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Israeli/Palestine

MondoManDevout

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Hey guys. This post is actually in response to a blog I came across. Here's the URL - http://journals.aol.com/ibspiccoli4life/RandomThoughtsfromaProgressiveMi/entries/119

I'm a moderate Democrat, so for the most part I found your article to be on the level. But if there were one key reason that my politics over the last couple of years has shifted from liberal to centrist (I'm 19 yrs old btw), it's your, and your ilks take on the Israeli/Palestinean conflict. Let's start with the pre-modern history. I'm agnostic, and I'm betting you're atheist, or, at most, Quaker. *snicker* So we can put aside any notions of a Biblical claim to the Holy Land. Not necessarily label them as false, but . . .we don't know. What is known and irrefutable however, is that the Hebrew people were staked on the land of Palestine thousands of years ago, before any Arab set foot in the region. Through the history books, however, it becomes known that time and again, they were to be dislodged from their homeland by invading armies from North, East, South, and West. The Persians, the Assyrians, the Babylonians, the Greeks, the Romans. No discussion is needed of the atrocities thrown at the Hebrews by their subjugators - slavery, rape, attempted genocide, desecration of their holy temple (they sacrificed pigs in it, and the Greeks attempted to erect a statue of Zeus in it). At this point alone you, who call yourselves liberals should be ashamed at your constant demonizing of the Israeli people for their history of suffering alone (except for the last point - I know you guys don't care about the desecration of anything holy). The trend continues with the Crusades, the Inquisition, etc. Finally in 1948, after the nefarious Holocaust had cruelly killed over 6 million of them (in experiments by the Nazis, particularly the infamous Mendelay(sp?), pregant women had their legs taped shut at birth, dyes were injected into their eyes in an attempt to research how to snythetically produce Aryans, among a host of many other gruesome deaths and experiments), the United Nations graciously bestowed the Jewish people with the land that been their own anyway (remember, that claim has nothing to do with Abraham). And you neglect to mention when you bring up the 1967 Six-Day War, that it was Israel that had been attacked. They were not the aggressors. And attacked not by one nation, but by Egypt, Jordan, AND Syria. Now we see Israel being denounced by the once-noble UN for defending itself against terrorist attacks from the Palestines. (Note:palestinean resentment is justified, Israel certainly doesn't have the only claim to the land. If it seems like I'm wholly on Israel's side, I'm not, I just felt I had to defend them since you attacked them.) Nothing could be done until Arafat passed away, and Abbas looks like a promising leader for reform in the region. But here's a little info for you jack! Does the Gaza-Strip pullout mean anything to you? Amidst death threats from many of his own countrymen, Sharon is willing to withdraw from territory he'd seized in the very defense of his nation. Don't you get it? He IS trying to cooperate and find a solution! And Abbas, while leaps-and-bounds more of a man than Arafat ever was, hasn't quite cracked down on militant-suicide groups like Hamas like he promised. You tell me who's extending the olive branch?

-And no, I'm not a Jew, not even remotely. I'll explain all later most-likely.
 
Actually, I havn't read that whole article on the blog. I just skimmed it. I knew the arguments, and I already kinda agree with them, so why bother? I've got 3 papers due in the next couple of weeks, so I won't be around for a while after this. Ta-ta all.
 
Historical claim means nothing to the muslims. They argue that all the land is theirs based on the Islamic Shariah and that Islam supercedes all other claims and that there is no compromise on this issue. They turn round and say that if you want to debate who gets the land then the point of reference should be the Quran.
 
Historical claim means nothing to the muslims. They argue that all the land is theirs based on the Islamic Shariah and that Islam supercedes all other claims and that there is no compromise on this issue. They turn round and say that if you want to debate who gets the land then the point of reference should be the Quran.

Don't single out the palestinian Muslims about having no regard for rightful claim. Historically the natives of america had a right to their land, did the christian europeans give a ****? For a long time, Palestinians lived in that land, and the UN backed Israel kicked them out. Technically they have historical claim also, but the Jewish Israelis don't give a ****.

Palestinian resentment is definately justified, although representing it through terrorism is not. The Jews, given the horrors they endured, and given the fact that they took whatever the powerful UN offered them, have done a fine, justified job in building Israel. However. The UN should have known that quicky creating a nation state over an existing existing nation would cause much conflict, so it is their fault, and only their job to fix it.
 
fix it? how exactly? there are two diametriacally opposed views.
 
Yep. The smartasses at the UN shoulda thought about that before they blindly created a state. I certainly can't think of one. I think the UN can start with actively and equally supporting the peaceful parties of both sides and their claims to the land.
 
Do you even know of the events that lead up to partition? It was because of constant battles between Jew's and Arabs, and the series of Arab and Jewish revolts. England wanted out regardless of what would happen in Palastine.
 
Yes, and they should have left it to the groups revolting to figure out what to do with the land they are living in. The UN should not have made that area into a "safe-haven" nation for displaced Jews in Europe. (especially considering the violence already in the area as you've stated).
 
what the UN should and should not have done is an academic affair now. what do we do about it now. Neither of the peace camps within the two societies have sufficient support from the rest of their respective populace. All attempts to date of strengthening the hand of the moderates on both sides has failed.
 
guess just let them fight it to the end, and see waht results would come from it...



pretty sad mess the UN created.....
 
nkgupta80 said:
Yes, and they should have left it to the groups revolting to figure out what to do with the land they are living in The UN should not have made that area into a "safe-haven". nation for displaced Jews in Europe. (especially considering the violence already in the area as you've stated).

If they had left it to the revolting groups than you would be supporting the total defeat of the Arabs earlier rather than later. Because in the end the Jews won, and had it come to open revolt the Haganah later proved itself quite capable of dispatching not only the Arab militia, but 5 Arab armies of major quality. The UN voted not because of a safe haven for the Jews but because of the seething rebellion within the state, British soldiers were being captured and executed, Count Bernadette was assassinated. There were daily raids on convoys, and the Jews had to resort to armored cars to traverse the country side and bring supplies to the Kibbutzim.

I think the UN can start with actively and equally supporting the peaceful parties of both sides and their claims to the land.


The Arabs surrendered all claim to the land after they attacked the Jews first in 1948. They had a state of their own for the first time in the history of man, why did it not matter? The Jews were their neighbors. They have no claim and it is only through Israels good grace the Arabs are even allowed to stay in Gaza and the West Bank. Name one Arab country that actively accepts the Palestinians into their land. None. In fact the Jordanians waged a war against them and slaughtered them evicting the PLO I might add. (Good for the Jordanians.)

yeah, so I really don't see a solution. Both sides are way too ****ing stubborn.

We aren't stubborn, we have had as much patience as we can with the Arabs for the past 60 years. After repeated terror attacks and invasions we are fed up. The Arabs live on our land at OUR discretion. Today a homicide bomber killed 3 people and wounded many more. Guess what, he killed the biggest threat Israel has against the Arabs. Teenagers.

guess just let them fight it to the end, and see waht results would come from it...



pretty sad mess the UN created.....


We don't want to have to fight it out against the Arabs, but if they want a fight we will respond in kind. If it came to an all out fight it would be a holocaust of the Arabs and that is not what we want.

It was not the fault of the UN that problems exist today, it is the intolerance of our Arab neighbors that lead to strife and I fear it will not end.
 
Israel is still grabbing and consolidating land at the same time in the West Bank as condemning Palestininas for breaking the peace! Guess what, israel has killed way more Palestinian civilians than the other way around.
 
Incorrect. Were consolidating land that is already ours. The settlements in the West Bank and borders on the Gaza Strip. Also check the definition of the word.

Consolidation

Noun

A bringing together into a whole

It means were consolidating our defenses, and settlements. At least know what the words mean before you start.

grabbing land

We have not taken any new land or had any new level of territories since the 1973 war. I don't know what your talking about, since we just in fact gave up most of Gaza.

Guess what, Israel has killed way more Palestinian civilians than the other way around.

Again you show your ignorance on the subject.

The Palestinians between 27 September 2000- 20 April 2004 suffered a total of 2370 dead. Now lets see how many were combatants shall we? Combatants killed by Opposite Side 1310. Now how many were killed by the PLO themselves? People killed by actions of own side 359 . Non-Combatant Males between ages 12-29 529, now we know the Palestine's are not known for openly defying and attacking Israeli soldiers, so there is no way the bulk of this group who were killed assailed Israeli soldiers, or were in a riot or revolt is there? :roll: . Now that accounts for more than 1700, and assuming that 250 of the other group were part of Palastians riots/revolts/ mobs (which the bulk most definitely were.) that ticks over 1900. Now lets look at my countries casualties shall we?

27 September 2000 through 20 April 2004
Israelis 920
Now lets look at combatants killed by terrorists Combatants killed by Opposite Side 186 , wow thats a lot those terrorists must not be as cowardly as people say they are. Wrong. Lets look at casualties among civilians shall we? Non-Combatants killed by Opposite Side 715. Wow civilians account for more than 70% of the Arabs targets, and soldiers account for about another 10%. The rest are children and old men. The Arabs have wantonly slaughtered civilians. And I know that not a man in my unit has shot an Arab unless under the authorized extreme cases.

You have little understanding of what's going on here, but that's ok, at least come into the debate with the right facts.
 
Land that is yours? again according to whom? That is a matter for debate. unfortunately I forsee the debating chamber to be a battlefield.

with regards to your comment regarding a swift Israeli victory, i think that your military has its hands full dealing with your own people at the moment to worry about a nation of 80 million coming down on you like a ton of bricks.
 
If the Arab nations were to come a Palastinain uprising would not stop our forces from mobelizing to defend Israel. We currently have deployed the Golanii, Givati armoured brigades and the
Gaza Division Galilee Division Judea and Samaria Division
Adom (Eilat) Division Gidon Division. We have 70% of our army in reserve and can handily deal with the Arabs, the odds have not changed we are still outnumbered by the Arabs, but we are better soldiers. And have better technology.


Land that is yours? again according to whom? That is a matter for debate. unfortunately I forsee the debating chamber to be a battlefield.

Land that is ours because the Arabs forfeited all claim to land that they last after the Invaded Israel right after our indipendance. They had a state and lost it for their hatred of the Jews. They live there out of our benovolance and nothing more.
 
The arab leaders of then as the arab leaders of now are seen as corrupt western stooges. they do not have the right to speak for the muslim people. That land is not yours. noone of any Islamic authority has given it to you.

Again with regards to your army, it is having trouble dealing with its own people. It does not sound very cohesive to me. And again let me remind you of the sheer wait of numbers that your nation is up against. 1.2 billion people. I would not be so arrogant in the face of that.
 
We have defeated the Muslim nations of Syria, Lebanon, Egypt, Iraq, Jordan, and Internal Muslim Militia, in single strokes of war before, we can do it again. If it came to total war as you describe and the Arabs were indeed going to drive us into the sea we would end it before it could happen. Nuclear weapons would be dispatched and the Arabs would be smitten from the face of the Earth. This is the ultimatum the Arabs have and why a tedious peace has been maintained since 1973, They can invade and face annihilation, or hate us and have relative peace.

Again with regards to your army, it is having trouble dealing with its own people. It does not sound very cohesive to me. And again let me remind you of the sheer wait of numbers that your nation is up against. 1.2 billion people. I would not be so arrogant in the face of that.

We are not having trouble dealing with our own people, our active brigades are dealing with the Palestinians aptly at the moment and the rest is on reserve. Our army is one of the most cohesive in the world, it is ranked in the top 5 of all nations. We posses arguably the best Air Force in the world and our armies are excellently trained and steadily reinforced with each passing year. As a matter of fact the American special forces come to train with Israeli specialists once a year. I personally am attached to the Givati 5th Brigade and I cant emphasize how great our brigade is, we are not un cohesive what so ever.
 
we will have to see. Remember that the muslim lands control access to the oil. they can cause an economic blockade on the israeli economy and any one that chooses to ally with you. The Israeli state has only ever faced US backed despots. The oil taps were turned off briefly and the damage done reverberated round the world. The cost of offending the mighty muslims would be economic suicide. The surrounding arab lands also control the access to water to the israeli state.

There are issues at the moment of dealing with the suicide bombers. imagine if these guys were outfitted with the latest weaponry that the US is selling to the arab regimes these days.

There is more than one way to crack a nut.

However you guys are not totally defenceless. I guess you guys have the samson option. You could potentially give a bloody nose. But i don't think you could survive a conventional war with the muslim nations.

Unfortunately this will be the natural conclusion.
 
The Arabs for all their bluster have hundreds of oil pipelines into Israel, where do you think we get it? They may hate us, but turning a profit is still the better option for them.

Not only have we survived conventional warfare against every Arabic nation surrounding us, but we have crushed them. The Egyptians and Syrians in particular have repeatedly been humiliated by us, and Jordan's army is a local defense force since it is in essence an Empire of Sand as the Sultan of Trans-Jordan so aptly put it. The Syrians posses a 1979-1983 Soviet era army, which has been repeatedly defeated by the IDF in 1973, and 1982. It would be an even further defeat now. The Egyptian army has fallen into disrepair. The Soviet weapons that make up their army was not built to be shoved into a warehouse in the desert. The tanks are barely kept running and they are no match for the Israeli army now any more than they were in 1973 after our counter attacks. In fact if anything they are worse. They rely on poorly motivated conscripts with a desertion rate of 36%, and meager training at best. Lebanon's army is basically the Hezbollah terrorists in the South. Iraq is not a problem because now it does not even really exist as a nation so to speak. Iran is to far away and can only launch missile strikes or aerial attacks. And Israel will never let them have nuclear weapons. We will strike first if it comes to that. Turkey is an Ally of Israel and can be discounted. That sums up the Arab armies which are late 1970 era Soviet junk heap armies. They would be crushed in a conventional conflict by Aerial assaults alone, they would never get large amounts of troops into Israel.

Also talk of outfitting them with US arms as if it would change the outcome of the war is disprove by the fact that something similar happened before. In 1967 the Egyptian army was still using world war 2 era weapons. The Soviets came in and gave them all the weapons they used in their arsenal, they became a first rate army overnight, and so did Syria after similar deals. They mobilized and prepared for war, Israel struck first and annihilated them. I mean we destroyed their armies and crushed their Armour. They were Crushed. In 1973 after being rearmed the Arabs attacked again and we were caught off guard and lost much of the Sinai and Golan, but we counter attacked and quickly destroyed the Arab armies and seized more artillery positions on the Golan heights as a result. For the last time the Soviets armed Syria with 1st rate Soviet weapons and artillery and tanks and planes. We attacked Lebanon and we lost a total of 6 planes for 60% of Syria's air wing, they lost almost all of their Armour and the divisions melted away under our attacks. They were crushed, they had superior equipment, we had better troops.

The Arabs in general have not made good soldiers this past century, the Arabs man for man have proved to not be equal to the Israelis when it comes to being a soldier. In essence what I'm saying is we make better soldiers and it's been proven in the past 6 wars with the Arabs in the space of less than 60 years. The Arabs have taken the action of abandoning military goals which are unattainable in favor of Terrorist ones.
 
As much as I will agree with you that the Arabs are poor soldiers in this war, I would like to ask you a question more so about the disengagement. How do the soldiers of the Army feel about the settlements, and the possiblity of having to attack your own people to enforce the political actions of your Prime Minister. Do you think that the settlers protests will be effective? Do you think that this issue will be resolved peacefully? I hope that you and your fellow soldiers are doing well, and staying safe defending the land of my people. I am an American Jew, and also a young producer of show that centers around International and American politics. I would be honored to ask you more questions about your feelings as well as the sentiment of the civilians when you are off duty, is there a differance in opinion between military and civilian Israelis? How do you think the rest of the world feels about it?
 
How do I feel about having to pull the settlers out of some of settlements? To tell you the truth I have thought about that a lot and on a personal level I feel that there is something very wrong with it, but on a more reasonable level I think that it may give us a shot at peace. Luckily I havent been deployed to evict the Settlers I'm about 11 miles east of the Gaza Strip at the moment so I havent had to wrestle with that to much yet. As a soldier however I do what I'm supposed to do, and if I got ordered to evict the settlers I would do it. The settler issue has become a big debate in the army, a few people have been court martialed for refusing to evict settlers and a lot of people are talking about it. Some guys in my unit had an argument about it yesterday as a matter of fact, so as you can see it's a tedious issue amongst many people.
 
When's Sharon up for reelection again? I thought I'd heard that it could be next year, that it depends sometimes. What do you think his chances of reelection will be?
 
Since yesterday, I have spoken with my dear friend, Simon. He lives in Haifa and is very opposed to the settlements. He sent me a news clip of a young soldier being arrested for opposing the withdrawal. I think it is very unfortunate that they must be evicted, but you do your country a great service by understanding the reasons, and performing your duties without question. You are a true soldier, sir. But even within the army, there are personal feelings opposing the eviction. Do you think that the protesters will escalate into violence? If so, what would become of that?
 
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Radical Ron said:
Since yesterday, I have spoken with my dear friend, Simon. He lives in Haifa and is very opposed to the settlements. He sent me a news clip of a young soldier being arrested for opposing the withdrawal. I think it is very unfortunate that they must be evicted, but you do your country a great service by understanding the reasons, and performing your duties without question. You are a true soldier, sir. But even within the army, there are personal feelings opposing the eviction. Do you think that the protesters will escalate into violence? If so, what would become of that?

Sadly I think it will come to violence, it already has in some areas, though no death's have been inflicted. You have to understand that for most of these people these have been there homes for decades, and we in the IDF have protected them, then all of a sudden we are coming to not protect them but evict them. So tensions are running high and there have been a few riots. Some Palestinians went to jeer the settlement evicti's which resulted in a lynch mob chasing them all the way to the Gaza checkpoint. I have no doubt someone will die before it is all over.

Another fear is that some of the more fervent soldiers will join the settlers and try and defend some of the settlements, which is even worse than it implies. Settlements as a rule are basically our forts inside Gaza and the West bank, which means evicting a strong dissenting group of people becomes very hard because they were built to withstand exactly what were doing right now.

We have two court martial pending for refusing to evict settlers or refusing to break down the settlements. Another problem is that we aren't just evicting them were destroying every settlement and the roads around them. We don't want the Arabs to be able to use them as a fort against us, but doing that brings additional emotional trauma to the people who are being re-located.

I personally do not support the evictions, but as a soldier I do the will of my country. If the country wants this done than I will do it to the best of my abilities in the interest of Israel.
 
MondoManDevout said:
When's Sharon up for reelection again? I thought I'd heard that it could be next year, that it depends sometimes. What do you think his chances of reelection will be?

His chances of reelction are tedious, he has a large support for his hardline against the Palastinians, but his eviction of Jewish settlers has drawn some support away. I know I'll vote for him, but it's not a certain win for Sharon.
 
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