Merged Gaza just launched an unprovoked attack on Israel

[TomC]

Why would we accept that when you haven't shown us opinion pieces or interviews with Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza that indicate widespread determination to do anything other than have their human rights respected and their lives valued?

You've got recent history, since the mid 40s, as evidence.

Bigotry aside, why is that?

They're human beings, just like the rest of us. They are as reasonable as we are.

So are the Trumpistas.

Unfortunately for the human situation, the people most inclined to use violence are going to run things.
It would not matter if 90% of Gazans just wanted to have a peaceful and prosperous relationship with Israel. As long as the ones who matter don't want that, even if only 10%, they will get their way.
Tom

 

[Arctish]

Why would we accept that when you haven't shown us opinion pieces or interviews with Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza that indicate widespread determination to do anything other than have their human rights respected and their lives valued?

You've got recent history, since the mid 40s, as evidence.

It's certainly evidence the Palestinians want their human rights respected and their lives valued. But seeing as how that history includes Palestinian recognition of the State of Israel and ceding the land inside the 1967 border to it, an affirmation from the Palestinian leadership that Israel has the right to exist in peace and security, and the PA's pursuit of a diplomatic solution via working with the international community, DrZoidberg's claims about the baseline opinion of the Palestinians is unsupported and, at the very least, partially refuted.

Bigotry aside, why is that?

They're human beings, just like the rest of us. They are as reasonable as we are.

So are the Trumpistas.

Unfortunately for the human situation, the people most inclined to use violence are going to run things.
It would not matter if 90% of Gazans just wanted to have a peaceful and prosperous relationship with Israel. As long as the ones who matter don't want that, even if only 10%, they will get their way.
Tom

The same is true of the most violent settlers and Netanyahu supporters. Does that mean the Israelis who want peace don't matter? Or does that simply mean the only Israelis who matter are the politically connected ones who idolize terrorists and celebrate the death-by-burning of an infant?

Who gets to decide who matters and who doesn't, anyway? I mean, I understand that you're the only person who can say which individuals matter to you personally, but the way you were talking about people who matter indicated you meant 'people who matter in general'. Who gets to decide that?

 

[Arctish]

Correction to my previous post:

Ali Sa'ab Dawabsheh was a toddler when he was murdered in the Duma arson attack.

 

[repoman]

I just saw a clip of guys riding on trucks shooting at wild boars and getting lots of head shots. I have seen similar video of the same with helicopters.

This is EXACTLY how the Israelis are viewing the Gazans. As wild boars to be eliminated.

 

[DrZoidberg]

Also, pay attention to the Arab governments. Since the six day war they all did a 180 and have all tried finding a peaceful solution. There's just so much they can do without inciting a domestic revolt

Have you considered that Arabs and Jews share profound cultural, linguistic, and historical connections? Shifts in attitudes often stem more from the actions and beliefs of individuals and communities than from governments, which is often the case in most political systems. In fact, intra-Arab tensions sometimes surpass hostility toward Jews or Israel. These dynamics evolve over time, often under pressure. What I'm suggesting is that Israel not only use force in self-defense but also strategically challenge the ideologies that fuel groups like Hamas.

Yes, sure. But then there's reality right now. Yes, they should be able to get on fine. They're just not. There's geopolitical reasons for it. But so? At some point we need to drop what we think should be possible and deal with what we've got. There is zero willingness by Palestinians to live in peace with Israel. There's zero popular movement for it. There are no Palestinian leaders (with any credibility) who is for it.

If you are a Palestinian civic leader your only option must be to want to wipe Israel off the map, otherwise you will have no credibility in your community

I personally think Israel has been handling this last crisis really well. If the only language the Palestinians understand is violence, then it's violence they will get. Israel has certainly tried, every other possible avenue.

 

[DrZoidberg]

I just saw a clip of guys riding on trucks shooting at wild boars and getting lots of head shots. I have seen similar video of the same with helicopters.

This is EXACTLY how the Israelis are viewing the Gazans. As wild boars to be eliminated.

No, they're not. That's a rediculous statement

Israelis in general are surprisingly clear sighted about the Palestinians. They understand that the Palestinians are used as pawns in wider Middle-Eastern geopolitics (especially by Iran). That they have been maniulated by generations of one sided propaganda. They understand that the Palestinians cannot be reasoned with.

Jews are an incredibly down to earth people.

There's another thing.... When Judea was destroyed in 70 AD and Titus, really did try to exterminate the Jewish people through genocide, it's pretty fucking amazing that Jews managed to, not only survive, and maintain their identity, and culture, but get their old country back. They understand how amazing and unlikely that is. They're not going to piss it away by doing dumb stuff.

 

[DrZoidberg]

It's certainly evidence the Palestinians want their human rights respected and their lives valued. But seeing as how that history includes Palestinian recognition of the State of Israel and ceding the land inside the 1967 border to it, an affirmation from the Palestinian leadership that Israel has the right to exist in peace and security, and the PA's pursuit of a diplomatic solution via working with the international community, DrZoidberg's claims about the baseline opinion of the Palestinians is unsupported and, at the very least, partially refuted.

The PA was/is little more than a western funded scam. Much like PLO. They have never had popular Palestinian support. The corruption of PA and PLO have been so egregrious, the Palestinian people was always aware. They just haven’t played it up in the media since the PA uses enough of that money to buy Palestinian silence on it. But it's not like its not easy to check

So PLO's and then the PA's attempt to broker peace means nothing

So much for your evidence

 

[Arctish]

It's certainly evidence the Palestinians want their human rights respected and their lives valued. But seeing as how that history includes Palestinian recognition of the State of Israel and ceding the land inside the 1967 border to it, an affirmation from the Palestinian leadership that Israel has the right to exist in peace and security, and the PA's pursuit of a diplomatic solution via working with the international community, DrZoidberg's claims about the baseline opinion of the Palestinians is unsupported and, at the very least, partially refuted.

The PA was/is little more than a western funded scam. Much like PLO. They have never had popular Palestinian support. The corruption of PA and PLO have been so egregrious, the Palestinian people was always aware. They just haven’t played it up in the media since the PA uses enough of that money to buy Palestinian silence on it. But it's not like its not easy to check

So PLO's and then the PA's attempt to broker peace means nothing

So much for your evidence

You haven't presented any evidence that supports your claims, you have only asserted that what you say is true. You haven't even told us where you're getting your information, despite receiving a very polite request from Gospel.

If you're interested in seeing evidence that supports my claims, you can start here. If you're interested in discussing the Oslo Accords we can start a new thread.

 

[DrZoidberg]

It's certainly evidence the Palestinians want their human rights respected and their lives valued. But seeing as how that history includes Palestinian recognition of the State of Israel and ceding the land inside the 1967 border to it, an affirmation from the Palestinian leadership that Israel has the right to exist in peace and security, and the PA's pursuit of a diplomatic solution via working with the international community, DrZoidberg's claims about the baseline opinion of the Palestinians is unsupported and, at the very least, partially refuted.

The PA was/is little more than a western funded scam. Much like PLO. They have never had popular Palestinian support. The corruption of PA and PLO have been so egregrious, the Palestinian people was always aware. They just haven’t played it up in the media since the PA uses enough of that money to buy Palestinian silence on it. But it's not like its not easy to check

So PLO's and then the PA's attempt to broker peace means nothing

So much for your evidence

You haven't presented any evidence that supports your claims, you have only asserted that what you say is true. You haven't even told us where you're getting your information, despite receiving a very polite request from Gospel.

If you're interested in seeing evidence that supports my claims, you can start here. If you're interested in discussing the Oslo Accords we can start a new thread.

How about this bit of evidence, as soon as they got the vote they overwhelmingly voted for Hamas. Boy must they have hated PLO/Fatah

What more evidence do you need. What kind of evidence do you need?

The Oslo accords meant nothing because, we know now, the Palestinian people would never accept it. Instead it was just seen, (by the Palestinians) as a first strategic move to be able to reclaim all Palestine, as everything they have done later proves

Or how about looking up what "the river to the sea" means?

Palestinian rhetoric on this is not subtle

The only way not to know is to aggressively keep your eyes shut, imho

 

[Arctish]

It's certainly evidence the Palestinians want their human rights respected and their lives valued. But seeing as how that history includes Palestinian recognition of the State of Israel and ceding the land inside the 1967 border to it, an affirmation from the Palestinian leadership that Israel has the right to exist in peace and security, and the PA's pursuit of a diplomatic solution via working with the international community, DrZoidberg's claims about the baseline opinion of the Palestinians is unsupported and, at the very least, partially refuted.

The PA was/is little more than a western funded scam. Much like PLO. They have never had popular Palestinian support. The corruption of PA and PLO have been so egregrious, the Palestinian people was always aware. They just haven’t played it up in the media since the PA uses enough of that money to buy Palestinian silence on it. But it's not like its not easy to check

So PLO's and then the PA's attempt to broker peace means nothing

So much for your evidence

You haven't presented any evidence that supports your claims, you have only asserted that what you say is true. You haven't even told us where you're getting your information, despite receiving a very polite request from Gospel.

If you're interested in seeing evidence that supports my claims, you can start here. If you're interested in discussing the Oslo Accords we can start a new thread.

How about this bit of evidence, as soon as they got the vote they overwhelmingly voted for Hamas. Boy must they have hated PLO/Fatah

Palestinians did not "overwhelmingly" vote for Hamas.

Hamas got 44% of the vote while Fatah got 41%. However, you do have a point about the PLO/Fatah losing popularity. The failure of the PLO to secure a Palestinian State caused a lot of former supporters to vote for the party promising a new effort to secure one. And as we now know, that drop in support for Fatah was helped along by Israel covertly supporting Hamas as a way to sow division among Palestinians.

What more evidence do you need. What kind of evidence do you need?

For starters, please respond to Gospel's request. He asked very nicely for a link to your sources of information, or at least for you to say what they are.

The Oslo accords meant nothing because, we know now, the Palestinian people would never accept it.

The Palestinian people did accept it. They were generally very optimistic about the Accords at the time the Accords were being implemented.

If you feel the linked article is incorrect please point out what you believe is being overlooked or misrepresented, and link to your sources.

Instead it was just seen, (by the Palestinians) as a first strategic move to be able to reclaim all Palestine, as everything they have done later proves

Or how about looking up what "the river to the sea" means?

Palestinian rhetoric on this is not subtle

I know what "the river to the sea" means. We've discussed it many times. We've seen the pictures of bigots and assholes showing their dream maps, and we've seen the texts of their papers, declarations, and speeches in which they express their utter contempt for other people and refusal to acknowledge any one's Rights except their own.

Do you not remember those previous discussions, or was your suggestion just an Ad Hominem?

 

[Swammerdami]

Could you share where you’ve been hearing from the Palestinians?

You didn't bother googling this, did you?

Two examples

... From_the_river_to_the_sea

... Calls_for_the_destruction_of_Israel

Your own Wikipedia link "From_the_river_to_the_sea" tells a different message than the one you tout:

According to the American historian Robin D. G. Kelley, the phrase "began as a Zionist slogan signifying the boundaries of Eretz Israel."[18] The Israeli-American historian Omer Bartov notes that Zionist usage of such language predates the establishment of the State of Israel in 1948 and began with the Revisionist movement of Zionism led by Ze'ev Jabotinsky, which spoke of establishing a Jewish state in all of Palestine and had a song which includes: "The Jordan has two banks; this one is ours, and the other one too," suggesting a Jewish state extending even beyond the Jordan River.[19] In 1977, the concept appeared in an election manifesto of the Israeli political party Likud, which stated that "between the sea and the Jordan there will be only Israeli sovereignty".[20][21] The current ideology of the Israeli government in 2024 is rooted in Revisionist Zionism, which sought the entire territory of Mandatory Palestine.

"Calls_for_the_destruction_of_Israel" is also misleading. While the Iran regime and Hamas may still offer some form of that rhetoric; it is not presently a general position of Arabs or Muslims.

It IS a fact that Israel is actively pursuing the effective destruction of the fledgling Palestinian state. Unemployment in the West Bank has soared to 30%. Just last year Israeli settlers (almost exclusively Jews) have occupied at least 30,000 new houses in Palestinian territory. Not only do those settlements violate international law, but settlements are linked with roads barred to Palestinians, effectively turning Palestinian territory into a checkerboard of ghettos. Israel's per capita GDP is 17 times that of Palestine.

Many Americans rant about the atrocities Hamas commits (and often blame these atrocities on Arabs or Muslims more generally) but have no intelligible response when asked about Israel's war-crimes and other violations of international law.

It's a manufactured identity. Before 1948 there were no Palestinians. It was simply an area, not distinct from the areas around it.

Referring to people that live in Palestine as Palestinians dates back to 1898.

And all identities are manufactured.

Nitpick: The ethnonym "Palestinian" is probably cognate with the ancient ethnonym "Philisitine," cognate to Hebrew פְּלִשְׁתִּים (p'lishtím). The Hebrew word is of uncertain origin but may derive from a Hittite phrase meaning "colonist of the lowlands." This is consistent with the accepted historic fact that the first "Philistines" were Sea People from the North who settled in Gaza about the time of their defeat by Pharaoh Ramesses III at the Battles of Djahy and the Delta. IIUC the original language of these Sea People is unknown, but intermarriages soon made them genetically and linguistically similar to the native Canaanites.

Although chronologically inconsistent, the book of Genesis describes interactions between Abraham the Patriarch and "Philistines": interactions which include alliance, betrayal and conflict. Obviously scrutinizing Genesis to decide "who started it" would be a psychotic "fool's errand." It is only slightly saner to begin judgement based on 1926 or 1948 or 1967 or whatever. Why not just try to start fresh in 2024 A.D. ?

 

[DrZoidberg]

It's certainly evidence the Palestinians want their human rights respected and their lives valued. But seeing as how that history includes Palestinian recognition of the State of Israel and ceding the land inside the 1967 border to it, an affirmation from the Palestinian leadership that Israel has the right to exist in peace and security, and the PA's pursuit of a diplomatic solution via working with the international community, DrZoidberg's claims about the baseline opinion of the Palestinians is unsupported and, at the very least, partially refuted.

The PA was/is little more than a western funded scam. Much like PLO. They have never had popular Palestinian support. The corruption of PA and PLO have been so egregrious, the Palestinian people was always aware. They just haven’t played it up in the media since the PA uses enough of that money to buy Palestinian silence on it. But it's not like its not easy to check

So PLO's and then the PA's attempt to broker peace means nothing

So much for your evidence

You haven't presented any evidence that supports your claims, you have only asserted that what you say is true. You haven't even told us where you're getting your information, despite receiving a very polite request from Gospel.

If you're interested in seeing evidence that supports my claims, you can start here. If you're interested in discussing the Oslo Accords we can start a new thread.

How about this bit of evidence, as soon as they got the vote they overwhelmingly voted for Hamas. Boy must they have hated PLO/Fatah

Palestinians did not "overwhelmingly" vote for Hamas.

Hamas got 44% of the vote while Fatah got 41%. However, you do have a point about the PLO/Fatah losing popularity. The failure of the PLO to secure a Palestinian State caused a lot of former supporters to vote for the party promising a new effort to secure one. And as we now know, that drop in support for Fatah was helped along by Israel covertly supporting Hamas as a way to sow division among Palestinians.

Oh, those conniving sneaky Jews and their conspiracys

Hamas are a Shia movement. Palestinians are Sunni. They must be extremely well motivated to vote against their own

What more evidence do you need. What kind of evidence do you need?

For starters, please respond to Gospel's request. He asked very nicely for a link to your sources of information, or at least for you to say what they are.

How about reality?

The Oslo accords meant nothing because, we know now, the Palestinian people would never accept it.

The Palestinian people did accept it. They were generally very optimistic about the Accords at the time the Accords were being implemented.

If you feel the linked article is incorrect please point out what you believe is being overlooked or misrepresented, and link to your sources.

The PA was setup under western pressure with little Palestinian involvement. My source is the realty of what happened at soon as the Palestinians started running their own shit. The PA was quickly muscled out (incredibly weak popular support).

I find it bizarre that you need someone to hold your hand to interpret these facts

The Oslo accord was bullshit. Why do you keep bringing it up as evidence for anything?

Instead it was just seen, (by the Palestinians) as a first strategic move to be able to reclaim all Palestine, as everything they have done later proves

Or how about looking up what "the river to the sea" means?

Palestinian rhetoric on this is not subtle

I know what "the river to the sea" means. We've discussed it many times. We've seen the pictures of bigots and assholes showing their dream maps, and we've seen the texts of their papers, declarations, and speeches in which they express their utter contempt for other people and refusal to acknowledge any one's Rights except their own.

Do you not remember those previous discussions, or was your suggestion just an Ad Hominem?

I'm not the one who seems to have forgotten those conversations

Following this thread my analysis is that antisemitism must be pretty strong for the support of Israel to be this weak. That's the only reason left I can see

 

[laughing dog]

Following this thread my analysis is that antisemitism must be pretty strong for the support of Israel to be this weak. That's the only reason left I can see

There is no doubt that bigotry is the only reason you see for the less than knee jerk support for whatever Israel does.

 

[Arctish]

Palestinians did not "overwhelmingly" vote for Hamas.

Hamas got 44% of the vote while Fatah got 41%. However, you do have a point about the PLO/Fatah losing popularity. The failure of the PLO to secure a Palestinian State caused a lot of former supporters to vote for the party promising a new effort to secure one. And as we now know, that drop in support for Fatah was helped along by Israel covertly supporting Hamas as a way to sow division among Palestinians.

Oh, those conniving sneaky Jews and their conspiracys

Hamas are a Shia movement. Palestinians are Sunni. They must be extremely well motivated to vote against their own

No one besides you is making an argument based on racist tropes.

The PLO is a secular political party. Hamas' roots are religious, but the party isn't ruled by imams or religious scholars. The disagreements between the two political parties don't fall along Shia/Sunni lines, and neither do their supporters.

What more evidence do you need. What kind of evidence do you need?

For starters, please respond to Gospel's request. He asked very nicely for a link to your sources of information, or at least for you to say what they are.

How about reality?

Is that your answer to Gospel's request?

The Oslo accords meant nothing because, we know now, the Palestinian people would never accept it.

The Palestinian people did accept it. They were generally very optimistic about the Accords at the time the Accords were being implemented.

If you feel the linked article is incorrect please point out what you believe is being overlooked or misrepresented, and link to your sources.

The PA was setup under western pressure with little Palestinian involvement. My source is the realty of what happened at soon as the Palestinians started running their own shit. The PA was quickly muscled out (incredibly weak popular support).

I find it bizarre that you need someone to hold your hand to interpret these facts

The Oslo accord was bullshit. Why do you keep bringing it up as evidence for anything?

The negotiation and implementation of Oslo Accords were the closest Israelis and Palestinians came to peace. It is the peace process by which Israel's right to exist was formally recognized by the governing party of the Palestinian people, and the land inside the 1967 borders were formally and officially ceded to it.

That's HUGE.

That was Number 1 on the Israeli to-do list: to get formal recognition that Israel has a Right to exist in peace and security on the lands Zionists had seized in order to create it.

The Oslo Accords were also why and how Israel recognized the PLO as representatives of the Palestinian people, and that the land outside Israel's 1967 borders isn't part of Israel.

That is also HUGE. And it's the reason Yitzhak Rabin was murdered.

Instead it was just seen, (by the Palestinians) as a first strategic move to be able to reclaim all Palestine, as everything they have done later proves

Or how about looking up what "the river to the sea" means?

Palestinian rhetoric on this is not subtle

I know what "the river to the sea" means. We've discussed it many times. We've seen the pictures of bigots and assholes showing their dream maps, and we've seen the texts of their papers, declarations, and speeches in which they express their utter contempt for other people and refusal to acknowledge any one's Rights except their own.

Do you not remember those previous discussions, or was your suggestion just an Ad Hominem?

I'm not the one who seems to have forgotten those conversations

Following this thread my analysis is that antisemitism must be pretty strong for the support of Israel to be this weak. That's the only reason left I can see

Support for Israel and support for Benjamin Netanyahu and his policies are two separate things. If you can't understand that, then this entire thread must be very puzzling.

 

[Gospel]

It will soon be 2025, and there are still those who believe violence is the only solution. History is filled with empires that shared this belief, and most of them have long since fallen.

 

[bilby]

It will soon be 2025, and there are still those who believe violence is the only solution. History is filled with empires that shared this belief, and most of them have long since fallen.

Violence is often the simplest solution.

We are currently seeing a worldwide surge in the power and influence of the simpleton, which seems to be a common feature of the propaganda power of new media technologies. In the 1600s it was printing, and we got wars and revolutions across Europe. In the late 19th and early 20th century, photography and the 'picture post' stoked the nationalism that led to the Great War. In the 1920s and '30s, fascism and nazism were fueled by radio. Today's simpletons are boosted by social media.

It took a full generation for the simpletons to grasp that it was crazy to believe everything they saw in a pamphlet; Or that the camera does, in fact, sometimes lie. It took a similar amount of time for the simpletons to stop trusting everything they heard on the radio.

We are in for war, hate, strife and pain, until the generation who grew up before social media are all dead and gone.

Sadly, as that includes me, I estimate that the current cycle of simpleton-driven global conflict and hate will not peak until after my 130th birthday.










* Particularly when it's violence in which one need not personally participate - I don't see the posters here picking up a rifle and heading to Gaza, nor are any US politicians, or even many Israeli ones.

 

[Don2 (Don1 Revised)]

Ben Gvir says he’s seeing ‘some openness’ from Netanyahu on ‘encouraging migration’ from Gaza

* * *

www.timesofisrael.com

Far-right National Security Minister Itamar Ben Gvir says Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is showing “some openness” over the idea of “encouraging migration” of Palestinians from the Gaza Strip.

 

[Gospel]

That's not news; similar proposals have been attempted before but faced strong opposition from the UN, Jordan, Egypt, and even the United States. Basically, it’s like saying he’s open to reusing the old rabbit out of the hat trick that everyone in the audience already knows the secret to.

 

[Gospel]

This conflict is fundamentally a war of ideological attrition, and in some ways, it echoes the dynamics of the American Civil War. Initially, the Confederacy held the advantage in ideological cohesion and strategic agility, while the Union, despite superior numbers and technological potential, struggled with poor organization and setbacks. However, after adding an ideological framework that garnered moral support to the Union’s overwhelming resources and technological advancements they wore down the Confederacy, culminating in victory.

A critical aspect of Lincoln's strategy early in the Civil War was his deliberate avoidance of framing the conflict as a crusade against slavery. By focusing instead on preserving the Union, Lincoln sought to keep fragile coalitions intact and prevent alienating key constituencies, such as the border states and Northern moderates. Only later, when the war’s dynamics shifted, did emancipation become a central focus, reshaping the ideological stakes and bolstering the Union’s moral high ground.

Similarly, in the Israel-Palestine conflict, we see two deeply entrenched ideologies clashing. Israel wields superior technology and military strength, while Hamas relies on ideological fervor and propaganda to rally support. However, Israel is faltering in the ideological battle on the global stage. By modern human rights standards, Israel's actions in Gaza are increasingly scrutinized, particularly as Palestinian civilians, trapped under Hamas’s oppressive control, bear the brunt of the suffering. This mirrors the way propaganda and global opinion became critical fronts in the Civil War after emancipation reshaped its narrative.

Just as the Union’s ultimate success depended not only on military strength but also on winning the ideological struggle, Israel’s path to long-term stability IMO hinges on addressing the humanitarian concerns that Hamas exploits as propaganda tools. Failing to consider this broader ideological battlefield risks eroding Israel’s legitimacy while empowering its adversaries, much as Lincoln recognized that the Union needed a compelling moral narrative to sustain its cause.

Well, that’s just my completely uninformed, terrorist-sympathizing perspective.

 

[DrZoidberg]

Palestinians did not "overwhelmingly" vote for Hamas.

Hamas got 44% of the vote while Fatah got 41%. However, you do have a point about the PLO/Fatah losing popularity. The failure of the PLO to secure a Palestinian State caused a lot of former supporters to vote for the party promising a new effort to secure one. And as we now know, that drop in support for Fatah was helped along by Israel covertly supporting Hamas as a way to sow division among Palestinians.

Oh, those conniving sneaky Jews and their conspiracys

Hamas are a Shia movement. Palestinians are Sunni. They must be extremely well motivated to vote against their own

No one besides you is making an argument based on racist tropes.

The PLO is a secular political party. Hamas' roots are religious, but the party isn't ruled by imams or religious scholars. The disagreements between the two political parties don't fall along Shia/Sunni lines, and neither do their supporters.

Where do you get all this shit from?

Palestinians are almost completely conservative. They're not remotely liberal. Like Arabs anywhere in the Middle-East. Remember Arab spring? It took the entire western world by surprise that the oppressive Arab rulers were forcing the Arabs to be more liberal than what they liked. That's what people were angry about. It turned out that baseline Arab culture is conservative to the extreme

Culture changes and evolves slowly. The Ottoman empire did everything they could to retard any reforms. And there's a cultural memory of this in the countries they ruled. That's not a racist opinion.

I'll tell you what I think is racist, its white westerners shoving their values down the throat of Palestinians, and not at all respecting what they want. And not listening to them at all. The actions of the Palestinians since the foundation of Israel have not been subtle.

What more evidence do you need. What kind of evidence do you need?

For starters, please respond to Gospel's request. He asked very nicely for a link to your sources of information, or at least for you to say what they are.

How about reality?

Is that your answer to Gospel's request?

I think its a good answer. There's just so many blinders you can cling to before it becomes pathetic

The Oslo accords meant nothing because, we know now, the Palestinian people would never accept it.

The Palestinian people did accept it. They were generally very optimistic about the Accords at the time the Accords were being implemented.

If you feel the linked article is incorrect please point out what you believe is being overlooked or misrepresented, and link to your sources.

The PA was setup under western pressure with little Palestinian involvement. My source is the realty of what happened at soon as the Palestinians started running their own shit. The PA was quickly muscled out (incredibly weak popular support).

I find it bizarre that you need someone to hold your hand to interpret these facts

The Oslo accord was bullshit. Why do you keep bringing it up as evidence for anything?

The negotiation and implementation of Oslo Accords were the closest Israelis and Palestinians came to peace. It is the peace process by which Israel's right to exist was formally recognized by the governing party of the Palestinian people, and the land inside the 1967 borders were formally and officially ceded to it.

That's HUGE.

That was Number 1 on the Israeli to-do list: to get formal recognition that Israel has a Right to exist in peace and security on the lands Zionists had seized in order to create it.

The Oslo Accords were also why and how Israel recognized the PLO as representatives of the Palestinian people, and that the land outside Israel's 1967 borders isn't part of Israel.

That is also HUGE. And it's the reason Yitzhak Rabin was murdered.

Ok. What happened then? The Palestinians have just kept going as if nothing was agreed. They clearly have no respect for it.

You sound like Chamberlain proclaiming "Peace in our time" after his meeting with Hitler

Instead it was just seen, (by the Palestinians) as a first strategic move to be able to reclaim all Palestine, as everything they have done later proves

Or how about looking up what "the river to the sea" means?

Palestinian rhetoric on this is not subtle

I know what "the river to the sea" means. We've discussed it many times. We've seen the pictures of bigots and assholes showing their dream maps, and we've seen the texts of their papers, declarations, and speeches in which they express their utter contempt for other people and refusal to acknowledge any one's Rights except their own.

Do you not remember those previous discussions, or was your suggestion just an Ad Hominem?

I'm not the one who seems to have forgotten those conversations

Following this thread my analysis is that antisemitism must be pretty strong for the support of Israel to be this weak. That's the only reason left I can see

Support for Israel and support for Benjamin Netanyahu and his policies are two separate things. If you can't understand that, then this entire thread must be very puzzling.

And what makes you think I can't separate them? Just one note, in Israel, the demonstrations against Netanyahu is mostly that he's not doing enough to get the hostages home. No, they don't mean to negotiate with Hamas. Like all politicians he serves his constituents

Initially I thought Netanyahu was heavy handed. But I have changed my mind. I now understand what the IDF is doing is necessary, and they are being as gentle as possible (without compromising the mission, ie bring the hostages back)

Here's a question to you. Why do you think Hamas isn't releasing the rest of the hostages?