[skinster]

Seconded.

[noir]

@Zionist Nationalist , please don't reply. You can't argue with Jihadists. It's going round and round and just playing to their hand.

[skinster]

I put a jihad on you, noir. durka durka durka mohammed jihad...

[noir]

I was reading recently a lot about the British anti Zionism story, despite their viscousness I can't hate them. In Israel many Euro haters wish Europe to be strike by Islam as just punishment for all those long years of antisemitism and anti Zionism. France and Sweden are lost but Britain should stay British.

[skinster]

[skinster]

Forgot one. I love Tony Benn (but I support his son dying in the hellfire in case anyone was asking)

[noir]

However, it wasn’t British Stalinists or Trotskyists who took this Soviet-designed message and put it to work on the British left. It was – believe it or not – the Young Liberals.


Amongst the delegates at both conferences was the international vice-chairman of the Young Liberals (the youth wing of the Liberal Party, that comprised the National League of Young Liberals and the Union of Liberal Students), called Peter Hellyer. His presence would have long-lasting effects on the Young Liberals and, indirectly, on the wider left.

Peter Hellyer



Today he lives in UAE and enjoys the petro dollars of corruptive oil fiefdom

Peter Hellyer, who first came to the Middle East in 1969, has witnessed firsthand the modern transformation of the UAE and the evolution of the local oil and gas industry.

“The willingness of the shareholding companies and the operators to enter into that partnership 35 years ago and to recognise that the industry had changed was crucial. The world had changed and the oil majors had to accept the principle of partnership and take it on board.”

[Potemkin]

Yes you are a zionist, because anyone who supports Israel as a state to exist is a zionist.

No nation has a 'right' to exist, skinster. Nations are forged in the furnace of war, not in diplomatic conference rooms. If the Palestinians want a nation, then they had better do what the Jews did, and fight for it. Arafat understood this point, and for several decades the PLO gave it their best shot. Unfortunately for them, it didn't work. Even the assistance of the Arab nations failed to do the job. Israel looks like it's here to stay, and not because it has some abstract 'right' to exist, but because the Jews got their shit together and carved out a nation for themselves with fire and sword. You know, the usual way. I neither approve nor disapprove of this; it simply happened, and is therefore a reality.

And you claimed it wasn't a racist or apartheid state, which it quite obviously is, but if you make that claim, why can't you prove it?

As has been pointed out, proving a negative is rather difficult. As for the accusation of racism, both the Jews and the Palestinians are the same race of people. They have a different religion and a different culture, that's all. And Israel is not (yet) an apartheid state - the Israeli Arabs are allowed to vote in elections, and are legal citizens of Israel.

Spare me with the I-don't-have-a-dog-in-this-fight bullshit, anytime you've commented in Israel/Palestine threads, you've done so from the position of a zionist. Own that shit.

I don't really care much either way, skinster. If Israel is destroyed and the Palestinians found their own nation on the smouldering rubble, then fine. If the Israelis deport all the Palestinians to Jordan, then that's fine too. Why should I care either way?

I thought socialists/communists in general opposed the state of Israel, or at least its oppression of the Palestinian people....what happened to you?

Stalin's Soviet Union was the first nation to formally recognise the state of Israel in 1948. Stalin believed that doing so would be in the best interests of the Soviet Union and of socialism worldwide. He later changed his mind, of course, but it is a fact that most Western leftists were pro-Zionist back in the 1940s and 50s, before they too changed their minds in the 1970s and 80s. Geo-politics is a complicated thing, skinster.

[noir]

@Potemkin

Stalin believed that doing so would be in the best interests of the Soviet Union and of socialism worldwide.

He supported the Zionists in 1948 not because they were socialists, of course.

[skinster]

at Potemkin. I'll respond when I'm sober but, in the meantime.

[noir]

but it is a fact that most Western leftists were pro-Zionist back in the 1940s and 50s, before they too changed their minds in the 1970s and 80s. Geo-politics is a complicated thing,

The story of progressive antisemitism (European anti Zionism) is the most fascinating history of our time.

[Cookie Monster]

Indeed. The whole concept of "human rights" is fundamentally alien to most of the human race, and is a very recent invention of post-Enlightenment Western Europe. Most people throughout history, and across the world even to this day, are essentially tribalist in their outlook. Such people think nothing of stealing another tribe's land or property, and have no conception of any universal "human rights". There's nothing particularly unusual about that; in fact, until a couple of centuries ago everyone thought this way. The Israeli state is not a racist state, and nor is it an apartheid state - it is essentially a tribal state, surrounded by similarly-minded hostile tribes. Lecturing them about their violations of the "human rights" of the Palestinians is therefore pointless; they don't recognise any such universalist discourse on "human rights", and neither do the Palestinians or the Arab world in general. It's just crazy liberal Westerners talking their nonsense again.

I agree that Israel is more of a tribal state, and for that matter many other states in the ME region are tribal as well. And indeed Israel is state that is only able to exist by shielding itself from certain segments of its society and from its neighbours who would otherwise undo its continuation. But I think it is unfair the isolate the Israeli's and Arabs in being foreign for such a universal discourse. I suspect that many of the average Europeans and Americans are also foreign to a universal secular discourse of human rights. It is just that their leaders are more skilled (or at least vocal) in this discourse than other leaders. Just follow the news in relation to the migration challenges Europe faces to get an impression of how the masses think. Civilisation is just a thin veneer over our barbarity.

That having said, the judgment is most certainly unorthodox to say the least by most legal standards. To deem it manslaughter instead of murder when a trained soldier shoots a captive person at point blank; and to sentence that soldier for 7,5% of the maximum years of imprisonment for manslaughter. I suspect that the Court thought it would otherwise harm the morale of the Israeli soldiers.

[noir]

I suspect that many of the average Europeans and Americans are also foreign to a universal secular discourse of human rights. It is just that their leaders are more skilled (or at least vocal) in this discourse than other leaders.

Right. Reading the h native Arab lobby in Britain, CAABU (The Council for Arab-British Understanding) and LMEC (Labour Middle East Council), their first years were very remote from liberal human rights speak, they were explicit of "Britain’s vulnerability to the Arab ‘oil weapon’". They were center right (or right wing elements of the labour party) with echoes of Enoch Powell’s racial anti immigrant rhetoric ("rivers of blood") that is, against the Jewish immigrants in what become Israel. The Arabs were cherished as indigenous like "us", the British.

In their press and publicity work, British Labor MP Christopher Mayhew, his allies in CAABU and LMEC, and their associates in groups like Palestine Action, developed a campaigning language of antiZionism which proved to be both hugely influential and highly controversial. Certainly, the presence of racial themes in the arguments being propounded made for highly combustible political material and there are interesting echoes of Enoch Powell’s racial rhetoric in some of the material associated with leading LMEC figures like Mayhew and Faulds. Mayhew was certainly prepared to exploit domestic political controversies on race and immigration as a springboard for attacks on Israel and Zionism. Appearing on the BBC’s ‘The World Today’ programme in 1968, he stated that I never felt it was right to ask us to impose on the Arab world hundreds of thousands of Jewish immigrants. And if I may say so, if it’s not irrelevant, the controversy about immigration in Britain today, when we are asked to have in Britain a comparatively negligible number of immigrants and yet we visited on the Arab world with force of arms, comparatively millions of people of different religion, different custom, different race.

Only later they repackaged their pro Arab propaganda with moral and liberal human rights argument.

[skinster]

No nation has a 'right' to exist, skinster. Nations are forged in the furnace of war, not in diplomatic conference rooms. If the Palestinians want a nation, then they had better do what the Jews did, and fight for it. Arafat understood this point, and for several decades the PLO gave it their best shot. Unfortunately for them, it didn't work. Even the assistance of the Arab nations failed to do the job. Israel looks like it's here to stay, and not because it has some abstract 'right' to exist, but because the Jews got their shit together and carved out a nation for themselves with fire and sword. You know, the usual way. I neither approve nor disapprove of this; it simply happened, and is therefore a reality.

If you don't care, why bother commenting in support of zionism? You're fooling no-one btw, not in the past and not now.

[skinster]

Mossad is fucking with my response, it only posts the last part but I responded in full...wtf.

[skinster]

MOSSAD!!

[skinster]

No nation has a 'right' to exist, skinster. Nations are forged in the furnace of war, not in diplomatic conference rooms. If the Palestinians want a nation, then they had better do what the Jews did, and fight for it. Arafat understood this point, and for several decades the PLO gave it their best shot. Unfortunately for them, it didn't work. Even the assistance of the Arab nations failed to do the job. Israel looks like it's here to stay, and not because it has some abstract 'right' to exist, but because the Jews got their shit together and carved out a nation for themselves with fire and sword. You know, the usual way. I neither approve nor disapprove of this; it simply happened, and is therefore a reality.

Ummm, I said you were a zionist because you support Israel as a state or whatever, what's all this nonsense?

As has been pointed out, proving a negative is rather difficult. As for the accusation of racism, both the Jews and the Palestinians are the same race of people. They have a different religion and a different culture, that's all. And Israel is not (yet) an apartheid state - the Israeli Arabs are allowed to vote in elections, and are legal citizens of Israel.

It can easily be proven that Israel practices apartheid by the fact that it offers privileges to those who are Jewish and discriminates and segregates, applies massive restrictions or imprisoning those who are not Jewish, in Israel-proper, the West Bank and Gaza. I think this all sits very comfortably under the definition of 'apartheid'. Are you denying this is happening?

Yes, the 20% of Israeli-Palestinians inside of Israel can vote, but what about the Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza who have few rights or absolutely none?

As for Semites, yep, that's true, but not all Jews are Semites, such as those from Europe and Russia, millions of them who settled in Israel.

I don't really care much either way, skinster. If Israel is destroyed and the Palestinians found their own nation on the smouldering rubble, then fine. If the Israelis deport all the Palestinians to Jordan, then that's fine too. Why should I care either way?

If you don't care, why bother commenting in support of zionism? You're fooling no-one btw, not in the past and not now.

Also lulz at Stalin getting owned by the zionists after supporting them initially and them picking the West as their buddies instead...

[layman]

@Potemkin skinster is too emotional to have a rational debate with.

The only interesting but predictable thing is that it's another ethnocentric loyalty.

Skinster is ethnically Pakistani and therefore rabidly anti Israeli.

As for why such an exception is made of Israel? Well, for all their hatred, these people still consider Israel part of the western club and for all their third worldism / brown people worship, they know that west is best and expect higher standards

[skinster]

zionists are

Potemkin can't prove that what Israel practices is not apartheid because that is the reality of the situation, sorry.

Also, Jews also oppose Israel and none of them are Pakistani (except one I know who has Pakistani cousins through marriage). Lots of Jews oppose Israel as much as me, in case you didn't notice. Let me know if you want me to make you a list.

[noir]

@Potemkin skinster is too emotional to have a rational debate with.

The only interesting but predictable thing is that it's another ethnocentric loyalty.

Skinster is ethnically Pakistani and therefore rabidly anti Israeli.

As for why such an exception is made of Israel? Well, for all their hatred, these people still consider Israel part of the western club and for all their third worldism / brown people worship, they know that west is best and expect higher standards

They are indoctrinated, the leading Islamist scholar, Bernard Lewis wrote,"The Arab opponents of Zionism and of Israel have usually tried to win support in the Western world by identifying Zionism with the fashionable enemy, at one time defined as bolshevism or communism. When-with growing American influence in the world-the racist became the fashionable enemy, Zionism was reclassified as racist."

*Amandla is a Zulu and Xhosa word meaning "power". The word was a popular rallying cry in the days of resistance against Apartheid, here a pro Palestinian propagandist uses the word to capture innocent Americans campus students.