The Present Israel-Palestine Conflict Thread

[Vosem]

So where does this "Israel is the only democracy in the region" line come from?  I keep hearing it.  Did Lebanon cease to exist at some point or something?

Freedom House doesn't consider Lebanon a democracy. However Libya and Turkey are in the general region, and are considered democracies.

Freedom House is literally funded by the CIA, in fairness. They also consider our puppet banana republic in Bogota freer than the Bolivarian democracies.

Are you seriously suggesting Ecuador/Venezuela are freer than Colombia?

[Vosem]

So where does this "Israel is the only democracy in the region" line come from?  I keep hearing it.  Did Lebanon cease to exist at some point or something?

Freedom House doesn't consider Lebanon a democracy. However Libya and Turkey are in the general region, and are considered democracies.

Freedom House is literally funded by the CIA, in fairness. They also consider our puppet banana republic in Bogota freer than the Bolivarian democracies.

Are you seriously suggesting Ecuador/Venezuela are freer than Colombia?

I would consider Ecuador and Colombia pretty much equal. There is significant issues in Colombia (FARC, far-right paramilitaries, vote rigging in areas controlled by them, President being able to fire any elected mayor for any reason and replace it by whoever he wants...)

I would agree that areas in Colombia that are under FARC control are very not free, which drags the country down, but it seems odd to me to compare a country where governments can be and are sometimes defeated and replaced by democratic means (Colombia) with a country that has a dictator who survived a coup attempt in 2010 and has imprisoned journalists (Ecuador) and say the latter is freer. I guess it can depend on how you count areas that are part of the country on paper but in practice are outside of the government's control.

[Vosem]

You really can't do any better than a mixture of made-up quotes and quotes from has-beens? Ignoring the remarkable diversity in political opinions, religious beliefs, et cetera that exist among 'ordinary Israeli citizens' (~20% are Muslims, for instance), Yosef is literally dead of old age, Sharon has never been in the government and has basically had no influence since his father went into a coma in 2006, Ben-Ari was always an incredibly fringey figure who was barely elected in 2009 and was defeated in 2013; Yishai is an opposition figure and Dichter is a has-been. Katz is the only figure on that list with any influence over Israeli policy in 2014. Also I looked up several of those quotes (specifically, the Dichter and Katz quotes) and couldn't find any source or context other than just repetitions of that list, which leads me to suspect that they are fake.

[Vosem]

“The missiles that are now being launched against Israel, each and every missile constitutes a crime against humanity, whether it hits or misses, because it is directed at civilian targets,”

I don't recall you being particularly hot and bothered when UN schools were getting shelled. I think your problem is that you are more upset by a Palestinian rocket that kills zero Israeli civilians than you are by Israeli artillery that kills multiple Palestinian civilians because on some possibly subconscious level you view Israeli lives as being inherently more valuable.

Or perhaps because one is a flat-out attempt to kill civilians, while the other is a belated response aimed at reducing enemy military capabilities.

Settlers' dogs attack Palestinian children.

You are literally posting from a website run by the Iranian government with support from Neo-Nazi website Veterans Today, that has in the past claimed that Israel and American Jews were behind 9/11.

Reactionaries like you are a greater danger to society than Press TV, trust me.

Dude, you defend Nazi war criminals.

Which court found him guilty of war crimes? I think you need your meds checked.
You defend much worse.

[Vosem]

Do you know how many more Gazans would be alive if Hamas had not broken the first ceasefire?

I don't think you understand how a war of national liberation works.

I don't think you do, either. Guerillas, by definition, don't govern cities. States do that.

Should the Americans, Irish, Vietnamese, Angolans, Algerians, and Mozambicans have just given up?

I could reply to these individually, but it wouldn't do any good, so I'll just briefly mention how it's fantastic that Jonas Savimbi never gave up.