Hello, my name is Israel and I am addicted to settlements...

[S.A.M.]

Israel okays 28 new settlement buildings, despite freeze

I'm not even going to bother posting what has become a constant refrain in Israeli "piece" policy [a piece of Palestine here, a piece of Palestine there].

What is more significant is that more and more people are finally realising they are sitting in the dark and pretending to see light.

There was a groundbreaking conference at Hampshire last week where students from US campuses got together and discussed the civil rights of Palestinians.

Ali Abunimah, following in the footsteps of Edward Said “the question is not how to devise means for persisting in trying to separate them [Israelis and Palestinians] but to see whether it is possible for them to live together as fairly and peacefully as possible,” put forth his views on the I-P issue and what he thinks is a just approach, with humour and humanism.

There is very little a sane human being can find to disagree with him.

Its an approximately 60 minute speech linked from the video below in 6 parts
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sq6yGxV4Ph0

In the same vein Tikun Olam has challenged its readers to imagine the nightmare of equal rights for all

Almost 10% of Israeli Jews now live in the Territories or in East Jerusalem. It would be impossible for any Israeli government to make a peace offer to Palestinians that would give up those homes and settlements: in Israeli politics, their coalition would instantly disappear. (And it’s unlikely they could do it militarily: the BBC reports that , “An increasing number of Israeli soldiers are publicly objecting, on religious and political grounds, to their role in the evacuation of Jewish settlements in the West Bank.”) Similarly, it would not be possible for any Palestinian leader to accept the kind of offer any Israeli leader might realistically make: his support would also disappear. The handful of bantustans offered as a Palestinian country at Oslo might have been the closest to a joint solution ever reached. And if a two-state solution is impossible,as seems increasingly clear, then the only alternative, however improbable, is a one-state solution.

A one state solution means a country open to both Jews and Muslims. This is also called a binational solution, and its supporters “advocate a single state in Israel, the West Bank and Gaza Strip, with citizenship and equal rights in the combined entity for all inhabitants of all three territories, without regard to ethnicity or religion.”

http://www.tikkun.org/tikkundaily/20...m_medium=email

As does Stephen Walt:

Be careful what you wish for. Israel is going to get what it has long sought: permanent control of the West Bank (along with de facto control over Gaza). The Palestinian Authority is increasingly irrelevant and may soon collapse, General Keith Dayton's mission to train reliable and professional Palestinian security forces will end, and Israel will once again have full responsibility for some 5.2 million Palestinian Arabs under its control. And the issue will gradually shift from the creation of a viable Palestinian state -- which was the central idea behind the Oslo process and the subsequent "Road Map" -- to a struggle for civil and political rights within an Israel that controls all of mandate Palestine. And on what basis could the United States oppose such a campaign, without explicitly betraying its own core values?

http://walt.foreignpolicy.com/posts/...gless_gestures

Here's to the future:

[pjdude1219]

did you really expect them too? they have ignored almost every overture of peace any arab country has offered and their overtures of peace are a sham meant to be too humiliate to start new wars so Israel can further expand. they won't stop until they have all of palestine and even than they will still probably look to expand.

[mike47]

Hello and welcome back my queen S.A.M .
We missed you dear.........
Settlements ?. It is a blown up occupation with all the tyranny and the misery that come with it .

[S.A.M.]

I agree that the term "settlements" implies falsely that the "settlers" are on unoccupied land, rather than occupying space ethnically cleansed of the native inhabitants. But calling them squatters isn't going to change anything. As Peter Marmorek has pointed out, they are not going anywhere.

See this: God's promise of land to Jews has deep pull on secular Israelis

What rational discourse is possible with people who don't believe in G-d but still think they are entitled to Palestine anyway?

You have people who openly declare themselves as "secular humanists" pointing to the massacre of the native Americans or Indians/Pakistanis as justification for their support for the Zionist state. They want their turn at dehumanising people and dispossessing them. To be fair

[otheadp]

It's not "settlements". It's natural growth of towns. Racists like you SAM can call it all you want, and Obama can incompetently, naively and foolishly try to limit it to get "palestinians" to stop attempting genocide, but it won't change a darn thing.

"palestinians" know what's expected of them. They want land for a state, they know what they need to do to get it from Israel, with cooperation. Until then, Israelis will keep building on THEIR land and people like you are welcome to stomp their foot until it breaks

[iceaura]

It's not "settlements". It's natural growth of towns

The Haitian expanding his squatter's outpost into your back yard is missing an argument you would find persuasive, apparently.

It's just the natural growth of his family, inviting his mother in law from the island, to live on your lawn in her new shack.

"palestinians" know what's expected of them. They want land for a state, they know what they need to do to get it from Israel, with cooperation.

Wow.

Little tip for y'all: telling people they need to learn their inferior place in this world has never been a promising gambit for easing tensions and reducing conflict.

What rational discourse is possible with people who don't believe in G-d but still think they are entitled to Palestine anyway?

If you restrict your discourse to the ones who do believe in God, you'll find yourself with plenty of discourse opportunity - but no gain in rationality, I predict.

[mike47]

It's not "settlements". It's natural growth of towns. Racists like you SAM can call it all you want, and Obama can incompetently, naively and foolishly try to limit it to get "palestinians" to stop attempting genocide, but it won't change a darn thing.

"palestinians" know what's expected of them. They want land for a state, they know what they need to do to get it from Israel, with cooperation. Until then, Israelis will keep building on THEIR land and people like you are welcome to stomp their foot until it breaks

I do not see how telling the truth makes one a racist . Israel is a racist entity based on religion for all the Jews from the world to rob the lands of Palestinians . Israel was and still is a racist and terrorist entity .

[draqon]

Hello and welcome back my queen S.A.M .
We missed you dear.........
Settlements ?. It is a blown up occupation with all the tyranny and the misery that come with it .

I know right...with 100% certainty without looking at who made the thread if its title is "israeli/palestinian conflict" its S.A.Mmmy'

[mike47]

Right now several nations need urgent solutions such as Palestine, Iraq, Afghanistan, Darfur, Ivory Coast, Congo ,......etc. Wars and civil wars destroy so many lives and tyhe international community ought to find solutions to those conflicts . Alas the US is not willing to follow the path of peace and justice .

[noodler]

The US can't follow the path of peace and justice. The US is a conglomerate of merchants with a political system that rewards "enterprise" not peace-making.
The US wants to have the best weapons and be militarily superior so it can do what it wants - think Diego Garcia, various Pacific islands, Guantanamo, ...

It has presidents, but they follow the line of merchant capitalism - this explains why "the best" arrangement is 300+ million people in debt to the merchant bankers, borrowing against the future earning capacity of themselves and their children.

Of course, there are Americans who believe in democracy and individual freedoms, but not that many who think this extends to anyone who isn't an American.

[S.A.M.]

If you've seen the speech by Ali in the OP you may have heard about this incident. As Ali said, Israel is probably the only country in the world today where celebrities issue tearful apologies for not being racist enough.

Beitar Jerusalem captain: Sorry for wanting Arab player

Aviram Baruchyan meets with football team's fans, apologizes for saying he would be happy to see an Arab play in Beitar at anti-violence conference

Beitar Jerusalem captain Aviram Baruchyan met Thursday evening with fans belonging to the "La Familia" organization and apologized for saying that he would like to see an Arab play in the football team.

The fans told him they were hurt by the remark he made about 10 days ago at an anti-violence conference.

Baruchyan said at the end of Thursday's meeting, "The most painful thing is that I unfortunately hurt Beitar's fans, and I understood that I hurt them very much. It's important for me that the players know and that everyone knows that I am with them through thick and thin, and I don't care what other people think or write.

"However," he added, "it's important for me to stress that I'm not the one who decides on these things, but if at the moment the fans don't want it, there won't be an Arab player in Beitar."

I do not see how telling the truth makes one a racist . Israel is a racist entity based on religion for all the Jews from the world to rob the lands of Palestinians . Israel was and still is a racist and terrorist entity .

Its a kind of projection I believe. People are goaded by reminders that they support apartheid and the expectation that their "natural growth" is more important than the "natural growth" of those they abuse. So much so that you become a bigot because you do not believe people should accept this state of affairs. Also you can be a troll for insisting that people should have equal rights, apparently it is de jure to assume that some people are more equal than others and the rest should just learn to live with it. To be fair

Up is down, wrong is right, bad is good.

[CheskiChips]

Sam, this level of rhetoric is even a little surprising for you.

[S.A.M.]

Not at all. Its rare to find anyone who openly supports racism these days as a state policy. Except for zionists.

It's not "settlements". It's natural growth of towns. Racists like you SAM can call it all you want, and Obama can incompetently, naively and foolishly try to limit it to get "palestinians" to stop attempting genocide, but it won't change a darn thing.

"palestinians" know what's expected of them. They want land for a state, they know what they need to do to get it from Israel, with cooperation. Until then, Israelis will keep building on THEIR land and people like you are welcome to stomp their foot until it breaks

You can't even get beyond putting Palestinians in quotes

Natural growth? Cancer is a natural growth too. But no one will just let it be because its in the same space as the cells that usually live there. To redefine occupation as natural growth is something only a zionist could dream up.

Lets look at what your "natural growth" entails:



source


And here is your role model for it:

The Nuremberg indictment of the German Nationalist Socialist Government charges (International Military Tribunal, vol. 1, p. 63):

“In certain occupied territories purportedly annexed to Germany the defendants methodically and pursuant to plan endeavored to assimilate these territories politically, culturally, socially, and economically into the German Reich. They endeavored to obliterate the former national character of these territories. In pursuance of their plans, the defendants forcibly deported inhabitants who were predominantly non-German and replaced them by thousands of German colonists.”
http://www.ess.uwe.ac.uk/genocide/indictment3.htm

Would you call that "natural growth" too?

[CheskiChips]

If you can avoid tangential discussion for just a few responses; that's a reasonable topic of discussion that's fundamental to this disagreement. I'm willing to discuss - and will admit to wrong if, you are equally willing.

The Questions:
- Under international law, what constitutes a legal acquirement of land?
- Can government-A lease purchased land in a foreign country discriminantly, if so, can government-B (the government which the land exists in) claim 'eminent domain'.
- if government-B can claim eminent domain and acquires said land, can government-A exact retribution?
if yes - where?
if no - do the losses constitute grounds for protection of assets?


---Your present argument, The Nurgemburg trials as a precedent, isn't valid for the following reasons.
- The lands were annexed by the NAZI government and sold to individuals.
as compared to...
- The lands were purchased by an organization from individual holders (The Jewish National Fund from Arab landowners) and then sold to a government entity which then claimed the land in ownership.

[S.A.M.]

Which one of your arguments is a support for the dispossession of people for ethnocentric reasons?

What I find really ironic about arguments with zionists is that the exact same arguments hold up for the nazis.

The Nuremberg laws were retroactively applied. They did not exist at the time of the atrocities. Does this make those atrocities legal, in your eyes?

Also I am not arguing for right or wrong here. Call it unmitigated arrogance if you will, but I come from a society with an embedded caste system and I accept no abuse of human rights on the basis of colour or race as justified.

[CheskiChips]

Which one of your arguments is a support for the dispossession of people for ethnocentric reasons?

What I find really ironic about arguments with zionists is that the exact same arguments hold up for the nazis.

The Nuremberg laws were retroactively applied. They did not exist at the time of the atrocities. Does this make those atrocities legal, in your eyes?

Also I am not arguing for right or wrong here. Call it unmitigated arrogance if you will, but I come from a society with an embedded caste system and I accept no abuse of human rights as justified.

So I guess you've decided to not engage in reasonable discussion.

I must ask, shouldn't your anger be directed at the Jewish National Fund rather than the Israeli government? Or...maybe the absentee landowners? You know - the people who purchased and sold the land of the poor tenant Palestinians?

I already established why the Nuremberg trials have no precedent here - you're proposing an entirely unrelated set of laws which is fine, simply admit you're doing so.

[S.A.M.]

But they do have a precedent here. They did not exist at the time of the atrocities.

Does that make those atrocities legal?

[CheskiChips]

But they do have a precedent here. They did not exist at the time of the atrocities.

Does that make those atrocities legal?

precedent - established practice: an established custom or practice

You're arguing that the "established practice" is making retroactive law? Let's assume so.

Then what exactly is this new law to state? Is it to state legally purchased land cannot be sold to foreign governments - nor is a landowner allowed to lease rights to a foreign government?

[S.A.M.]

I'm saying that laws take time to catch up with human rights. So its disingenuous to use them to address issues of human rights.

But like the Germans of yore the absence of laws defending human rights is not an excuse for continued apartheid.

As a Jew, you don't need a court to tell you that discrimination for reasons of ethnicity or religion is a violation of human rights.

[CheskiChips]

I'm saying that laws take time to catch up with human rights. So its disingenuous to use them to address issues of human rights.

But like the Germans of yore the absence of laws defending human rights is not an excuse for continued apartheid.

As a Jew, you don't need a court to tell you that discrimination for reasons of ethnicity or religion is a violation of human rights.

Then answer the following questions:
1. Was Europe right to annex German land after WWI?
2. Were the Nuremburg trials right to retroactively impose a law?
3. What is the law that you believe should exist that doesn't? What law that existed could prevent what happened?
4. What was the right - in detail - that was transgressed, and who transgressed it, how?


Can you actually answer any of these questions? Until you can, you're just a babbling crazy person.