Israel does level neighborhoods. So the issue is (unless policy has changed since I was there) that Palestinians aren't allowed to build without Israeli position. However, Israel often doesn't give it because it isn't in their interest. Palestinians still need to live somewhere so they build anyhow. Which means if Israel wants to build something, they just say it is an illegal neighborhood and raze it.

The other thing that happens is they raze the homes of friends and relatives of terrorists, even if those people didn't do anything and their houses are permitted.

Amy, I think I still might have connections there if you really want to go and see the other side. I think you SHOULD go see the other side, so that you can stay fully informed. I know you to be a person who likes to stay informed, but you are understandably one-sided on this issue.

You are correct in saying the Palestinian government is awful. That does not change the fact that Israel controls a great deal, including the free movement, which would make it difficult for even the best Palestinian government to build a great nation.

Still remember all the young Israelis asking me why I was staying/working in the West Bank, the Palestinians aren't really human, I shouldn't bother about them.

“Israel does level neighborhoods. So the issue is (unless policy has changed since I was there) that Palestinians aren't allowed to build without Israeli position. However, Israel often doesn't give it because it isn't in their interest. Palestinians still need to live somewhere so they build anyhow. Which means if Israel wants to build something, they just say it is an illegal neighborhood and raze it.

The other thing that happens is they raze the homes of friends and relatives of terrorists, even if those people didn't do anything and their houses are permitted.

Amy, I think I still might have connections there if you really want to go and see the other side. I think you SHOULD go see the other side, so that you can stay fully informed. I know you to be a person who likes to stay informed, but you are understandably one-sided on this issue.”

I find it highly amusing that you took everything the Palestinians told you at face value.

Jewish academics and media personalities (no small influence I might add) have been telling us that brown people are good and white people are bad for decades. Are you surprised that some leftists take these Jews at face value and oppose what they see as a colonial stronghold of white supremacy in the Middle East?

>I find it highly amusing that you took everything the Palestinians told you at face value.

Everyone knows you're supposed to blindly believe the Israelis. I can safely dismiss you Isab old chap since you offered no rebuttal whatsoever to my gal pal (Chris Chan style) NicoleK.

>I find it highly amusing that you took everything the Palestinians told you at face value.

Everyone knows you're supposed to blindly believe the Israelis. I can safely dismiss you Isab old chap since you offered no rebuttal whatsoever to my gal pal (Chris Chan style) NicoleK.

Crid at December 1, 2020 7:18 AM

I’ve been on this planet too long to believe even half of what anyone tells me. Especially a bunch of grifters like Obama and the Palestinians.
With the advent of fracking the Palestinians aren’t even serving much of their intended purpose anymore.

I don't see any rebuttals or arguments Isab. Just some ad-hominem calling the Palestinians grifters.

Simply asserting that the Palestinians are doo doo heads isn't going to work any more. Maybe the Israelis are just poo poo faces.

“Roughly 21% of Israel ’s more than nine million citizens are Arabs. The vast majority of the Israeli Arabs - roughly 83% - are Muslims. Arabs in Israel have equal voting rights; in fact, it is one of the few places in the Middle East where Arab women may vote. Arabs hold 15 seats in the 23rd Knesset.”

The Palestinians had a choice seventy some years ago with Israel. They could beat them or join them. The ones we still call Palestinians failed to do either.

As the great Ben-Gurion once said Isab my boy:

"Let us not ignore the truth among ourselves ... politically we are the aggressors and they defend themselves... The country is theirs, because they inhabit it, whereas we want to come here and settle down, and in their view we want to take away from them their country." -Benny-Gur

Friends and family didn’t do anything, is a matter of interpretation. An intellectual argument: If your son who lives next door is storing/ making weapons, digging tunnels, and training others. Kind of tough to claim you didn’t know , didn't help.
Is paying his rent help? Is giving him $ help?
Is not telling authorities help?
Is providing cover stories help?

Some would say yes to any of the above.

Just like with The US riots only some “protesters” were violent. But the rest knowingly provided cover and aid.

Palestine-Israel will always be a point of contention. The Palestinian Arabs thought that, with the fall of the Ottoman Turkish Empire, they would have a country "from the river to the sea." But the British took over per the 1916 Sykes-Picot Agreement, and the Palestinian Arabs were serfs again.

The British issued the Balfour Declaration in 1917, promising to establish a Jewish homeland on what was generally accepted as the site of the old Kingdom of Israel within the British Mandate.

Escaping the Nazi Holocaust, the Zionists had been moving in and buying the Arab lands in the British Mandate. Being a tribal people, the concept of private property escaped many of the Arabs who sold "their" land to the Israeli settlers. This influx forced the British to acknowledge and act on what was already happening, ending the Mandate and establishing the State of Israel on 14-May 1948. The Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan and the Hashemite Kingdom of Iraq were also formed out of the Mandate. The Hashemite king of Iraq would be overthrown in 1958.

On 15-May 1948, the five Arab nations invaded the new state of Israel. In April 1949, an armistice was signed and Jerusalem was divided between Israeli and Jordanian governance. Israel was then admitted to the UN.

Israel was invaded by Arab nations in 1948, 1956, 1967, and 1973. Over the years, numerous terrorist attacks were conducted by the PLO and its surrogates against Israelis - Munich, Air France Flight 139, Sbarro pizzeria attack, Savoy Hotel attack, the Coastal Road massacre, etc. The party currently ruling the Palestinian territories is Fatah, the political arm of the PLO.

Jordan captured, and later annexed, the West Bank in the 1948 war. Palestinian Arabs were granted full Jordanian citizenship. Jordan lost the West Bank in its 1967 invasion of Israel, formally ceding it to Israel in 1988. The PLO moved its headquarters to Jordan following the loss and began making attacks on Israel from Jordan.

PLO fedayeen acted as a state-within-a-state and ignored Jordanian law, even attempting to assassinate the king of Jordan twice. The Dawson's Field hijackings forced Hussein's hand and he ordered the military to oust the Palestinians from Jordan.

The fedayeen fled Jordan for Lebanon, where the helped instigate the 15-year Lebanese civil war. The fedayeen formed Black September after fleeing Jordan to carry out reprisals against Jordan. Black September assassinated the Jordanian prime minister and massacred Israeli athletes at the Munich Olympics.

Given this history, no Arab nation wants the Palestinians or the PLO within its borders. Nor is it clear that the Palestinian Fatah understands what being a country will entail in terms of diplomacy, warfare, and conduct.

The Palestinians consider the establishment of Israel as theft; that their lands were stolen to assuage Europe's guilt over the Holocaust. This, despite the fact that the Balfour Declaration was made in 1917, long before the Holocaust.

I read a recent claim that the phrase "from the river to the sea, Palestine will be free" means only that Palestinians want to establish a secular democracy in the combined West Bank, Gaza, and Israel. However, past Jewish and Christian experiences living in Muslim-dominated lands, along with current Islamic hostility to secular democracy, suggest otherwise. In addition, such a sentiment ignores past and current hostility of Muslim Arabs toward Israel and Jewish people in general.

The sentiment also ignores any Jordanian, Syrian, or Egyptian designs on the land the Palestinians claim as their own; land that was once claimed and governed by Jordan, Syria, and Egypt. The PLO, in its role as perpetual victim, might win the land, but it won't keep it for very long.

Picking up from where Conan left off, in about 2007 the Palestinians gave control of Gaza to Hamas, which is just another extension of the Muslim Brotherhood, a terrorist organization. They couldn’t get away from Hamas if they tried and they aren’t inclined to do so. As long as the Palestinian state finds currency in being a victim of Israel, they will never more forward. They were offered a full two state solution by the Oslo Accords in the 90’s and walked away from it. For them, it was the full destruction of Jews and nothing less.

Now, after Obama’s feckless tinkering in the region and his attempt to install Iran as the local hegemonic power, he might have accidentally stumbled onto the recipe for piece... “The enemy of my enemy is my friend.” In an attempt to keep Iran in its place, Israel is now looking like a good friend. Let’s hope they stay United. God only knows what Biden will do.

Please list the neighborhoods that were leveled by Israel - unprovoked, without previous missile attacks on Israeli civilians in *their* neighborhoods.

There ain't any.

Palis have invented almost every tactic of modern terror war targeting civilians.

From every inch of territory that was given (not returned) to them, they have lobbed missiles into Israeli neighborhoods - as far and deep into the country as they can. This is the "peace" that progressive victimhood politics and fawning over terrorists has created.

There are no neighborhoods unilaterally levelled by Israel during this "peacetime" without previous aggression by the Palis.

I think many regulars here consider themselves freethinkers/libertarians. It's always sad to see such types mouthing the tropes of the Left. The exact opposite of freethinking.

At least the other Arabs are assessing the situation correctly, and dropping the Palis. I have no doubt a certain kind of "Progressive" will still defend them. We will continue to have rounds of "one man's terrorist is another man's freedom fighter" and clueless bleating that "two wrongs don't equal a right" - as if a sovereign nation should not use deterrence to protect its people.

I think the phrase here is "Wrong but Romantic".

Someone is again signing my name to comments I didn't make. Someone is deeply, woundingly butthurt; someone almost certainly deserves to be. Someone's actual personality is too timid, insubstantial and weakly-grounded to take part in conversation with a genuine identity.

I don't worry that much about Israel.

I think it's Ben, though: It's got his oblivious disregard for the rhythms of speech & text.

I'm not sure that first comment is really Lenona, either.

What's really offensive about the being mocked this way is that the guy is illiterate, politically and otherwise.

Crid,
I’m not convinced that Crid 2.0 is Ben bc he doesn’t appear to realize that Isab is a woman. This is someone who hasn’t been lurking around the site for a long time or he would already know that. I admit that I didn’t catch the impersonator right away. I just looked at the posts again, and I can see where they don’t match your writing style.

Also, I agree that the first post doesn’t sound like Nicole either, bc in all the years she’s been posting here, I don’t remember any instances of her mentioning time spent in the West Bank. I could be wrong though and I might have missed it, but the ME comes up often enough, that I think she would have mentioned it before.

I don't assume people's gender Sheep Mom so I have no idea what Isab identifies as, or what pronouns to use, until she (oops) tells me.

I'm not really sure why Crid thinks I'm the one impersonating him. Honestly I've never even held him in much regard. He's just a lonely guy who has nothing better to do but obsess over Amy and chime in with his 2 cents on everything she writes. I'm sure if Amy ever ran into him in real life she would want the encounter to be as brief as possible.

I'm not surprised Sheep Mom couldn't tell the difference between real Crid and fake Crid. To my eyes both of their comments are riddled with spelling/grammer/style mistakes and stupid "witticisms" that only Crid (real or fake) finds amusing. Effectively Crid might as well mean:

Comments are
Rediculous &
Idiotic:
Disregard.

I don't assume people's gender Sheep Mom so I have no idea what Isab identifies as, or what pronouns to use, until she (oops) tells me. ~ Ben? at December 2, 2020 7:41 AM

Something tells me there's a fake Ben running around here, too.

By the way, since you brought up spelling, it's "ridiculous" and "grammar."

Don't be bitter. I think you have integrity problems. Review your comments, to me and to others, and it will all be clear.

Ben at December 2, 2020 7:41 AM
This isn't me

Though I'm not sure why you are so hostile to me Crid. I'm not the one impersonating you and I have never been rude to you so why don't you back off and stop being an asshole to me.

Well that is fun. Hello Ben impersonator.

It tickles, don't it?l

This is getting way too postmodern.

Can't the Goddess tell where the posts are coming from?

She can Ben David. She can also block them. At least for a while. All depends on her mood and free time.

Crid at December 1, 2020 5:58 PM

Um, Crid, what comment did you mean? Thanks.

-Oops.

I meant the first comment from Nicolek, first on the stack. I don't know how I confused the two of you... Maybe just that your name's more fun to type. Sorry to have bungled that when someone's here play identity games. (Also, I think Sheep might be right about the pretender being a newkid, but he has some of Ben's unusual habits.)

Nic's in Euro-time, and life's going okay over there, and she's usually feeling pretty cheerful when she types the first or early comment to one of Amy's posts.

That she'd spark up and begin with the word Israel, a topic of endless political complication and difficult feeling, was a real surprise. Those second and third paragraphs, personally critical of Amy, are very much unlike her.