Israel has invaded Gaza...

[Tom Joad]

Originally Posted by Ike Bana

Israel was the option they were given.

They should have asked for a nice big slice of Germany.

After all, they are the ones that owed them something, not the Palestinians.

[whell]

Originally Posted by finnbow

I've never read those. What do they say?

PS - Being the smartest guy in a room with you and Ike is no great achievement. The full extent of your respective arguments are "Hamas wants to wipe Israel off the map" and "Holocaust!!!" Not very compelling stuff, methinks.

They're not my arguments Finn. They're Hamas's arguments.

[whell]

Originally Posted by Tom Joad

Well cheer up Whell.

Your attempt to come across as the "dumbest dude in the room" is, as always, a smashing success.

As is your effort at being the biggest di.....

...oh, never mind. Not worth it.

[whell]

Originally Posted by donquixote99

No, because in this story, there's only one house. The Palestinians initially were confined to one bedroom, and now they're down to a closet.

Yet, at one time, the Palestinians got exactly what they said they wanted from Israel, as recently as 2005, when Israel pulled their folks out of the West Bank and Gaza. What did it get them? Part of that deal to pull out was Abbas committing to get rid of Hamas. The next year Hamas got representatives elected.

Look, I wish that everyone involved in this conflict would find a way to resolve their issues. But this has been going on for 60 years. There are no angels in this conflict, but that's the nature of a conflict that is punctuated by frequent military and terrorist conflict.

From my perspective, however, the Hamas has over-stepped. Israel has tried over the years - through deals brokered by various US administrations, to pursue peaceful solutions. But much of the Middle East - particularly those factions prone to aggression or the more radical versions of Islam - still have yet to accept Israeli statehood.

[finnbow]

In a number of posts, I referred to how many in Israeli live inside a bubble, oblivious to what's really going on in their name outside of that bubble. Here's a take on this issue from a noted Israeli author, translated from Hebrew into English. FWIW, he lost his 20 year old son fighting for the IDF in Lebanon in 2006.

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/07/28/op...-violence.html

Contextually, his use of the word bubble is a bit different than the one normally associated with life in Tel Aviv. This article captures that feeling:

http://www.csmonitor.com/World/Middl...1s01-wome.html

[Ike Bana]

Originally Posted by Tom Joad

They should have asked for a nice big slice of Germany.

After all, they are the ones that owed them something, not the Palestinians.

OK TJ time for you to be reasonable about this for just a moment, eh? If you were a concentration camp survivor, you really believe you could tolerate spending the rest of your life in fucking Germany? If it were me, I wouldn't want to spend 5 minutes anywhere in Europe.

[Ike Bana]

Originally Posted by finnbow

Somebody who has never been near or on the West Bank, it seems. If you unaware of Israel's designs on the West Bank, it's certainly due to your own willful ignorance. It seems you believe a lot more than you know.

I fully support Israel's right to exist and its right to defend itself. What I don't support is their tactics, just as I don't support Hamas' tactics. This crisis won't be solved by ensconcing 4 million people behind 30' concrete walls and periodically "mowing the grass."

BTW, the Palestinians on the West Bank had nothing to do with the Holocaust, other than the Holocaust ultimately cost them their homeland. Give it a rest with the Holocaust already. The Holocaust is not a vague concept to me. I lived within 30 minutes of Dachau for 5 years and visited it many times and have visited Yad Vashem in Jerusalem on several occasions. I also have a son and many Jewish friends living within range of Hamas rockets and several serving right now in the IDF.

Screaming "Holocaust" and "Anti-Semitism" are trump cards that simply don't work for me. They may have in the years before I visited Israel, the West Bank (and Jordan) on several occasions, but they no longer do. These are the screams of a clueless ideologue devoid of a valid argument.

After listening to your bullshit for the past few days, I don't give a flying fuck what works for you or what you don't fucking support or how much time you spend on the West Bank. In fact, you proclaim you know a lot more than you actually know. Particularly about the history of the area prior to last week.

I was listening to some Christian religious leader on NPR the other day. And this bonehead actually said that King Hussein of Jordan gave the West Bank back to the Palestinians. This guy was either a liar or an ignoramus who never took 5 minutes to study the history. Jordan had annexed and occupied the West Bank immediately after David Ben Gurion declaration the establishment of the State of Israel in May 1948 and held it until it lost it to the Israeli Army in the first week of June 1967. Jordan never gave the West Bank to the PLO. Prior to the Jordanian occupation, it was effectively British territory, and before that, occupied by the Turks. The Palestinians, whoever the "Palestinians" actually are, have no greater historical claim to the West Bank than the Jews have.

[Zeke]

Originally Posted by Ike Bana

If it were me, I wouldn't want to spend 5 minutes anywhere in Europe.

You would just expect a reservation to be carved out of someone else's land then for the displaced to be good enough to not bitch about it.

Entitled and all...

[Ike Bana]

Originally Posted by Zeke

You would just expect a reservation to be carved out of someone else's land then for the displaced to be good enough to not bitch about it.

Entitled and all...

Would that you understood the meaning of the word entitlement.

There are plenty of us who believe the Jews are as entitled to the West Bank, and the rest of the land upon which stands the State of Israel as anybody.

[BlueStreak]

Originally Posted by Ike Bana

Israel was the option they were given. And they were given that option because, along with certain Arab tribes...Jews had as much historical claim to a piece of the dirt in the British mandate as anybody. So that's what the surviving Jews of Europe were provided. Seriously dude?...WTF should they have done? Say "uh...thanks but no thanks...we're gonna stay here with the collaborators who would have been pretty much as happy to see us eliminated as the Nazis???"

Yeah...seriously dude, that's what the surviving Jews of Euope should have said when offered a place...any place as far from Europe as they could get.

And they chose to go to a place where everybody hates them even more than the Nazis did, not just some of the people and we've been dealing with this bullshit ever since. Time to stop. Yank the subsidy and the political empathy. If "God" really does favor them, there should be no problem, right?

Dave