Topic: Palestine & israel? What do you think about that situation? - page 2. (Read 15034 times)

Plus, given the definition, would it not then apply towards the over-representation of palistinians?

That's easily debatable depending on how you wish to define "over-represented".

That kind of reminds me of the incident where the Israeli 'art students' or whatever were rounded up in New York after a lady reported them high-five'ing and taking photos of the smoking twin towers on 9/11 with a lighter held under it.

My personal belief is that this incident does not necessarily implicate Israel, and maybe not even these particular Israeli's who may have been fictitious.  If I were designing the operation I would have been most concerned about the follow-up in the media.  To thwart unwanted investigation, I would have made things be fairly clear to various editorial staffs where an exploration may end up.  I don't think it is particularly arguable that Jews are over-represented in the U.S. media, nor that Jews tend to have a propensity to not wish to see misfortune befall that state..and being implicated or framed would qualify as misfortune since much of Israel's national security is predicated on exploiting the U.S. and we still have enough of a democracy to where this would do damage.  For this reason I believe it would be (and was) an effective strategy to discourage very much real journalism around the event in mainstreamland.

I was flying into Ben Gurion airport when the 9/11 attacks happened. When I landed, I saw the televisions with coverage and muslims watching, smiling, high-fiving. So, there is no disproving something I witnessed, in person.

Last reply to the monster May 1 post. This is regarding Israel's mistreatment of the Palestinians. You listed a lot, but I thought it was enough to focus on one to make my points. Obviously I could list any number of examples of Palestinians committing atrocities against Jews/Israelis going back a century. It's not a one sided fight.


Note that this case caused an uproar in Israel. Often the criticisms of Israel start in Israel.

It looks bad, of course, but in comparison to what? The world is a violent place. We could look at the surrounding countries and find similar or worse examples. The difference? That's Muslim on Muslim violence, so it's not treated the same way. When Jordan kills a few thousand Palestinians, Jordanian embassees aren't attacked and hatred towards Jordanians doesn't manifest itself.

The fact that people criticized Israel in this particular case is reasonable, in my opinion. I wouldn't attribute that to Jew-hatred. However, I would say Jew-hatred was the reason for the resulting attacks on Israeli businesses and embassies around the world after this story aired. Here's a description of it from one of the articles you linked to. It describes clear examples of Jew hatred.


The surrounding countries are currently engaging in military action against ISIS. If the media wanted to play supporters of ISIS as being sympathetic, I'm sure they could. They could also find some people who weren't in ISIS but were killed or wounded in a battle. At the moment, the consensus seems to be that ISIS is not only bad but savage, and that fighting them militarily is understandable. The same thing used to be true about Hamas. Maybe we'll live to see the say that Syria and Jordan are being encouraged to negotiate with the "political arm" of ISIS to make a peace deal with the "militant arm" of ISIS.

Israel is held to a higher standard by the rest of the world. This is dangerous. Israel is even held to a higher standard by itself. I suspect this may end up being a suicidal strategy.

Well, that analogy doesn't work as well because Germany lost land to Poland because the Germans were Nazis who lost the war.

Still, I'm willing to discuss it. Suppose some group of Polish nationalists started to hijack airplane and bomb pizza parlors with the demand to return Lwów from Ukraine to Poland. I suspect these Polish nationalists would get little to no sympathy from the world. With the current Russia-Ukraine there's no telling what would happen, but I doubt they'd make serious headway. Maybe Putin would fund some Polish nationalist terrorists or maybe he would kill them all. The rest of the world would probably hardly notice.

The reason this all sounds farfetched is because modern Germans and Poles are reasonably civilized. The same can't be said for modern Palestinians. Barbarism should neither be encouraged nor excused.

The idea of the Palestinian state gradually gaining authority over their territory sounds reasonable. They haven't shown so far that they're capable of living in peace with Israel or fighting terrorists.

If you find the Camp David deal unacceptable or unreasonable, that's fine. But don't be surprised by the results of choosing continued conflict over the deal.


Negotiations work this way right? Barak insists on having A and B and would like C. Arafat insists on having B and C and would like A. Barak offers C and part of B. It reads like you think Barak should've offered Arafat B, C and part of A.


In general, offering the Palestinians less in each successive peace deal sounds like a way to encourage the Palestinians to accept a deal. Leading them to believe rejecting peace deals leads to more generous deals being offered would encourage the opposite.

This specific case is more complicated, of course. Barak already offered more than many Israelis would be willing to accept, and lost the next election as a result. Expecting Sharon to offer more than Barak is irrational.


Disengagement sounds like a reasonable strategy when the other side is unwilling to make peace. Maybe the pro-Palestinian side should sponsor programs to convert Palestinians into Finns.


This doesn't change the conclusion that the Palestinians chose at Camp David to continue the conflict. They may have been right to do so. As I keep saying, I think in the end they will win. The world loves dead Jews, and hates live ones.


They supported Arafat. They elected Hamas. They've voted for a Fatah politician who goes by the nickname Hitler. They name schools after terrorists. They put their children in plays in which they pretend to behead Jews.

The Palestinians do not have a culture which allows them to live in peace with Jews, and they are doing nothing to develop such a culture. They're encouraging a culture of open Jew-hatred. And it'll probably work out for them.

Re whether or not the Palestinians want a peace deal:


I don't trust Hamas. Maybe we feel differently about that. Even so, the quote from the Hamas leader you included isn't particularly promising.


Hamas believes all the land is occupied. An "end of the occupation" for them implies the destruction of Israel. Any "truce" Hamas makes only until they are strong enough to fight for more land/dead Jews. I agree that in your quote above Mustafa of Hamas said in 2006, "calls for the end of the occupation, not the destruction of Israel." Hamas was lying in order to further their position. There's a long history of this in the Islamic religion, dating back to Muhammed. Taqiyya.

Here's a further quote from the Haaretz article you linked to:


40% sounds plausible. I'm skeptical of the other polls showing higher percentages for more specific questions you included, but maybe someday we'll find out.


I reject the idea that Palestinians are playing a minor role in these issues. They are the ones choosing to place such a focus on hating Israel/Jews instead of being more productive.


I don't think it's a moot point. Whether or not Hamas would continue to hold power in the new government, Hamas would continue to attack Israel. Israel would respond. The world would rise up in anger against Israel attacking a "sovereign state of Palestine" as opposed to the current anger about Israel attacking "occupied territory." Basically Israel would have to give some things up and would get nothing in return. Not even good will from the world.

Re the Gaza sanctions:


I'm happy to let you have David Cameron on your side. It looks like Gazan children have been able to import their crayons for a few years now. Good to know. I wonder what kind of pictures they're coloring?

People should keep in mind that 2007-2010 followed the dual conflicts in 2006, one of which was in Gaza following the kidnapping/capture of Gilad Shalit. Gilad Shalit was being held prisoner during all of that time. Hamas (who had been elected by Gazans in 2006) had a huge card they could've played to lessen the sanctions. They didn't play that card until 2011, and even then Shalit was released to secure the release of about 1000 Palestinian terrorists held by Israel.

As with everything else, one always has to ask what alternatives Israel had. It's clear that they would be condemned regardless.


Reading this positively, it says Israel wanted to avoid a humanitarian crisis. Obviously they could've responded by fire bombing Gaza. I'm not sure what good options Israel had after Hamas took control of Gaza.

The people of Gaza voted for Hamas, more decisively than Germans voted for the Nazis. I don't feel bad for the Germans who died as a result, and I don't feel bad for the Gazans who live under sanctions as a result.


As your sources say, the sanctions are far less restrictive and the blockade has been eased. Has Israel gotten more positive press as a result?

The only reasonable strategy I could imagine for dealing with Gaza is for the U.S./Israel to pay Egypt a few extra billion dollars (on top of the billions Egypt already gets from the U.S.) to annex Gaza. It was previously under Egypt's control already. In an effort to avoid a war with Israel Egypt might be willing to fight Hamas and other terrorists in Gaza. This would likely involve killing 100,000 or so people in Gaza, but if Egypt did it the world would likely look the other way. Egypt got rid of their Jews a long time ago. Even this wouldn't really work. Even if Egypt took care of Gaza, the world would spin it as the Jews being their usual puppetmasters and so on. Jordan killed several thousand Palestinians in 1971 and the Palestinians still blamed the Jews for it (Black September).

@u9y42: This morning I spent time to read your post of May 1. Since the post is already very long, I don't think it's a good idea to respond to it in a single post, so I'll do it in more than one.

Let me start with this:


We disagree about whether or not acknowledging the role of Jew-hatred in the conflict would help solve it.

You wrote a lot, but sentence quoted above provides the best summary of what I think you're saying. You think Israel's actions should be different. In particular, you think they should engage in less military action and be willing to make more concessions to reach some final status agreement. Is that fair to say? Would you like to be more specific about what actions you believe Israel should take and what the likely responses to those actions would be?

I could imagine the conflict ending if the Palestinians generally accepted that they have lost the war. Germany didn't accept its loss from WWI, but has accepted its loss in WWII. Frankly I'm skeptical that anything could convince the Palestinians they've lost. However, suppose if there were a military campaign against the Palestinians similar to the one against Nazi Germany, a campaign that included events similar to the fire bombing of Dresden. Suppose as a result the Palestinians essentially gave up. Suppose most moved to Jordan or Egypt and the ones who remained were given, say, 50% of the disputed territory to form one or two Palestinian states. In that case, would the WWII level military campaign have been worth it? Everyone has to decide for themselves, of course. I don't feel bad about the military campaign against Nazi Germany, and I see the modern Palestinians as occupying a lower moral plane than the Nazis.

It's natural that the Palestinians haven't accepted that they've lost. They haven't lost. In the end they will probably win, and six million Jews will be dead. I think this is the most likely way the conflict will end. The only silver lining for people like me will be watching Hamas and Fatah (or whoever the tribes are at that point) fight for control in the aftermath. Well, that and watching the nanorobots bring about human extinction.

It hasn't been disproven. There are video clips of it that was shown on 9/11 and surpressed shortly afterwards. It's easy to find on youtube now. But I assume you're not saying such video doesn't exist. By "disproven" you probably mean it's been "proven" that the video shows something else. The first version of this I heard around 2003 and said the Palestinian celebration video was just showing a wedding celebration. That's ridiculous, of course, to anyone who sees the video. There's another version now that says cameramen offered Palestinians candy to randomly celebrate for the camera. That's not such an outlandish claim since there's plenty of evidence that Palestinians are accostomed to playing for cameras (Pallywood). However, even in this version, the Palestinians are celebrating 9/11, right?

I understand that it's important for Palestinian supporters to paint them as sympathetic and that acknowledging Palestinians celebrate terrorism and the deaths of thousands of innocent people harms that cause. Consequently, Palestinian supporters sometimes make attempts to deny the obvious: Palestinians support terrorism.

Palestinians name their schools after suicide bombers. Why is it difficult to believe the people who name their schools after suicide bombers would celebrate 9/11?

Let's be honest:

The Palestinians celebrated 9/11. They celebrated 9/11 because they were happy about it. They were happy about it because they see the U.S. as the "great Satan" supporting Israel the "little Satan." They celebrate successful terrorist attacks against either the U.S. or Israel. Every sentence I've written in this paragraph is well-known and obvious, even to everyone on this thread.

It may be useful propaganda for Palestinian supporters to pretend the Palestinians didn't celebrate 9/11, but it doesn't change the obvious truth.

@tins: I took very little interest in the Arab-Israeli conflict before 9/11. Seeing the Palestinians celebrate on 9/11 was a turning point for me well. That's when I started reading about the conflict and realizing what a cartoonish version of the conflict is typically told.

Maybe those of you who support the Palestinians should learn something from those of us who side against them in the post-9/11 world. Maybe it's worth your while not to create more people like me. One way to accomplish this might be to try to train Palestinians not to celebrate and reward terrorism. Otherwise the next time there is a major terrorist attack and they celebrate it, there will be more people who see it and think: who are these monsters?

I can explain why I ask. No analogy is perfect, of course, but in many ways the status of Wrocław (which I'm provocatively referring to as Breslau) mirrors the status of the land west of the Jordan river.

As Bryant Coleman pointed out, Breslau was part of Germany and was ethnically overwhelmingly German in 1900. It continued to be a major German city until after WWII. As part of the post-war reparations, this part of Germany was given to Poland. The reason it is now called Wrocław and is overwhelmingly Polish is simply because the German population was essentially expelled after WWII.

This happened in the late 1940s, the same time period in which the British mandate for Transjordan ended and the state of Israel declared independence. This is the same period of time in which many Palestinians left their homes in the new state of Israel. (Those against Israel would say they were "expelled" while those pro-Israel point to the fact that neighboring Arab countries warned Palestinians to leave in advance of Arab countries going to war with the newly declared state of Israel.)

In the late 1940s, Germans lost Breslau to Poland and part of that involved a significant population displacement. It happened as a result of losing WWII. As I've pointed out before, significant Palestinian leaders were allied with Hitler. In this sense, at least, they were also on the losing side of WWII. The two cases are quite similar.

The situations are also different. There is no outcry to return Wrocław (Breslau) to Germany. There certainly could be. Germans unhappy with the outcome of WWII could start hijacking airplanes and bombing restaraunts. One of their demands could be the return of Breslau. The fact that this isn't happening is largely due to the vast majority of Germans being (apparently) reasonable people who accept the loss of WWII and its consequences. But lets suppose some small minority of German neo-Nazis started committing acts of terrorism to try and return Breslau to Germany. Would international bodies start taking the case more seriously? I doubt it. First of all, the German authorities would obviously say that Wrocław is a Polish city and take steps to catch and imprison the neo-Nazi terrorists. The neo-Nazi terrorists would not be the "militant arm" of any political force in today's German government.

In essence, terrorist acts by German neo-Nazis would be counterproductive if the goal were the return Breslau to Germany.

Why have terrorist attacks by Palestinians resulted in their demands being taken more seriously? I think this is largely due to prejudice against Jews, but also prejudice against Arabs. Of course, many people (including many Jews) who have a problem with Jews, reflexively side against the Jews. In addition, whereas Germans are expected to be civilized, many people do not have the same expectations of Arabs. This is itself a form of bigotry. When Palestinian Arabs commit terrible acts of terrorism, instead of seeing it as something that should undermine their cause, it is seen by many people as the result of throwing someone in a lion's cage. No one's surprised when a lion kills and eats someone. It's a lion. I would prefer it if Arabs were held to the same standards as, say, Germans. But they aren't.

Another very important difference is that Germany explicitly agreed to the reparations at the end of WWII. The conflict is over. This is not the case for the middle east conflict. However, this implies that the conflict is, in fact, ongoing. The fact that Israel takes a series of military measures including bombing campaigns, blockades and checkpoints is hardly surprising when one accepts that they are in an ongoing conflict. The fact that one of the natural conclusions of this conflict would be the destruction of Israel and the murder of the millions of Jews there actually makes Israel's actions seem quite measured.

That has been disproven you know that right?

You must have a soft spot in your heart for the Iranians then, right?  I remember reports of some fairly impressive candlelight vigils in that country directly after the 9/11 event before most people (including myself) realized what that thing was all about.

BTW, I also remember Sharon saying right after 9/11 something like 'Oh yes, this is very good for Israel' before catching himself and being a little less impertinent.  This is, in fact, why I personally doubt that Israel had anything to do formally through their military and intel services with 9/11.  Had they I am pretty sure that Sharon would have been at least dimmly appraised of the event and prepared with a somewhat more careful message.

Actually, it looks like it was Netanyahu who had that response.  Same idea though.

It was the palistinian cheerings and support for the 9/11 attacks that was turning point for me.

The converse would appear to be true as well by this logic.  Were they not to 'beat their attackers' then there 'spoils of war' would be negative.

I'm disgusted enough by observing and funding the 'Zionist entity' aspects of the state of Israel over the years that I am most likely to take a 'live by the sword, die by the sword' attitude toward future kerfuffles in that region.  This was not always the case.  The American citizen to died face down on the steel deck of a ship in international waters with an Israeli bullet in the back of his head, and with nary a peep of protest from 'our' leadership and media, was probably the turning point for me on this issue.

I'm just trying to understand why anyone would ask if it's occupied. If no one is even seriously questioning it's status, the analogy JJ tried to draw between Breslau and Palestine isn't valid. Perhaps then the reason no international body has deemed Breslau occupied territory is because there's no basis for it because nobody is disputing the territory today.

As per the 1900 Census, German was the native language of 98.7% of the population there. In 1945, Wrocław (Breslau) had a population of 210,000, of which 190,000 were ethnic German (90%). Poles constituted for less than 10% of the total population. After Germany was defeated in the WW2, the ethnic Germans of Breslau and other cities of Niederschlesien were expelled west-wards, to be replaced with ethnic Polish migrants from the East.

Thanks for this. I will look into it when I have an hour to watch.

I don't know enough about Breslau to have a qualified opinion. What are the circumstances that would lead you to question its status as occupied or not? Does Germany contest the land? Does the civilian population express a German identity rather than Polish?