Nope. You are very confused here if you think I am doing that. I invite you to cite a reference here or anywhere where I seriously advocate and/or make excuses for ‘wanton murder’.

“…oppressed minority migrated  to their historical homeland in order to coalesce into asociety that could defend itself.”

I agree. My assertion was the very simplified version of the history. It is in fact a lot more complicated than what either of us has illuminated. There was however the small matter of some existing inhabitants. Who also can claim this area as their historical homeland. Also the British had quite the hand in the whole ordeal as did the US and France. I’m not really certain that the Arab world at that time (or any time really) would have just allowed large numbers of European Jews to just waltz in and set up camp without the influence of the British/Allies/UN.

“They had to take tremendous risks to escape that hell.”

I am certain that they did. It’s been centuries of cluster-fuck there and for the most part everywhere. I’ve never said that the Jewish people have had a good time of things, quite bad for the most part if you ask me. And it’s still a shit state of affairs. And what’s worse is nobody wants to listen anymore. It’s just constant upping of stakes and over-reaction on both sides of the fence. And I’m sorry to say that unless both sides just quit being jerks or kill each other off there will be no peace. Both of these states or one unified state could exist and be functional but only if both sides really want it. They really need to fucking want it. And in order for that to happen both sides need to start letting the hate go instead of escalating things. Just a word to the wise I guess.

Actually, considering this koan a little deeper. I propose that a good starting point may be to get external parties like the US and the backers of the Palestinians to stop trowing fireworks into both of those backyards. Maybe if everybody had just rocks and sticks things would be at least a little quieter.

“Because Britain decided to snatch another people’s land and give it to the Jews”

That is not what happened. What did happen is that an oppressed minority migrated  to their historical homeland in order to coalesce into asociety that could defend itself. That stared before the British. 

“Have your neighbors built a fence around your land and told you that if you want to leave you need permission from them. ”

Ask any Syrian Jew, because that is precisely what happened. They had to take tremendous risks to escape that hell. Some literally walked across minefields into Turkey because they felt the risk was worth it. 

Less cordial:
Whoa! Glad you ducked, otherwise the point might have hit you right in the face.

“…why the Jewish community in the Arab World is less than 1% in size from what it once was.”

Because Britain decided to snatch another people’s land and give it to the Jews. Why on Earth they thought Palestine would be the place to do that I’ll never know but they did and now we have this wonderful quagmire. (I know; tradition and history and so on and so on). Here’s a fun question for you. Why did only a miniscule proportion of Jews living in the US move to Israel? Well, for one thing it isn’t New York City. And obviously they have it pretty good here, so why would you throw that away for a little national solidarity in a hot dusty place surrounded by people that hate your guts. What I’m saying here is that people tend to want to move up in the world. And that is why most Arab Jews left their previous residence for an Israeli homeland. It had to be better than being a tiny vilified minority in a tribalist society.

“Might have something to do with me not throwing fireworks at their back yards.”

Have your neighbors built a fence around your land and told you that if you want to leave you need permission from them. Do they prevent you from accessing such life-essentials as medicine, food or water? Do they try to partition off chunks of your property to build their new summer home? Do they humiliate you with demeaning searches and scare tactics when you try to leave your compound even with the proper papers that they made you get. Do they come into your house and tell you how to run your house. Do they constantly turn down any reasonable solution to the horrendous state of affairs.

Your analogy is terrible, just terrible. That you would still insist that the Palestinians have it just as good as you do (where the hell ever you are) or at least good enough to not need to lash out is just plain ignorant. No actually it’s actively idiotic. The mental gymnastics involved to make such a comparison work out must really be straining your mind. And whatever your point in mentioning it it still feels like you are saying that the Palestinians should shut up, behave and just take it. Because of general antisemitism? Because they started it? Because… some other bat-shit insane justification? The people of Palestine are the ones getting fucked here friend, not the Israelis. The sooner you see that the sooner we can start talking about a real solution that benefits all parties, not just Israel and the US

Also, you never told me when or if you get out of the pit and try to brain me with the tomahawk. I’ll just be waiting here with this shotgun watching you starve.

That doesn’t mean keep kicking the little kid that follows the bullies around. Was it actually the Palestinians that fomented any of those wars or were a principle actor in any of them. You could stretch history a bit to say yes but the reality is is that the Palestinians haven’t the power or the resources to mount any sort of attacks at the level of say Jordan, Syria, Egypt, et.al. They were the poor outcasts that even the rest of the arab world didn’t want(and still don’t). And when the British yanked their state out from under them to hand to the Jews (that Europe wanted so desperately to get rid of) did they consult any other stakeholders in the region or did they just do the magical white western hand wave and tell everybody to ‘just get along’?

Nobody is right in the fight, not any more anyway. But I think that it’s high time the Palestinians were treated as human beings for one thing and secondly that they actually, you know, get to govern and control the little fragments of a psuedo-state they still have left. Also, your pipe-dream talk is just  that. Palestine doesn’t necessarily need any more land from Israel (even if it is largely debatable whether or not Israel’s claim to it is valid) just like say Alaska and the continental US. Canada doesn’t tell the US that they can’t go back and forth without undue hassle. And surely the US would raise holy hell if Canada ever did.

Another thing that is telling about the attitude of many Israelis is the continuing expansion of the settlements which they were specifically ordered to halt. They don’t care, the Palestinians are annoying gnats to be swatted away. Fuck those other people over there, I want mine. Mine mine mine. It’s quite childish really.

And sure, just as is the case the world over, a people and a government are often two totally different beasts. And sure, there are moderate to progressive Israelis that are trying to do the right thing. But in the mean time there are kids starving in Gaza right now because a bunch of frightened children can’t see past their own nose to realize that all of this war and fighting is ultimately pointless. And, of course, that those starving children will grow up hating Israelis. A new crop of zealots and idiots to engage in more constant and intractable warfare. Great plan Israel, great, fucking, plan.

“I do find it a bit humorous that you describe a country that has been attacked by foreign nations (at least) three times in sixty years to be “imperilled” in smear quotes.”

Oh, please, if there was any chance at all that Israel was in peril we would be calling it East Jordan or Palestinian Egypt by now. It is essentially true that Israel is a giant military base for the US (also another reason why they are targeted so often) by extremists. So the chance that Israel will be destroyed by their neighbors is virtually nil. I find it a bit humorous that you think it IS in peril.

“Disproportionate response is the name of the game and has been for decades as far as IDF strategy goes. The thing is, ratcheting the severity of the response down is a potentially suicidal act…”

So is the other alternative. Try again.

As to the military service angle. Mandatory service serves to militarize people’s mind set. If we are always at war and everybody is a soldier then it becomes that much harder to envision a peaceable resolution that is found by talking not fighting. The military mind-set is pretty effective at getting people to think of themselves as a collective that lives and dies by the sword, and following orders. So, I don’t really see how military service tends to make people favor less harsh tactics. After all they probably lost some friends or family, or figure that they put in their time and so should the youth. And having known quite a few military people, being in the military tends to amplify people’s tendencies towards harsh responses and supporting harsh responses not diminish them. There are exceptions of course but those are the type of person that probably had no business going into the military in the first place.

I said nothing of the sort. In fact, I said nothing at all except ask you to clarify your position, so please stop putting up strawmen.

You may be surprised to learn that the Israeli political landscape is by no means uniform, and there is plenty of opposition to the way the current government is handling interactions with Gaza. In fact, the ruling coalition is currently comprised of six parties, so it’s by no means a guarantee that even the government is all of one mind on this.

I’m not sure why you feel mandatory military service has any bearing on your argument. If anything that should serve to explain why voters who have faced personal danger to life and limb are more, rather than less, likely to support a stronger response.

Speaking of bullies, Israel has faced a series of wars where its survival as a country was at stake — all of them against numerically superior opponents. The way you get bullies to stop coming after you is by making it clear you will hurt them really, really badly, no matter the cost to yourself. Disproportionate response is the name of the game and has been for decades as far as IDF strategy goes. The thing is, ratcheting the severity of the response down is a potentially suicidal act, so the IDF is unlikely to change that approach. How appropriate it is in these particular circumstances is a bit of a moot point, since you won’t find any takers to conduct such an experiment.

I do find it a bit humorous that you describe a country that has been attacked by foreign nations (at least) three times in sixty years to be “imperilled” in smear quotes.

I guess it’s my turn to suggest a solution, one that’s a bit more practical than “pull their head out of their collective ass,” but sadly, I don’t have one. It’s a chicken and egg problem of the worst kind: There is deep, profound, racism on both sides of the conflict, and the racist views are constantly reinforced by acts of violence and violent rhetoric. 

I can tell you one thing, though: The idea of a single Palestinian state will remain a pipe dream until teleportation is invented. Israel will never give up any land to connect Gaza and the West Bank, since that would put it in the same position that the two Palestinian territories are currently in. Egypt has no desire whatsoever to absorb Gaza into itself, just as Jordan wants nothing to do with the West Bank. 

As far as I’m concerned, the only option is coexistence — yes, as a single country — but how to get there from here is anyone’s guess.

I grew up in Israel, and had classmates with relatives in the rocket zone. Classmates, that is, from families that came to Israel as Jewish refugees from Arab countries. So before you lecture anyone about “lying down and taking it,” ask yourself why the Jewish community in the Arab World is less than 1% in size from what it once was. 

But yes, I do safely coexist with my neighbors. Might have something to do with me not throwing fireworks at their back yards. 

Seriously though, I’ve at no point advocated for the killing of civilians on either side of the conflict. What I am saying is that oppressed people around the world have the right to stand up to their oppressors. And let’s not make the mistake of putting Israel’s military in it’s own little vacuum. The civilians of Israel (all of which at one point or another serve in the military, it’s mandatory) have the power to tell their government and their military to stop treating the Palestinians as if they were ghetto-trash. I would think that a people who have been oppressed and persecuted for thousands of years could pull their collective head out of their collective ass and see that what they are doing to the Palestinians is just as bad as what happened to them. As a nation Israel’s hands are quite bloody.

Furthermore, while the oppression and ghettoization of Palestinians certainly explains their actions it by no mean should be seen to condone those actions. Same goes for the Israelis. You reap what you sew, treat others as you would be treated, peace on earth and good will towards people and all that crap. But when that fails for whatever reason, I still reserve my right (and anybody else’s) to defend myself from bullies. And if that means that I have to get my hands a little dirty then so be it.  (That doesn’t mean I beat up the little kid hanging around with the bully because he’s an easy target and guilty by association. Just to be crystal clear here.)

You’re arguing that might makes right. So, let’s say I show up at your house. I bring my trusty shotgun and you get your tomahawk. So I tell you to strip naked and then just sit in a pit and starve (you can keep that shitty tomahawk, I’m supremely confident that the shotgun will keep you in line). I stand there over the pit for as long as it takes for you to starve to death. So here’s my question. At what point do you stand up and come at me with the tomahawk? Or do I automatically win because I have the shotgun? If that is the case then the rational conclusion is that you should dash your own brains out and save me the trouble of making sure you don’t leave the pit.

No, gathering intelligence and conducting clandestine strikes on military assets belonging to entities who are at war with you is not terrorism. Shooting at civilian neighborhoods is.

Yeah, that fucking rules. 

The purposes of Star Wars were primarily political (as well as defense contractor pork barrel.)   Missile defense that protects a command headquarters like Cheyenne Mountain and the missile bases in North Dakota and Kazakhstan is fairly stabilizing politically, but missile defense systems that protect major cities would be fairly destabilizing if they actually worked.  In reality, stopping 1000 missiles or 8000 warheads aimed at a few hundred cities is not only far beyond the capabilities the system actually had, but a 95% effective system means you only suffer catastrophic damage to your  country from the few hundred warheads that get past it. 

The one threat where Star Wars would have been useful was decades after the Cold War if Bush’s Axis of Evil Enemies List tried to launch a couple of ICBMs at the US (but they didn’t have missiles that good.)  Stopping regional-range missiles is technically different, possibly feasible, and then you discover that the other guys actually hauled their big nukes into your capital city by truck or ship.  And stopping short-range small missiles is also different; the IDF is announcing a success rate at stopping the Gaza missiles that’s a bit under 50%.

Plus, we’ve been here before. See: Gaza War. Hamas launches rockets at Israel. Israel retaliates, claiming self-defence. The damage and death toll is, of course, very lopsided. Hamas stops shooting at Israel for a while. Rinse, repeat. Today, I heard Israeli forces are gathering near the Gaza strip for a possible invasion.

The point being, if I, as a political leader in Gaza, knew that my people would get stomped into the ground — again — because I kept shooting at Israel, you’d think I’d stop shooting at Israel. And if I didn’t, you might question my true motives.

As to the larger picture, I agree that Israel is oppressing the Palestinians, and, as the 800-pound gorilla in the region, Israel carries the major share of the responsibility for negotiating with, and coming to, some sort of agreement with the Palestinians that ends the oppression.

And yet, they seem to enjoy acting like thugs. Year after year of the status quo is unacceptable. It’s curious how the oppressed has now become the oppressor. But if you say that too loudly, you risk being called anti-semitic.

And people die and suffer in Gaza too, and get their land stolen in the west bank, especially if it’s on the wrong side of the apartheid wall, so there’s a lot of anger that they’re taking revenge for, which leads to more collective punishment and more revenge.

Although, I will say that the call to make aliyah is important, so don’t underestimate the drive to go home again, despite knowing it wasn’t going to be easy.  Not like creating a homeland in Germany or Poland would have been a wonderful thing for the survivors, either.  Going back to one’s ancestral home would have felt like the better option, all things considered.

The Holocaust happened.  Europeans killed Jews in huge numbers.  It’s written in ink in the Social Contract that what happened then is that benevolent Europeans felt so sorry about it that they made a homeland for the Jews.  If that were true, they would have partitioned Germany and made a Jewish homeland there.  But the bottom line is that, even after the war, the French would still have viewed their German neighbors with less suspicion than they turned on the Jews.

Israel was created for the primary purpose of getting the Jews, who had been considered a problem in need of a solution for millennia, out of Europe and Russia and into somebody else’s lap.  Preferably someone with no political and military strength to prevent it.

You know that antisemitism was pervasive throughout Europe and Russia since antiquity.  You know that antisemitism is still pervasive.  And yet, you believe that shipping the Jews out to some dusty foreign backwater was an act of kindness.