Palestine now a non-member observer state thanks to landslide UN Vote, US pissed off

Some jerkhole can outwit and then scream at a telemarketer. Obviously that means that Hamas is fake and doesn't launch rockets at Israel, fire mortars at Israel, bomb buses, etc.

Three rolleyes for you:

 

Man, I didn't even watch that video. I like to keep the crap where it belongs.

I can do that too:

Take more!

BEAT LA USED ROLLEYES...It was highly effective.

 

Netanyahu was born when the state was a year old. He has no memory of pre-State Israel and is one of the first products of its institutions. As for the generation before, I wouldn't paint all the members of the pre-state armed groups as the same. Irgun and Lehi had totalitarian and anti-British ideology (both labeled terror organizations by the UK).

The Irgun trained with the Italian Navy and Lehi even had a relationship with the Nazis, thinking they were the lesser evil than the British (google it). They wanted Jewish immigration to Palestine, and thought they had common goals.

The Haganah, on the other hand, worked with the British, fought the Axis in WW2 as well as Lehi and the Irgun. Pretty big difference. People like Dayan and Rabin came from this group and this time.

Nettanyahu's dad was an Irgun supporter.

The only politician that ever had 60% support in Israel was Bill Clinton in the 90s. Israel has no equivalent to Barghouti.

Uri Averny is a peace activist that people respect and avoids getting tangled up in the inane circle jerk of Israel's (irrelevant) far-left. He keeps the peace message on target, but he's an activist, not a politician. He's also like 90.

The peacemakers in power have traditionally been right-wingers (Begin, Sharon, Olmert). Rabin was a notable exception, but despite being from Avoda (labor), he was still the chief of staff (head general of the IDF) during the 67 war and one of the first advocates of settlement building.

I don't think the comparison works all that well. I think the personalities and situations are pretty different. Israel isn't an apartheid state...yet, but it's inching along to get there. And there isn't a Palestinian Mandela any more than there is an American Beatles or a British Willie Nelson

I try to make an effort to de-romanticize both the Israeli and Palestinian personalities and narratives...people who are drawn into either have a way of ending up becoming useful idiots.

If there's any line to draw, it's between the educated and rational people and the sentimental, superstitious and tribal, both being subsets of their respective constituencies, and the far-left of Israel being just as far from reality as settlers, Hamas rocketeers and men in beards who think women should be told what to do.

Where Barghouti fits in that spectrum and how he manages to draw that large of a coalition among his own people is a mystery to me, but as I said, I'm hardly an expert on him. I'll ask people.

 

He's definitely liked by the educated elite in Ramallah. Like a lot of people there, he had a successful career and could have stayed abroad the rest of his life, but chose to come back home to help his people build a state. Maybe he's harder for some to like because he's not a partisan or an activist, but he's the sort of guy that builds working societies. The world needs more of those and less who want to kill each other over rocks.

Ouch. You can't be the partner in peace if you don't cooperate. Oslo was about giving the PA more autonomy and US support to build infrastructure and a security apparatus independent of Israel. That doesn't happen if you aren't guy who picks up the phone when the bad things that will inevitably happen, happen.

Abbas is hardly a lackey. He's very critical of Israel and often threatens to dismantle the PA in frustration. That's pretty much his only real move when Israel doesn't progress on peace talks or keep their end of the bargain on freezing settlement construction and force his position into irrelevance.

I don't think it has anything to do with the region, glynch. I think it's the nature of any religion having or believing it deserves absolute power. I don't see them any different from Cromwell or the Texas Education board that wants to force creationism into high school biology textbooks. It's the same kind of ignorant hubris.

 

Irgun were cold-blooded mass murderers- the claim they were only "labelled terrorist" is typical Israeli revisionism. And Likud formed of Irgun, in much the same manner as Sinn Fein formed of the IRA. Begin and Sharon and Netanyahu are born of a pure terroristic tradition.

 

Congratulations to Palestine and the Palestinian people. Lol @ the Zionists calling this a "strategic terrorist attack." This vote just underscores how international public opinion is firmly against Israel and on the side of the Palestinians.

Here was Israel's response... The Israeli regime has decided to build 3,000 more illegal settlements...Absolutely pathetic:

http://www.haaretz.com/news/diploma...000-new-homes-in-settlements.premium-1.481695

 

I can assure you the guys in the Haganah or the British Army that are still alive to remember them consider them terrorists too.

Sharon was never in Irgun. He was raised in a socialist secular community and joined the Haganah, and was, like Rabin and Peres, an early protege of Ben-Gurion. Netanyahu was born after the Irgun was disbanded and absorbed into the IDF.

Likud came from Herut, which came from Irgun. It didn't come to power until the late 70s, and it did so because of a generation of Mizrachi people who felt marginalized by the socialist Ashenazi elite that snubbed them and because of the total failure of the Yom Kippur War.

Likud's leadership (especially now) is full of aging ideologues, but that's not true of their voters.

Likud's main constituency aren't people who are versed on the writings of Jabotinsky and Revisionist Zionism, they are the sons and grandsons of immigrants from places like Morcocco and Iraq and Yemen who didn't come to Israel until the 50s. Those people are about half the electorate in Israel and have no relationship with Europe, the Holocaust or the establishment of the State of Israel or it's early pre-state militias.

Likud's other main identity is private enterprise, and is the party of privatization, American-style capitalism and big business. It gets a lot of votes that way as well.

None of that really scales with comparisons to Sinn Fein.
Disclaimer: I'm not Israeli, but my great-grandfather WAS in the IRA so I do know a bit about that

 

1. Who are "the Zionists?" I ask that because the only people in 2012 who refer to Israelis collectively as "the zionists" are people who refuse to say "Israel" and remain insensitive to a large chunk of the population that don't identify with it or consider it anachronistic. And of course people that like to talk about international banking conspiracies.

I guess that's fine if your audience is the hardliners in the Nation of Islam and the Iranian clergy, but that's probably not the main audience of this board.

2. I agree that it's a step forward at the UN, but Palestinians have been underwhelmed. It's a symbol, but they know that nothing has fundamentally changed in the status quo.

3. They are building 3000 homes, not 3000 settlements. It's still brazenly belligerent and warrants a strong rebuke from the US:

 

I was referring to the Zionist who made that quote and those that support her. You seem like you have Zionist sympathies as well.

I meant 3,000 more homes in illegal Israeli settlements. It deserves a rebuke and condemnation from everybody. Do you condemn it?

Do you believe Irgun and Lehi were terrorist organizations?

 

So, can the supporters of this actually explain how this is going to help the peace process? At all?

 

It's not designed to promote a "peace" where Palestinians remain in Palestine. It's a scripted aggression designed to provoke a response from prideful Palestinian males who will then be executed, bringing Israel ever closer to the inevitable expulsion of the few remaining Palestinians to other Arab nations.

 

I do have a vested interest in the State of Israel. I live here and my life is here but I'm not foolish enough to think military occupation can continue indefinitely without consequence.

Zionists were 19th century idealists who wanted to build a Jewish state. They did that. As far as I see it: "Mission accomplished. You have your state, let them build theirs. You should understand their need to express their national narrative better than anyone, or at least be pragmatic enough to understand that preventing it is self-destructing your own."

That's pretty much no different from what Ben-Gurion said from retirement after Israel took the territories in '67 from Jordan and Egypt, but today saying that gets you called a "post-zionist" (which includes a lot of people I have nothing in common with), or in some less enlightened circles, a traitor.

I condemn the settlements in their entirety, but this move is a step beyond that, going out of the way to punish the PA and snub the West.

Yes, as did the Haganah and the British Army, most Western nations, and probably most of the people who are still alive that were in the Irgun and Lehi. They make no apologies about what they did and are proud of it. There are still some that are still butthurt about the Altalena.

 

...fanatical Jew haters like Kwame.

 

I wish the best for Palestine and its people, and fully believe that they can peacefully coexist with Israel. But that won't happen until Hamas is gone.

<iframe width="560" height="315" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/sNNhG0zDtA8" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe>

 

.......I'm referring to the whole "becoming an observer state" thing. Unless you're suggesting that all of this is something that Palestine wants. How will becoming a non-member observer state improve the peace process? This, in and of itself, won't do anything one way or the other. But the very real threat is that then Palestine will join the ICC, which will pretty much permanently shatter any hopes of peace as Israel will be spammed with 500 "Your entire leadership should be strung up for war crimes" junk from pathetic and irrelevant international courts, and will naturally respond with a hearty "**** you."

 

I've never said anything remotely close that could even be interpreted as hatred towards anyone or any group. I know this is your schtick, but I take great offense with the comment that you've made here. Unfortunately, you're allowed to spew this kind of inflammatory rhetoric on a regular basis. If anything, based on your infatuation and obsession with bashing Islam and its followers, you're the fanatical Muslim hater.

 

It confirms that the world thinks Israel's policies are a joke. Israel should be tried for war crimes. If any other country in the world were doing likewise the US would be all over them, condemning it every step of the way. It's a gigantic hypocrisy.

 

lol

If the tipjar got a nickel for every time he's used a line like this, nobody would ever need to contribute to it.

 

Do you believe trying the Israeli leadership for war crimes will improve the prospects of a peace treaty?