Does the USA need to STOP supporting ISRAEL NOW-?

[thomasdixon]

The USA has looked the other way while Israelis murder Palestinian children

The USA has looked the other way while Israelis destroy Palestinian fishing boats.

The USA has looked the other way while Israelis murder American citizens.

The USA has looked the other way while Israelis destroy Palestinian villages and then build illegally on top of the rubble.

28 Dec 2022
Benjamin Netanyahu’s incoming hardline government put West Bank settlement expansion at the top of its list of priorities on Wednesday, vowing to legalise dozens of illegally built outposts and annex the occupied territory as part of its coalition deal with its ultranational allies.
Netanyahu government makes West Bank settlement expansion its priority

We, as Americans, including American Jews must band together and demand that we, citizens of America STOP giving Israel money.
We must make our voices heard in Congress and directly to Biden.

Israel should be designated a terrorist state-?

opinions welcome yes/no/why

[historia]

Sure, in the same way that, if I hit you in the face a bunch of times and then you hit me back in order to get me to stop hitting you in the face, I'm now dealing with the consequences of your punch.

What if you were hitting me in the face because I had invaded your house, refusing to leave and inviting my relatives to move in and take over more and more of your house?

You have to look at the entirety of a conflict to properly understand it, of course.

We certainly mustn't focus only on the present and ignore the past (look up Nakba).

I don't need to look it up, as I'm already familiar with the history of events that led to the displacement of many Palestinian Arabs in 1948. We wouldn't be talking about a Nakba today, however, had multiple Arab armies not invaded Israel in 1948 in an attempt to destroy the nascent Jewish state. You invade someone's house and bad things are likely to follow, right?

Israel's expansion hasn't gotten it much security, has it?

Yes, it has.

Over the past decade, look at how many rockets and mortars have been fired into Israel from Lebanon and the Gaza strip, two areas the Israelis do not control. It numbers in the thousands.

By contrast, how many have been fired from the West Bank? Very few, because Israel controls that area.

Israel doesn't just control that area----it colonizes that area.

Okay, so colonizing the West Bank has led to greater security for Israel. Good to know.

Sure, because why de-escalate resentment by removing illegal settlements from someone else's territory when you can just keep them under your thumb.....right?

The problem with this caricature of the Israeli position is that they have removed settlements from lands that they previously occupied rather than "keeping them under their thumb."

After the Six Day War, Israel occupied not just the Gaza strip and the West Bank, but also the entire Sinai Peninsula. In the ensuing decades, Israeli settlers moved into all three of those areas.

In 1982, Israel pulled back its military and forcibly removed all of its settlements from Sinai in exchange for peace. Egypt agreed, have kept the peace ever since, and to this day there are no Israeli settlements in Sinai.

On multiple occasions since 1967, the Israeli government has agreed to give up land for peace with their Arab neighbors -- so much so that they just unilaterally pulled out of the Gaza strip in 2005. But Palestinian Arab leaders have turned down every singe peace deal, including generous deals that would have put Israel in a very vulnerable position.

Wars have consequences. Foolishly choosing to reject generous peace deals has consequences.

My comment here is not about what has happened, or how long it took to happen, but about why it happened, which is wholly missing from your analysis so far in this thread.

Why it happened is fairly clear. Israel wants the land the Palestinians are on.

If it was that simple, then why did the Israelis repeatedly agree to several very generous peace deals with the Palestinians from the late 1940s through the early 2000s that would have given the Palestinians their own state in the West Bank and Gaza?

It's been far more complicated than that

That's funny, because I was just told it was simple: "Israel wants the land the Palestinians are on."

But I'm glad you (now?) recognize that this whole thing is far more complicated. That's the overarching point I'm trying to make in my replies: Up until this sentence, your assertions have been too simple by half!

As Noam Chomsky put it

Chomsky is Jewish.

[Youtube video from Turkish state media]

Are the people in the video Turks.....or are they Jews?

No way, they're Jewish? Why didn't you say so before! Here I was basing my understanding of the Israel-Palestine conflict on the scholarship of historians and political scientists who (regardless of their ethnicity or religious affiliation) have spent their entire careers studying this topic. But now that I know that a couple of Jews on the Internet have critical things to say about Israel, I'm going to have to rethink my entire approach!

[Athetotheist]

[Replying to historia in post #71]

What if you were hitting me in the face because I had invaded your house, refusing to leave and inviting my relatives to move in and take over more and more of your house?

You have to look at the entirety of a conflict to properly understand it, of course.

Yes----we do.

We wouldn't be talking about a Nakba today, however, had multiple Arab armies not invaded Israel in 1948 in an attempt to destroy the nascent Jewish state.

We wouldn't be talking about a Nakba if thousands of Palestinians hadn't been forced out of their homes to make way for that state.

"In November 1947, the UN General Assembly passed a resolution partitioning Palestine into two states, one Jewish and one Arab, with Jerusalem under a UN administration. The Arab world rejected the plan, arguing that it was unfair and violated the UN Charter. Jewish militias launched attacks against Palestinian villages, forcing thousands to flee. The situation escalated into a full-blown war in 1948, with the end of the British Mandate and the departure of British forces, the declaration of independence of the State of Israel and the entry of neighbouring Arab armies. The newly established Israeli forces launched a major offensive. The result of the war was the permanent displacement of more than half of the Palestinian population."
https://www.un.org/unispal/about-the-nakba/

Okay, so colonizing the West Bank has led to greater security for Israel. Good to know.

And colonizing the West Bank has led to the Palestinians of the West Bank being deprived of a vital resource [water]. Do you consider that "good to know"?

The problem with this caricature of the Israeli position is that they have removed settlements from lands that they previously occupied rather than "keeping them under their thumb."

.....while keeping other land they previously occupied under their other thumb.

In 1982, Israel pulled back its military and forcibly removed all of its settlements from Sinai in exchange for peace. Egypt agreed, have kept the peace ever since, and to this day there are no Israeli settlements in Sinai.

Peace without colonization. Good to know.

On multiple occasions since 1967, the Israeli government has agreed to give up land for peace with their Arab neighbors -- so much so that they just unilaterally pulled out of the Gaza strip in 2005. But Palestinian Arab leaders have turned down every singe peace deal, including generous deals that would have put Israel in a very vulnerable position.

An Israeli official said Monday that there is “no chance” Israel would accept the five-year truce proposal with the Hamas terror group that is currently being discussed by Arab mediators.
“There is no chance that we will agree to a hudna with Hamas that just allows it to rearm, recover and to continue its war against Israel,” the official said, referring to a statement from a Hamas official that the group is to willing release of all remaining hostages in exchange for a five-year cessation of hostilities in the Gaza Strip.
https://www.timesofisrael.com/official- ... age-talks/

If Israel is going to argue that peace will just allow Hamas to rearm, what peace deal will Israel accept?


It's been far more complicated than that

That's funny, because I was just told it was simple: "Israel wants the land the Palestinians are on."

The root cause is simple. Pursuit of a two-state solution has been complicated.

But I'm glad you (now?) recognize that this whole thing is far more complicated. That's the overarching point I'm trying to make in my replies: Up until this sentence, your assertions have been too simple by half!

Which half? That it's all been the Palestinians' fault? That seems more like your half.


Are the people in the video Turks.....or are they Jews?

No way, they're Jewish? Why didn't you say so before! Here I was basing my understanding of the Israel-Palestine conflict on the scholarship of historians and political scientists who (regardless of their ethnicity or religious affiliation) have spent their entire careers studying this topic. But now that I know that a couple of Jews on the Internet have critical things to say about Israel, I'm going to have to rethink my entire approach!

"A couple of Jews on the internet"?
https://www.jewishvoiceforpeace.org/

[historia]

We wouldn't be talking about a Nakba today, however, had multiple Arab armies not invaded Israel in 1948 in an attempt to destroy the nascent Jewish state.

We wouldn't be talking about a Nakba if thousands of Palestinians hadn't been forced out of their homes to make way for that state.

No, that analysis is way too simplistic. And, frankly, shows why you shouldn't just scour the Web for sources that confirm your prior position, as there are a ton of incomplete and biased histories of this conflict on the Internet.

Speaking of which:

"In November 1947, the UN General Assembly passed a resolution partitioning Palestine into two states, one Jewish and one Arab, with Jerusalem under a UN administration. The Arab world rejected the plan, arguing that it was unfair and violated the UN Charter. Jewish militias launched attacks against Palestinian villages, forcing thousands to flee. "
https://www.un.org/unispal/about-the-nakba/

This is incomplete.

Let's turn to an actual scholarly source on the history of this conflict for some additional information. From Howard Sachar, A History of Israel from the Rise of Zionism to Our Time (2007), pgs 298-99:

The initial Arab response to the Partition Resolution was to carry out their oft-repeated threat of violence. It set the pattern for the months and years ahead.

In Aleppo, Syria, three hundred Jewish homes and eleven synagogues were burned to the ground, and half the city's four thousand Jews fled elsewhere. At Aden, seventy-six Jews were killed.

In Palestine itself the Arab Higher Committee proclaimed a three-day general strike from December 2 to December 4, 1947. Violence began immediately with attacks on Jewish quarters in Jerusalem, Haifa, and Jaffa.

Soon after, the Higher Committee began recruiting volunteers throughout Palestine Arab towns and villages. Most of the ensuing "militias" were organized around the nucleus of the Futuwwa and Najjada societies. Their opening tactics were essentially hit-and-run assaults on isolated Jewish settlements and transportation, and the pillage and destruction of Jewish property. The attacks were launched entirely by Palestine Arabs, although part of the funds and some military equipment came from neighboring Arab countries.

Both Israeli and Arab militias launched attacks against each other's communitites in the wake of the 1947 UN Resolution. This was part of a decades-long cycle of escalating violence between Jewish and Arab residents in Mandatory Palestine, and why the partition was proposed in the first place.

Any source that tries to lay the blame for that violance solely at the feet of either Jews or Muslims should be rejected as biased.

But, ultimately, this was all low-level violence, which even people at the time recognized would not have derailed a two-state solution or led to large-scale evacuations of either Jews or Arabs from Palestine. Sachar continues:

Convinced that the spread of violence would end in disaster for his people, [Muhammad Nimr al-Hawari] met frequently with Jewish authorities. "In many instances, I succeeded in avoiding clashes between Arabs and Jews. We initiated a successful effort to convince our people that it was to our advantage to coexist peacefully with the Jewish people."

Hawari did not exaggerate. Left to their own devices, Arabs and Jews for the most part continued to live together peacefully, if fearfully. The Higher Committee's violence alone would not have precipitated a full-scale war between the two peoples.

But the Palestine Arabs and Jews were not left alone.

The thing that ultimately causes the displacement of large numbers of Palestinians is the decision on the part of the Arab League in 1948 to invade Palestine and launch a war against Israel.

Five Arab armies starting a war with Israel in 1948 is the "invading the house" moment of this conflict. Without that, we would not be talking about the Nakba. Without that, we would not be talking about the subsequence events that led to Israel's capture of the West Bank and you complaining about them "going back." Indeed, without that, we wouldn't be having this conversation at all.

Israel's expansion hasn't gotten it much security, has it?

Yes, it has.

Over the past decade, look at how many rockets and mortars have been fired into Israel from Lebanon and the Gaza strip, two areas the Israelis do not control. It numbers in the thousands.

By contrast, how many have been fired from the West Bank? Very few, because Israel controls that area.

Israel doesn't just control that area----it colonizes that area.

Okay, so colonizing the West Bank has led to greater security for Israel. Good to know.

And colonizing the West Bank has led to the Palestinians of the West Bank being deprived of a vital resource [water]. Do you consider that "good to know"?

I consider it irrelevant to the point I was making, just as your prior response was irrelevant, hence my sarcastic comment about it being "good to know."

Israel occupies the West Bank because it was attacked multiple times by Jordon and other Arab countries. It took the West Bank away from Jordon during those conflicts, as it was necessary for their security. I gave you an argument as to why that has, in fact, led to greater security for Israel. You have yet to offer a meaningful rebuttal.

The problem with this caricature of the Israeli position is that they have removed settlements from lands that they previously occupied rather than "keeping them under their thumb."

.....while keeping other land they previously occupied under their other thumb.

In 1982, Israel pulled back its military and forcibly removed all of its settlements from Sinai in exchange for peace. Egypt agreed, have kept the peace ever since, and to this day there are no Israeli settlements in Sinai.

Peace without colonization. Good to know.

Yes, that is actually good to know, as it puts to lie your rhetoric that the Israelis just want Palestinian land and to keep the Arabs "under their thumb."

If Israel is going to argue that peace will just allow Hamas to rearm, what peace deal will Israel accept?

Like I said, wars have consequences and repeatedly rejecting generous peace deals has consequences. This is one of those consequences.

That's funny, because I was just told it was simple: "Israel wants the land the Palestinians are on."

The root cause is simple.

Then actually answer my question, rather than side-step it:

If Israel simply wants the land the Palestinians are on, why did the Israelis repeatedly agree to several very generous peace deals with the Palestinians from the late 1940s through the early 2000s that would have given the Palestinians their own state in the West Bank and Gaza?

Up until this sentence, your assertions have been too simple by half!

Which half?

That's not how that idiom works, my guy.

That it's all been the Palestinians' fault? That seems more like your half.

I've never said this conflict has "all been the Palestinians' fault." I leave those kind of reductive arguments to you, ledgeRAILz, and others in this thread determined to convince us the causes and motivations in this conflict are "simple."

Are the people in the video Turks.....or are they Jews?

No way, they're Jewish? Why didn't you say so before! Here I was basing my understanding of the Israel-Palestine conflict on the scholarship of historians and political scientists who (regardless of their ethnicity or religious affiliation) have spent their entire careers studying this topic. But now that I know that a couple of Jews on the Internet have critical things to say about Israel, I'm going to have to rethink my entire approach!

"A couple of Jews on the internet"?
https://www.jewishvoiceforpeace.org/

If what you took away from my sarcastic comment here is that you didn't cite enough Jews who have no expertise in the history of this conflict, then I'm afraid you missed the point entirely.

You can line-up 10,000 Jews who are anti-Israel and 10,000 Muslims who are pro-Israel, and my comment here would be the same. Regardless of their religious identity, or which side they support, non-experts are not good or compelling sources to consult about the Israel-Palestine conflict. You should consult better -- which is to say, scholarly -- sources.