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Senate Israel/Palestine

Discussion in 'Community' started by Obi-Wan McCartney, Jan 4, 2009.

  1. EmuBay

    EmuBay Jedi Knight star 1

    Registered:
    Jan 4, 2017
    Having nuclear weapons isn't illegal. Mind you the UN Refugee Convention doesn't say that countries have to accept anyone who says the magic words "I am a refugee" - no country would have signed it otherwise - and it doesn't ban offshore detention, so the Greens have had to claim bull**** about "the spirit" of it.
     
  2. SuperWatto

    SuperWatto Chosen One star 7

    Registered:
    Sep 19, 2000
    He's not getting it.
     
    Jedi Ben likes this.
  3. Artoo-Dion

    Artoo-Dion Manager Emeritus star 6 VIP - Former Mod/RSA

    Registered:
    Jun 9, 2009
    @EmuBay Simple question: Is self-determination a right or a privilege?
     
    Master_Rebado likes this.
  4. EmuBay

    EmuBay Jedi Knight star 1

    Registered:
    Jan 4, 2017
    It's a right. Never said that it wasn't. I just don't like the idea of an Islamist or Arab Nationalist controlled Palestine backed by those theocratic despots in Iran.
     
    black_saber likes this.
  5. Artoo-Dion

    Artoo-Dion Manager Emeritus star 6 VIP - Former Mod/RSA

    Registered:
    Jun 9, 2009
    Well, nobody has to like it. But how is that relevant?
     
    3sm1r likes this.
  6. Jedi Ben

    Jedi Ben Chosen One star 9

    Registered:
    Jul 19, 1999
    re: Israel and nukes

    Funny how Israel only wants to be the only one in the ME with nukes, while not admitting it has them.
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_weapons_and_Israel

    "Maintaining nuclear superiority

    Alone or with other nations, Israel has used diplomatic and military efforts as well as covert action to prevent other Middle Eastern countries from acquiring nuclear weapons.[218]


    Iraq

    Mossad agents triggered explosions in April 1979 at a French production plant near Toulon, damaging two reactor cores destined for Iraqi reactors.[219] Mossad agents may also have been behind the assassinations of an Egyptian nuclear engineer in Paris as well as two Iraqi engineers, all working for the Iraqi nuclear program.[220]

    On June 7, 1981, Israel launched an air strike destroying the breeder reactor at Osirak, Iraq, in Operation Opera.[221][222]

    Mossad may have also assassinated professor Gerald Bull, an artillery expert, who was leading the Project Babylon supergun for Saddam Hussein in the 1980s, which was capable of delivering a tactical nuclear payload.[223][224]


    Syria

    On September 6, 2007, Israel launched an air strike dubbed Operation Orchard against a target in the Deir ez-Zor region of Syria. While Israel refused to comment, unnamed US officials said Israel had shared intelligence with them that North Korea was cooperating with Syria on some sort of nuclear facility.[225] Both Syria and North Korea denied the allegation and Syria filed a formal complaint with the United Nations.[226][227] The International Atomic Energy Agency concluded in May 2011 that the destroyed facility was "very likely" an undeclared nuclear reactor.[228] Journalist Seymour Hersh speculated that the Syrian air strike might have been intended as a trial run for striking alleged Iranian nuclear weapons facilities.[229]


    Iran

    On January 7, 2007, The Sunday Times reported that Israel had drawn up plans to destroy three Iranian nuclear facilities.[230] Israel swiftly denied the specific allegation and analysts expressed doubts about its reliability.[231] Also in 2007 Israel pressed for United Nations economic sanctions against Iran,[232] and repeatedly threatened to launch a military strike on Iran if the United States did not do so first.[31][233][234]

    Israel is widely believed to be behind the assassination of a number of Iranian nuclear scientists.[235][236][237][238] The death of the Iranian physicist Ardeshir Hassanpour, who may have been involved in the nuclear program, has been claimed by the intelligence group Stratfor to have also been a Mossad assassination.[239]

    The 2010 Stuxnet malware is widely believed to have been developed by Israel and the United States. It spread worldwide, but appears to have been designed to target the Natanz Enrichment Plant, where it reportedly destroyed up to 1,000 centrifuges.[240][241][242]"


    It has been argued too that Israel's ambiguous policy works against its own known foreign policy aims:
    https://www.washingtonpost.com/news...ot-iran/?noredirect=on&utm_term=.eb89741d8cf2

    "Some scholars are beginning to ask whether the old deal is outdated, if Israel should consider announcing its nuclear weapons arsenal publicly. Cohen, the historian who studies the Israel program, argues that the policy of secrecy "undermines genuine Israeli interests, including the need to gain recognition and legitimacy and to be counted among the responsible states in this strategic field."


    The dilemma for Israel is that, should Iran ever develop a nuclear warhead, Israel will surely feel less unsafe if it has its own nuclear deterrent. But, ironically, Israel's nuclear arsenal may itself be one of the factors driving Iran's program in the first place.


    "History tells us that Israel's position as the sole nuclear-armed state in the region is an anomaly -- regions either have several nuclear states or none," said Cirincione, of the nonproliferation Ploughshares Fund. "At some point, for its own security, Israel will have to take the bombs out of the basement and put them on the negotiating table." "


    The thing here is there are a host of reasons that say a nuclear Saudi would not be a good situation - equally someone like Assad is likely to turn parts his own country glowing green if he ever got them! - but while Israel maintains its ambiguity all the attention goes to that instead.

    As tends to be its way, Israel starts at a perfectly reasonable point and then goes so far in the pursuit of it that that point becomes eclipsed by those actions.
     
    Iron_lord likes this.
  7. black_saber

    black_saber Force Ghost star 5

    Registered:
    Apr 4, 2002
    Supporting the BDS Movement Is anti Semitic because it does not recognize Israel’s right to exist. It is like not condemning hamas for it’s war crimes on Israelis including American Jews who have been killed as well.

    Yes Israel is committing war crimes in Gaza but the BDS is even Israel bigger problem. Why? Because calling for boycotting Israel is like nazis calling for Jewish business to be burned.

    I am Jewish and left wing anti semitism should not be tolerated like right wing anti semitism as well.

    Other countries are doing worse things in the world and who gets all the blame and only them, both Israel and the Jews
     
    Last edited: Feb 3, 2019
  8. Artoo-Dion

    Artoo-Dion Manager Emeritus star 6 VIP - Former Mod/RSA

    Registered:
    Jun 9, 2009
    A ringing endorsement indeed.

    Have you not seen the recent reactions against Saudi Arabia? Or against South Africa in the '80s? Boycotts were organised against apartheid-era South Africa, so how does that fit your narrative?
     
    SuperWatto likes this.
  9. Lord Vivec

    Lord Vivec Chosen One star 9

    Registered:
    Apr 17, 2006
    This makes no sense. BDS's expressed claims are for Israel to withdraw from the Palestinian territories and to give Palestinians equal rights in Israel. How is that not recognizing Israel's right to exist? Was Divestment from South African not recognizing South Africa's right to exist?
    You literally just glossed over Israeli war crimes in order to make a comparison that the people condemning said war crimes are equivalent to Nazis.
     
  10. SuperWatto

    SuperWatto Chosen One star 7

    Registered:
    Sep 19, 2000
    Israel is a country, beholden to international treaties, UN conventions, and the Declaration of Human Rights.
    Jewish businesses in the 1930s were not a country. They were not burned because they disregarded international treaties. They were scapegoated in a state-organized terror.
    It's incomparable. If you want to make a comparison, you can compare how Germany treated the Jews in the 1930s with how Israel treats Gaza.
     
  11. Jabba-wocky

    Jabba-wocky Chosen One star 10

    Registered:
    May 4, 2003
    I just wanted to stop in and say I wish that it had been, as a South Africa owned by a coterie of white colonists using extreme force to subjugate people literally never had any right to exist and never should have.
     
  12. EmuBay

    EmuBay Jedi Knight star 1

    Registered:
    Jan 4, 2017
    Arabs are not a separate race, just like Islam is not a race.

    I don't share the Greens/Left portrayal of Netanyahu as a genocidal monster. His resolute defence of Israel's security interests in the face of intense international pressure has been generally correct and admirable, although of course he has exploited security issues for political advantage. But voters have to judge him on his domestic record, and this is pretty poor. He's also become increasingly arrogant and authoritarian the longer he's been in power, and the allegations of corruption seem to be well-founded. I agree that it's time for him to go. Since support for Israeli Labour has (sadly) collapsed, Benny Gantz seems to be the only viable alternative.
     
  13. Lordban

    Lordban Isildur's Bane star 7

    Registered:
    Nov 9, 2000
    Arabs do form an ethnic subgroup (and not just the eponymous pan-national identity); they are a subgroup of the semitic family. As to race, there's only one race of humans in existence at present, homo sapiens sapiens, which has driven the last remaining other race in its species extinct a couple dozen of millennia ago.

    As to Netanyahu, of course he's not a genocidal monster. Callous and a war criminal he may be (yes, that's what they call the repeated, deliberate targetting of schools and hospitals in the real world), but he lacks the intentionalism to actually become genocidal; if he does trigger one, it will be an incidental one.

    He also won't care.
     
  14. Adam of Nuchtern

    Adam of Nuchtern Force Ghost star 6

    Registered:
    Sep 2, 2012
    This is...not good.

    [​IMG]
     
  15. Artoo-Dion

    Artoo-Dion Manager Emeritus star 6 VIP - Former Mod/RSA

    Registered:
    Jun 9, 2009
    They're saying it was a mistranslation; the tweet has since been deleted, with a new tweet using the phrase "combatting Iran".

    Still, that's quite the error.
     
    Ghost likes this.
  16. Adam of Nuchtern

    Adam of Nuchtern Force Ghost star 6

    Registered:
    Sep 2, 2012
    According to this it wasn't.
     
  17. Artoo-Dion

    Artoo-Dion Manager Emeritus star 6 VIP - Former Mod/RSA

    Registered:
    Jun 9, 2009
    I wouldn't know. What I've read seems to suggest that it could be translated in any number of ways, but all of them represent a shift to more forceful rhetoric.
     
    Master_Rebado likes this.
  18. Point Given

    Point Given Manager star 7 Staff Member Manager

    Registered:
    Dec 12, 2006
    The Visegrad Group (Poland/Czechia/Slovakia/Hungary) has pulled out of a summit meeting in Jerusalem over the new Israeli FM's comments about Poles being anti-Semitic. Bilateral talks will continue but it's still a big self inflicted wound for Israel.
     
  19. Adam of Nuchtern

    Adam of Nuchtern Force Ghost star 6

    Registered:
    Sep 2, 2012
  20. Vaderize03

    Vaderize03 Manager Emeritus star 6 VIP - Former Mod/RSA

    Registered:
    Oct 25, 1999
    Politics makes for strange bedfellows, but occasionally, you end up sleeping with someone you would have been attracted to randomly.
     
    Lordban likes this.
  21. 3sm1r

    3sm1r Force Ghost star 6

    Registered:
    Dec 27, 2017
  22. Lordban

    Lordban Isildur's Bane star 7

    Registered:
    Nov 9, 2000
    If it were just that. Look up Baruch Marzel on homosexuality...
     
  23. Darth Smurf

    Darth Smurf Small, but Lethal star 6

    Registered:
    Dec 22, 2015
    A liberal cosmopolitan....[face_laugh]
     
  24. Darth Guy

    Darth Guy Chosen One star 10

    Registered:
    Aug 16, 2002
    You know a political party is racist when even AIPAC distances themselves from them.
     
  25. Adam of Nuchtern

    Adam of Nuchtern Force Ghost star 6

    Registered:
    Sep 2, 2012