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[Bauglir]

More importantly, Israel is not the United states. They are separate countries. The citizens of Israel are not US citizens, and vice versa.

Israel and the United States are not the same country. The elected government of the US is not elected by and does not represent Israel. Israeli citizens do not pay US taxes. US citizens do not pay Israeli taxes. The US constitution does not mention Israel.

Israel has Israeli soldiers paid with Israeli tax revenue. These Israeli soldiers are not expected to defend the US.

Is my point becoming clear in any way?

You know what, no, it isn't. You'd think you'd have realized that the first time you felt it necessary to repost. If it didn't work the first time, it isn't going to work the third time.

I DON'T CARE WHAT HAPPENS TO ISRAEL BECAUSE I AM NOT AN ISRAELI. UNLESS THEY BECOME AN OFFICIAL U.S. STATE, IT IS NOT THE  DUTY OF THE US GOVERNMENT TO CARE FOR IT.

That's a bit better, thanks. Rather less spammy this time. Perhaps a bit much on the apathy, but I agree with the general sentiment of there being no moral imperative there and that we, as a nation, shouldn't be all world-policey. That said since there's an established policy of commitment there it is probably unwise to abruptly do an about-face, but eh. That's just a general stability issue, and not really relevant to the point at hand, I think.

[nenjin]

Butting in? The US has been involved in the Israeli-Palestinian negotiations for decades. Everyone has.

I know it's people's tendency to tack their opinion on to a discussion about global politics, and you didn't exactly get a nice reception, but seriously, you can't play both sides of the field.

Can I get an age check? Because seriously, I've been listening to and about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict for almost 20 years. I remember listening to stories about violence in Gaza on NPR coming home from Day Care at the Y in the 80s. If you think the president's Middle East diplomacy push is just ill advised, I'll leave you to it. But it's standard for an American president's administration to be involved in the negotiations, deeply, and this isn't the first time it's publicly disagreed with Israel, and trying to paint it into:

encouraging the bad feelings

Is just crap. Supporting the PA is encouraging bad feelings, status quo is:

I think anyone can stop hating each other long enough to realize that, hey, being friends isn't so bad!

?

You wanna talk about generalizations.....I suggest you stop making them.

[Knight of Fools]

You too, bud.  Because everyone that's younger than you is obviously less informed or stupid.

If this discussion is going to become more about attacking people personally, way more than it should be, I think it should be locked down.  I thought we could have a more mature discussion, here.  Basing your own argument around saying someone else's argument is "crap" is rather childish.

[nenjin]

You have the power to lock your own thread. Trying for a "mature" discussion ain't a license to say what you want and label people who strongly disagree with you immature. "Crap" is short hand for "your generalizing has gone too far."

[Il Palazzo]

To be fair, a lot of comments aimed at Knight of Fools had a rather strongly condescending tone, which I think was unnecessary to drive the point home. This is a thread on a computer game forum, people might very well turn ill informed and naive, but why not enlighten them with one's competence on the subject rather than shoo them away and tell them to go and educate themselves.

KoF - I like this thread, some rather informative stuff to be found here, so I'd appreciate if you kept this one open.
Up to you, of course.

[Knight of Fools]

Thanks.  I figure we're now mature enough to continue the discussion maturely.

The meeting between President Obama and Natanyahu is interesting.  The Prime Minister's response was what I expected: "We can't go back to pre-1967 borders."  Both leaders looked pretty uncomfortable during the turn-based monologues.  They said they both want the same result (Peace), but have completely different ways about doing it.

[jester]

Someone from the upper levels of US goverment occasionally saying something that isnt going to make israel completely happy isnt really new, it doesnt happen all the time, but it does happen.  If it was really serious, there would have probably been a serious threat of an aid/weapons cut, I havent seen anything like that, at least not yet, but who knows? 

  As to the why, world opinion seems to be sliding very hard against israel (compared to the past at least) atm and I dont think that anybody can deny that things in the middle east are at some kind of important point politically however things end up.  Obama may be working on a little goodwill (or a little less badwill) from some of the locals.  I cant really see him doing it for votes, possibly as a way to try to rein in Israel but that sort of thing hasnt worked in the past and whatever you think of Obama, he aint stupid.

  Personally im thinking it may have something to do with wanting a more stable middle east before troops can be seriously pulled out of Iraq/Afghanistan.  Having the israel/palestine thing worked out (or at least some light at the end of the tunnel) would probably go a fair way to settling things down in the region, that would help with keeping hardcore muslims from taking over alot of the countries in the area that are very much in political flux atm.  A bit of friendliness/lack of open hostility from some of the local muslim countries would probably go along way towards keeping things stable(or less batshit) during the troop withdrawal.

  May also be that the US is seeing the things in pakistan going totally to shit soon and they dont want to see israel ending up a smoking hole in the ground (probably taking out the whole area and all the oil therein in a last ditch revenge attack as well).  Without the occupation and nastiness that comes with that it seems doubtful to me that a somone could justify nuking one of their holy cities and making the whole area (also fairly holy) poison for 50 years.  Much more likely that someone would dob said nutter in as well.

  May also just be that it is some sort of internal political maneuver that will never mean a damn thing to the general public, Obama is a politician, and alot of what they say frankly doesnt mean a damn thing


whoa, ninja x3

[scriver]

Which is why there was no reason for the President to bring up the debate again.

As you mentioned, things were/are calming down along Israel's border - Maybe things are getting better.  Time is an important factor if you just leave something alone; if the USA can get over Japan stabbing us in the ribs at Pearl Harbor, and Japan can get over us dropping nuclear bombs on their cities, I think anyone can stop hating each other long enough to realize that, hey, being friends isn't so bad!

That's going to take some dramatic changes in attitudes on the part of the Middle-Easterners, Israelis and Pakistanis alike.  It's certainly not going to be easy, but encouraging the bad feelings isn't going to help a bit.

Those aren't very fitting similes. The conflict is not something that happened half a century ago that the parties "have to get over", it's something still happening to day, as we write and read this. Better comparisons would be if Japan had been bombing Pearl Harbor continually for all these years, or if USA never decided to occupy and colonize Japan after the bombs were dropped. And still were doing so today.

The conflict are very much still alive, and both parties are still suffering in it. Hell, it's arguably even more alive (not only are all people living, and many have lived all their lives knowing nothing than this fear, under constant threat from the occupation/oppression and terrorism respectively, the last large scale armed conflict (as opposed to terror acts and "small time" retaliatory strikes) was as close as December '08) than the American war on terror - asking them to forget and forgive would be more preposterous than asking the USAmericans to "get over" 9/11.

So, while I agree that a change in attitude is definitely needed to solve this fucked up situation, it's not an easy thing to accomplish.

[Knight of Fools]

I think that's the crux of the whole thing - Change over there is going to take two large groups of people to change their mindset, something that would probably take several generations to accomplish if it were to happen.  I don't think there's a whole lot the United States can do by just talking at this point.

Maybe Obama has a deeper view of what's going on thanks to the intelligence he has access to.  He's nobody's fool, but I'm not sure what he's doing here.

[Leafsnail]

And to get two large groups of people to change their mindset, we'll first need to get them to stop bombing/ oppressing/ demolishing the houses of/ launching rockets at each other to some degree.  I don't see any way the Palestinians are gonna change their minds while their houses are still being demolished to make way for settlements, for instance.

[Africa]

I don't think it's safe to say Netanyahu wants peace. His actions say exactly the opposite. Or, perhaps, it's just that the kind of "peace" he wants is like the peace they have right now, where they do whatever the hell they want and there's little to no violence from the Palestinians. But that won't last forever. The generation that remembers how much the last intifada sucked will be gone eventually and then, if Israel is still ruling the Palestinians, things will blow up again. Except this time, Jews will be a minority in Israel and the territories.

But the ability of Israelis to see that continuing the occupation is remarkable. One guy (Moshe Arens) would always write in Haaretz about how they should just go ahead and annex the West Bank and give citizenship to the Palestinians through a long and selective process (I'm sure he intends one that involves deporting any of them who were vaguely involved with anything intifada-related, and any who won't swear allegiance to Israel as a Jewish state...but that's another story) because, after all, there's not that many of them - only 1.5 million in the West Bank. The thing is, his numbers came straight out of somebody's ass. There's 2.5 million Palestinians in the West Bank. I have no idea what compels the guy to live in fantasyland, but it's hardly out of the ordinary.

Also, Knight of Fools' complete lack of understanding of the conflict probably has less to do with age than with, well, just being clueless.

As to the why, world opinion seems to be sliding very hard against israel (compared to the past at least) atm and I dont think that anybody can deny that things in the middle east are at some kind of important point politically however things end up.  Obama may be working on a little goodwill (or a little less badwill) from some of the locals.  I cant really see him doing it for votes, possibly as a way to try to rein in Israel but that sort of thing hasnt worked in the past and whatever you think of Obama, he aint stupid.

World opinion is turning against Israel and will do so a lot more after September. Once again, the standard response to this is to cry that the world just hates Israel because the world hates Jews. No, the world used to dote on Israel. Then the world noticed that Palestinians were a thing and were like, holy shit, this country that portrays itself as a shining beacon of freedom and democracy is actually oppressing an entire other nation! It's been going further in that direction since.

Obama will still have his reps oppose the Palestinian state in the UN, though. Not because he's stupid, but because he's nutless.

[RedKing]

Obama will still have his reps oppose the Palestinian state in the UN, though. Not because he's stupid, but because he's nutless.

I'm not so sure. He'd catch all holy hell for it here at home if we voted to recognize Israel, but I think there's a few things playing into this:

1. His approval bounce from the bin Laden thing. Dude went up like 15-20 points in the polls overnight. Suddenly he's feeling pretty good.

2. The complete clusterf**k that is the Republican field of Presidential hopefuls. At this point, an asthmatic Chihuahua would have a better shot at winning a general election than any of the putzes currently in the race. It's gonna come down to a boring sorta-Republican like Romney (that the GOP base hates) or a far-right wackjob that the Tea Party can rally behind but who will scare the bejeezus out of everyone else in the country.

3. A GOP that is so polarized that there's really not a downside to pissing them off. They're already pissed off. They're already alienated. They already think he's a foreign-born Muslim Antichrist and there's no amount of reality checks that is going to shake them out of that.

4. Make a serious show that Israel no longer has America's collective balls in its grasp, and suddenly we have a lot more street cred in the Arab world. People forget that in the immediate post-WWII era, America was highly regarded across the Arab world, because we were the one major power that didn't have a history of colonialism. Britain, France, Germany, Italy...they had all exploited and oppressed various chunks of the 'Ummah and couldn't be trusted. The Americans were seen as a fresh player with no prior biases in the region. That was further bolstered in 1956, when Britain, France and Israel worked out a deal for the Israelis to trigger a war with Egypt, which Britain and France could use as a pretext to send military forces to seize the Suez Canal. Eisenhower wielded a ton of diplomatic and economic power to threaten Britain and France with everything from NATO expulsion to embargoes. It worked, and the fact that the US had stood up for Egypt did not go unnoticed in the Arab world. It was really starting from Lyndon Johnson that we became the main spigot of weapons and aid to Israel and vetoing everything in the UN on their behalf.

[Gorjo MacGrymm]

http://bigpeace.com/elcid/2011/05/21/palestinian-activist-jews-are-human-pieces-of-filth/
http://www.jihadwatch.org/2009/08/denmark-all-the-danes-and-jews-must-die.html
http://www.truthandgrace.com/muslimhateforJews.htm
http://www.newsbusters.org/blogs/noel-sheppard/2010/09/06/inconvenient-truth-10-times-more-hate-crimes-against-jews-muslims
http://www.terrorism-info.org.il/malam_multimedia/html/final/eng/sib/4_04/as_hp.htm
http://www.matthiaskuentzel.de/contents/antisemitism-in-the-middle-east-abbas-and-hamas?print=y
http://www.matthiaskuentzel.de/contents/hitlers-legacy-islamic-antisemitism-in-the-middle-east
http://israelagainstterror.blogspot.com/2011/05/full-blown-return-of-anti-semitism-in.html

[Aqizzar]

Yeah, those are some incredibly convincing, totally unbiased, and very well-produced news sites right there.  Look at all that stuff about unnamed "Lebanese" apartment tenants in Denmark from two years ago.  You have convinced me sir, the Palestinians are absolutely the unspecific problem here, and Israel is at fault for none of the the things you seem to believe they are falsely accused of.

I don't suppose there's anything in one of those links you'd like to quote, instead of just linking?

[Leafsnail]

Hitler wanted to indoctrinate the children to create the 3rd Reich. This moronic Satan-worshiping moose has been successfully brainwashed and is lost forever - - to Satan.

Their is no "right of return" because there is no such group as Palestinians. It's a made-up name for a bunch lf nomadic gypsies.
...
Hey, that's OK. Palestinians aren't even human. Just filth.
...
That sure means a lot coming from a goat humper..
...
THIS MENTALLY DISEASED "ISLAMIC" HUMAN GARBAGE CANNOT/WILLNOT WIN BECAUSE THEIR LIES ARE REFUTED BY HISTORY AND ARCHEOLOGY ALL THE WAY BACK TO NOAH.WHAT.... ABRAHAM EXISTED AND NOAH DIDN'T??

Man, that Palestinian activist is completely unique in his vituperativeness.  I have no idea how views like that could emerge in this kind of climate.