Let's see, there's the demolition of homes, extremely heavy-handed responses to protests, invasive checkpoints even outside Israeli territory, the fact that Israel is outside its UN mandated boundaries, the MASSIVE disparity in Palestinian and Israeli civilian casualties, the millions of displaced Palestinians, the fact that most Israeli settlements are built were Arab settlements used to be, the barely concealed policy of revenge killings for every Israeli who dies, the fact that Isreal wouldn't recognize any Palestinian government for decades...
Oh, and then there's siphoning 3 billion dollars per year out of my heavily indebted country and adding, by proxy, a whole new set of bloodstains to America's hands.
And yes, I understand that Israeli civilians get killed in terrorist attacks, and that the current government of Palestine is basically split between two terrorist groups of differing levels of extremity. But if you act like Israelis are living in fear and the same isn't true for Palestinians you need a reality check.
It's astonishing what the media covers and what it does not, but here's my penny if you will.
the question whether israel should have or shouldn't have existed in the first place is irrelevant, fact is we were an ethnic group that was in desperate need of a safe haven. going through the history of the legitimacy of an israeli state there were many yays and nays but fact of the matter is it was a majority yay, after which the ISR acting government wanted the co living nation idea to flourish.
and we were denied the very thought of the idea not because we didn't wish for it but because people (not all of them mind you) outflat refused to let us live in, the at the time,
uninhabited regions that were
bought from the Palestinians and were FYI actually owned by the British at the time (brits mandate history etc).
now i could continue on and on but i will not bore you so here's a map of how it could have been
as a left wing israeli i agree that treatment isn't always fair and some israelis are downright hateful and are so backwards in their minds that its frankly appalling (religious nutcases most of them who live outside the borders and hardly if ever join the army). with that being said as an Officer i've hardly ever witnessed an "invasive checkpoint" and when i'm held in command of one i will assure you no one is mistreated in any way because i'll boot that soldiers ass if he ever came close to harassing civilians and i pride myself as a highly moral person.
also i would like to added that ethnic cleansing is a retarded term for the situation we're in.
btw there are approximately 1mil arabs muslim\christian living in israel and they are content and some even join the army out of a sense of duty.
i've hardly got the time between army work and DF but if you'd like me to discuss further why the Hamas is the less moral of the two armies then i'd love to keep talking to you in private.