should america support Israel?

[little_monkey]

I'd argue that the cultural psychology of both the Japanese and the Germans had as much, if not more, to do with the turnaround those countries saw after World War II.

Additionally, with the Marshall Plan (and separate aid for the Japanese) we were able to buy their compliance with peaceful international norms. I don't see that happening with Israel after any hypothetical total defeat of the Palestinians. The upshot of such an outcome would likely be more hatred and violence in the long run.

I find it disturbing how many pro-Israel posters are willing to consider "millions" of deaths acceptable.

So you're basically saying this can only end with total annihilation of one side - Palestinians are incapable of learning any lesson even in the case that one million of them die needlessly in a war they can't realitically win. So be it.

[Thumpalumpacus]

So you're basically saying this can only end with total annihilation of one side - Palestinians are incapable of learning any lesson even in the case that one million of them die needlessly in a war they can't realitically win. So be it.

No. The gist of my post was that your comparison was inapt due to differing circumstances. I made no prescriptions of any sort.

Any extrapolation that can be made would most sensibly take into account their cultural history and memory. If you devastate a people without offering a hand up then you should not expect them to turn into friends. Neither Japan nor Germany turned into peace-loving nations because of their defeats. They turned into peacful nations because our aid allowed them to recover enough to see that peace is a better economic solution in the long run. Additionally, both Germany and Japan had previously been organized nations of disciplined workers, rather than a group of malfortunates crammed into a small sliver of land and bereft of unified leadership. Both Germany and Japan still had effective (though weakened) organs of government in place through which the Allies could administer the citizenry. Gaza has not that advantage; the polity is divided, and so long as one segment stays extremist, Israel will likely be reluctant to extend ny aid. That means that after a devasting defeat, the Palestinians will be politically divided, economically barren, and angry.

Were Israel to kill the million or so Palestinians as you suggest, without subsequently aiding the survivors, the devastation would only worsen the conditions which are driving the extremism in the first place.

That doesn't sound like a good recipe for peace, to me.


Any generalizations about Palestinians as an ethnicity have nothing to do with my post, and I'd appreciate it if you didn't impute such fallacious thinking to me any more. Thanks.

[little_monkey]

Gaza has not that advantage; the polity is divided, and so long as one segment stays extremist, Israel will likely be reluctant to extend ny aid. That means that after a devasting defeat, the Palestinians will be politically divided, economically barren, and angry.

The Palestinians have no one else but themselves to blame for the misery they are encountering. As I earlier stated, war is ugly, and since the Palestinians are resolved to continue their armed struggle, then they need to accept the suffering that comes along instead of crying baby to the international community. Who are they really fooling, if not but themselves.

Were Israel to kill the million or so Palestinians as you suggest, without subsequently aiding the survivors, the devastation would only worsen the conditions which are driving the extremism in the first place.

That doesn't sound like a good recipe for peace, to me.

The killing should only stop when the Palestinians are ready to wave the white flag and surrender unconditionally. It would be lunacy for Israel to help the Palestinians when these people have not deflected one iota from their open and stated policy of destroying the state of Israel. Only after an unconditional surrender from every part of Palestinian society can there be talks of peace, reparation and cooperation. Any other recipe is doomed to failure.

Any generalizations about Palestinians as an ethnicity have nothing to do with my post, and I'd appreciate it if you didn't impute such fallacious thinking to me any more. Thanks.

The generalization was mine as it was unmistakenly a logical conclusion from your post. But thanks for indicating that you had other stuff in mind.

[Anomalocaris]

Killing should (in the sense of being likely to) stop when either:

1. Palestinians wave the white flag, or
2. Israeli stops being in any sense a Jewish state. Or is succeeded by a different state, or a collection of different state, altogether that is not the legal heir to the current Jewish state of Israel.

The latter seem to me a more likely outcome on a scale of a few hundred years then the former. The more the Israelis press for the former now and in the near future, the more likely the latter will eventuate in the slightly more distant future.

Any other outcome was essentially foreclosed by 1967 war.

[Thumpalumpacus]

The Palestinians have no one else but themselves to blame for the misery they are encountering. As I earlier stated, war is ugly, and since the Palestinians are resolved to continue their armed struggle, then they need to accept the suffering that comes along instead of crying baby to the international community. Who are they really fooling, if not but themselves.

There's enough crying on both sides of the divide, to be honest. Propaganda is emanating from the Israelis at quite the hurry, too. Of course war is ugly. This is not news.

The killing should only stop when the Palestinians are ready to wave the white flag and surrender unconditionally. It would be lunacy for Israel to help the Palestinians when these people have not deflected one iota from their open and stated policy of destroying the state of Israel. Only after an unconditional surrender from every part of Palestinian society can there be talks of peace, reparation and cooperation. Any other recipe is doomed to failure.

I disagree. The killing should stop immediately based on both sides stopping shooting. The idea that the killing should only stop when the Palestinians surrender leaves them at the mercy of an Israeli state that treats them like shit.

Also, I see that you missed a key point in my statement when I said that if your "plan" of ending the war by killing a million or more Palestinians were to be successful, it would need aid to be applied after the victory. You clearly are thinking that I'm advocating aid while the conflict is still going on, as shown in the text you wrote and I emphasize. This discussion would have less misunderstanding if you'd read what I'm writing.

Finally, the insistence that peace can only come with a Palestinian surrender belies a clear pro-Israeli slant on your part, which is fine. But that position needs a little more reasonable support than what has thus far been presented. Israel has bloody hands and policies at work which fuel the hatred directed at it.

The generalization was mine as it was unmistakenly a logical conclusion from your post. But thanks for indicating that you had other stuff in mind.

It was not a logical conclusion from my post, as a closer reading will reveal.

[little_monkey]

There's enough crying on both sides of the divide, to be honest. Propaganda is emanating from the Israelis at quite the hurry, too.

Wrong. The crying is coming mainly from the Palestinians. In the war of images, Israel will stand to loose every time as the Palestinian "freedom fighters" have launched and will continue to launch their rockets in the middle of populated area. There's no other way for Israel to take those out without killing large number of Palestinians in the process. And Hamas will use these pictures to suade the international community to express their outrage towards Israel. And many fools fall for that shit. Israel knows damned well it cannot win this war of images but at the same time it needs to be sensitive to what is propagated in the US as it depends heavily on US support. If only Israel would not fall another time for these Palestinians tricks. But I have little hope that the Israeli leadership has the stomach to carry out what is needed to be done.

The killing should only stop when the Palestinians are ready to wave the white flag and surrender unconditionally. It would be lunacy for Israel to help the Palestinians when these people have not deflected one iota from their open and stated policy of destroying the state of Israel. Only after an unconditional surrender from every part of Palestinian society can there be talks of peace, reparation and cooperation. Any other recipe is doomed to failure.

I disagree. The killing should stop immediately based on both sides stopping shooting. The idea that the killing should only stop when the Palestinians surrender leaves them at the mercy of an Israeli state that treats them like shit.

Where were you in 2006, 2008, 2010, 2012? It's the same fucking story that is happening right now in 2014. When will you be able to connect the fucking dots? Another truce will only mean giving time for the Palestinians to re-arm. If you believe in anything else, you are delusional.

Also, I see that you missed a key point in my statement when I said that if your "plan" of ending the war by killing a million or more Palestinians were to be successful, it would need aid to be applied after the victory. You clearly are thinking that I'm advocating aid while the conflict is still going on, as shown in the text you wrote and I emphasize. This discussion would have less misunderstanding if you'd read what I'm writing.

I didn't miss anything, just supplying what is needed to be said so that it is clear what we are talking about.

Finally, the insistence that peace can only come with a Palestinian surrender belies a clear pro-Israeli slant on your part, which is fine. But that position needs a little more reasonable support than what has thus far been presented. Israel has bloody hands and policies at work which fuel the hatred directed at it.

You can thank your Palestinian friends for the blood being spilled. Had Palestinians agree to the UN resolution in 1948, there would be two peaceful states, living side by side, with most likely many intermarrying. Instead, the Palestinians declared war, and we are where we are.

The generalization was mine as it was unmistakenly a logical conclusion from your post. But thanks for indicating that you had other stuff in mind.

It was not a logical conclusion from my post, as a closer reading will reveal.

Whatever rocks your boat.

[Anomalocaris]

[

You can thank your Palestinian friends for the blood being spilled. Had Palestinians agree to the UN resolution in 1948, there would be two peaceful states, living side by side, with most likely many intermarrying. Instead, the Palestinians declared war, and we are where we are.

Sure, anyone can have peace if they only peaceably accommodated the demands of any robbers. Perhaps their children could have married the children of the robber.

The point is UN had no right to pass any resolution without the consent of the Palestinians. In fact, the Palestinians should have been the only one to even have any right to suggest such a resolution, and possess and absolute veto over it.

[little_monkey]

[

You can thank your Palestinian friends for the blood being spilled. Had Palestinians agree to the UN resolution in 1948, there would be two peaceful states, living side by side, with most likely many intermarrying. Instead, the Palestinians declared war, and we are where we are.

Sure, anyone can have peace if they only peaceably accommodated the demands of any robbers. Perhaps their children could have married the children of the robber.

The point is UN had no right to pass any resolution without the consent of the Palestinians. In fact, the Palestinians should have been the only one to even have any right to suggest such a resolution, and possess and absolute veto over it.

A little history is needed here. Before the 1948 UN resolution, there were constant fightings between the two groups. The whole region was under British rule after WW1. But at the end of WW2, the UK was banckrupted and could no longer offer the security in Palestine. So the British asked the UN to come up for a solution. Before the British rule, the region was under the Ottoman empire. The Turks ruled over it for centuries. Palestine was never ever a state, the name applied to that region since the Roman empire. So the Palestinians never had that right as you are suggesting. There was never a Palestinian state and no people were called Palestinian - and the word "Palestinian" came into circulation after 1948.

BTW, there were no robbery. The Jews who immigrated to Palestine BOUGHT the land from Palestinians who were eager to sell.

[Anomalocaris]

Bullshit. What Israeli self justifying propagandistic tripe. As if the right of the people in the territory of Palestine to self determination, self government and statehood, and not to have a foreign state explicit for the benefit of a different people than their own imposed upon them, depended on whether Palestine had ever been a single state in the past.

Most of the land was Palestinian. Most of the people were Palestinian. Had been since beginning of living memory. They didn't want a Jewish state there. End of story.

That their will might not have counted for much under British or Ottoman imperial rule is a historic curiosity, and means just as much as the the fact the Jewish aspiration for a state didn't count for much for 1830 years. So if the fact that Palestinian haven't formed a state before 1948 should preclude them form forming one and determining what form that state should take, then perhaps sad Jewish inability to form a state before 1948 should also preclude them from being allowed to form one or determine what form it should take.

So Is this the best spin you can manage?

If holocaust is to be raised as justification, then perhaps it would have been more just, to say nothing of justifiable, to give European Jews a UN mandate to form a Jewish state in Bavaria, or saxony, or some other part of former Nazi germany.

[Thumpalumpacus]

Wrong. The crying is coming mainly from the Palestinians. In the war of images, Israel will stand to loose every time as the Palestinian "freedom fighters" have launched and will continue to launch their rockets in the middle of populated area. There's no other way for Israel to take those out without killing large number of Palestinians in the process. And Hamas will use these pictures to suade the international community to express their outrage towards Israel. And many fools fall for that shit. Israel knows damned well it cannot win this war of images but at the same time it needs to be sensitive to what is propagated in the US as it depends heavily on US support. If only Israel would not fall another time for these Palestinians tricks. But I have little hope that the Israeli leadership has the stomach to carry out what is needed to be done.

I'd suggest you search out multiple sources, then. I regularly hear Netanyahu justifying the killing of 1300 Palestinians, many non-combatants, due to rocket-firings which haven't killed one-tenth the number of Israelis. And yes, the fact that Hamas puts their batteries in populated ares is itself an atrocity. That doesn't mean that Israel must resort to wholesale invasion to counteract it. Surely that is one "solution", but I'm sure there are others.

Where were you in 2006, 2008, 2010, 2012? It's the same fucking story that is happening right now in 2014. When will you be able to connect the fucking dots? Another truce will only mean giving time for the Palestinians to re-arm. If you believe in anything else, you are delusional.

When you must resort to invective, you must not have much of a point to make.

Firstly, I didn't realize that I had been appointed Keeper of All That is Right for the Middle East. All this time, I thought I was simply opining online. I didn't realize I had to answer to you for my actions in the last eight years. But since you seem to think you are owed an answer, I'll do you a favor and give you one: I was complaining about atrocities from both sides, as I have been since the first intifada. Injustice is injustice, no matter who perpetrates it.

Your naive assumption that Israel is lily-white is preventing you from grasping a larger truth. But credit where credit is due, you have the simple stuff like "war is hell" down.

I didn't miss anything, just supplying what is needed to be said so that it is clear what we are talking about.

It had already been said. All the more, after this reply, do I think that your reading skills are being filtered by your biases.

You can thank your Palestinian friends for the blood being spilled. Had Palestinians agree to the UN resolution in 1948, there would be two peaceful states, living side by side, with most likely many intermarrying. Instead, the Palestinians declared war, and we are where we are.

The proper apportionment of blame should go to the British anyways, as anyone schooled in a little history would know.

But -- I'm not sure why you think I have Palestinian friends; I've criticized both sides of this shitsplat, and I certainly don't exonerate Palestinians for their crimes. Perhaps if you'd take off your ideological blinders we could have an unstilted discussion, but quite frankly, you don't strike me as being capable of even-handed treatment of this matter. Your refusal to consider the role of Israeli misdeeds leading to this bloodbath, your insistence that the only peace will come with Israeli victory and nothing else -- these facts lead me to believe that you are so partisan that you are incapable of objective thinking in this matter, and so this reply will be my last to you. You're not teaching me anything except the potential intransigence of men, and I'm old enough to have learnt that lesson already, thanks.

Whatever rocks your boat.

"Whatever" -- the last refuge of the thoughtless. Here's what I wrote:

I'd argue that the cultural psychology of both the Japanese and the Germans had as much, if not more, to do with the turnaround those countries saw after World War II.

You'll note the use of the word "cultural", which in essence excludes any ethnic generalizations.

Perhaps you should read more and post less. You certainly need the practice.