I throw a rock. You throw it back. I shoot you. Authorities Watch.

It seems Israel has "stand your ground" laws as well.

 

It's tricky. Banning products made in the Territories might punish companies that take advantage of the relaxed laws there for employment and benefit from the occupation, but it also hurts legit exports from Palestinians. If you buy Palestinian grown dates or olives, those are from the "Occupied Territories" too. Any long term effort to end the Occupation is for Palestinians to grow increasingly economically self-sufficient. Bans aren't going to help that.

I briefly did a US advertising campaign for a company (not going to name it) that is based near the airport but does it's manufacturing just outside of Jerusalem on the other side of the Green Line. It's a small factory that employs Palestinians and pays them less and under conditions that wouldn't be legal inside Israel proper. But the company is legally based in Lod, near the airport, maybe 30 min from Tel Aviv.

I only know that because when I did my own research to write the campaign, I found loads of BDS people on the Internet who were all over it and were calling them out for it. Even if they were pressured to move the factory to say, Ashdod or Haifa, it would mean a loss of jobs for Palestinians in a place where good jobs are scarce. I was employed by an agency at the time and had no choice about doing the work if I wanted to eat. I'm my own now and would have turned it down, but it's a good indicator about how people unknowingly "work" for the status quo.

Any real change in the status quo will have to come from Israeli voters, who still vote center right, presumably because of a vacuum of leadership, security fears, or plain apathy about social justice when most are concerned with their own economic issues.

Any party that makes ending the Occupation a major plank in their platform will immediately relegate itself to obscurity. Since the 90's, Labour and Meretz hopped on the pro-peace message at the expense of core issues like union jobs and pensions and education and all that bread and butter stuff that gets working class votes, and lost them to the center right and right, who promised prosperity and tax cuts (and security of course).

It shouldn't be forgotten that the rise of Avigdor Lieberman at that time happened not so much because of his hardline views on Arabs or nationalism, as much as his hard-line views on the religious and ending the sphere of religious influence on daily life. That won a lot of votes from Joe Sixpack that voted Labour all his life, all from a guy who proudly lives in a settlement in the West Bank.

If you are a columnist, politician, or public person that decries the occupation, even if you escape being called a traitor or self-loathing jew or whatever, it's still easier to make it stick that you are out of touch with "core issues" of the average Israeli voter.

Other than pressure from Israel's allies, I think the best effort would be from trade organizations. I saw first-hand how the Kimberly Process was used in Africa to pressure governments to be more ethical with their diamond industries, especially in regards to how the workers in those industries were treated. It's still far from ideal, but it got pressure on places like Zimbabwe and Liberia and the Ivory Coast in ways that the UN and other government bodies and NGOs were powerless to do.

My boss at the time, unabashedly right-wing, admitted that by the legal standards of the KP, any diamond that passed through Israel could presumably be regarded as a "conflict diamond" since the profit of it could (and by virtue of tax) fund warfare. Agreements like this are less political and liklier to be effective, even if in this example aren't so universally applied.

Agricultural organizations can set standards on what an ethical orange is, or what an ethical date is or what an ethical microchip is, and circumvent the sort of political polarization that say, pressuring the Red Hot Chili Peppers from playing Tel Aviv or keeping an Israeli scientist from lecturing in a British university would. I don't think that kind of isolation helps.

I'm sure the idea isn't perfect. I'm hardly an expert in the international orange trade or chip fabrication trade. It would also likely ban everything made in China as well , but it's better than Flotillas and the sort of activism by the western Left that polarizes consensus, confuses the real issues and often makes things worse for the people they want to help, besides giving ammunition to the status quo to build it's own ideological bunkers.

 

To follow on the post above one thing that I have believed would help the situation is to withdraw US economic support for Israel. Maintaining settlements is expensive and I suspect that without US support for Israel it would be difficult to maintain settlements while also providing social services in Israel proper. I think without that support Israel would likely choose to pull back to something easier to defend which would be closer to the 1967 borders allowing the Palestinians to develop a more continuous state.

This of course wouldn't address the address the issues of Jerusalem, right of return and water rights but would at least lay the economic realities of settlements bare to Israel.

In the end though it will take another leader like Rabin to make a real peace and right now I am not seeing another leader with the courage and moral standing of Rabin coming out of either Israel or the Palestinians.

 

And journalists. Several I knew were there. Here's a link to one story and another.

People who were there said it didn't really get out of hand until politicians started inciting the crowd, saying the refugees urinated on holy places and carried AIDS and wanted to rape their daughters and other rhetoric that sounded like it came from a Klan rally.

 

Fanatical people of any kind are bad.

 

They might disagree.

 

Well, that's an exception .

Actually, more people should channel their emotions like that!

 

The first link I put in the post above might answer some of your questions, Mathloom.

Infrastructure and welfare entitlements are sacrificed in poor areas in places like Tel Aviv and the Negev in order to build and afford tax cuts in the Territories. The government is actively trying to get poor people to move there. If I wanted to move to Ariel tomorrow I'd get a way nicer apartment and my living expenses (rent, bills, etc) would probably be a quarter of what they are now, all a reward for helping colonize the West Bank.

As the article mentions, when Rabin was elected in the 90's, the slogan that got him elected was: “money to neighborhoods, not settlements.” A lot of Israelis are (understandably) resentful of the practice.

 

What a bunch of despicable, racist vermin. It is absolutely incredible that billions of United States tax dollars support those vile lunatics every year. The US would be better off funding the KKK. At least the money would presumably be spent domestically.

 

Only for Israeli's

Israel's law is more like "Build on their ground."

 

Mathloom i've reported you to Homeland Security as a person of interest.

 

Please - these few crazies are not representative of the majority of the Israeli population.

 

Of course not but they have a disproportionate say in the Knesset. They get to drive Israeli politics.

 

I'd be more concerned about Saudi Arabia.

 

I am well aware that there is a highly progressive segment of the Israeli population but I am also aware that there is a significant number of urban racist lunatics (as seen on the latest videos posted to the thread) and a significant number of unhinged, bloodthirsty, well armed psychopaths who are guided by a ludicrous fairy tale that are often referred to as 'settlers.'

Which segment of Israeli society do you suppose procreates more actively, the progressives or the orthodox and the settlers?

 

I don't know, which segment of the Afghan/Pakistani society do you suppose procreates more actively, the progressives or the ass-backwards, ignorant ones?

 

I find it funny that when someone brings up Muslim extremist a lot of people go out of their way to point out they do not represent the majority of Muslims (which I agree wholeheartedly) however the same people want to label all Israelis extremist based on the actions of a few.