Apparently there is a league and Mr Miniter is the score-keeper.

And it's great to see that with Obama the US is guarenteed to follow the same line with Israel, Namely head stuck well up their arse. ( Just check how much money and military equipment the US gives Israel each year. )

"Democratic presidential hopeful Barack Obama on Tuesday stressed his "stalwart" support for Israel and his ties to American Jews, during a presidential debate with rival candidate Hillary Clinton.

He added that has always been "a stalwart friend of Israel's" and said he considers Israel to be one of the U.S.' "most important allies in the region [Mideast]."

"I think that their security is sacrosanct," he added."
http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/958748.html

Quote from Racer Y :

I tried to read all of this thread, but it was mostly blah blah blah Israel... Blah Blah Lizard... flambaiting... Blah blah...
Anyways What I'm getting out of all this is:
You got morons like the (ROFL) "Goddammed Finklestein SHIT kid"
(lol watch Up in Smoke ) as college professors and goof balls that couldn't cope with typical suburban post teen angst shooting people...Just why in the Hell does a college education cost so damn much?
And does anyone really learn anything in those places?

My education doesn't seem to have gotten me much, because I don't understand a goddamn word of this post.

Quote from Racer X NZ :

I actually thought that the US and Israel had ignored any UN ruling on Israels behavior in Palestine. The US has certainly voted against UN rulings and vetoed security council moves.

And it's interesting to see Israel is still murdering children in the Gaza strip, strange the total lack of indignation from anyone regarding this.
Only when the Palestinians kill an Israeli does there seem to be an outcry !
This is this week by the way.

"Israeli military forces have killed four Palestinian children in the latest air strike on the Gaza Strip, medics say.

The children aged eight, nine, eleven and twelve, were killed while they played in a field in the town of Jabaliya in the north of the territory on Thursday.

Another Israeli aircraft struck two targets in the northern Gaza Strip on Thursday afternoon, killing at least one person and wounding two others, Palestinian medics said.

Eleven other Palestinians, including a six-month-old baby, were killed in the Israeli raids on the Gaza Strip on Wednesday."
http://www.presstv.ir/detail.a ... 1&sectionid=351020202

That may occasionally be true. But if that was absolutely true then there wouldn't be a cease fire now would it?

I hate idiots that feel the urge/need to C & P random articles into a new thread for no apparent reason

"Self-Hating Jew hates America"

more like

"JO53PHS hates C & P wannabe journalists"

Quote from lizardfolk :

That may occasionally be true. But if that was absolutely true then there wouldn't be a cease fire now would it?

Did you bother reading my post ?

If there is a cease fire then why is Israel carrying out airstrikes right now, 32 dead including 5 children in 3 days. ?

Or is it just a cease fire for the Palestinians ?

This quote seems to sum up the whole problem. Unfortunately it's made by a 'radical palestinian' so it will be completely ignored.

But prominent Palestinian activist Hanan Ashrawi said Israel was guilty of double standards.

"If you make security for Israel a precondition while Israel has a free hand to kill and destroy and wreak havoc in Palestinian lives, you will never get anywhere," she said.

"There has to be security for everybody."
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/middle_east/7270300.stm

And re UN resolutions - ( This is from 1967 to 2000 )

Israel, our closest "ally" in the Middle East, has been the subject of 138 resolutions. Not surprisingly, most of those resolutions call upon Israel to comply with basic principles of international law embodied by the UN Charter. Many of them condemn actions taken by Israel and call upon Israel on more than one occasion to comply with previous resolutions that Israel ignored and continues to ignore to this day.

http://www.mediamonitors.net/m ... mp;suleimaniajlouni1.html

And this resolution has been breached for 40 years.

On June, 14, 1967, through Resolution No. 237, the Security Council called upon Israel to "ensure the safety, welfare and security of the inhabitants, facilitate the return of those inhabitants who have fled the areas since the outbreak of the hostilities and recommends the scrupulous respect of the humanitarian principles contained in the Geneva Conventions of 12 August 1949." In subsequent resolutions, the Security Council deplored Israel for the delay in its implementation of Resolution 237. Yet, Israel continued to defy the world community, including the United States. The Security Council, in the face of Israel's defiance, passed no less than five subsequent resolutions demanding that Israel comply but to this day, thirty five years after June 14, 1967, the defiance continues.

But apparently, to "ensure the safety, welfare and security of the inhabitants, facilitate the return of those inhabitants who have fled the areas since the outbreak of the hostilities and recommends the scrupulous respect of the humanitarian principles contained in the Geneva Conventions of 12 August 1949." is completely unreasonable.
Perhaps this is what Finklestein is referring too, that would certainly make him anti Israeli.

I also failed to notice any reference to any breached UN resolutions by Obama, rather he stated "I think that their ( Israel's ) security is sacrosanct," so I guess he won't be pushing for Israel to comply with UN resolutions.

Quote from Racer X NZ :

I also failed to notice any reference to any breached UN resolutions by Obama, rather he stated "I think that their ( Israel's ) security is sacrosanct," so I guess he won't be pushing for Israel to comply with UN resolutions.

I didn't say Obama opted to breach in the UNSC Resolutions.

Quote from Racer X NZ :

Did you bother reading my post ? (LOL)



"If you make security for Israel a precondition while Israel has a free hand to kill and destroy and wreak havoc in Palestinian lives, you will never get anywhere," she said.

"There has to be security for everybody."

You know, I think that the way Israel handles the Palistinian situation, at least military wise, is the main source of all their problems with that nonsense.

See, they go after a bunch of thugs (who else goes out and shoots rockets at random people?) with helicopters and tanks and crap. and that leads to two things: First, just by their counter actions or retaliation by those means, it gives legitimacy to the "cause" of the targets. Why else would dealing with them require such massive firepower? If they did that in Los Angeles then pretty soon some moron with tattoos on his forehead would be addressing the U.N.
Second, those methods always ALWAYS lead to innocent people getting killed. And that doesn't look good AND it really paves the way for more violence. Afterall, If my house was ran over by a bulldozer because some jerk off I didn't even know was firing a mortar nearby, I wouldn't be too enthused about any sort of peace or cooperation with the people that did it.

The Israelis need to get back to basics and realize they are dealing with gangsters and play them like that instead of what they're doing thus far.

Racer Y, considerations about gangsters aside you have just described (almost) perfectly one of the most despisable aspects of Israeli tactics on the field. But, just as the US in Iraq, the IDF must stick to terrorist tactics since a cleaner approach to the enemy would lead to much heavier losses on their side, and this would lead to the end of the occupation. And this tells you how vicious occupations are since they add a sense of corruption that can't be easily shaken away. Military wise, there's no honour in such methods.

I agree with your analysis, and I thought such a thing could never happen in this forum.

Edit: about this issue there's a piece of Ran HaCohen which I deem particularly interesting: Israel - A Suicide Bomber?

A small illustration of what so enrages Palestinians ...



I imagine anyone who belonged to the green bits would want to know why the hell Israel's been allowed to get away with this blatant, illegal & immoral annexation, occupation and disposession for nearly 50 years. How can this be justified? Someone please, take up a devil's advocate position and tell me how anything illustrated above - especially since 1967 - is even remotely fair.

...and you have to take into account that those maps only show the land. Resources such as water are not shown, and water is extremely important there. A map containing the appropriation of resources would be pretty damning for Israel too.

Israel, however, did build a separation wall from Palestine to stop suicide bombers, and it has been partially effective. They didn't build it exactly on the 1967 Green Line, though: they managed to take some more land.

Quote from Albieg :

Racer Y, considerations about gangsters aside you have just described (almost) perfectly one of the most despisable aspects of Israeli tactics on the field. But, just as the US in Iraq, the IDF must stick to terrorist tactics since a cleaner approach to the enemy would lead to much heavier losses on their side, and this would lead to the end of the occupation. And this tells you how vicious occupations are since they add a sense of corruption that can't be easily shaken away. Military wise, there's no honour in such methods.

I agree with your analysis, and I thought such a thing could never happen in this forum.

Edit: about this issue there's a piece of Ran HaCohen which I deem particularly interesting: Israel - A Suicide Bomber?

yeah, that is weird huh

but you don't think the comparison to gangsters is accurate? I mean they employ liberal doses of intimidation and robin hood tactics for their local support, The chumps they strap bombs on may be mesmerized into thinking they are furthering the cause or whatever, but they also are removed as potential future threats from the leadership. A guy can't take your position five years from now if he's a martyr in two.

Something that operates like that should be easy to just take down. Just play the sub factions against each other. But all that overkill has pretty much galvanized local support. I think that even if Israel radically shifts its approach to the problem, it's going to take decades to reach a conclusion.

All I can say about that is that Hacohen's piece addresses the suicide bombers' tactics and reasons effectively, for me. There's no sense in quoting it since the whole piece is about this kind of tactics.

There's no way, however, to turn subfactions one against each other since the real problem stems from an occupation. The only way for something like that to happen would be to give complete satisfaction to the internal factions. In other words such a deadlock can't be easily solved, or flattened to a single, partial and one-sided point of view. It's a complex situation that demands complex answers, and a lot of pain to come.

Quote from Racer Y :

The chumps they strap bombs on may be mesmerized into thinking they are furthering the cause or whatever, but they also are removed as potential future threats from the leadership. A guy can't take your position five years from now if he's a martyr in two.

The ones that become martyrs never have a chance to being leaders to start with.

Average martyr profile:

You're a teenager. Your brother was tortured in prison when he was arrested for crossing into Israel and working illegally. He'd been doing so for 10 years anyway but now someone killed an Israeli soldier and they cracked down on the workers to put some pressure down in the community. Your family is shit poor, you can't find a job because on one hand there's a lockdown and your neighborhood shares commodities by throwing them from window to window as walking in the streets is prohibited and troups patrol them arresting or shooting anyone on sight. Even if you could find a job, it would be on the Israeli side of the border. Someone walks up to you and tells you, to keep this short, that your only option is getting revenge and restoring honour to your family - they will be taken care of with a sort of "martyr's pension" so they're better off if you sacrifice yourself - after all, you're doing it for them.

Might I propose a book: Wild Thorns by Sahar Khalifeh. While it focuses primarily on "how it is" from the Palestinian side, it doesn't do so to justify or anything - it keeps to the (in)humane side of things and really shows how deadlocked the situation is both for Israeli citizens and Arabs in the region.

Quote from xaotik :

The ones that become martyrs never have a chance to being leaders to start with.

Average martyr profile:

You're a teenager. Your brother was tortured in prison when he was arrested for crossing into Israel and working illegally. He'd been doing so for 10 years anyway but now someone killed an Israeli soldier and they cracked down on the workers to put some pressure down in the community. Your family is shit poor, you can't find a job because on one hand there's a lockdown and your neighborhood shares commodities by throwing them from window to window as walking in the streets is prohibited and troups patrol them arresting or shooting anyone on sight. Even if you could find a job, it would be on the Israeli side of the border. Someone walks up to you and tells you, to keep this short, that your only option is getting revenge and restoring honour to your family - they will be taken care of with a sort of "martyr's pension" so they're better off if you sacrifice yourself - after all, you're doing it for them.

That's all true.... BUT.....
If they didn't get get these people when they were so vulnerable, they might live long enough to decide that the current leadership is in effective - maybe think that they could do a better job OR realize that if they really want money power and honour, they need to call the shots. and the leadership of these groups know this very well.

breaking up the subfactions....
An easy way to to this would be to simply infiltrate their financing. The average Hamas guy doesn't have a clue as to EXACTLY who is financing them - I mean knowing the EXACT source of the money.
They can't. its all underground. Sure they know who the big sponsors are, but all the little guys donating to "charities"? If a "little guy" was to start sponsoring, but only lavish their funding on a certain clique within the organization, that right there would start intensifying the jealousy and rivalries that are already present. And also, When the IDF rolls in looking to bust heads, and they only target the same sub factions and leave a couple of other ones alone, suspicions will start popping up. Especially if these "untargeted" factions are rolling in cash and not getting shot at.

I guess I should try to be more indepth about this, but I just woke up.

Quote from Hankstar :

A small illustration of what so enrages Palestinians ...



I imagine anyone who belonged to the green bits would want to know why the hell Israel's been allowed to get away with this blatant, illegal & immoral annexation, occupation and disposession for nearly 50 years. How can this be justified? Someone please, take up a devil's advocate position and tell me how anything illustrated above - especially since 1967 - is even remotely fair.

Oops sorry for multiple posting, but I didin't see this...

Hank, I learned something a long time ago.....
There Ain't no such thing as Free and there ain't no such thing as fair. Life's a bitch and then you die.
Funny thing is, even if there was no Israel, I don't things would change all that much for the Palestinians. It might actually be worse.

Quote from Racer Y :

Funny thing is, even if there was no Israel, I don't things would change all that much for the Palestinians. It might actually be worse.

What could be worse than a neighbour with a permanent loan of a superpower's military budget stealing all your land and blowing up your civilians?

being welsh?

Quote from thisnameistaken :

What could be worse than a neighbour with a permanent loan of a superpower's military budget stealing all your land and blowing up your civilians?

Having it happen in a game of Risk when playing against a 12 year old who wears braces and can't stop giggling while spitting bits of cookies all over the board.

I'm curious to know.. the Beeb is reporting rockets being fired into Israel as the justification for the current aggression and illegal incursions into Gaza.. are the rockets actually being fired into Israel, or are they actually being fired into occupied territories belonging to Palestine? Not making a point, just curious to know.

Quote from Racer Y :

There Ain't no such thing as Free and there ain't no such thing as fair. Life's a bitch and then you die.

Apathy like that is probably the cause of 95% of the problems we're experiencing with the world right now. Not so much that people and governments do bad things, but because those who could do something to stop them are so damn apathetic about anything that doesn't perceivably affect them directly.

There is arguably strong evidence that the US government is EFFECTIVELY under the CONTROL of a foreign nation, and that that nation's activities are to the detriment of the safety and security of the US as a nation, so far to the tune of several thousand US civillian deaths on US mainland soil SINCE the turn of the millenium. But I guess life's a bitch and then you die, right?

Quote from Racer Y :

Hank, I learned something a long time ago.....
There Ain't no such thing as Free and there ain't no such thing as fair. Life's a bitch and then you die.
Funny thing is, even if there was no Israel, I don't things would change all that much for the Palestinians. It might actually be worse.

You just blew my mind.

Explain your thought process to me here. You think that, somehow, the Palestinians would've just degenerated into chaos & murder naturally if their land hadn't been carved up to form a new nation which then spent the next 50 goddam years carving it up even more, locking the people into tiny little chunks, cutting them off from resources, opportunities & each other & basically treating them like vermin in their own homeland? I know you're not that stupid.

"There's no such thing as free". Interesting. Palestinians would disagree with you, as that's all they want - to be free from a demonstrably illegal occupying force. Of course, if you meant "free" the other way around, as in getting stuff without earning it, you should apply that to the succession of Israeli governments who have stolen bits of Palestine and locked the indigenous inhabitants out of them.

"Life's a bitch and then you die." I'm sure the families of the 3000 9/11 victims and the relatives of 4000+ KIA soldiers in Iraq/Afghanistan would agree with you. Or does that only apply to dark-skinned foreigners?

Sorry, but you've done absolutely nothing to dispel that old stereotype of the apathetic, ignorant American who couldn't give a shit about anything outside the 50 states. For all I know you don't fit the stereotype one bit, but that post of yours speaks pretty loudly.

Quote from Hankstar :

You just blew my mind.

Qualunquismo.

I guess there's no translation in English, maybe whateverism, the feeling that things never change, don't have any emotional content and no meaning. Whatever it is, it is, and if it's different, it's the same.

It's an apparently light form of cynicism, extremely diffused. To tell the whole truth I don't think Racer Y is just as his words sometimes are, I don't know him so well to say something so personal.

I'll just consider his dismissive tone a useless way to say that, no matter the facts presented, he'll stick to his own opinion. Once again, no wonder. I don't expect people to change opinion. At least, not suddenly.

Fact is, a lot of people have lost (or never had) their individuality to favour some sort of collective identity where consensus counts more than personality, to the point that facts no longer form opinions: opinions form facts. It's a vicious epic to which I'll always prefer the fragmentation of modernity.

Quote from Racer Y :

Hank, I learned something a long time ago.....
There Ain't no such thing as Free and there ain't no such thing as fair. Life's a bitch and then you die.
Funny thing is, even if there was no Israel, I don't things would change all that much for the Palestinians. It might actually be worse.

Considering that if Israel didn't exist then Lebanon and Syria wouldn't have focused their attention on that region, I wouldn't say Palestine would be worse. (They want Israel to be recognized as a illegitimate state.)

However, Israel was bound to happen either way mainly because of the troubles that the British Mandate had with Zionist in the region. In fact, the main reason why the Mandate handed over Palestine to the UN was and I quote

Quote :

In the years following World War II, Britain's control over Palestine became increasingly tenuous. This was caused by a combination of factors, including:

• Rapid deterioration due to the attacks by the Irgun and Lehi on British officials, armed forces, and strategic installations. This caused severe damage to British morale and prestige, as well as increasing opposition to the mandate in Britain itself, public opinion demanding to "bring the boys home". (Sounds familiar? )
  
• World public opinion turned against Britain as a result of the British policy of preventing Holocaust survivors from reaching Palestine, sending them instead to Cyprus Interment Camps, or even back to Germany, as in the case of Exodus 1947. (Sounds familiar? )
  
• The costs of maintaining an army of over 100,000 men in Palestine weighed heavily on a British economy suffering from post-war depression, and was another cause for British public opinion to demand an end to the Mandate.
  
• US Congress was delaying a loan necessary to prevent British bankruptcy. The delays were in response to the British refusal to fulfill a promise given to Truman that 100,000 Holocaust survivors would be allowed to migrate to Palestine.

Finally in early 1947 the British Government announced their desire to terminate the Mandate, and passed the responsibility over Palestine to the UN.

This whole Palestine situation sucked to begin with. So do you want Palestinian/Lebanon/Syrian terrorists wanting Israel to become an illegitimate state? Or do you want some extremist Zionist terrorist wanting a "home for the Jews"?

And with the whole Holocaust event so fresh in the minds of the public at the time can you blame the UN for creating Israel? Hindsight 20/20 right?

Quote from SamH :

Apathy like that is probably the cause of 95% of the problems we're experiencing with the world right now. Not so much that people and governments do bad things, but because those who could do something to stop them are so damn apathetic about anything that doesn't perceivably affect them directly.

Quote from lizardfolk :

This whole Palestine situation sucked to begin with. So do you want Palestinian/Lebanon/Syrian terrorists wanting Israel to become an illegitimate state? Or do you want some extremist Zionist terrorist wanting a "home for the Jews"?

I think your question is stupid, rethorical and offensive. As such it deserves only an improper answer.

I know what I want: I'd like that people like you, who have a penchant for simplifying, wouldn't attribute their simplifications to people who have demonstrated to you - even harshly - they have spent much more time and brains than you did or you'll ever do on some issues.

Age and education matter. Call it experience, if you like. Don't insult it, and don't insult the intelligence of people who are talking to you, next time.