Thread: Rethinking the state of Israel

The conflict was created by the British fraud perpetrated on the Mandate for Palestine in contravention of the terms of the mandate.
The Arab states are no less detestable than Israel, as they too are run by bigots.

Originally Posted by ENT

The Arab states are no less detestable than Israel, as they too are run by bigots.

Agreed, like Israel is run by bigots, but the Arab bigots don't have the unbridaled protection of the USA at the UN Security Council to stop international action from proceeding there, as it most likely would.

If you want to talk about "fair treatment", let's drop the billions of dollers in aid to Israel and support strong, meaningful sanctions until it disarms its nukes. A nuclear free middle east! What's wrong with that?

It may take years, but we can't afford to have this loose cannon with nuclear arms setting the agenda for American policy.

Until USA ceases to use Israel as a front line buffer state and strategic base in the ME, and other Arab states also cease developing their potential nuclear armament programmes, an Israeli nuclear deterrent will remain in place.

Reducing US aid to Israel now,(c, $150 billion in arms funding/annum) would run the risk of destabilising US and UK control of the ME.

Israel is not a "loose cannon" in this issue, it is very much regulated by US foreign policy.
Not totally, but sufficient to US interests.
If Israel made a unilateral decision to nuke another country in the region, it would be tantamount to suicide.

Israel would far rather use other forms of military hardware, superior air-strike capability using non-nuclear warheads.
The reason for this being that nuclear fallout in the region is likely to affect it's own populace as much as any other in the region.

US aid to "Palestine".

It would be an insanity for USA to supply military aid to Palestine, and Israel simultaneosly but here's the current civilian aid figures.

WASHINGTON | Wed Sep 14, 2011 3:01pm EDTBy Arshad Mohammed and Susan Cornwell
(Reuters) - Worried about possible U.S. aid cuts to the Palestinians, some American Jewish groups find themselves in the peculiar position of defending the funding, particularly money that supports Palestinian security forces.

The Congress has threatened to review the roughly $500 million in annual aid to the Palestinians if they seek full membership at the United Nations, a step opposed by Israel and the United States.

Of the $513.4 million in such aid the Obama administration has requested for the year beginning October 1, $113 million would help strengthen Palestinian security forces and improve rule of law in the West Bank

Some pro-Israel groups defend U.S. aid to Palestinians | Reuters


US lawmakers have released $88.6m (£56m) in development aid for the Palestinians that has been frozen for more than six months.
The move comes after two senior Republicans from the House of Representatives dropped their opposition to freeing the funds.

BBC News - US lawmakers release $88.6m in Palestinian aid



Since the establishment of limited Palestinian self-rule in the West Bank and Gaza Strip in the
mid-1990s, the U.S. government has committed over $4 billion in bilateral assistance to the
Palestinians, who are among the world’s largest per capita recipients of international foreign aid.
Successive Administrations have requested aid for the Palestinians to support at least three major
U.S. policy priorities of interest to Congress.

http://www.fas.org/sgp/crs/mideast/RS22967.pdf

This news is a relief from the usual blinders-on support for Israel usually published in the US press. Not much, but a growing sign that the Israeli war-mongers are being taken to task by people in the government, and who don't want to see their country led down the path of ruin by messianic Right now in power.

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/04/29/world/middleeast/yuval-diskin-criticizes-israel-government-on-iran-nuclear-threat.html?_r=1&partner=rss&emc=rss

^ Beat me to it!
I read that yesterday and pleased to see that the article is getting some airing.

The internal grumblings in Israel have going on for a while, many years in fact.
Messianic extremism is not a popular view within Israel, neither among the civilian nor military.

The extreme orthodox Jews are growing in numbers there, due largely to a greater birth rate among them than in other segments of Israeli society. Coupled with other Messianic Xtians there, largely 7th DAs, J.Ws and a smattering of Baptists.
This rather large and increasingly vociferous and belligerent set of factions cause a tremendous amount of social and political disruption.
They now comprise between 10-12% of the population of Israel.

The sooner that they are sidelined the better for Israel and the world.
The hypocrites scream on about a messianic end time where the forces of Jehovah will fight the forces of evil, but exempt themselves from military service, the cowards!
The worst of it all is that their views are based upon a totally corrupt mismash of interpretations of doctrines ranging from the Torah to modern Xtian born again yahooism and religio-ecstatic group hysteria. All of it a madness! As crazy as Islam. Totally meshugeh!

Having such a pull on the Jewish and Xtian group-think on morality, the end times in life and a long awaited Armageddon where the Xtian believers will be raised in some sort of a rapture and the Jews will somehow achieve some sort of victory over something, they are a dangerous bunch.

Diskin's views are not isolated by any means, and I'm pleased that he and others like him speak out.
Too many times in the past these people have been silenced by the orthodox.

A rabbi from Jerusalem Uni once said, "Don't read the Bible, it's nothing but a book of magic!" All hocus-pocus.
He was of course referring to the Jewish OT,(the OT does contain some history and genealogies also, but no god saving grace though!) but the same applies to the Xtian NT, which has been so horribly touted as the only "living word of God", and the Koran, the so called word of the"prophet" written 60 years after his death, all a mix of old Judaism and hearsay mixed with customary ritual.

The sooner we can get religion out of politics the better!
George Dubya Bush was a classic hocus-pocus man at using his morning prayer meetings to kick off his daily indoctrination programmes.

Originally Posted by ENT

The sooner we can get religion out of politics the better!

Diderot notwithstanding, religion is a form of politics, as it is about the ideological directing of the structure of society. Politics without ideology is just marketing and management: cue Blair and Cameron...
All political decisions are moral decisions, and religion is about defining and imposing a system of morality upon a group of people of any size.

True enough, but religious belief in blatant hocus-pocus, per se, is a simple insanity.

Originally, religions were appropriate social guidelines, but cobbling them together with a belief system in a supposed "god" as a divine law-maker to enforce the rules only keeps the masses divorced from independent thought and appropriate consensus decision making.

The whole idea of giving up one's right of self determination to a "higher power", (always in human form, no one's seen anything else yet) claiming to be the voice of a non existent almighty god is frankly, irresponsible.

Putting the "fear of god" into someone is just another stand over tactic, morality has nothing to do with it.

I dispute that all political decisions are moral ones, they are rather pragmatic, suited primarily to economic imperatives by means of social structuring.

Security and well being are the human goals the formula, religion is just one of the archaic tools for achieving those goals.

i read all the comments but the question is that who one is responsible for the situation of the Israel.who did this.which man will be punish on this situation of the Israel.

^Churchill.

The irony is that there should be no Jewish state according to their own scriptures.

It's quite simple.
Israel is currently a criminal state, illegally occupying another nation.
It can either proceed with the 'two state' solution (which it has repeatedly promised to do, before the UN and international community).
Or annexe Palastine, thus granting the occupied Palestinians citizenship of the combined state.
End of story. Everything else is bullshit.

Nonsense.
The Arabs got their chunk in in 1922.

The idea of a state called Palestine for Arabs was dreamed up by Yasser Arafat.
Before he stuck his nose in the deal Lebanon, Jordan, Syria, Iraq and Gaza, were the collective names for the Arab sector of Palestine, as agreed by Churchill and Sheriff Hussein.

Arafat got the stupid idea that displaced Arabs from Israel should get an extra bit of land as well as Lebanon, Jordan, Syria, Iraq and Gaza and he wanted to call that bit, and that bit alone, Palestine.

The whole mandated territory including Syria,Iraq, Lebanon, Gaza, TransJordan and Israel was termed Palestine.

The term Palestinian as a separate group of people from the rest of the populace in that territory is a political invention of Arafat's.

Interesting then that between 40-60% of the population of neighbouring Jordan are deemed Palestinian (including the Queen), and amongst other things are not allowed to serve in the Army. Seems a well nigh impossible thing to do, if they are inseperable from Jordanians.

Lebanon has a similarly baffling story, for these 'non-existent' Palestinians-
Palestinians living in Lebanon are considered foreigners and are under the same restrictions on employment applied to other foreigners. Prior to 2010 they were under even more restrictive employment rules which permitted, other than work for the U.N., only the most menial employment. They are not allowed to attend public schools, own property, or make an enforceable will. Palestinian refugees, who constitute nearly a tenth of the country’s population, have long been denied basic rights in Lebanon. They are not allowed to attend public schools, own property or pass on inheritances, measures Lebanon says it has adopted to preserve their right to return to their property in what constitutes Israel now.
Demographics of Lebanon - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

The term 'Arab' is rather meaningless, except perhaps as a loose linguistically linked group of widely varying ethnicity. A black Mauretanian 'Arab' looks nothing like a caucasian 'Arab', such as those of the Levant, including the Palestinians. The 'Arabs' of the Levant are largely the descendants of various Aramaic speaking groups, rather than natives from the Arabian peninsula, from which the term is derived. It certainly has no bearing on the illegal Israeli occupation of Palestine, for which there are only two viable solutions- and Israel should certainly be acting more proactively towards a 'Two state' solution, if (as is widely said) it fears the demographic menace of a 'One state' solution.

Or allow Persians to raze it all and start again

Originally Posted by ENT

The term Palestinian as a separate group of people from the rest of the populace in that territory is a political invention of Arafat's.

Yeah, right. So all those indigeneous people who were living there when Pig Israel squatted, whining something about "this land is mine...God gave it to me 3000 years ago. Now the rest of you people who have been living here are obviously a bunch of religeous fanatics and have to move on". Israel is an appartheid state bent on committing any act of terror on anybody it perceives as having something it wants. It gets it to, as long as it has the American media keeping the American public (and fellow bone heads) blinkered.

They're all Semites. It is the religion that's fucked them all up.

Originally Posted by harrybarracuda

It is the religion that's fucked them all up.

it seems to fuck everybody up. there is no peace where religion is practiced.
only conflict and confusion inside and outside of the human.

i want to break free, i want to break free, from all the lies and bullshit.
stand up for ure rights.

Can't say I agree altogether with these guys, and what was said was said to make political points during a political election, but could it be the start of an "Israeli Spring".

Abul Fotouh, a front runner in the May 23-24 election according to polls, had earlier described Israel as an "enemy" in a televised debate with his main contender, former foreign minister and Arab League chief Amr Mussa.
In Saturday's interview with the private Egyptian CBC satellite station, he said he had opposed the treaty since its implementation. "I still view the peace treaty as a national security threat to Egypt, and it must be revised."
"It is a treaty that forbids Egypt from exercising full sovereignty in the Sinai and allows Israelis to enter Sinai without visas, while they need visas for Cairo," he said.
The treaty, in which Israel withdrew from the Sinai after capturing it in a 1967 war, does not allow Egypt a military presence in parts of the peninsula.
Abul Fotouh said Israel was "a racist state with 200 nuclear warheads" that continued to pose a threat to Egypt.
A moderate Islamist with support from both hardline fundamentalists and liberals, Abul Fotouh refused to describe Bin Laden as a terrorist, saying the term was used by the United States to "hit Muslim interests."
But he said the killing of the Saudi militant was an "act of state terrorism," and Bin Laden had deserved a fair trial, athough he disagreed with Bin Laden's use of violence.
"If a just court sentenced him, then the sentence should be applied," he said.
Abul Fotouh's rival Amr Mussa has also argued for the revision of the treaty with Israel and described its policies towards Palestinians as an Egyptian "national security issue."

http://ca.news.yahoo.com/leading-egypt-candidate-calls-racist-israel-threat-191026825.html

Israel is a notable beneficiary of charity from the international diaspora- Jewish charity is very organised, at both Synagogue and community level around the world, and generously funded. Interesting then that Israeli's are parsimonious in comparison:-


With the exception of a small number of individuals, most wealthy Israelis do not make philanthropic donations anywhere near the amounts that wealthy non-Israelis contribute to their own societies.

Research conducted by Jerusalem's Hebrew University shows local Israeli philanthropy is miniscule, at least in comparison to the degree of active civic engagement, size of donations and charitable endeavors underwritten by wealthy philanthropists in other countries.

Donations in Israel only reach 0.75 percent of GDP, while in the United States the same figure exceeds 2 percent. In other words, Americans contribute that is three times as much to charitable causes relative to the size of their economy.

This disappointing Israeli figure exists despite the fact that Israel relies in a large part on "importing" philanthropic donations from Jewish benefactors who live outside Israel and made their money elsewhere as well.
Israel's rich trying to take it with them - Haaretz Daily Newspaper | Israel News

Ayn Rand is alive and well in Israel, although it does beg the question why this (mostly) Jewish nation, founded on a part religious, part ethnic, part cultural 'Zionist dream' is in fact so apathetic and stingy when it comes to philanthropy, and funding and developing it's own civil institutions? Why are foreign Jewish donors so more generous than wealthy Israel'is ?

Just in on the NY Times via MSN.

Trying to Revive Mideast Talks, Kerry Pushes Investment Plan for West Bank
By MICHAEL R. GORDON and JODI RUDOREN

Published: May 26, 2013


DEAD SEA, Jordan — In an effort to revive the moribund peace talks between Israel and the Palestinians, Secretary of State John Kerry announced a plan on Sunday to invest as much as $4 billion to develop the economy of the West Bank.


Sketching out a vision of a transformed Middle East, Mr. Kerry said an infusion of private sector investments could increase the gross domestic product of the West Bank by 50 percent over three years and slash unemployment, which now hovers around 21 percent, by two-thirds.



In highlighting the plan at a conference here of the World Economic Forum, Mr.
Kerry hoped to spur Israel and the Palestinians to begin talks on a comprehensive Middle East peace agreement amid concerns that the window for initiating negotiations may begin to close.

Israel is not going to like this at all.
For one thing, it forces Bebe to stop stalling and get on with serious negotians.
He has to go along with it or risk worse breaches with world opinion, which does matter in the long run. He especially does not want to alienate public opinion in the US, and attention focused on them or the gory details of daily life in the apartheid State of Israel may turn some heads (especially if the US propoganda "news networks" decide to allow discussion of Israel instead of the truncated reports, deep sighs and hand-wringing over Israels "predicament" that passes for information here.)

Furthermore, building industries forces Israel to open the borders on the West Bank and Gaza.

Finally, this move backs a settlement deal with big dollars invested from international businesses. These people do not like to have their investments threatened by religeous zealots, especially if the zealots are ones we have been propping up for years while it steals land and water from the indigenous population.

Very shrewd on policy on the part of the US. And apparantly in the works for a long time with numerous players.

There's a group of reformed LA gang members who now run businesses. They wear T-shirts that say "The best way to stop a bullet is with a job". This could bring on a big change in the facts on the ground. Hope it works.


http://www.nytimes.com/2013/05/27/world/middleeast/peres-says-israel-must-overcome-skepticism-about-peace.html?pagewanted=1&_r=0&partner=rss&emc=rss

I don't actually think Israel will care or do anything about it. Why would they? What is the worst that will happen, the US will threaten to cut them off for a few days again?

US public opinion can not be changed because the lobbyists will not allow them access to another side of the story and the news networks will never allow free discussion (weren't 2 reporters sacked from Fox recently for exactly this?)

Israel do not want a two state solution. They do not, so any involvement in peace talks is all brinkmanship on their behalf and they do it because every time they have it the past they have been rewarded in a very Pavlovian manner by the US and UK, and never punished when they carry on regardless.

They are very good at making offers that are impossible for Palestinians to accept and then blaming them for not accepting, just like the Camp David and later the desperate Clinton overtures. Even Shlomo Ben-Ami said "If I were a Palestinian I would have rejected camp David as well" because counter to what the ADL, AIPCAP and their owned politicians and media in the US said, what was being proposed was a further capitulation from Palestine reducing their territory even more, having them not as a free state but still under the control of Israel and kept defense less to them. Whilst this was all happening of course, Israel had confiscated another 40,000 acres of land, built hundreds of miles of roads and 30 new settlements. They did not want a solution. They wanted a diversion which is exactly what the latest effort from Kerry will be. Another window for Israel to get their retaliation in first, and grab more land.

Originally Posted by pseudolus

I don't actually think Israel will care or do anything about it. Why would they?

I tend to agree with this.

Since this kind of international politics is pretty much always based in "interests", and has little to do with morality or ethics or the polite fiction of international law (no matter how effectively western democratic propaganda has convinced so many otherwise), it's hard to see what Israel would have to gain.

Seems like a bit of a puff piece and little else.

And when you think about it, with the "Palestinians" being part of the pan-Arab brotherhood and all, there are any number of wealthy Arabs in the region who could have invested 4 billion in "Palestine" any time they cared to. Apparently they never have. Not sure why an American politician should make any difference.

Until USA ceases to use Israel ...

People still don't get it, do they?

Originally Posted by pseudolus

I don't actually think Israel will care or do anything about it. Why would they?

They will care when it hits them in the hip pocket nerve, and the decent international community is well overdue applying these screws- thanks only to US bullying. Time to get real. Time for Israel to get real.


One state, or two?

Originally Posted by sabang

the decent international community

Do you do stand-up gigs as well?

Care to explain what you mean by this and give a few examples?