It seems to me that Ron Paul is the only with some common sense when it comes to foreign relationships!! Never heard him say that he hates any ethnicity.

Very weak for the hasbara to continue label everyone as a "Jew Hater" or "Anti Semitic" when they have no counter arguments. The sting from that barb is long gone. The rest of us just watch in amusement. Run along now.

Agree heartily that the only way out of this mess is for one state, embracing both populations to replace the curent Zionist monstrosity and call back the exiles. Otherwise, war and disaster loom.

A well-thought out argument on an internet comment section; talk about a diamond in the rough. I felt your solution was practical, ethically sound, and fiscally advantageous; I am glad we provide monetary support for Palestinian security, but wouldn't it be much better if such aid wasn't necessary because they had a functioning society in which to better their lives, build and expand industrial capacity, and learn to live in (as peaceful as realistically possible) coexistence with the Jewish population?

No one can doubt this will be a damn hard thing to accomplish. But as I once heard a fictitious person say, "Democracy wasn't built on ease and cheese." Although I would argue my home state of Wisconsin would seem to confirm the former and deny the influence of the latter.

Side Note: If only we had the Barack Obama from 2008 in office and not the mild-mannered referee who won't take a stand; maybe he would support the Palestinian bid in the Security Council. In my opinion, if we are willing to spend vast sums of money and expend American lives in support of democracy in Afghanistan, Iraq, and Libya (minus American casualties here, of course), then I don't believe we can justifiably support the repression of millions of people seeking the national self-determination and democracy that the UN Charter explicitly supports.

Redactd's spammed this anti-Israel crap on other articles too, and it needs a response.

First, Israel's settlements don't prevent the existence of a Palestinian state. What everyone seems to forget is that the Palestinian Authority has no functioning economy. The biggest employer there is the government itself, where they offer a wide range of edifying career options, like extortionist, drug dealer, suicide bomber, sniper, kidnapper, and explosives expert, among others. The Palestinian "government" run by terrorists in suits, uses almost none of the billions of dollars it gets from the US (our taxes!) and the EU on anything that a future state might find useful, like agriculture, education, manufacturing, or healthcare. The waste it building and upgrading an army"security forces" that is huge for their size, and that they cannot afford. Note that this is what they do with what's left after what they stash in their Swiss bank accounts. The Palestinians don't want a state. They've never wanted one. This bid for a state is only a ploy to get more support for their genocidal campaign against Israel.

The only other jobs, the only real sources of education, food, healthcare, etc exist in the very "colonized" settlements that the whole world is screaming for Israel to tear down. It is important to note that the standard of living for the average Palestinian was much higher before the Palestinian Authority was created; since then, Arafat, Abbas, and their terrorist cronies have let the infrastructure Israel built degrade and instead spent their money creating hate and terrorism.

First, Israel's extensive colonization of the territories it seized in the 1967 war has made the creation of a Palestinian state there impossible. Israel was offering nothing more than "a mini-state of cantons," as Palestinian Authority negotiators recently complained.

This leaves Israel in control of more than half of the West Bank and all of East Jerusalem. With the Israeli position largely unchallenged by the international community, the only route to a two-state settlement will be through pressure on the weaker Palestinian side.

The "historic Palestine" Redacted is talking about never existed. But if it had, it would not just include Israel, the West Bank, and Gaza, but also Jordan. Jordan was once 80% of the British Mandate of Palestine. It's populated mostly by Palestinians, it's Prime Ministers have been mostly Palestinian, and even its Queen is a Palestinian. Given that this was all promised to the Jews in the Balfour Declaration, it was Israel who got shortchanged in the deal, given that there are now supposed to be TWO states, both populated by Palestinians, and that's only if we consider Gaza and the West Bank to be one state, which, given that they're locked in a civil war, is questionable at best.

The idea of a Palestinian national identity, let alone a state, never existed prior to 1967. During the Ottoman rule over the area, what is now "Palestine" was Ottoman Syria, and the Arabs living there considered themselves Syrians. Indeed, they were, ironically enough, very suspicious when the British named the area Palestine. The word Palestine, you see, has traditionally been used to refer to the Jews, not the Arabs. It dates back to the Roman annexation of the area. They named it Palestine after the word Philistine, the traditional enemy of the Jews, to humiliate the latter. These Philistines were Greeks, not Arabs.

In 1948, Egypt, Jordan, Syria, Lebanon, and Iraq all attacked Israel with the intent to destroy it. But they never had any intention of creating a Palestinian state. One of the reasons that they failed was because while the Israelis were fighting for their state, the Arabs were squabbling over which of them would get what pieces of land. They wanted to divide it among themselves, not create a Palestinian state.

After the war, the West Bank was taken over by Jordan, and the Gaza strip by Egypt. There was no complaint that "Palestine" had disappeared from the map, from the Palestinians themselves or by other Arabs. If the Palestinians are their own distinct nation, then surely being ruled over by Egyptian and Jordanian Arabs unjust being ruled over by Israel? Even today, a Palestinian majority is ruled over by a Hashemite Arab monarch, but no one's whining about that, either. But there was no attempt by anyone to set up a Palestinian between 1948 and 1967. That is because there was no concept of a Palestinian identity yet. When the PLO was formed in 1964, Arafat specifically excluded the West Bank and Gaza from the areas he wanted to "liberate."

Note that Israel would not take over these areas until 1967. There was no "colonization" yet. Arafat didn't want to "liberate" the Palestinian Arabs living in the West Bank or Gaza under brutal Egyptian and Arab rule; he wanted to destroy Israel. Note that this is despite his admitting, in his own official biography, Arafat Terrorist or Peacemaker, that the Egyptians forced the Palestinians into refugee camps, shot them if they tried to leave, and refused to issue them passports or citizenship. When Israel took over the West Bank and Gaza in 1967, then Arafat CHANGED the PLO's charter to include the West Bank and Gaza as areas in need of liberation. Arafat clearly only cared about "liberating" land under Israeli administration (ie, destroying Israel.)

Neither Arafat, nor the Palestinians themselves, considered the Palestinians to be separate from other Arabs until 1967. This was even admitted by PLO leader Zahir Muhse’in in an interview with a Dutch newspaper. He said: “The Palestinian people does not exist. The creation of a Palestinian state is only a means for continuing our struggle against the state of Israel for our Arab unity. In reality today there is no difference between Jordanians, Palestinians, Syrians and Lebanese. Only for political and tactical reasons do we speak today about the existence of a Palestinian people, since Arab national interests demand that we posit the existence of a distinct ‘Palestinian people’ to oppose Zionism. For tactical reasons, Jordan, which is a sovereign state with defined borders, cannot raise claims to Haifa and Jaffa, while as a Palestinian, I can undoubtedly demand Haifa, Jaffa, Beer-Sheva and Jerusalem. However, the moment we reclaim our right to all of Palestine, we will not wait even a minute to unite Palestine and Jordan.”

Israel doesn't wish to preserve Israel's Jewish demography out of racism, but because if it doesn't, the Jews will become a minority in Israel. Given their long and painful history of being oppressed in the West and the Middle East, allowing Arab refugees who have been indoctrinated to hate them since childhood to return to the country and thus make the Arabs a majority, would result in the Jews being an oppressed minority yet again. Redacted mentions the Kosover repatriation after the Bosnian war. But after WWII ended, there were thousands of refugees all over Europe. They were all absorbed by the countries that they had fled to. After British India was split into India and Pakistan, all the refugees were absorbed by the two countries. What is often also ignored is that, in response to the creation of Israel, Jews who had been living there for centuries were driven out. They had nothing to do with Israel, but the Arabs took their anger out on them. Yet Israel didn't leave these Jews in refugee camps. They needed no international aid or legal representation. Despite the fact that these Jews traveled much farther than the Palestinian Arabs have, and had to painfully adjust, they did so, and their descendants are now productive, peaceful Israelis.

The Palestinian Arabs could easily be absorbed by the countries that they are currently refugees in. Jordan, especially is already populated by Palestinian Arabs, and is only a few miles away. The Arab leadership could use the money gained from the Jewish refugees stolen property to do this. However, only Jordan has even tried to give the Palestinians citizenship. The Arabs know that if they do, the refugee crisis disappears, and they have no propaganda tool to support their war against Israel. So they deliberately keep the Palestinian Arabs as refugees. This was admitted by none other than Mahmoud Abbas in the PLO's official journal: "The Arab armies entered Palestine to protect the Palestinians from the Zionist tyranny but, instead, they abandoned them, forced them to emigrate and to leave their homeland, and threw them into prisons similar to the ghettos in which the Jews used to live in Eastern Europe, as if we were condemned to change places with them: they moved out of their ghettos and we occupied similar ones." Clearly, the only ones who "herded" anyone anywhere, and inflicting "cruelty and misery" upon them are the Arab leaders. It is important to note that this is entirely the result of the Arab's war against Israel in 1948. If they had allowed Israel to exist peacefully, not only would there be no refugees on either side, there would be a Palestinian state alongside Israel today.

Note that as soon as Israel unilaterally pulled out of the Gaza strip in 2005, thus ending its "brutal occupation" the people elected Hamas, a genocidal terrorist organization whose charter calls for the destruction of Israel and the killing of its Jews. Hamas relentlessly fired rockets at Israel, and started a civil war with Fatah after purging the party from the Gaza strip, and forbidding opposing parties from holding demonstrations there. The reason Israel occupies the territories is because if it pulls out, the Palestinians will use the land as a base form which to attack Israel, just as Hamas is doing now. If the Palestinians want peace so bad, why not embrace the "land for peace" deal that worked with Egypt. It is because they don't want peace; they want Jewish genocide. Yet, Walt criticizes Israel for Operation Cast Lead, as well as the 2006 invasion of Lebanon, even though these were both responses to Arab jihad against Israel. His complaint about the attack on the Gaza flotilla too is unwarranted. Israel wanted the members of the flotilla to unload their "humanitarian" cargo in a secure port. This shouldn't have been a problem if they really were bringing supplies, but they refused, because they wanted to support Hamas' terrorist regime. The flotilla, incidentally, was sponsored by the IHH, a Turkish "charity" that supports Hamas. The "activists" were chanting "Remember Khaibar, Remember Khaibar oh Jews! The army of Muhammad will return!" As, Khaibar was a place in Arabia where Muhammad had the Jewish population massacred, these people were clearly not "peace activists." The Israeli commandos boarded, they were armed with paintball guns; their actual pistols were holstered due to international pressure. Yet, the "activists" attacked the commands first with iron poles and knives, and threw one commando overboard. It was only then that Israeli commandos retaliated. All of the issues that Walt raises are legitimate acts of self defense by Israel, our only real friend in the Middle East that shares our values much more than any of the totalitarian Arab "republics" that surround it.

Israel isn't an "exclusive state" and it wasn't created on "another people's territory." Israel gives the Arabs more rights and freedoms than they would enjoy in any Arab country. They can vote, serve in the Knesset, serve on Israel's courts, teach in Israel's schools and universities, and serve in the IDF. The Jews have been living in Israel continuously for 3,000 years. Jerusalem, it's land, and its Temple are integral to their identity, which is why, all over the diaspora, Jews ended their Passover Seder with the words "Bashanah haba'ah biyrushalayim," or "Next year in Jerusalem." They've repeatedly attempted to return, but the brutality of the regimes in question prevented them from doing so in numbers large enough to reestablish their state. The Arabs only arrived in the 7th century with the early Muslim armies. It is also important to note that though the land in question was populated by Arabs, it was very sparsely populated, with large stretches of land simply uninhabited, as Alphonse de Lamartine and Mark Tawin noted when they traveled there.

The two state solution certainly won't solve the problem because the terrorists who lead the Palestinian people don't want it solved. Thus, the terrorists must be neutralized by giving the people they lead a better life. The only viable solution would be for the Palestinian refugees to be resettled in the Arab states where they have taken refuge with the ones in the West Bank going to Jordan, and the ones on Gaza going to Egypt, both of which are only a few miles away, with a culture that is essentially no different than theirs. Everyone wins. Israel gets Judea and Samaria back, which they can settle to their heart's content, and gets secure borders. The Palestinians get citizenship and some freedom. Though it won't be much, it's certainly better than anything that they'd get in a Palestinian state, or in an Israel dominated by Arabs that would eventually degenerate into a dictatorship like all the Arab states around it. The terrorists would lose their rank and file, and their organizations would dissolve into nothing.

>> First, Israel's settlements don't prevent the existence of a Palestinian state.
Of course they do. They along with the Jewish only roads divide the West Bank into disconnected, non contiguous territories, hence preventing a Palestinian state.

>> What everyone seems to forget is that the Palestinian Authority has no functioning economy.
No one has forgotten that. Israel has destroyed whatever functioning economy existed. The apartheid Wall, check points etc. stop farmers getting to their orchards. Settlers routinely destroy and set fire to orchards and olive groves.

>> The biggest employer there is the government itself, where they offer a wide range of edifying career options, like extortionist, drug dealer, suicide bomber, sniper, kidnapper, and explosives expert, among others.
You are clearly confusing the PA with the Israeli government.

>> The waste it building and upgrading an army"security forces" that is huge for their size, and that they cannot afford.

There "security forces" are armed and trained by the US and the money is spent doing so as a condition of the aid they are given. Since Olso and later on, the Road Map, Israel and the Quartet demanded that the PA curtail violence. They succeeded.

>> Note that this is what they do with what's left after what they stash in their Swiss bank accounts.

Note that every Israeli leader since Rabin has been under investigation or charged with corruption.

>> It is important to note that the standard of living for the average Palestinian was much higher before the Palestinian Authority was created

Hillarious. The level of poverty in the West Bank (under Israeli control) is actually worse than in Gaza (under Hamas control). As for creating hate and terrorism, one does not need money to do so. Injustice, mass murder, human rights abuses, ethnic cleansing do that free of charge.

>> With the Israeli position largely unchallenged by the international community, the only route to a two-state settlement will be through pressure on the weaker Palestinian side.

Could you be any more dishonest!
14 of the 15 permanent UNSC members directly challenged Israel's position earlier this year. It was the US veto that prevented Israel being challenged.

>> But if it had, it would not just include Israel, the West Bank, and Gaza, but also Jordan. Jordan was once 80% of the British Mandate of Palestine.
Correction. Jordan was added to the British Mandate of Palestine after the fact, with the explicit provision that it was a separate entity.
>> It's populated mostly by Palestinians, it's Prime Ministers have been mostly Palestinian, and even its Queen is a Palestinian.
Thanks to Israel expelling Palestinians in 1948 and driving them into Jordan.

>> Given that this was all promised to the Jews in the Balfour Declaration, it was Israel who got shortchanged in the deal, given that there are now supposed to be TWO states, both populated by Palestinians, and that's only if we consider Gaza and the West Bank to be one state, which, given that they're locked in a civil war, is questionable at best.

This has been debunked countless times and anyone familiar with the Balfour Declaration and the British Mandate knows this to be false.

Jordan was never promised to the Jews in the Balfour Declaration.
Transjordan was part of the Arab OETA setup under Feisal according to the terms of the Sykes-Picot agreement. It was part of the territory lying to the East of the McMahon-Hussein line (Damascus, Homs, Hama, and Allepo) which was always included in the territory that Britain and France had pledged to recognize as Arab and independent.
Even the August 1919 Balfour memo from the peace conference (see the link in my comment above) mentions that the territory East of the Jordan river was not included in Palestine. He also mentions that the French interests in Syria, Mesopotamia, and Palestine were three separate territories. See also the “Aide-memoire in regard to the occupation of Syria, Palestine and Mesopotamia pending the decision in regard to Mandates, 13 September 1919? available in the FRUS and in the J. C. Hurewitz collection. Balfour was also present at the ‘Council of Four Conference Held in the Prime Minister’s Flat at 23 Rue Nitot, Paris, on Thursday, March 20, 1919 in which Lloyd George advised the French that the McMahon letters were a binding treaty obligation and that the League of Nations Mandate (i.e. the Balfour Declaration) could not be used to put aside the bargain with King Hussein. http://digicoll.library.wisc.edu/cgi-bin/FRUS/FRUS-idx?type=goto&id=FRUS.FRUS1919Parisv05&isize=M&submit=Go+to+page&page=1
So, Transjordan wasn't even part of Palestine during the San Remo Conference in April 1920. Article 25 had to be added to the British Mandate when the territory of Transjordan was added to the British Mandate as a result of the overthrow of the Faisal regime a few months after San Remo and an agreement was reached between Abdullah and Churchill during the Cairo Conference. On 21 March 1921, the Foreign and Colonial office legal advisers decided to introduce Article 25 into the Palestine Mandate. It was approved by Curzon on 31 March 1921, and the revised final draft of the mandate, including the territory of Transjordan (for the very first time), was forwarded to the League of Nations on 22 July 1922. See Aaron S. Klieman, “Foundations of British Policy In The Arab World: The Cairo Conference of 1921?, Johns Hopkins, 1970, ISBN 0-8018-1125-2, pages 228–234

>> The idea of a Palestinian national identity, let alone a state, never existed prior to 1967.
False again. Ben-Gurion explicitly Palestinian national identity in his dairies as early as 1914.

>> The word Palestine, you see, has traditionally been used to refer to the Jews, not the Arabs.
False. In 1920, everyone who lived in Palestine was referred to as Palestinian.

>> In 1948, Egypt, Jordan, Syria, Lebanon, and Iraq all attacked Israel with the intent to destroy it.
False.
The day after UNGAR was passed, Zionist forces began expelling Palestinians and by the time the 5 armies entered Palestine (not Israel), they had expelled 300,000 Palestinians.
On that day, Azzam is said to have declared:
"This will be a war of extermination and a momentous massacre which will be spoken of like the Mongolian massacres and the Crusades".[33][34] However, Joffe and Romirowsky report that this "cannot be confirmed from cited sources".[35] Benny Morris, who had previously quoted it in his books, refrained from using it in his book 1948 "after discovering that its pedigree is dubious".[36] Six days later, Azzam told reporters "We are fighting for an Arab Palestine. Whatever the outcome the Arabs will stick to their offer of equal citizenship for Jews in Arab Palestine and let them be as Jewish as they like. In areas where they predominate they will have complete autonomy."[37]
-- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abdul_Rahman_Hassan_Azzam#Arab_League:_1945-1952

So yes, the intention was indeed to create a Palestinian state.
After the war, the West Bank was taken over by Jordan, and the Gaza strip by Egypt.

>> There was no complaint that "Palestine" had disappeared from the map, from the Palestinians themselves or by other Arabs.

Jordan called attention to the fact that after the unification of the West Bank within Jordan's territory, Jordan concluded a considerable number of bilateral and multilateral treaties with other states (including the members of the Arab League). The application of those treaties extended to the entirety of Jordan including all of the West Bank: none of the other parties to those treaties made any reservation to the effect that their applicability to the West Bank was excluded. See Written Statement of the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan to the Internartional Court of Justice, para 2.21 pages 18-19 http://www.icj-cij.org/docket/files/131/1559.pdf

>> If the Palestinians are their own distinct nation, then surely being ruled over by Egyptian and Jordanian Arabs unjust being ruled over by Israel?
Jews were ruled over by other nations for thousands of years were they not, and don't they insist they are a distinct nation? Did the Jews living in Europe consider it unjust?

>> Even today, a Palestinian majority is ruled over by a Hashemite Arab monarch, but no one's whining about that, either.

You are clearly deluded and out of your mind. The Jordanian monarchy is despised and resented and perceived as US puppet.
>> When the PLO was formed in 1964, Arafat specifically excluded the West Bank and Gaza from the areas he wanted to "liberate."
False. Arafat explicitly stipulated that the West Bank and Gaza were to be part of Palestine.

>> Note that Israel would not take over these areas until 1967. There was no "colonization" yet.
Actually there was. The post 1948 borders had already taken a good deal of Palestinian land.

>> Neither Arafat, nor the Palestinians themselves, considered the Palestinians to be separate from other Arabs until 1967.

False and irrelevant. The issue is not identity so much as land ownership and land rights.

>> This was even admitted by PLO leader Zahir Muhse’in in an interview with a Dutch newspaper. He said: “The Palestinian people does not exist.
A blatant lie. Muhse’in clearly prefaced this statement with “In my opinion”.

>> In reality today there is no difference between Jordanians, Palestinians, Syrians and Lebanese.
Irrelevant. In reality today there is no difference between most Israelis and Americans.

>> Israel doesn't wish to preserve Israel's Jewish demography out of racism, but because if it doesn't, the Jews will become a minority in Israel.

Jews were always a minority in Palestine and only achieved an artificial majority by expelling 800,000 Palestinians n 1947 -1948. Israel committed as Benny Morris said, the original sin, so arguing that the refugees cannot be allowed to return because they bear a grudge is pathetic.

>> What is often also ignored is that, in response to the creation of Israel, Jews who had been living there for centuries were driven out. They had nothing to do with Israel, but the Arabs took their anger out on them.

This was debunked by Haaretz. The myth of Jewish refugees being driven from Arab lands was invented by The World Organization of Jews from Arab Countries (WOJAC), which was founded in the 1970s. Yaakov Meron, head of the Justice Ministry's Arab legal affairs department came up with the idea of Jewish refugees but it was overwhelmingly rejected by the Mizrahi Jewish community who insisted they migrated to Israel for Messina reasons.

>> The Palestinian Arabs could easily be absorbed by the countries that they are currently refugees in. Jordan, especially is already populated by Palestinian Arabs, and is only a few miles away.

Similarly, the US and Europe could easily absorb Israeli Jews, but that's hardly the point. In fact, many Israeli Jews hold multiple passports and many are applying for German Passports. A decade ago, Israel had to lobby the German government to restrict welfare benefits to Russian Jews arriving in Germany because so many Russian Jews were choosing Germany over Israel.
>> This was admitted by none other than Mahmoud Abbas in the PLO's official journal:

It's ironic that you should cite Abbas to make your argument, while ignoring that the very same quote debunks the myth that that Arab armies attacked Israel in 1948.

>>Note that as soon as Israel unilaterally pulled out of the Gaza strip in 2005, thus ending its "brutal occupation" the people elected Hamas, a genocidal terrorist organization whose charter calls for the destruction of Israel and the killing of its Jews.

Israel has already achieved this aim against Palestinians and the Likud Cahrter rejects the creation of a Palestinian state.

>> Hamas relentlessly fired rockets at Israel, and started a civil war with Fatah after purging the party from the Gaza strip, and forbidding opposing parties from holding demonstrations there.

False on both counts. This was debunked by Vanity Fair.
1.Fatah started a civil war under the orders of Washington
2.Israel have broken every ceasefire with Hamas

>> The reason Israel occupies the territories is because if it pulls out, the Palestinians will use the land as a base form which to attack Israel, just as Hamas is doing now.
The reason Israel occupies the territories is because as Ben Gurion said in a letter to his son in 1937, the Zionist dream has always been to “reclaim al of Palestine in it's entirety”.

>> If the Palestinians want peace so bad, why not embrace the "land for peace" deal that worked with Egypt.
They want their land back. Peace is meaningless without justice. Israel agreed to dismantle ALL settlements in the Sinai. Egypt would not have agreed to any of them remaining.
>> Yet, Walt criticizes Israel for Operation Cast Lead, as well as the 2006 invasion of Lebanon, even though these were both responses to Arab jihad against Israel.
The Winograd Commission concluded that Israel started the war with Lebanon. The capture of IDF soldiers for the sake of a prisoner exchange, is not a jihad.

Israel broke the ceasefire to start Cast Lead. Prior to that unprovoked attack by Israel, Hamas had not fired any rockets for 6 months. A Wikileaks memo revealed that Israel planned Cast Lead, not as a measure against rocket attacks, but because they were alarmed that Hamas were befitting poiltically from the ceasefire and starting a war was easier than explaining to the public why they didn't want to renew a ceasefire that was clearly working.
>> Israel wanted the members of the flotilla to unload their "humanitarian" cargo in a secure port.
False. Israel wanted to stop any ships reaching Gaza. There were no weapons on those ships and Israel knew it.
Israel had been banning innocuous items like childrens toys, spices and pasta and had proven they could not be trusted to allow basic foods and medicines into Gaza.

>> The "activists" were chanting "Remember Khaibar, Remember Khaibar oh Jews!
According to whom? Oh yeah, the lying IDF who stole all the videos and camera equipment and were exposed doctoring audio about Auschwitz.

>> The Israeli commandos boarded, they were armed with paintball guns; their actual pistols were holstered due to international pressure. Yet, the "activists" attacked the commands first with iron poles and knives, and threw one commando overboard.

Rubbish. The IDF shot rounds at the boat before boarding. They killed one passenger holding a camera before any of them even boarded.

None of this had anything to do with self defence. Not 2006 in Lebanon, not Cast Lead, not the attack on the Mavi Marmara.

Israel is a criminal apartheid state that is headed towards fascism. It had already achieved pariah status.

For years you have been banging on about Walt's thesis, and now that Israeli apologists liek Friedman and the US ambassador to Israel have vindicticated him, you are not man enough to admit you were wrong.

>> The Christian evangelicals support those doing the telling. AIPAC does the telling, but its success depends on large swathes of public support. So

False. The Christian evangelicals have their own agenda. So far, they and AIPAC have shared the same policy of promoting Israelis expasinism, but if AIPAC were to agree to a Palestinian state, the Christian evangelicals would turn on them.

"The Christian evangelicals have their own agenda. So far, they and AIPAC have shared the same policy of promoting Israelis expasinism, but if AIPAC were to agree to a Palestinian state, the Christian evangelicals would turn on them."

Right. As long as AIPAC's goals dovetail with these tens of millions of evangelicals, they have massive support, just as I said. When they diverge, AIPAC will have a much harder time of it. Steve tries to pooh-pooh this here just on his say-so, but even you (and truth be told, Steve in previous writings) admit the self-evident truth.

>> Right. As long as AIPAC's goals dovetail with these tens of millions of evangelicals, they have massive support, just as I said. When they diverge, AIPAC will have a much harder time of it.

But your argument was that the evangelicals are a passive grop that will folllow AIPAC unconditionally. But clearly they won't.

>> Steve tries to pooh-pooh this here just on his say-so, but even you (and truth be told, Steve in previous writings) admit the self-evident truth.

You have got yourself into a hole David and your digging even deeper. You believe you have a point, but your argument is a mess.

The Arab World is not dying. It is coming to life.

Other polls totally contradict The Hill's findings. See http://andrewsullivan.thedailybeast.com/2011/09/a-majority-for-a-palestinian-state.html

I tend to doubt 45% of the US supports voting 'yes' to Palestinian statehood right now, with only 36% against. Maybe if all the calls were placed to the Berkeley area code you'd see those numbers.

Your admonishment to beware of 'neutral' polls seems to be borne out.

You reference a poll, which surprise, surprise, supports your view. Then when I show you a poll that demonstrates the opposite, you immediately trash it.

You have no basis to challenge its methodology. You just don't like it.

Weak.

I only doubt it. People can draw their own conclusions. I have been wrong before, once or twice :-). It's only that it flies in the face of basically every other poll out there that has been published. Palestinians consistently poll very low in the US in all of the Gallup and other polls. Now all of a sudden a plurality supports voting them a state at the UN? The question was more than "Do the Palestinians deserve a state?", a general statement that I would answer 'yes' to. It is rather, "Should the US vote 'yes' in a General Assembly vote?", something I and I imagine a large majority of Americans would answer 'no' to.

Evidence for what I said:

http://www.gallup.com/poll/146408/americans-maintain-broad-support-israel.aspx

Where do sympathies lie -- Palestinians maxxed at 20% in 2007. The Hill poll doesn't ask this specifically, but did find 20% think the US is 'too supportive' of Israel.

Rasmussen poll from last week:

http://www.rasmussenreports.com/public_content/politics/current_events/israel_the_middle_east/26_support_elevated_status_of_palestine_38_say_it_will_hurt_israeli_peace_talks

26% of likely voters support elevated status for Palestinians. This is a far cry from the 45% the BBC poll found and closer to historic norms.

The public support for Israel found in The Hill poll is not surprising at all, this polls consistently and has over many years. What is surprising is how many voters say the issue is important to them. I would have guessed lower, but the other results found are consistent with other polls over time.

The US government says that it is committed to a two-state solution, so a poll of Americans showing that more people support the UN recognizing a Palestinian state than oppose it, frankly, is not surprising.

Now it is true that Palestinians poll badly in the US. I wonder why? Could it be the endless overreaching of the Palestine Lobby? Could it be the number of Palestinian-Americna politicians who campaign openly on how they peronally have a duty to protect Palestinians? Or could it be that Americans are turned off by the disproportionate number of Palestinian-American journalists who routinely conflate the interests of Palestine with America and accuse other Americans of being anti-Arab bigots if they don't kowtow to the Palestinian Lobby.

Really, it so infuriating when about 1/3 of new House Members ignore the problems of our country but somehow make time for all-expense paid trips to Palestine. And then they come back here and criticize our president for being insufficiently "Pro Palestine."

No wonder the Palestinians poll so badly. Americans hate it when foreigners interfere in our political process.

Americans do support the creation of a Palestinian state as the outcome of a peace treaty. Past Rasmussen polls show that too (read my linked article), and I don't see why we wouldn't support that. But the BBC poll doesn't ask this question, they ask about voting at the UN to create a Palestinian state now. Something is off with that poll. We see the numbers we would expect from the more general question on Palestinian statehood. The 26% that Rasmussen polls on a similar question is more in-line with what one would expect from the trends.

The US government says that it is committed to a two-state solution, so a poll of Americans showing that more people support the UN recognizing a Palestinian state than oppose it, frankly, is not surprising.

If you are looking to the US government as the reason for people's opinion, note that our government strongly opposes the Palestinians going to the UN and trying to achieve a state without negotiating, with the requisite concessions that would entail.

The US supports the two-state solution so long as the parameters are set by Israel and the United States. To that end, the Israelis accepted the Roadmap with 14 reservations. Condi demanded that Abbas accept it unaltered. Sounds fair, right?

The US also "opposes" settlements, but not enough to avoid vetoing a resolution condemning them. See February.

The US also opposes "unilateral actions" so long as they are taken by the Palestinians. If the Israelis demolish Palestinian homes, that merely merits "concern."

Abbas is going for broke here. He knows that exposing the US hypocrisy on this issue is necessary. The "peace process" is not only fraudulent, it's cruel. The Palestinians literally have built a security service that is designed to only protect Israelis. Despite all the settler violence against Palestinians, how many settlers have the Palestinian police arrested?

Zero.

What perfect symbolism.

I think you ought to look at the Comments section for Friedman's article. They do NOT suggest American support for the Israelis is as strong as you seem to believe.

"Historically, a majority of Americans have supported successive Democratic and Republican administrations' support for Israel. Such support will undoubtedly continue. However, there is a risk that such future support may be a mile wide; but only an inch deep. The significant domestic fiscal limitations upon United States economic power and resources have qualitatively rearranged the dynamics of the power and ability of Israel and the United States to play the decisive role they once enjoyed in the region. Sooner or later, the reality of this will impact and influence domestic politics in America."

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/clarence-b-jones/un-palestine-state-bid_b_952716.html

Furthermore, the Gallup poll you cited doesn't really tell us how important Israel is to most people. Previous polls have shown that as far as the importance of foreign states to Americans go, Israel ranks 7th or 8th.

You are citing one persons opinion about a hypothetical, and the Gallup poll is not meant to corroborate the main finding of the initial poll, but rather to show the consistency of similar findings over many polls. By the latter I am referring to the 26% Rasmussen finding that the US should support the Palestinians at the UN, 20% Gallup sympathy towards the Palestinians, and 20% The Hill who think that the US supports Israel too much. These polls seem to all indicate that there are 20%+ in the US who are pro-Palestinian/anti-Israel, and I don't find anything all that surprising about that.

As for the other finding in The Hill poll, that Americans do consider Israel an important issue, it's not a real shock that you choose to disbelieve it.

DAVID IN DC

Thsi poll shows that Americans favor Palestinian statehood bid, by 45 to 36%
http://www.globescan.com/news_archives/bbc2011_palestine/

So why have you choen to disbelieve it?

>> You are citing one persons opinion about a hypothetical, and the Gallup poll is not meant to corroborate the main finding of the initial poll, but rather to show the consistency of similar findings over many polls.

That's meaningless. The findings may be consistent but they do not verify the imoprtance of support for Israel.

Given the extent of Msulim villification, it's no surprise that Palestinians only have minial support, but that does not automatically mean that anomosity towards Palestinians is a pro Israeli position.

>> I tend to doubt 45% of the US supports voting 'yes' to Palestinian statehood right now, with only 36% against.

Why, because it kinda debunks your own polls?

>> Your admonishment to beware of 'neutral' polls seems to be borne out.

So ni other words, all polls are suspect, or just the inconvenient ones?

I wonder if he realizes how he is coming across. I used to read his comments seriously.
But it seems he sees the world through colored glasses.

But he sure can pen a descriptive narrative, whether you agree with his message or not.

>> Walt is now more of a cult leader than social observer.

He might be a cult leader, but his political obsrvations happen to be proven right time and time again.

>> He has taken his knee-jerk anti-Israel projection to new levels of derangement, and his lemmings are always there with a huzzah.

and you Israeli shills have taken pro Israeli knee-jerk reactions to an art form.

The sad fact is that for 6 years now, you shills have thrown everything you had at Watl and Meareshimer and tried to debunk their thesis and you have not made a dent.

Maybe you should stick to prose SKANDERBEG. Your talents clearly belong outside the realms of reality.

>> If there is a Jewish history in Israel, and you deny it, then you aren't interpreting it differently, you're ignoring facts.

The history of the region is often conflated with myth and religious fairy tales.

The Arab have not denied the existence of the Temple. It's existence is a historical fact. What is open to interpretation is the extent of Jewish presence in the region and it’s claim to the land. It is pathetic listening to you bemoan that Arabs trivialise the importance of the territory to Jews while you yourself have done nothing but argue that Palestinian identity is a recent invention.

You complain about Abbas denying Jewish history while denying Palestinian history. That makes you a hypocrite, and your obsession with the lives of only Israelis makes you an insufferable one.

>> The fact that terrorists can get around checkpoints doesn't mean that they should be removed.

Yes it does, because they are not working and are being used to simply make the lives of Palestinian unbearable. If 1,500 Palestinians can get into Israel every week and bypass the check points, then it's obviously very easy to do it already.

>> I'm talking about innocent Israelis being attacked by Palestinian terrorists.
You're simply being an insufferable hypocrite.

What about the innocent palestinians being attacked by settlers or the IDF? I guess that doesn't count.

In your mind, the Palestinians in Gaza deserve what they get for electing Hamas, but the Israeli population who has elected 2 terrorist leaders a number of war criminals, and now a right wing extremist coalition to office, is innocent.

The simple fact is that you think Jewish life is worth more than anyone else's and you can't understand why your repugnant logic is offnsive.

>> Whether Begin and Shamir were terrorists depends on your point of view, doesn't it?

Wow, that's priceless.

Your last half dozen posts have been punctuated with relentless references to terrorists and terrorism and now all of a sudden, when the same standards are applied to Israel. you've decided that the term is open to interpretation.

Do you expect anyone to take you seriously?

Never mind that both Begin and Shamir were regarded as terrorists not only by the British, but by the Israeli government at the time once they decided they had served their purpose. After all, the reason Ben-Gurion gave for disbaning these groups was that they were in fact, terrorists.

Of course, that was simpy window dressing. The Haganah and Palmach also carried out terrorist attacks, but they simply became the IDF.

>> I mean, the Irgun was fighting against the British. The King David Hotel bombing was in response to British attempts to repress the Jews during Operation Agatha.

The Irgun, like the Stern, Palmach and Haganah were fighting to drive the British out of Palestine so that they could then drive the Palestinians out of Palestine.

>> Plenty of countries consider terrorism against colonial authority to be a virtuous thing.
In which case, would that not make Hamas and Heabollah virtuous? Israel is a colonial project that is driven to expand and settle land.

Do you not see how foolish and hypocritical you look? How juvenile and unaware?

>> As far as Israel's bombing of Gaza, recall that Hamas was voted into power in January of 2005.

Yes, it's called democracy. Gaza elected Hamas and Israel elected Likud/Shas.

>> Hamas viewed the Israeli withdrawal as a humiliating retreat, and, promised to continue attacking Israel.

Seriously SI91, doyou even bother with looking up this sfuff, or you do you simply make this BS up as you go along?

In 2005:

1. Hamas in its election campaign, did not call for an end of
Israel or attacks, but instead called for an independent Palestinian state with Jerusalem as its capital.
2. Hamas signed the Cairo Declaration of 2005 and the National
Reconciliation Document, in which Haniyeh and
Maschaal stated that Hamas “fully respects” the previous agreements between the Palestinians and Israel.

In 2006 IKhaled Mashaal said: “(Hamas) cannot oppose the
unified Arab stance expressed in the resolution passed by the Arab
League summit. They did not reject it. That resolution, approved in Beirut, speaks of recognizing Israel and normalizing relations with it in exchange for a full withdrawal and a solution to the refugee problem”.

Hamas won the election and continued to observe the unilateral
ceasefire until Israel, responding to a rocket that landed harmlessly in the Negev (not Hamas) attacked Gaza in June 2006 killing 220 civilians.

>> As far as the motivation for Israel's withdrawal is concerned, your explanation doesn't seem to be likely; the fact that the withdrawal was heavily criticized as a threat to security

Do yourself a favour and look it up before reflexively spouting such nonsense. The decision to withdraw from Gaza was made by Israeli hard liners, including security forces.
No state in the world has the right to exist. Not even the US has ever recognised Israel's right to exist, because it has none. Shortly after the declaration of the establishment of the State of Israel, the International Law Commission noted that:

“It could not be admitted that any community which fulfilled the conditions of a State had the right to exist as a State and that it possessed the same rights as a legally constituted State. It should be borne in mind that a State might be set up in violation of the rights of another State.”

>> You are incorrect to say that Hamas accepts the Arab Peace Initiative. They repeatedly rejected it because accepting would involve accepting Israel's right to exist

Rubbish. You're making it up as you go along AGAIN.

It is Israel that remains the only party that has rejected it. In other worlds, Israel demand to be recognized and 22 Arab States have agreed to do so, but has rejected the offer.

>> Recall that, while Arafat was negotiating, he refused to stop the Second Intifada.

False. He was powerless to stop it. The Second Intifada was a result of Israel crushing non violent demonstartions by the Palestinians, which was predictably met by more violence.

>>Israel refused because the initiative would allow many Palestinians back into Israel.

In other words, Israel values territory and expansionism over peace.

>> The West Bank and Gaza are very much disputed territory, just as Western Sahara,

Kashmir, and a whole host of other contested pieces of land around the world are.
False. No one but Israel regards the West Bank and Gaza as disputed territory. In fact, Israel only began referring to it as such recently.

>> Israel can't be occupying "Palestine" because there was not a state or a nation called

Palestine in 1967. Jordan's "occupation" was, from a Jordanian perspective, an annexation.

Who cares what it was from a Jordanian perspective? Was it or was it not an occupation?

>> As such, Benveni?tî concludes that it was "widely regarded as illegal and void by the Arab League and others."

False, it was not regarded as illegal and void by the Arab League. I've already explained it to you.

>> UN Resolution 242 does not simply demand that Israel withdraw.

It sates very clearly in the preamble that territory acquired during the 1967 war is inadmissible.

>> The Arabs, of course, wanted the word "all" to be put in the sentence "Withdrawal of
Israeli armed forces from territories occupied in the recent conflict; "

Nice try, but that too is false. The resolution was drafted n French and the world “the” was only omitted from the English translation of the Resolution. It was the French version that was passed by the UNSC.

>> Recall that the territories Israel took during the war included the Sinai, which it has already given back. So, it could be construed that Israel has already fulfilled its obligation.

Oh please, stop wasting your time and mine with this crap. Not even Israel is trying to make that case.

>> The resolution does not specifically demand a withdrawal from the West Bank or Gaza.

The West Bank and Gaza are territory that was acquired during the 1967war, so yes it does.

>> Israel currently does not have "secure and recognized boundaries" nor have all "states of belligerency" been "terminated."

Israel refuses to declare those boundaries. That's Israel's problem, not the Palestinians.

>> Israel is nine miles wide at its narrowest point; completely withdrawing would enable terrorists to get within striking distance of Israel's major population centers.

That argument is pure rubbish. The nonsensical nature of this latest Likudnick talking point can be demonstrated by simply turning it around to illustrate that the borders of a demilitarized State of Palestine would be even more indefensible. They would leave East Jerusalemless than two miles wide and the Gaza strip less than 4 miles wide.” Israel has accepted resolution 242 as the basis of the final settlement and the resolutions emphasis on the inadmissibility of acquisition of territory by war does not contain an exception for defensible borders.

Secretary of State Rusk explained to Foreign Minister Eban that US support for secure permanent frontiers doesn’t mean we support territorial changes.

Israel is hated because it terrorises the Palestinians and it's neighbours. There's no point complaining that it is not loved while it behaves as a rogue nation that it out of control.
Hezbollah have not killed any innocent Israelis,. But Israel kills innocent Palestinian at a rate of one every 2 days.

>> George Brown, who was British Foreign Secretary in 1967, said 242 “means Israel will not withdraw from all the territories.”

George Brown had no legal authority to make that judgement.

>> Bush wrote a letter to Sharon in 2004, stating

Bush had no legal authority to make that statement either. Nor did American Ambassador Goldberg.

>> Note that while an Israeli withdrawal from the Jordan Valley would facilitate weapons smuggling to terrorists attacking from there, an Israeli annexation of the West Bank would extend its borders to the natural geographical rift between Jordan and Israel.

So now you’re back to talking about terrorists again. You Zionists are such anti intellectuals, it’s farcical.

1. There is no such thing as natural barriers in this day of missiles and fighter planes. Even retired IDF and Israeli intelligence leaders have debunked the argument about defensible borders.
2. Israel has the most powerful military force in the region. Whatever weapons are smuggled would be nothing compared to the firepower Israel has. What use is all the arms and aid we give Israel if it can’t defend itself?
3. And why is it that you only believe Israel has the right to self defense?

>> The League of Nations endorsed the British Mandate for Palestine, which called for "the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people.

Yes IN PALESTNE, meaning inside it, not all of it and no mention is made of a state.

The former members of the League of Nations and many other states had legally "recognized" the Mandated State of Palestine under the terms of the Treaty of Lausanne.

For example, in 1926 the Mixed Courts of Egypt recognized Palestinian nationality and ruled that the former Ottoman territories placed under Mandate had the character of regular States, and that their inhabitants possessed the nationality of those States in accordance with Article 30 of the Treaty of Lausanne. See the case of Saikaly v. Saikaly reported in John Fischer Williams and Hersh Lauterpacht (editors), “International Law Reports”, Volume 3, Cambridge University Press, 1929, page 48.

>> The Transjordan Memorandum, excluded Jordan from the Jewish National Home, but not the West Bank and Gaza.

But the League of Nations, San Remo and Balfour all declared that the rights of the Palestinians should not be affected adversely in any way.

>> As far as the housing demolition is concerned, the fact that it has been misused does not mean that terrorists do not use houses to launch missiles.

And visa versa. But Israel does misuse it to ethnically cleanse East Jerusalem and steal land.

>> There's no law preventing Israeli Arabs from going into those settlements.

No, just racism and prejudice. There’s no law that prevents Arbs from building homes either, but Israel simply refuses to issue them with permits and demolishes houses that are built without permits. Israel even demolishes entire houses for adding an extension without a permit. It only does this to Arab homes.

>> Given that Israel took the West Bank and Gaza in a defensive war, its occupation of the territories is legal, as per the League of Nations Charter, which the current UN still uses.

There was nothing defensive about the 6 day war. Mordechai Bentov, Minister of Housing told us what the war was all about:

“The entire story of the danger of extermination was invented in every detail, and exaggerated a posteriori to justify the annexation of new Arab territory.” (Al-Hamishmar, April 14, 1971)

And yes, they are occupied territories. They are disputed by no one but Israel.

>>. As far as the settlements being illegal is concerned, it depends on which type of settlement you're talking about.

All settlements are illegal because they violate the 4th Geneva Convention. Theodore Meron warned the Israeli government of this fact in 1967.

As for taking security measures, building settlements not only has nothing to do with security, it actually places the settlers in danger.

>> Settlements where Jews used to live before they were driven out by Arabs are also legal.

No they are not. There were no settlements where Jews used to live before”, there were homes and the Jews who were evicted from them have a legal claim to the land to which they held title. The settlements were not built to reclaim those homes.

All the land in the occupied territories is occupied territories therefore none of the settlements can be legal

>> Israel does in fact buy land from Arabs when these settlements expand, something that the latter found so profitable that Arafat forbade further land sales on pain of death when he took power in 1994

False. It was not profitable. The Arabs are given an ultimatum to sell the land or have ti taken from them. In the case of farms and orchards, Miko Peled (son of General Mattitiahu Peled) explains that Israel uses the check points to prevent Palestinians accessing their farms, then declares the farms are abandoned and seizes them for development.

That is blatant land theft.

As for Israelis courts, they always rule in favour of the state. They are nothing but sow trials.

>> The concrete parts of the wall Robert describes are a minority; most of the wall is made of wire, and is thus a fence.

Irrelevant. The concrete parts of the wall are larger than the Berlin Wall. The wall is not to prevent snipers, it is nothing more than a land grab. The wall goes up to 10km into Palestinian territory and is also illegal.

>> The West bank is indeed suffering. but it wasn't always this way. Before 1994, the West Bank was in much better shape.

That’s because Israel imposed the closure, without justification, which brought hte economy to it’s knees.

>> Israel introduced "water, housing, jobs, and healthcare" to the territory

You must be out of your Hasbara mind.
1. Israel steals water from the territory and uses it to supplement water in Israel.
2. Israel destroys houses
3. Israel destroys hospitals
4. Israel collects all the taxes and uses them to pay for any services it provides.

The Palestinian Authority uses the money money it gets via international aid too build "security forces" because it promised to do so under Oslo. In fact, the security forces are trained by the US military and have fulfilled all their obligations to provide security under the Peace Road Map of 2002. Speaking of which, Israel signed the Road Map and the Knesset ratified it, yet Israel are in violation of the agreement which required Israel to stop building settlements.

>> The Haaretz article only mentions housing.

And that’s not a storng enough indictment about apartheid in Israel? Here’s something more to chew on:

1. 93% of the land is held in trust by the Jewish National Fund for the use of Jews wherever they may be in the world. That means the Palestinians (20% of the population) are only entitled to use 3% of the land. No provision to accommodate natural growth.
2. ID papers coded to differentiate Jews from Muslims
3. Intense airport security, where all items are removed from the cases of Arabs
4. Demotion of Arab homes
5. Refusal of permits to rebuild them
6. Prohibitions on Arab land purchases and the resulting overcrowding in Arab towns
7. Re architecting roads and bridges so that only Jews can travel on them
8. Gross neglect of infrastructure and services such a water, electricity, clinics and schools, especially in the Negev.
9. Exclusion of Arab workers from wealth generating sectors of the economy
10. Firing workers who speak Arab rather than Hebrew
11. Diverting or manipulating water supplies
12. Erasure of Arab presence and history by building parks and forests over Arab villages
13. Desecrating a Palestinian cemetery to build a Museum of tolerance
14. Removing former Arab place names from maps and roads.
15. Arab school curriculums are rewritten to remove Arab history and replace it with the Zionist history.

There were no terrorist attacks against Israel between '48 and '67. Israel was at war with it's neighbours and there border skirmishes, which Moshe Dayan admits Israel started 80% of the time.

>> Targeting homes that never originally belonged to Jews is unfair, but failing to return homes that did indeed belong to Jews who were driven out would also be unjust. I never said both didn't happen.

Targeting homes that never originally belonged to Jews is Israeli policy.

>> The Haganah was created to defend Jews from attacks like the Jaffa riots of 1921, and tried to defend Jews during later attacks like the 1929 Palestine riots.

There were no pogroms in Jaffa. The Palestine riots were the result of immigrants flooding Palestine and displacing the local population. Any population would have responded in the same way. The Hebron massacre, which was directed at Ashkenazi Jews (not Mizrahi), followed the raising of the Israeli flag over Jerusalem, which was a clear sign of conquest.
There have never BEEN missiles launched from the West Bank. Hamas don't own any missiles and never have.

Hamas has not even threatened to do so. The Israeli government has even acknowledged that Hamas is not even behind the rocket attacks fro Gaza and that they have been stopping attacks from occuring.

http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-4105175,00.html
http://www.haaretz.com/news/gaza-militant-hamas-stopping-rocket-fire-into-israel-1.284117
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/middleeast/israel/4538827/Hamas-not-responsible-for-recent-rocket-attacks-says-Israel.html

>> The Arabs states, for instance discriminate against Palestinian Arabs and Christians; the latter are treated brutally. The Arab Spring hasn't changed this.

True, but there are no expulsions and ethnic cleansing taking place.

>> There were no Jews in the Nazi government.

And then you go on to admit that there were some who were allowed. The point is not that Israel is like Nazi Germany, it is that arguing that a few token Arabs being allowed to hold office or sit on the benches of courts proves nothing.

Arab parties are not allowed to form coalitions, which is clearly a racist law intended to assure they remain weak.

>>The demographic threat to Israel is indeed real.

That's a racist ideology in itself. Can you imagine if you were to suggest there was a demographic threat to the white population of America from black people or Hispanics?
The fact is that Israel would not even exist today if it had not expelled 800,000 Palestinians, so arguing that the return of those refugees to their homes threatens Israel's ethnocentric identity is simply a repugnant position.

>> Jews did indeed suffer before Israel was created. Jews were persecuted in Iraq, Libya, Egypt, and other Arab states.

Actually the Jews in Iraq enjoyed a privileged existence in Iraq until Jewish terrorists started setting off bombs in Baghdad (again Jewish targets of all things) to try and stir up trouble and convince the Iraqi Jew that they were being persecuted.

Amin al Husayni was a British appointed stooge who had no credibility in the Arab world. He even received fewer votes than his rival, but the British chose him. He was sent into exile by the British in 1937.

>> Recall that Husayni created an Arab Legion in Nazi Germany for the express purpose of killing Jews.

Like I said, Husayni was one man with no credibility of no significance, who never enetered Palestine again after 1937.

>> Banna, who created the Muslim Brotherhood, translated Mein Kampf, and called for the Jews to be pushed into the sea.

According to what source? BTW. Banna had nothing to do with Palestine and Avigdor Lieberman threatened to drone the Palestinians in the Dead Sea.

>> Hatred for Jews is enshrined in Islam's own Hadith.

False. Jews are revered as people of the book. Until the creation of Israel, Muslims and Jews got along pretty well. The Turks protected the Jews from persecution in Spain and gave them protection and refuge.

>> Muhammad had the Jews of the tribe of Banu Quraiza massacred, forcing them to dig their own graves, and then having them beheaded.

Muhammad, like Jesus or David never existed

>> The increased radicalization of Muslims in Europe has CAUSED terrorism.

False. The only thing that caused terrorism was the illegal attack and invasion of Iraq based on lies. It led to the death of a million Iraqis and was a war crime.

>> Israel doesn't want radical Arab mullahs preaching death to Jews in its own cities; that causes terrorism.
No one does, and there is no reason why such teachings should be tolerated. That's not the reason Israel doesn't want the refugees to return to Israel though.

>> Jewish terrorism against the British and against Arabs was, in many cases (but not all) a response to imperialism and Arab attacks.
Rubbish. The British were protecting the Jews and not only killed thousands of Arabs on behalf of the Jews, but disarmed them and crushed their leadership while allowing the Jews to arms themselves to the teeth. The attacks on the British were intended to drive the British out of Palestine because the British were the only thing standing in the way of their conquest of all Palestine.
>> Muslim Arab terrorism is, by their own admission again and again, motivated by a desire to kill Jews, (not just Zionists, but ALL Jews) as their Prophet did, and instructed them to do.
Rubbish,. Even the Hamas Charter contains a qualifier that forbids members harm to those who have not "borne arms against you on account of religion, nor turned you out of your dwellings
>> How about Hamas, the terrorist organization that has purged Fatah and other political rivals from the Gaza strip and banned opposition parties from staging demonstrations there?

Like I pointed out, Fatah were expelled from Gaza after they launched a US and Israeli backed coup to overthrow Hamas.

And please, spare us the crocodile tears about gays in Gaza. Ow many gays people do you think Israel killed among the 1,400 during the Cast Lead massacre?
>> Many Israeli Arabs stay in Israel because they like it there.
The same could be said of the 25000 Jews in Iran.

>> What Iranian Jews are you talking about? The ones who can't hold positions in Iran's army or bureaucracy?
Tell that to the Iranian member of parliament.
>> The ones whose religion is regularly demonized by the mullahs?
Tell that to the Roger Cohen of the NYT, who said he felt more welcome as a Jew in Iran than he does in most Western countries.

>> The Jews who face death for allegedly spying for Israel?

That's the risk that goes with spying.

>> The Jews whose leader was executed for the same?

No Jew has been executed in Iran since the Iranian Revolution.

>> The Jews who are considered impure by their fellow Iranians?

Like I said, tell that to the Roger Cohen of the NYT, who said he felt more welcome as a Jew in Iran than he does in most Western countries. BTW,. Chine received a lot of hate mail from Jews for daring to report that.

>> The ones in Iran, the state that funds Hezbollah, whose leader wants all the Jews to gather in Israel so he doesn't have to go all over the world hunting them down? Those Jews?
Yes those Jews. BTW. That quote was BS.

Hezbollah is a resistance organisation who is no threat to Israel unless Israel crosses the border into Lebanon.