Originally posted by FMFI wrote what I specifically intended to say, without any insinuations. Answer what I said, instead of building up a straw man.
So you are suggesting that Arab Israelis are in some way to blame for the tide of suicide bombings and retaliatory air strikes? Can you substantiate this insinuation? And are you proposing that Arab Israelis are stripped of their citizenship and rights because the surrounding Arab states have never proposed giving up some land for a Palestinian state? Isn't that ...[text shortened]... dressing with your post, anyway? Me specifically? Or opponents of ethnic cleansing generally?
I've already posted that the lesser of two evils is still evil.
I am capable of saying what I think, without anyone else making inferences to what they think I mean. If I am unclear, by all means get clarification.
What alternatives would you suggest? When one side in a dispute keeps making all of the concessions and the dispute appears to remain the same or worsen, it is hard to blame the side that is making the concessions.
Originally posted by normbenignWhat would be a good move for the Palestinians? They could look to the U.S. maybe. Yes, the U.S. did, as you put it, freak out and responded to their predicament in September 2001 with massive violence. The Palestinians are responding to their own predicament with violence too. You seem to have a selective distaste for it. Are not suicide bombings in common public venues such as buses, pizza parlors, public markets, and night clubs, a form of collective punishment? Why did you leave 'apartment blocks' off that list? Haven't U.S. bombs fallen on common public venues such as buses, pizza parlors, public markets, and night clubs in Iraq during the last 6 years?
In the US, we freaked out after a single major terror attack.[...] Find a good move! I don't know what that is for the Israelis.
Originally posted by FMFBy the way, my post was a response to the beginning of the thread.
So you are suggesting that Arab Israelis are in some way to blame for the tide of suicide bombings and retaliatory air strikes? Can you substantiate this insinuation? And are you proposing that Arab Israelis are stripped of their citizenship and rights because the surrounding Arab states have never proposed giving up some land for a Palestinian state? Isn't that ...[text shortened]... dressing with your post, anyway? Me specifically? Or opponents of ethnic cleansing generally?
Mostly, I simply asked a couple of questions which could be answered. Why not just answer them, instead of becoming argumentative.
Originally posted by normbenignYes, please clarify what you meant. Are suggesting that Arab Israelis are in some way to blame for the tide of suicide bombings and retaliatory air strikes? Are you proposing that Arab Israelis are stripped of their citizenship? You say: "I am capable of saying what I think." Then please do. The post I responded to seemed to be a messy attempt to change the subject.
If I am unclear, by all means get clarification.
Originally posted by normbenignBut your questions were not about the beginning of the thread and not about the proposed ethnic cleansing of Arab Israelis. You appear to want to indirectly justify it by talking about something else - suicide bombings and air strikes. What have they got to do with Arab Israelis? If you are, as your own words seem to indicate, lending your support to the proposed ethnic cleansing of Arab Israelis, then surely that is the argumentative pose, and a reprehensible one to most decent people, surely, rather than me calling you on your obfuscation.
By the way, my post was a response to the beginning of the thread. Mostly, I simply asked a couple of questions which could be answered. Why not just answer them, instead of becoming argumentative.
Originally posted by FMFWhat would be a good move for the Palestinians>
What would be a good move for the Palestinians? They could look to the U.S. maybe. Yes, the U.S. did, as you put it, freak out and responded to their predicament in September 2001 with massive violence. The Palestinians are responding to their own predicament with violence too. You seem to have a selective distaste for it. Are not suicide bombings in common publ uch as buses, pizza parlors, public markets, and night clubs in Iraq during the last 6 years?
I presume you are speaking of Israeli citizens? If so, and the same is true of moderate Arabs everywhere. they would be advised to disavow loudly and clearly the actions of the extremists.
Why is the anger directed exclusively at Israel? Please! Suicide bombings, strapping explosives to children???? Find a better way, and target those responsible. In the American Revolution, we targeted British officers.
Rarely, and when they did, specific individuals, not the general population were the targets. The American bombing in Iraq has been the most surgical of recorded history. Civilian casualties have been far more limited than in any conflict in human history. War sucks, and innocent people have always been killed, but the conduct of the US in Iraq is not even close to a moral equivalency with strapping explosives to kids to be set off intentionally to produce maximum casualties in purely civilian areas. It is a difference as clear as that between a traffic accident, and a premeditated homicide.
It's like comparing psychological interrogation techniques to beheadings!
Originally posted by normbenignThat is your response/retort to criticism of the proposal that Arab Israelis are stripped of their citizenship and rights and ethnically cleansed from Israel??
What do you propose to stem the tide of suicide bombings and retaliatory air strikes?
Surely it is you who is being argumentative?
In what specific way are you linking Arab Israelis to suicide bombings? You say: "If we [here in the U.S.] had one year with attacks as common as they've been in Israel for decades there would be similar proposals here as well." What attacks? By whom exactly? Similar proposals to do what? Cleanse the U.S. of an ethnic minority? Would you merely understand that course of action or would you support it?
Is this what you mean? Say what you mean. Your posts are littered with nasty little insinuations. Be clear.
Originally posted by FMFNo, I don't favor ethnic cleansing, so I moved on to questions which address the possible reasons that some Israelis may even consider such an option.
But your questions were not about the beginning of the thread and not about the proposed ethnic cleansing of Arab Israelis. You appear to want to indirectly justify it by talking about something else - suicide bombings and air strikes. What have they got to do with Arab Israelis? If you are, as your own words seem to indicate, lending your support to the propose ...[text shortened]... reprehensible one to most decent people, surely, rather than me calling you on your obfuscation.
Until moderate Arabs and Palestinians, are vocal in distancing themselves from the jihad, many Israelis will take their silence as a sign of sympathy with the jihad.
Clearly, the course since 1948 needs to be changed, but it can not be as one sided as has been the case so far.
Originally posted by normbenignWhere did you get this idea from? A web site? A pamphlet?
The American bombing in Iraq has been the most surgical of recorded history. Civilian casualties have been far more limited than in any conflict in human history.
The American aerial bombings of Cambodia and Laos in the early 70s apparently killed no one.
In Iraq, water supply infrastructure was bombed "surgically" and tens of thousands have died of preventable, and previously non-existent, waterborne diseases. Do you factor this in or do you factor this out as you cogitate the truth of the propaganda that you have internalized?
How many millions of cluster bombs did Israel drop on southern Lebanon as a parting gesture in 2006 and in the hope that exploding children will deter the adult opponents of Israel?
It's interesting that you can put the death of innocents into little boxes and then start talking about "accidents" when the civilian casualties of industrialized military action are predictable. "Moral" Westerners always hum and hah about the abhorrance of 'human shields', as if it prevents them from conducting clean and virtuous war, but then they just go ahead and kill the 'human shileds' anyway, claiming that it was an accident over and over and over and over and over again - in a way that would see Pavlov fumbling to find a different dog to illustrate his idea that we can learn about cause and effect even if we are nothing more than dogs.
How can anyone be in the mood to go to a nightclub when there is a modern day concentration camp with 2,000,000 people in it down just the road?
Originally posted by normbenignWould you favour some kind of military action by the U.S. against Israel if it carried out this threat of ethnic cleansing?
No, I don't favor ethnic cleansing, so I moved on to questions which address the possible reasons that some Israelis may even consider such an option.
Until moderate Arabs and Palestinians, are vocal in distancing themselves from the jihad, many Israelis will take their silence as a sign of sympathy with the jihad.
They do. What newspapers have you been reading?
How is it that you have not, not even once, not in any of your posts so far, used the term "Arab Israelis"? How can you claim that your posts have been truly on-topic?
As FMF keeps pointing out, the question here is about Israeli citizens who are also Arabs. There seems to be an awful lot of presumption about what those Israelis want or don’t want, would or would not do, in the event of a two-state solution, etc., etc. –beginning with Foreign Minister Livni’s comment about “national aspirations”.
Why assume that the majority of Arab Israelis have any “national aspirations” beyond participating fully as citizens of Israel? For example:
On April 29, 2007 Haaretz reported that an Israeli Democracy Institute (IDI) poll of 507 people showed that 75% of "Israeli Arabs would support a constitution that maintained Israel's status as a Jewish and democratic state while guaranteeing equal rights for minorities, while 23% said they would oppose such a definition."[192]
A poll published in the Nazareth-based Arabic newspaper A-Sinara in 2007, reported that the majority (78% ) of Arab citizens of Israel would prefer to remain under Israeli rule rather than move to a future Palestinian state in the West Bank and Gaza.[citation needed]
Similarly, a 2008 poll on intercommunal relations by a Harvard Kennedy School associate found that 77% of Arab citizens of Israel would rather remain in their native land, as Israeli citizens, than in any other country in the world.[193] The poll also found that "Arab citizens and Jewish citizens both underestimate their communities’ liking of the 'other.'"[194]
—http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arab_Israelis
And:
A 2007 poll conducted by Sami Smooha, a sociologist at Haifa University, found that:
62% of Arab citizens of Israel worry that Israel could transfer their communities to the jurisdiction of a future Palestinian state
60% of Arab citizens of Israel said they are concerned about a possible mass expulsion
67.5% of Arab citizens of Israel said they would be content to live in the Jewish state, if it existed alongside a Palestinian state in the West Bank and Gaza Strip
—http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arab_Israelis
Both the Smooha poll and one by The Center Against Racism cited statistics about racist attitudes directed against Arab Israelis; and the wiki article covers other issues of Arab-Jewish relations in Israel. I extracted the statistics that dealt just with the question of the “national aspirations” of Arab Israelis.
And, despite rhetoric about a potential “fifth column” of Arab Israelis:
“A small minority of Arab citizens have also played a role in some attacks, assisting Palestinian suicide bombers reach cities in Israel.” (My italics)
And: “The only suicide bombing physically carried out by an Arab citizen of Israel was on September 9, 2001, against soldiers and civilians disembarking from a train in the Nahariya station, killing 3 and wounded 90.[209][210] Outside of attacks that took place during the 1948 Arab-Israeli war, the only record of violent attacks against Israelis by Arabs with Israeli citizenship is the case of seven Arab citizens killing a nineteen year-old girl in her home in Jerusalem on 1 January 1952.[211]”
—http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arab_Israelis
Although wiki may not be the best source, these quick statistics indicate that the majority of Arab Israelis would choose to remain just that. What they don’t want is to be discriminated against because they are Arabs. And it goes without saying that they don’t want to be expelled from the country in which they hold citizenship.
Originally posted by Bosse de Nagehttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jewish_Autonomous_Oblast
Then there's the strange case of Birobidzhan ...
http://strangemaps.wordpress.com/2008/11/30/333-next-year-in-birobidzhan-stalins-siberian-zion/
Jewish Autonomous Oblast (JAO) (Russian: Евре́йская автоно́мная о́бласть, Yevreyskaya avtonomnaya oblast) is a federal subject of Russia (autonomous oblast) situated in the Far Eastern federal district, bordering Khabarovsk Krai and Amur Oblast of Russia and Heilongjiang province of China.
The region was established in 1934. It was the result of Joseph Stalin's nationality policy, which allowed for the Jewish population of the Soviet Union to receive a territory in which to pursue Yiddish cultural heritage within a socialist framework[citation needed]. According to the 1939 population census, 17,695 Jews lived in the region (16% of the total population).[1] The census of 1959, taken 6 years after Stalin's death, revealed that the Jewish population of the JAO declined to 14,269 persons.[2] As of 2002, 2,327 Jews lived in the Jewish Autonomous Oblast, while ethnic Russian make up 90% of the total population.
Originally posted by zeeblebotThis kind of shoddy cut & pasting on a public forum pretty much sums you up, zeeblebot.
Евре́йская автоно́мная о́бласть, Yevreyskaya avtonomnaya