[onlooker]

Was struck by this article and how amid all the violence and chaos now in the ME, Jerusalem seems to hold all this intolerance and negative feelings in extreme levels and it is coming out now with a spike in knife attacks. Of course this is also years of conflict and animosity between Israelis and Palestinians. The religious fanaticism that has been a hallmark of Jerusalem for centuries and the disputing claims of these two major religions that hold Jerusalem as "their" holy city does not make things better. God help us all with this intolerance. Here is link:
http://www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-34543808

[Plantagenet]

I travelled to israel a few years ago and at that time the intifada was quiet other then the occasional terror bombing of a Jewish bus and things were mostly peaceful. I visited both Jewish areas throughout Israel and Palestianian areas in the west bank. I ate in Palestianian and Jewish Restaurants without any incidents. Thus these killings make me very sad---I was in those very restaurants in Jerusalem and I walked through the old city without incident. Jews and Moslems were living side by side and rubbing along pretty well then.

This latest outburst of violence reminds me of the Hutu genocidal attacks on the Tutsi in Rwanda. The genocidal in Rwanda seemed especially horrible to me because it wasn't carried out by special military groups but by average citizens---the Hutu in neighborhoods throughout Rwanda would take it upon themselves to murder their Tutsi neighbors just because they were Tutsi. It was neighbor-on-neighbor do-it-yourself genocide.

The current stabbings in Israel are similar in that average Palestinians are taking it upon themselves to murder their Jewish neighbors just because they are Jewish. The victims are people like little old Jewish ladies in Supermarkets and an elderly rabbi waiting at a bus stop. These people are being targeted solely because they are Jewish, i.e. it is neighbor-on-neighbor do-it-yourself genocide after the Rwanda model.

Very sad.


Can't we all just get along?

[Keith_McClary]

... I visited both Jewish areas throughout Israel and Palestianian areas in the west bank. I ate in Palestianian and Jewish Restaurants without any incidents. Thus these killings make me very sad---I was in those very restaurants in Jerusalem and I walked through the old city without incident. Jews and Moslems were living side by side and rubbing along pretty well then.
...
Can't we all just get along?

Reminds me of how US segregationists would say they get along fine with the black folks as long as they stayed on their own side of the tracks and didn't get uppity, wanting to vote or use white stores, lunch counters or buses.

The Palestinians live in ghettos, have no citizenship rights in occupied Jerusalem, can't get building permits (but Jews from NYC have no problems if they can somehow get their hands on Palestinian real estate). Of course the ghettos get no government services. And when the the Palestinians resist the occupation, the Jews call it "intolerance".

[onlooker]

I have to agree what is happening in this conflict is pretty one sided. Much of what I know I have heard from Noam Chomsky. It really is oppressor and oppressed. Having said that I still believe their has to be a better way for Palestinians then knife attacks.

[Keith_McClary]

I have to agree what is happening in this conflict is pretty one sided. Much of what I know I have heard from Noam Chomsky. It really is oppressor and oppressed. Having said that I still believe their has to be a better way for Palestinians then knife attacks.

They tried the Gandhian approach in the 1940s but the Irgun slaughtered them.

[GregT]

Having said that I still believe their has to be a better way for Palestinians then knife attacks.

Their supply lines have pretty much been cut off.

[onlooker]

Yeah things are truly grim in ME if that is true Greg. No reason to doubt veracity of your claim. Now is really life and death over there no grey area.

[SeaGypsy]

Always blame the Jew, it is always the Jew. Bullcrap. The world which stood by & allowed the Holocaust has a perpetual duty to Israel which should never be forgotten. Their neighbours consensus is that Israel should not exist, that Jews should always be subordinate, that Israel is a western impost. Until the consensus is reversed, Israel as a matter of course must remain an extremist state. Those busy with the critique should grow up & show a bit of balance.

[yellowcanoe]

Always blame the Jew, it is always the Jew. Bullcrap. The world which stood by & allowed the Holocaust has a perpetual duty to Israel which should never be forgotten.

Millions of lives were lost including 44,000 from my country in the struggle to defeat the Third Reich. Your claim that the world stood by and allowed the Holocaust is an insult to those who lost their lives fighting to liberate Europe.

Their neighbours consensus is that Israel should not exist, that Jews should always be subordinate, that Israel is a western impost. Until the consensus is reversed, Israel as a matter of course must remain an extremist state. Those busy with the critique should grow up & show a bit of balance.

There wasn't much violence in the West Bank or East Jerusalem for 20 years after the 6 days war and a large number of Palestinians crossed into Israel each day to work. Occupying people against their will is a brutal, messy business though and sooner or later people will revolt as they did in the first Intifada in 1987. You seem to want to portray Jews as being the victims but in this case it is Israel that holds most of the cards as it clearly has the military and economic strength to maintain an occupation of the West Bank indefinitely.

[Keith_McClary]

Always blame the Jew, it is always the Jew. Bullcrap. The world which stood by & allowed the Holocaust has a perpetual duty to Israel which should never be forgotten.

Right, so you cheer as thugs from NYC and Chicago stomp on the natives.

[Subjectivist]

I have never understood why people hate Jews for doing the same kind of things every other government has done thousands of times.

[Keith_McClary]

I have never understood why people hate Jews for doing the same kind of things every other government has done thousands of times.

They claim to be morally superior and demand our support, and call us anti-Semites if we don't.
Oh, and we must believe in this (IMO racist) notion of an eternal "People" whose members are the same "People" as some ancient tribe and are born (wherever in the world) with some (genetic?) kind of entitlement to an ancestral homeland. Eg.:

The Palestinian leadership refuses to acknowledge that the Jews have a history and sovereign legitimacy in Israel that goes back thousands of years; this same Palestinian leadership claims that there was no Jewish Temple in Jerusalem and, by extension, no Jewish history in the Holy Land. They deny the Jews any religious, historical, or political legitimacy in the land of Israel.

If you look up "Jewish history" you will find it is almost entirely bible stories (There are, of course, "Bible historians" and "Biblical archaeologists" with their own "scholarly" journals whose mission is to pass off these stories as reality).

[yellowcanoe]

I have never understood why people hate Jews for doing the same kind of things every other government has done thousands of times.

People who object to the continued occupation of the West Bank do not necessarily hate Jews. There is much to admire about Israel and her people. However, Israel is the only democratic, westernized country that is essentially maintaining a colony under force of arms. Britain still has a few colonies, such as the Falkland Islands, but these are situations where the majority of residents wish to remain a colony instead of acquiring independence. Of course you can find plenty of examples in non-democratic countries where one ethnic group is being oppressed by another, more powerful ethnic group.

[onlooker]

Good objective analysis of the situation over there Yellow.

[Cog]

People that make moral equivalency arguments, between the Jews in Israel and the Palestinians, obviously haven't been paying attention to what is going on over there.

[Plantagenet]

Israel is the only democratic, westernized country that is essentially maintaining a colony under force of arms.

Thats a half-truth at best. What about the UK in Northern Ireland? The Spanish in Catalonia and the Basque Country. The French in Corsica and Polynesia. The Russians in eastern Ukraine? What about the US in Indian Country? Many western countries have areas where the native people living there want the occupiers out and armed conflicts have erupted. These areas are mostly quiet now, but there was violence in the recent past and violence could easily erupt again in many western countries. I was just in Kashmir in India, and the Indian Army had military checkpoints everywhere to control the local people. And even in Europe the spanish, for instance, have just summoned the Catalonia President to Madrid answer for Catalonia's independence movement and recent vote for independence mixed with threats to send in the Spanish Army if Catalonia moves ahead towards independence.

And why restrict this discussion to "western" countries? Are you saying its OK for non-western countries to invade neighboring regions and oppress the local people?

Cheers!


You think there are no independence struggles going in western countries other than Israel? Think again......

[Keith_McClary]

Are you saying its OK for non-western countries to invade neighboring regions and oppress the local people?

When they do, our Western leaders foam with moral indignation and issue reports condemning their appalling human rights records.

You think there are no independence struggles going in western countries other than Israel? Think again......

Don't these people at least have full citizenship rights?

[Keith_McClary]

The nations of the Christian West don't give a damn. They remain coldly silent in the face of PA Jew-hate. They remain silent and cold as they watch PA-inspired Jew-killing.

The nations of the Christian West will suffer because of that silence.

The Christian West descends from the Biblical Edom. The Story of our Final Jewish Redemption tells us there will be War for this Edom-West: at the time of the Jewish Final Redemption Edom and Yishmael will fight each other.

Hashem talks to us through news headlines. He shows us how this Edom-Yishmael War could happen: the blood-frenzied Muslims who attack Jews in Israel remind us that our headlines are filled with Jihad and the hate of both Israel and the West.

Jihadis will not long tolerate the West’s slowness to attack Israel on Islam’s behalf. Jihad is at War with both the Little Satan (Israel), the Great Satan (the US), and with all Western 'infidels' (the EU).

At some point, Jihadists will get fed up fighting Israel’s toughness. They’ll turn their wrath on an easier target: the Christianized West, Edom.

Large Muslim populations in Europe, and embedded Muslim terrorists in the US, will soon reach a tipping point. They will blame the West for Israel’s survival.

These descendants of Yishmael will rise up in Jihad against the descendants of Edom (the West). Because the West has so enabled and legitimized killing Jews (today and throughout history), it will be punished by this Jihad, measure-for-measure.

Read the Jewish Tanach. Read the commentaries. It’s all there.

http://www.israelnationalnews.com/Blogs ... iFNO9_09xk

[yellowcanoe]

Israel is the only democratic, westernized country that is essentially maintaining a colony under force of arms.

Thats a half-truth at best. What about the UK in Northern Ireland? The Spanish in Catalonia and the Basque Country. The French in Corsica and Polynesia. The Russians in eastern Ukraine? What about the US in Indian Country? Many western countries have areas where the native people living there want the occupiers out and armed conflicts have erupted. These areas are mostly quiet now, but there was violence in the recent past and violence could easily erupt again in many western countries. I was just in Kashmir in India, and the Indian Army had military checkpoints everywhere to control the local people. And even in Europe the spanish, for instance, have just summoned the Catalonia President to Madrid answer for Catalonia's independence movement and recent vote for independence mixed with threats to send in the Spanish Army if Catalonia moves ahead towards independence.

There certainly has been a trend for distinct ethnic groups to want to break away and form their own country. I've seen that in my own neighbourhood where the Province of Quebec has had two referendums on separating from Canada. However, in all your examples the people who are trying to separate already have full citizenship rights in the country they are trying to separate from. I would also expect that as these are democratic countries that separation would be allowed if reasonable conditions are met. One reasonable condition would be that the people who want to separate constitute a clear majority. In Canada, after the two failed referendums, the conditions for Quebec separation are now spelled out in the Clarity Act. Quebec separatists are not happy with the Clarity act because it would not allow separation on the basis of 50% plus one of the vote and by laying out some of the other realities of separation it makes it more difficult for the separatists to gather support.

It's quite a different situation in the West Bank and East Jerusalem. Palestinians don't have the rights associated with Israelis citizenship -- they only have whatever rights Israel chooses to extend to them today and there is no framework for them to create their own state even though almost every Palestinian would want that.

And why restrict this discussion to "western" countries? Are you saying its OK for non-western countries to invade neighboring regions and oppress the local people?

No it isn't ok for non-western countries to invade neighbouring regions and oppress the local people. However, I think it is normal to have higher expectations of the people who are more like us.

[yellowcanoe]

http://www.israelnationalnews.com/Blogs ... iFNO9_09xk

That's an interesting article. The author fails to understand that the vast majority of people in the West are just completely tuned out of what is happening in Israel. It's nothing personal -- people are just focused on so many other things. The idea that muslims in West are going to rise up against Christians once they conclude that Israel is too hard to crack seems baseless to me. The vast majority of Muslim immigrants to the West just want a better life for their family. I am skeptical of the claim that the Palestinian Authority is distributing Jewish hate material. The PA can only operate with the cooperation of the Israelis and I am sure the Israelis would not hesitate to arrest any member of the PA who was directly involved in distributing hate material or attacks on Israelis.