Israel storms Gaza aid ships in international waters

[Stalins Organ]

People don't like Israel because it is acting like a twat. Post 1967 they had a heap of sympathy as the little guy that fought off the big bad Arab who vastly outnumbered it, theough sheer guts and competance.

Now it's just a twat that sets its own rules and doesn't give a shirt what anyone else thinks.

and because its relationship with the USA is now the tail wagging the dog - and all the downstream bull that has happened because of the way the relationship has at least clouded US foreign policy.

I have no expectation that much will ever change - if the US & Israel ever do become "good international citizens" then some other country will take over their position as prime dorks.......the names and locations will hten change, but hte actions/effects wil lremain the same.

but at the moment it's them & they're just digging the hole deeper every day.

If it wasn't for the Palestiniaans & most of the Islamic countries being just as bad if not worse it'd be a slam dunk....but they're managing to win the PR war despite that handicap!

[hcrof]

ASL Vet - I don't think any of us dislike Jews or debate the right of Israel to exist.

I think it is healthy to have a strongly pro Israel voice in this debate but please don't accuse us of racism. Thankfully there have been no extreme views so far and it would be a pity for this thread to be locked because of a pro/anti Israel shouting match.

For what its worth - I have very little time for the free Gaza movement as an organisation. They have approached me a number of times asking for support and they don't seem to have a grasp of any recognisable form of reality. It is sad to see such a lack of reason shown by the big players in the issue.

[Thomm]

Thomm hte link you gave doesn't contain the text you quote about Palestinians not allowing the aid through - can you provide another link to that?

The original page has changed, but now there is another one devoted entirely to the subject:

http://edition.cnn.com/2010/WORLD/meast/06/02/israel.palestinians.aid/index.html?iref=obnetwork

Best regards,

Thomm

[panzermartin]

I think the question is not why people dont like Israel but why US likes it so much. I find it strange that the average american accepts that is normal to support and annually finance with 3 billion dollars a foreign state some thousands kilometers away. I haven't seen any IDF soldier in Iraq or Afghanistan either. What is the gain for the american citizen?

[Runyan99]

I think the question is not why people dont like Israel but why US likes it so much. I find it strange that the average american accepts that is normal to support and annually finance with 3 billion dollars a foreign state some thousands kilometers away. I haven't seen any IDF soldier in Iraq or Afghanistan either. What is the gain for the american citizen?

The enemy of your enemy is your friend. My view is that Israel is an island of Western culture and values in a land filled with, to be blunt, rather backward bedouins, who violently oppose Western secularism and liberal government. As such, it deserves Western support, partucularly as it was created after WW2 by the mandate of the victorious Western Allied powers. In that light, I think to abandon Israel to the fates, as many in the American left would seem to prefer, would be an ugly and counter-productive thing to do. The same leftists who give lip service to secular government and liberal lawmaking seem strangely disinterested in promoting those values abroad, and most especially in the case of Israel.

[Lt Belenko]

I think the question is not why people dont like Israel but why US likes it so much. I find it strange that the average american accepts that is normal to support and annually finance with 3 billion dollars a foreign state some thousands kilometers away. I haven't seen any IDF soldier in Iraq or Afghanistan either. What is the gain for the american citizen?

If one Israeli soldier when to afghanistan then all muslim nations would immediatly move towards total jihad at Israel. Israel showed great restraint in not attacking Iraq during Gulf War 1 when Saddam was tossing Scuds at Israel. Why did Saddam do that Israel was not involved in Gulf War 1.

But I think the question is why does Iran hate Israel so much they are 2 nations away?

[Runyan99]

The answer is obvious, but it's impolitic to say. Arabs and Persians, or at least a plurality of them, are terribly intolerant of Jews, which is why there are a handful of synogogues in Iran, and zero in Saudi Arabia. Of course, that's why the Israeli state was created in the first place.

[dieseltaylor]

Read this article and weep Runyan:

http://www.sephardicstudies.org/iran.html

But Khomeini met with the Jewish community upon his return from exile in Paris and issued a ''fatwa'' decreeing that the Jews were to be protected. Similar edicts also protect Iran's tiny Christian minority.

Just as it radically transformed Muslim society, the revolution changed the Jews. Families that had been secular in the 1970s started keeping kosher and strictly observing rules against driving on Shabbat. They stopped going to restaurants, cafes and cinemas - many such establishments were closed down - and the synagogue perforce became the focal point of their social lives.

Lets stop confusing respect for the Jewish religion to mean support for the nominally secular state of Israel OR being anti-Israeli to mean anti-Jewish.

Evidently, Ayatollah Khomeini agreed, as when he declared, "the Iranian government differentiates between Iranian Jews and the Zionist government of Israel." To one group of concerned Iranian Jews bold enough to approach the authorities after 1979, they were told "All three prophets were sent by God to guide mankind. All those heretical religion on earth never tended to the soul of mankind. But the three monotheistic religions do. They are the only religions to descend directly from heaven."

http://www.jewishmag.co.il/119mag/jews-iran/jews-iran.htm

And of course the reports of the Iranian Jews leaving Israel to return to Iran are things we do not like to talk about.

The relative safety of Iran's Jews is rarely mentioned in the United States, as any indication that Jews may feel safe in countries unfriendly to Israel is not welcome here. According to political science professor Norman Finkelstein, author of The Holocaust Industry, Israeli (and US ) foreign policy objectives depend on emphasizing Jewish victimhood. Senior investigative correspondent Mike Wallace of CBS' 60 Minutes, himself Jewish, has been vilified ever since he reported in 1975 that Jewish Syrians did not receive unusual mistreatment.

Demick wrote in 1997: "Inside Iran, Jews say that they frequently receive alarmed telephone calls and letters from relatives in the United States concerned about their well-being, but that they themselves do not feel physically endangered. Their major complaint is the inability to visit family in Israel, and what they say is inadequate funding for Hebrew schools."

Even the hawkish Jerusalem Post reported last year that some Iranian immigrants in Israel were packing to return to Iran, where "Jews . . . live very well." Said one, "If you have problems there, [Muslim Iranians] help you -- and they know you are Jewish. . . . But here [in Israel], everyone is looking out for himself. You can't trust anybody." Another added, "I thought that here it was good. I thought that all the Jews leave their doors unlocked and no one stole. But the Israeli people are not cultured. They are rude and disrespectful. In Iran people trust each other and when they give their word they keep it. Here you need a lawyer to get anyone to keep their promise." Haggai Ram, an Iran specialist at Ben Gurion University, agreed with this report in a conversation with me at this year's conference of the Middle East Studies Association of North America.

http://mrzine.monthlyreview.org/2006/pourzal280706.html

The dislike for Israel is perhaps also not a million miles from the fact that the US has been meddling in Iranian affairs for decades and Israel is the US proxy in the area.

[costard]

I think Israel is just another example of proof that the divorce of church and state is a necessary one. While your leadership is required to believe in fairy tales (chosen people, one true God, that the rules were written some three thousand years ago and are inviolable, etc) your nation stands little chance of finding and developing solutions to problems that threaten its existence. The most recent developments in PR disasters are a follow on from a deliberate policy of telling direct lies and expecting the rest of the world to believe anything said in the future - the snubbing of the US President re: the settlements rankled with everyone: only a nutcase seeks to trap the most powerful man in the world and expects that everything will turn out right afterwards. The slide from strategic asset to strategic liability can be viewed as the US repositioning its sympathies, but only by a mob that believes in fairy tales. The smarter Israelis are leaving, or have already left.

[hoolaman]

Yes the real solution to the conflict would be abandoning the fundamentally exclusive zionist ideals of Israel as a homeland and state for Jews. Rename the country back to Palestine, and allow the original inhabitants to return to the areas they left during times of conflict if they can provide fair claims.

A power sharing government along the lines of Northern Ireland might make this possible, but public perception and opinion on both sides will make it impossible to even consider.

[dieseltaylor]

There is already a "peace plan" but Israel has consistently been violating the borders established in the peace plan which has just been a matter of rubbing the Palestinian noses in it. And for that matter the international community who supported the concepts.

Whilst officially the Israeli's may restrict the settlement to organic growth of existing settlements on Palestinian land the illegal new sttlements by right-wing Jewish groups would go on pretty much unhindered. The chances of a Palestinian being allowed to build a new property in Israeli occupied territory are slim to non-existent apparently:

Although the Oslo accords stipulate no settlement ban, Israel refrained from building any new settlements but continued building in existing settlements at a pace which fell far short of the Shamir government's 1991-92 level. Construction of Housing Units Before Oslo: 1991-92 14,320 units. After Oslo: 1994-95 3,850 units; 1996-1997 3,570 units [29] The Palestinians built throughout area C administered by Israel without permit[30] which, according to Peace Now is due to the extreme difficulty Palestinians face in obtaining building permits for Area C. (Under the 1993 Oslo Accords 59% of the West Bank was allocated to Israeli control and denoted as Area C [31].) Only 91 of 1,624 Palestinian requests permits were approved by Israeli authorities in 2001-2008. Peace Now also said the army demolished 33 percent of the 4,993 cases of illegal Palestinian construction against which it issued demolition orders. By contrast, 7 percent of the 2,900 cases of illegal settler construction that drew demolition orders were torn down, the group said

I think the international community has to decide a solution and enforce it by boycotting the Countries that do not buy into it - that is Palestine and Israel. I do not doubt that those Arabs within the Israeli state will subsequently be leant upon to leave but I am sure that sufficient monetary award and passport to a new land will help.

However that does leave the problem of a divided Israel where religious Israelis battle out governemnt with secularist Israelis. And there is the matter of the 200 nuclear devices that Israel has - would you feel happy for those to be in the hands of religious zealots? That problem is beyond answering. Anyway one step at a time.

[Thomm]

Are those Israeli nuclear missile submarines already in place?

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2010/jun/06/gaza-blockade-iran-aid-convoy

Best regards,

Thomm

[Stalins Organ]

So if the Palestinians are allowed to get their land, buildings, etc back in "Palestine" - are all the Jews ex the various Arab/Moslem states going to be allowed to get theirs back too?