Israel & Palestine

I was going to call this thread 'Palestine', in recognition of the rightful owners of that crazy place annexed by the nations of Lebanon, Syria, Iraq, Jordan, Saudia Arabia and Egypt.  But if you look at the latest maps showing the full extent of growth of Israeli settlements (especially in the Jordan valley) and consider the implications of the erection of the wall, the reality that there's not much Palestine left to speak of really begins to dawn on you.  In fact, as I've just discovered, if you search for 'Palestine' on Google maps, the only result is 'Palestine, Texas'.  Sergey Brin & Larry Page are both Jewish, as it happens.

I attended a talk given recently at Adelaide Uni as part of their 'Israeli apartheid awareness week' activities.  One of the featured speakers is a psycho-therapist living in Canberra who was born and raised in Israel as an Israeli Jew and describes herself as a 'cult survivor'.  What she had to say offered an incredibly eye opening perspective into an issue which, as a fairly staunch skeptic, I really didn't know what to think about.  Too much misinformation and all that.  Hearing what she had to say has definitely changed that, and confirmed a couple of haunting theories which I had formed through a morbid part-time fascination with all things Zion...

She has given me permission to pass on the transcript of her talk to anyone who would be interested.  Highly recommended.

http://tinyurl.com/nrjlva

Discourse?

I am going to ignore this thread out of fear of saying something I regret.

Heil Hitler!

keep fighting the good fight nodsworth

It is such a an excessively touchy subject, I think that's partly what draws me to it...

My ex-mother-in-law continually takes the side of Israel in this argument.

Eventually we had to make the decision never to bring the subject up again after some extremely heated discussions.

this is flying too close to religion imo
bunch of fuckwits crying over a bit of sand their own jeebusus said they can have.
end of story
 

i used to side more with the palestinian side of things, but frankly, the palestinians have been everyones bitches over the past few hundred years, egypt, turkey, saudi arabia, jordan, lebanon, britain, france etc but teh jooz are copping it right now more for the forged & falsified 'elders of the protocols of zion' hoax than for their silly hats and beards. they can all go and fuck off as far as im concerned.

lets also not forget that the grand mufti of jerusalem was a 'friend and guest' of hitlers before the holocaust either.

Both sides have made big mistakes which have hindered any move towards peace since the creation of the state of Israel.

Both sides use tactics in their fight which I think are deplorable.

One side (Israel) has much bigger guns and is able to respond to or instigate any violent action with extremely disproportionate measures.

The other side has been used as a pawn for all their "supporters" in the Arab and Islamic countries in their global "struggle against Zionism".

I can't see the conflict ending anytime soon. Obama hasn't got the balls to push the Israelis too hard when it comes to slowing down or stopping their construction of settlements. Palestinians will continue to live in their ghettos.

I guess the thing now is that the battle is over.  The Israelis have won.  Now it's apartheid.

How is the battle over? Even after the Israelis kill 10 Palestinians for every one of their own who dies the Palestinian population is continuing to grow faster than Israel's.

They have won the battle of political sovereignty...

I'll scan the maps tomorrow as that will make explaining what I mean a lot easier...



Yeah... Nobody had a problem with the Nazis until they gave them an obvious reason.  The German Reich played a fairly large part in assisting the Zionist cause well into the 20th century...

If teh jooz didnt have their stupid original religion telling them they were more kick ass than anyone else on the planet and they were given by 'covenant' that bit of land, they wouldnt have had their arses kicked so severely by the romans to cause the diaspora in 69AD, and mohammed wouldnt have had the hideously violent old-testament precendent to base the Quraan on (that ironically calls for the death of jews throughout it) and we wouldnt be in this hideous mess we are in now.

Its bad enough Israel has nukes, let alone Iran (and others) wanting to get hold of them for their religious ideologies.

Its religion first, politics second thats driving the problems there.

How is that relevant?

Saddam Hussein had some nice friends all over the West before and during his war with Iran. He gassed tens or hundreds of thousands of civilians.

The Shah had some nice friends and guests before he was kicked out. He tortured opposition groups in Iran.

The Taliban had some nice friends during their war with the Soviets. I don't think I need to mention what they did since.

The Saudis continue to have some nice friends. You don't need to look far to see how they deal with people they have problems with in their own country.

The Pakistanis continue to have some nice friends. As above.

The Indonesians had us as nice friends, while they ruined East Timor.

I don't think I need to go on... Hitler's atrocities were on a different scale, there's no doubt about that. But political alliances are easy to look back at and judge decades after historical events.

Extremely true.

But that whole side of the 'Israel/Palestine' debate is massively unproductive.  What this paper shows an interest in exposing is how fucked up Israeli society is, even forgetting for a minute that religion even plays a part.  What she's talking about doesn't really even have much of a religious context, it's more cultural.

When something comes from Adelaide Uni, it's called 'Israeli apartheid awareness week', and the psycho-therapist guest exposes as you put it "how fucked up Israeli society is", don't you think it might be time to go and read something on the other side to balance it out?

Adelaide Uni of all Universities in Adelaide is probably the last place to be at if you want a balanced view on issues like this.

Also I don't think it's more religion than politics as it stands right now. The religious aspect is clear. The political side and the wider power plays at stake here is what make this ongoing drama so controversial.

Fair call, I can understand it might seem like I'm being a bit one sided, and I certainly have a lot more to learn.  I'm not past debate by any stretch.  The reason I wanted to share this particular piece of literature is that I am often frustrated with how hard it is to find unbiased information anywhere, and this first hand account I found to be quite illuminating.

its completely relevant
once you realise that 'the protocols of the elders of zion' is virtually an accepted truth throughout the arab world, you begin to understand the deep seated hatred of jews, no matter how ridiculously invalid it is. this transcends any political alliances by an order of magnitude.

comparing that with saddam hussein & the shah of iran (corrupt, essentially secular leaders ruling with an iron fist) and the saudi royal family (dont get me started) or the taliban fighting a foreign incursion (whose friends are/were as much political as economic) is very different from someone representing a religious ideology seeking the destruction of an entire race ~ and in the case of hitler, a bed fellow for the ends justifying the means...

Extremely true.  I guess I should clarify in that I was agreeing that religion is/was 'driving it' in the historical context that JR presented... And when I say that I think that side of the debate is unproductive, I mean regarding the historical roots, i.e. religion, as it tends to end up being at least a little bit about who's right and who's wrong.

You're absolutely spot on about the 'wider power plays'.  To be extremely politically incorrect for just a moment I must admit it scares the shit out of me that there are so many powerful Zionists around the globe when I'm being told by someone who went to school in Israel that part of the Israeli education involves deliberately traumatising children to promote adherence to a fairly brutal nationalistic ideal...

I was reading something recently about an outspoken holocaust denier who didn't really believe that the holocaust never happened, he was more interested in having the right to present such a controversial point of view.  I'm not saying that's what I'm doing here but I'm a not completely opposed to making the odd 'extremist' statement every now and then to see the reaction... :P

And yeah what Jayar just posted about how the various Arab nations have some fucked up politics that are probably in ways worse than any Israeli apartheid policies is also very true, but it doesn't mean that we should ignore the 'lesser' issue.  It's also a bit different when you consider the Western connection and how much of a disproportionate amount of sway Israel seem to have in their relationship with the US.

That's all for tonight...

Israel's relations with it's neighbours are complicated, but the main ones around it have been forced to recognise it regardless of what their brainwashed populations think (there aren't any real democracies in the region anyway so it's not as if the leaders represent their populations).

I'm just saying that dismissing the whole thing as purely religious is ignoring the equally (IMO) important political side of it. If that's all there was to it then why would anybody outside of the Middle East care about the whole thing? The Middle East has been a dangerous playground for the West for a long time, and having a Jewish state in the middle of it has just made things more complicated for everyone. That goes for the US, for Europe, and the whole Islamic world.

Also, if it was just religious the thread would be closed by now.

Here's something interested that surprised me when I first read about it the other day...
Fatah elects first Israeli of Jewish origin to governing body

I dont actually believe the politics is as important as the root cause. the religious shite is what got them there, they now use politics as the excuse.


read up on the US fundies who want israel there because it leads to 'the rapture' - and how many of them are card carrying republicans. theyre not pro-jew, theyre pro israel being in the middle of this shit.
again, stupid 'beliefs'... and as if after all the shit that happened in europe 60 odd years ago isnt going to be weighing on the minds of enough euro politicians for them to be pro-israeli state!


meh, im a fence sitter anyway. theyve both fucked themselves in the arse... if they didnt have their stupid belief books and imaginary friends telling them not to, theyd be able to build bridges and get over it.


 

1 - Withdraw military aid from both sides
2 - ?????
3 - Profit


This is my in depth analysis of the way forward. America should definitely heed my maverick strategy.

Until these bunches of idiots give up their different Gods, and until the world gives up it's addiction to oil, this is the only solution:

 

Isnt this another Religion thread?

DELETE

Not with the new thread title it isn't.

i will sort it out

Oh lordy, I don't know where to begin on this topic; inclusive of what transpired in our own backyard.

I will refrain from beginning in the first place ha!

But I am curious to learn of the aforementioned theories, Joe.

+1

It's really not about religion.  Zionism is not Judaism.  There are plenty of anti-Zionist Jews in Israel and elsewhere.  It's about racism, really.

The purpose was not to ignite the same old Israel/Palestine debate, hence why that wasn't the original title of the thread.  I probably was asking for it a bit in my introduction to the OP however .  The real purpose was to share  what Avigail had to say with anyone who may be interested, because it was very eye opening for me.

But really...

Whatever

 

Yes, indeed it is.

The root problem is racism, despite race being a social construct. While racism and discrimination are the impetus of horrific situations; be it contemporary or historical, religion is the tool or justification for this appauling conduct of various states. Australia being one of them.

Yesterday my supervisor told me about 'Blackster'. A 40,000 year annual trek of traditional owners moving from in-land SA to Pt. Augusta during the summer time to camp on the beach to keep cool was devastated by a right-wing conversative Mayor. She ordered the traditional owners of this vast area they could no longer camp there (which coincided with the rise of up-market development on this particular spot on the beach).

She proceeded to set up their new 'camp' i.e. detention centre from which the term 'Blackster' came from, whereby the traditional owners now reside during summer. This place is inland, surrounded by a radius of 12ft. barbed wire and families live in barely 1m high tents on the ground. There is no access to medical care etc and social workers I have come to know told me of what they had witnessed on this site.

Therefore this racial, discriminatory situation is not only confined to the rightful land of the Palestinians, but in our very own backyard.

I am going to write to Dateline and the 7.30 Report/Four Corners folk about what I found out yesterday, I implore anyone else who is inclined to do so too.

Watch the rhetoric.

It's no more the "rightful" land of the Palestinians than it is the Israelis.

whats a Palestine?  Is it some kind of beer mug?

It really isn't. Such statements make no sense on a biological level. If you have to adapt to different environments throughout your genealogical history, chances are you will adapt slightly different traits. Lumping all black people in one racial group, or all white people in one racial group, is absurd, but so is claiming race to be a social construct. It is still a probability thing, and just because something is common within a racial group does not mean it will be so to any individual, but those probabilities do make a difference. No matter which way the nature/nurture mix splits different nurture will produce different people anyway, so again, only probabilistically, that makes a racial difference. You are confusing equality with sameness. Equality is worth fighting for. Denial of difference is harmful.

 

yeah, and how else do you explain the nips? They're socially constructed not be able drive properly?

Actually L'edOL.

Is that a PC original or did you read that somewhere.  Really good line though

'tis mine. Thank you for the compliment.

Well said.

There are huge biological differences between races. For example the Aboriginals average IQ is 65 (classed as mildly mentally retarded). Completely ruling out the fact that IQ is a quite useless and outdated scale, it shows that evolution and environmental factors contribute to different races. The fact that they have an IQ so low is indicative that they haven't used the same areas of the brain as much as other races and hence don't do as well in those tests.

In my opinion racial groups are essentially completely biological. Obviously like all things there are some social constructs involved but the inherent differences between races are mostly biological. To say they are social is a bit silly really.

*Edit*: updated IQ

really thats interesting and yet completely useless.  I think something like 2% of Australia actually identify as being Aboriginal or Torres straight islander which is bugger all plus aren't we really seeing now the first generation of educated Aboriginals?
I think an IQ test is a completely impractical way of testing all peoples intelligence.  I'm sure it can give a good overview for the majority but for anyone struggling with a language barrier or any other difficulty I think an IQ test can have its downfalls.

Just out of curiosity does anyone know the average IQ of a native American or Inuit or kiwi?

Will look it up later. I understand it's useless. It's just meant to be an example of biological differences in races. I don't want this to turn into a discussion about Aboriginals or other races as it will completely derail this thread. Also I did note in my original post that IQ's are essentially useless and that it was only an example of biological differences.

*Edit*: American Natives are 85, but once again this is NOT meant to a marker of racial superiority or inferiority just the differences between races. I'm annoyed I feel I have to mention this so many times.

As i get annoyed having to put a  to make sure people realise I'm attempting sarcasm!
Although I dont see IQ pointing out biological difference in race. I would have thought skin pigmentation would be the most obvious biological difference.

Back on topic though,
How's them Israelites?

Natho - you've got it the wrong way around.

IQ tests are useless because they test certain socially learned knowledge that the native Americans and Australian's do not understand because they are not socialised to understand it.

For example, traditional aboriginals do not conceptualise 3D space in the same way a European does, so they'll have trouble with "put the correct shape in the correct hole" type puzzles, which makes the tests invalid for those types of people.

Not in gas chambers unfortunately.

That is far from entirely true, and the point about 3D space seems A) Not entirely relevant to most IQ tests, and B) Borderline logically fallacious, as an understanding of the laws of geometry aren't really culturally amenable. But I'm not going to argue it in this thread. In fact, for fear of being 'Watsoned', I'm happy to avoid all IQ based Human Bio-Diversity conversations. That said, being a glutton for punishment, I will probably discuss it if it starts up elsewhere.

Edited for a more calm and rational approach.

Back to Israel & Palestine...

Coincidentally, interesting cover story in this weekends Weekend Australian magazine (that comes with The Australian) about a Palestinian man who moved out of his family home in Hebron for 4 days during renovations only to find out it had been broken into by hardline armed jewish fundie settlers, locks changed etc and now he's becoming doubtful about ever getting it back even through court action.

i knew there were plenty of cases about palestinians still living in refugee camps since the 60s, being able to look across a valley to see their own family homes now being occupied by jewish settlers, but i had no idea it could still be so brazen. ah, those quirky black-felt-hatted bearded jews, they love a good pogrom.

Not for 1950 of the last 2000 years they didn't.

I saw something on the news the other day about Hamas storming a mosque in Palestine run by a hardline cleric and his flock who were opposing/attacking Hamas from within because they think they are being too soft now in trying to negotiate peace over traditional violent methods.

Now how fucking stupid is this? The last thing an oppressed minority needs is infighting yet these guys are too have failed to realise that solidarity is the way.

I know that all these factions/extremists believe in using violence to achieve their aims but when their own side commits violent acts against them because they think they are not being violent enough towards the common enemy it's just ridiculous!

It brings to mind fragging COs in the Vietnam War, similar actions for different reasons but still quite pointless for the team as a whole.

There hasn't been solidarity between the Palestinians for a long time. The West Bank and the Gaza Strip are run by completely different groups of people and even before this split there had long been disagreements between them.

It certainly doesn't help their cause though, you're completely right about that.

ummm yeah, point out the sarcasm/irony toby

meh, they have 2000 years of catch up. been a long time since joshua

I'm hungover, damn you.

watch the 10 minute docco 'fitna' by geert wilders (google it, download i-, preferable to watching it on youtube where its split into parts) and see if it gives you any insight into some of the mindset your dealing with here.

I dont know much about either side of the arguement.. politics is something i avoid

but I met some Israeli chicks in thailand and they were hot...

Ressurecting this one after reading this today

http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2010/06/10/2923111.htm
and more specifically the comments below.


As much as I agree Israel acts like a fuckhead of a nation regularly and causes many of its own problems, do people really believe Israel is the biggest threat to peace in the Middle East? I think I'd be pretty shaky with my trigger finger if two of my closest 'neighbours', Hamas & Iran have 'the destruction of Israel' in their charter and/or new years resolutions ( ), nothwithstanding the text of their respective system of beliefs shall we call it ( ) also incite mind-bogglingly irrational hatred and genocide against the Jews.

If Iran ever do get a working nuclear weapon, there is no way countries like the US, UK, Russia and China (or Israel) would wait for Iran to actually act first, I reckon its pretty safe to say Iran would cop a preemptive nuke before the week was out. Not much point trying to argue with lunatics who's highest level of piety is based on notions of 'paradise' and matrydom - this is the point I think that is being lost on your average westerner - you cant apply a western perspective or level of moral reasoning to nations like Iran.

http://www.abc.net.au/tv/bigideas/stories/2010/06/01/2913953.htm
this did a pretty decent job of stepping back and looking at the issuers associated with identity...

Reza Aslan: Terrorism and How to Win a Cosmic War
"...In his book "How to Win a Cosmic War", Iranian-American writer Reza Aslan argues that conflicts between Islamic regimes and western powers are no longer about defending borders, but about fighting for God, and seeking to propagate their religious ideas. These cosmic warriors are not expecting victory on earth, but rather looking to be rewarded in heaven.

In this feisty, challenging and utterly entertaining argument with Tony Jones at a special Big Ideas-presented session of the Sydney Writers Festival, these two intellectual heavyweights cover a lot of ground. What's the difference between a Jihadist and an Islamist? Why is the rhetoric style of George W Bush so similar to that of Osama Bin Laden? What are the true motivations of the Taliban, Hezbollah, and al Qaeda? And why is Europe emerging as the new Caliphate?

As well as "How To Win A Cosmic War", Reza Aslan is the author of the international bestseller "No God But God". He is Associate Professor of Creative Writing at Riverside University in California, and President and CEO of Alsan Media Inc. He is a frequent commentator on thedailybeast.com, and contributes to newspapers including the New York Times, the LA Times and the Boston Globe. He holds degrees in religion from Santa Clara University, The University California Santa Cruz, and Harvard University, as well as an MA from the University of Iowa. He is an Iranian-born Muslim who now lives in Los Angeles...."

I know it's about Iraq, but, take it away Greg Cochran: "I looked at freely available evidence. For example, when the Feds started telling us that Iraq was a nuclear menace, I knew that the hardest step in making a bomb is obtaining fissionable materials, and I knew what the four ways of making those fissionable materials were (breeder reactors, gaseous diffusion plant, centrifuge, calutron), their costs and difficulty, and it seemed to me that none of them were possible (while remaining undetected) in Iraq, considering sanctions, inspections, aerial recon, negligible local talent, and being stony broke.

Since I read the paper every single day, I knew roughly how much oil Saddam was smuggling out by truck and how big a kickback he was getting on the oil-for-food exports. A horseback guess said that the whole Iraqi state was running on a billion dollars a year. Took about fifteen minutes of Googling to determine that. Not much to pay for an army, secret police, palaces out the wazoo, and an invisible, undetectable Manhattan project. Which was right on the money, as later laid out in reports by Duelfer and Paul Volcker.

I'm told that the CIA doesn't do this kind of capacity analysis, why, I dunno. I've also heard that they had only one guy in the entire agency who knew enough to do the technical-capacity analysis I just mentioned and that he was working on something else. They don't have a lot of physicists, partly because they pay peanuts, partly because it's a hateful place to work where you need a key to go to the bathroom. Sheesh, they don't even play "Secret Agent Man" in the elevator. There were plenty of people at DOE who could have done that kind of capacity analysis -- but the Administration refused to listen to the technical experts."


Or I could just quote Daniel Larison endlessly. Call me biased, but the paleocons are the only ones consistently speaking logic on the whole Iran thing.

Iran can't and thus won't have nuclear weapons anytime soon; say, within our lifetime. It's quite possible they aren't even trying. The whole anti-nuclear campaign against Iran is trumped up bullshit, and Turkey and Brazil are sounding like the two most rational nations in the world right now. Actually, Turkey have a pretty fucking good batting average in recent international relations, if you choose to disregard the whole unwillingness to talk about Armenia thing. Which I am, because, well, I don't care. Keeping score in the Historical Genocide Games just seems a tad unproductive to me.


As far as recent Israel matters are concerned, I'm ambivalent about the recent events that have them catching the ire of the liberal academic world. They seriously could have stopped the flotilla without boarding it on the water, that just seems beyond idocy to me; but the second you board one of the boats and weapon wielding anti-Israelis start trying to kill you, a shot in the face is the least one can do. Either way, by handling it poorly from the outset, they have fucked their way in to the worlds bad books, which could actually change shit for the future.



Reza Aslan's view is ridiculously blinkered. Israel is statistically quite secular, with about two thirds of its inhabitants considering themselves secular, or non-traditionalist. They do have a strong orthodox movement, but it seems to mostly move within a rhetoric similar to that of some of the christian American right. the Isolationist American right, more specifically. They certainly enforce and react in questionable ways, but logic would say that even their religious faction are largely about borders, it is just that, to make an analogy to the christian right, they really don't want California's "wetback" problem; and they are happy to make sure of that by extreme measures. Also, if the problem is Cosmic war, does that make the Isrealis less complicit because they are more secular? It leads to some troubling questions.

Also:


Win!

nice comic


Naive in the extreme. Iraq was a no-brainer, but isnt there ample evidence of Iran's gathering technology for producing fissile material far in excess of whats required for just energy production? Offers of other countries providing pre-enriched (for power) uranium have been rejected and theyve been caught building secret enrichment facilities in military establishments, so its not a leap of faith to think they could be working toward enrichment to bomb-grade. Just because they arent there yet and arent likely to be so for a while, is that reason for not even paying any mind?

 

Awesome. It simplifies the whole ridiculous mess quite nicely I reckon.

If I hadn't spoken to you in real life before, I'd swear English isn't your first language. As it turns out, you just read things in the most conveniently stupid fashion so as to construct non sequitur arguments against an imaginary opposition. Saying it is possible they aren't even trying does not in anyway mean it takes a leap of faith to believe they are trying. I personally wouldn't be surprised either way. For every piece of evidence that shows them doing sneaky things, there is a piece of evidence showing that the set up they are asking for will not even be capable of enriching uranium to anything like pure enough levels. Turns out such studies are usually heavily coloured by the beliefs of those conducting them, so all I can do is assign vague probabilities based on my pre-existing knowledge of the world. If you have any watertight sources, please dispense some knowledge. Fuck, there appeared to be more than ample evidence of WMD's in Iraq. My memory, plus my obsession with stats reminds me that a majority of those on the anti-Bush left believed such studies back in 2002. I'm just not hedging bets yet.

I also said nothing about paying no mind to the situation. I personally feel that the current plan of intervention is ridiculously ignorant of historical precedent, basic knowledge of the reality of incentives, and, though this should actually sway you far more than it sways an ethical egoist like myself, the futures of millions of Iranian lives.

I'll deal with it further another time. I'm tired and it's Friday night.

come n get ur drink on, grandad. 

there was? i dont remember it... all i remember was heresay from George Dubya and Blair.

But to cut back to the chase, i find it a little unnerving that a country who's former leader put out a death sentence on salman rushdie without even reading his book, and also put out another fatwa saying it was ok to fuck babies up the arse is trying to gain nuclear technology above and beyond whats required for civilian purposes, AND has a rabid hatred of both israel and sunni islamic countries... call me paranoid if you will.

Have you seen the women that guy gets!? I reckon they put that one on him out of spite.