Lisa’s bigotry aside, this is not the right argument. Hamas’ side includes horrific attacks on Israeli civilians, the murder, torture and incarceration of their own people in order to squash dissent. Hamas has a long history of this. They can’t be legitimized.
We've legitimized worse governments, even propped them up. The problem is, Hamas would probably win an election pretty easily. While Fatah was sucking up to Israel and stealing aid provided by the west hand over fist, Hamas was providing social services and support. The last legitimate election in the Palestinian territories was in 2006, which Hamas won easily.
What American’s need to be allowed to hear are honest appeals to end this war, something that could have been done by now, with hostages released, if Netanyahu hadn’t needed a forever war for his political survival and a far-right extremist religious coalition intent on exterminating or expelling the inhabitants of Gaza and settling it with their Zionist settlers in a form of “manifest destiny”.
Given the stranglehold that AIPAC has on both political parties, that is fairly unlikely.
Ya, I don’t get the point of her comparison either, it is one she uses often. False moral equivalence.
Maybe she really liked those pancakes?
That’s a bit complicated. Israeli’s are a mix of indiginous Jews and Jews who have immigrated over generations. They’ve established their nation, they are Israeli’s, this their land too. Likewise, Palestinians aren’t some pure indiginous ethnic group but a composite of native people, including the Bedouin, and others who immigrated from nearby areas such as Egypt, for work.
I'm not sure I buy that. Very few Jews lived in Palestine before the British took it over from the Ottomans. Most of them are European settlers. Name any prominent Israeli politician since 1948; you will find someone who was either born in Europe or whose parents were.
And here's the problem: Israel is a colonial state, probably the last one. What they practice is a form of apartheid, because if they were an egalitarian state, there wouldn't be an Israel.
How are you going divide everyone up and where are you going to send them? And…why is this demand not being made of other countries with multiple ethnic immigrant groups?
Well, to start with, those other countries aren't being subsidized by the US Taxpayer the way Israel is.
Strongly disagree. There wasn’t an initial “theft of Palestinian land”. There was the messy legacy of colonial empires and various nationalist groups vying for the same bit of land. Ultimately, Israel fought for and won its state along with the other Arab countries created through the dissolution of the mandate. Borders were never settled or agreed upon and the Palestinians were both screwed and screwed themselves.
Oh, I agree the Palestinians screwed themselves by trusting the British. They and every other Arab nation should have heeded the Sultan's call for Jihad in 1914. Instead, they believe the British when they told them they'd get their own countries, only to have the Brits turn around and try to dump Europe's Jews into the place (colonialism by proxy).
The only solutions that would be just imo…would be either two states or a semi-autonomous region under Israeli sovereignty with full Israeli citizenship rights.
The problem with any single state solution is that there are more Palestinians than Israelis. (If you count the occupied territories, those living in Israel proper, and refugees living outside Palestine).
That leaves a two-state option, but that's equally unacceptable to the Palestinians because it would mean accepting the theft (and yes, it was theft) of their land to start with.
Lisa considers dissent to be anti-semitism. In her view, that is sufficient reason to secretly cancel visas, kidnap people off the streets and throw them in prison. No crimes committed, no access to lawyers or family. Disappeared right here in America.
Yes, that is pretty horrible. "It's okay when we do it" is never a good look.