well that escalated quickly! Business as usual or the tip of the iceberg?

From personal experience, no, I don't think he reads people's posts. From his replies, I can only assume he quickly skims and then writes out what he thinks people say and responds to that.

States don't have any rights. Their people do.

The demand that Palestinians acknowledge Israels "right to exist" is a sinister attempt to get them to legitimise their own dispossession.

And the reverse question is never asked.

This.

For the sake of @Demiurge who hates actually reading what people say, I'll repeat what I had said multiple times in this thread now:

Israel has a right to defend itself.

Hamas are terrorists.

However when many in the Israeli government actively and openly oppose the mere concept of Palestinian statehood, it is absurd at best and more likely maliciously disingenuous to attribute all their actions as being purely reactionary.

There are other more creative solutions that could be pursued - federalism, joint authority and so forth. But the fact that Israel has now made (2) impossible makes the prospect of (1) more likely, and their refusal to countenance it makes their policy of apartheid more explicit. They are artificially maintaining a Jewish majority in their territories by systematically denying civil rights to a large minority of the people who live there.

Ultimately the prime mover here has got to be the United States. They provide economic and diplomatic cover for everything that Israel does. When they decide that the status quo must change, it will.

This is ironic, considering I stated several times that the government is clearly using this for political means, and never once indicated it was purely reactionary, and that both sides are full of bad actors and share the burden of the blame.

You might want to sharpen your reading skills there a bit too, Bailey.

And if there were a bunch of far right yahoos in this thread saying Palestine is fully in the wrong and deserved what they got, I'd be counterbalancing them too.

Because for the 4th or 5th time, both sides need to want peace, and both sides clearly don't.

Again, the UN and international system disagree, and while this may be your personal philosophy it is not at all the system that is in place now, nor the philosophy that's guided international relations since the formation of the UN.

There's nothing sinister about requesting another party commit to peace. The inference is ludicrous.

And yes, the reverse question has been a matter of long standing international diplomacy. You might have heard of the Oslo accords and the two state solution.

Everything about this post is a matter of personal world view, not a matter of historical fact.

I think both Palestine and Israel have a right to exist.

Alas, it's never going to happen. Because Jerusalem.

Well, Bibi got his wish, the Likud is going to be in the next government coalition. The new government needed the Arab block, and that's been rendered untenable with the current crisis.

https://www.timesofisrael.com/liveb...medium=website&utm_content=link&ICID=ref_fark

I find this "right to exist" stuff bizarre. Does Prussia or Czechoslovakia - or Kurdistan - have a right to exist? What affords a state this right?

Do the Palestinians have a right to a safe place to call home? Yes.

Do the Israelis have a right to a safe place to call home? Yes.

"Right to exist" is just an easy way to express a complicated concept.

Anyway... aren't you Irish? You of all people should grasp the concept of having a safe place to call home.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Use_of_child_suicide_bombers_by_Palestinian_militant_groups

Yeah, that sucks, doesn't it.

Yes, liberal Oldfella, it does suck. That doesn't change what I posted, though, and that the systemic oppression Palestinian children face every day by the Israeli Defense Force is an abuse of human rights, one the US supports.

It's not remotely the same thing. A state is a very particular institution, with a government, courts, a police force and so forth. It isn't reducible to "a safe place to call home" - which as I said upthread, is a right that might be afforded to people, not to an institution.

And since you mention it, my living in the midst of an ethno-nationalist dispute makes me sensitive to the stupidity of imposing the absolutist concept of the nation state system where there are competing claims to a piece of territory.

No child suicide bombers, no spot checks of kids.

And the use of child suicide bomber and child armed combatants period by Palestinians has been condemned by far right organizations such as the UN Human Rights Council, Amnesty International, and Human Rights Watch.

Umm Nidal, who sent three of her sons, including one 17-year-old, on suicide attacks, said "I love my children, but as Muslims we pressure ourselves and sacrifice our emotions for the interest of the homeland. The greater interest takes precedence to the personal interest." She was later elected to the Palestinian legislature on the Hamas ticket.

Seems pretty oppressive to me.

Okay, Michael Collins.

Not a fan.

Like any other right - the concentrated will of enough people. No right exists other than those we demand and can enforce, period.

Within that context, it's explicitly part of the UN's charter, especially in context of the right to self-determination.

So Prussia had the right to exist - right up until they determined they wanted to be part of a larger German state. Czechoslovakia determined they wished to be the Czech republic and Slovakia. Kurdistan has never gained state status within the context of UN requirements. As you say, a special condition dependent on several other factors, and so is not protected in this manner. Though their human rights should be.

And, of course, one possible definition of 'state' is the territory of a specific polity, so in that manner, yes, Borgs is correct in his assertion.

There is no other homeland for the Jewish people.

There are 22 Arab majority countries, and 50 Muslim majority countries.

The Onion rarely fucking misses, and they nailed it here, too.

By that rationale, no right can ever be violated, and rights have no moral content. Fuck that.

You're very confused, and continuing to conflate people with their institutions. Until you make that distinction clearly you will be unable to address this point.

Of course rights can be violated. Where'd you ever get that idea? But the natural rights of man are all man made institutions, and always have been, from the beginning. The first caveman didn't bock the first cavewoman over the head with a rock and have his way with her and then think, oh, no, I'm violating her natural rights. It was an evolution of philosophical and legal systems, and quite a few of them had to be enforced at the end of a sword or barrel of a gun.

One of us is.

It's pretty obvious why this is happening, and it all has to do with institutional goals, much less so individuals. Both sides have adopted more violent and extremist governments.

It's hard to understand from an individualistic framework how a Palestinian mother can send off her children as suicide bombers, or why they'd agree to go.

So yes, it's wrong of Israel to indiscriminately target areas without concern for civilians, which they seemed to jump to pretty quickly after the initial reports of not doing so.

Just like it's wrong for Hamas to fire over a thousand rockets indiscriminately. Both sides clearly have horrendous intentions.

But that's because institutions are involved, and that almost always overcomes the intentions of individuals.

Trying to strip away the motivation and method is to not understand the situation at all.

The UN does not exist to determine whether nation states have a right to exist. Not in it's charter at all. The UN can serve to assist in negotiations, to keep the peace, to aid with the humanitarian consequences, but it does not and should not act as a source of legal authority for determining the future of nation states.

The Palestinians see Israel as being an occupation, but crucially I would differ on this from you on this point by saying they're factually not wrong, it is an occupation and they do IMHO have the stronger moral case here.

That's not to say I agree with HAMAS's actions in resorting to violence but the idea of externally imposing a two nation solution is a tried and tested way to make such situations worse. We made this situation by placing the fledgling Israeli state in arguably the worst possible place available and doubling down at this point by actively supporting yet another partition is to disregard the lessons of history.

I'm not sure there is a correct course of action for us in the west to follow other than to be available as intermediaries but I am sure that the more actively we involve ourselves the less validity any "solution" will have. To blithely claim the two parties must agree to a co existence is to repeat the same naivety that we showed in India. Any solution must come from the belligerents themselves in order to be acceptable and meaningful and it may look very different indeed to anything we imagine on their behalf.

To quote River Tam, "we meddle. People don't like to be meddled with. We tell them what to do, what to think. Don't run, don't walk. We're in their homes and in their heads and we haven't the right. We're meddlesome.”

Eh, if you believe all that stuff about the Kingdom of David, the Israelis were technically there first.

Anyway... a lot of human history, unfortunately, is all about who was where first and who took what from whom. North Americans are constantly guilt-tripped about our ancestors' abhorrent treatment of First Nations, but there's plenty of archeological evidence to suggest that the First Nations were not, in fact, first.

You speak out of both sides of your mouth. You pretend to be on the both sides are bad, like faux news, but then you pile on the palestinians while excusing zionist genocide. If you are going to say both sides are bad you should STFU before you expose you really do not feel that way when you want to excuse the colonization and genocide of their people.

Stop playing the equality game when you are not. That is all. Oh and stop complaining when others point out your excusing genocide because you simply do not like palestinians.

I am alsoi still waiting for your solution to the problem. You do more bitching than a trumpista about the dems, and then you have no actual solution for the problem. If there is no solution then just quit your excuses for the Isrealis.

But like always with the zionist genocide supporters you lose your head and have a npissbaby fit. This is the same thing as always when speaking with zionist supporters.

The UN does not have the legal right to act as judge in these matters outside of its members agreements. The fact that the right to self-determination is in its charter does not mean it has the legal means to enforce its decisions. As I clearly stated it's not a world government, it is however the basis for much of the boundaries of customary international law.

But you can't argue that states don't have the right to exist if they have self-determination, and both the Montivedo conference which is considered customary international law and the UN report on the duties and rights of state clearly indicate this.

And, of course, the UN did agree to the partition of Palestine and the creation of the state of Israel, given that power by the controlling body at the time, the UK.

This was complicated by the Holocaust, and can't be separated from it. Indeed, the political capital to push for the reopening of Jewish immigration came from Truman, who was appalled that they were denying 100,000 holocaust survivors the right of resettlement in what the UN had already determined to be a viable Jewish state.

Why yes, you are one of several posters here who agree with the Palestinian point of view.

The Israeli point of view is that this is their ancestral homeland, the diaspora ended up in the planned extermination of their people, and they need the right to self-determination and the protection of a nation-state to ensure it never happens again.

So naturally the first thing that happened is every surrounding Arab nation tried to destroy them, then tried again, and the other partitioned polity has now elected a government whose stated purpose is, indeed, to destroy them.

So yes, I have some sympathy for their point of view. I do believe that the Jewish people should have one nation-state on the face of the Earth.

Force by external parties for Israel has never been used. That can't be said about external force organized for the destruction of Israel, and that is a historical fact. No external tanks rolled to create the state of Israel. Indeed, the Israelis had virtually no support at all in its foundation. And even then, external humanitarian aid was the primary source of the revenue of the Palestinian National Authority. Right up to the moment that it put into power a political party that was dedicated to the destruction of Israel.

Your viewpoint is very one sided if you are concerned about external groups trying to pressure the two sides into peace while ignoring the fact that many external groups have tried to help Palestine destroy Israel, not with monetary support but with active armies, tanks, missiles and bombs.

What do you think would have happened to the people of Israel in that case?

That's all we are doing, being available as intermediaries.

And there is absolutely no evidence that these two groups are on a path other than the ultimate destruction of one side or the other, and yes, that's horrific. It's been the same way for 75 years, and until both sides claim that the other has the right to exist, that won't change.

The purpose of Israel is to create a majority Jewish nation to provide safety. The Israelis will not accept anything else.

And the Palestinians not only won't accept Israel's existence, they actively attacked other polities that have.

The world of Leftforge.

It also permeates outside of Leftforge.

Frankly, I think she was too nice with these idiots. I'd have told the tweeters to go fuck themselves.