Back on subject. There has always been a basic contradiction regarding what it means to be a Jewish State that is also both Democractic and secular. I don't think the idea of having a state whose purpose of being is to preserve a religion and/or an ethnicity is completely compatible with the idea of democracy and secularism.
Franchise2001, Please open your mind. The government decides to give half of your house to a poor guy. Nevermind that you are not the most well off or that you don't have loads of space to spare. Once this happens by force and following appeals and pleads for help, you attack the guy with a baseball bat to get your half of the house back. Is that an invasion? Once you reach the guy you find that he is holding a bazooka with "Property of The Government" printed on the side. This guy who was homeless days ago. You take a swing, he fires a bazooka. Suddenly the government labels you a terrorist. Are you the war-crazed terrorist? Your side of the house is shrinking everyday and the government is looking the other way. You throw a stink bomb into his side of the house. He fires with a tank which says "property of the government" on the side. The government condemns what you did and says that the tank was justified. Is that fair?
Just to confirm, it doesn't. In fact, in Sharia, an act of aggression in war can only be justified if the other side acted first.
The most important person in Israel is the Prime Minister, not the President. The most important person in Iran is the Supreme Leader who is given the title for life by vote of the Guardian council whose own members elect each other with no vote by the people. Effectively the the limits on the power of the Supreme Leader have been compared to and are roughly the same as the limits on the power of the Shah. Of the people who want to run for the President, 99%+ either don't run because they know the Guardian Council will disaprove them, or they are rejected by the Guardian Council for being 'not Islamic enough'. In the curent election cycle, 4 people (Ahmadinejad, Mir-Hossein Mousavi, Mehdi Karrubi and Mohsen Rezaie) have been approved to run. 471 others were rejected by the Guardian Council. No candidate for President or Prime Minister of Israel has ever been disqualified by an unelected body for being 'not Jewish enough'.
Hey, don't get me wrong, I'm not saying they're doing anything right. You are right in the powers you have discussed. You are also right in that they abuse these powers. However, there is no conflict of interest for them if the state is meant to always be wholly Islamic and governed by Sharia. The notion of a law other than civil or common is new and requries new structures. The only problem here is labelling it a republic/democracy. A Sharia state contains governance structures which are similar to a democracy. I find that it's rarely understood that Sharia is not a policy. It's not a personal thing. Faith in Islam is a personal thing. Sharia is a law. Like the common or civil law of any other country. It is meant to govern all humans, regardless of religion. It addresses everyone, Muslim or otherwise. It addresses everything, from governance structures to trusts to parking fines. It is an entire complete system of law, the like of which we have never seen properly in our lifetime and is very difficult to implement when other types of law are involved. This law is not compatible with the democratic norms we are accustomed to. It is a a square and democracy is a round hole. It won't work and will look bad as long as people try to bend it.
I was referencing events which took place in the aftermath of WWII and the UN's involvement with Israel. It seems you want to take this debate further back in history instead of sticking to the last century (most people stop debating if it isn't recent due to the legal complexities). There are many sieges of Jerusalem, which one are you referring to? And what is your opinion on how its result affects Israeli/Palestinian issues like the one we're discussing?
The Supreme Leader is elected by the Assembly of Experts, which is directly elected by the Iranian people. I don't think he's elected for life. From what the wikipedia entry on the Assembly of Experts says, it seems that they monitor his performance and can choose to either let him continue or dismiss him.
This is pretty much the gist of half of the opinion pieces in all but the most jingoistic right-wing (Jerusalem Post) papers in Israel for the last decade. Post-Zionism seems like the logical progression of zionism, and certainly makes an effort to address the problem you describe. I also think post-zionism is the consensus of Israel academic elite, and most prominent writers and thinkers. Those people are not the majority of voters, because Israel, unfortunately, *IS* a democracy. As in all democracies, the uneducated, regardless of their religion or ethnicity, are empowered to elect maybe not the best people qualified for the job, and start wars.
I appreciate it. [/quote]1) They need to do things which require the supression of free speech. It's dirty work, but necessary.[/quote] Yes, I'm aware that this is your position. I'm trying to ask you why you think this is the case. In what way is free speech a threat to Israeli security? By whom is the Supreme Leader subject to oversight? The "with a spiritual leader" part renders any comparison between Iranian and US democracy absurd. As you say, Sharia is the highest law and it is not subject to a vote. I don't understand what you're trying to say here. How so? Democracy isn't an all or nothing proposition. An example of an anti-democratic trend in Israel is the following: currently, Arab Israelis are represented by their own party in the Kinesset, but there has been a push to ban all non-Jewish parties. You made some pretty strong claims without any justification whatsoever. I am merely requesting that you justify your stance. If you find a claim of mine that you would like sources, ask me and I will try to accommodate your request as best I can. As it were, you haven't provided any sources for your claims, which is quite hypocritical in light of your childish insult here. You are, of course, welcome to ignore my posts.
Who said anything was fair? Almost my entire family was wiped out in the Holocaust. I'm not getting any payback checks or property from the Nazis or the villages in Poland or Russia where my ancestors came from before the war. The remainder of my family moved to a place where we could thrive and we have done so. Let's get this straight right now. As soon as the state of Israel was created, they were attacked by Egypt, Syria, Lebanon and Iraq. When the dust settled, then you saw the Jewish nation's land increase by 50%. This is what happens in wars, land is won and lost. It's been 3 generations since the creation of Israel. Is it 100% the Israeli's fault for the living conditions and mentality of the Palestinians? You are quick to point the finger at Israelis or people that might lean in their favor. Do I need to start posting Palestinian children's programming again? Should we talk about how Palestinians acted and were treated in Jordan? They sure love them in Egypt... Why don't you blame the UN for partitioning the land in the first place? Oh wait, Arab nations are too busy moaning and creating anti-Israel resolutions in the UN instead of actually helping Palestinians lay down their weapons and picking up text books. Why is this? There are countless websites with hateful, disgusting propaganda that help people "open their minds." War isn't pretty and yes... this is and has been a 60 year war. If only that prick didn't shoot Rabin, things might have been different. I understand that your argument is that Israel's responses are heavy handed and deemed to be "unfair" by the masses... but what do you expect? Do you expect them to just sit back and not protect their citizens from suicide bombings and rocket attacks? Just because the Palestinians bring baseball bats to a bazooka fight, doesn't mean the Israelis should engage in hand to hand combat for the sake of fairness. Israel prides itself on technology, and I'm not just talking militarily. Israel has other threats besides rocket fire, etc from Palestinians. See my earlier post with the giant list of battles/wars it has been in since 1948. Many say that Israel acts criminally to protect itself... but you can't blame them when they have faced constant attacks by Hamas, Hezbollah and Islamic Jihad. So are you ready to talk solutions or do you just wanna throw blame around? I know that there are plenty of extremists on both sides. I just want the damn fighting to stop. I'm also sick of hearing that I'm against humanity or that I need to "open my mind" and side with Palestinians. Why don't we hold them accountable for all of their actions? I will definitely empathize with a people who work hard and attempt to prosper with no excuses. :: puts on flame suit ::
When I typed it, it said Israel. Apparently, when I got up to get a glass of water before hitting submit, one of Refgal's kids thought it would be funny to jack with my post. He has already been sent to live on a kibbutz for a year.
I am deeply and sincerely sorry for your family's loss. Nothing can replace the loss of human life obviously. In all fairness, you are receiving payback checks and property, it's just not from the Nazis or the Poles. It is from Palestine. You had every right to refuse it. Obviously, it is difficult to refuse a gift like a state and that's human nature. But human nature is wrong at times. t was unethical to accept the gift of an entire state in Palestine. Perhaps you can tell me why this state wasn't given to you in Germany, the U.S., Mexico, China, Madagascar, anywhere else? But the key question is this: Would any country in the world have reacted differently to a new state being established within their own? If the highest body in the world grants someone the right to establish a state within my state, I would personally go to war. If the UN partitioned Israel today and allowed for the establishment of a Kurdish state in Israel, and no one would help you, what would you do? You would go to war. The people who established Israel requested the land. They were offered the land. They accepted the land. Which brings me to the next point... Franchise2001, the state of Israel was created in Palestine. That is an invasion. If we land on a Mars and there are people there and we create a state, that is an invasion. Anytime you try to claim the land of another country, it is an invasion. Just like Iraq tried to invade Kuwait. It is an act of aggression and the creation of Israel is a declaration of an invasion and war in itself. War was/is a result of invasion. They are not the same. Two things happened, not one. (1) Palestine was invaded and (2) War ensued. So to answer your question about whether Israel is 100% to blame, the answer is probably. The only other people who could possibly be blamed are (initially and mostly) the U.S. and the U.K. for giving permission and weapons, and (more recently) Saudi Arabia and Egypt for not helping out enough. The problem here is that you want them to focus on development and education and infrastructure. Therefore you are implying that, what, they should forget that their land was stolen? Would you forget it if I stole your car much less a large chunk of your country? Be realistic here please. If we are proposing solutions, let's at least be fair. Same as my previous point... There is no picking up text books when someone stole your land. The first logical action is war. So while the adults go to war, the kids pick up the textbooks, right? But the homes, water supply and electricity are attacked. Olive trees, the number one source of income for a huge majority of Palestinians, set on fire. Please don't expect Palestinians to do something that no other population on earth would do either. Their blood is just as valuable as anyone else's. They have the same rights. The right to put Arthur James Balfour and Baron Rothschild to a fair and independent trial much like Saddam Hussein's trial. The right to keep their land. The right to defend itself against invasion. It is infuriating to think that you are proposing a solution which can be summed up as... "So it happened, we had to do it. Can you go read a book now? You haven't picked up a book or taken a shower in 60 years." No, that is not my position. Those are minor things in the grand scheme. My argument is that there was an invasion. The countries which openly gave permission for this invasion own Veto Rights in the UN. Israel's heavy handedness is retaliation. But in a conflict where everything can be deemed a retaliation, then the only place where you can put your finger is at the source - where the chain reaction began. I must point out a couple of key things which I don't think you've grasped though: 1) An attack on Palestine is two-pronged. It is an attack on Arabs and an attack on Islam (Religion and race are much more closely aligned in the case of Jewish people). That is a dangerous thing since these people are historically not known to be able to stay calm for too long. There would be no bigger nightmare than if all these countries join in. My number one hope is that this never happens. 2) Palestine has nothing to do with the holocaust. Palestine is only involved in this because of the specific qualities which the land they own/owned holds. This land only has special qualities for Muslims, Christians and Jews. Although Israel was given this land by someone else, it had to be this land. Israel wanted this land. They chose to displace Palestinians specifically. This is not a case of "we needed a place to go" or "they deserve this because of the holocaust". For the former, Israel could have been formed anywhere - there aren't that many Jews in israel (7 million?). For the latter, receiving Germany would (I guess) have made sense. Palestine is only a party to this because their land was sought and neither them nor the Zionist Federation of Great Britain and Ireland nor Arthur James Balfour gave a damn about what Palestinians would do. Despite our polar views on the matter, I can honestly see that you genuinely want a solution. I know in the midst of these arguments, there are so many emotions running around, so many memories. I really meant it when I said that I'm sorry for the loss of yoru family. I want you to know I have more than a handful of friends who have died in Palestine. I also have more than a handful of friends who grew up in Palestine. I guess this is why the emotions are strong on both our sides. I do genuinely hope that this conflict is resolved without any more fighting and with better solutions than are currently on the table. I'm sure (or I hope) everyone feels the same.
Thank you Mathloom. Your post elaborates my earlier one much more effectively, especially the 'chain-reaction' part. Pro-Israel people, my contention is a legal one, specifically the sovereignty of what used to be Palestine and how a whole new country was created inside it simply because of good lobbying skills/representation in Europe and America by the benefiting party, to put it in layman terms. Besides the city of Jerusalem which should be an 'international city' under the UN or something similar because of its significance to the 3 Abrahamic faiths, I could care less for that little dusty parcel of land by the Mediterranean. But when it hurts our foreign policy as well as disrupting the stability of the region, something has got to change.
If Zionists really wanted the land, why didn't they fight under Allenby or help out in any way during the Sinai and Palestine campaigns?
this thread is depresing me i dont think there will ever be peace by these two countries not when u got crazy rabis and moslems calling for wiping out the other side and its granted by god
Articulation is impossible for the mess the British created after the Ottomans fell. Which brings us to the other biggest issue that all these promises of a Jewish National Home by Balfour and the foundations laid down because of him are simply relics of a bygone British empire. The McMahon-Hussein agreement guaranteed the Arabs the opposite what actually happened. Anyway, within the British Mandate of Palestine, there was a government comprised of the Grand Mufti of Palestine, Supreme Muslim Council, and the Arab Higher Committee. Together these 3 kept the Arab/Christian sector in check while the British/Jewish people tended their own. For a while, there was a relative amount of stability between these groups and all was ok. You're starting to take the argument on a national level (since the above shows this cannot be used here) but I'm simply saying there was a protector of property rights for Palestinians and that these rights were infringed upon by people who simply drew a line on a map to divide territories without having any right to do so.
Absolutely. Al-Husayni was really interested only in property right and ensuring everybody got a fair shake. He was really a share-and-share alike guy with a deep respect for the Jews. In fact, he was really concerned that under the Ottoman Empire it was illegal for any Jews to own land at all, and he was working to make sure they were compensated for that 400 years of injustice, right? <img src="http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/0/0b/Bundesarchiv_Bild_146-1980-036-05,_Amin_al_Husseini_bei_bosnischen_SS-Freiwilligen.jpg" width=75% height=75%> When you choose to go to war to take something away from someone else, you loose all right to b**** when they turn around and do the same to you. The right to draw borders was implicitly granted by the Ottomans to the British and French when they lost their territories by choosing to side with the Kaiser. The same thing happened when the Ottomans took it from the Mamaluks and when the Mamaluks took it from the Kingdom of Jerusalem. Until the Arab League attacked the Jews in '48, no Jew ever took land from a Palestinian or Turk without paying for it what was asked. I repeat, until the Arab League attacked the Jews in '48, no Jew ever took land from a Palestinian or Turk without paying for it what was asked. The Palestinians will try to obfuscate this fact, making it appear that the Jews moved in and just squatted on land owned by Palestinians. But this is like saying that the Mexicans who come to the USA and buy homes don't have any rights to that land, because they aren't 'real Americans' and their homes really intrensically belong to 'real Americans'. For the most part, the large farms were owned by Turks from the old Ottoman days. Once you go to war to enforce your will, to overwhelm and subjugate the other guy, as a rule across the board no matter what the conflict, you implicitly loose the ability to cry when he does the same to you and not be a whiny child. If the Arabs had chosen to accept the ’48 plan, they would be much better off than they can ever hope for now. It would have been a relative paradise of sharing. If they never wanted it to come to that in the first place, they should have taken it up with the Turks who according to all international laws legally gave up the rights of all people of the Levant to the British and French. They spent 40+ years trying to fight to become king of the hill and evict all jews "from the river to the sea" with no compromise. Suddently they become concerned with sharing? The only reason it has become en vogue for them to whine about coexistence now is because they have no more forceful hands to play beyond throwing rocks. If they were interested in the '48, '67, or '73 resolutions, they should have considered agreeing to and supporting them at the time with the same righteous fervor they display now, instead of waiting until they clearly had no hope of achieving anything remotely similar through force. If the Muslims were so concerned about the multi-faith nature of Jerusalem, they should have been overjoyed that they controlled half the city (greater than their multifaith 1/3) and not tried to impose their rule over 100% in 1967. Or were they doing that out of concern for Christian and Jewish rights?
