Speaking of Israel...

[Hooahguy]

Well, if you want to marry out, I invite you to consider why the Jewish community has a specific word for non-Jewish women.

Also a word for non-Jewish men. Basically all non-Jews. Were pretty xenophobic Id say.

Death toll is absurd - this is like Lebanon all over again. As soon as one of Israel's neighbours shows any signs of progress they flatten them.

Israel is not only the focus for all Islamists in the region, it actively suppresses any positive development.

What do you mean by "progress"?

[Idaho]

Meanwhile the Palestinian death toll reaches 348 with 2700 injured. Many women and children. So do you think it's unreasonable for the families of those dead to cheer the news of 13 dead Israeli soldiers?
http://www.theguardian.com/world/201...li-bombardment

[Hooahguy]

I thought it was past 425 now?

Either way, the Palestinians will cheer the deaths of the Israelis and the Israelis will cheer the deaths of the Palestinians. And the cycle continues.

[x-dANGEr]

This thread is so lovely. Too many people on their high pedestals. I guess it sounds too cool to be all wise and smart about people dying else where.. they're just animals killing each other, at the end of the day. Never mind you could very well be in these people's shoes, if it weren't for your "lucky" place or time of birth.

I particularly enjoy the "only possible solution" suggested by one of the members.

In short, get real. 10 is not the same as 1, no matter how you spin it. You can't just take things from people, that's called stealing, and if you do, you better expect they won't be happy about it, and never will be. Kill them? Well if this was a few hundred years ago that would probably slip just fine [think Amerika?], but no, your civility denies that doesn't it? Unless stealing things is fine, or killing people is fine if they're not fine with you stealing their possessions.

Keep going though, I'm feeling enlightened and intellectually bettered, by the post.

[Greyblades]

Interesting that you decry people for thier high pedestels while building your own even higher.

[Philippus Flavius Homovallumus]

This thread is so lovely. Too many people on their high pedestals. I guess it sounds too cool to be all wise and smart about people dying else where.. they're just animals killing each other, at the end of the day. Never mind you could very well be in these people's shoes, if it weren't for your "lucky" place or time of birth.

I particularly enjoy the "only possible solution" suggested by one of the members.

In short, get real. 10 is not the same as 1, no matter how you spin it. You can't just take things from people, that's called stealing, and if you do, you better expect they won't be happy about it, and never will be. Kill them? Well if this was a few hundred years ago that would probably slip just fine [think Amerika?], but no, your civility denies that doesn't it? Unless stealing things is fine, or killing people is fine if they're not fine with you stealing their possessions.

Keep going though, I'm feeling enlightened and intellectually bettered, by the post.

War is stupid - I don't think anyone here is defending the utter foolishness that led to this situation - and I don't think even frags is defending the wholesale slaughter going on right now.

Maybe you should, you know, read​ some of these posts?

[Papewaio]

So we are approaching/past the point where more civilians have died then in the Malaysian Airliner.

[Seamus Fermanagh]

[HOPPING ON PEDASTAL] Could we please stop reporting deaths as though they were ball-scores? I grew up with that in the '60s. It was silly at best and vile at worst then...and hasn't improved. [/PEDASTAL]

[drone]

I particularly enjoy the "only possible solution" suggested by one of the members.

Yeah, someone reads my posts!

The only way to stop the incessant fighting over this particular patch of desert (as seen in the excellent "This Land Is Mine" vid) is to make the land uninhabitable. Neither side wants peace, so to replace the constant war/low level terrorism endless cycle, there are two options:

• Complete genocide
• Denial of territory

I'm open to others if you have them.

[x-dANGEr]

I don't understand how you treat the two parties as equal. There are two aspects where I find this flawed.

First, at root, to me, this is a problem of legitimacy. Some people legitimately own all those lands, and have owned it for a very long time. Suddenly, others took over it, colonized it, and have been there de facto for the last what 90 years? Do you truly believe they both have equal right to the lands in dispute?

This isn't even a matter of politics to me. Say an old man owned half of Haifa, and was forcefully expelled from Haifa, but still has all the legal documents which prove he owns half of Haifa. Isn't it his right then to want his land back? What say does anyone in the world have to "rightfully" take over his land?

Second, does proportion even matter at all? For example, is it sound to paint all people who kill with the same color without looking into the details? I think doing that is a very superficial way of weighing things, it reflects absence of reality and too much book-reading. The devil is in the detail.

What's also truly disturbing is the hypocrisy the civilized modern world shows when dealing with this crisis in comparison to others. What happened, I don't get it.. How did I miss the world-wide convention on founding a country in some innocent people's land, expelling the original people, and then basing that country on a strictly racist hierarchy, and turning a blind eye to whatever evil shit that country does from then on?

Also, let's stop kidding ourselves. The country in question probably has the most allies in the region, contrary to the popular stigma, which goes "oh they're backed against the wall etc., poor them."

Excuse my deficiency of expression. My last post was unfair to most of the posters here, but then I really didn't address most of them with it. Sorry about that misunderstanding.

[Pannonian]

I don't understand how you treat the two parties as equal. There are two aspects where I find this flawed.

First, at root, to me, this is a problem of legitimacy. Some people legitimately own all those lands, and have owned it for a very long time. Suddenly, others took over it, colonized it, and have been there de facto for the last what 90 years? Do you truly believe they both have equal right to the lands in dispute?

This isn't even a matter of politics to me. Say an old man owned half of Haifa, and was forcefully expelled from Haifa, but still has all the legal documents which prove he owns half of Haifa. Isn't it his right then to want his land back? What say does anyone in the world have to "rightfully" take over his land?

Second, does proportion even matter at all? For example, is it sound to paint all people who kill with the same color without looking into the details? I think doing that is a very superficial way of weighing things, it reflects absence of reality and too much book-reading. The devil is in the detail.

What's also truly disturbing is the hypocrisy the civilized modern world shows when dealing with this crisis in comparison to others. What happened, I don't get it.. How did I miss the world-wide convention on founding a country in some innocent people's land, expelling the original people, and then basing that country on a strictly racist hierarchy, and turning a blind eye to whatever evil shit that country does from then on?

Also, let's stop kidding ourselves. The country in question probably has the most allies in the region, contrary to the popular stigma, which goes "oh they're backed against the wall etc., poor them."

Excuse my deficiency of expression. My last post was unfair to most of the posters here, but then I really didn't address most of them with it. Sorry about that misunderstanding.

Some of us have an even less hypocritical and less high pedestalled position than yourself. You complain about taking stuff from people and you call it stealing. Fair enough, but then what's your position on taking stuff back from the Israelis in order to restore it to the Palestinians? At what stage does taking and giving become righteous and principled in your eyes? Who decides what to give and what to take, and who enforces it to your satisfaction? If you're not just riding a high horse, but have a practical position, please answer these questions.

As for me, I care not who has what nor who kills whom. They're not me and mine, what they do doesn't affect me. I only wish there was an even lesser chance of what they do affecting me. I put forward a position earlier considering international law, but only as an academic point since, as I said, I care not enough to enforce it. If you want us to take a position of principle, explain why we should care enough to do so.

Just so you can have a point of reference and something to accuse me of, I'm a Brit, so you can drag up all the stuff about us illegally giving the Jews what wasn't ours to give. And you know what? I don't care that we did. I didn't do it, nor anyone in my generation. It's long past the stage where it's in our power to do anything about it, and since we can't do anything about it, why should we be bothered? The question is, what's in it for us now that we should back one side or the other? I don't think Israel offers anything that we don't already have, and Palestine offers even less. And if anyone tries the guilt argument on us, that's just an argument for us to care even less. We've done worse elsewhere, and if we can't be bothered to feel guilty about them, there's even less chance that we can be bothered to feel guilty about a patch of sand where everyone hates us anyway.

[lars573]

I don't understand how you treat the two parties as equal. There are two aspects where I find this flawed.

First, at root, to me, this is a problem of legitimacy. Some people legitimately own all those lands, and have owned it for a very long time. Suddenly, others took over it, colonized it, and have been there de facto for the last what 90 years? Do you truly believe they both have equal right to the lands in dispute?

This isn't even a matter of politics to me. Say an old man owned half of Haifa, and was forcefully expelled from Haifa, but still has all the legal documents which prove he owns half of Haifa. Isn't it his right then to want his land back? What say does anyone in the world have to "rightfully" take over his land?

The Arabs who owned (or more properly perpetually leased from the sublime porte) the land only really did so since 1858 or 1873 (when the Ottoman empire enacted a series of land reforms). Before that land was held collectively by a village in a very medieval sense of by custom rather than legality. Also don't forget that old chestnut, possession in 9/10th's of the law. So whom ever has it now has more right.

Who has the right? The legitimate government that controls Haifa, namely Israel. And Israel has passed 4 laws (The Absentees’ Property Law, 5710- 1950, Land Acquisition (Validation of Acts and Compensation) Law, 5713-1953, The Absentees’ Property (Amendment No.3) (Release and Use of Endowment Property) Law, 5725-1965, The Absentees’ Property (Compensation) Law, 5733-1973 ) saying that any Arab who abandoned his land (whether by their own choice or a gun to their heads), left any claims behind with it. Save for some sort of financial compensation, once a final peace deal is reached. So realistically his papers would be better used wiping his ass.

And let's be real here. For every Arab who fled Mandatory Palestine in 1948, a Jew left his home in North Africa or the Arab country. Guess where they ended up?

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

Israel

[Don Corleone]

First, at root, to me, this is a problem of legitimacy. Some people legitimately own all those lands, and have owned it for a very long time. Suddenly, others took over it, colonized it, and have been there de facto for the last what 90 years? Do you truly believe they both have equal right to the lands in dispute?

I'm very sympathetic to the plight of the Palestinians, more so than I ever used to be. However, while I agree with you that the root issue here is legitimacy (as it applies to land ownership by a political body, sovereignty), I disagree with your supposition that one side has it and the other doesn't. We can trace who took what from whom all the way back to our pre-historic days.

I suppose before we can discuss who has legitimate claim to ownership, we have to define legitimacy and sovereignty. From whence do the rights come? How are they established? Are they transferrable? If I buy a property in good faith, and then I sell my property to a buyer, yet down the road it is revealed that my deed to the property had another claimant and my deed was in dispute... what then?

The more I think about this, the more I'm coming to believe that Chief Seattle may have been correct... You cannot "own" land, the Earth does not belong to man, man belongs to the Earth.