Israel operates with impunity??

[Nioya]

Are you just going to complain or can you make a counter argument?

You only used the word once.

Over the time they've posted in here they've done nothing but rail about the Zionists. Quite frankly I'm over it

He's done nothing but insult me this entire time. He doesn't care about the truth. He doesn't care about the civility. Every zionist here has done the same thing. It's a real shame the mods care about the most ridiculous stuff but they don't care about flaming like this.

[Austrasien]

Not only does the Israeli Airforce attack the Syrian Arab Army in palmyra while they are fighting ISIS but the Israeli border guard have opened their border to all injured Al Qeada (Al Nusra) fighters to be treated in the occupied Golan heights and then send them back into Syria to keep fighting the Syrian state.

If that isn't enough to think that Israel supports and sponsors terrorism in Syria and acting as a ISIS Airforce then i dont know what is.

The core leadership of the Islamist militant movements in Sryia are the men Assad released from his own prisons in 2011.

If that isn't enough to think that Assad supports and sponsors terrorism in Syria then i dont know what is.

Syrian state-run media made the announcement on Tuesday, saying that "President [Bashar] Assad has by decree issued an amnesty on all [political] crimes committed before May 31, 2011."

The amnesty is to include all members of political movements, including the outlawed Muslim Brotherhood and all political prisoners, the report said.

>release hundreds of hardened islamists into Syria, including the group behind Syria's previous islamist uprising
>suddenly radical islamic militant movements all over Syria
>"Jews did this!!!!!"

I am sure Israel is laughing it's ass off that Assad botched the crackdown so badly that he needs Russia, Hezbollah, Iran, the United States and even the Kurds to come save his ass.

[Slovenya]

I am sure Israel is laughing it's ass off that Assad botched the crackdown so badly that he needs Russia, Hezbollah, Iran, the United States and even the Kurds to come save his ass.

I've seen the interviews where he's said he was committed to dialogue with the opposition. Part of dialogue includes releasing political prisoners to ease tensions, and this isn't a new strategy either. What about posting how the US armed and trained Al Nusra? or when John Kerry, Hillary Clinton, and Barrack Obama openly admitted to it???

[4stan]

Israel is attacking an actual terrorist group instead of harassing Palestinian civilians? Well, this is new. I'll give them a pass on that.

[Slovenya]

Israel is attacking an actual terrorist group instead of harassing Palestinian civilians? Well, this is new. I'll give them a pass on that.

Hezbollah is involved in fighting ISIS because they know that if Syria falls to ISIS then Lebanon will be next and their Shia population will suffer

[Crockerland]

Israel is attacking an actual terrorist group instead of harassing Palestinian civilians? Well, this is new.

No, it's not.

[The Knockout Gun Gals]

Israel is attacking an actual terrorist group instead of harassing Palestinian civilians? Well, this is new. I'll give them a pass on that.

Where have you been over the past 50 years?

[Thermodolia]

You only used the word once.

Over the time they've posted in here they've done nothing but rail about the Zionists. Quite frankly I'm over it

He's done nothing but insult me this entire time. He doesn't care about the truth. He doesn't care about the civility. Every zionist here has done the same thing. It's a real shame the mods care about the most ridiculous stuff but they don't care about flaming like this.

Because I criticize you I'm a Zionist? Do you even know what that means? And no being Jewish nor pro-Israel counts as Zionism.

[Slovenya]

Because I criticize you I'm a Zionist? Do you even know what that means? And no being Jewish nor pro-Israel counts as Zionism.

how do you define Zionist?

[The Ik Ka Ek Akai]

Well, yes of course when said nation don't even recognize its existence and keep going on and on about wanting to genocide the jews.

again, baseless facts. When did Syria want to "genocide" the Jews? One thing is not recognizing a State (born out of the mass murder and displacement of thousands of Palestinians), and another is the outright desire to eliminate an entire religion of people. Please...

1948 Arab-Israeli War:
"I personally wish that the Jews do not drive us to this war, as this will be a war of extermination and momentous massacre which will be spoken of like the Tartar massacre or the Crusader wars. I believe that the number of volunteers from outside Palestine will be larger than Palestine's Arab population, for I know that volunteers will be arriving to us from [as far as] India, Afghanistan, and China to win the honor of martyrdom for the sake of Palestine ... You might be surprised to learn that hundreds of Englishmen expressed their wish to volunteer in the Arab armies to fight the Jews." -Mustafa Amin, October 11, 1947

"Throw the Jews into the sea" - Various

Six Day War:
"Our forces are now entirely ready not only to repulse any aggression, but to initiate the act ourselves, and to explode the Zionist presence in the Arab homeland of Palestine. The Syrian army, with its finger on the trigger, is united. I believe that the time has come to begin a battle of annihilation."- Syria’s Defence Minister Hafez Assad (later to be Syria’s President), May 20 1967


In relation:
"Those [Jews] who survive will remain in Palestine. I estimate that none of them will survive.” - Ahmed Shukairy, chairman of PLO June 1 1967

That time they expelled over 20,000 Jews and almost destroyed the thousands-years-old Jewish community in the northern Levant might also be a hint.

But how is the use of the word "zionist" genocidal? Well, it's been known for a while that it's often used as a code for "Jewish" rather than being used on a purely ideological basis, and there's been rulings about such.

Believe it or not, most of Israel's military action since its inception has been defensive. Of course, infighting and the slaughter of civilians is nothing new. There's a little over 3000 deaths from before 1948 from Arab massacres of Jews. A little over 30,000 Jews were detained in prison camps after attempting to flee to Mandatory Palestine. However, even in past negative actions, there was also fair degrees of cooperation between Jewish and local Arab leaders. Why? Because back in the older days, the Jews and Palestinians were once considered of the same ilk. For example, Kant stated that the German Jews were "Palestinians living among us", and the particular reason for this is because the region known historically as Palestine (although typically lumped into the entire Levant as "Syria" as well) originated as a result of the Roman persecution of Jews in the early 1st Millennium CE, having changed the name to "Palestina" (Palestine) away from "Iudaea" (Judea), naming the land after the Philistines to spite what were often rebellious subjects living in the region. This shared history between the Jews and the Arabs (the idea of a distinct Palestinian ethnicity had not yet arisen) of the Levant was acknowledged on all fronts, leading the main leaders of these groups to attempt cooperation, with violence generally belonging to the fringe. Note, the Saudis, Syrians, Egyptians, Lebanese, and Jordanians were not part of this- they had their own ambitions, goals, and identities.

Also, You want to talk about displacement? The numbers given in that chart are approximate, but somewhere between 700,000 and 900,000 Jews were expelled or slaughtered, mostly the former, in Islamic countries over the past 70 years. The earliest ideas about a potential Jewish state at all spawned, as linked above, more than a few massacres of ancient and continuous communities. From the very year Israel was actually established, the Arab League took every effort to "drive the Jews into the sea". As for modern statistics of "mass murder", there are interesting things to note. For example, of the some 8000 Palestinian deaths since 1987, a little over 2000 have been caused by intra-Palestinian violence. That's over 25% of the total! What's even better/worse? There is a very very clear pattern of non-random violence and fatality on the Palestinian side. Israel's casualties are 69% male, 31% female. Of all the Israeli casualties, about 30% were actually combatants, with 70% being civilians. 12% of them were children. On the Palestinian side, 41% of casualties are combatants (59% civilian), 94% were male (6% female), and 20% were children. It does not take long for one to see that a 94% male rate of death (with a higher relative rate of combatants, also a higher rate of children[?]) is a non-random pattern. The plot thickens when some reports suggest B'teselem, the pro-Palestinian party for statistics, may have purposefully committed error to inflate the number of civilian deaths, and that the actual ratio of combatants against civilians was much higher in favor of combatants rather than civilians. Analysis of the data would suggest that the evidence points strongly towards the conclusion that many, if not most, of the Palestinians deaths have been the result of active confrontation of Israeli forces despite consequences being clear and well-established.

Also, nice move calling Jews "a religion of people" rather than "a people" or "a nation". With a common language (Hebrew, in the past Aramaic and Judeo-Arabic were dominant), common traditions (many festivals with secular value, more than a few culture-specific practices, specific ways of styling and dressing), a common heritage (ancient Canaanite ancestry through genetics clearly evident in every significant Jewish community), a universally-agreed upon homeland within said group (the Levant), a common origin myth (Patriarchs and Exodus), common history (Radhanites for an example of how interconnected communities were), a folk religion (Judaism/Canaanite mythology, arguably Egyptian touches as well), common cuisine (flat bread, for example), established artistic traditions (Hebraic calligraphy, colorful caftans, etc.), physical appearance (most communities have identifiably Middle-Eastern phenotypes, especially in conservative and isolated communities), and a sense of national unity, I'm fairly certain they classify for the quality of being defined as an actual ethnic group and, by general philosophy, thus entitled to self-rule.

[The Ik Ka Ek Akai]

As a side note to those arguing that the Jews are European invaders, the majority of Israeli Jews are descended either from pre-established communities in the region from the Ottoman period and earlier, or they arrived after being expelled from Middle Eastern and North African countries. These groups are 61% of Israel's Jewish population. The European Jewry, however, does also still retain a distinctly Canaanite genetic history, and are closer to Assyrians and Egyptians than they are to their neighboring ethnic Europeans.

[Novus Athenae]

An absolute destruction of the Pro-Palestinian narrative. Beautiful work my friend, absolutely beautiful.

[The Ik Ka Ek Akai]

An absolute destruction of the Pro-Palestinian narrative. Beautiful work my friend, absolutely beautiful.

I could go into a similar discussion about how Israel is not an Apartheid state by its very definition. Lemme give it a shot:

"racism and discrimination do not form the rationale for Israel's policies and actions. Arab citizens of Israel can vote and serve in the Knesset; black South Africans could not vote until 1994. There are no laws in Israel that discriminate against Arab citizens or separate them from Jews. Unlike the United Kingdom, Greece, and Norway, Israel has no state religion, and it recognizes Arabic as one of its official languages"
- Kadalie, Rhoda and Julia Bertelsmann, who fought Apartheid in South Africa


Merriam-Webster:

Definition of apartheid
1
: racial segregation; specifically : a former policy of segregation and political and economic discrimination against non-European groups in the Republic of South Africa
2
: separation, segregation

(Parts striked out for irrelevance to the analogy: the definition of Apartheid here is not specific to South Africa)

Okay, so there's our definition. It's basically segregation, whereby minority groups are blocked from simple things like, say, holding office, voting, etc. Here's how Israel's declaration of independence describes itself:

"The State of Israel; it will foster the development of the country for the benefit of all inhabitants; it will be based on freedom, justice and peace as envisaged by the prophets of Israel; it will ensure complete equality of social and political rights to all its inhabitants irrespective of religion, race or sex; it will guarantee freedom of religion, conscience, language, education and culture; it will safeguard the Holy Places of all religions"

Does that sound like segregation based on, say, religion, culture/ethnicity, race, or sex? It sure doesn't seem that way to me. In fact, Israeli legislation seems to support this strange and alien notion of non-discriminatory measures. How odd!

Now, moving on from legal text and into practice, how does this hold up? Well, remember how back in the day, everything was segregated down to the schools? Remember how the national guard was called in because a handful of Black students wanted to attend a mostly White school? Mind, that was American segregation, not South African Apartheid, but American segregation DOES meet the definition for Apartheid, so....go figure. Anyways, here's two young girls talking about why they love attending a bilingual school. That's not just letting them study together, it's supporting both of their languages at once!

Now, there was a biased video cited earlier, 10 Reasons Why Israel is Apartheid or some such. If you'll allow me, here's a different biased video in favor of Israel, just to even the odds a bit. Here we see a woman fail to answer how exactly Israel conducts Apartheid in Israel, where Israel is the governing body of Israeli Israel and the Israelis live in Israel which is governed by Israeli Israel in Israel.

Let's move to politics for a second. Israel is about 1/5 Arab in its total population, or 20%. In 2009, 19 parties ran for election, of which 4 were Arab parties. Now, this doesn't sound like a lot, but if you do the math it comes out to slightly over 20% (specifically, it is 21%). This is an unprecedented level of statistical representation, considering the percentage of the population which is Arab also happens to be the percentage of parties which are Arab. That's just a little fun fact.

Things get a bit murkier with the Knesset. Of the some 120 seats of parliament, 14 of them are Arabs. This is half representative of the overall course, but it, believe it or not, singularly disproves the Apartheid analogy. In Apartheid, the oppressed groups in question are prevented from participating in politics. Here, not only are Arabs allowed to vote, they're allowed to run, and have already won seats in parliament. One of them is even female!

Now, in an Apartheid system, freedom of movement and and economic freedoms are also repressed and restricted. First things first, did you watch the video I linked earlier? It's explicitly stated that, while in West Bank (under the Palestinian Authority) Arab-only public transportation has been instated, within Israel the woman being questioned fails to produce any accounts of such segregationist practices being used. From marketplaces to trains, whether shopping or selling, Arabs and Israelis are given the same freedoms in this regard.

Freedom of religion is a cornerstone of the modern free world. It's something heavily emphasized by practically every democratic state in existence. Israel sure guarantees freedom of worship, didn't you read the declaration earlier? Did you also check the hundreds of thousands of Jews who were expelled across the Islamic world on the basis of religion over the past 70 years? Here we see an Israeli official publicly visiting a mosque. How would Apartheid's systems of segregation ever allow a Jewish state representative and official to visit an Islamic place of worship and talk to Muslims directly and without hostility? It just seems unlikely, is what I'm saying.

There is one place in Jerusalem where religious Apartheid is alive and strong, however. That would be the Temple Mount, under Palestinian control. While Muslims are given free access to the entire mount and its places of worship, Jews are strictly forbidden from praying anywhere at the site. It is famous for this restriction, in which Jews can be removed from the sight for so much as appearing to be contemplative.

Another common occurrence in Apartheid states is the lack of job opportunities. In the Reconstruction South, it was common for Blacks to be forced onto the plantations they had been liberated from by corrupt police, imposed debts, and other highly malicious practices. In Israel? Nobody's really stopping anyone from getting where they want to be, except perhaps that Arabs are exempt from mandatory military service, and are in fact the only group entirely exempt from it. Mind, exceptions exist elsewhere in the case of a pacifistic lifestyle, religious habits, and so on, but Arabs are as a whole not required to enlist (although many Bedouin enlist voluntarily anyways). Point is, Israel has diversity in the military, in hospitals, in political everything, in everyday life, and yes, even the Jewish media. Why? Because Israel is more than just a Jewish state. It's a land with thousands of years of history, for better, and for worse. It is both united and diverse. Jews and Arabs have shared the region for thousands of years, and it it is a fighting spirit.

So, let me ask the real question:

Is this Apartheid? Or is this? Is this Apartheid? Or is this? Is this Apartheid?

Is this Apartheid?

[KuroShirou]

An absolute destruction of the Pro-Palestinian narrative. Beautiful work my friend, absolutely beautiful.

I could go into a similar discussion about how Israel is not an Apartheid state by its very definition. Lemme give it a shot:

"racism and discrimination do not form the rationale for Israel's policies and actions. Arab citizens of Israel can vote and serve in the Knesset; black South Africans could not vote until 1994. There are no laws in Israel that discriminate against Arab citizens or separate them from Jews. Unlike the United Kingdom, Greece, and Norway, Israel has no state religion, and it recognizes Arabic as one of its official languages"
- Kadalie, Rhoda and Julia Bertelsmann, who fought Apartheid in South Africa


Merriam-Webster:

Definition of apartheid
1
: racial segregation; specifically : a former policy of segregation and political and economic discrimination against non-European groups in the Republic of South Africa
2
: separation, segregation

(Parts striked out for irrelevance to the analogy: the definition of Apartheid here is not specific to South Africa)

Okay, so there's our definition. It's basically segregation, whereby minority groups are blocked from simple things like, say, holding office, voting, etc. Here's how Israel's declaration of independence describes itself:

"The State of Israel; it will foster the development of the country for the benefit of all inhabitants; it will be based on freedom, justice and peace as envisaged by the prophets of Israel; it will ensure complete equality of social and political rights to all its inhabitants irrespective of religion, race or sex; it will guarantee freedom of religion, conscience, language, education and culture; it will safeguard the Holy Places of all religions"

Does that sound like segregation based on, say, religion, culture/ethnicity, race, or sex? It sure doesn't seem that way to me. In fact, Israeli legislation seems to support this strange and alien notion of non-discriminatory measures. How odd!

Now, moving on from legal text and into practice, how does this hold up? Well, remember how back in the day, everything was segregated down to the schools? Remember how the national guard was called in because a handful of Black students wanted to attend a mostly White school? Mind, that was American segregation, not South African Apartheid, but American segregation DOES meet the definition for Apartheid, so....go figure. Anyways, here's two young girls talking about why they love attending a bilingual school. That's not just letting them study together, it's supporting both of their languages at once!

Now, there was a biased video cited earlier, 10 Reasons Why Israel is Apartheid or some such. If you'll allow me, here's a different biased video in favor of Israel, just to even the odds a bit. Here we see a woman fail to answer how exactly Israel conducts Apartheid in Israel, where Israel is the governing body of Israeli Israel and the Israelis live in Israel which is governed by Israeli Israel in Israel.

Let's move to politics for a second. Israel is about 1/5 Arab in its total population, or 20%. In 2009, 19 parties ran for election, of which 4 were Arab parties. Now, this doesn't sound like a lot, but if you do the math it comes out to slightly over 20% (specifically, it is 21%). This is an unprecedented level of statistical representation, considering the percentage of the population which is Arab also happens to be the percentage of parties which are Arab. That's just a little fun fact.

Things get a bit murkier with the Knesset. Of the some 120 seats of parliament, 14 of them are Arabs. This is half representative of the overall course, but it, believe it or not, singularly disproves the Apartheid analogy. In Apartheid, the oppressed groups in question are prevented from participating in politics. Here, not only are Arabs allowed to vote, they're allowed to run, and have already won seats in parliament. One of them is even female!

Now, in an Apartheid system, freedom of movement and and economic freedoms are also repressed and restricted. First things first, did you watch the video I linked earlier? It's explicitly stated that, while in West Bank (under the Palestinian Authority) Arab-only public transportation has been instated, within Israel the woman being questioned fails to produce any accounts of such segregationist practices being used. From marketplaces to trains, whether shopping or selling, Arabs and Israelis are given the same freedoms in this regard.

Freedom of religion is a cornerstone of the modern free world. It's something heavily emphasized by practically every democratic state in existence. Israel sure guarantees freedom of worship, didn't you read the declaration earlier? Did you also check the hundreds of thousands of Jews who were expelled across the Islamic world on the basis of religion over the past 70 years? Here we see an Israeli official publicly visiting a mosque. How would Apartheid's systems of segregation ever allow a Jewish state representative and official to visit an Islamic place of worship and talk to Muslims directly and without hostility? It just seems unlikely, is what I'm saying.

There is one place in Jerusalem where religious Apartheid is alive and strong, however. That would be the Temple Mount, under Palestinian control. While Muslims are given free access to the entire mount and its places of worship, Jews are strictly forbidden from praying anywhere at the site. It is famous for this restriction, in which Jews can be removed from the sight for so much as appearing to be contemplative.

Another common occurrence in Apartheid states is the lack of job opportunities. In the Reconstruction South, it was common for Blacks to be forced onto the plantations they had been liberated from by corrupt police, imposed debts, and other highly malicious practices. In Israel? Nobody's really stopping anyone from getting where they want to be, except perhaps that Arabs are exempt from mandatory military service, and are in fact the only group entirely exempt from it. Mind, exceptions exist elsewhere in the case of a pacifistic lifestyle, religious habits, and so on, but Arabs are as a whole not required to enlist (although many Bedouin enlist voluntarily anyways). Point is, Israel has diversity in the military, in hospitals, in political everything, in everyday life, and yes, even the Jewish media. Why? Because Israel is more than just a Jewish state. It's a land with thousands of years of history, for better, and for worse. It is both united and diverse. Jews and Arabs have shared the region for thousands of years, and it it is a fighting spirit.

So, let me ask the real question:

Is this Apartheid? Or is this? Is this Apartheid? Or is this? Is this Apartheid?

Is this Apartheid?

This is the best news I've ever read on this Forum. I was going to accumulate facts upon facts, and I still might in the future, but given the fact that most of the people here know the truth and would rather be delusional, proving them wrong just ends in frustration. So, I'll wait another 24-72 hours before I post some more. Hopefully, hammering facts into their minds again and again will serve as a minor counter to the falsified information being spread every day.

[Marado]

An absolute destruction of the Pro-Palestinian narrative. Beautiful work my friend, absolutely beautiful.

It's essential we take both sides on this matter.

[The of Japan]

West Bank minus east Jerusalem to Palestine, Gaza to Palestine, Rest to Israel. Deal?

[Marado]

West Bank minus east Jerusalem to Palestine, Gaza to Palestine, Rest to Israel. Deal?

Might as well hand over the Senkaku Islands.

[KuroShirou]

West Bank minus east Jerusalem to Palestine, Gaza to Palestine, Rest to Israel. Deal?

This is the most logical solution, but it just won't work. The Palestinians want East Jerusalem/Jersualem, simply because the Jews and history recognise it as the homeland of the Jews. It's the case of the bully wanting your toy simply because you want it. Were Tel Aviv the centre of Israel and Judaism, the Palestinians would be cutting themselves for it.

It's sad and depressing, I must say. Exactly why has a significant portion of the Western and civilised world, allowed the ideology and extremism of Islam to dictate their perspective? This Forum delights in facts, even going as far as to make mockery of biased or incorrect information and/or websites. Is it so hard to differentiate the genuine facts from the manipulated facts.

[Philjia]

An absolute destruction of the Pro-Palestinian narrative. Beautiful work my friend, absolutely beautiful.

It's essential we take both sides on this matter.

More like the people's side over the leaders. They unhinged nationalists running Israel and Gaza are the ones agitating violence. There's a constant cycle of Hamas doing something provocative, and the Israeli government responding disproportionately, and civilians on both sides suffering as a result.

[The of Japan]

It's essential we take both sides on this matter.

More like the people's side over the leaders. They unhinged nationalists running Israel and Gaza are the ones agitating violence. There's a constant cycle of Hamas doing something provocative, and the Israeli government responding disproportionately, and civilians on both sides suffering as a result.

I don't remember Likud ever wanting all Palestinians dead period.

[Philjia]

More like the people's side over the leaders. They unhinged nationalists running Israel and Gaza are the ones agitating violence. There's a constant cycle of Hamas doing something provocative, and the Israeli government responding disproportionately, and civilians on both sides suffering as a result.

I don't remember Likud ever wanting all Palestinians dead period.

That would imply they care about anything other than the Israeli vote.

[Unrepentant Piracy]

Israel is defending itself. Good for them.

Fuck that. If you are moving into somebody's neighborhood, you oughtn't be so...


obnoxious, about it.

[The of Japan]

Israel is defending itself. Good for them.

Fuck that. If you are moving into somebody's neighborhood, you oughtn't be so...


obnoxious, about it.

Doesn't justify the neighbors trying to murder them.

[The of Japan]

I don't remember Likud ever wanting all Palestinians dead period.

That would imply they care about anything other than the Israeli vote.

Most Israelis want a two-state solution. They are just tired of failed peace talks followed by terrorist attacks in Israel.

[Marado]

It's essential we take both sides on this matter.

More like the people's side over the leaders. They unhinged nationalists running Israel and Gaza are the ones agitating violence. There's a constant cycle of Hamas doing something provocative, and the Israeli government responding disproportionately, and civilians on both sides suffering as a result.

Yeah. People make Democracy and Peace, and, hopefully, the Israelites are at peace again.