Where do you think Jewish people come from?

Oh, the neo nazis have arrived 🙄

Ah, the night shift lunatic posts.

‘The Arabs/Palestinians have been offered a two-state solution 5 times and have turned it down each time.

Maybe someone should have a word in their ear?’

They were offered two state solutions, although the offers fell far short of truly sharing the land.

The offer Arafat was given didn’t offer a contiguous state, an airport or international borders, meaning Israel would always have control over its trade.

Having said that, I think he should have grabbed the offer with both hands, which is why I said both sides needed to resist maximalism.

@BlessedIsTheFruit ,

‘Of course the only thing 'happening in the West Bank' is 'settler violence'. Pretty sure international journalists have no problem getting in there but I haven't seen THAT reported in the international media, have you?’

I am pretty sure international journalists have plenty of problems reporting from the West Bank.

https://www.freepressunlimited.org/en/current/journalists-blocked-and-targeted-while-reporting-west-bank

Not bothering to respond to the rest of your post because there's really no point.

‘I really do hope, that 'as a Jew', you never have the need for the protection of Israel.’

Israel Was created for the diaspora fleeing the Shoah, including parts of my family. It was never designed or desired to be a theocracy. Your attitude of having to support Netanyahu and all he does or you are not a Jew deserving of sanctuary would have disgusted the founders of Israel.

Well, Israel (as in Israel within pre-67 borders) is probably the closest.

Plantations aren't just about growing cotton. England siezed land from indigenous Irish people and resettled (poor) people from other parts of the UK to work the land. That is why an Irish person can find they are most English via their DNA.

Plantations? Is that not a Deep South USA thing? I didn't think much cotton grew in Ireland, but I could always be wrong.

The Middle East isn't known for such regimes, sadly.

They need a new model.

You're conflating colonisation and ethnic cleansing. Colonisers didn't expel a people from their own land. They wanted the people to remain in place so they could be controlled and exploited. The Anglo-Saxons colonised ancient Britain (as it was spelt then) and they didn't expel the Britons. The equivalent to the issue that Jews face would be if ancient Britons were violently expelled from Britain by the Anglo-Saxons, became stateless, were compelled to roam, and spent the next ten centuries or so being persecuted because you weren't where you belong - in Britain.

That's assuming that you are descended from ancient Britons, as opposed to from Anglo-Saxons. If the latter, you still would not be able to theoretically claim German nationality, because your forbears would have CHOSEN to move to ancient Britain and CHOSEN to stay. This is not the same as being expelled from what's present-day Germany.

So you're making a false equivalence.

(I feel very bad for the Jewish people and all that they have suffered over so many centuries. I also feel very bad for the conditions that the Palestinians had to live in, all crowded in and controlled by the Israeli government, and made to be second-class citizens. Such a pity that both factions couldn't just share the land and be equals, and get along.)

Is there a model in the region that you think might work? An example of a liberal democratic country which respects minority rights as well as equial rights for women and LBTQI?

Well, no. Not like that. Like I said, equal rights.

The UK itself has no single legally designated official language across the country, so language status alone is not a straightforward measure of equality. The 2018 Nation-State Basic Law defines Israel as the nation-state of the Jewish people. Israel's constitutional framework gives the Jewish people a unique national status that Arab citizens do not share.

There have been other genocides.

The means have been different, but the motivation has been the same.

Please don't dignify the term 'actual genocide'.

Politics is the art of the possible.

It involves talking. It involves listening.

Hundreds of years of plantations, evictions, political and economic oppression, intense sectarian hatred, massacres, apartheid, and dogged determination to wipe each other off the face of the earth gave way to a fairly peaceful settlement in Northern Ireland, produced after several years of talking, of realism, and some significant compromises on both sides.

Politicians talking to each other and to demagogues and hard liners achieved that.

Netanyahu is the epitome of moral cowardice!

Not that I think the delegations which walked out are any better, hardly warriors of justice and human rights.

The only moral coward in that room was Netanyahu.

I have no hesitation whatsoever to support Israel, to support Israel's right to exist, and I abhor anti semitism.

However, two wrongs will never make a right. No state has the right to perpetuate genocide.

A siege mentality is never going to lead anywhere but toward violence.
We will win. We have no other choice is a recipe for disaster.

You don't need to go as far as Iron Dome. How about building bomb shelters? They're very effective and don't cost much. Did Hamas build any bomb shelters for the civliian population int he 20 years they ruled Gaza? (answer is no) Did they have the ability and resources to do so (answer is yes, as evidenced by the many tunnels they built for the exclusive use of Hamaas)

You are correct that the pwoer is assymetric now but it wasn't previously. The Palestinian problem is and has always been a refusal to compromise and accept reality.

Or there could have been a Palestinian state, moving ahead. Maybe not best pals but no war like with Jordan and Egypt.

Don’t have time to read through 27 pages of posts but I don’t see what’s so hard to see where Jews come from. Jews originate from Judea and after the destruction of the second temple were sent to exile. To keep it as short as possible , the Jewish diaspora were spread all over and that’s why today there are Ashkenazi , sefardi and mizrachi Jews. Iraqi/bukharian Jews can trace their lineage back to the temple times. While customs vary, it’s all the same religion and the land of Israel is central to it. It’s mentioned constantly in prayers, Jews pray towards Jerusalem , smashing a glass at a wedding is to commemorate the destruction of the temple etc. There has been continued Jewish presence in Israel for hundred of years. And just to clarify , the Palestinians today are descended from tribes, they were never a nation so to speak. Some have Jordanian or Egyptian roots.
just as an aside the idea that Jews are colonising Israel when there are mosques on the Temple Mount built above the ruins of the Jewish temples is truly absurd.

Same situation different front lines, is my guess. They'd always be bickering over demarcation and property rights, firing explosives at one another and yelling that the other is the more belligerent.

Indeed. Imagine where we'd be now had they accepted one of them.

Avi Shlaim is one voice (who has built his career off of this) versus hundreds of thousands who give a different narrative and explanation.
But you cherry pick the one who says what you want ro hear.
I mean the Jews of Yemen???? How about you read exactly how they were treated over the years. Read historical accounts. What ignorance youre showing.

FYI. If you look at the ga hall during most speeches, it's half empty. The delegation that are planning a performative walk out will intentionally arrive with a massive delegation - basically anyone they can get in the room - in order to performatively walk out. The room will be practically empty when the leader of guinea bissau or Bhutan is speaking but no one needs to perform for the camera that they're leaving 😅

I agree.
As as I have said before, they want a one-state solution and that state isn't Israel.