Thomas Eshuis wrote:

Animavore wrote:Despite President Scumbags pathetic little threats the U.N. votes to make the right decision on Jerusalem.

https://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way ... ntent=2050

Well done. I see my country, for a change, hasn't decided to blindly follow the US.

Same here. It has been quite refreshing to see this otherwise pathetic and ridiculous shower on occasion actually speaking out against and acting against Trumpitypump's stupidity.

Scot Dutchy wrote:

WayOfTheDodo wrote:

Scot Dutchy wrote:Israel should never had existed. There was no justification for it.

Why not? There are several reasons for Israel to exist, for example:

1. Jews have ethnic, historical, cultural and genetics ties to the area.

2. At the time the Jewish immigration started, Palestine was mostly empty. The population was extremely low.

3. The Jewish immigrants created economic growth and made previously barren lands fertile. This, in turn, attracted Arabs to the fertile and prosperous Jewish areas.

4. Once the Jews were already there and settled in, there is no reason why they should have been kicked out.

5. Since you can't just evict all the Jews (unless you think ethnic cleansing is OK as long as it's Jews suffering it), what are you going to do when you hand the area over to the locals as the British wanted to do? You can either make a single state, or you can split it up. Considering the violence, hatred and persecution aimed at Jews by their Arab neighbors, a single state was not a good solution. Holocaust was also fresh in mind. And so, the only way to do it was to create two states: An Arab and a Jewish state.

Those are not reasons just excuses. There is no reason for the existence of Israel. It was political pressure by extremely wealthy zionist families. Balfour also considered Africa. Basing any country on a extreme religious movement will never succeed.

Right, then there are no reasons for anything. Everything is just excuses. Why does the US exist? There's no reason for it to exist, only excuses. Why does the UK exist? No reasons, just excuses.

And claiming that the wish to escape persecution is just an excuse? Laughable. Fucking laughable. The fact is that the Jews were being persecuted around the world, and they needed somewhere they could stay safe and without persecution. It just so happened that there was a largely empty area they had historical, cultural, ethnic and genetic ties to.

Zionism was not an religious movement. It was largely secular, with Socialists (Atheist) making up a huge portion of the movement.

willhud9 wrote:The answer to both of your questions is no and no. A more realistic question is: would Israel adopt the Palestinians into Israel while giving them equal representation as a people group in government?

Israel already did that. Arabs make up 1/5 of the population in Israel, have their own political parties, and Arabic is an official language in Israel.

The problem, of course, is if Arabs who want to kill all Jews become a majority of the population... And as we see, mixing different groups in one single state is a bad idea. See Kurds vs. the rest. See other areas where different ethnic groups have been forced to live together. Conflict is what happens.

Kurds should get their own Kurdish state, just like the Jews have Jewish state.

Shrunk wrote:

willhud9 wrote:The problem, and its a big problem, is in the trust that Israel would actually treat the Palestinians as equal citizens and not second-class.

If Israel is meant to be a Jewish homeland, I don't see how that is possible.

I can't think of any other religion that has an entire country dedicated to its preservation. Well, I guess Roman Catholicism.

Israel is not a Jewish-religious state, it is Jewish-ethnic state. It is not about religion, it is about an ethnic minority.

The_Metatron wrote:That simply wasn’t vacant land those imperialists carved up after the First World War. And, it wasn’t fucking empty when the UN decided to create Israel out of thin air and assign them Palestinian land as their shiny new country.

The land was vacant when the Jewish immigration started in the late 1800s. Once the Jews started moving in and increasing the standard of living, Arabs soon followed. They wanted a piece of the goodie pie, too.

The fact is that Palestine was extremely sparsely populated when the first Jewish immigrants started arriving.

proudfootz wrote:I'll just leave this colorful graphic here:



If we should ignore how Israel came to be in Palestine and its continued behavior, why not invite them to your neighborhood instead?

That map is a blatant misrepresentation. It assumes that Palestine belonged to the Arabs.

The problem being that Australia is an existing state, while Palestine was an area under someone else's rule. The British then decided to give the area independence after they took over, and they had to find a good way to give the locals independence. The obvious choice was to give each group their own state.

Anything else would be completely retarded. Why would the Arabs get everything and the Jews nothing? Only those who hate Jews think the Arabs should get everything and the Jews nothing.

Fallible wrote:

Macdoc wrote:So how was supper?

Eh? Again, eating is not in the same universe as invading someone's land and ejecting them from their homes.

Who invaded someone's land, and who were ejected from their homes?

Scot Dutchy wrote:Colonisation from 1700 to 1900 occurred organically as was case all over the world. Israel was imposed on the whim of a stupid Englishman who had very rich Jewish friends.

Not really. Israel wasn't imposed any more than Jordan was. Israel was created because the Jews in the area needed their own state to escape persecution (from Arabs).

Why was the Jewish state "imposed", but not the Arab state?

See, it's that fucking racism against Jews again.

Thomas Eshuis wrote:Mandatory disclaimer to refute perdictable straw-men: I do not hold the position that Israel should not exist.

WayOfTheDodo wrote:

Scot Dutchy wrote:Israel should never had existed. There was no justification for it.

Why not? There are several reasons for Israel to exist, for example:

1. Jews have ethnic, historical, cultural and genetics ties to the area.

So do Palestinians.

So? That's completely and utterly irrelevant to my point. I never said that Palestinians shouldn't have their own state. This was one of the reasons why Israel exists, not why other states should not exist.

WayOfTheDodo wrote:2. At the time the Jewish immigration started, Palestine was mostly empty.

This is a ludicrous myth.

No, it is not:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demograph ... ne_(region)

WayOfTheDodo wrote: The population was extremely low.

And yet the Jews were still greatly outnumbered by the Palestinian population.

So? Another irrelevant comment.

WayOfTheDodo wrote:3. The Jewish immigrants created economic growth and made previously barren lands fertile.

More one-sided propaganda.

It is a fact, is it not? And if you think it's one-sided, what is the other side?

WayOfTheDodo wrote:4. Once the Jews were already there and settled in, there is no reason why they should have been kicked out.

Again, the same applies to Palestinians, yet Israel starting kicking out Palestinians during the civil war and continue to do so through expanding colonies.

First of all, the Arabs were the one who started trying to ethnically cleanse the Jews, and the Jews were forced to defend themselves.

Secondly, this is, again, irrelevant to the point I'm making. Are you really saying that it would be OK to kick out Jews who were already there and settled in? That it would be OK to ethnically cleanse the Jews from the areas they were living it?

WayOfTheDodo wrote:
5. Since you can't just evict all the Jews (unless you think ethnic cleansing is OK as long as it's Jews suffering it), what are you going to do when you hand the area over to the locals as the British wanted to do? You can either make a single state, or you can split it up. Considering the violence, hatred and persecution aimed at Jews by their Arab neighbors, a single state was not a good solution. Holocaust was also fresh in mind. And so, the only way to do it was to create two states: An Arab and a Jewish state.

A reasonable and productive way to do that would be through compromise.
Instead a unilateral decision was 'offered' to the Arabs. A decision which not only gave a disproportionate ammount of territory to the Jews, but also violated the Palestinian right to self determination.

The Arabs had already gotten huge areas of land for their own state (Jordan). The Jews got far less land than they originally hoped for, but they still agreed. The Arabs were unwilling to settle with anything less than 100%, and that is the problem here.

So again, what is your solution? Should the Jews have been offered less land for their new state? That would mean that many Jews would end up living outside of Israel, which would not exactly be a good thing. Remember, the proposed borders were drawn based on where the different groups were a majority at the time.

Basically, you seem to be dragging the discussion off-topic. I am giving reasons for Israel to exist, nothing else. I am not saying in what shape or form it should exist in this particular part of the discussion. I am merely pointing out specific reasons why it should exist in some form.

Thomas Eshuis wrote:

WayOfTheDodo wrote:

Agi Hammerthief wrote:

WayOfTheDodo wrote:
And the occupation started as a result of Israel being attacked, similar to how the allied forces occupied Germany during WWI.

How considerate of the allied forces to hide their settlements so well, you'd think they didn't exsist.

You are talking about something entirely different.

No, he isn't.

WayOfTheDodo wrote: I am talking about the occupation itself. The whole reason Israel was forced to occupy those areas was because they were attacked. Israel didn't even want to move into the West Bank in the first place.

I wasn't aware that Germany was still part of the UK, US, France and Russia.
Oh, that's right, because it isn't. And hasn't been since 1949.
Why? Because the Allies only remained to keep order until the new German nation could provide for itself.
Which is not at all analogous to the situation in Israel, where it not only occupied Palestinian territory, but effectively annaxed it and keeps building colonies on.

WayOfTheDodo wrote:
As for the settlements, is a bit more complicated than that. Many settlements consist of Jewish families that were ethnically cleansed from the West Bank in 1948. What they did was to return to their homes.

More distorted propaganda.

You fail again. Germany was occupied for years after the war ended. Israel is still at war, and as such, keeps occupying the areas of the enemy who attacked them.

Matt_B wrote:Sure, Israel can't call itself a fully secular state while discrimination against Arabs exists

What discrimination are you referring to here, specifically?

And all you Jew-haters who will now be flooding the thread with irrelevant links, I am not asking all of you. I am asking Matt_B what he is referring to.

WayOfTheDodo wrote:

Thomas Eshuis wrote:Mandatory disclaimer to refute perdictable straw-men: I do not hold the position that Israel should not exist.

WayOfTheDodo wrote:

Scot Dutchy wrote:Israel should never had existed. There was no justification for it.

Why not? There are several reasons for Israel to exist, for example:

1. Jews have ethnic, historical, cultural and genetics ties to the area.

So do Palestinians.

So? That's completely and utterly irrelevant to my point. I never said that Palestinians shouldn't have their own state. This was one of the reasons why Israel exists, not why other states should not exist.

Glad to see that you acknowledge the Palestinian right to their own state.

WayOfTheDodo wrote:

WayOfTheDodo wrote:2. At the time the Jewish immigration started, Palestine was mostly empty.

This is a ludicrous myth.

No, it is not:.

Yes it is.

men: I do not hold the position that Israel should not exist.

WayOfTheDodo wrote:https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographic_history_of_Palestine_(region)

Nothing about it being mostly empty. You do reaslise that land get's used for more than just houses, right? Like farmland for example.

WayOfTheDodo wrote:

WayOfTheDodo wrote: The population was extremely low.

And yet the Jews were still greatly outnumbered by the Palestinian population.

So? Another irrelevant comment.

False. The so-called 'oppurtunity' for palestinians to have their own country was in fact a disproportionate division giving the Jews much more land than their demographical representation.

WayOfTheDodo wrote:

WayOfTheDodo wrote:3. The Jewish immigrants created economic growth and made previously barren lands fertile.

More one-sided propaganda.

It is a fact, is it not?

It's also a fact that Nazi Germany started WW2. That doesn't mean, however, that all Germans at the time were Nazis or supported the war.

WayOfTheDodo wrote:And if you think it's one-sided, what is the other side?

That the Jewish immigrants brought with them a lot of wealth either personally or through sponsors. Means which the Palestinians never had access to.
It's like arguing the US had a right to displace and kill the native americans because they created economic and scientific development.

WayOfTheDodo wrote:

WayOfTheDodo wrote:4. Once the Jews were already there and settled in, there is no reason why they should have been kicked out.

Again, the same applies to Palestinians, yet Israel starting kicking out Palestinians during the civil war and continue to do so through expanding colonies.

First of all, the Arabs were the one who started trying to ethnically cleanse the Jews,

Every time you bring this up you fail to present any evidence for that claim.
We don't know who started it. Nor is it relevant when you participate.

WayOfTheDodo wrote: and the Jews were forced to defend themselves.

Ffs, you keep parroting this stupendously simplistic and false narrative don't you?
By that same token, Palestinians were defending themselves from the Jews.

WayOfTheDodo wrote:
Secondly, this is, again, irrelevant to the point I'm making.

It is a direct response to a point made by you, so the only way it is irrelevant, is if your original point is irrelevant.
You don't get to blindly dismiss anything that doesn't suit your narrative as irrelevant.

WayOfTheDodo wrote: Are you really saying that it would be OK to kick out Jews who were already there and settled in? That it would be OK to ethnically cleanse the Jews from the areas they were living it?

Are you still creating straw-men through JAQ-ing off? Guess you are.

WayOfTheDodo wrote:

WayOfTheDodo wrote:
5. Since you can't just evict all the Jews (unless you think ethnic cleansing is OK as long as it's Jews suffering it), what are you going to do when you hand the area over to the locals as the British wanted to do? You can either make a single state, or you can split it up. Considering the violence, hatred and persecution aimed at Jews by their Arab neighbors, a single state was not a good solution. Holocaust was also fresh in mind. And so, the only way to do it was to create two states: An Arab and a Jewish state.

A reasonable and productive way to do that would be through compromise.
Instead a unilateral decision was 'offered' to the Arabs. A decision which not only gave a disproportionate ammount of territory to the Jews, but also violated the Palestinian right to self determination.

The Arabs had already gotten huge areas of land for their own state (Jordan).

Another dishonest lie. Palestinians did not and do not recognise Jordan as their state.
Nor did the UN partition plan designate Jordan as the Palestinian country.
Where the fuck do you come up with these fantastical arguments?

WayOfTheDodo wrote:
The Jews got far less land than they originally hoped for,

How is that in any way relevant? If the Palestinians had numbered only a 100 people and hoped for 80% of the land, would that somehow be acceptable?
The Jews were a minority, yet they got far more than their demographic share.
Conversly, the Palestinians had no say whatsoever and were offered far less than their demographic share.

WayOfTheDodo wrote: but they still agreed.

Not strange when you get more land than you have people.

WayOfTheDodo wrote:The Arabs were unwilling to settle with anything less than 100%, and that is the problem here.

That's another generalising fabrication.

WayOfTheDodo wrote:So again, what is your solution? Should the Jews have been offered less land for their new state? That would mean that many Jews would end up living outside of Israel, which would not exactly be a good thing. Remember, the proposed borders were drawn based on where the different groups were a majority at the time.

I'm notr interested in your straw-man.
I don't know whether a completely fair and equitable solution can be found at this time.
I do know, however, that Israel's continuing occupation of Gaza (yes, controlling a regions traffic is still a form of occupation) and colonialist expansion is both counterproductive and illegal.

WayOfTheDodo wrote:
Basically, you seem to be dragging the discussion off-topic.

Another blind dismissal not given in evidence.

WayOfTheDodo wrote: I am giving reasons for Israel to exist, nothing else.

You're also giving excuses for Isreali/partial Jewish agressive and illegal acts.

WayOfTheDodo wrote:
I am not saying in what shape or form it should exist in this particular part of the discussion. I am merely pointing out specific reasons why it should exist in some form.

Some of which are irrational and/or in conflict with the Palestinian right to self-determination.

WayOfTheDodo wrote:

Thomas Eshuis wrote:

WayOfTheDodo wrote:

Agi Hammerthief wrote:
How considerate of the allied forces to hide their settlements so well, you'd think they didn't exsist.

You are talking about something entirely different.

No, he isn't.

WayOfTheDodo wrote: I am talking about the occupation itself. The whole reason Israel was forced to occupy those areas was because they were attacked. Israel didn't even want to move into the West Bank in the first place.

I wasn't aware that Germany was still part of the UK, US, France and Russia.
Oh, that's right, because it isn't. And hasn't been since 1949.
Why? Because the Allies only remained to keep order until the new German nation could provide for itself.
Which is not at all analogous to the situation in Israel, where it not only occupied Palestinian territory, but effectively annaxed it and keeps building colonies on.

WayOfTheDodo wrote:
As for the settlements, is a bit more complicated than that. Many settlements consist of Jewish families that were ethnically cleansed from the West Bank in 1948. What they did was to return to their homes.

More distorted propaganda.

You fail again.

I can't do something again, that I haven't been demonstrated to have done even once.

WayOfTheDodo wrote: Germany was occupied for years after the war ended.

You really should not accuse someone else of failing and then in the very next sentence spout counterfactual bullshit.
The occupation ended in 1949, only 4 years after the end of the war.
And again, that was only to stabilise the country. They did not colonise parts of Germany, nor did they continue to control access to the region.

WayOfTheDodo wrote: Israel is still at war,

You really must get out of that alternate reality.
Israel is not at war. There has been no declaration to such effect.
And if they were they could end said war very quickly by just occupying all of Palestine.
Instead they perform raids, implement illegal blockkades and acts of colonisation.

WayOfTheDodo wrote: and as such, keeps occupying the areas of the enemy who attacked them.

More black and white nonsense.

WayOfTheDodo wrote:

Scot Dutchy wrote:Colonisation from 1700 to 1900 occurred organically as was case all over the world. Israel was imposed on the whim of a stupid Englishman who had very rich Jewish friends.

Not really. Israel wasn't imposed any more than Jordan was. Israel was created because the Jews in the area needed their own state to escape persecution (from Arabs).

Why was the Jewish state "imposed", but not the Arab state?

See, it's that fucking racism against Jews again.

Complete fucktwittery.

WayOfTheDodo wrote:

willhud9 wrote:The answer to both of your questions is no and no. A more realistic question is: would Israel adopt the Palestinians into Israel while giving them equal representation as a people group in government?

Israel already did that.

No they don't.

WayOfTheDodo wrote: Arabs make up 1/5 of the population in Israel, have their own political parties, and Arabic is an official language in Israel.

And there are multiple laws that discriminate against Palestinians.
ttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arab_citizens_of_Israel

According to a study commissioned by the Arab Association of Human Rights entitled "Silencing Dissent," over the past three years, eight of nine of these Arab Knesset members have been beaten by Israeli forces during demonstrations.[157] Most recently according to the report, legislation has been passed, including three election laws [e.g., banning political parties], and two Knesset related laws aimed to "significantly curb the minority [Arab population] right to choose a public representative and for those representatives to develop independent political platforms and carry out their duties".[158]]

On 31 July 2003, Israel enacted the Citizenship and Entry into Israel Law (Temporary Provision), 5763-2003, a one-year amendment to Israel's Citizenship Law denying citizenship and Israeli residence to Palestinians who reside in the West Bank or Gaza Strip and who marry Israelis; the rule has been waived for any Palestinian "who identifies with the State of Israel and its goals, when he or a member of his family has taken concrete action to advance the security, economy or any other matter important to the State". Upon expiration the law was extended for six months in August 2004, and again for four months in February 2005.[210] On 8 May 2005, the Israeli ministerial committee for issues of legislation once again amended the Citizenship and Entry into Israel Law, to restrict citizenship and residence in Israel only to Palestinian men over the age of 35, and Palestinian women over the age of 25.Although this law theoretically applies to all Israelis, it has disproportionately affected Arab citizens of Israel;[212] Arabs are far more likely to have Palestinian spouses than other Israelis.[213] Thus the law has been widely considered discriminatory[214] and the United Nations Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination has unanimously approved a resolution saying that the Israeli law violated an international human rights treaty against racism.[215]

Israeli High Court Justice (Ret.) Theodor Or wrote in The Report by the State Commission of Inquiry into the Events of October 2000:[216]

The Arab citizens of Israel live in a reality in which they experience discrimination as Arabs. This inequality has been documented in a large number of professional surveys and studies, has been confirmed in court judgments and government resolutions, and has also found expression in reports by the state comptroller and in other official documents. Although the Jewish majority’s awareness of this discrimination is often quite low, it plays a central role in the sensibilities and attitudes of Arab citizens. This discrimination is widely accepted, both within the Arab sector and outside it, and by official assessments, as a chief cause of agitation.

So they're not equal in the slighest.

WayOfTheDodo wrote:
The problem, of course, is if Arabs who want to kill all Jews become a majority of the population...

You'd first need to provide evidence that this would be the case.
And even then, no country in the Western world revokes citizenship based on thoughtcrime.

WayOfTheDodo wrote:

The_Metatron wrote:That simply wasn’t vacant land those imperialists carved up after the First World War. And, it wasn’t fucking empty when the UN decided to create Israel out of thin air and assign them Palestinian land as their shiny new country.

The land was vacant when the Jewish immigration started in the late 1800s.

Still counterfactual bullshit. No matter how many times you mindlessly regurgitate it.

WayOfTheDodo wrote:Once the Jews started moving in and increasing the standard of living, Arabs soon followed. They wanted a piece of the goodie pie, too.

More unsubstantiated bullshit.

WayOfTheDodo wrote:The fact is that Palestine was extremely sparsely populated when the first Jewish immigrants started arriving.

So what? Natural parks are completely unpopulated. Does that mean that anyone that wants to just gets to claim it?

WayOfTheDodo wrote:

proudfootz wrote:I'll just leave this colorful graphic here:



If we should ignore how Israel came to be in Palestine and its continued behavior, why not invite them to your neighborhood instead?

That map is a blatant misrepresentation. It assumes that Palestine belonged to the Arabs.

Yeah, Palestine belonged to the British who I suppose have the right to do whatever the hell they want with it no matter what the people who lived their wanted.

The problem being that Australia is an existing state, while Palestine was an area under someone else's rule. The British then decided to give the area independence after they took over, and they had to find a good way to give the locals independence. The obvious choice was to give each group their own state.

Anything else would be completely retarded. Why would the Arabs get everything and the Jews nothing? Only those who hate Jews think the Arabs should get everything and the Jews nothing.

No one suggested 'the Arabs get everything and the Jews get nothing' - claiming anyone said any such thing is completely retarded (to use the term you seem to prefer).

What has been suggested that all the Palestinians - Jews, Christians, and Muslims - become equal citizens of Palestine.

quas wrote:For the betterment of men, you have to support Israel. It's unbelievable how much they have contributed to the advancement of scientific knowledge and technology. If Arabs or whoever else occupied that land, we wouldn't be as advanced today.

Yeah, featherlss chickens....

What a crock of shit argument. If it wasn't for jews and their stupid religion, we'd be more advanced today! If it wasn't for dumbass posts like your one, we'd be more advanced today! I'm sure just having that peice of land is what made them discover things though. Wouldn't be any of the money the rest of the world pays them now, would it.

quas wrote:

The_Metatron wrote:
That’s your measure of lesser people, is it?

We wouldn’t be friends, you and I. You think there exists people that are less than other people.

You’re futile attempts to bait me into a pissing contest about how fucking wonderful Israel is are in vain. My utter fucking contempt for the shit you wrote is well grounded in your assertion of everyone else to be lesser men.

In the same way that I do not accept the concept of the “sins of the father”, I utterly reject granting any group of people support because ancestors...

I don't care about any ancestors horseshit, I am just a 21st century digital boy enjoying modern technological advancements that come to me courtesy of Israel. If Arabs or whoever else had created the processors that made modern-day computer gaming possible for me, then I would approve of them occupying whatever land they needed to create the best R&D facilities on the planet.

Brits made the first computer...

quas wrote:

Thomas Eshuis wrote:Citation missing. Go tell that to the French, Americans, Japanese, Chinese and many other countries which have all produced and in many cases continue to produce groundbreaking technologies.

Using computers with Intel inside, no doubt.

Except Viatron made the first microprocessor.

As for Intel, it was 3 guys. An Italian, Federico Faggin, Ted Hoff, an American and Stanley Mazor, another American who had jewish parents. The Italian was the project lead btw.