Israeli settlers fire on Palestinian civilians, Israeli army sits and watches, does nothing:

[underlankers.livejournal.com]

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2012/may/21/israeli-settler-fires-gun-stone-thrower/print

In the running saga of Israeli settler-colonialism in the West Bank and Gaza Strip, the Israelis have currently added new fuel to the fire. In a pattern that's more remiscent of the US conquest of its own territory, Israelis will move in, establish settlements they solemnly and falsely pledge to withdraw, ensure the locals get riled up, throw stones at them, then open fire and reload. I strongly believe that the only means to defend these settlements is the mentality that worships and reveres force over all, a mentality safely well away across the Atlantic or the Mediterranean. Israel cannot simply settle and destroy the Palestinians, it doesn't have the cultural or infrastructural power even if it has the will. Things like this means it's never going to be able to just withdraw from the West Bank as it will immediately gain a new state neighbor with every reason to loathe it.

That being said, I repeat a question I asked before: how are these settlements at all defensible by anyone with a moral view of the world? Or for that matter one that respects rule of law over rule of "My army's parked here so there?".

Comments

[rick-day.livejournal.com]

This issue is one of the main reasons I do not like the positions of war joos

[underlankers.livejournal.com]

What's a War Joo?

[dwer.livejournal.com]

how are these settlements at all defensible by anyone with a moral view of the world? Or for that matter one that respects rule of law over rule of "My army's parked here so there?"

They're not.

[hikarugenji.livejournal.com]

how are these settlements at all defensible by anyone with a moral view of the world? Or for that matter one that respects rule of law over rule of "My army's parked here so there?".

It's defensible because omg terrorism and jesus will come back if Israel is strong. Jack Chick even believes that God directly punishes and rewards countries based on their behavior towards the Jews and Israel (although of course all Jews are going to hell.)

[yes-justice.livejournal.com]

Had I not personally had this argument with someone, I would accuse you of exaggeration.

[pastorlenny.livejournal.com]

Christian Zionism is indeed one of the more notable manifestations of the doctrinal incoherence of evangelical theology.

[oslo.livejournal.com]

I'm beginning to think that the only (admittedly not exactly) feasible solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is to cede that Israel, through a decades-long strategy of incremental encroachment, obstinacy, and delay, has effectively seized control of the Gaza Strip and West Bank. In acknowledgment of this, we should morally condemn Israel and do what we can to effectively re-settle Palestinians to neighboring countries that will have them so that Israel can have its damn purified territory.

It's a horrible, Trail-of-Tears kind of solution, but I don't see how the alternatives are any better or more feasible for the Palestinians. They're not going to get a viable state in the current geopolitical environment. Israel will never accept full assimilation of the territories with all its occupants as part of Israeli civil society. Israel's approach is to make life in the Occupied Territories as miserable as possible for the Palestinians for the foreseeable future, until a final "resolution" is reached. And in the meantime, hawkish, messianic conservatives dominate Israel's government, which isn't good for Israel's citizens, either.

I say, it's time we reconciled the checkbook. We acknowledge that Israel has waged a long, brutal, and morally unjustified war on the Palestinian people that it has effectively won. We acknowledge this blight on the American conscience. And we try to provide Palestinians some sense of stability and safety, expensive though it will have proven. Maybe once Israel has aged out of its current political climate there can be talk of reparations or return.

[underlankers.livejournal.com]

Except that this doesn't work because Palestinians already have plenty of experience with how their fellow Arabs treated them and the Fatah leadership made its bones bombing and bushwhacking the Arabs that did precisely that. Israel will never sanction Palestinian return any more than the USA will adhere to any off its treaties it solemnly pledged its word to and gleefully broke before the ink was dry.

[nairiporter.livejournal.com]

Meanwhile...

S. Africa to enforce special labeling of settlement products (http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-4231167,00.html)

Trade and Industry Ministry announces intention to ban marking products from settlements with 'made in Israel' label. Jerusalem to summon S. African ambassador over 'racist' decision.

[il-mio-gufo.livejournal.com]

interesting. i don't know if this action really defines SA as picking one side over another. But . . . it definitely makes a statement!

[yes-justice.livejournal.com]

They are eating the same food. They are drinking the same water. They dance to the same music.

[underlankers.livejournal.com]

And Hebrew and Arabic both are very, very similar as languages. It's an even deeper tragedy that genetically Palestinians are as close to Jews as anyone, to a point where it's very clear that they really are close relatives. The iron law of Manifest Destiny will not be denied or deterred by such points, however.

[fierceleaf.livejournal.com]

The only difference is that they profess the different religion.

Secularization is the solution.

[policraticus.livejournal.com]

Israel already has state neighbors who hate it. A lot of them. More than can be easily numbered, in fact. I dare say that a plurality of UN member states would be content to see Israel simply erased from the map. The bottom line is that a significant number of Palestinians want a Palestine that stretches from the Jordan to the Mediterranean. For those Palestinians, an Israeli free West Bank will not be a solution to anything. The goal post will move, and keep on moving. Look at the example of Gaza and recalculate why Israel doesn't want to just make itself scarce from the West Bank.

This doesn't mean, of course, that Israeli settlers should be allowed to fire willy-nilly at Palestinians, nor does it mean they should be allowed to settle there at all. But acting like that is the problem mistakes a single symptom for the whole disease.

[the-rukh.livejournal.com]

So what you are saying is lets talk about other problems so we dont have to face this.

[underlankers.livejournal.com]

Except that if we solve the Israeli-Palestinian issue it still wouldn't solve the issue of the other Arab states hating Israel, or for that matter their grudes with Palestinians. I also fail to see why if Jews from Poland and Czechoslovakia were entitled to Palestine because a bunch of people who culturally would be "Yeahbuhwhat" at their modern descendants happened to live there 1900 years ago Palestinians have no claim to the area they were actually living there? Aside from the myth as self-serving as it ever is of the land without people for the people without land?

The problem, full-stop, is that Israel cannot exist so long as Palestinians do. Palestinians aren't going to go away even if they're all expelled, people tried that repeatedly with Jews and here centuries after the Greekling's expelling them for Bar Kohkba's folly we are again. Why is it that we are content to see little states like Kosovo or East Timor but gasp in horror at an indigenous people reacting violently to colonizers?

Tecumseh, Metacom, Sitting Bull, and Geronimo weren't nice sweet bleeding hearts, either, after all. That hardly justified things like Bosque Redondo or the serial pattern of genocide and bad faith.

[il-mio-gufo.livejournal.com]

isn't the saying something like, "Fear breeds hate. Hate breeds violence," or something or other?

what i really just don't understand is what is so special about settling in that spot? i mean, is the soil better for crops? is there a HUGE employer in that spot? what, if anything, is genuinely attracting them to want to settle right there?

[the-rukh.livejournal.com]

There's Palestinians there.

[madnecromancer.livejournal.com]

its one of the last strips of Palestine left...they want it all...also theres a Zionist doctrine that claims Jews shall inherit all of historical Israel...psh as if they were ever in complete rule of it historically speaking.

[underlankers.livejournal.com]

Some garbled argument about strategic depth as a means for security. Maybe it is security to replace a border with a state with an endemic, perpetual nationalist terrorist movement in one sense of the word but it's not my understanding of the word.

[sandwichwarrior.livejournal.com]

Both sides in this conflict have decided that ultimate victory is the only acceptable route to peace. A pox on both thier houses as far as I'm concerned.

As for Isreal's tactics, "Manifest Destiny" worked out rather well for the US, so why shouldn't it work for teh evil Joos.

[underlankers.livejournal.com]

It arguably did only if you neglect the human cost for the natives, as well as the crude reality that the USA due to Manifest Destiny arguably has no moral scruples whatsoever beyond the purely hypocritical phrases of rhetoric to convince those who wish to be convinced.

[anfalicious.livejournal.com]

Whargarble! You're an anti-semite.


I'm pretty sure that's the answer right?

[sandwichwarrior.livejournal.com]

Yabber-Gabble I think is the proper pronounciation

[rimpala.livejournal.com]

I heard people "rationalize" in different it a long time ago, my memory is a little foggy but...

Someone from one of the private schools I've attended said It was something like they're the chosen people by God and if you cross them or otherwise be on the disagreeing side in one way or another you invite your own downfall, with Nazi Germany often being cited as an example of proof. This was information she was giving out to a circle of pre-schoolers.

On a trip to the Holy Land Experience while at same school while it was still being built, one of the staff said something to the degree that in order for Jesus to return Solomon's temple would have to be rebuilt, on that same location that is now occupied by the Dome of the Rock - darn those pesky Mosslims!

Both of these people claim to be people of moral views of course... it's the sort of mind set I've seen in some of these people regarding this issue