Happy Birthday Israel! Happy Birthday Israel! Happy Birthday Israel!
Some might find the following offensive. And rightly so.
Well done for being so liberal while surrounded by such barbarians!
Congratulations for being so representative!
Your bravery is a sterling example, you stand as a single shining hope amongst a sea of foulness!
I salute your indefatigability!
Three cheers for the noble boys of the IDF!
10/6,000,000 Keep up the good work!
I hope I live to see it be 120 years of this!!
His life worth as much as mine? LOL!
Right of return? LOL! Back to the earth with you, worm!
A racist state? Nah, just Chosen or GTFO.
ZIONISM FTW!
Alright guys, I know what you’re all thinking:
THREE CHEERS FOR ISRAEL!
Hip hip…
Hooray!
Hip Hip…
Hooray!
Hip Hip…
HOORAY!
And one for luck:
Hip Hip…
HOORAYYY!!
Israel is a nation which has been in various states of war throughout its short history. Nations at war kill people. If I was the sort of person who used pictures of dead children for point-scoring in blog-based debates, then I’m sure I could find all sorts of grizzly images of dead children for any modern war, however moral. At least Israel makes an attempt not to kill innocents, even if we can debate whether it tries hard enough. The people it’s fighting understands the situation to be the more dead Jews, the better; the more women and children, the better.
By the way, do you even read the articles you’ve linked to? One is a pro-war blog (which disputes the 6m dead figure you’ve sourced from it, one links to a website with articles including “The Holocaust as political asset”, ( I wonder what your response to that would be if it was written by a white Christian, rather than a Muslim…) and others defending suicide bombers. Such hyperbolic and stereotypical reactionary leftism is a bit tedious, especially when you don’t make any points other than “Israel has killed people”, therefore the state is evil and we can’t celebrate its beacon of democracy in the Middle East.
I refer you to my comment on your last piece of unneccessary, unhelpful, and unwelcome garbage.
Ben: I don’t care how hard it tries. I care that it fails. If you doubt that then see above.
Hopefully these pictures caused reality to slap you in the face. A principle is worthless the second you assume it to be of more worth than the overwhelming “Don’t kill children who never needed to die”. I think that this also applies to the man who shot schoolchildren in a Zionist school, of course, but the amount he killed was a minuscule fraction of the Palestinian dead. You can not deny that. And unless Jewish life is worth more than goy, which does that make worse?
Also, to concern yourself with dead children is not “Leftism”. It rather transcends the political spectrum, I would have thought. At times I have my doubts, but would never allege as much as openly and directly as you have. I also find your own response of assuming me to be an apologist for terrorist groups rather stereotypical. I loathe them as well, but none of them have been feted in the press lately and its worthwhile considering exactly why they come into existence. Why must you instantly presume that because I consider Israel’s legitimacy to be a sham based upon theft and sustained with young corpses that I relish the prospect of terrorists or wish to conceal their sins?
All I want is understanding.
“( I wonder what your response to that would be if it was written by a white Christian, rather than a Muslim…)”
It could be written by a Zoroastrian and it wouldn’t affect my view of the argument. That would be an ad hominem.
As it happens the Holocaust was a political asset to the militant Zionists, in much the same way the WTC attacks served as an asset to the neo-conservatives. In both instances the groups were evil to start with and used massive human suffering as an opportunity to pursue their perverse agenda.
The rape of Iraq required the World Trade Centre, the theft of Palestine required the Holocaust.
I trust that you do not accept the standard narrative of Jewish violence and ethnic cleansing somehow being rendered acceptable owing to them being victims of the Nazis. Indeed the common assumption that the militant variety of Zionism emerged only after the atrocities committed in the death camps is entirely flawed and misleading. The truth of the matter is that Zionism included violent organisations which advocated and utilised terrorism long before the Shoah struck European Jewry. Decades, at least. Their intentions remained the same both before and after the Holocaust, but it served as an immensely helpful affair for them in the pursuit of their political goals.
I don’t think that it’s insensitive to point that out. I do think it’s insensitive for them to have done it.
The problem with Zionism is deeper than this, though, it is that it was wrong from the start: if you are under attack wherever you go then filling a single location simply gets you attacked on all sides. You may have noted that some of the people who argue “the more dead Jews; the better” are immensely pleased at having all their targets in a single place and have stated as much. They have done nothing to resolve the hatred, they have simply relocated. You will note that in many countries {Scandinavia, for instance} there is virtually no Jew-hate, which surely seems a more suitable environment to live than one where you are surrounded by enemies and face the prospect of them soon outnumbering you inside as well.
Aloof as this may sound what the Jews should have done is engaged in a spot of introspection. It is often said by anti-Semites that the fact they were attacked wherever they went said something about them rather than the world. This is an obvious nonsense. They have a fine point, but not the one they wish to make. Allow us to consider the instance of the Normans: they staged an outright invasion of England, followed by an occupation that caused almost the entire of the English aristocracy to lose their land, instead giving the land to their own kind, who then taxed the people a lot more to fund the logistics of a cross-channel Empire.
Was their anti-Norman bigotry? Of sorts. But no accounts of it lasting despite them being a tiny and highly privileged minority, conditions which remained true even when the Angevin dynasty took command.
Too much could easily be read into this comparison but I find it instructive that the Normans inter-bred happily and met no problems, indeed are now entirely indistinguishable within the English population. The Jews, meanwhile, have kept cliqued and thus are hounded and pogrommed wherever they go.
If concern about creating new Jews and any form of stigma concerning marrying outside of the “Chosen People” were to vanish then so would the bigotry which follows them. It is inevitable that any group which distinguishes itself from the mean in the fashion which the Jews do they would suffer much the same fate. Indeed, observe the prejudice that solidifies daily in this nation towards the Muslims, who make themselves clearly of the other through their garb. It seems an inevitable tendency within humanity to engage in tribalism. I am not about to advocate that all spark of individuality should be extinguished but if you are obeying rigidly the traditions and norms of your “Community” exactly how strong a claim to any non-conformist status can you possess?
And yes, I am effectively arguing that the Jewish people should cease to exist. This hardly makes me an anti-Semite, however. Indeed my dream is the National Socialist nightmare: total integration, assimilation for all and a blurring of once concrete boundaries into nothingness. All it would take is for the internal objection to cross-cultural unions to cease.
I propose that we do away with these divisions, but the Zionists instead advocated claiming an entire land as the Jew Land, where Jews would belong. This inevitably bears the implications that Jews belong only there and no non-Jews belong. Which you may argue against but it is obviously a popular chant amongst many on the Israeli right.
Better still the basis is entirely racial. If you have a grandparent who was a Jew then you are in, otherwise you must have the correct beliefs to belong there. So we are left with a racist state built upon stolen land. Unless you are going to run with the “It was an empty desert!” lie, which was untrue of almost everywhere save Tel Aviv.
Furthermore your analysis of the motivation behind Palestinian resistance is immensely lacking. There are certainly those that simply wish to kill all the Jews but understanding that as the totality of Palestinian nationalist thought is foolish. For instance Islamic Jihad, the group for those who consider Hamas sell-outs, evokes in its name a philosophy which largely exists in response to western action. It first came to prominence due to the success of the First Crusade in claiming sizable chunks of Palestine for the Europeans, led to the destruction of the WTC {contrary to popular belief Osama has not asserted his aim to be total dominance of the west under a vicious theocracy but instead has stated US foreign policy as being his inspiration} and the bombings of 7/7 {once again, the bombers argued it was foreign policy that they aimed to protest, albeit in the least appropriate manner imaginable}.
Let us not understate unprovoked Islamic militancy. The only way that the religion established itself as the size it did so quickly was through the sword. But arguing that this remains its defining trait is rather unfair, in that it is much akin to considering the expansionist tribalism of the early Israelites as relevant to modern history. At present it seems that Muslims will mainly attack each other and their attacks upon the west, or upon Jews, follow clear instances of provocation. The invasion and occupation of the Gaza Strip and West Bank are two prime examples and I am sure that the context of those occasions told from a slanted Zionist pro-pre-emptive strike perspective will be great consolation to former residents who have gone almost half a century without a house.
{Oh yes, and I just thought I’d mention Hamas have offered cease-fire lasting decades. If they want all the Jews dead they certainly are patient chaps…}
So do you give in to terrorists? Well, yes. When behaving unethically anyway you do not suddenly become ethical owing to the tactics used against you. That they are behaving badly in reaction to your crimes to try and make you stop does not give you a mandate to continue your own foulness.
Which brings us to your last argument: Israel the noble democracy. Well, they are in command of the West Bank and increasingly are reclaiming control over Gaza. That is where all of the corpses above are from, I believe. How many of their parents are going to get an opportunity to vote, Ben? Given that their children have been killed by this callous, brutal monstrosity surely they should get a single chance to exert some influence over it?
Ah, but of course. They get to vote for the endlessly effectual Palestinian Authority. They get to pick a government. Then get crushed for opting for the wrong party.
“Put on a diet”. Surrounded by effluent. Receive treatment that leaves them looking as above.
Quite a beacon.
Well, that’s an exceptionally long reply so I’ll just deal with a few points if that’s okay.
“I don’t care how hard it tries. I care that it fails”.
The fact that Israel tries not to kill innocents and Hamas tries to kill as many civilians as possible demonstrates a clear moral difference between the two sides. If you a fighting a terrorist organisation which purposefully bases itself in civilian areas so that innocents’ deaths can be used for propaganda and takes their families along with them, innocent people will die. Of course this is a tragedy but, and I’m beginning to repeat myself, the actions of the IDF and Hamas are incomparable because of what their aims are.
“Also, to concern yourself with dead children is not “Leftism”. It rather transcends the political spectrum, I would have thought. At times I have my doubts, but would never allege as much as openly and directly as you have. I also find your own response of assuming me to be an apologist for terrorist groups rather stereotypical. I loathe them as well, but none of them have been feted in the press lately and its worthwhile considering exactly why they come into existence. Why must you instantly presume that because I consider Israel’s legitimacy to be a sham based upon theft and sustained with young corpses that I relish the prospect of terrorists or wish to conceal their sins?”
Where did I allege you supported Hamas? You are quite clearly not transcending the political spectrum – you are quite tastelessly using pictures of dead Palestinian children to make a political point. It adds nothing to the debate (indeed there was no debate; you simply posted the disgusting pictures). If you wanted to comment on the conflict in such a way, you could have posted dead children of either nation, after all, they’re just “dead children”.
I think Israel gets a very tough time of it in the western media. The 60th anniversary was not used as a time for celebration in our media but as an excuse to comment, usually negatively.
“As it happens the Holocaust was a political asset to the militant Zionists, in much the same way the WTC attacks served as an asset to the neo-conservatives. In both instances the groups were evil to start with and used massive human suffering as an opportunity to pursue their perverse agenda.
The rape of Iraq required the World Trade Centre, the theft of Palestine required the Holocaust.”
I’m sure Galloway would be proud… Why do you think that neo-conservativism and Zionism are evil?
“The problem with Zionism is deeper than this, though, it is that it was wrong from the start: if you are under attack wherever you go then filling a single location simply gets you attacked on all sides. You may have noted that some of the people who argue “the more dead Jews; the better” are immensely pleased at having all their targets in a single place and have stated as much. They have done nothing to resolve the hatred, they have simply relocated. You will note that in many countries {Scandinavia, for instance} there is virtually no Jew-hate, which surely seems a more suitable environment to live than one where you are surrounded by enemies and face the prospect of them soon outnumbering you inside as well.”
There are just over 20,000 Jews in the whole of Scandinavia. It is possible that their governments may not want an extra million or two turning up at the border. The Jews had been persecuted for 2000 years in pretty much whichever country they’d settled in. This was still the case in relatively liberal western countries such as France – in which the Dreyfus Case highlighted huge levels of anti-Semitism whilst many French people and institutions including the police and SNCF actively participated in the Holocaust and Britain, where a major national newspaper was supported the BUF and my grandfather can remember getting beaten up in the 30s for going to the local synagogue in Leeds.
Nationalism then was focused on cultural, ethnic and religious groups (Judaism can be seen in all these three camps) having their own homeland. This may be less applicable today, in an age of multiculturalism and western tolerance but it would have seemed perverse for Jews to continue living in a continent which had largely facilitated their murder when many of them were already living in a nation they regarded as a safe, spiritual homeland.
“Too much could easily be read into this comparison but I find it instructive that the Normans inter-bred happily and met no problems, indeed are now entirely indistinguishable within the English population. The Jews, meanwhile, have kept cliqued and thus are hounded and pogrommed wherever they go.”
It’s a mad example. Most Jews do not accept you can be a member of the religion unless your mother is Jewish, there’s no way (they would accept) the faith could continue if Jews bred with non-Jews. I think your suggestion that because the Jews stayed as a community (when most of Europe forced them for years to stay in ghettos or leave the country and in the really liberal ones, just banned them from most jobs) it was obvious they should be persecuted is revolting.
“I am not about to advocate that all spark of individuality should be extinguished but if you are obeying rigidly the traditions and norms of your “Community” exactly how strong a claim to any non-conformist status can you possess?”
This sounds more like a discussion about a teenage counter-culture than a major word religion…
“And yes, I am effectively arguing that the Jewish people should cease to exist. This hardly makes me an anti-Semite, however. Indeed my dream is the National Socialist nightmare: total integration, assimilation for all and a blurring of once concrete boundaries into nothingness. All it would take is for the internal objection to cross-cultural unions to cease.”
That’s lovely but I’m not sure it’s really a practical solution to the current conflict, is it?
“Better still the basis is entirely racial. If you have a grandparent who was a Jew then you are in, otherwise you must have the correct beliefs to belong there. So we are left with a racist state built upon stolen land. Unless you are going to run with the “It was an empty desert!” lie, which was untrue of almost everywhere save Tel Aviv.”
I’m in! It’s not about racism, it’s about providing a sanctuary to anyone who would have been persecuted under the Nuremburg Laws.
“Furthermore your analysis of the motivation behind Palestinian resistance is immensely lacking. There are certainly those that simply wish to kill all the Jews but understanding that as the totality of Palestinian nationalist thought is foolish. For instance Islamic Jihad, the group for those who consider Hamas sell-outs, evokes in its name a philosophy which largely exists in response to western action. It first came to prominence due to the success of the First Crusade in claiming sizable chunks of Palestine for the Europeans, led to the destruction of the WTC {contrary to popular belief Osama has not asserted his aim to be total dominance of the west under a vicious theocracy but instead has stated US foreign policy as being his inspiration} and the bombings of 7/7 {once again, the bombers argued it was foreign policy that they aimed to protest, albeit in the least appropriate manner imaginable}.”
Jihad, which means struggle, was written about the Koran and Hadith well before the Crusades. Whilst Muslims would be quick to point out most of it is about an inner struggle, the violent side of it has been present throughout Islam, from its very bloody beginning under Muhammad.
Osama Bin-Laden first turned on the West as a result of ties between Saudi Arabia and the Americans, whereby Americans were invited to base themselves in a Muslim land. I’m not sure this really means his motivation is an opposition to western foreign policy although this is certainly part of it. He wants the westerners out so that the Middle East can become a vicious theocracy and Israel can be destroyed. The idea of a worldwide theocracy is undoubtedly present in his ideology but you are right to say that removing all western involvement in the region is his first priority.
“At present it seems that Muslims will mainly attack each other and their attacks upon the west, or upon Jews, follow clear instances of provocation. The invasion and occupation of the Gaza Strip and West Bank are two prime examples and I am sure that the context of those occasions told from a slanted Zionist pro-pre-emptive strike perspective will be great consolation to former residents who have gone almost half a century without a house.”
Please explain how America “provoked” 9/11? Or how the Spanish people provoked Al Qaeda to bomb them on their way to work? Or how the UN aid workers brought it upon themselves when their headquarters in Baghdad was blown up, with several hundred people inside? I hadn’t called you an apologist for terrorism yet, but surely this is about as naked as apologism gets?
“{Oh yes, and I just thought I’d mention Hamas have offered cease-fire lasting decades. If they want all the Jews dead they certainly are patient chaps…}”
It is true that they offered a ten year truce if Israel quickly and unilaterally withdrew to the 1967 borders. How genuine the offer was is a different matter and the lack of offer on their part to move towards a two-state solution made it rather impractical and short-term. It is explained in the New York Times in the terms that “since the Prophet Muhammad made a temporary hudna, or truce, with the Jews about 1,400 years ago, Hamas allows the idea. But no one in Hamas says he would make a peace treaty with Israel or permanently give up any part of Palestine.” Mkhaimer Abusada, a political scientist at Al Azhar University explains that “They [Hamas] talk of hudna, not of peace or reconciliation with Israel. They believe over time they will be strong enough to liberate all historic Palestine.”
However, the 1988 Hamas Covenant (or Charter) states that the organisation’s goal is to “raise the banner of God over every inch of Palestine,” in order to establish an Islamic Republic and opposes any two-state solution. It reads like Mein Kampf:
“You may speak as much as you want about regional and world wars. [The Jews] were behind World War I, when they were able to destroy the Islamic Caliphate, making financial gains and controlling resources. They obtained the Balfour Declaration, formed the League of Nations through which they could rule the world. They were behind World War II, through which they made huge financial gains by trading in armaments, and paved the way for the establishment of their state. It was they who instigated the replacement of the League of Nations with the United Nations and the Security Council to enable them to rule the world through them. There is no war going on anywhere, without having their finger in it.”
“Today it is Palestine, tomorrow it will be one country or another. The Zionist plan is limitless. After Palestine, the Zionists aspire to expand from the Nile to the Euphrates. When they will have digested the region they overtook, they will aspire to further expansion, and so on. Their plan is embodied in the “Protocols of the Elders of Zion”, and their present conduct is the best proof of what we are saying.”
As I imagine you know, the Protocols… were a forgery suggesting a Jewish plot for world domination, used to great effect in anti-Jewish Nazi propaganda of the 1930s and 1940s.
You also might want to check out their children’s website, Al-Fateh, where children are encouraged to train as suicide bombers or, as it euphemistically puts it, “the young builders of the future”. It includes pictures of the decapitated heads of female suicide bombers.
“So do you give in to terrorists? Well, yes. When behaving unethically anyway you do not suddenly become ethical owing to the tactics used against you. That they are behaving badly in reaction to your crimes to try and make you stop does not give you a mandate to continue your own foulness.”
I’m trying to understand where you’re coming from. Do you suggest that Israel puts down its weapons the next time a school or bus is blown up? Are you suggesting we should follow an entirely pacifistic line – welcome the Iranian and Syrian tanks with a few flowers and wait for another Holocaust? You should be under no illusions that the end of western support for Israel would means its destruction and no fuzzy multicultural state of Jews and Arabs living side by side would take its place. The Jewish people in the Middle East would be murdered.
If I may quote something from Oliver Kamm, “It is a failing of many liberal commentators to be swayed by the sheer unlikelihood of a popular movement dedicated to the political realisation of an eschatological vision. So far as we can ascertain from their intended targets, and in the absence of a suicide note, the terrorists of 9/11 [and this is more than relevant in discussing Palestinian Islamism] were not making a statement about poverty or oppression. Rather, they were acting out of an ideological imperative of striking at the institutions of Western civilisation: constitutional government, international commerce and a civilian-controlled military”.
“Which brings us to your last argument: Israel the noble democracy. Well, they are in command of the West Bank and increasingly are reclaiming control over Gaza. That is where all of the corpses above are from, I believe. How many of their parents are going to get an opportunity to vote, Ben? Given that their children have been killed by this callous, brutal monstrosity surely they should get a single chance to exert some influence over it?
Ah, but of course. They get to vote for the endlessly effectual Palestinian Authority. They get to pick a government. Then get crushed for opting for the wrong party.”
Israel and America support a two-state solution. When the Palestinian nation becomes a State, its people will have full voting rights in an autonomous country. Sadly, this seems impossible whilst Hamas – which has refused to accept the continued existence of any state of Israel – is still in charge. I respect the right of the Palestinians to vote for whoever they want to lead them but it is impossible to bargain with Hamas and they committed a sad error which has set back the peace process many years.
Well, that’s an exceptionally long reply so I’ll just deal with a few points if that’s okay.
There’s reason behind my rage, Ben. That’s quite alright, I don’t want to be here all night.
The fact that Israel tries not to kill innocents
It’s attempts involve driving tanks into a town and shelling randomly, do they? I apologise, Ben, but my faith in the human intellect even of members of the military forbids me from accepting that anyone could be that imbecilic.
Either the IDF wants civilians dead for purposes of collective punishment or it finds their demises incidental.
and Hamas tries to kill as many civilians as possible demonstrates a clear moral difference between the two sides. If you a fighting a terrorist organisation which purposefully bases itself in civilian areas so that innocents’ deaths can be used for propaganda and takes their families along with them, innocent people will die. Of course this is a tragedy but, and I’m beginning to repeat myself, the actions of the IDF and Hamas are incomparable because of what their aims are.
I insist upon making a comparison. My proposal is quite simple:
Who kills more children, the IDF or Hamas?
You can argue about principles all you like but corpses are corpses.
Where did I allege you supported Hamas?
Your reference to my celebration of their birthday. Perhaps I misinterpreted. What was your meaning?
You are quite clearly not transcending the political spectrum – you are quite tastelessly using pictures of dead Palestinian children to make a political point.
Firstly I never said that I was transcending anything. Secondly it was politics that killed them. It was Zionism. This matter is entirely political.
It adds nothing to the debate (indeed there was no debate; you simply posted the disgusting pictures). If you wanted to comment on the conflict in such a way, you could have posted dead children of either nation, after all, they’re just “dead children”.
When it’s Palestine’s birthday and the media celebrate it noisily I’ll post up some dead Israelis then, would that make you happy?
I think Israel gets a very tough time of it in the western media. The 60th anniversary was not used as a time for celebration in our media but as an excuse to comment, usually negatively.
Depends which papers you read.
I’m sure Galloway would be proud…
Nah, I haven’t praised the PLO enough.
Why do you think that neo-conservativism and Zionism are evil?
I’m not going to go off into some deep deconstruction of their theoretical flaws. I’m just going to point out the carnage that they’ve caused:
Neo-conservatism led to war in Iraq.
In Iraq a vast proportion of the population has been forced into exile for their own safety, inspired by the vast amount of dead. The United States has perpetuated war crimes both through the torture of the untried and the Siege of Fallujah, during which it used weapons of mass destruction. The killings of civilians by terrorists is entirely beyond the control of anyone and continues vigorously, with outright sectarian warfare seeming an increasingly likely consequence. Only the delusional would deem it in a better state than even when the tyrant Saddam Hussein was in charge.
Zionism led to Jews being considered worth more than resident Palestinians and thus the ethnic cleansing which the nation is founded upon and occupation it perpetuates to this day.
In Palestine…Well, scroll up.
There are just over 20,000 Jews in the whole of Scandinavia. It is possible that their governments may not want an extra million or two turning up at the border.
Per country or divided between them all?
The Jews had been persecuted for 2000 years in pretty much whichever country they’d settled in. This was still the case in relatively liberal western countries such as France – in which the Dreyfus Case highlighted huge levels of anti-Semitism whilst many French people and institutions including the police and SNCF actively participated in the Holocaust and Britain, where a major national newspaper was supported the BUF and my grandfather can remember getting beaten up in the 30s for going to the local synagogue in Leeds.
Thanks to refusal to assimilate and inherent human tribalism. Neither of which is resolved by stealing an innocent party’s land…
And it was also in the 1930s that both Jew and goy united in thrashing Oswald Mosley. Your overly negative stance is one I’d find rather offensive if I was a nationalist. As it is I just think that you’re wrong and in imagining that Jews would never have found a superior homeland to one that was stolen from others entirely mistaken.
Nationalism then was focused on cultural, ethnic and religious groups (Judaism can be seen in all these three camps) having their own homeland. This may be less applicable today, in an age of multiculturalism and western tolerance but it would have seemed perverse for Jews to continue living in a continent which had largely facilitated their murder when many of them were already living in a nation they regarded as a safe, spiritual homeland.
Which required ethnic cleansing to claim.
It’s a mad example. Most Jews do not accept you can be a member of the religion unless your mother is Jewish, there’s no way (they would accept) the faith could continue if Jews bred with non-Jews.
Well then the faith would end.
I think your suggestion that because the Jews stayed as a community (when most of Europe forced them for years to stay in ghettos or leave the country and in the really liberal ones, just banned them from most jobs) it was obvious they should be persecuted is revolting.
Well that is a revolting suggestion. Glad I never made it. The word “should” appeared nowhere in my argument. I simply said that it was inevitable that it would happen owing to inherent tribalism. If you separate yourself off from the rest then you are automatically causing yourself to be a target.
This sounds more like a discussion about a teenage counter-culture than a major word religion…
Simply addressing some of the concerns which are commonly raised to a proposal of a total merge.
That’s lovely but I’m not sure it’s really a practical solution to the current conflict, is it?
Is it not?
I’m in! It’s not about racism, it’s about providing a sanctuary to anyone who would have been persecuted under the Nuremburg Laws.
It is highly unwise to be led in your policy by the National Socialists. And it is about racism. It lets in people from the correct lineage and denies access to those who are not. Irrespective of the context this is a bigoted system which is entirely arbitrary.
And I note that the system still excludes gays, gypsies and Jehovah’s witnesses. Whither their homeland? Shall we claim some of Guyana for them, perhaps?
Jihad, which means struggle, was written about the Koran and Hadith well before the Crusades. Whilst Muslims would be quick to point out most of it is about an inner struggle, the violent side of it has been present throughout Islam, from its very bloody beginning under Muhammad.
Incorrect. Islam did engage in expanionism during its earliest years, as indeed did most major religions, but not in Jihad.
Osama Bin-Laden first turned on the West as a result of ties between Saudi Arabia and the Americans, whereby Americans were invited to base themselves in a Muslim land. I’m not sure this really means his motivation is an opposition to western foreign policy although this is certainly part of it. He wants the westerners out so that the Middle East can become a vicious theocracy and Israel can be destroyed. The idea of a worldwide theocracy is undoubtedly present in his ideology but you are right to say that removing all western involvement in the region is his first priority.
He opposes American bases in Saudi Arabia. American bases are in Saudi Arabia owing to American foreign policy. Therefore Bin Laden acts because of American foreign policy.
Please explain how America “provoked” 9/11?
See above.
See also: funding of Israel even after the point where it is a nuclear power perfectly capable of supporting itself.
Or how the Spanish people provoked Al Qaeda to bomb them on their way to work?
Spanish presence in Iraq.
Or how the UN aid workers brought it upon themselves when their headquarters in Baghdad was blown up, with several hundred people inside?
Presumably some cock-up whereby they were considered to be aiding the occupation forces.
I hadn’t called you an apologist for terrorism yet, but surely this is about as naked as apologism gets?
Did I say anywhere that their motivation makes it alright? It isn’t. These are still atrocities.
I am simply stating that your claim that interventionism is the solution rather than the problem is incorrect. It is involvement rather than disengagement which causes the strife. And what exactly were American troops doing inside an autocracy anyway? Just because it has oil that doesn’t wipe clean it’s human rights record does it? Or is co-operation all that distinguishes a Saudi Arabia from an Iraq?
It is true that they offered a ten year truce if Israel quickly and unilaterally withdrew to the 1967 borders. How genuine the offer was is a different matter and the lack of offer on their part to move towards a two-state solution made it rather impractical and short-term. It is explained in the New York Times in the terms that “since the Prophet Muhammad made a temporary hudna, or truce, with the Jews about 1,400 years ago, Hamas allows the idea. But no one in Hamas says he would make a peace treaty with Israel or permanently give up any part of Palestine.” Mkhaimer Abusada, a political scientist at Al Azhar University explains that “They [Hamas] talk of hudna, not of peace or reconciliation with Israel. They believe over time they will be strong enough to liberate all historic Palestine.”
Right, so they are offering a ceasefire which lasts for decades.
However, the 1988 Hamas Covenant (or Charter) states that the organisation’s goal is to “raise the banner of God over every inch of Palestine,” in order to establish an Islamic Republic and opposes any two-state solution. It reads like Mein Kampf:
Yes, and in 1988 Ariel Sharon was firmly committed to obtaining Greater Israel. Prior to his coma he was the only force that had both the will and power to withdraw from the West Bank. Things alter and twenty years on Hamas are offering a generation of peace. The Israelis have declined.
You also might want to check out their children’s website, Al-Fateh, where children are encouraged to train as suicide bombers or, as it euphemistically puts it, “the young builders of the future”. It includes pictures of the decapitated heads of female suicide bombers.
And to think, that cease-fire would save them all.
I’m trying to understand where you’re coming from. Do you suggest that Israel puts down its weapons the next time a school or bus is blown up? Are you suggesting we should follow an entirely pacifistic line – welcome the Iranian and Syrian tanks with a few flowers and wait for another Holocaust? You should be under no illusions that the end of western support for Israel would means its destruction and no fuzzy multicultural state of Jews and Arabs living side by side would take its place. The Jewish people in the Middle East would be murdered.
I’m suggesting they GTFO.
Of the West Bank, that is.
If I may quote something from Oliver Kamm
No.
Israel and America support a two-state solution. When the Palestinian nation becomes a State, its people will have full voting rights in an autonomous country. Sadly, this seems impossible whilst Hamas – which has refused to accept the continued existence of any state of Israel – is still in charge. I respect the right of the Palestinians to vote for whoever they want to lead them but it is impossible to bargain with Hamas and they committed a sad error which has set back the peace process many years.
Right, so cut off the power, cut off the food, plunge the country into chaos and hope that those disobedient swine learn their lesson. Shell civilian areas with tanks, kill children by smashing their skulls to messes {scroll up} and leave hospitals with donated organs turning to dead meat for want of refrigeration. Send in the ground troops to kill the untried and take photos next to their corpses. Put the Palestinians on a diet. Punish collectively. Disregard remorse.
This is how you treat a fellow democracy. This is how you respond to offers of cease-fire. This is a shining beacon of hope amongst the putrid squalor.
Happy Birthday, Israel.