Of course some critism of isreali is based on anti-semitism, the posters wishing death to the jews and bring back hitler are just wrong.  Simply wrong. 

I think that Isreali has such a high profile for several possible reasons, anti-semitism, historical guilt over the holocaust, anti-amercian feeling by proxy, anti-islam, pro-semitism for relgious reasons but the reason that I feel it deserves a high profile is because it has the large potential to destabilse a large area of the world.  Korea also does, and get a lot of attention, China and Tiawan gets attention when that starts to get worse, India and Pakaistan, Darfur and Sudan does in the UK media.  The suicide bombers in the UK also used the middle-east as part of their justification to blow themselves, and others up.  Which of the other wars you mention does that?

I have no problem with a wall on pre-67 land.  I have no problem with new Jewish villages on pre-67 land.  I have no problem old jewish villages on pre-67 land.  I have a problem with new villages forced on post-67 land which will in no doubt be used in an eventual two-state solution along with the wall as evidence that land should become part of Isreal.  I have a problem with all the hassle that people get living in the post-67 land.  I think it is unfair and that it turns world opion against Isreal and is ulimatly counter productive for all concerned.

ANY Jewish village in the region is counter productive since the Arabs still claim the entire land.

What reason is there to disallow Jewish towns (old or new) on "post-67" land? Did somebody draw a line on the map and said that no Jews are allowed to the right of it? (I know someone did, but how is that not anti-Semitism?)

 

No, it doesn't Israel is a tiny country that never attacked its neighbours. I think the Arabs have a large potential to destabilise a large area of the world.

There are TWO parties to the conflict. The ones who started it (who are also the larger party) and the Jews. The ancient theory that in a conflict between Jews and some dictatorship it is the _Jews_ who have the potential to "destabilise" the situation is becoming tiresome. And it is anti-Semitism any way you put it.

Korea gets a lot of attention, yes. But there are no protests against South-Korea and no stories are made up about South-Koreans. And nobody demands that they all be killed. It's totally different.

South-Koreans are also not prohibited from living on land captured from the north. That ruling is ONLY for Israel.

Do you notice that of all the conflicts in the middle east, the terrorists always use the smallest one as their "justification"? Nobody blows himself up because the Arabs killed hundreds of thousands of Africans or tens of thousands of Kurds. But when a Jew is attacked and shoots back... BLAMM!

 

Everything Israel does turns the world opinion against it. I think the Jewish villages in the "West-Bank" send an important signal to the world: THIS TIME, when you tell us not to live somewhere, we won't just give in. The world will have to learn that it's over. Jews can no longer be murdered or moved around at will. It's over.

And this time the Jews are not alone.

When I was in northern Iraq I met many people (Kurds) who were really enthusiastic about Israel not giving in, about the Jews fighting back against the Arabs.

And I don't understand why an expensive wall that Israel builds to prevent must be built on pre-76 land. Plus I don't understand why Israel alone for some reason must not annex land won in a war. North-Vietnam has. Poland has. Russia has. Syria has. Saudi-Arabia has. Why single out Israel and suddenly say that winning land in a war is "wrong" or "illegal"?

No, I think it is time not for the Jews to give in to preserve world peace but for the world to recognise that Jews have the same rights as everybody else.

The more Israel gives up, the more the world demands, always for "peace". But we never get that "peace". Not before the "refugees" (pre-1984), not before the occupation (pre-1967), not when Israel offered the occupied land in exchange for peace (in 1967), and not when Arafat was offered a "Palestinian" state in 2000. It's ENOUGH. The deal is obviously a lie.

 

 

Sorry, the was a mis-phrasing of mine.  I meant to say 'the isreali situation' there was no attempt meant to single out israel as the only player in the region with the power to de-stabilse the reason and I realise that the way I wrote it says differently.  For that I aplogise.  

I am not saying that Isreal alone must not annex land won in a war.  I am saying that Isreal must not annex land won in a war, I would say the same about any war, no matter who was fighting it.  I would say the same if jorden invaded isreal and started to annex its land.

I am also not saying that Jews must not live here.  I am saying that Isreal should not build the villages on annxed land- no matter if they then send non-Jewish Isrealis to live there.  The issue is not who lives there but the affect of the people who live there now.  If the Jews moved there after the land was returned then I would have no problem with it (there would of course be saftey concerns for the people living there).  The issue is with the annexing, not the Jewish nature of the people doing it.

Isreal was formed with borders agreed by the international community, in that is a very unusual country (most other countries are not formed that way, most not all).  As far as I am concerned Isreal has a right to exist in those borders.  It has no more right to land outside those borders than the UK would if it siezed part of France.  

The people of Northern Ireland have been part of the UK for a hell of a long time and it still causes bloodshed on both sides and I think that if Isreal annexes the land post-67 the same will happen for a years to come.  Over and above what would happen if is withdrew not that I am saying that all the hatred would go away if it did withdraw.  There would always be the sections that hated Isreal for being mostly Jewish but the current occupation and annexing provide more and more reasons for people to hate Isreal everyday.

Jordan did, in 1948. Jordan annexed the West-Bank and also built settlements. Nobody claimed that Jordan wasn't allowed to build settlements there.

How would you propose to end wars if you don't recognise a defending victor's right to annex land? Wouldn't you just be resetting the unstable situation every time some country successfully defended itself?

 

How is saying that Israel must not build villages now the same as saying that Jews must not live there?

Realise that Israel is not building those villages anyway. It's individual "settlers" who are.

 

Yes, I am ware of the claimed injustice of having to live next to Jews. That's my problem with this subject exactly.

 

Returned to whom? To the British? to the Jordanians? To the Turks?

If the problem is not the Jewish nature of the settlers, why is it a problem at all? Israel _didn't_ annex the land the settlers live on. Israel only annexed East-Jerusalem and the Golan. East-Jerusalem already had Jewish quarters before 1948 (but not between 1948 and 1967 since the Jews were driven out by the Arabs). And the Golan was never "Palestinian" land in any shape or form.

I don't see why a Jew who bought a house from an Arab somewhere in the West-Bank (it's very brave to sell land to a Jew because there is a death penalty against it in "Palestine"), should leave that house and then move back after the land is "returned". And that doesn't even cover the problem whom the land could be returned to.

Israel tried "returning" the land to Jordan in 1967 and they didn't want it. And Israel tried "returning" the land to the PLO in 2000, and Arafat rejected that too.

So since that didn't work the discussion is now about Jewish inhabitants of the land. It's ridiculous.

Plus you seem to believe that the land is somehow naturally "Arab land" despite the fact that it was part of Turkey just a hundred years ago and hadn't been Arab for over a thousand years. It is that attitude that land in the middle-east is "Arab" until prove otherwise that I have a problem with.

 

Israel was also attacked in those borders.

 

The UK exists on land siezed from the native Britons.

France exists on land siezed from the native Gauls.

Both were nominally part of the Roman Empire when that happened.

France happily rules land that was German before WW1. Germany had ruled that part since 1870. Before that the same land was sometimes French, sometimes German.

If Israel had no more right to land outside those borders than the UK would if it siezed part of France, Israel has every right to keep the land because that's how both the UK and France got their land.

(Poland controls a large part of pre-WW2 Germany. _I_ of course think they deserve it since Germany attacked them and lost.)

 

 

Incidentally, the peace treaty with the PLO allows for the "settlements".

This demand that Jews must not live in the West-Bank is a new term. It just goes to show that the world indeed believes that they can demand more from the Jews and expect them to obey.

 

I've never seen that in my area and I've seen quite a few anti-Israel protests in my time. I'm starting to think the differences in what we see are a matter of geography and the political lie of the land. You don't live in similar communities to me, nor do you read similar news. It's moments like these when you realise how laughable the idea of the global village is.

So I'll leave it here. I wish you luck with your newspaper/TV network. Try not to let ratings get in the way of the right story.

So would you have an issue if Jordon invaded and started to annex Isreali land?  Is it just might=right?

Jordan had no right to annex the land in 1948.  Isreali had to right to annex the land in 1967. 

Just because another contry did something wrong doesn't give Isreal the right to do the same.  Isreal defeated its enemies in 1967 - views are conflicting on if is was aggression or defensive- that should have ended the war.

But you did wonder why those protesters targeted Israel so often, didn't you?

 

What I have seen myself is "Palestinian" television promising me death when "Allah" beings victory and Irish left-wingers putting up posters supporting the "Palestinians".

I assure you that if Israel were to promise death to all Arabs in case of an Israeli victory making that possible, there would be very little public support for Israel in the west.

 

If Israel attacked Jordan and Jordan won, I would have no issue with Jordan keeping the land it occupied in that war,

Neither do I have an issue with Poland keeping large parts of Germany since WW2 or with Israel keeping the land she annexed after 1948.

I don't even have an issue with Poland expelling all the Germans who lived in those parts of Germany, although I would not support Israel or Jordan do likewise in such a case.

I think the problem with these ever-continuing wars is the result of the strategy of giving the attacker back what he lost and thus making it cheap to start and lose a war.




Why not?

Why didn't Jordan have a right to annex the land? And if Jordan didn't, why didn't Israel have a right to annex (parts of) it in 1967?

If the land wasn't Jordan's (and I don't see why it wouldn't have been), it was nobody's land. Why wouldn't Israel have a right to annex it (which Israel didn't do anyway except for East-Jerusalem)?




Yes, views are conflicting. Some say that the Egyptian army only expelled the UN peacekeepers and assembled at Israel's border to take in some sunlight. There have also been claims that maybe Egypt closed the Suez canal, in violation of international law, to Israeli ships just for the entertainment value. And it's also possible that the attacks originating from Egyptian soil against Israel were not technically an "aggression" since the victims were only Jews.

And maybe Israel just decided to attack a larger and better-equipped enemy because the Jews are a bit suicidal.

And yes, the fact that other countries do it, DOES give Israel the right to do the same. The same rights should apply to all, even to Israel.

If for some insane reason annexing land after a war is suddenly illegal, it should be illegal for everyone.

And Germany should get her eastern territories back. Don't tell me that land occupied just four years before 1948 is more legally annexed than land occupied in 1948 by Israel (like West-Jerusalem).

For the reconrd, I am strictly and utterly against Poland giving that land back to Germany. I am convinced that countries that start a war and lose SHOULD lose land.

And I can tell you that when I stand in a street surrounded by five hostile armed Arabs who shout "Death to the Jew!" I would definitely not attack them for no reason just to see if maybe I might win. And anybody who said that I would seriously overestimates my bravery. I assume such is the case for other Jews as well, so we can maybe forget about the theory that there are "conflicting views" about 1967.

(Also note, again, that Israel did offer to give back the land won in 1967 and the offer was rejected by the Arabs.)

I will offer this compromise:

Should the UN officially vote and make it law that "just because another contry did something wrong doesn't give Isreal the right to do the same" I will accept the truth of the statement and regard it as international law.

But they would have to state also what it was that was "wrong" and give examples of other countries that did it and why they won't be punished.

IDEALLY, of course, international law would be the same as any idealised law: something written that applies to everyone.

 

 

Not really. I mostly saw anti-Israel protests while I was at uni from 2002-2006. It wasn't a happy time in the Middle East and Israel never seemed willing to turn the other cheek, so I assumed in my relative lack of interest that the Israeli government - what I now know to be a weak conglomerate of leftist, arch-nationalist and centrist parties - was just as belligerent as their Arab opposites. The Israeli government seemed like it was run by uncompromising and scheming fools - precisely the sort of people who would blow up villagers if they felt it necessary. It had nothing to do with their religion. I was equally against the Bush regime for much the same reason. People who justify their means by their ends tend not to be good people.

My sympathy is always going to be for the innocents caught between two marauding idiots, not either one of the idiots in question. And with the capacity of Palestine to coordinate its actions constantly thrown out of kilter by Israeli focused attacks, it's hard to put the responsibility grow up in Palestinian hands.

So no, I never worried too much about the focus on Israel. It seemed justified at the time. It could have been more balanced, but I was more interested in what was happening in East Timor than in the perennial battlefields of the Balkanised Middle East.

But I never saw any signs that neo-Nazis were behind the pro-Palestine movement. Quite the opposite in fact, as neo-Nazis seemed to be realigning themselves against Muslims rather than Jews. From what you've said, your white supremacists are different.

And what made you believe that this was the case for the Israelis?

Isn't that anti-Semitism, to assume that middle-eastern Jews are scheming and uncrompromising fools?

Of course, the media didn't report that Israel had been under Lebanese attack for five years before 2006 or that the war was started by the PLO in violation, of course, of the peace treaty.

 

I was talking about white supremacists in the US.

 

To be fair, in Italy protesters are demonstrating against the visit of Lybia's dictator Gaddafi. And the left-wing parties (!) have arranged that Gaddafi cannot speak in the senate building as was planned but had to speak somewhere else.

The news reporting mentions that "Italy was Lybia's former colonial master". It should mention that Gaddafi is Lybia's current colonial master. I know from conservations with Libyan natives that they do NOT consider their Arab government a native (or democratic) regime any more than they considered Italian rulers a native government. Libya was free from 1951 to 1969 when the pan-Arabists took power.

 

 

Not in the sense you mean it, because I felt the same way about the Arabs.

They did though. That's why it was always so depressing. Palestinian or Hezbollah radicals would launch an attack on Israel, which would radicalise the Israeli population. Israel would then overreact and respond in kind with bombs, or bulldozing peasant homes, or something similar. Previously merely distrustful Palestinians whose loved ones/lives had been ruined would promptly radicalise, and then the cycle would begin again.

I just didn't get a sense that Israel was prepared to deal with terrorism as a crime because it was so enthusiastic about its apocalyptic 'ten eyes for an eye' policy.

Now I'm more aware that peace is impossible because the political system in Israel prevents a government that's sufficiently strong to not need to make grandiose but, in the long-term, unwise military statements. Also that Palestinians lack the education/dissociated world view necessary to distinguish saviours from cashed-up psychopaths (Hamas), but the Israeli political system doesn't help.

The cycle would end if the Arabs stopped their attacks.

Or do you think Israel would waste time and money on firing rockets if she doesn't have to?

I don't see how bulldozing homes (rather than bombing them) is "overreacting". I consider this entire "overreacting" thing simple anti-Semitism. There is no "overreaction" as a bad thing when you are defending yourself.

 

Quite in contrast. Israel has always had governments willing to accept any peace offer made.

As for the "Palestinians" who saw their loved ones killed and therefor hate Israel, I have seen interviews with Israeli Arabs whose homes were hit by Hizbullah rockets and they most emphatically DID NOT hate Hizbulla or the Lebanese because of it. I therefor reject the theory that they hate whoever shoots for them, no matter the reason. They hate whom they want to hate.

My grand parents' house in Germany was bombed by the Americans. Some of the (German) family died (although none in the direct line). Do you think I hate Americans because of that?

I don't. I hate those Germans who made the Americans come and destroy our country.

The reason we have peace between America and Germany now is because America WON and a large number of Germans decided to hate those on OUR side who started the war and NOT the Americans who reacted.

The Arabs have not yet reached that point.

And since the world keeps telling them that it is OK to attack Israel and be upset when Israel shoots back, I don't think we will reach that point soon.

The war would end, however, if the protesters world-wide demonstrated against the next Arab attack and would be quite while Israel responds. That would show the Arabs that their attacks cannot possibly win the war for them. It that would happen, we would have seen the last attack and the last response.

And tens of thousands of "peace activists" would be out of a hobby.

(Another way for the war to end, of course, would be if Israel didn't respond. And I think that is what the "peace activists" want. Tough for them. We tried that once, in WW2. It was a huge success for the "peace activists", but not for the Jewish people.)