Palestinian Propaganda Thread - Page 3 - Politics Forum.org | PoFo

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#14943366
The polls and surveys are clear that a majority of Israelis are in favour of a two-state settlement but a majority of Palestinians are opposed! They want ONE state!

With Jews either as a persecuted minority/second class citizens, or expelled/genocided, depending on which Palestinian you ask.
#14943367
redcarpet wrote:The polls and surveys are clear that a majority of Israelis are in favour of a two-state settlement but a majority of Palestinians are opposed! They want ONE state!

With Jews either as a persecuted minority/second class citizens, or expelled/genocided, depending on which Palestinian you ask.


Palestinians are aware of the Jewish Religious Ultra-Orthodox and Orthodox nuts that want "it all back, plus Al Asqa too, then the Messiah will come and wipe out Islam". That the majority are opposed to the Two State solution and see it as the Jews pretend "status quo" solution is understandable. Religiously/culturally speaking, this is a fight for survival.
#14943369
colliric wrote:Palestinians are aware of the Jewish Religious Ultra-Orthodox and Orthodox nuts that want "it all back, plus Al Asqa too, then the Messiah will come and wipe out Islam". That the majority are opposed to the Two State solution and see it as the Jews pretend "status quo" solution is understandable. Religiously/culturally speaking, this is a fight for survival.


Lol, so it's not that Palestinians are Muslims with the desire to persecute non-Muslims? Riiiiiight.......

Why are there no Jews in the Arab states? Why don't they talk about BOTH refugee problems of 1948? Why aren't Jews & Arabs equal in law RIGHT NOW in the Arab states. And why should people assume a single, unitary Palestinian state would be the first ever one-law, secular & multicultural society?
#14943371
redcarpet wrote:Lol, so it's not that Palestinians are Muslims with the desire to persecute non-Muslims? Riiiiiight.......


You know my opinion is they're both wrong and in fact the British created this shithouse situation. Should have been a damn combined secular state. Palestinian should have been told to accept Jewish holocaust "refugees as full citizens" instead of a fucken half-half solution. Plus no right of return to other Jews.

Why are there no Jews in the Arab states? Why don't they talk about BOTH refugee problems of 1948? Why aren't Jews & Arabs equal in law RIGHT NOW in the Arab states. And why should people assume a single, unitary Palestinian state would be the first ever one-law, secular & multicultural society?


Islam is a shitty religion with many inconsistencies and the Arab states reflect this currently. Palestine should have become a secular state with both Jews and Palestinians having to learn to live together with the UN overseeing it. The 1948 creation of Israel didn't help this and made the Arab states more aggressive to Jewry.
#14943382
redcarpet wrote:The polls and surveys are clear that a majority of Israelis are in favour of a two-state settlement but a majority of Palestinians are opposed! They want ONE state!


Which polls?
#14943390
Klein: Trump Advancing Real Mideast Peace by Exposing Palestinian ‘Refugee’ Myth

Image

The Trump administration seems poised to help bring real and lasting peace to the Middle East by recognizing the long-ignored reality that the Palestinian “refugee” issue is a giant fraud perpetuated by the Palestinians together with the United Nations.

According to several reports, the Trump White House is planning to issue a policy paper capping the number of Palestinian “refugees” at about 500,000, which is one tenth the number claimed by the UN. The U.S. administration is also reportedly set to reject the UN’s definition of a Palestinian “refugee,” which scandalously differs from the way all other refugees are officially categorized by the international body and is clearly designed to perpetuate the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

Already in January, the Trump administration slashed aid to the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA), the UN body that ministers to the Palestinian “refugees.” On Tuesday, Foreign Policy magazine cited sources saying the U.S. has decided to stop funding UNRWA altogether, an overdue move given that UNRWA’s very existence only fuels radicalism and Palestinian intransience.

U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Nikki Haley on Tuesday signaled a sea change in U.S. policy toward UNRWA when she questioned the official number of Palestinians designated as refugees and advocated an overhaul of UNRWA if the U.S. is going to continue to provide support.

The U.S. moves against UNRWA and toward a clearsighted Mideast approach have predictably been met with anger and derision from the Palestinians and some in the international community. However, even utilizing the UN’s own exaggerated definition of a Palestinian “refugee,” the agency was caught red-handed last December wildly inflating “refugee” numbers.

Lebanon’s census data released that month put the Palestinian “refugee” population living inside Lebanon at about one third of the nearly 500,000 reported by UNRWA. I24 News added the census was “conducted by 1,000 Lebanese and Palestinian employees and was taken over the course of a year.” If accurate, that would mean UNRWA has been taking in funding for a massively inflated number of so-called Palestinian refugees. UNRWA would not comment when asked by this reporter to provide the total number of Palestinian “refugees” that the UN body services in Lebanon. Accurate census data is not available for UNRWA camps in the West Bank and Gaza Strip.

There are many reasons the U.S. should immediately stop funding UNRWA and instead take the approach recommended by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who has called for the dismantlement of the UN’s Palestinian “refugee” agency.

The existence of UNRWA is unnecessary. The international body has another agency, the UNHRC, which tends to the world’s refugees other than Palestinians. Only Palestinian “refugees” have a separate agency, UNRWA.

The Palestinians and Arab states know that the so-called Palestinian refugee problem could only be sustained through a separate agency since Palestinian “refugees” do not meet the UN’s basic criteria for the definition of refugees.

The UNHRC, which again deals with all other refugees outside the Palestinian arena, has a fairly sensible definition of a refugee: “A refugee is someone who has been forced to flee his or her country because of persecution, war or violence. A refugee has a well-founded fear of persecution for reasons of race, religion, nationality, political opinion or membership in a particular social group.”

In other words, the UNHRC defines a refugee as someone who was forced to flee his or her home and cannot return for fear of persecution.

UNRWA, in contrast, defines a Palestinian “refugee” as any person whose “normal place of residence was Palestine during the period 1 June 1946 to 15 May 1948 and who lost both home and means of livelihood as a result of the 1948 conflict.”

So UNRWA counts as “refugees” any local Arab who lived in Palestine for as little as two years, knowing that scores of foreign Arabs immigrated to the area during those years in search of employment amid talks of creating a future Jewish state.

Amazingly, UNRWA states that “Palestine refugees are persons who fulfill the above definition and descendants of fathers fulfilling the definition.”

This means that even if original Palestinian “refugees” long ago immigrated to another country and became citizens of that country, they and their descendants are still considered “refugees” according to UNRWA. The definition flies in the face of what a refugee is supposed to be. It is also in direct contrast to the Convention on Refugees, which dictates that a person who “has acquired a new nationality, and enjoys the protection of the country of his new nationality” is exempted from the status of refugee.

UNRWA’s definition of a “refugee” doesn’t mention UNHCR’s “well-founded fear of being persecuted.” Indeed, Palestinians have no fear of being persecuted by Israel, and would not be considered a “refugee” under ordinary international criteria.

In defining a refugee as it does, UNRWA has ensured that the Palestinian “refugee” problem has only grown throughout the years.

The actual number of Palestinian “refugees” is in question.

The Jewish Virtual Library notes:

Many Arabs claim that 800,000 to 1,000,000 Palestinians became refugees in 1947­-49. The last census was taken in 1945. It found only 756,000 permanent Arab residents in Israel. On November 30, 1947, the date the UN voted for partition, the total was 809,100. A 1949 Government of Israel census counted 160,000 Arabs living in the country after the war. This meant no more than 650,000 Palestinian Arabs could have become refugees. A report by the UN Mediator on Palestine arrived at an even lower figure — 472,000.

The Library notes that at the same time that Arabs were left stranded, about the same number of Jews were forced to leave their homes in Arab countries:

The number of Jews fleeing Arab countries for Israel in the years following Israel’s independence was roughly equal to the number of Arabs leaving Palestine. Many Jews were allowed to take little more than the shirts on their backs. These refugees had no desire to be repatriated. Little is heard about them because they did not remain refugees for long. Of the 820,000 Jewish refugees, 586,000 were resettled in Israel at great expense and without any offer of compensation from the Arab governments who confiscated their possessions.


There is evidence that scores of Arabs joined the local inhabitants and became “refugees” tended to by UNRWA when the agency began operations in May 1950 to help the Arabs impacted by the 1948 war.

That year, UNRWA’s director admitted, “a large group of indigent people totaling over 100,000 … could not be called refugees, but … have lost their means of livelihood because of the war. … The Agency felt their need … even more acute than that of the refugees.”

UNRWA’s Annual Report of the Director from July 1951-June 1952 acknowledges it was difficult to separate “ordinary nomadic Bedouins and … unemployed or indigent local residents” from genuine refugees, and that “it cannot be doubted that in many cases individuals who could not qualify as being bona fide refugees are in fact on the relief rolls.

The Palestinian “refugee” issue is one of the most potent weapons utilized by the Palestinians against Israel. The Palestinians use their “refugee” status to threaten Israel’s existence by demanding the so-called right of return, meaning flooding Israel with millions of Palestinian and foreign Arabs considered Palestinian “refugees,” thus threatening the very nature of the Jewish state. If the “refugee” problem is ever solved, the Palestinian Authority’s main trump card against Israel will be taken away and they know it.

As I wrote in my book, The Late Great State of Israel:

When UNRWA began operations, it was assumed that the refugee problem would be resolved and that the agency would function only temporarily. It was not anticipated that the Arab states, which were directly shaping the mandate of this new organization, had another idea: the refugees would be kept in camps for as long as it took, and the burden of political responsibility for them was to be placed permanently upon Israel.

As one PLO document on the refugees explains: “In order to keep the refugee issue alive and prevent Israel from evading responsibility for their plight, Arab countries—with the notable exception of Jordan—have usually sought to preserve a Palestinian identity by maintaining the Palestinians’ status as refugees.”

Arlene Kushner, an Israel-based researcher on UNRWA, explains: “In other words, as a matter of deliberate policy, most Arab nations have deliberately declined to absorb the refugees or give them citizenship, and have instead focused on their right to ‘return’ to Israel.”

The Palestinians and Arab nations, meanwhile, have distorted the history of “Palestinian refugees” to manipulate the international community.

The Palestinian narrative is simple: When the Jewish state was founded, Israel largely kicked the Palestinians (who, by the way, did not exist at the time under the name “Palestinians,” but were local Arab inhabitants who lived in a region also inhabited by Jews) out of their homes, thus causing hundreds of thousands to become refugees. The Palestinians refer to Israel’s creation as the “Nakba,” or catastrophe when Palestinian Arabs fled or were expelled from their homes.

The reality is quite different. After Israel was founded in 1948, a military coalition of Arab nations immediately formed to wage war on the new Jewish state. Some local Arabs, who did not yet go by the name of Palestinians, left the area in anticipation of the war, others directly responded to the dictates of Arab states to stay out of the way so that invading armies could conquer Israel, and still others fled once the war started so that they were not caught up in the fighting.

Arab states waged the war after refusing to accept UN Resolution 181, which called for the partition of the British Mandate of Palestine into Arab and Jewish states. The Jews immediately accepted the resolution, but the Arabs forthrightly rejected the plan, launching a war to destroy the Jewish state.

It should be noted that Israel’s Declaration of Independence called on the local Arab population to remain in place:

In the midst of wanton aggression, we yet call upon the Arab inhabitants of the State of Israel to preserve the ways of peace and play their part in the development of the State, on the basis of full and equal citizenship and due representation in all its bodies and institutions.

It is true that some Jewish groups, including the Haganah, encouraged local Arabs to flee, however those few documented cases are the exception and not the rule.

The Economist, for example, reported that the Arab residents of Haifa left their homes in large part because of Arab army warnings:

Of the 62,000 Arabs who formerly lived in Haifa not more than 5,000 or 6,000 remained. Various factors influenced their decision to seek safety in flight. There is but little doubt that the most potent of the factors were the announcements made over the air by the Higher Arab Executive, urging the Arabs to quit. … It was clearly intimated that those Arabs who remained in Haifa and accepted Jewish protection would be regarded as renegades.

“Arab officers ordered the complete evacuation of specific villages in certain areas, lest their inhabitants ‘treacherously’ acquiesce in Israeli rule or hamper Arab military deployments,” wrote historian Benny Morris.

Based on the latest reports, it seems the Trump administration has recognized the “fake news” narrative of Palestinian “refugees” and is about to deploy a heavy dose of reality to one of the world’s greatest frauds.

Aaron Klein is Breitbart’s Jerusalem bureau chief and senior investigative reporter. He is a New York Times bestselling author and hosts the popular weekend talk radio program, “Aaron Klein Investigative Radio.” Follow him on Twitter @AaronKleinShow. Follow him on Facebook.

https://www.breitbart.com/jerusalem/201 ... ugee-myth/

(some bolding is mine)
So it seems the main problem is getting solved.
UNRWA should disband, all Arabs who claim to be refugees and hold a citizenship anywhere can no longer call themselves refugees. I don't know how happy Jordan, Egypt, Syria and Lebanon would be to naturalise those Arabs.

By the way, I was born a refugee and did not have any citizenship till the age of seven. My country of residence then accorded me citizenship and I stopped being a refugee. Easy peasy.
#14943493
colliric wrote:…Should have been a damn combined secular state. Palestinian should have been told to accept Jewish holocaust "refugees as full citizens" instead of a fucken half-half solution. Plus no right of return to other Jews.


What you are saying is simply as unreal as a pie in the sky. The Arabs, even back at the end of the British Mandate in the late 1940s, never contemplated any deals or even a remote coexistence with the Jews. There is not even one iota of evidence to suggest otherwise.

To wit, - the Arabs would laugh at a possibility of accepting Jewish Holocaust, as you put it. At the time, as it is now, the Arab narrative stipulates that the Jews of Palestine are not ‘native’ to Palestine specifically, or Middle East in general. The Arabs say that those Jews came from Europe, and that fact disqualifies them form claiming any connection to the Middle East. This is off course moronic, but none the less is what they say today and in the days prior to 1948.

The war of 1948 was predicated on those sentiments plus an overwhelming and well-documented desire by Jordan, Syria and Egypt to carve out British-mandated Palestine and attach those parts to their respective freshly-established countries. For instance, King Farouk intimated that Egypt might stay out of war if Israel was prepared to secede Eilat.

So, - no…no Palestinian leader has ever been able to even contemplate any coexistence with the Jews on a 50-50 basis. One-state solution is being dangled in front of a gullible world as simple the means to an end, - the end being a total overpowering of the Jews as an ethnic group by demographic means in any future Palestine. The Arabs must, by definition, assume politically and ethnically superior posture. Nothing less will suffice.

colliric wrote:…Palestine should have become a secular state with both Jews and Palestinians having to learn to live together with the UN overseeing it.


Really? Why? Why should Israel be interested in a future that is subject to the UN or anybody else’s supervision? If you are implying that that is a price to pay for peace, - well…the price is too high! Naturally, back in 1948 your suggestion would have fallen on deaf ears, simply because the Arabs had other designs, as I am sure you know and history attests.

Today your suggestion is a ‘no go’, because it is infinitely easier to either maintain a status-quo indefinitely or until the other sides gives in. Or flex the muscle and force the solution that is acceptable to Israel now. Both option are doable and not a single country or any international body would stand in the way.

Loss of sovereignty is an existential threat, and no country will ever accept it quietly without an all-out fight. Yugoslavia and its fate comes to mind here. In the case of Israel, it is noteworthy that we are dealing here with a reginal superpower that is capable, well… of anything.

Anyway, there is no ‘learning to live together’ here, there is only a remote possibility of respecting each other. Mutual respect will forestall any military action and that is the best case scenario in the short term.

colliric wrote:The 1948 creation of Israel didn't help this and made the Arab states more aggressive to Jewry.


The creation of Israel in 1948 had nothing to do with what Arabs wanted. It was about the Jews. We all know what Arabs wanted, - as the war of 1948, that they initiated, aptly confirmed.

Anyway, please do not treat Israel as some kind of special case. Israel was created like any other country in the region and more or less at about the same time. Israel, therefore, is not any more special than any other recognized country in the Middle East or elsewhere.

Can you imagine if you were to suggest that, for example, Russian Federation should be governed by UN…why? Well, - you might say that there are nearly 100 ethnic groups populating the country and the Chechens are pissed off, - so, you know, to keep the peace, let’s get the UN in! The Russians will literary die laughing. Israelis will not be far off the same response.
#14943864
What Lana is saying is that she wanted to play for both Israel and Palestine. Unfortunately, she doesn't really realize that Israel is a state that was built upon Palestine, where actual humans still exist. She requested playing Palestine but since Israel controls the entire state and tries to control the narrative, it refused whathername's request. And she refused to play for apartheid. Even though she was offered 600K more than she's normally offered.
#14943889
skinster wrote:What Lana is saying is that she wanted to play for both Israel and Palestine. Unfortunately, she doesn't really realize that Israel is a state that was built upon Palestine, where actual humans still exist. She requested playing Palestine but since Israel controls the entire state and tries to control the narrative, it refused whathername's request. And she refused to play for apartheid. Even though she was offered 600K more than she's normally offered.


Do you really think that anybody in Israel actually cares for Lana?
Your BDS crap is not working. Look at Soda Stream success.
You entire narrative is bankrupt.
Fundamentally Israel cannot be stopped any longer from achieving its objectives of accomplishing a Zionist dream, - a country where the Jews can feel secure. With functional borders and thriving, functional economy.
The history has left you and your kind behind.
There is nothing you do or say to reverse the process.
#14943931
Metoo wrote:Do you really think that anybody in Israel actually cares for Lana?


Considering she was offered 6 times more than she's paid for shows usually, to play for apartheid, I'm guessing that yes, there are some in Israel who care. I don't really care much for her but appreciate her solidarity here. For zionists and Israelis who do care for her, feel free to look at their tears responding to her Twitter page where she cancelled the gig. :)

Your BDS crap is not working. Look at Soda Stream success.


Wasn't that the company that was forced to move out of the settlements in the West Bank? :?:

Anyway, whether BDS is working or not can be considered by how many millions the Israeli government is putting towards attacking the movement and activists within it, how Israel is forcing certain countries to legally criminalize the movement, and stuff like your anger at it.

You entire narrative is bankrupt.


Rich, coming from a zionist.

Fundamentally Israel cannot be stopped any longer from achieving its objectives of accomplishing a Zionist dream, - a country where the Jews can feel secure. With functional borders and thriving, functional economy.


Where are Israel's borders again?

The history has left you and your kind behind.


With regard to apartheid states and history, I believe I'm on the right side of history.

There is nothing you do or say to reverse the process.


Reverse the process of the theft of the entirety of Palestine? Perhaps not right now, but things aren't looking good for Israel's future if it continues its dream of being an ethnosupremacist state in a land where half of the people are occupied or imprisoned and lack basic human rights. :)
#14944149
skinster wrote:Considering she was offered 6 times more than she's paid for shows usually, to play for apartheid, I'm guessing that yes, there are some in Israel who care. I don't really care much for her but appreciate her solidarity here. For zionists and Israelis who do care for her, feel free to look at their tears responding to her Twitter page where she cancelled the gig.


Look, - yes there are a lot of people in Israel who would have loved to see her. Absolutely. However, you are confusing entertainment with politics. There is absolutely no impact of Lana’s concert on anything Israeli. Everyday life in Israel is unchanged regardless of the status of the concert, - whether or not it proceeds or it gets cancelled.

My point is simple here, - BDS has never worked. All it did is this, - it created a lot of ‘noise’, but no substance. In order for the boycott to be felt, it needs a political and most importantly economic dimension. For example, with South Africa back in 1970s and 1980s the boycott worked to a point, but even then the effect was rather flimsy. Note that that boycott was by far better organized and stronger in every respect. It involved UN and individual governments of many nations. The boycott you are talking about, is nothing like it. It is a bug bite at best.

skinster wrote:Wasn't that the company that was forced to move out of the settlements in the West Bank?


Really? Forced? It was a business decision. Clearly, Soda Stream did not want to lose any business over BDS. It was by far cheaper to move, then to face a possibility (not certainty) of sale losses. For your information, - the Arab workers staged multiple meetings with administration asking not to move! In business, we often do what is necessary to maximize the revenue and offset the unnecessary headaches, which is what the BDS would have been for Soda Stream. It is very unlikely that Soda Stream would have lost all that much regardless of the move. Anyway, BDS in this case accomplished one thing only, - it made nearly 600 Arabs unemployed!

skinster wrote:Anyway, whether BDS is working or not can be considered by how many millions the Israeli government is putting towards attacking the movement and activists within it, how Israel is forcing certain countries to legally criminalize the movement, and stuff like your anger at it.


Look, you got to do the math here. The 2016 Israeli GNP was 320 billion. The ‘millions’ they spend on countering BDS is not even a pocket change, - it is a lot less than that. No country so far, that is no country that actually matters, endorsed BDS. Many states in US actually criminalized the BDS activities. Call it what you will, - Israeli efforts or local initiatives, - who cares, nobody that actually matter in any shape or form supports BDS.

You should really ponder a different issue, - ask yourselves, why is it BDS is not working? Is it possible that BDS platform fundamentally goes counter to western values and is anti-Semitic in nature? No self-respecting organization or a country will ever come close to BDS. You want prove? Easy…why not boycott China, Saudi Arabia, Russia, Iran, half a dozen African countries, etc. etc. If you want to boycott Israel, you must boycott them too! But you don't!

Think about it, - you and the BDS characters are only interested Israel! This is the reason, why people who actually think for living will never touch BDS with a 10-foot pole!

skinster wrote:Where are Israel's borders again?


Really? Israeli borders, as we speak, are de facto next to Jordan, Gaza, Lebanon and Syria. Perhaps you should look at the map and see what territory Israeli actually controls. Furthermore, Mr. Abbas just now intimated that he may not be against a confederation with Jordan and Israel, instead of pushing for the independent Palestine. Here you go with the borders of the future!

My point to you was that Zionist dream is a reality now. The Jews finally, after 2000 years, have a place to live without a fear of persecution and with defensible borders. This is a fact. If the borders move a bit, as a result of accommodation with the Arabs, it is fine, because it will not change the defensibility criterion.

However, it seems in a light of Trump’s recent decision regarding UNRWA and upcoming peace plan, most of the West Bank will remain in Israeli hands.

skinster wrote:With regard to apartheid states and history, I believe I'm on the right side of history.


Please educate yourself as to what apartheid is. Google it! Otherwise your comments are misplaced. There is no apartheid in Israel. Stop that, - it is not intelligent.

skinster wrote:Reverse the process of the theft of the entirety of Palestine? Perhaps not right now, but things aren't looking good for Israel's future if it continues its dream of being an ethnosupremacist state in a land where half of the people are occupied or imprisoned and lack basic human rights.


Funny…I heard it all before. Easy for you to scream ‘theft’. Prove it! Prove that any land was ‘stolen’. Show that ownership of the land in question changed hands without the due process. If it were as easy as you think, the Arabs of Palestine would have inundated the courts everywhere with jurisdiction with claims and they would have won and Israel would be shamed! But it never happened.

They can’t do it, because they have no case in any court. So, - Palestinian Arabs head for the court of public opinion, and they scream real loud like you do. Notice, that people or countries or organizations that actually matter, pay virtually no attention to it. Something for you to think about, right?

The land that you are so concerned about is at best under dispute and dispute only, it is not ’stolen’. Disputes get solved by the parties who want to solve them. The Arabs, so far, have shown no desire to solve the dispute, they choose to scream ‘theft’ instead. So they get nothing for now. When they come to the table, hopefully soon, they will get what is fair at that time. So far, the pattern has been, - the longer they wait , the less they are offered.

Israel is developing and Israeli needs as a sovereign state supersede the needs of displaced people. With this in mind, the displaced Arabs must be taken care off, and, I am sure, they will be, - but their needs will be secondary to that of Israel. This is how the international law and the politics work.

To wit, - the political posture of Hamas is untenable and that of PA is not intelligent, as history shown. The Arabs needs smarter leaders. Israelis are waiting for those. The last comments by Mr. Abbas, as mentioned above, are the first ones that actually deserve attention.
OK?
#14945763
Metoo wrote:Your BDS crap is not working. Look at Soda Stream success.


Soda Stream?

https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/bus ... -1.6406215

Oh you mean the DIY softdrink company that George Soros(who else? Lol) part-owned and has been bought-out by Pepsi?

Lol.

Soda Stream's continued success is because Soros and other billionaires have shitloads to keep it going. Now Pepsi owns it.
#14945770
Soda Stream's 3800 employees continue to work in Israel and each of them gets a bonus of US$ 18,000 due to the windfall of Pepsi's takeover.
Unfortunately, 500 Arabs have lost their jobs at Soda Stream when it relocated from Judea to South Israel due to BDS pressure. A big victory for BDS.
#14945779
Ter wrote:Soda Stream's 3800 employees continue to work in Israel and each of them gets a bonus of US$ 18,000 due to the windfall of Pepsi's takeover.
Unfortunately, 500 Arabs have lost their jobs at Soda Stream when it relocated from Judea to South Israel due to BDS pressure. A big victory for BDS.


Soda Stream is losing its market share in Australia to the very successful home-grown version:
https://www.sodaking.com.au

Will expand overseas no doubt very soon.
#14946282
colliric wrote:Soda Stream?

https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/bus ... -1.6406215

Oh you mean the DIY softdrink company that George Soros(who else? Lol) part-owned and has been bought-out by Pepsi?

Lol.

Soda Stream's continued success is because Soros and other billionaires have shitloads to keep it going. Now Pepsi owns it.


Do you ever think about WHY are you so bothered by the RESONS as to why Soda Stream is a success? What difference does it make who bankrolled it?

The fact is that it is a success. The fact is that 578 Arabs are out of work because of the efforts by BDS idiots. The fact is that Soda Stream under PepsiCo will stay in Israel for at least 15 more years providing employment for 2500 people while giving them a one-time bonus of $18000.
If that is not a success, I do not know what is.
#14946283
colliric wrote:Soda Stream is losing its market share in Australia to the very successful home-grown version:
https://www.sodaking.com.au

Will expand overseas no doubt very soon.


Perhaps it comes as a surprise to you, but competition is good for business. All the best to the Australian company.

Do not be overly concerned about Soda Stream. PepsiCo will look ufter it's interests. In the mean time Israeli economy grows while the people get better lives. What's not to like?
#14946286
Metoo wrote:Do you ever think about WHY are you so bothered by the RESONS as to why Soda Stream is a success? What difference does it make who bankrolled it?


No I'm not bothered by Soda Stream's success. I actually mainly found it funny that Ter touts it as a "major success/coup" when everyone else knows the company was in significant financial trouble prior to securing Scarlett Johansson's endorsement, the change of marketing direction to more agressive advertising and now PepsiCo buying it. Soros even sold his stake earlier.

This product was originally aimed at Children, and was successful in the 80s, went downhill in the 90s, became obscure in the '00s and finally "came back" in the last few years, thanks almost entirely to Johansson's marketing endorsement and a product redesign, but now has competition.
#14956368
One major propaganda slogan, or imputation, is that anything bad, even war crimes, the Pals. commit is justified because they're under occupation.

Which is garbage, as well as disgusting. War crimes are illegal period. It doesn't matter what the enemy does, no act they commit legalises any war crime. Ever.


There's a pretty big silence on the Fatah-Hamas record of administration too. Either in the West Bank or Gaza. The titan Ze'ev Schiff documents this perfectly;

If That's How They Act in Gaza
It's obvious that the Palestinians do not want to, or are not capable of, keeping agreements. Israel has no choice but to continue to seek agreements with them, but it also must insist on maintaining broader margins of security.

Ze'ev Schiff, Haaretz, May 25, 2007 12:00 AM


The armed Palestinian organizations in the Gaza Strip are demonstrating once again what has become a norm among the Palestinians - that the agreements to which their leaders commit have no value. It's enough just to listen to Palestinian citizens complaining about how the cease-fire agreements there have no meaning. Agreements are made and signed, and immediately violated.

In this latest round of violence, the warring parties have already decided on a cease-fire five times. Each time, within hours, they were back to killing each other and injuring bystanders in the process. If this is how they behave among themselves, why should they be any more scrupulous in abiding by agreements with outside elements such as Israel, Jordan, Lebanon or Egypt? This is an important lesson that Israel must learn from the recent events in Gaza.

The phenomenon did not originate in Gaza. During the civil war in Lebanon in the 1970s and '80s, the Palestinians agreed to and signed more than 90 cease-fires. Most were violated with terrible bloodshed. The desire to be rid of the Palestinians was the reason that many Shi'ites welcomed the IDF forces that entered Lebanon. The goal of stopping Palestinian unruliness was also one of the reasons behind Hafez Assad's invasion of Lebanon. In Jordan, the Palestinians continued to violate the agreements they reached with King Hussein until he sensed that the government was slipping from his hands. There, too, they caused a civil war in which they were beaten by the Jordanian army. The peak occurred not long ago, when the Palestinians crudely violated the Mecca agreement for the establishment of a Palestinian unity government even before the ink was dry.


It is obvious, therefore, that the Palestinians do not want to, or are not capable of, keeping agreements. They'll always find an excuse or a pretext, even if it ends up hurting them. Some say this happens because the Palestinians have no national entity. But Yasser Arafat had such an entity and controlled a majority of his organizations, and he continuously violated agreements.
Israel has no choice but to continue to seek agreements with the Palestinians, but it also must insist on maintaining broader margins of security. For example, by making every effort in the current situation to isolate the territories of the West Bank from the Gaza Strip and to prevent Hamas from gaining the upper hand in the West Bank. For this reason, most of the security-related sections (the acid tests) in the proposal by the American general Keith Dayton must be rejected.
#14956383
Metoo wrote:skinster, I read your post with interest. While I understand your enthusiasm for the plight of Palestinian Arabs and I do share some of it, still, - your understanding of their predicament is badly flawed. You are making things up and revising history as you go to suit your narrow-minded narrative. Permit me to point a few things out to you…



While I do agree that Israel is an oppressive force, - unlike you, I am willing to live with it. Yes, I am ok with Israel keeping Palestinian Arabs of Gaza locked up in a blockade, because I know that the alternative is much worst. It is very easy for you to point a finger and accuse Israel of imprisoning 1.7 million Palestinian Arabs in Gaza, - it is easy for you because you refuse to ponder what would happen if Israel suddenly let them be free.

Allow me to remind you that Palestinian Arabs in Gaza were free to do as they please back in 2005 when Israel under Ariel Sharon pulled all of its people from the settlement in Gaza. All Jews left, none remain! Gaza’s Arabs were free to do as they please. Question, - what did they do, after they destroyed the Jewish settlement infrastructure, - the farms, the green houses, - everything, - what do they do? They put Hamas in power, killed of 300 of Fatah people by throwing them from the rooftops of high-rises and by 2007 went to an all-out war against Israel, - the war in a form of terrorism and mortar and rocket fire daily. 10,000 projectiles in 2 years were lunched at Israeli communities. Why? Well, - why not, right?

So, - Israel locked the Palestinian Arabs of Gaza up in a jail with a provision that when they wise up, the blockade will end. Simple as that.

To wit, - you have no case to complain here. You cannot accuse Israel of blockading Gaza, while turning a blind eye on attacks by Hamas on the Jews. According to your logic, - its ok for Palestinian Arabs to fire at the Jews, but it is not ok for the Jews to defend themselves. I hope you see a problem with your reasoning.

Coming back to the alternative I mentioned earlier. Do understand that the alternative is war. It has already happened 3 times. It may happen again with by far more catastrophic consequences. So, - blockade is a better choice, all things considered.



I disagree. Government of Israel is not fascist by definition. It is an elected parliamentary democracy with separated and independent judiciary. It is just like any other western democratic country. Anybody with a passport or a residency permit has broad civil rights. This is not fascism. Arabs constitute 1.8 million Israeli citizens. They have the same rights as anyone else. They are represented in all spheres of Israeli life, even the Army. Perhaps further reading on fascism will benefit you, - look up Italy under Mussolini, Spain under Franco and off course Germany under Hitler. Their is no comparing that can be drawn on any reasonable grounds between Israel and any fascist regime if the history of the planet.

You are correct however that the ‘two sides’ are not equal. They cannot be equal and so they are not. It is also a stretch for you to imply that Israel is occupying any land. Most Israelis will disagree with you and so would I. I’ll come back to that point…



Wow! Let us not make up history here. The Palestinians have actually had numerous opportunities to create an independent state, but have repeatedly rejected the offers:

In 1937, the Peel Commission proposed the partition of Palestine and the creation of an Arab state.

In 1939, the British White Paper proposed the creation of a unitary Arab state.

In 1947, the UN would have created an even larger Arab state as part of its partition plan.

The 1979 Egypt-Israel peace negotiations offered the Palestinians autonomy, which would almost certainly have led to full independence.

The Oslo agreements of the 1990s laid out a path for Palestinian independence, but the process was derailed by terrorism.

In 2000, Prime Minister Ehud Barak offered to create a Palestinian state in all of Gaza and 97 percent of the West Bank.

In 2008, Prime Minister Ehud Olmert offered to withdraw from almost the entire West Bank and partition Jerusalem on a demographic basis.

In addition, from 1948 to 1967, Israel did not control the West Bank. The Palestinians could have demanded an independent state from the Jordanians. On the contrary, while Jordan was in control, Arafat said there was no longer a claim as it was no longer part of Palestine. Once it was back in Israeli hands it miraculously became disputed land again! This is one of many reasons Jews and Israelis are cynical.

The Palestinians have spurned each of these opportunities. A variety of reasons have been given for why the Palestinians have in Abba Eban’s words, “never missed an opportunity to miss an opportunity.” Historian Benny Morris has suggested that the Palestinians have religious, historical, and practical reasons for opposing an agreement with Israel. He says that “Arafat and his generation cannot give up the vision of the greater land of Israel for the Arabs. This is true because this is a holy land, Dar al-Islam [the world of Islam]. It was once in the hands of the Muslims, and it is inconceivable to them that infidels like us the Israelis would receive it.”

The Palestinians also believe that time is on their side. “They feel that demographics will defeat the Jews in one hundred or two hundred years, just like the Crusaders.” The Palestinians, Morris says, also hope the Arabs will acquire nuclear weapons in the future that will allow them to defeat Israel.
In 2000, Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak offered to withdraw from 97 percent of the West Bank and 100 percent of the Gaza Strip. In addition, he agreed to dismantle 63 isolated settlements. In exchange for the 3 percent annexation of the West Bank, Israel said it would give up territory in the Negev that would increase the size of the Gaza territory by roughly a third.

Barak also made previously unthinkable concessions on Jerusalem, agreeing that Arab neighborhoods of East Jerusalem would become the capital of the new state. The Palestinians would maintain control over their holy places and have “religious sovereignty” over the Temple Mount.

According to U.S. peace negotiator Dennis Ross, Israel offered to create a Palestinian state that was contiguous, and not a series of cantons. Even in the case of the Gaza Strip, which must be physically separate from the West Bank unless Israel were to be cut into non-contiguous pieces, a solution was devised whereby an overland highway would connect the two parts of the Palestinian state without any Israeli checkpoints or interference. The proposal also addressed the Palestinian refugee issue, guaranteeing them the right of return to the Palestinian state and reparations from a $30 billion fund that would be collected from international donors to compensate them.

“In his last conversation with President Clinton, Arafat told the President that he was “a great man.” Clinton responded, “The hell I am. I’m a colossal failure, and you made me one.”
Arafat was asked to agree to Israeli sovereignty over the parts of the Western Wall religiously significant to Jews (i.e., not the entire Temple Mount), and three early warning stations in the Jordan Valley, which Israel would withdraw from after six years. Most important, however, Arafat was expected to agree that the conflict with Israel was over at the end of the negotiations. This was the true deal breaker. Arafat was not willing to end the conflict. “For him to end the conflict is to end himself,” said Ross.

The prevailing view of the Camp David/White House negotiations—that Israel offered generous concessions, and that Yasser Arafat rejected them to pursue the war that began in September 2000—was acknowledged for more than a year. To counter the perception that Arafat was the obstacle to peace, the Palestinians and their supporters then began to suggest a variety of excuses for why Arafat failed to say “yes” to a proposal that would have established a Palestinian state. The truth is that if the Palestinians were dissatisfied with any part of the Israeli proposal, all they had to do was offer a counterproposal. They never did.

Anyone that is against Israel should satisfy themselves as why this may have been?
I believe, when it comes to the Palestinians, as David Crosby has it:

"They Want It All"



Well, - I hope you read my response above.

As it stands right now, Israel is in a position to annex most of the West Bank, certainly Area C for sure. I must remind you that there has never been a country called Palestine, so Palestinian Arabs as they became known at around 1964, can’t really blame Israel for any land that they perceived as taken from them. They had no recognizable ownership to any land in question. When Ottoman Empire ceased to exist, any land deed of the day ceased to exist. British Palestinian Mandate also ended.

At best you may say and the Arabs may say that the land is disputed. Israel would welcome such announcement, however Palestinian Arabs as their behavior has so far shown, do not want that, - they want Palestine INSTEAD of Israel, not NEXT to Israel.


I have literally tried for years to talk about this with @skinster. Talking with her about Israel is like hitting your head at a brick wall. But i still try sometimes although i do not know why anymore.

She will not listen to reason. Israel is evil. Palesteine is good. Arabs do not do anything bad, it is just self-defence. Jews do everything bad, it is fascism.

She doesn't care about good solutions and workable ones. She doesn't care that BDS is basically useless and demands a one sided solution which Israel could never accept. She doesn't care that both have claim to the land. (I guess one by law and another by birth right) She doesn't aknowledge that Israel has any security concerns and worries. Only Palesteine should exist and people of Israel should just go back to Europe/etc.

It is ultimately a very problematic conflict that polarizes people. She has chosen a side. She is not impartial. She is not interested in a compromise or a just solution.

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