[noemon]

The Palestinians have passed by several opportunities to have a state and make peace.

Greeks were drowning inside the port of Smyrna, while American, British and European Red Cross ships were refusing them to board. Greeks lost a territory 3 times the size of Greece in Asia Minor, Pontos, Cappadokia. Jews lost their homes in an area about the size of half the planet. The Turks lost almost all their European, African and Saudi holdings. The Greek nation up until 1920 was spread across 3 continents and 7 seas. We used to run Odessa, Istanbul, Izmir, Cappadokia, Alexandria, Pontos, Jerusalem up until less than 100 years ago. Now we just run Athens and Thessaloniki. The Jews were prominent from Tajikistan to Germany to Morocco. Now, we are both concentrated and packed in a little tiny piece of land that is about 100 times less than before, while the Arab/Muslim world is still expanding(though it has no space for Palestinians). People have just lost the real measure of things.

Arabs in Palestine refuse to let go of a tiny strip of land for 70 years.

Would you give up Greece to those with more money and more power? Let us say the Turks really like Greek land and they beef up their military and plan to invade and take over Greece? They come in with overwhelming force with Yankee money and weapons? All ethnic Greeks got to just get the fuck out? Leave their land behind to wander the deserts of the world for the rest of their existence because might is right....would you do it Noemon?

Greece gave up, Thrace, Pontos, Asia Minor, Cappadokia, Northern Epirus, Istanbul(literally our capital for about 2000 years for crying out loud!!!) areas with several millions of Greek people, businesses, homes, smiles and children just to make peace.

The Arab world cannot give up a few square miles to make peace? Why, can we all give up our land and homes in the altar of peace, but the Arabs can never give anything up? They lost, not 1 but several wars. At which point exactly, do they come to terms with that?

[Fasces]

A true two state solution is a slow ethnic cleansing, of either Israelis or Palestineans. They will not coexist - Israel's demands for security will make peace untenable. The blockades and security demands will always lead to Palestinean insurgency because of they are a permanent source of indignant fundraising. A two state solution is bunk.

A one state solution with a large Arab minority is also utenable for Israel. They fear being overrun by demographics and ceasing to exist as a Jewish state. If Israel must be a Jewish state, the Arabs must be a marginalized minority.

The very idea of a non-apartheid, non-ethnic cleansing Israel is a contradiction. It cannot practically exist. The state of Israel is based, fundamentally, on the completion of genocide.

A one state solution under the Arabs is also unrealistic. For better or worse, the Arab world will push the Jewish population to the sea. Ethnic cleansing yesterday does not justify ethnic cleansing today. There are generations of Jews that have never known another home. The establishment of a one-state Palestine is also impossible without genocide.

Both are right. Neither is right.

[Tainari88]

The Palestinians have passed by several opportunities to have a state and make peace.

Greeks were drowning inside the port of Smyrna, while American, British and European Red Cross ships were refusing them to board. Greeks lost a territory 3 times the size of Greece in Asia Minor, Pontos, Cappadokia. Jews lost their homes in an area about the size of half the planet. The Turks lost almost all their European, African and Saudi holdings. The Greek nation up until 1920 was spread across 3 continents and 7 seas. We used to run Odessa, Istanbul, Izmir, Cappadokia, Alexandria, Pontos, Jerusalem up until less than 100 years ago. Now we just run Athens and Thessaloniki. The Jews were prominent from Tajikistan to Germany to Morocco. Now, we are both concentrated and packed in a little tiny piece of land that is about 100 times less than before, while the Arab/Muslim world is still expanding(though it has no space for Palestinians). People have just lost the real measure of things.

Arabs in Palestine refuse to let go of a tiny strip of land for 70 years.



Greece gave up, Thrace, Pontos, Asia Minor, Cappadokia, Northern Epirus, Istanbul(literally our capital for about 2000 years for crying out loud!!!) areas with several millions of Greek people, businesses, homes, smiles and children just to make peace.

The Arab world cannot give up a few square miles to make peace? Why, can we all give up our land and homes in the altar of peace, but the Arabs can never give anything up? They lost, not 1 but several wars. At which point exactly, do they come to terms with that?

The solution is always the same for all human societies Noemon. Universal human rights. You got to consider the needs of all with respect to their human rights. Until the need to control from afar is given up? You will not have peace.

No one talks about which industries are the most wealthy in all the world.

4https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_largest_companies_by_revenue

Check that list out? Many are in the Arab world and in South America with Venezuela which has the biggest oil reserve in the world. Those countries were unstable. All of them have been attacked at some point. Mainly by UK, France, US, and others who had a stake in making money off of fossil fuel and gas energy.

The USA and the UK have always backed Israel. They sell them the most sophisticated weaponry and security systems in the world. Israeli intelligence is some of the best in the world if not the best in the world. And still Hamas was able to do a planned and coordinated attack.

The threats continue. I happen to think the faster fossil fuel energy is no longer in play all over the world and the petro dollar from the US is no longer the main currency of exchange the faster the stability will be in place to not have fights over land. At the same time you got to have human rights respected. Not impose liberal democracies on societies ruled by theocracies that are part of their traditional cultures. Those societies have to be able to change internally without interferences not based on impositions that is really about GREED and corporations controlling the world, but about sincere plans to help humans in need as equals. That is the key. Equality for states that are small and or less armed to the teeth.

If all that is respected are the ones with nukes and enormous armies we are headed for armageddon.

[noemon]

The USA and the UK have always backed Israel. They sell them the most sophisticated weaponry and security systems in the world. Israeli intelligence is some of the best in the world if not the best in the world. And still Hamas was able to do a planned and coordinated attack.

Key takeaways:
1) The tech superiority of the west is immensely exaggerated. An Ak-47 will kill the same as a G3.
2) Eternal vigilance is required.

The threats continue. I happen to think the faster fossil fuel energy is no longer in play all over the world and the petro dollar from the US is no longer the main currency of exchange the faster the stability will be in place to not have fights over land. At the same time you got to have human rights respected. Not impose liberal democracies on societies ruled by theocracies that are part of their traditional cultures. Those societies have to be able to change internally without interferences not based on impositions that is really about GREED and corporations controlling the world, but about sincere plans to help humans in need as equals. That is the key. Equality for states that are small and or less armed to the teeth.

If all that is respected are the ones with nukes and enormous armies we are headed for armageddon.

You are gravely mistaken about fossil fuels and the petro-dollar. But this is totally off-topic and should not be used to derail this thread.

Switching our fuel from liquid petrol and gas to metals like lithium is neither clean, nor free, nor cheap. It is actually the opposite of all that.

The petrodollar ensures low inflation in the west. If you want to make yourself into an African type of currency, you should go ahead and do that but it's going to be destructive for you and your family and will turn you into a starving Africa type of economy.

[Tainari88]

A true two state solution is a slow ethnic cleansing, of either Israelis or Palestineans. They will not coexist - Israel's demands for security will make peace untenable. The blockades and security demands will always lead to Palestinean insurgency because of they are a permanent source of indignant fundraising. A two state solution is bunk.

A one state solution with a large Arab minority is also utenable for Israel. They fear being overrun by demographics and ceasing to exist as a Jewish state. If Israel must be a Jewish state, the Arabs must be a marginalized minority.

The very idea of a non-apartheid, non-ethnic cleansing Israel is a contradiction. It cannot practically exist. The state of Israel is based, fundamentally, on the completion of genocide.

A one state solution under the Arabs is also unrealistic. For better or worse, the Arab world will push the Jewish population to the sea. Ethnic cleansing yesterday does not justify ethnic cleansing today. There are generations of Jews that have never known another home. The establishment of a one-state Palestine is also impossible without genocide.

Both are right. Neither is right.

Universal human rights. And that is the only way out. Implement it for both Israel and Palestine. If they can't do it? Killing and having a mass genocide of one of the two or never-ending wars is really impossible to do Fasces.

Both parties need to really realize that it is impossible to not acknowledge the right to exist of the other group with dignity Fasces. Imagine Spain going to war again because Pedro Sanchez is a socialist and Franco hated the socialists? Kill off half the nation over differences. Got to make peace and agree universal human rights.

If they do not get there? War without end is the alternative.

Mandela faced the same problem. A South African state that had lived in apartheid and had one group being oppressed for generations by another group that was actually a majority. He still said, got to accept the minority group that has lived here with us, even when they did the worst of the worst to us. Got to unite and move forward.

Even through prison, torture, injustice, racism, classism, hatreds and oppression. Go for democray one woman and one man and one vote and UNITE. Work together. Universal human rights.

How else can someone like him who was in jail for twenty seven years be let out and become the president of a nation with a government who saw him as public enemy number one.....have any chance at success Fasces? Because if you respect universal human rights you get to a peace. But if you have to win at all costs and without acknowledging the basic humanity in the worst enemy you got? You are doomed.

[QatzelOk]

And until very recently, Europeans had a strong tendency towards being violent religious fanatics. Remember the Thirty Years War? The Spanish Inquisition? The expulsion of the Moors and the Jews from Spain? And so on and so forth...

You left out the slaughter of 250 nations in the Americas over the course of 3 centuries. And one of those post-slaughter creations - the USA - has been the center of Western culture for the last century or so.

And you didn't mention the "Science" of "Scientific Racism" that was so respected in three European colonial nations at the time - UK, USA and France. When your nation has a great respect for racism... slaughters are only a false-flag away.

Is the United States of America not an occupied land where it's indigenous 'owners' were massively slaughtered?...

That's correct, Lipush. But if that legitimates genocide (like you seem to be suggesting it does), then I really don't know why we bother with Holocaust Museums or human rights organizations.

Something tells me personally that *genocide is not okay* and neither is the extinction of other species. In both cases, we are playing American Roulette with our own survival and happiness.

And Israel was founded "on top of other human bodies" because racism was still respectable until the middle of the 20th Century... in most of Europe and other Western nations.

[Fasces]

Universal human rights. And that is the only way out.

I trust Israel to be more willing to uphold them than Hamas - though attacking the seperation of powers and kowtowign to the Orthodox hurt that a little ever day - but I have zero faith in the Israeli population or political establishment to do the hard and sometimes self-harmful work of doing it. Hamas and those hurt won't go quietly, and in the short-term there's no politician on Earth capable of just turning the other cheek and taking the hits without reprisal for the two or three generations it would be necessary.

Killing and having a mass genocide of one of the two or never-ending wars is really impossible to do Fasces.

Not impossible. Not productive. Not good for anyone involved. But not impossible.

Mandela faced the same problem. A South African state that had lived in apartheid and had one group being oppressed for generations by another group that was actually a majority. He still said, got to accept the minority group that has lived here with us, even when they did the worst of the worst to us. Got to unite and move forward.

And where is the experiment a generation later? For better or worse, race relations in South Africa are deteriorating. The number one ethnicity I met in China was South African white and colored folks escaping for a better and more safe life.

Palestine would need three continous generations of Mandelas after a generation of Saladin before a multinational Israeli state could exist in stability.

[Tainari88]

You left out the slaughter of 250 nations in the Americas over the course of 3 centuries. And one of those post-slaughter creations - the USA - has been the center of Western culture for the last century or so.

And you didn't mention the "Science" of "Scientific Racism" that was so respected in three European colonial nations at the time - UK, USA and France. When your nation has a great respect for racism... slaughters are only a false-flag away.


That's correct, Lipush. But if that legitimates genocide (like you seem to be suggesting it does), then I really don't know why we bother with Holocaust Museums or human rights organizations.

Something tells me personally that *genocide is not okay* and neither is the extinction of other species. In both cases, we are playing American Roulette with our own survival and happiness.

And Israel was founded "on top of other human bodies" because racism was still respectable until the middle of the 20th Century... in most of Europe and other Western nations.

The new way of killing off the people they do not want around now is ecocide. Just throw the poor and working class in toxic neighborhoods full of lead filled mud colored water, dirty air and polluted land. Let them all get cancer and call it a day.

[Tainari88]

I trust Israel to be more willing to uphold them than Hamas - though attacking the seperation of powers and kowtowign to the Orthodox hurt that a little ever day - but I have zero faith in the Israeli population or political establishment to do the hard and sometimes self-harmful work of doing it. Hamas and those hurt won't go quietly, and in the short-term there's no politician on Earth capable of just turning the other cheek and taking the hits without reprisal for the two or three generations it would be necessary.



Not impossible. Not productive. Not good for anyone involved. But not impossible.



And where is the experiment a generation later? For better or worse, race relations in South Africa are deteriorating. The number one ethnicity I met in China was South African white and colored folks escaping for a better and more safe life.

Palestine would need three continous generations of Mandelas after a generation of Saladin before a multinational Israeli state could exist in stability.

Who said peace in the middle east is easy eh? Nothing is easy in these situations Fasces.

South Africa is going to be in turmoil for a long time because healing those festering wounds is going to take some heavy duty nationally based psycho therapy. The road to peace after a lot of pain and war is a long haul one Fasces.

Again Spain still has the spectres of the Civil War in the closets of the psychology of that nation. And it was Spaniards against other Spaniards. Imagine grudges of that semite family that is old and deeply rooted? Mohammed believers against the Jewish orthodox types and the Christians wanting Jerusalem to be visiting the Holy Land of Jesus Christ?

You can't control all the variables Fasces but you can take steps to start the discussions.

It is not going to be an overnight solution.

[wat0n]

A one state solution of a peaceful, democratic, and secular multiparty state composed of Israelis and Arabs with the right of return for Palestinean refugees and their descendents is a much better 'best case scenario' than the current apartheidist one, wouldn't you agree?

Is the support for Hamas a biological fact or a consequence of Palestinean economic and social marginalization? It's just odd, to me, that your 'best case scenario' takes as a given the continued marginalization of Palestineans and the entrenchment of legal seperation between Arab and Jewish communities. What does that say about Israeli institutions that there is no feasible future in which the land is shared with the Arab people?

If that best case scenario was feasible, we wouldn't even be having a conflict or an Israel-Palestine subforum.

Plenty of surveys show that kind of binational secular state is not desired by either side. Even among the one-staters, those preferring an exclusionary version are the majority among both Israelis and Palestinians.

[Fasces]

Your best case scenario is hardly more feasible.

[Tailz]

Long drawn or not, right now the #1 obstacle to any peace treaty is the Palestinian Islamists.

I don't disagree, I just add the Zionists to that pile as well. Do you really think the Zionist camp has been an honest partner in the peace process? Especially Netanyahu, the guy who bragged about defeating the Oslo Peace Accords before the ink had even dried.

It's clear it's impossible to negotiate any sort of final status agreement with them and that they hold Palestinian society as a whole hostage.

I agree, but we have also seen how Israeli society is held hostage to it's own political masters, to the point they have been in the streets protesting in record numbers. Do you really think Israel is not beholden to its own fanatics? You have the most right-wing government now, and the settlers have had a ball of a time under them.

As I've said many times in the past, even if Israel signed a peace treaty with the Palestinian Authority, the problem of the islamist armed groups would remain.

Just as the settlers would remain a thorn in everyone's side. They are not going away anytime soon.

Even under the best case scenario, Israel would need to reoccupy Gaza and disarm all those groups, going door by door if necessary.

We can't even look at the "what if" scenario as both sides can't even get to the negotiating table.

I'm at the point where I don't think either side can get there without pulling some bullshiitery. I'm at the point where I think they will have to be pulled kicking and screaming to the peace table and then TOLD what the result will be. They are not going to do it themselves, it's been tried for 70+ years, what makes anyone think they will do it now?

The difference between us Wat0n, is that I don't see an honest peace partner on either side.

[Wellsy]

And until very recently, Europeans had a strong tendency towards being violent religious fanatics. Remember the Thirty Years War? The Spanish Inquisition? The expulsion of the Moors and the Jews from Spain? And so on and so forth. Were Europeans just born that way? Or was their behaviour the result of concrete material and historical forces operating at that specific time?

Yes, fanatic Kents the lot of them.

[wat0n]

Your best case scenario is hardly more feasible.

It all depends on the ability of the Palestinian state(s) (Gaza may as well become its own state, I regard this a domestic Palestinian issue) to keep their extremists in check, just like Jordan and Egypt do.

I don't disagree, I just add the Zionists to that pile as well. Do you really think the Zionist camp has been an honest partner in the peace process? Especially Netanyahu, the guy who bragged about defeating the Oslo Peace Accords before the ink had even dried.

It depends on the PM, like it or not even Netanyahu has always been quite open about his disregard of Oslo.

But you can't say Barak or Olmert weren't honest negotiators. Olmert in particular was honest about his offer to Abbas, as shown in the leaked Palestine Papers of around a decade ago.

I agree, but we have also seen how Israeli society is held hostage to it's own political masters, to the point they have been in the streets protesting in record numbers. Do you really think Israel is not beholden to its own fanatics? You have the most right-wing government now, and the settlers have had a ball of a time under them.

Not nearly to the extent of Hamas' control. Like it or not, the Israeli right doesn't rule Israel under a dictatorship, they use the democratic process just like other lobbies do.

Or am I to think such sectorial interests that cause all sorts of dysfunction don't exist in Western democracies?

Just as the settlers would remain a thorn in everyone's side. They are not going away anytime soon.

Yes, but they don't have their own military. When Israel left Gaza and, before, the Sinai they screamed and kicked but they had to comply eventually.

Yes, they make peace harder but they are not an insurmountable obstacle. And the Israeli right will have to face the domestic political fallout of this attack, it's likely many if not most Israelis will blame the right as a whole.

We can't even look at the "what if" scenario as both sides can't even get to the negotiating table.

I'm at the point where I don't think either side can get there without pulling some bullshiitery. I'm at the point where I think they will have to be pulled kicking and screaming to the peace table and then TOLD what the result will be. They are not going to do it themselves, it's been tried for 70+ years, what makes anyone think they will do it now?

The difference between us Wat0n, is that I don't see an honest peace partner on either side.

There aren't two sides here. The Palestinians are not a single side, that alone is one of the key problems with any negotiation.

And yes, it does often feel like a solution may need to be imposed.

[Rich]

The question is pretty simple. Which side is right?.

Yes it is indeed an easy question to answer. Under which regime is one freest to worship Odin? Under which regime is one most free to convert people to Odinism? Its the same answer whether its Celtic or Slavic deities, Hindu or Buddhism. Even Arab deities. One is more free to worship al-Lāt, al-'Uzzá, and Manāt in Israel than one is under Hamas.

Every square yard that is liberated from Hamas domination is a glory, every human being that is freed from their rule of body and mind is a blessing.

[Tainari88]

Yes it is indeed an easy question to answer. Under which regime is one freest to worship Odin? Under which regime is one most free to convert people to Odinism? Its the same answer whether its Celtic or Slavic deities, Hindu or Buddhism. Even Arab deities. One is more free to worship al-Lāt, al-'Uzzá, and Manāt in Israel than one is under Hamas.

Every square yard that is liberated from Hamas domination is a glory, every human being that is freed from their rule of body and mind is a blessing.

That happens in all religious fanatical families or societies Rich. I never liked religious fanatics of any type.

But, there are a lot of those societies all over the world.

[Tainari88]

Key takeaways:
1) The tech superiority of the west is immensely exaggerated. An Ak-47 will kill the same as a G3.
2) Eternal vigilance is required.



You are gravely mistaken about fossil fuels and the petro-dollar. But this is totally off-topic and should not be used to derail this thread.

Switching our fuel from liquid petrol and gas to metals like lithium is neither clean, nor free, nor cheap. It is actually the opposite of all that.

The petrodollar ensures low inflation in the west. If you want to make yourself into an African type of currency, you should go ahead and do that but it's going to be destructive for you and your family and will turn you into a starving Africa type of economy.

I am not talking about fake green energy. I am talking about something that is clean and cheap and safe. I am just thinking that continuing to fight over a resource that is not renewable and once gone for good won't be doing the job. The pollution is out of control. The Saudis have a lot of money flowing in from the Western powers needing to buy oil from them. Why can't they give up on the oil and start thinking about an alternative? The biggest lithium reserve is in Sonora, Mexico. Elon Musk has been talking to AMLO the Mexican president.

All this dependency on the USA dominating everything is not going to spell peace for the EU, or anyone else in the long run Noemon.

Anyway, back on the main topic. This cutting off food, water, electricity and fuel to the Gaza Strip is madness. Innocent people live there. Why does Israeli troops need to make sure they die off or submit? it seems extreme to me.

[Potemkin]

Yes it is indeed an easy question to answer. Under which regime is one freest to worship Odin? Under which regime is one most free to convert people to Odinism? Its the same answer whether its Celtic or Slavic deities, Hindu or Buddhism. Even Arab deities. One is more free to worship al-Lāt, al-'Uzzá, and Manāt in Israel than one is under Hamas.

Every square yard that is liberated from Hamas domination is a glory, every human being that is freed from their rule of body and mind is a blessing.

This simply tells you that the Muslims still take their own religion seriously. Back when Christians still took Christianity seriously, they had the same intolerance of heresy and apostasy. And the same can be said of Judaism. Just read the Old Testament if you don’t believe me. The modern liberal ideal of religious tolerance is a recent thing, is more or less confined to Europe and its European-inhabited colonies, and required that Christianity had its balls chopped off, which happened during the course of the 18th and early 19th centuries. Hell, even Catholics (supposedly fellow Christians) were only emancipated in Britain in the middle of the 19th century. Before then, they couldn’t even study for a university degree in their own country. I repeat: religious tolerance is only possible once you stop taking your own religion seriously. The Christians of Europe did this a couple of centuries ago, but the Muslims haven’t yet received the memo.

[Tainari88]

This simply tells you that the Muslims still take their own religion seriously. Back when Christians still took Christianity seriously, they had the same intolerance of heresy and apostasy. And the same can be said of Judaism. Just read the Old Testament if you don’t believe me. The modern liberal ideal of religious tolerance is a recent thing, is more or less confined to Europe and its European-inhabited colonies, and required that Christianity had its balls chopped off, which happened during the course of the 18th and early 19th centuries. Hell, even Catholics (supposedly fellow Christians) were only emancipated in Britain in the middle of the 19th century. Before then, they couldn’t even study for a university degree in their own country. I repeat: religious tolerance is only possible once you stop taking your own religion seriously. The Christians of Europe did this a couple of centuries ago, but the Muslims haven’t yet received the memo.

Good luck with fanatical Muslims taking their religion lightly Potemkin. None of them are tolerant of blasphemy and lack of adherence to Sharia law.

[Potemkin]

Good luck with fanatical Muslims taking their religion lightly Potemkin. None of them are tolerant of blasphemy and lack of adherence to Sharia law.

Indeed. And they are intolerant precisely because they still take their own religion seriously.