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The last person responsible for rending an area Judenrein before Sharon did it in 2005 was Adolf Hitler.
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I'm pretty sure Lisa doesn't like him because he ordered the disengagement of Gush Katiff - a settlement in Gaza. It took a huge emotional toll on Israelis and Jews abroad.
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quote:I'm not exactly sure what you meant, but Israel does not embrace terrorism.
Perhaps then you can explain why Israel has elected leaders that had in fact been members of terrorist organizations and conducted bombing that killed civilians? Does terrorism simply not count if you agree with the terrorists agenda?
There was never, ever, ever a Jewish group that targeted civilians. Military targets, yes. Government targets, yes. Civilian? Never. Go look it up again, Rabbit.
I read an article a couple days ago about a group of Israeli settlers in the West Bank who set up road blocks to stop buses with Palestinian workers bound for Israel. When the buses stopped, the settlers beat the workers inside. Elsewhere, they set fire to Palestinian farms, and when the Palestinians came out to try and fight them off by throwing rocks, the settlers responded with weapons fire.
Now, granted, they were pissed, I think over the forced evacuation of a local settlement that they blamed the Palestinians for, ultimately. But they didn't take out their frustrations on government buildings, they cut olive trees, burned farms, shot at people, and ambushed others.
I guess settlers don't count though since they aren't an official paramilitary group, no? I'm not trying to make a larger point or establish moral equivalency, I'm really just saying "never say never."
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quote:Originally posted by Armoth: I'm pretty sure Lisa doesn't like him because he ordered the disengagement of Gush Katiff - a settlement in Gaza. It took a huge emotional toll on Israelis and Jews abroad.
A settlement? Try several towns. Try 9000 Jews rendered homeless, and most of them rendered jobless. Some of whom had lived there all their lives. Some of whom had lived there for a good 25 years. Built homes, families, communities. All of whom were thrown out at the command of Ariel Sharon the pig.
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*shakes head sadly* One only needs look at the Wikipedia entry on Gush Katif to see why America should just back away slowly from Israel and let the entire stinking country fall into the sea.
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The people who live there are absolutely determined to turn the country into a cesspool of hate. And all foreign interference is doing is shoring up both sides of the conflict, making it more and more essential from their POV that they justify their behavior to themselves. Walking away is the only sane option.
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I definitely don't want to get involved in another argument here so I only have two minor things to say:
1) Democracy is meaningless if it isn't preceded by universal access to education. 2) I don't endorse ever intervening in any situation in both the parties involved think of their existing or proposed nation-states as singular ethnic or racial units.
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quote:Originally posted by TomDavidson: *shakes head sadly* One only needs look at the Wikipedia entry on Gush Katif to see why America should just back away slowly from Israel and let the entire stinking country fall into the sea.
We back off and someone gets nuked. It's as simple as that.
Without American support, Israel won't have the economic power to keep their military at a level necessary to fend off large scale attacks. They couldn't even take southern Lebanon a couple years ago fighting insurgents.
If they get invaded and they lose, they'll nuke something, something like Mecca, or Cairo or Damascus, in an effort to survive or as a parting shot. I can't guarantee that they'd even be invaded in that given circumstance, but a vocal segment of the Jewish population on Hatrack seems to think so, to say nothing of people in Israel itself.
And if you think for a second that we won't get tagged with a heavy dose of the blame for it, you're nuts. We shot ourselves in the foot decades ago by tying ourselves so deeply to Israel's long term safety, and the umbrella of protection that we created that gave them the chance to build their own country would be as much to blame as what they ended up building. In the 50s and 60s I think creating a home for Jews was the right thing to do, and protecting them was the right thing to do, but maybe we went about it in the wrong way, and maybe we got carried away with it out of principle without ever looking back, but it is what it is, and much as I would like to have that particular monkey off our national back, I think we have a better chance at seeing it through to the end than we would just dumping the whole mess.
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quote:I read an article a couple days ago about a group of Israeli settlers in the West Bank who set up road blocks to stop buses with Palestinian workers bound for Israel. When the buses stopped, the settlers beat the workers inside. Elsewhere, they set fire to Palestinian farms, and when the Palestinians came out to try and fight them off by throwing rocks, the settlers responded with weapons fire.
Now, granted, they were pissed, I think over the forced evacuation of a local settlement that they blamed the Palestinians for, ultimately. But they didn't take out their frustrations on government buildings, they cut olive trees, burned farms, shot at people, and ambushed others.
And when settlers do things like that they get arrested and the Palestinians get compensated for property damage.
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Blayne Bradley
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quote:Originally posted by Mucus:
quote:Originally posted by TomDavidson: ... Walking away is the only sane option.
Indeed.
Unless of course he thinks Nuking Mecca is more sane.
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quote:I think we have a better chance at seeing it through to the end than we would just dumping the whole mess.
What is the "end?" Honestly, I think it's ridiculous to worry about sunk costs, here. Cut bait and move on.
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Nuking Mecca? Oh come now. This isn't some OSC novel.
And honestly? I wish I could back away slowly. There is too much I don't know about the PA situation, about the Israeli situation, it's just too big of a mess and I can't see any good way of extricating myself from it.
But I still think it kind of strange that the British and French parceled up the Middle East and decided to give the Jews a portion of the land and thought it would all turn out okay.
I also think that if you don't expect a nation that had just been close to eradicated to do everything they can to hold on to that land and equate it with their very survival, then you're a fool.
There is too much perspective to hold in my brain at once, so I'm at a bit of a loss.
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quote:I read an article a couple days ago about a group of Israeli settlers in the West Bank who set up road blocks to stop buses with Palestinian workers bound for Israel. When the buses stopped, the settlers beat the workers inside. Elsewhere, they set fire to Palestinian farms, and when the Palestinians came out to try and fight them off by throwing rocks, the settlers responded with weapons fire.
Now, granted, they were pissed, I think over the forced evacuation of a local settlement that they blamed the Palestinians for, ultimately. But they didn't take out their frustrations on government buildings, they cut olive trees, burned farms, shot at people, and ambushed others.
And when settlers do things like that they get arrested and the Palestinians get compensated for property damage.
You're changing the subject. The question was never "what's the punishment?" the original claim was that it never happened to begin with. Ever. You're trying to justify it, and once you're there, you've already conceded the original claim I was arguing against.
quote:Originally posted by TomDavidson:
quote:I think we have a better chance at seeing it through to the end than we would just dumping the whole mess.
What is the "end?" Honestly, I think it's ridiculous to worry about sunk costs, here. Cut bait and move on.
By sunk costs do you mean the money we've spent so far? I'm not concerned about that. I'm concerned about the blame we'd get tagged for when we pull our support and Israel's enemies see the "open season" lamp lit. Half the reason people over there are pissed at us is for decades of supporting Israel. Cutting bait tomorrow won't erase all that, and it's probably the biggest net negative we're getting out of the deal.
If leaving now isn't going to solve that, then why do it?
I'd be okay with leaving if we did it slowly. Rather than just cutting the cord and pretending it never happened in an effort to wash our hands of the whole thing, we could try really putting the screws to both sides, with everything we have at our disposal, which is something we've never really done before, and if that doesn't work, which I guess it's likely not to, then we start cutting financial aid to Israel, and instead move that money around in the foreign aid budget to help impoverished Mideast areas other than Israel.
I seriously think that leaving Israel to their own devices really would lead to a cataclysmic confrontation between Israel and her enemies, and I think that, no matter we say and do afterwards, we're going to get painted with a lot of the fallout, and it will have negative effects on our national security for decades. Thus, I think PR and preemptive damage control would be absolutely essential in any pullout.
quote:Originally posted by Armoth: Nuking Mecca? Oh come now. This isn't some OSC novel.
I don't think it's that far fetched. Israel has nukes. They're there as a last gasp defense and implied threat. Some of the more fanatical elements of the Mideast don't give a damn who gets nuked so long as they stay in power. The US is the biggest wedge that stands between Israel and large scale hostilities from unfriendly neighbors.
Remove that wedge, and dominoes start to fall.
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quote:You're changing the subject. The question was never "what's the punishment?" the original claim was that it never happened to begin with. Ever. You're trying to justify it, and once you're there, you've already conceded the original claim I was arguing against.
Actually, my claim was that "Israel does not embrace terrorism". I was speaking of government policy. I know there are crazies in Israel who commit terrorist acts, but they are not endorsed or encouraged by the state. They are condemned, hunted down, and arrested.
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Oh okay. Next time just throw a little non-sequitor disclaimer somewhere in your post.
I'm not being sarcastic. Seriously, it'll save us both the effort of me having to defend a point you weren't even addressing and you having to correct my rebuttal.
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quote:I don't think it's that far fetched. Israel has nukes. They're there as a last gasp defense and implied threat. Some of the more fanatical elements of the Mideast don't give a damn who gets nuked so long as they stay in power. The US is the biggest wedge that stands between Israel and large scale hostilities from unfriendly neighbors.
Remove that wedge, and dominoes start to fall.
A hypothetically cut-free israel would know no better way to hasten their demise than to launch a nuke.
Nuking Mecca ain't even on the table. It exists only as a Tom Tancredo fantasy.
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quote:A hypothetically cut-free israel would know no better way to hasten their demise than to launch a nuke.
Well, maybe not Mecca. The target doesn't really matter though.
You really don't think that if there was a serious threat of being overrun they'd use at least one nuke? Why bother having them? So long as nuclear weapons exist, they're always on the table.
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Blayne Bradley
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Indeed, "invade us in such a way we might lose kiss every one of your major cities good buy"
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Probably the ideal solution would be for a way to be found to enter an alternate or parallel earth, where everything is much the same, but no human inhabitants. Then the Jews could have their Promised Land, and the Palestinians could have their Palestine--in the same place. The only question would be who would be willing to move to the alternate earth. It might be the Jews who would be willing to go, seeing how insular some of them seem to be today.
I think I would hate to see that happen though, because the Jews are important to the rest of the human race, even if they and most of the rest of us do not know it. But they could still communicate and trade through the interworld gate. And they would have the advantage of knowing where all the natural resources are on their empty planet.
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quote:You really don't think that if there was a serious threat of being overrun they'd use at least one nuke?
I could see them using a nuke if they were threatened by a certain kind of oblique foreign incursion but the state of Israel today is one that makes it so that the use of a nuke would not at all improve their situation in the vast vast majority of circumstances that see the state's future threatened.
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quote:Without American support, Israel won't have the economic power to keep their military at a level necessary to fend off large scale attacks. They couldn't even take southern Lebanon a couple years ago fighting insurgents.
In the Lebanon fighting they were worried about civilian casualties. Remove American support and the gloves would come off; we would then see total war, where sniper fire from a window means cities get leveled.
As for the economy, it's true that Israel can't maintain both a high standard of living and its current military without outside aid. Against this, firstly, presumably aid to the Arab nations would also be cut off, and it's not as though they have economies other than oil; and secondly, you can do a lot of cutting back on standards of living when your existence is at stake. Consider Europe in WWII: For five years or so no new housing was built, no clothing except for the very barest essentials was made, no new cars hit the streets. Israel's economy has a lot more slack in it than the French and Germans and British had.
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Blayne Bradley
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also American aid to Israel only makes up what? 1% of their GDP?
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More like 1.5% to 2%. And even 1% wouldn't be "only"; that's a huge amount. Current aid to Israel is like someone giving the US government two hundred to three hundred billion dollars.
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quote:Originally posted by Blayne Bradley: also American aid to Israel only makes up what? 1% of their GDP?
Yes, but most of GDP is kindergartens and iPods. This is stuff that can go directly to tanks and guns. Plus, tax revenue is a lot smaller than GDP, and some of it has to go to plain infrastructure. The GDP comparison is misleading.
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quote:Originally posted by fugu13: More like 1.5% to 2%. And even 1% wouldn't be "only"; that's a huge amount. Current aid to Israel is like someone giving the US government two hundred to three hundred billion dollars.
And yet the benefits to doing without US pressure would be worth more than that. Israel doesn't charge the US for use of its ports. Every other country in the world that has ports that get used by the US does. The US stores some of its major middle eastern armories in Israel, again for free.
The ridiculous amounts of money we have to spend in order not to make the US government frown could be used for other things. Plus, since Israel is obligated to spend a huge amount of that aid by buying from American companies (another string attached), we could make things ourselves, or buy for lower prices elsewhere.
Please, pretty, pretty please with sugar on top, cut the cord.
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quote: Plus, since Israel is obligated to spend a huge amount of that aid by buying from American companies (another string attached), we could make things ourselves, or buy for lower prices elsewhere.
Well, I think your first point is better than this one. If you weren't using American money to buy American weapons, you'd have to use Israeli money to buy from whoever, probably the Chinese, and it might be cheaper, and maybe of somewhat lower quality depending on what you're buying, but it's still pricey. And you'd have the added training cost, where right now the US military foots part of the bill for joint training exercises. Part of that is negated by the fact that the IDF is so damned good, they don't need a great deal of US help in that department anymore.
I think you probably have a good decade or so before you'll have a current generation domestically produced fighter, but Israel already makes an excellent tank (the Merkava? I know it starts with an M) and most if not all of their own small arms. Near as I can tell, the only big ticket items you get from the US are fighters, which you're probably due to replace sometime (I'm guessing with the F-35, at least that's the tentative plan), and munitions.
As for non-military spending, this is something I honestly don't know and I'm curious about; what sort of spending do you have to use American aid for from American companies? Is it just random stuff, like buying from Caterpillar instead of Komatsu or something like that? Or does Congress actually spend the money for you and just ship stuff over?
Either way you'd still have to buy things, even cheaper things, with your own money rather than more expensive things with US money. So it's still a net negative. Unless you're just naturally tied to frugality as a point of principle.
I won't touch the issue of whether or not it'd be worth it to cut American aid in return for political freedom. But I will say that I think we're probably more alike in mind on that subject than any other with regards to this issue.
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Blayne Bradley
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Israeli's with Infrared Missiles. See TVTropes.
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Yep, Israel makes the Merkava (which means chariot in Hebrew).
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Blayne Bradley
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the tank that goes the extra mile to protect its crew.
Though I think specificationwise its not that much better then either the Leopard II or the T-99 MBT, its just better at protecting its crew.
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Very sensible if trained manpower is your limiting factor while limited access to expensive antitank stuff is the main problem of your expected enemies.
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quote:Originally posted by Lyrhawn: I think you probably have a good decade or so before you'll have a current generation domestically produced fighter, but Israel already makes an excellent tank (the Merkava? I know it starts with an M) and most if not all of their own small arms. Near as I can tell, the only big ticket items you get from the US are fighters, which you're probably due to replace sometime (I'm guessing with the F-35, at least that's the tentative plan), and munitions.
Yeah, we had a fighter plane ready to go. It was called the Lavi. Regardless of what that article says, I was living in Israel at the time that the US torpedoed the project, and that was definitely the primary reason it was scrapped.
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Blayne Bradley
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Dont you have a plane based off of the Avro Arrow?
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Cutting the "direct" financial cord would not necessarily result in the US washing its hands of Israel. We would almost certainly still support Israel from inside the UN Security Council. We would also still be an ally -- a threat to those who would threaten Israel.
We're also unlikely to pass laws making it illegal to send money to Israel, so Israel will still benefit financially from the large affluent (by world standards anyway) Jewish population in the US.
I can conceive of things that Israel could do to challenge the US' continued good will, but I think they're unlikely -- just as it is unlikely that Israel will stop taking direct aid from the US.
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quote:Originally posted by Bob_Scopatz: We're also unlikely to pass laws making it illegal to send money to Israel, so Israel will still benefit financially from the large affluent (by world standards anyway) Jewish population in the US.
Like such laws would even work.
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quote:Originally posted by Lyrhawn: I think you probably have a good decade or so before you'll have a current generation domestically produced fighter, but Israel already makes an excellent tank (the Merkava? I know it starts with an M) and most if not all of their own small arms. Near as I can tell, the only big ticket items you get from the US are fighters, which you're probably due to replace sometime (I'm guessing with the F-35, at least that's the tentative plan), and munitions.
Yeah, we had a fighter plane ready to go. It was called the Lavi. Regardless of what that article says, I was living in Israel at the time that the US torpedoed the project, and that was definitely the primary reason it was scrapped.
I know the history quite well Lisa. While its clear we define terrorism differently, many of the attacks executed by zionists fit even your narrow definition. For example the bombings of Arab buses in 1939 and the bombing of the SS Patria in 1940.
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Blayne Bradley
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but they were freedom fighters, there's a difference.
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Stop, Blayne. Rabbit, you have a lot invested emotionally in creating some sort of moral equivalency here. I find that disgusting. It speaks volumes about the kind of person you are.
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I have far less emotional investment in this issue than you. I have friends on both sides of the conflict. I have deep sympathies for both. I have studied the conflict in depth enough to know that neither side of this conflict is innocent.
The fact that you can not see the moral equivalency of the two or recognize the legitimate grievances of your enemies or even their basic humanity speaks volumes about the kind of person you are. If anyone here had posted the kind of bigotry about Jews on this sight that you routinely post about Palestinians and Arabs, they would have been banned ages ago. You have never been able to discuss Israel/Palestine relations here without eventually calling everyone who disagrees with you morally depraved.
But I think we've been over this plenty of times before. I have no interest in your judgements of me as I am sure you have no interest in my judgements of you.
My posts have not been for your benefit but for the benefit of others who might have enough of an open mind to consider both sides.
I have only one thing left to say to you. Hershey's chocolate is gritty, sour and nasty (and that isn't an opinion, I have the scientific data to back it up (at least the first too any way)).
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quote:Originally posted by Lisa: Stop, Blayne. Rabbit, you have a lot invested emotionally in creating some sort of moral equivalency here. I find that disgusting. It speaks volumes about the kind of person you are.
There is a moral equivalency. Israelis took land from Arabs. Arabs have every right to be pissed about it. The problem of Israel/Palestine can be solved if the Jews leave Israel. Arabs should use their oil wealth to pay every Israeli Jew vast sums of money to encourage Jews to leave.
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It's unfortunate that Lisa sometimes posts with an attitude that irks many hatrackers. It makes it difficult for her points, when they are good, to be received.
In this very thread I have expressed that the situation is exasperating, to say the least, and I am a Jew. But I will say that I found your comparison of Israelis and Palestinians in the last few posts to be disheartening, and Blayne's to be a bit offensive.
I will not deny that Israelis are not saints. But, overall, it needs to be said that Israelis, in this conflict, are more sensitive to human life than Palestinians. You may squint and squeeze to find examples of murder and terrorism among Israelis. But surely, you can see the difference, can't you?
I will not deny that the Palestinians are desperate, that their situation is dire, and that when people are pushed, their backs against the wall, a lot of ugliness comes out. But remember that this situation started out with TWO peoples, one's situation a whole lot more desperate than the other - and the decisions these two peoples made were very different.
You can say what you will about either people from an ivory tower - but Lisa and I have strong connections to our people. Even in trying to show us that there is another side, and that things are not as black and white as they seem, you cannot fudge the truth in order to create a more convenient sense of moral equivalency.
Furthermore, Blayne, I find your sarcasm to be vile. But that's okay - I'm sure that in person you'd never argue that way. We're online so you don't have to look us in the face.
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quote:Originally posted by Lisa: Stop, Blayne. Rabbit, you have a lot invested emotionally in creating some sort of moral equivalency here. I find that disgusting. It speaks volumes about the kind of person you are.
There is a moral equivalency. Israelis took land from Arabs. Arabs have every right to be pissed about it. The problem of Israel/Palestine can be solved if the Jews leave Israel. Arabs should use their oil wealth to pay every Israeli Jew vast sums of money to encourage Jews to leave.
Actually, the British/French took land from the Arabs. Then, the West decided to give it to the Jews. Would you really expect a bunch of Jews who had just survived genocide NOT to take it?
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