Replies to post #424823 on Tornado Alley (PROG)

[sortagreen]

"Final solution? Bet you thought that was clever."

Well yeah... Yeah I did, but it does cut pretty close to the bone, doesn't it?

Congresswoman Tlaib has stated that Israel cannot call itself a progressive democracy while it denies basic rights to millions of people under it's rule. I can't help but agree with her. It may hurt, but it's hardly anti-Semitic.

You want to know where I get my numbers? Here is a sketch of the humanity in the occupied Palestinian territories.

The OPT consists of the West Bank (including East Jerusalem) and Gaza. Some 4.5 million Palestinians live in the OPT (2.7 million in the West Bank and 1.8 million in Gaza). The fulfilment of a two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict would see the creation of a sovereign and unified Palestinian state on this area, with East Jerusalem as its capital, based on the pre-June 1967 lines (the borders that existed prior to Israel's occupation of the West Bank and Gaza in June 1967).

https://ecfr.eu/special/mapping_palestinian_politics/opt/

Amnesty International puts it like this.

For the last 50 years, Israel has been forcing thousands of Palestinians off their land, occupying and illegally using it to create settlements that exclusively house Jewish Israeli settlers.

Entire Palestinian communities have been displaced by these settlements. Their homes and livelihoods have been destroyed, they’ve had restrictions enforced on their movement, access to their own water, land and other natural resources. The communities have also been violently attacked by the Israeli military and settlers.

https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/campaigns/2017/06/israel-occupation-50-years-of-dispossession/#:~:text=There%20are%20currently%20about%207%2C000,of%20Palestinian%20land%20east%20of

Israel claims the land, the hilltops, the water, the borders and the very bodies of the human beings within them. And apparently, not only aren't they citizens... you can't even acknowledge that they're people. But they are, and if you add them to the ~25% Arab population in Israel proper, then you come up with pretty much half the population being Palestinian.

However... if Israel is claiming dominion over the land, and the people therein don't have any civil or political rights... and God forbid anyone call that apartheid ( Give me a better word then. You should note that even within Israel proper, Israel practices a policy of official discrimination against its Palestinian citizens. Israel: Discriminatory Land Policies Hem in Palestinians https://www.hrw.org/news/2020/05/12/israel-discriminatory-land-policies-hem-palestinians) Given this, what part of my final solution comment galls you the most? The fact that Israel hasn't gotten there yet?

No? OK then... What is your "plan"? I know Avigdor Lieberman and the late Rabbi Meir Kahane had a few ideas. But what are yours?

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"And the final thing, as I wrote in response to our moderator: Jordan annexed the West Bank in 1948. Where were the cries then for a two state solution and why were there no Palestinians then"

Says who? You mean they didn't use the term? Tibetans don't speak of a two state solution either. I have it on good authority that Palestinians think of themselves as Palestinians. They weren't happy under the Ottomans and they may not have been happy under Jordanians, but they weren't never abused to anywhere near the extent they are today.

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Also, you are making no effort to explain why Jews in Paris get attacked because of something Israel does, if there is truly anti-Zionism that's not anti-Jewish.

Jews face bigotry and discrimination. We have for a thousand years, though largely it's been at the hands of Christians. The last I heard, "pogrom" is not an Arab word, or even a concept in their culture. Radicals like Hamas and ISIS do exist, they're reactionary movements though, and they're recent and their numbers are pretty low. Oddly enough, bombing city blocks full of ordinary people hasn't helped to sway anyone on your side on the issue. ("Mowing the grass", I believe that's called, no?)

A friend of mine who "traveled" extensively in Iraq found that not only did Shia and Sunnis live side by side, but there were many synagogues as well. There are still synagogues in downtown Tehran. Although the community is shrinking, it's not from anti-Semitism. In general Muslims don't hate Jews.

Neither Rashida Tlaib nor her 85 year-old grandmother in her little village outside Jerusalem (remember where the conversation began) are responsible for attacks on Jews in Paris. Nor am I.

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Lastly, many Jewish people of good conscience are proponents of the BDS movement. (Ben and Jerry are currently suing Unilever to stop selling their products in the occupied territories) White people supported the boycott of South Africa.

White nationalists like the Klan and similar hate groups use the term "race traitor" for white people who don't subscribe to their ideology.

Do you have any idea how close to that you sound when you call me an anti-Semite?