The Question Of Israel

The media reports the thing that really pissed off Osama was the US placing military bases in Saudi Arabia. I don't doubt that.

But how much of the Mideast hate against the US is due to our open support of Israel, financially and militarily?

Should we re-examine this policy of publically supporting Israel, distance ourselves, and support her secretly?

no...only functioning democracy in the region...your plan is tantamount to appeasement.

Do you even have a clue how many different kinds of Judaism are practiced there?

And since the other countries in the region are theocracies, what exactly is your problem?

but can a non-Jew be a citizen of Israel. And is there a seperation of church and state in that country?

Did you hear the recent news, about Israeli Arabs being taken hostage in Iraq? There are Israeli citizens either Muslims or Christians.

There are many Christians who chose to live in the "Holy Land" and are citizens.

There is no separation of church and state the way it is in the U.S. I doubt that such exists in any other country. After all, the Queen of England is the head of the Anglican Church. Jewish holidays are the national holidays in Israel but Arab businesses, like banks and grocery stores are open during these holidays.

The only book I've ever read on the topic was "Middle East Illusions" by Chomsky and that was a collective of writings and speeches since the mid-70's. So it might've been out of date, but it said that you had to be a Jew to gain citizenship in Israel.

I believe. In other words, if you are Jewish in the eyes of the Rabbinate of Israel, you are an Israeli. This usually means that you have a Jewish mother.

The "Law of Return" grants automatic Israeli citizenship to any Jew who wishes to immigrate to Israel. If you are a "super Kosher" Jew who lives in, say, New Jersey, you are not an Israeli citizen.

Others have to apply to citizenship and go through the steps that every democracy takes - you have to live there for a while, show means of supporting yourself and, of course, identifying with your adoptive country.

if they emigrate to Israel. And if I wanted to move there and gain citizenship, I would have to go through some hoops because I'm not ethnically or religiously Jewish. But my daughter--whose mother is Jewish--would be granted citizenship. Unless they've changed the rules for who is Jewish.

automatic citizenship as her parent.

And, yes, there is a history. For thousands of years Jews were kicked from countries - often after they gained economically from their labor - just because they were Jews. So one reason of establishment of Israel was to provide a home where, as the poet says - no one will kick you out. And it is difficult for people in this country to understand it but, hey, there are billions of acres around the world where you can go to live, so leave those few square miles to the Jews. What is so wrong with that.

And... this was not the solution for a "European problem." The land was part of the Ottoman Empire and was quite deserted and barren. Both Jews and Arabs started migrating there at about the same time. The Arabs grabbed the fertile land and the first Jews bought land, or went to swamps. No one took anyone's land. But the Palestinians showed how dumb they were and when given the chance to divide the land equally they refused, started a war. As often happens during a war, some land changed hands. Happens all the time, all over but interesting that citizens of this huge country don't mind living in Texas, and New Mexico and California, but are unhappy when this happens miles away from here.

I wouldn't buy it if I were you either. Of course if it makes life more comfortable believing it, I understand. ;)

PS: I wonder if it makes you feel comfortable to say things like "the Palestinians showed how dumb they were." :eyes:

She is a christian arab She went to the united states to get married and the six days war broke out and shewasnt there to be counted in the israeli census and because she is arab was not allowed to return as a citizen and yet our other friend who works with a jewish voices against the occupatiion org can go to israel as a citizen.If i recall Israel was intended to be a jewish homeland.I have a problem with any kind of theocracy

but rather as a socialist homeland for a homeless European people. The problem with Israel is not that it's a theocracy, but that it is a Middle Eastern "solution" for a European "problem."

on its own people who protest http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=124x64324

Ethnic Cleasning
Land Grab
Gross Human rights violations
Blantant Apartheid
murdering nonviolent american peace activists
oh and with our tax dollars to boot
so i doubt we would ever not support israel

Message removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

on US relationships with the Arab and Muslim world. There's no question the nature of our relationship with Israel should be up for discussion.

But absolutely no one in either party is willing to look at the issue honestly as it should be looked at, not as a cultural and religious issue but as a question of US/European imperial/colonial politics.

Osama was totally uninterested in Israel, or, more specifically, the plight of the Palestinians until after 9/11 when he kind of added it in. He's really George with a beard, a spoiled self-involved rich boy who thinks he has the ear of God.

Most Arabs are real vocal about Israel but really, really quiet about doing anything for the Palestinians who are mainly treated like rabid dogs throughout the known world. Or did you never notice that the "refugee camps" were in Arab, not Israeli territories?

Maybe you got a clue when Europe argued for months over who was going to take Palestinian prisoners and how many. No country would take more than what? Two?

It's a good thing they have you. Because their own only want them to keep Israel sealed off from their women and children who might get ideas if the borders were open and free. Much better to put a bomb around your wife's waist than to have her think she can go to the movies alone, for instance.

But keep trying to come up with good reasons to allow the Arabs to overrun Israel and massacre everyone in it. I'm sure there will be one everybody here agrees with eventually.

Pretty much, I basically think the Palestinians got screwed. I think they had a right to be pissed off. But at this point I think they should just give it up. Israel has shown it can fight off pretty much the whole middle east, there is another Palestinian country (from what I understand, forget the name right now (drinking)), and the conflict could turn out to be fatal for a good part of the world if it escalates anymore.

I think the fight is being instigated by racial hatred on both sides, really. I just think the Palestinians need to give it up. Not like Israel is squeaky clean in thier claim to land, but it is a small piece of land, and there has to be a point where someone realizes courage can be both noble and stupid.

Of course I'm sure many will disagree. Love you all :)

There is no Israel. It's Palestine, pure and simple.

Of course, this is typical of the Palestinians. They have never faced reality, they just kept dreaming of taking over Israel and just keep losing.

First they were betrayed by the Egyptians and the Jordanians, then by the Saudis and now by Arafat. They just keep going backward.

Or, perhaps, you also dream about the glory days of the Middle Ages? Keep dreaming. You will not regain them by being backward. Talk about theocracy. What are the people that you admire - the "fighters" of Iraq who kill Americans - for your glee - but supporters of theocracy?

.. I wanted to bring the hard-core Israeli (possible-dual-citizen/) supporters out to shame their own faces.

if you say so.:silly:

Supporting Israel's right to exist, absolutely.

Supporting the Likud party's terrorism, building walls, and bulldozing homes (and peace activists) HELL NO!!

And if violating UN resolutions was Bush/PNAC's justification for invading Iraq, then Israel certainly should be made to comply with them as well.

I have the utmost respect for the Israeli left. But I despise Sharon and his thugs on the level of Bush.

What I cannot get is that I got the idea somewhere (from something I read) that most American Jew's support Likkud, the right wing of Israel, but support Democrats majorly in the US. It doesn't add up to me.

I do believe one of the reasons Likkud is so powerful is because of wealthy American Jews who supported it with money after the 1967 war, and now former Soviet Jews, who are supplying bodies. Until the mid 1970s, socialist, secular Labour owned Israel. American Jews, as well as American policymakers, undermined it and built up Likkud at the same time.

But I doubt there's a consensus among American Jews in general on Israel. By far most of the Jews I have known in my life would be Labourites or members of Peace Now. Or more likely, wouldn't give up being American to become Israeli.

For the cover story of "why do they hate us"

(I thought that I had the URL but got "page not found"):

Here are some excerpts:

Look at Egypt today. The promise of Nasserism has turned into a quiet
nightmare. The government is efficient in only one area: squashing
dissent and strangling civil society. In the past 30 years Egypt’s
economy has sputtered along while its population has doubled.
Unemployment is at 25 percent, and 90 percent of those searching for
jobs hold college diplomas. Shockingly, Egypt has fared better than its Arab neighbors. Syria has become one of the world’s most oppressive police states, a country where 25,000 people can be rounded up and killed by the regime with no consequences. (This in a land whose capital, Damascus, is the oldest continuously inhabited city in the world.) In 30 years Iraq has gone from being among the most modern and secular of Arab countries—with women working, artists thriving, journalists writing—into a squalid playpen for Saddam Hussein’s megalomania. Lebanon, a diverse, cosmopolitan society with a capital, Beirut, that was once called the Paris of the East, has become a hellhole of war and terror. In an almost unthinkable reversal of a global pattern, almost every Arab country today is less free than it was 30 years ago. There are few countries in the world of which one can say that.

(snip)

For the Arab world, modernity has been one failure after another. Each
path followed—socialism, secularism, nationalism—has turned into a dead end. While other countries adjusted to their failures, Arab regimes got stuck in their ways. And those that reformed economically could not bring themselves to ease up politically. The Shah of Iran, the Middle Eastern ruler who tried to move his country into the modern era fastest, reaped the most violent reaction in the Iranian revolution of 1979. But even the shah’s modernization—compared, for example, with the East Asian approach of hard work, investment and thrift—was an attempt to buy modernization with oil wealth.

(snip)

lobalization has caught it at a bad demographic moment. Arab societies
are going through a massive youth bulge, with more than half of most
countries’ populations under the age of 25. Young men, often better
educated than their parents, leave their traditional villages to find
work. They arrive in noisy, crowded cities like Cairo, Beirut and
Damascus or go to work in the oil states. (Almost 10 percent of Egypt’s working population worked in the gulf at one point.) In their new world they see great disparities of wealth and the disorienting effects of modernity; most unsettlingly, they see women, unveiled and in public places, taking buses, eating in cafes and working alongside them. A huge influx of restless young men in any country is bad news. When accompanied by even small economic and social change, it usually
produces a new politics of protest. In the past, societies in these
circumstances have fallen prey to a search for revolutionary solutions. (France went through a youth bulge just before the French Revolution, as did Iran before its 1979 revolution.) In the case of the Arab world, this revolution has taken the form of an Islamic resurgence.

(snip)

Islam had little competition. The Arab world is a political desert with no real political parties, no free press, few pathways for dissent. As a result, the mosque turned into the place to discuss politics. And fundamentalist organizations have done more than talk. From the Muslim Brotherhood to Hamas to Hizbullah, they actively provide social services, medical assistance, counseling and temporary housing. For those who treasure civil society, it is disturbing to see that in the Middle East these illiberal groups are civil society. Islamic fundamentalism got a tremendous boost in 1979 when Ayatollah
Ruhollah Khomeini toppled the Shah of Iran.

(snip)

The fact that Islam is a highly egalitarian religion for the most part
has also proved an empowering call for people who felt powerless. At the same time it means that no Muslim really has the authority to question whether someone who claims to be a proper Muslim is one. The
fundamentalists, from Sayyid Qutub on, have jumped into that the void.
They ask whether people are “good Muslims.” It is a question that has
terrified the Muslim world. And here we come to the failure not simply
of governments but intellectual and social elites. Moderate Muslims are loath to criticize or debunk the fanaticism of the fundamentalists. Like the moderates in Northern Ireland, they are scared of what would happen to them if they speak their mind

(snip)