolen, forget about it. If you have domestic disputes, forget about it. People are almost pretty much on their own. It’s just that generally speaking the population is pretty docile, intelligent and educated which means generally low crime rates (definitely when compared to crime rates in neighboring countries).

Almost everything you listed in your bullets is wrong. The only thing you wrote that is true is your first bullet: Innocent families are destroyed, on both sides. And with all the aid the Palestinians were given, they should have been an extremely RICH nation, however all of that money was siphoned by corrupt leaders. Just google Yasser Arafat and theft of Palestinian money. Google about Khaled Mash’al with the same. They take aid money, and they literally pocket it, buy homes, fly in private jets, all on account of the Palestinians. They have a vested interest in allowing the bloodshed to continue, because it means more sympathy and aid around the world for the Palestinian “cause” (which is to drive out the Jewish occupation into the sea).

About your offer to go back to 1947 borders, it is a ridiculous offer, and it will never happen. There can be no more “land for peace” gestures. How about this: How about Arab countries around Israel all declare that Palestinians have equal rights, and can come and go freely? How about Arab countries give Israel a bit more land? They sure have tons of it, and a lot of it is not even populated. I mean what makes you even think about having Israel give back lands? Did you stop to think about this for a moment?

And what are those organizations such as Hezbollah and Hamas trying to achieve? Who is funding them? What are the forces working in the background? Why is Iran so determined to obtain atomic bombs and destroy Israel and the USA? What’s behind ISIS? Who are the Muslim Brotherhood and what are their goals? Why is Recep Tayep Erdogan so anti-Israel, after many years of love and peace between Israel and Turkey? Is it really about land? Have you seen the size of Israel? It’s smaller than New Jersey. Are you telling me this is all about that tiny piece of land?

I think a lot of you are not really reading between the lines, and we are not really having an intelligent discussion about the situation simply because you are mostly unaware of what’s really going on.

101

See, and until you start caring more about helping the innocent and less about justifying their continued endangerment you’d be in that category that is part of the problem.

Until then you’re obviously not part of any solutions, and your opinions are likely just as unimportant. You didn’t bother to even try to comprehend what you responded to and you rejected it outright. You have no value in this conversation.

Come back when you want every child to have the chance at a peaceful life no matter who they are and don’t think ‘but they started it!’ is a valid excuse for them getting murdered all the time.

We’re not two.

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