ISRAEL: Most Hated Country in the World?

[Patroklos]

The "welfare queens living the high life" meme is right-wing propaganda.

The queens are, the millions just not carring and living the minimum ths system provides is not.

[padillah]

Originally posted by Odin


The "welfare queens living the high life" meme is right-wing propaganda.

Are you sure? My sister's friend Tracy is the one that's getting an HDTV next week so you might want to check you propaganda. (Her husband is also the one that got fired from his job so they could declare bankruptcy)

Not saying everyone does it, just like there are real Israel supporters and ones that do it for the angst, but it is being done. People do work the system.

Tom P.

[Patroklos]

Are you sure? My sister's friend Tracy is the one that's getting an HDTV next week so you might want to check you propaganda. (Her husband is also the one that got fired from his job so they could declare bankruptcy)

In a country of over 300 million, there is an example of everything.

[Sandman]

Dunno about hated, but Israel-Palestine is certainly the most over-rated conflict in the world. There are gang wars in South America that have a higher death rate.

[DinoDoc]

Originally posted by Sandman
Dunno about hated, but Israel-Palestine is certainly the most over-rated conflict in the world. There are gang wars in South America that have a higher death rate.

They have a better press agent enabling them to annoy more people.

[padillah]

Originally posted by Sandman
Dunno about hated, but Israel-Palestine is certainly the most over-rated conflict in the world. There are gang wars in South America that have a higher death rate.

Brazil is apparently rife with them. I'm trying to get my wife to go and visit her family with the kids and she almost doesn't want to go because of the reports she sees on Globo.

The police have used the term "war" several times with regard to conflict in the favelas.

Tom P.

[Sirotnikov]

Originally posted by Heresson
Israeli creation and its further behavious destabilised entire region and is responsible for the rise of islamic fanaticism and hatred towards the West in the muslim world.

What nonsense. Especially when coming from a major in islam / middle east studies.

AFAIK, neither Hassan El'Banah nor Sayeed Kutub mention Israel or the palestinian Israeli conflict as a major source of influence or importance.

Islamic Jihad leaders in the 70s when asked of Israel were quoted "we hate it just as we hate any non adhering muslim government - egypt, syria, jordan...".

You are perhaps right that Israel's creation destablized the region - by making repressed arab populations realize that their fascist tyrant leaders are nowhere near getting them the rights and opportunities and freedoms that Israelis get in a democracy.

This quite possibly contributes to the rise of democratic Islamic resistance against the old tyrannical regimes.

[Heresson]

I don't think islamic fanaticism and hatred towards the west wouldn't exist without Israel, but its creation and politics probably fueled their popularity among the masses.
I don't think most Arabs care about the gouverment in Israel. Which is a shame, because Israel functions much better than any non-oil arabic state.

[Sirotnikov]

I think Israel is perceived as yet another significant block in the list of grievances that fuel the feeling of crisis and conflict in the muslim-arab world.

This is the crises created due to the disintegration of the muslim empire and their extreme lagging behind the west in terms of culture, economy and society - something which ought to be humiliating to such a previously powerful and advanced empire.

However Israel's role is not at all as unqiue or as deep as you make it. Many if not most countries not bordering Israel, have absolutely no problem with it or its existance.

It has been trumpetted up as a martyr cause by the secular arab leaders of some states, especially egypt and syria who thought they have good claim for the land, and used it as a flag in an attempt to evoke a new basis for pan-arabism.

This has failed terribly.

Funny that Jordan, has almost always been in good contact with Israel, even though it technically had the most 'grievances' done by the Israeli state.

Had it not been Israel, there would have been some other nation everyone would be envious of. Either Turkey or Egypt, or some european colony that might have survived here (france?)

[Straybow]

Originally posted by Odin
I'm talking about the Palestinians, not the Jews.

After WW2 there was a sh*tload of ethnic cleansing in Eastern Europe in order to make the boundaries of ethnic groups match the new post-war political boundaries. AFAIK there is little or no demand from Germans whose parents or grandparents were from East Prussia, Silesia, the Sudetenland; or Transylvania to have a "right of return."

Well in that case you are correct. After WW2 the German-speaking people who moved out of East Prussia, Silesia, etc were too busy working, building homes and businesses, sending sons and daughters to university to make a better life. Not preaching the destruction of their displacers, not teaching their sons and daughters to strap bombs to their bodies and murder innocent people.

Sorry for the misunderstanding.

[Straybow]

Originally posted by padillah
In that same mentality they would have rejected any offer, regardless of the ease with which they would be accepted, that didn't involve ownership of Jerusalem. That's not a very realistic outlook.

They accepted an offer which did not include ownership of Jerusalem. In the original partition they didn't have Jerusalem. They didn't start a war to conquer Jerusalem from Jordan. They fought a defensive war, won, and claimed the territory that they captured in the process.

But let us concede, for the sake of discussion, that ownership of Jerusalem was always a goal for the nacent state of Israel. Is there something inherently evil in that? They wanted the city that in essence is their heritage.

There are a half dozen ethnic enclaves in Spain that strive for self determination. Can you imagine offering Uganda or Madagascar to the Basques or Catalonians? The Kurds want their own country. Offer them some distant plot of land with no connection to their heritage. Or how about the Scots; instead of giving them home rule, let them move somewhere else and make a new country. Homeland, schmomeland; you should be glad we're offering you a place.

Let's do a more direct thought exercise. After the fall of the ancient Jewish state to Rome, what autonomous polities had Jerusalem for a capital? The only answer, of course, is the Crusader Kingdom of Jerusalem. For all the centuries of Arab and Turk rule there was no autonomous territory with Jerusalem as its capital.

What other nationality or people group historically looked to Jerusalem as their capital or principal city? Not the Palestinian Arabs. They looked to Beersheba, to Damascus, to Amman. Jerusalem, to them, was the place that was cluttered with bothersome Jews and Christian pilgrims.

Palestine was a bastard step-child to every Muslim empire that ruled it. They only wanted it when somebody else had it. For all the talk of Jerusalem being the "third holiest site in Islam" it was never a great political or economic city. It was never even a second-rate power; it languished in virtual neglect. There were no Muslim pilgrimages to the Dome. It was just a stop-over for some pilgrims to Mecca, if it happened to be on the way.

As LOTM pointed out, Jews have prayed daily in the direction of Jerusalem, for their return to Jerusalem. They have done this for twenty five centuries. It was their capital for five centuries before that and for a brief century while the vast majority of Jews remained in exile, praying for return.

That's over ten times as long as the USA has been a country. The British have only lived in Britain for nine and a half centuries if Norman, or fifteen centuries if Anglo-Saxon. Germans tribes may have lived in Germany twenty-five centuries ago, but those were displaced and settled in Iberia, northern Italy, and France. The current Germans arrived perhaps twenty centuries ago.

[DinoDoc]

You speak as if anyone should really give a damn about how long Jews wanted to return to a land that was no longer theirs. That seems to be the weakest arguement that could be made.

[lord of the mark]

Originally posted by DinoDoc
You speak as if anyone should really give a damn about how long Jews wanted to return to a land that was no longer theirs. That seems to be the weakest arguement that could be made.

Hes aserting that it still was theirs by right, despite exile.

The fact is theres no other example of an exiled people remaing so attached to their land. Therefore comparisons that say "Well people X left, should they also get their land back" generally fail. Its sui generis. To Zionists the claim speaks for itself. To most Westerners in 1919 and in 1948 did. For a variety of reasons its no longer fashionable to accept it today.

[KrazyHorse]

I think you're all ignoring the most important part of this story

Namely that people like us better than anybody else.

[Straybow]

Originally posted by DinoDoc
You speak as if anyone should really give a damn about how long Jews wanted to return to a land that was no longer theirs. That seems to be the weakest arguement that could be made.

Ummm, yes it does matter. If you don't give a damn, then you are a sociopathic bastard. Rhetorically speaking.

Why does anyone want anything? If you don't deal with that then you cannot exercise judgement, only your isolated whim.