Why do Zionost Jews have a right to have the state of Israel in its present form?

[Deepak]

Israel wouldn't agree, either--UN troops are a very one-sided wall. They do nothing meaningful about terrorism. We have UN forces in Lebanon now that are willfully blind to Hezbollah's actions.

The alternative being what - status quo?

I'm pretty sure that's not going to be sustainable. I don't see any other way of solving the Jerusalem issue, and a two state solution is not possible without a solution to that issue.

 

[Jayjay]

I was referring to them having to adopt the Condorcet method to elect the prime minister. Perhaps it was an exaggeration to call that "dispensing their own political system" though. But in any case, that would mean an Arab majority Knesset and as such Arab-party coalition in the government, which could easily exclude Jews altogether.

It potentially COULD exclude Jews altogether; you are, however, seriously deluded if you really think it would be "easy" to do so.

Especially when you consider that there is no political party in Israel called "The Jews" and it is unlikely such a thing would come to exist if Israel unified with Palestine. Jewish neighborhoods will still vote for the usual suspects (Likud, Labor, etc) as would Palestinians (Fatah, Hamas, PFLP, etc). The more likely result is an alliance between one or more Jewish and Palestinian political parties (e.g. Labor and Fatah) who can reach enough common ground to form a coalition. Since the hardliners are far less likely to form common ground (no way in hell Hamas is gonna team up with Likud), this gives space for the more liberal Israelis and Palestinians to take control of the Knesset and form a unity government.

The Jihadists would be pissed.
The Zionists would be pissed.
Loren would be pissed.
And everyone else would bake a cake.

You underestimate loyalty to national identity. Any Palestinian who teams up with Jewish parties would be branded a traitor. That's why Hamas and Fatah alliance is more likely than Fath and Labor alliance. I'm not saying that it woudl be a terrorist government (what would they be terrorizing against, having gained everything they wanted already?), but it would definitely not put Jews in any kind of position of power to make demands.

 

[Bomb#20]

Of course they have a right, the right of conquest and might.

It is exactly the same right as the right of the USA to Texas and many other SW States. They were "conquered" by war, revolution, invasion by immigration, the idea of Manifest Destiny -- which was a socio-political "religion", preceded and followed by partial extermination, amounting to genocide, of the aboriginal population. They are being held by the right of might of the USA.
That this was all a long time ago and is accepted as the status quo, makes no difference to the principle of the thing, and neither does the anger towards me for pointing this out to the citizens of the land of the free.

Who was angry toward you for pointing this out? Somebody was angry toward you for pointing out that Israelis won't agree to commit suicide. That wasn't because he's offended by your "might makes right" theory; that was because he is a zealous partisan of the Palestinian cause and therefore deliberately blinds himself to probable consequences that don't reflect well on the people he's decided to identify with. He of all your readers certainly has no quarrel with your implied criticism of the land of the free.

Canada's right to Quebec is on the same principle, and its very right to existence as "Canada" also rests on the successful, if incomplete, genocide of the aboriginals.

I'm not sure you're talking about the same topic as the thread. In the first place, you're talking about the rights of countries; the thread's about the rights of people. As far as I can see, countries don't have rights; the concept is a category error. In the second place, the rest of us seem to be debating the morality of keeping Israel in existence; you appear to be declaring moral considerations irrelevant. If you mind that you're not getting positive feedback from that, why join the thread? You no playa the game, you no makea the rules.

 

[Jayjay]

The current Palestinian leaders are terrorists. Why would we expect them to vote differently than they have already done?

They don't have the numbers to take over and it is extremely unlikely that they would ever have the numbers. Israel's population is 8.5 million with about 1.5 Muslim; The Palestinian territories is around 4.5 million people with about 4.2 Muslim.

So, it is a rough estimate of around 6.3 million non-Muslims to around 6 million Muslims. Even if every single Muslim voted for a terrorist party, they still wouldn't have the majority. Also, it is extremely unlikely that all Muslims would vote for an extremist party that would wage war. There is a going to be a significant bloc that just wants peace and doesn't want to jeopardize that. If you've got representation, it is so much easier to get your needs met by voting for that instead of voting for war. Even if the Muslims eventually take the majority position, it only takes a small portion of them to keep electing moderates to power under a Condorcet method. In the worst case scenario, it would be Fatah that would gain power and I strongly doubt even that would ever happen.

Your hypothetical only proposed Condorcet method for electing the prime minister in the Knesset. But the closed lists in Israeli general election means that the pool of candidates will include mostly representatives that vote strictly according to party line and would do nothing to prevent strong Arab and Jewish blocs from emerging. If the Arab bloc is the majority (which it would be, if refugees were given right to return and vote also; the scenario was not clear on that) then Condorcet method would only guarantee that the prime minister is probably from Fatah (or maybe an Israeli Arab), but that would still mean that the coalition he'd have to build would probably be exclusively Arab with maybe a token Jew minister.

 

[untermensche]

What you will find from the supporters of Israeli brutality and decades of torture is nothing but one inane rationalization after another.

There is no connection to the real world in anything they say.

To even consider giving Palestinians the right to live without Israeli brutal interference is according to them "suicide".

It is insanity. And there is no rational argument that can penetrate it.

I note no argument as to why it's not suicide.

Thus I guess you consider the death of the Jews to be a good thing.

As we see, insane.

Somehow one must prove it isn't suicide to let ordinary people be free.

 

[arkirk]

I note no argument as to why it's not suicide.

Thus I guess you consider the death of the Jews to be a good thing.

As we see, insane.

Somehow one must prove it isn't suicide to let ordinary people be free.

Loren: I have to confess I regard you as the most chicken person here. No matter what anybody does to ameliorate any condition, you immediately pipe up that it would be suicide. Your answer to everything is to kill all the opposition. You are the consummate war promoter. According to you to show any compassion whatever for innocent Palestinians would be equivalent to suicide. You offer no solutions and show no interest in anything that might help the Palestinian people...or for that matter almost any minority. You approved bombing the U. N. school because it was according to you..a hiding place for terrorists. Your definition of terrorist is anybody you fear for any reason and people Netanyahu doesn't like. You seem incapable of tolerance for anybody once they voice any opposition for Bibi who is constantly lying through his teeth and fomenting military actions against Islamic countries.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

Israel wouldn't agree, either--UN troops are a very one-sided wall. They do nothing meaningful about terrorism. We have UN forces in Lebanon now that are willfully blind to Hezbollah's actions.

The alternative being what - status quo?

I'm pretty sure that's not going to be sustainable. I don't see any other way of solving the Jerusalem issue, and a two state solution is not possible without a solution to that issue.

Asking what the alternative is is not a rebuttal to the suicidal nature of the proposal.

What we are facing here is the desire to do something when faced with a bad situation--which all too often ends up being jumping from the frying pan to the fire. (If there were an easy answer it would have been done long ago. Thus when you're looking at an apparently intractable problem you can pretty much figure there's no good answer.)

- - - Updated - - -

I note no argument as to why it's not suicide.

Thus I guess you consider the death of the Jews to be a good thing.

As we see, insane.

Somehow one must prove it isn't suicide to let ordinary people be free.

Try proving it rather than simply complaining.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

As we see, insane.

Somehow one must prove it isn't suicide to let ordinary people be free.

Loren: I have to confess I regard you as the most chicken person here. No matter what anybody does to ameliorate any condition, you immediately pipe up that it would be suicide. Your answer to everything is to kill all the opposition. You are the consummate war promoter. According to you to show any compassion whatever for innocent Palestinians would be equivalent to suicide. You offer no solutions and show no interest in anything that might help the Palestinian people...or for that matter almost any minority. You approved bombing the U. N. school because it was according to you..a hiding place for terrorists. Your definition of terrorist is anybody you fear for any reason and people Netanyahu doesn't like. You seem incapable of tolerance for anybody once they voice any opposition for Bibi who is constantly lying through his teeth and fomenting military actions against Islamic countries.

I'd like to help the Palestinians. I just realize it's impossible so long as they are under the thumb of those who would use them as cannon fodder against Israel. The only way to actually help them is to end the billions upon billions that's poured into making them fight.

You can't solve a problem without understanding it's cause--and you don't.

 

[untermensche]

The elephant says he'd love to take his foot from the neck of the mouse.

But I'm afraid you will kill me if I let go, says the elephant.

Insane.

 

[4321lynx]

Who was angry toward you for pointing this out? Somebody was angry toward you for pointing out that Israelis won't agree to commit suicide. That wasn't because he's offended by your "might makes right" theory; that was because he is a zealous partisan of the Palestinian cause and therefore deliberately blinds himself to probable consequences that don't reflect well on the people he's decided to identify with. He of all your readers certainly has no quarrel with your implied criticism of the land of the free.

Canada's right to Quebec is on the same principle, and its very right to existence as "Canada" also rests on the successful, if incomplete, genocide of the aboriginals.

I'm not sure you're talking about the same topic as the thread. In the first place, you're talking about the rights of countries; the thread's about the rights of people. As far as I can see, countries don't have rights; the concept is a category error. In the second place, the rest of us seem to be debating the morality of keeping Israel in existence; you appear to be declaring moral considerations irrelevant. If you mind that you're not getting positive feedback from that, why join the thread? You no playa the game, you no makea the rules.

In as much as countries are collections of people, if people have rights then countries must have rights. The problems arise when populations of countries are so divided by religion, culture, language, race, history that they cannot or do not want to get on. This often translates in war, or revolution. So, for example, Ireland and England ( or Britain) in early 20th century, Israel now, and less violent, the Basques and the Catalans in Spain, the Quebeckers here, the Scots in Britain, the Protestant vs Catholic Irish in N Ireland etc etc.
Morality is a relative construct in those cases and only might is right. Sad but unavoidable. The Arabs consider the Jews as colonizers; the Jews have imaginary/religious/historical rights, they say. And their might makes that claim inevitable, and for the time being, "morally" right from their point of view.

 

[4321lynx]

The elephant says he'd love to take his foot from the neck of the mouse.

But I'm afraid you will kill me if I let go, says the elephant.

Insane.

Your problem is you mix up who is who.
The elephant is Islam and Israel the mouse, in numbers at least. (You are dreaming if you think the Palestinians would not get support from the rest of Islam, especially from ISIS.) But the mouse has a large nuclear stockpile and will use it if and when it and no-one but it considers it necessary to do so. And the elephant's only nuclear weapons, so far, are in Pakistan and at present Pakistan is not supplying the rest of Islam with that weapon.

As long as the insane religious/cultural/racial hallucinations or delusions exist that the mosque in Jerusalem is a "holy" place to one side, and the stones it stands on and others near it are "holy" to the other side, there will be no solution, especially no solution invented by an outside group such as Christians or the UN or whoever.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

The elephant says he'd love to take his foot from the neck of the mouse.

But I'm afraid you will kill me if I let go, says the elephant.

Insane.

You're forgetting the mouse has a gun.

 

[untermensche]

The elephant says he'd love to take his foot from the neck of the mouse.

But I'm afraid you will kill me if I let go, says the elephant.

Insane.

You're forgetting the mouse has a gun.

Mostly rocks.

And the elephant has nukes and a powerful modern military.

Paid for by the US taxpayer.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

You're forgetting the mouse has a gun.

Mostly rocks.

And the elephant has nukes and a powerful modern military.

Paid for by the US taxpayer.

The problem is that you are looking at Israel as a monolithic entity rather than being made up of people. (Does that mean you don't consider the Jews people? You don't make that mistake with the Palestinians.) While the Palestinians can't destroy Israel they can kill Israelis--and a government that wants to remain in power can't just sit back and allow the attacks.

These days the average Israeli polls more aggressive than the Israeli government's actions.

 

[Arctish]

Mostly rocks.

And the elephant has nukes and a powerful modern military.

Paid for by the US taxpayer.

The problem is that you are looking at Israel as a monolithic entity rather than being made up of people.

... says the guy who wrote this:

I think it is pretty abhorrent to base a country around a religion or ethnicity. I realize Israel isn't the only nation to to this, but that doesn't make it right.

I think a lot of the problems could be solved if Palestine and Israel were incorporated with Palestinians being allowed to vote. Allow a Condorcet method to be used for parliament to elect the Prime Minister and you'll ensure that you won't have radicals dictating policy.

The result would be ethnic cleansing.

First election, the terrorists get power and carry out their long-stated objectives--the extirpation of the Jews.

Also you just handed a few hundred nuclear weapons to the terrorists, if we are lucky Russia blows them off the map before the terrorists can use those bombs.

Palestinians are people, too, Loren. They're not Borg. They don't share a hive-mind. They don't all support the same political party or espouse the same social philosophy. Heck, they don't even share a single religion, much less the same degree of religious fervor.

The Palestinians are as likely to elect an entire slate of like-minded Islamist terrorists and take over the Knesset as Ammon Bundy is to rally a militia strong enough to topple the US government.

 

[Will Wiley]

Mostly rocks.

And the elephant has nukes and a powerful modern military.

Paid for by the US taxpayer.

The problem is that you are looking at Israel as a monolithic entity rather than being made up of people.

So to ask the question again. How many Palestinians do you know?
Have you ever met a Palestinian?

 

[untermensche]

Mostly rocks.

And the elephant has nukes and a powerful modern military.

Paid for by the US taxpayer.

The problem is that you are looking at Israel as a monolithic entity rather than being made up of people. (Does that mean you don't consider the Jews people? You don't make that mistake with the Palestinians.) While the Palestinians can't destroy Israel they can kill Israelis--and a government that wants to remain in power can't just sit back and allow the attacks.

These days the average Israeli polls more aggressive than the Israeli government's actions.

You miss the most important part of the story.

The elephant has it's foot on the neck of the mouse and has for some time.

Of course the mouse is resisting.

But all the mouse wants is for the foot to be removed.

And that is the essential first step towards peace.

 

[untermensche]

The problem is that you are looking at Israel as a monolithic entity rather than being made up of people.

So to ask the question again. How many Palestinians do you know?
Have you ever met a Palestinian?

But he knows they are all bad, because of the Charter of Hamas. Something even most members of Hamas had nothing to do with and don't care about at all.

Not monolithic thinking at all.

 

[Crazy Eddie]

The elephant says he'd love to take his foot from the neck of the mouse.

But I'm afraid you will kill me if I let go, says the elephant.

Insane.

You're forgetting the mouse has a gun.

Yeah, a little mouse-sized gun that the elephant finds really annoying when he shoots it.

I'm not even going to split hairs here: we KNOW you assume that all Palestinians are terrorists, that every single one of them is indoctrinated to such rabid antisemitism and hatred that even their children go to bed every night dreaming about how nice it would be to finally get to murder a Jew. We know that even the most timid and bend-over-backwards reasonable Palestinian leaders are, in your mind, scheming warmongers who are not to be trusted under any circumstances. Trying to convince you that Palestinians can live in peace with Jews would be like trying to convince Derec that a black female college student may be telling the truth about being raped by a police officer. It's just not a concept you are psychologically capable of grasping.

FOR EVERYONE ELSE, however, it's pretty clear the ways this could work, and it's equally clear all the ways it could fail. It's not like it's ever been a question of HOW to bring about peace -- not genocide, not the destruction of one side or the other, but actual peaceful coexistence between the two -- it's only been a question of who is willing to make the sacrifices necessary to bring it about. There are things the Israelis need to do for this to be possible; they refuse to do most (if not all) of them. There are things the Palestinians need to do to make this possible; they have done most of them.

At this point, the only prospect for "suicide" would be the Palestinians continuing to cooperate with Israel and getting absolutely nothing in return.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

The problem is that you are looking at Israel as a monolithic entity rather than being made up of people.

... says the guy who wrote this:

I think it is pretty abhorrent to base a country around a religion or ethnicity. I realize Israel isn't the only nation to to this, but that doesn't make it right.

I think a lot of the problems could be solved if Palestine and Israel were incorporated with Palestinians being allowed to vote. Allow a Condorcet method to be used for parliament to elect the Prime Minister and you'll ensure that you won't have radicals dictating policy.

The result would be ethnic cleansing.

First election, the terrorists get power and carry out their long-stated objectives--the extirpation of the Jews.

Also you just handed a few hundred nuclear weapons to the terrorists, if we are lucky Russia blows them off the map before the terrorists can use those bombs.

Palestinians are people, too, Loren. They're not Borg. They don't share a hive-mind. They don't all support the same political party or espouse the same social philosophy. Heck, they don't even share a single religion, much less the same degree of religious fervor.

The Palestinians are as likely to elect an entire slate of like-minded Islamist terrorists and take over the Knesset as Ammon Bundy is to rally a militia strong enough to topple the US government.

At this point there are only two Palestinian parties, both of which are terrorist. Sure, in time other parties would arise if they were allowed to (the Palestinian record on holding elections is very bad) but a third party isn't going to show up and take the vote in the first election.

- - - Updated - - -

The problem is that you are looking at Israel as a monolithic entity rather than being made up of people. (Does that mean you don't consider the Jews people? You don't make that mistake with the Palestinians.) While the Palestinians can't destroy Israel they can kill Israelis--and a government that wants to remain in power can't just sit back and allow the attacks.

These days the average Israeli polls more aggressive than the Israeli government's actions.

You miss the most important part of the story.

The elephant has it's foot on the neck of the mouse and has for some time.

Of course the mouse is resisting.

But all the mouse wants is for the foot to be removed.

And that is the essential first step towards peace.

The foot is there because the mouse was attacking.

And the mouse wants the elephant dead, not merely the foot removed. They've said so many, many times.