Israel to World: "Suck It."

bizarre, huh

naftali bennet? xp

god morbz the problem isn't that you disagree it's that everything you say is dumb, uninformed + uninteresting. do you really need to fill this messageboard with your landfill dumbassery in a desperate attempt to get anyone to acknowledge that you exist, even if the attention is only negative? you're like the little kid in class who keeps getting in trouble but at least the teacher is paying attention to him not like his distant distracted parents at home. you're a grown ass adult get yr shit together.

put the bong down and buy your Phillies season tickets (great game last night)

OK not Bennett either, fine.

lol i'm sure i could name a bunch of ppl who you'd prefer bibi to and that's really the problem isn't it? considering that the israeli public is fed up w/ labour and unlikely to hand over the reins to anyone on the nominal left any time soon, bibi is a pretty good option. probably lapid would be marginally better in terms of promoting the peace process but even he is likely to go acc to the will of the israeli public, which in the post-oslo, post-2nd intifada, post-gaza withdrawal world has lost its appetite for compromise. the leadership is just a reflection of the politics of the populace. they feel like bibi has done an ok job keeping them safe, has been growing the economy, is establishing new + stronger diplomatic ties throughout the world, etc. why switch over to herzog then? (not to mention that even the left is moving right on the palestinians - bc they know which way the electorate wind is blowing). the only way forward re the peace process that i see is some kind of massive peaceful protest movement from the territories, and/or some kind of very eloquent pro-peace palestinian leader. i don't see either coming v soon. (and if anything i think PLO is on its last legs as Abbas is getting old and there's no clear successor - which is to say that if things seem bad now, just wait until Hamas is in charge of everything.)

Israel continues to make itself harder to publicly support for anyone to the left of Paul Wolfowitz and you keep cheering, gl

honest leftists can't support any country so really that shouldn't be the metric for national success. this idea that israeli politics should conform to what liberal americans jews most want is insane. you'd never say something similar about politics in turkey, poland, france, the UK, russia etc. i guess it's bc we feel like we're owed something bc of military aid and close ethnic bonds. but if you keep waiting for a country to make you feel good, and you're not a right-winger, you'll be waiting a long time.

I feel owed nothing. it's israel that feels owed.

that's ridiculous. israel is a country full of ppl. you're a dude on a message board complaining that ppl on the left can't support it.

do you think there's a right-wing movement in any country in the world that keeps itself up at night worrying that the left doesn't like them? it only makes sense as an argument if you believe that the ppl you're discussing have a huge stake in being liked by you. but if they have other interests (which they do) then your feelings about their decisions don't figure particularly heavily in their political decisions. if it did they wouldn't keep reelecting bibi.

anyway, if they do eventually go full-blown authoritarian we know that'll win back all the jill steinian leftists who seem to love that fascist shit when russia does it

a country full of ppl including my wife's family, as I think you know, so I don't need to be reminded of that

do not feel owed, do feel concerned. Israel does in fact have a huge stake in being liked by people in the US and EU.

If Israel thinks it's only "Jill Stein leftists" I'd say it faces a reckoning in 10-20 years.

ppl have been prophesying this reckoning since at least 67 if not 48. i suspect it's hysteria.

BDS is only 10 years old, the south african boycott movement took about 30. Not saying it will definitely happen but I wouldn't be too smug about it either.

south african boycott movement had a lot of things going for it that BDS does not. for one, they were trying to end an apartheid system, not a military occupation. apartheid is inherently unjust. a military occupation is only unjust when it stops being necessary. as long as palestinians are stabbing jews and firing rockets from gaza they will not have the moral leverage that south africa did. nb i understand that south african resistance also included the use of terrorism but again - that was to end an unjust society, not to end an occupation - and even then it didn't take off until it had a leader with serious moral authority. maybe you're right and 20 years from now everyone will be boycotting israel. but i doubt it. i don't see it trending in that direction. if anything i think BDS is boiling off. if one day the pressure becomes too hot for israel, all they have to do is withdraw from the WB like they did in Gaza. unilaterally declare borders and keep whatever settlements they decide to. that's an option open at any time. you can't bully them into accepting all descendants of 48 + 67 refugees. it'll just never happen.

and meanwhile israeli society will become more mizrahi and more charedi and american liberal ashkenazi jews will become more and more defensive about it. but does anyone really believe that mizrahim gaf about what american jews think of them? i have yet to meet one who does.

honest leftists can't support any country

this is a weird thing to say

I fully support Costa Rica for ex.

there may be exceptions but i think among major world countries none of them live up to left-wing ethics. even once beloved scandanavian countries have turned out to have secret nativist cores.

dim view of the world you have there

how could it be otherwise? the nation state is inherently problematic. any time you're defending a nation state's interests you're going to run afoul.

there's a scale, it's not like every country in the world is militarily dominating its neighbors. there are plenty of countries that are small and relatively insignificant in the scope of world affairs and primarily concerned with minding their own business.

i think you'd be surprised. many countries you might think of as innocuous have all kinds of domestic + neighborly issues that just don't get 1% of the reporting that the israel/palestine conflict gets.

BDS is only 10 years old, the south african boycott movement took about 30. Not saying it will definitely happen but I wouldn't be too smug about it either.

― the last famous person you were surprised to discover was actually (man alive), Friday, September 23, 2016 3:58 PM (two hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

especially since its such a big deal on college campuses.. at least in california. there's tons of stories out there about students in the pro-palestinian/pro-israel camp really going at it. I havent seen polling but I think the youts are way less pro-israel than they used to be.

my impression is that it's mostly a v minor cause that keeps getting blown up primarily by hysterical right-wingers who use the existence of BDS as a cudgel to attack all liberals w/

it's one of those things that is hard to gauge the actual size + impact bc both its proponents and its detractors have an interest in making it appear larger than it is. in terms of real world consequences though i'm not convinced it has had, or will begin to have a material impact on Israel. it may have an impact on American Jewish college students who feel battered and politically marginalized, which is definitely unfortunate but it's unclear how hurting American Jews will force Bibi to withdraw from the WB.

"a military occupation is only unjust when it stops being necessary"

this isn't wrong exactly but tbh every occupying power thinks their occupation is "necessary"

i agree but it's much easier to make the case - or at least make it controversial enough that it can't be settled unanimously - when hostilities are still ongoing

‏@PageSix
Benjamin Netanyahu was booed by the audience at "Hamilton"

@DougHenwood
Best thing I ever heard about “Hamilton"

This week, with its fresh new $38 billion commitment in hand, the Israeli government announced the approval of an all new settlement in the West Bank, one that is particularly hostile to ostensible U.S. policy, the international consensus, and any prospects for an end to occupation. The new settlement, “one of a string of housing complexes that threaten to bisect the West Bank,” as the New York Times put it this morning, “is designed to house settlers from a nearby illegal outpost, Amona, which an Israeli court has ordered demolished.” This new settlement extends far into the West Bank: closer to Jordan, in fact, than to Israel.

In response to this announcement, the U.S. State Department yesterday issued an unusually harsh denunciation of Israel’s actions. “We strongly condemn the Israeli government’s recent decision to advance a plan that would create a significant new settlement deep in the West Bank,” it began. It suggested Netanyahu has been publicly lying, noting that the “approval contradicts previous public statements by the government of Israel that it had no intention of creating new settlements.” The State Department invoked the aid package the U.S. just lavished to describe it as “deeply troubling, in the wake of Israel and the U.S. concluding an unprecedented agreement on military assistance designed to further strengthen Israel’s security, that Israel would take a decision so contrary to its long-term security interest in a peaceful resolution of its conflict with the Palestinians.”

Much of that, while a bit more rhetorically clear than usual, is par for the course: The U.S. — in vintage Obama fashion — issues pretty, pleasing statements claiming to be upset at Israel’s settlements while taking continuous actions to protect and enable the very policies Obama pretends to oppose. But the State Department denunciation yesterday was actually notable for what amounts to its stark and explicit acknowledgement — long overdue — that Israel is clearly and irreversibly committed to ruling over the Palestinians in perpetuity, becoming the exact “apartheid” state about which (Ehud) Barak warned....

So Israel — in the words of its most loyal benefactor — is moving inexorably “towards cementing a one-state reality of perpetual occupation” that is anti-democratic: i.e., the equivalent of apartheid. And the leading protector and enabler of this apartheid regime is the U.S. — just as was true of the apartheid regime of the 1980s in South Africa....

https://theintercept.com/2016/10/06/u-s-admits-israel-is-building-permanent-apartheid-regime-weeks-after-giving-it-38-billion/

https://twitter.com/IAFsite/status/791565335619104768?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw

mondoweiss commenters surprisingly upbeat + optimistic about president trump - now they share something in common w/ hardcore right-wing zionists /and/ white supremacists

https://www.commentarymagazine.com/foreign-policy/united-nations/united-nations-schizophrenia-on-israel/

looks like i'm going to israel again this summer (third visit)

where will you be? my parents visited friends in tekoa a few weeks ago

haifa (visiting baha'i holy sites)

might visit a friend in tel aviv, but we're not really supposed to tourist around

akka too

might get in a side trip to bethlehem also

sorry i mean nazareth, not bethlehem

embarrassing

‏@AliAbunimah
Lol. Netanyahu told New Zealand backing UN resolution would be “declaration of war”

http://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/.premium-1.761706

@DougHenwood
As someone pointed out somewhere, Israel is doing to itself what it hates BDS for - isolating the country from the world.

http://jewishnews.timesofisrael.com/uk-criticism-us-kerry/

A British government spokesperson said: “We do not believe that the way to negotiate peace is by focusing on only one issue, in this cases the construction of settlements, when clearly the conflict between the Israelis and Palestinians is so deeply complex.

“And we do not believe that it is appropriate to attack the composition of the democratically-elected government of an ally. The Government believes that negotiations will only succeed when they are conducted between the two parties, supported by the international community.”

Do the people in Israel who think Elor Azaria should be pardoned (including some politicians not of the right like Yachimovich) dispute what the judges agreed were the facts of the case (i.e. that he fatally shot an attacker who'd been subdued and was lying wounded on the ground) or do they disagree with the IDF policy that it's illegal to execute subdued prisoners who are lying wounded on the ground? This one is really hard for me to understand as an American Jew, I thought was the kind of outcome liberal Zionists like me were supposed to deploy as evidence that Israel punishes freelance ethnic murderers in a way its neighbors don't.

The apologia I've most often heard is that the soldier was afraid the terrorist was still a potential threat (like maybe playing opossum) but I agree it's a hard defense to understand and his legal teams argument was even more absurd. They argued the guy was already dead so the shot didn't kill him. I assume it's more about not punishing soldiers for killing terrorists no matter the circumstances. It's still far better than the US where a sizable part of population defend cops who murder black ppl in cold blood who weren't even attempted murderers just moments before (and then get let off by the legal system).

It's still far better than the US where a sizable part of population defend cops who murder black ppl in cold blood who weren't even attempted murderers just moments before

tbf a sizable part of the population thinks of any black man 13 and up as an attempted murderer who only by chance may not have been attempting to murder someone at the exact moment he was apprehended

If the comments on this article

http://www.timesofisrael.com/elor-azaria-and-israels-moral-core/

are any indication, there are definitely people in Israel who take the second view I described above: namely that a terrorist should be summarily executed if you have him in custody. It is.... unsettling.

If I can love America while keeping my eyes open to the fact that there are lots of really terrible Americans -- and I do -- I can love Israel while keeping my eyes open to the fact that there are lots of really terrible Israelis. Still, it stings.

it seems like a really dumb opinion too just from a pragmatic pov. don't prisoners have value as bargaining chips, or sources of intelligence? and since these stabbing attacks seem mostly suicide by soldier anyway it's just giving them what they want. idgi.

israelis are nuts. my boss is israeli. =|

Also I'll bet 75% of comments on that page (which is an English-language paper) are US basement hardmen letting you know how tough THEY'D be if they were in the idf

yeah i was gonna say the american right-wing zionists (esp those who ultimately make aliyah to the territories) are really the worst (where worse = more jingoistic, martial nationalism). which maybe shouldn't be such a shock bc even tho our (where our = diaspora cosmopolitan jewry) values are antithetical to theirs, our nation as a whole is v accommodating + even incubates these sentiments where there's a v real phenomenon of [some of] US jewry actually radicalizing israel.