UN Slams Israel's killings of civillians - Only USA not in favour of vote.

[Agathon]

Yes... a story

Is that the best you can do.

[Verto]

Your story possesses severe and critical flaws, leaving it with little value. Only in your communist dreamworld would the Armenians be better armed than Texans.

[Agathon]

The old trick - "pick on irrelevant aspects of the analogy".

So if someone said, "Abortion is permissible because it's like being in a hospital bed having someone hooked up to your kidneys without your consent", you'd reply, "No, you could do it sitting in a chair."



You have nothing. You tories are like some clapped out old heavyweight, yearning for yesteryear.

[DinoDoc]

Originally posted by Agathon
A Story

That really only serves as a poor attempt at justifying the murder of civilians.

[Ming]

Wars have changed the boundries of nations since the beginning of time. EVERY country can look back in their history and see how their boundries have changed. What is in the past is in the past... deal with TODAY and the future. The pals should stop TARGETING civilians, and Isreal should stop their over use of military power... and they should all sit down at the table and talk about a true peace... instead of one side vowing to push the other into the sea and trying to wipe them out.

[Agathon]

Wars have changed the boundries of nations since the beginning of time. EVERY country can look back in their history and see how their boundries have changed.

Which is why people decided that it was a dumb idea. Allowing people to keep the fruits of conquest, just encourages conquest.

What is in the past is in the past... deal with TODAY and the future. The pals should stop TARGETING civilians, and Isreal should stop their over use of military power... and they should all sit down at the table and talk about a true peace... instead of one side vowing to push the other into the sea and trying to wipe them out.

You can't deal with the future without dealing with the past because the future is conditioned by past events.

[Ming]

Originally posted by Agathon
You can't deal with the future without dealing with the past because the future is conditioned by past events.

So they should just keep on killing each other

[Agathon]

So they should just keep on killing each other

Why don't you ask your idiot president? He has the power to force an equitable solution.

[DinoDoc]

Because it worked so well when the last President tried just that. Oh wait...

[Ming]

Originally posted by Agathon
Why don't you ask your idiot president? He has the power to force an equitable solution.

Why don't the people involved do something about it..

Plus... you are the first to whine when the US forces themselves on the world scene, yet here you are talking out of the other side of your mouth

[Kuciwalker]

Originally posted by Pax Africanus
Kucinich,
People do shoot at trespassers in their homes.

And they also get prosecuted for it.

My point was that being wronged does not make it OK for you to attack civilians.

I wish the Isreali's would just leave those people alone.

Israel leaves them as much alone as is consistant with a sane national security policy.

[The Mad Monk]

Agathon, have you read The Grapes of Wrath?

Many midwesterners were displaced, but by banks rather than some outside invader. They were forced by economic conditions to move to California, where they lived the life of the refugee.

Where are they now? Did they stay in those camps in California? Did they go back to the midwest to kill and destroy in the name of ancestral holdings?

Where are they now?

[Agathon]

Plus... you are the first to whine when the US forces themselves on the world scene, yet here you are talking out of the other side of your mouth

I complain when they force themselves on the world to do bad or stupid things. If the US wanted to use it to do some good it would be a nice change.

[Agathon]

Agathon, have you read The Grapes of Wrath?

Absolutely, it's one of the greatest novels ever written. From what you've said I wonder if you've read it.

Many midwesterners were displaced, but by banks rather than some outside invader. They were forced by economic conditions to move to California, where they lived the life of the refugee.

Which is what the novel is complaining about - impersonal forces that render human beings miserable and pit them against each other.

But what does that have to do with Palestine? Unless you subscribe to some weird Hegelian account of history, it's not the case that mindless economic forces or natural disaster forced the Palestinians into refugee camps, the Israelis did and are the one's keeping them there (or bulldozing them out).

Where are they now? Did they stay in those camps in California? Did they go back to the midwest to kill and destroy in the name of ancestral holdings?

Do you not understand the novel? Steinbeck is arguing that what happened to them was bad. Generalizing what you just said is equivalent to might makes right.

And remember that the eventual solution to the depression was a world war. You don't want another one of those, do you?

One might as well say, "many Jews were forced to flee to America to escape Nazism". Do you think that they had just cause to go after the Nazis with guns or not?

[Kuciwalker]

Originally posted by Agathon
You are fast becoming a sort of sad clown on virtually every issue.

I hadn't realized I'd adopted your posting style.

That is the main reason the UN was created, to avoid the scourge of war and in particular the aggressive annexation of territory.

Yeah, right. Which five countries were permanent members of the UNSC? Oh yeah - the US, Britain, France, the Soviet Union, and China. I'm sure all of those were just so pacifist and not trying to extend their dominance...

The UN was created to help the major powers stay out of each others' way while they expanded their dominance.

Are you being deliberately obtuse? Look at where it is. If you wanted to project your power into the region wouldn't you attempt to find a vassal in the area. That is what Israel is, a US vassal.

Which is of course why we constantly use Israel as a staging ground for our forays into the Mideast. Oh, wait...

And you conveniently ignore the fact that this was a general point about Western/Arab relations.

Except that the Arabs who we "shat on for years" are not the ones who were displaced by the Israelis... thus there's no connection at all between the two, and there is no bearing on the Palestinian conflict.


[quote[

On the other hand, the forced expulsion of Jews from Israel proper would be a terrible crime. For this reason the vast majority of the world's population support a two state solution with perhaps land swaps and either the right of return or some adequate compensation for it. Everyone knows that a peace settlement will have to look something like this. Anything else will condemn the region to violence for the next 50 years.

Since the right of return = the destruction of Israel, don't you think it's quite reasonable for them to deny it?[/quote]

It might equal the destruction of Israel if the Arabs were to become a majority in Israel proper. I don't see any problem with this since basing a state on race is not morally justifiable.

And yet it's part of the original UN agreement, which you want to return to. You can't call for the Israelis to return to their side of the agreement, but then demand that they give up part of what they get in it.

Notice that I said or adequate compensation for the right of return. That seems like a better option politically, but something must be done because whatever way you look at it, these people were alienated from their own land and property.

Over half a century ago.

Um... no. The refugees were expelled from Israel due to war. IIRC the issue of refugees is completely separate from the original partition.

The Declaration of Human rights states that no one should be subject to arbitrary exile from their own country. In a sense these people should be Israeli citizens. If not, they should be compensated.

To quote from the Declaration of the State of Israel:

On the 29th November, 1947, the United Nations General Assembly passed a resolution calling for the establishment of a Jewish State in Eretz-Israel; the General Assembly required the inhabitants of Eretz-Israel to take such steps as were necessary on their part for the implementation of that resolution. This recognition by the United Nations of the right of the Jewish people to establish their State is irrevocable.

Since the right of return would mean that Israel was no longer a Jewish state, it would violate the original agreement.

So, the attempt to paint the Israelis as the victims is frankly laughable.

The Israelis aren't sending suicide bombers into Palestinian restaraunts.

Would you say that the Axis were the victims in WWII because they lost?

That's a pathetic analogy. Israel cannot be defeated militarily by any of the neighbouring states or all of them acting in concert. That's just a fact. It's also a fact that some Palestinians might want to destroy Israel, but it's not going to happen. They simply do not have the power to do so.

It's not pathetic at all, because I wasn't making the analogy of commies = palestinians. Rather, just because the Israelis are winning doesn't justify trying to kill civilians on the part of the Palestinians.

Many of them were people throwing stones at armoured cars (helpfully supplied by the British) or people who shot at the police who beat and tortured blacks. It's a straight analogy - one would have to be a total cretin not to see the similarity here. Israel is not the victim - Israel is the bad guy here.

If they were civilians, it WASN'T a straight analogy. I'm sorry to pop your little bubble of Israel = automatically evil, but the Israelis don't go in and start gunning down innocents for the heck of it.

Perhaps not, but if you steal my car, my house, my right to vote, my right to freedom of movement, all my other judicial and political rights, kill members of my family and imprison them in Bantustans from which it is near impossible to travel unless one has a menial and poorly paid job working for the masters; in short if you treat me as a slave, I think I would have good ground to shoot you.

Would you also have grounds to shoot my family?

Israel is a democracy, in fact it's one of the worlds best democracies. In a democracy the people take responsibility for the goverment's actions - even those who did not vote for it - because that's how democracy works. If a democracy oppresses others and its own citizens refuse to do anything about it, then they cannot complain if the people they are ****ting on resort to violence.

Ah, I see. So of course you would see 9/11 as completely justified, because of course we live in a democracy. AQ would be completely justified in wiping the US off the face of the earth, because of course we live in a democracy. Getting a hard-on, yet?