US cuts funding of UNESCO

[D Laurier]

So the UN should just recognize Palestine. Commit troops to expell the occupation. And let America simmer in its own depravity.
Give the Palestinians a few decades to rebuild, and they will be able to fund UNESCO from their own trade surplus.

[Meshakhad]

So the UN should just recognize Palestine. Commit troops to expell the occupation. And let America simmer in its own depravity.
Give the Palestinians a few decades to rebuild, and they will be able to fund UNESCO from their own trade surplus.

Yeah... I don't see this happening. This would entail war with Israel. I don't see the UN getting a lot of volunteers. There's also the fact that the UN would be swiftly banned from the West Bank and Israel proper.

[Lt. Fred]

A free and independent Palestine in accordance with the Hussein/MacMahon accord of 1915, is pretty much the only thing that will convince me that democracy is a synonym for freedom.
The occupation must end NOW. And the partitions must be reversed and retracted with full appologys from ALL guilty partys.

Personally, I think there's a potential middle ground to be had here;

Not really. It's a question of rights, and there's not a lot of grounds (or ground; the area is tiny) for compromise. Either the borders are at the Green Line, or nations can take other people's land by force.

In practice, the Israelis control all the land in Palestine- so there's no way for them to get at a peace conference more than they have through the conflict. The Palestinians cannot offer them peace, because war is not a cost (hardly any Israelis have been killed in the conflict).

The Israeli government needs to be forced to stoop the occupation, it needs to become a cost. A boycott or Israeli goods, informal sanctions on the Israeli government should do it, really. There's no need to bomb Tel Aviv.

I don't think we have to fuck over either party royally in order to come to a conclusion which benefits everyone.

]

No agreement is going to benefit Israel in any way. It's going to be a defeat for them.

Let's not kid ourselves here and pretend Israel's the only aggressors here.

No, the Israelis are the aggressors.

[kefkaownsall]

Dont some Israeli politicians think Palestine needs a state?

[RavynousHunter]

I'm sure there's good and bad folks on both sides; there always is.  But, Israel can pretty much afford this bullshit pretty easily, because the know that, if attacked, big bro America will come down and bomb the other guys back into the stone age.  Even if the leader of Israel were to go up, on television, put a gun to a foreign leader's head, and blow his brains out, the US would likely still come to their rescue because HOLY LAND.

In fact, let's take this "older brother" metaphor a bit further, shall we?  Little brother Israel got bullied a lot when he was young, and big brother America rightly defended his little brother, and helped make the bullies stop.  But, as time went on, little brother got older, and he became a bully to other people, even people who could easily wipe the floor with him, because he knew he had big brother to protect him.  Big brother has a "my brother, right or wrong" mentality, and doesn't realize that his actions only serve to spoil his little brother, and encourages his bullying other people.

Big brother could do one of two things to help curb this behavior:

1) Step aside, and let little brother get that broken nose he's got coming to him; or,
2) Try and help steer his little brother away from his current ways.

I'd prefer it if we took the latter route, but, if push comes to shove, the former will serve as a good lesson to little brother Israel: Your actions have consequences, and we won't defend you if you're the one pushing the other boys into fights.

[Meshakhad]

Dont some Israeli politicians think Palestine needs a state?

Yes. Or at the very least, they think it's the best solution.

D. Laurier, I can tell you that the Israeli PEOPLE want peace. The wars and intifadas may not exact the same toll on Israel as they do on the Palestinians, but they exact a toll. There is not a single Israeli who does not know the victim of a terrorist attack. Also, they don't like being treated as a pariah state. And a large part of their population, perhaps even the majority, are willing to give up a lot of land in order to get there.

And don't say that the Israelis are the only aggressors. It's WAY more complicated. I personally blame the Romans.

[largeham]

Yes. Or at the very least, they think it's the best solution.

D. Laurier, I can tell you that the Israeli PEOPLE want peace. The wars and intifadas may not exact the same toll on Israel as they do on the Palestinians, but they exact a toll. There is not a single Israeli who does not know the victim of a terrorist attack. Also, they don't like being treated as a pariah state. And a large part of their population, perhaps even the majority, are willing to give up a lot of land in order to get there.

And don't say that the Israelis are the only aggressors. It's WAY more complicated. I personally blame the Romans.

What is so complicated? Israelis with Western help pushed the Palestinians off their land and created the state of Israel and in the process created millions of refugees. And if the Israeli people want peace, then why don't they push their government for it? Yet every time anything happens, people bow to the fundies and the settlers.

[MadCatTLX]

Dont some Israeli politicians think Palestine needs a state?

Yes. Or at the very least, they think it's the best solution.

D. Laurier, I can tell you that the Israeli PEOPLE want peace. The wars and intifadas may not exact the same toll on Israel as they do on the Palestinians, but they exact a toll. There is not a single Israeli who does not know the victim of a terrorist attack. Also, they don't like being treated as a pariah state. And a large part of their population, perhaps even the majority, are willing to give up a lot of land in order to get there.

And don't say that the Israelis are the only aggressors. It's WAY more complicated. I personally blame the Romans.

I blame whoever created the Abrahamic religions in the first place.

"I blame the media blamers." - Dale Gribble

[Meshakhad]

Yes. Or at the very least, they think it's the best solution.

D. Laurier, I can tell you that the Israeli PEOPLE want peace. The wars and intifadas may not exact the same toll on Israel as they do on the Palestinians, but they exact a toll. There is not a single Israeli who does not know the victim of a terrorist attack. Also, they don't like being treated as a pariah state. And a large part of their population, perhaps even the majority, are willing to give up a lot of land in order to get there.

And don't say that the Israelis are the only aggressors. It's WAY more complicated. I personally blame the Romans.

What is so complicated? Israelis with Western help pushed the Palestinians off their land and created the state of Israel and in the process created millions of refugees. And if the Israeli people want peace, then why don't they push their government for it? Yet every time anything happens, people bow to the fundies and the settlers.

If the majority of people in the US are opposed to the war in Afghanistan, why are we still there? Politics in democracies is complicated. And the Palestinians aren't exactly saints in this either. They're the ones who were consistently going after civilian targets with no military value, not the Israelis.

Not to mention that the Arab powers could have just GIVEN the Palestinians a bloody state in the West Bank and Gaza back in '48!

Also, I should point out that 7 years ago, Israel unilaterally pulled out of Gaza. They were forcibly dragging their own people from their homes. There were fears that it would CAUSE A BLOODY CIVIL WAR. But they did it. Because they thought it would lead to peace.

And the situation is not as simple as you describe. The first Jewish settlers BOUGHT their land, at inflated prices too. They accepted the 1947 UN Partition Plan. Oh, and the Jews didn't drive off the Arabs. The Arabs fled of their own volition, reasonably not wishing to be caught in a warzone. Their thinking was "Oh, we'll just pop over to Jordan for a bit. Once the Arab armies have destroyed Israel, we'll go back to our homes. Hey, maybe we'll be able to snag the Cohens' place as well!" But Israel won, and they became refugees.

[Canadian Mojo]

Big brother could do one of two things to help curb this behavior:

1) Step aside, and let little brother get that broken nose he's got coming to him; or,
2) Try and help steer his little brother away from his current ways.

I'd prefer it if we took the latter route, but, if push comes to shove, the former will serve as a good lesson to little brother Israel: Your actions have consequences, and we won't defend you if you're the one pushing the other boys into fights.

The problem is that if you let little brother learn the hard way and get a bloody nose he is probably going to pull out his BFG and put a cap in somebody's ass, if not several people's asses... and then we have a real problem on our hands.

[Lt. Fred]

Also, I should point out that 7 years ago, Israel unilaterally pulled out of Gaza. They were forcibly dragging their own people from their homes. There were fears that it would CAUSE A BLOODY CIVIL WAR. But they did it. Because they thought it would lead to peace.

Keyword unilaterally. It was not part of a peace deal with Palestine, which the IDF government doesn't want; it was an internal realignment of military priorities for the occupation. Occupying Gaza was expensive, it didn't have many Israelis living there but required thousands of soldiers to defend them, ect. Simply making Gaza a ghetto is much cheaper.

They accepted the 1947 UN Partition Plan.

Both sides rejected it; both sides were responsible for the war.

The Arabs fled of their own volition, reasonably not wishing to be caught in a warzone.

Wrong. Thousands of Arabs were deliberately murdered by the IDF, or raped, or assaulted. The IDF deliberately spread terror in order that the people ahead of them would choose to leave voluntarily- if apparently temporarily- like you'd flee, say, a nasty natural disaster. That's ethnic cleansing. 900,000 people had their land stolen like that. Many of them still have the deeds to their houses, though they are never allowed back because they're the wrong religion.

Over the last 40 years, Israel has had a hundred excellent chances to end wars. The only time they've agreed- Camp David 1978- they were forced to do so by Jimmy Carter and the Egyptian Army (which whooped the IDF in Yom Kippur). Israel has become perhaps the most aggressive nation on Earth. It is expansionist and power hungry. It does inestimable ill to the good-will most humans hold to the victims of the holocaust, by exploiting their memory to do wrong to other innocent people. Their memory is being tainted, just as the word 'anti-semite' is being legitimised, by the IDF's use of it for pro-aggressive war propaganda.

[MadCatTLX]

As I've said before, remove ALL the people in the area and tell them what's about to happen then nuke it until it is a radioactive wasteland that no sane person will want to fight over. Key word there being "sane" person. Sadly I'm sure they'd STILL go back and fight over it.