So apparently Israel isn't an occupying force in the West Bank

[danny]

A key thing about the Secular vs. Haredi conflict is that there's a big split within the Haredi community as well. The Zionist Haredi wing, led by Moshe Feiglin, is fiercely patriotic, serves in the military, and works within Likud and the other right wing parties to bring religion more into politics. The other Haredi, the more extreme religious ones, are often less interested in politics, don't serve in the military and prefer to devote themselves 100% to Torah study, and some actually oppose Israel's existence on religious grounds.

It's unlikely that the Haredi would be able to unite enough to pose a threat to continued Secular Zionist government.

Feiglin is not Haredi, he is from a group that would be called "religious Zionist" or "national religious" and he certainly doesn't lead that group, he is just leader of a certain faction within it.

But your right about the fact that their politics can range from one extreme to another.

[danny]

Hmmm... well, this isn't the source I found it from, but it seems that Palestinians need to carry ID cards; I didn't know that Israelis themselves had to have their own IDs. Anyway, the point is that they aren't treated as citizens nor as neighbors.

All Israeli citizens, regardless of religion, get Israeli ID cards. Palestinians are not Israeli citizens and so, naturally, don't have these. Instead they use Palestinian ID cards made by the Palestinians themselves.

As for the homes, again, this is not where I found it the issue about the Israel homes in Palestinian territory, but here's an example.

Israel certainly builds in settlements, but it wasn't promised to the
Palestinians.

As for the "police state" thing, what about that Gaza flotilla raid that happened in 2010? Surely an attack on a flotilla that was trying to get supplies to a blockaded city is something close to authoritarian, right?

A blockade is a military maneuver, it has little to do with being a police state. A police state means when a state controls all the sources of information and doesn't allow dissenting thoughts. Israel doesn't prevent either Israelis nor Palestinians from speaking their mind. Publically disagreeing with the Israeli government is the norm in both the Palestinian territories and Israel.

[danny]

I oppose international law on principle, regardless of how it applies to Israel, and the Palestinians certainly have no problem breaking international law anyway.

Of course. As international law shouldn't apply to the superior "chosen ones", does it?

No, it shouldn't apply to anyone.

I'm genuinely baffled as to how you can possibly in good conscience believe this.

I believe in a democracy where the people can make their own laws via elections. International law takes this away by giving the legislative power to unelected officials, and thus takes the world further away from democracy.

[Free Palestine]

I oppose international law on principle, regardless of how it applies to Israel, and the Palestinians certainly have no problem breaking international law anyway.

Of course. As international law shouldn't apply to the superior "chosen ones", does it?

No, it shouldn't apply to anyone.

I'm genuinely baffled as to how you can possibly in good conscience believe this.

I believe in a democracy where the people can make their own laws via elections. International law takes this away by giving the legislative power to unelected officials, and thus takes the world further away from democracy.

If democracy means allowing genociders and occupiers to get away with it around the world, then you know what?   democracy.

[ingemann]

I don't get why people care discussing the issue here, the Israeli could ground up the Palestenians as dog fooder and sell it to USA, and people like Vosem would defend it. As for Danny for many years I supported Israel, mostly because I saw the Palestinians as scum and their supporters as obnoxious (I still see their supporters as obnoxious), but people like him have convinced me that Israel isn't worth supporting. It's a disgusting state inheritor of the worst tendency in late 19th century Central European ideology and thoughts.

As for the whole only Democracy in the Middleeast, it's a bunch of crap, Lebanon have as good right to call itself a democracy as Israel, not that it keep some people from defending the slaughter of Lebanese civilians by the Israeli. It's clear that at best the foreign defence of Israel at best is pure racism (toward the Arabs/Muslims; see Breivik as the worst case of this attitude) or in case non-Israeli Jews pure supremacism and at worst is some kind of delusional idiocy based on sectarian and radical Christian doctrine. Of course for some it's to some degree of holdover from a time when being pro-Israeli wasn't as putrid as today.

[asexual trans victimologist]

I oppose international law on principle, regardless of how it applies to Israel, and the Palestinians certainly have no problem breaking international law anyway.

Of course. As international law shouldn't apply to the superior "chosen ones", does it?

No, it shouldn't apply to anyone.

I'm genuinely baffled as to how you can possibly in good conscience believe this.

Really? Why so? I'm not saying one can't argue for international law or anything, but it is a bit of a silly concept.

We know what the alternative has historically looked like. It's called the right of the conqueror and if danny thinks that it's somehow more amenable to democracy and self-determination than is international law then I'd like to hear his argument.

[danny]

I oppose international law on principle, regardless of how it applies to Israel, and the Palestinians certainly have no problem breaking international law anyway.

Of course. As international law shouldn't apply to the superior "chosen ones", does it?

No, it shouldn't apply to anyone.

I'm genuinely baffled as to how you can possibly in good conscience believe this.

I believe in a democracy where the people can make their own laws via elections. International law takes this away by giving the legislative power to unelected officials, and thus takes the world further away from democracy.

If democracy means allowing genociders and occupiers to get away with it around the world, then you know what?   democracy.

It's not as if international law stops genociders from getting away with it.

[opebo]

There are few things that repulse me more than white people who decide to play "white knight" for the Palestinians while being venomously opposed to Israel and casting Jewish Israelis as "White Europeans" in order to make their point.

Why buddy?  It just shows we know our own history.

[Ray Goldfield]

There are few things that repulse me more than white people who decide to play "white knight" for the Palestinians while being venomously opposed to Israel and casting Jewish Israelis as "White Europeans" in order to make their point.

Why buddy?  It just shows we know our own history.

Because for a very long time, including the Holocaust, the persecution of Jews has centered around the fact that our oppressors do not consider us "white" in the sense of European descent.

So now, to try to frame Israelis as "white colonialists" to delegitimize the Zionist cause is pretty warped.

The Israeli/Palestinian conflict is an ongoing territorial conflict between two people of Middle Eastern descent who lived on the land at different times.