Thread: What is "israel"? Somebody please....?

Palestinians hae been ersecuted from way before their suicide brigades, the borders of 1967 are absolutely not respected, the UN did vote around 235 resolutions condemning Israel's actions but the US did put their veto everytime. Steal someone's land, steal a few inches eery year, pay the mayor to put a blind eye on it and then hope that your neighbor remains peaceful and docile, just for fun.

Lyle call the no-frılls Arabs whatever you lıke---there were offıcıally half a mıllıon of them ın that land as of the creatıon of Israel----and 15 thousand Jews on the same land at that tıme. Thereffore whıch people have the more property rights etc? The 500,000 or the 15,000? Doesnt matter ıf you call them general Arabs or Palestınıans or Egyptıans-lıvıng-in-Palestıne Arabs---the fact ıs they were THERE, to the tune of 450 thousand---and how the fuck do Polısh and Russıan and Brooklyn New York Jews have the rıght to now be occupyıng all of that where those people were and stıll are?

I am a Chrıstıan Armenıan--- Jerusalem has an Armenıan Quarter where over 120 thousand Armenıans have been lıvıng for about 2000 years. When the Jews started oversteppıng and occupyıng the surroundıng lands and buıldıng ıllegal settlements everywhere----they wound up destroyıng quıte alot of ancıent Armenıan sıtes too---ıt ıs a bıg ıssue wıth Armenıans ın the US, France and Armenıa ıtself. The Jews destroyed ancıent Armenıan sıtes, cemeterıes, and olıve groves to buıld there walls and settlements etc. Its not just the Palestınıans they have abused.

Don't talk to me about "ancient sites" being destroyed when there's a fucking mosque on top of the Temple.

Originally Posted by Greenbeanz

Originally Posted by Kirkland Laing

Originally Posted by VictorCharlie

Originally Posted by brocktonblockbust

3 Jews killed.....99 Palestinians killed, 440 injured. Does something seem wrong here?

Attachment 2619

Demographically the Palestinians are winning. In a few years an Israeli minority will be ruling an apartheid state that will eventually go the way of South Africa.

This is where you undermine yourself. Apartheid was an official policy of discrimination practised by white people against black people. Many Jews are black. What is your argument? Race, Religion or ethnicity? From where does your concern for one side over the other arise?

Four decades later, the increasingly complex world of Israel's system of classification deems Said Rhateb to be a resident of the West Bank - somewhere he has never lived - and an illegal alien for living in the home in which he was born, inside the Jerusalem boundary. Jerusalem's council forces Rhateb to pay substantial property taxes on his house but that does not give him the right to live in it, and he is periodically arrested for doing so. Rhateb's children have been thrown out of their Jerusalem school, he cannot register a car in his name - or rather he can, but only one with Palestinian number plates, which means he cannot drive it to his home because only Israeli-registered cars are allowed within Jerusalem - and he needs a pass to visit the centre of the city. The army grants him about four a year.
There is more. If Rhateb is not legally resident in his own home, then he is defined as an "absentee" who has abandoned his property. Under Israeli law, it now belongs to the state or, more particularly, its Jewish citizens. "They sent papers that said we cannot sell the land or develop it because we do not own the land. It belongs to the state," he says. "Any time they want to confiscate it, they can, because they say we are absentees even though we are living in the house. That's what forced my older brother and three sisters to live in the US. They couldn't bear the harassment."
The 'apartheid wall'
There are few places in the world where governments construct a web of nationality and residency laws designed for use by one section of the population against another. Apartheid South Africa was one. So is Israel.............


Worlds apart | World news | The Guardian




More than two-thirds of Israeli Jews say that 2.5 million Palestinians living in the West Bank should be denied the right to vote if the area was annexed by Israel, in effect endorsing an apartheid state, according to an opinion poll reported in Haaretz.
Three out of four are in favour of segregated roads for Israelis and Palestinians in the West Bank, and 58% believe Israel already practises apartheid against Palestinians, the poll found.
A third want Arab citizens within Israel to be banned from voting in elections to the country's parliament. Almost six out of 10 say Jews should be given preference to Arabs in government jobs, 49% say Jewish citizens should be treated better than Arabs, 42% would not want to live in the same building as Arabs and the same number do not want their children going to school with Arabs.
A commentary by Gideon Levy, which accompanied the results of the poll, described the findings as disturbing. "Israelis themselves … are openly, shamelessly and guiltlessly defining themselves as nationalistic racists," he wrote.
"It's good to live in this country, most Israelis say, not despite its racism, but perhaps because of it. If such a survey were released about the attitude to Jews in a European state, Israel would have raised hell. When it comes to us, the rules don't apply."


Israeli poll finds majority would be in favour of 'apartheid' policies | World news | guardian.co.uk






As a Jew who has been an ardent supporter of Israel since its independence, it pains me to record what I saw there. But it is my love for Israel and for the Jewish people that drives me to speak out at this treacherous time.
What I witnessed in the West Bank—home to about 2.5 million Palestinians and 400,000 Israeli settlers—exceeded my worst expectations.
While the world’s statesmen have dithered, Israel has created a system of apartheid on steroids, a horrifying prison with concrete walls as high as twenty-six feet, topped with body-ravaging coils of razor wire. Spaced along these walls are imposing guard towers that harbor bunkers from which trespassers can be shot by Israeli soldiers. From this physical segregation—one land for Israelis; another, unequal land for Palestinians—flows a torrent of misery, violence and human rights abuses. The West Bank suffers from acute shortages of water, housing, jobs and healthcare. Palestinian children are separated from their parents, denied access to hospitals and stoned and beaten by Jewish settlers. Human rights sanctioned by international law, including the right to health, the prohibition on transferring populations into occupied territoriesand equality before the law are routinely violated....
How can Jews, who have been persecuted for centuries, tolerate this inhumanity? Where is their moral compass? How can this situation be acceptable to Judaism’s spiritual and political leaders? I don’t have that answer; except to say that Israel’s biggest enemy has become itself.


It’s apartheid, declares an investment banker/CFR member who’s an ‘ardent supporter of Israel’ | Mondoweiss






Citizenship law makes Israel an apartheid state

We do not have to identify the characteristics of South African apartheid in the civil rights discrimination in Israel in order to call Israel an apartheid state. It is best that we not try to evade the truth: The Citizenship Law's existence turns Israel into an apartheid state..............




Citizenship law makes Israel an apartheid state - Israel News | Haaretz Daily Newspaper

My concern for one side over the other isthe same reason I opposed the apartheid regime in South Africa and various rogue regimes around the world that repress their own and other people.

Originally Posted by Kirkland Laing

Originally Posted by Greenbeanz

Originally Posted by Kirkland Laing

Originally Posted by VictorCharlie

Originally Posted by brocktonblockbust

3 Jews killed.....99 Palestinians killed, 440 injured. Does something seem wrong here?

Attachment 2619

Demographically the Palestinians are winning. In a few years an Israeli minority will be ruling an apartheid state that will eventually go the way of South Africa.

This is where you undermine yourself. Apartheid was an official policy of discrimination practised by white people against black people. Many Jews are black. What is your argument? Race, Religion or ethnicity? From where does your concern for one side over the other arise?

Four decades later, the increasingly complex world of Israel's system of classification deems Said Rhateb to be a resident of the West Bank - somewhere he has never lived - and an illegal alien for living in the home in which he was born, inside the Jerusalem boundary. Jerusalem's council forces Rhateb to pay substantial property taxes on his house but that does not give him the right to live in it, and he is periodically arrested for doing so. Rhateb's children have been thrown out of their Jerusalem school, he cannot register a car in his name - or rather he can, but only one with Palestinian number plates, which means he cannot drive it to his home because only Israeli-registered cars are allowed within Jerusalem - and he needs a pass to visit the centre of the city. The army grants him about four a year.
There is more. If Rhateb is not legally resident in his own home, then he is defined as an "absentee" who has abandoned his property. Under Israeli law, it now belongs to the state or, more particularly, its Jewish citizens. "They sent papers that said we cannot sell the land or develop it because we do not own the land. It belongs to the state," he says. "Any time they want to confiscate it, they can, because they say we are absentees even though we are living in the house. That's what forced my older brother and three sisters to live in the US. They couldn't bear the harassment."
The 'apartheid wall'
There are few places in the world where governments construct a web of nationality and residency laws designed for use by one section of the population against another. Apartheid South Africa was one. So is Israel.............


Worlds apart | World news | The Guardian




More than two-thirds of Israeli Jews say that 2.5 million Palestinians living in the West Bank should be denied the right to vote if the area was annexed by Israel, in effect endorsing an apartheid state, according to an opinion poll reported in Haaretz.
Three out of four are in favour of segregated roads for Israelis and Palestinians in the West Bank, and 58% believe Israel already practises apartheid against Palestinians, the poll found.
A third want Arab citizens within Israel to be banned from voting in elections to the country's parliament. Almost six out of 10 say Jews should be given preference to Arabs in government jobs, 49% say Jewish citizens should be treated better than Arabs, 42% would not want to live in the same building as Arabs and the same number do not want their children going to school with Arabs.
A commentary by Gideon Levy, which accompanied the results of the poll, described the findings as disturbing. "Israelis themselves … are openly, shamelessly and guiltlessly defining themselves as nationalistic racists," he wrote.
"It's good to live in this country, most Israelis say, not despite its racism, but perhaps because of it. If such a survey were released about the attitude to Jews in a European state, Israel would have raised hell. When it comes to us, the rules don't apply."


Israeli poll finds majority would be in favour of 'apartheid' policies | World news | guardian.co.uk






As a Jew who has been an ardent supporter of Israel since its independence, it pains me to record what I saw there. But it is my love for Israel and for the Jewish people that drives me to speak out at this treacherous time.
What I witnessed in the West Bank—home to about 2.5 million Palestinians and 400,000 Israeli settlers—exceeded my worst expectations.
While the world’s statesmen have dithered, Israel has created a system of apartheid on steroids, a horrifying prison with concrete walls as high as twenty-six feet, topped with body-ravaging coils of razor wire. Spaced along these walls are imposing guard towers that harbor bunkers from which trespassers can be shot by Israeli soldiers. From this physical segregation—one land for Israelis; another, unequal land for Palestinians—flows a torrent of misery, violence and human rights abuses. The West Bank suffers from acute shortages of water, housing, jobs and healthcare. Palestinian children are separated from their parents, denied access to hospitals and stoned and beaten by Jewish settlers. Human rights sanctioned by international law, including the right to health, the prohibition on transferring populations into occupied territoriesand equality before the law are routinely violated....
How can Jews, who have been persecuted for centuries, tolerate this inhumanity? Where is their moral compass? How can this situation be acceptable to Judaism’s spiritual and political leaders? I don’t have that answer; except to say that Israel’s biggest enemy has become itself.


It’s apartheid, declares an investment banker/CFR member who’s an ‘ardent supporter of Israel’ | Mondoweiss






Citizenship law makes Israel an apartheid state

We do not have to identify the characteristics of South African apartheid in the civil rights discrimination in Israel in order to call Israel an apartheid state. It is best that we not try to evade the truth: The Citizenship Law's existence turns Israel into an apartheid state..............




Citizenship law makes Israel an apartheid state - Israel News | Haaretz Daily Newspaper

My concern for one side over the other isthe same reason I opposed the apartheid regime in South Africa and various rogue regimes around the world that repress their own and other people.

You have merely quoted several other people incorrectly describing something that is not apartheid. Can you not see how inherently racist it is to use such a metaphor? Does this sound like a rational and unbiased account to you?

Originally Posted by Greenbeanz

You have merely quoted several other people incorrectly describing something that is not apartheid. Can you not see how inherently racist it is to use such a metaphor? Does this sound like a rational and unbiased account to you?

Only if it supports what he originally thought

https://www.youtube.com/watch?featur...&v=UH-IINhvQvI

Who is on the side of logic, reason, and rational thinking again

the REAL voice of reason----God Bless the REAL Jews
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zA5is7IcEqA

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IapWP8hq9Mc

I find it odd to quibble with a solitary sentence when most of what was said in the quotes above is quite true and on the record. Apartheid simply means the seperation or segregation of groups and in this case of Arabs.

Kirkland produced a good post as always. He isn't clouded by the way we are supposed to view Israel, but sees through the mist and tells it as it is.

Good on Brockton and Kirkland for keeping it real. One should never atone for injustice and with 160 dead we have seen another slaughter. Though in comparison to times past only a moderate slaughter and so this truce may be seen as a victory for peace.

All this after the Israeli's shot dead a boy playing football. It's funny how they always draw first blood and will do so again after another truce. You cannot allow the uppity concentration camp members to get silly ideas about independance, development and potential freedom. They have rockets? How dare they! And thus the shooting of the boy and an excuse to hammer them when the obvious retaliation came. It was predictable, but to have dunces like Hague say Hamas started it.....well, we support the regime. What else could we say? We have no backbone nor integrity.

You may wish to toe the popular line and believe that things are that simplistic but no amount of hyperbole will ever describe such a complex issue. Comparing the Palestinians situation to a concentration camp or referring to it as apartheid just lets you off the hook when it comes to analyzing the facts with an open mind.

Originally Posted by Greenbeanz

You may wish to toe the popular line and believe that things are that simplistic but no amount of hyperbole will ever describe such a complex issue. Comparing the Palestinians situation to a concentration camp or referring to it as apartheid just lets you off the hook when it comes to analyzing the facts with an open mind.

But it is and has described as much by influential scholars; Chomsky and Finklestein would readily agree with me. It is a concentration camp minus the gas chambers and moreso now that so much infrastructure has been destroyed. It was no accident and the bombing carefully targetted to wreak as much havoc with Palestinian lives as possible.

There is nothing simplistic in the fact that Gazan's are camped in and restricted by land, air and sea, they are denied basic equipment, food, or even materials to rebuild long term damaged property. You keep a populace hungry, deprived, poor and bound and what you have is a concentration camp. It is easy to end it and Israel is in control of it. All this talk of rockets is absurd when you see how Gazan's are forced to live.

It is you who deny that we can call it a concentration camp or Israel/West Bank as apartheid. It seems it is you with the closed mind on the topic.

Time to break the taboo and say what Gaza is: a concentration camp

palestınıans are blockaded-----they are treated like scum----ambulances and etc take 10 tımesa longer to come to theır resCue as opposed to the resCue of Jews ın that area. Pregnant women are regıularly delayed on theır wway to hospıtals at israeli checkpoınts----etc.

It ıs Warsaw ghetto revısıted.

NO WONDER THEY LAUNCH ROCKETS INTO İSRAEL. I WOULD DO IT TOO.

Originally Posted by Greenbeanz

Originally Posted by Kirkland Laing

Originally Posted by Greenbeanz

Originally Posted by Kirkland Laing

Originally Posted by VictorCharlie

Originally Posted by brocktonblockbust

3 Jews killed.....99 Palestinians killed, 440 injured. Does something seem wrong here?

Attachment 2619

Demographically the Palestinians are winning. In a few years an Israeli minority will be ruling an apartheid state that will eventually go the way of South Africa.

This is where you undermine yourself. Apartheid was an official policy of discrimination practised by white people against black people. Many Jews are black. What is your argument? Race, Religion or ethnicity? From where does your concern for one side over the other arise?

Four decades later, the increasingly complex world of Israel's system of classification deems Said Rhateb to be a resident of the West Bank - somewhere he has never lived - and an illegal alien for living in the home in which he was born, inside the Jerusalem boundary. Jerusalem's council forces Rhateb to pay substantial property taxes on his house but that does not give him the right to live in it, and he is periodically arrested for doing so. Rhateb's children have been thrown out of their Jerusalem school, he cannot register a car in his name - or rather he can, but only one with Palestinian number plates, which means he cannot drive it to his home because only Israeli-registered cars are allowed within Jerusalem - and he needs a pass to visit the centre of the city. The army grants him about four a year.
There is more. If Rhateb is not legally resident in his own home, then he is defined as an "absentee" who has abandoned his property. Under Israeli law, it now belongs to the state or, more particularly, its Jewish citizens. "They sent papers that said we cannot sell the land or develop it because we do not own the land. It belongs to the state," he says. "Any time they want to confiscate it, they can, because they say we are absentees even though we are living in the house. That's what forced my older brother and three sisters to live in the US. They couldn't bear the harassment."
The 'apartheid wall'
There are few places in the world where governments construct a web of nationality and residency laws designed for use by one section of the population against another. Apartheid South Africa was one. So is Israel.............


Worlds apart | World news | The Guardian




More than two-thirds of Israeli Jews say that 2.5 million Palestinians living in the West Bank should be denied the right to vote if the area was annexed by Israel, in effect endorsing an apartheid state, according to an opinion poll reported in Haaretz.
Three out of four are in favour of segregated roads for Israelis and Palestinians in the West Bank, and 58% believe Israel already practises apartheid against Palestinians, the poll found.
A third want Arab citizens within Israel to be banned from voting in elections to the country's parliament. Almost six out of 10 say Jews should be given preference to Arabs in government jobs, 49% say Jewish citizens should be treated better than Arabs, 42% would not want to live in the same building as Arabs and the same number do not want their children going to school with Arabs.
A commentary by Gideon Levy, which accompanied the results of the poll, described the findings as disturbing. "Israelis themselves … are openly, shamelessly and guiltlessly defining themselves as nationalistic racists," he wrote.
"It's good to live in this country, most Israelis say, not despite its racism, but perhaps because of it. If such a survey were released about the attitude to Jews in a European state, Israel would have raised hell. When it comes to us, the rules don't apply."


Israeli poll finds majority would be in favour of 'apartheid' policies | World news | guardian.co.uk






As a Jew who has been an ardent supporter of Israel since its independence, it pains me to record what I saw there. But it is my love for Israel and for the Jewish people that drives me to speak out at this treacherous time.
What I witnessed in the West Bank—home to about 2.5 million Palestinians and 400,000 Israeli settlers—exceeded my worst expectations.
While the world’s statesmen have dithered, Israel has created a system of apartheid on steroids, a horrifying prison with concrete walls as high as twenty-six feet, topped with body-ravaging coils of razor wire. Spaced along these walls are imposing guard towers that harbor bunkers from which trespassers can be shot by Israeli soldiers. From this physical segregation—one land for Israelis; another, unequal land for Palestinians—flows a torrent of misery, violence and human rights abuses. The West Bank suffers from acute shortages of water, housing, jobs and healthcare. Palestinian children are separated from their parents, denied access to hospitals and stoned and beaten by Jewish settlers. Human rights sanctioned by international law, including the right to health, the prohibition on transferring populations into occupied territoriesand equality before the law are routinely violated....
How can Jews, who have been persecuted for centuries, tolerate this inhumanity? Where is their moral compass? How can this situation be acceptable to Judaism’s spiritual and political leaders? I don’t have that answer; except to say that Israel’s biggest enemy has become itself.


It’s apartheid, declares an investment banker/CFR member who’s an ‘ardent supporter of Israel’ | Mondoweiss






Citizenship law makes Israel an apartheid state

We do not have to identify the characteristics of South African apartheid in the civil rights discrimination in Israel in order to call Israel an apartheid state. It is best that we not try to evade the truth: The Citizenship Law's existence turns Israel into an apartheid state..............




Citizenship law makes Israel an apartheid state - Israel News | Haaretz Daily Newspaper

My concern for one side over the other isthe same reason I opposed the apartheid regime in South Africa and various rogue regimes around the world that repress their own and other people.

You have merely quoted several other people incorrectly describing something that is not apartheid. Can you not see how inherently racist it is to use such a metaphor? Does this sound like a rational and unbiased account to you?

In that case 58% of the Israeli population must be inherently racist and incorrectly describing something that is not apartheid as apartheid. Bishop Desmond Tutu and a bunch of other South African notables who've been to Palestine and say it's worse than apartheid-era South Africa must be inherently racist and incorrectly describing something that is not apartheid as apartheid.

Originally Posted by Greenbeanz

You may wish to toe the popular line and believe that things are that simplistic but no amount of hyperbole will ever describe such a complex issue. Comparing the Palestinians situation to a concentration camp or referring to it as apartheid just lets you off the hook when it comes to analyzing the facts with an open mind.

People in Gaza are currently under a blockade that controls how much medicine is allowed in and even how many calories each Gazan is allowed every day, and it's basically the minimum daily allowance for human beings kept in a prison. An Israeli minister described the calorie thing as "putting them on a diet".

The Pope's justice minister, Cardinal Renato Martino, has sharply criticised Israel's actions and likened the Gaza Strip to a "big concentration camp"........

BBC NEWS | Europe | Vatican deplores Gaza situation

So the situation there is bad enough fopr the Vatican to compare the situation to a concentration camp.

And I think I've covered the apartheid thing. If a majority of Israelis believe Israel is currently running an apartheid state then who are we to argue with them?

Here's an Israeli newspaper making the samr point :

The de facto separation is today more similar to political apartheid than an occupation regime because of its constancy. One side - determined by national, not geographic association - includes people who have the right to choose and the freedom to move, and a growing economy. On the other side are people closed behind the walls surrounding their community, who have no right to vote, lack freedom of movement, and have no chance to plan their future.

Where is the occupation? - Israel News | Haaretz Daily Newspaper



Here's a former Israeli regime leader making the same point :

Israel's Prime Minister Ehud Olmert has said failure to negotiate a two-state solution with the Palestinians would spell the end of the State of Israel. He warned of a "South African-style struggle" which Israel would lose if a Palestinian state was not established.





"If the day comes when the two-state solution collapses, and we face a South African-style struggle for equal voting rights, then, as soon as that happens, the State of Israel is finished," Mr Olmert is quoted saying in Haaretz newspaper.





http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/7118937.stm




And the two state solution has most definitely collapsed. So there you go.


I'm not looking at this from a pro-Palestinian viewpoint, I'm not even looking it from an open-minded position which can see both sides of the argument. I'm looking at it from the Israeli viewpoint.