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No, my question is how you can have an "Islamic state" if a majority of the population is not Muslim in the first place. I see two options: mass expulsion of all non-Muslims followed by an election, or a violent coup where a minority seizes power, suspends all elections and parties declares an Islamic state and simply imposes it on the non-Muslim majority (and also imposed it on the many Muslims who don't want to live in a theocratic state).
How else do you suggest creating an "islamic state" in a country where only a relatively small minority of the population wants one?
No I am NOT willing to flush everything prior to 1967 down the memory hole, nor everything since. You have no reason to think that I would have thought that. If I thought that, I wouldn't have said what I said on the Right of Return and compensation and a future unitary state. If I'd thought that everything prior to 1967 was alright, I'd sound like Netanyahu and Avigdor Lieberman. You are baiting me here for no reason.
I oppose the Israeli demands for all of Jerusalem. They have no right to all of it. OK?
I'm not the enemy here, dude.
@Stockybaba
Nope that wasn't your question. You changed your tack, sorry. Prevously you were simply misrepresenting the facts of Hamas's stated positions and pandering to Islamophobia.
However, more detailed statements by Hamas officials have indeed suggested that they would expect to win a democratic election in a future unified state, because the Muslim population will indeed soon outnumber all the rest. They presume of course that all Muslims would vote for them, which is doubful.
OK.
Sure I do. You just made it sound as if claiming all of Jerusalem as the capital of the propose Arab state was some new demand on behalf of the Palestinians, as opposed to recognizing that surrendering a claim to everything but East Jerusalem was a massive concession by the Palestinian leadership of Yasser Arafat.
Bagkitty made an innocent comment in #22, and 45 posts later, can we please deal with the topic of this thread? I've already apologized for my role in diverting it.
Look, I made a mistake on that. I wasn't intentionally implying that the Palestinians were asking for something they hadn't asked for before. I just got confused on what their position was for a moment and I apologize for that.
But I would never, ever take the position that everything since 1948 should be swept under the rug. That's not where I come from on this.
Can we please move on from this now?
K. Its just a very slippery, and well oiled machine that is slowly submerging the facts beneath the surface of what is common knowledge.
Fair enough. And it was never my intention to be a cog in that particular machine. Are we ok between us now on this?
Well, I'm ok with you, Ken, always have been, and I'm sure Cueball is also. These days, historical lapses on Middle East history are being used to destroy people's careers and justify the most abominable crimes of the murderers in the Israeli government. It's not surprising that these issues would then attain an urgency and passion that they may not have at other times.
I'm not sure how much these debates about 48, 56, 67, really matter. Ultimately the Palestinians and Israelis are going to have to negotiate an agreement with one another.
It would be in everyone's best interest to fully support a negotiated settlement ASAP.
And who doesn't. The point is that one party is not, and will never honestly approach a negotiated settlement, because it is simply not in its best interests to do so. This is clearly evidenced by the history; 48;56;67. Each instance shows that force, over negotiation succeeds. The primary motivator behind the lack of action in any of these instance where a negotiated settlement was possible, was the failure of the international community to force negotiation upon the victor through sanction and international pressure.
Indeed the USA rewards the aggression with ever increasing hand outs of military aid to Israel. Indeed to a certain extent the economic viability of the Israeli state is entirely dependent on the "Occupation Economy", which feeds on, and is justified by the constant state of military alert that Israel is in, due to its expansionist policies, and its need to repress violent dissent by those it subjugates.
How different this picture would be if the billions in aid that Israel receives for buying US Apache helicopters were spent on compensationn packages for displaced Palestinians, or financial rewards for settlers who leave the West Bank. But of course, there is no reason for Israel to back down, because intransigence bears fruit.
" The point is that one party is not, and will never honestly approach a negotiated settlement, because it is simply not in its best interests to do so."
You're being very hard on the Palestinians - surely some of them want peace.
How different this picture would be if the billions in aid that Israel receives for buying US Apache helicopters were spent on compensationn packages for displaced Palestinians, or financial rewards for settlers who leave the West Bank. But of course, there is no reason for Israel to back down, because intransigence bears fruit.
The other factor is probably the personal ambitions of the Israeli political elite.
As long as the war goes on, they get to be world famous.
If it ended, would they matter to anyone, in geopolitical terms?
Look at it this way...
When's the last time anybody noticed that the Swiss defense minister showed up in Washington or Ottawa?
What would happen if Mahmoud Abbas announced that he's willing to enter into negotiations without any pre-conditions.
That he wants to go to Camp David and negotiate with the Israelis and not leave until a settlement is achieved.
How could Israel and the US back out of that?
Demanding that someone enter into negotiations "without pre-conditions" is indeed a pre-condition. How is it that you just fell into the trap of demanding a condition upon Palestinian negotiators, without actually demanding that Israel shoud do the same... such as stop coming up with cheap ways of blocking negotiations, such as demanding "no pre-conditions" as a "pre-condition" for negotiation?
Why indeed do you put the onus upon Palestinians, when indeed they have essentially already made massive concessions on their original position, such as no explicit demand for the "right of return" for Palestinian refugees, such as renouncing their claim to 70% of their historic homeland, such as agreeing to recognizing Israel's "right to exist".
In fact, all these three things were all pre-conditions to negotiations that Israel has demanded of Palestinians, before entering into negotiation, and in each case the Palestinians have agreed to these pre-condtions... but now, for some reason you seem to think it is Palestinian intransigence on key issues as "pre-conditions" for negotiations that is the block to a peaceful settlement.
So, how does Israel back out of negotiations? Simple. Demand no "pre-conditions", as a precondition.
Yes my friend it is precisely this kind of tortured logic that has dogged a peaceful settlement for many many years, and through many rounds of so-called peace negotiatios.
How about both Israel and the Palestinian Authority enter into negotiations without pre-conditions?
Logical if you assume that Israel is bargaining in good faith. Why should it? It gets what it wants simply by maintaining the status quo. I mean, seriously, you think this miserable Palestinian rebellion impacts Israel or its economy in any real way? Not at all. It is just one great big excuse to justify the billions and billions of dollars that flow into the Israeli military industrial complex from Uncle Sam.
The Syrian Threat
Eithere there are negotiations or another hundred years of never ending bloodshed and suffering and more and more Israeli "facts on the ground" on the west Bank. The fact is that time is on Israel's side, the more time passes without an agreement - the more the outcome of any negoatiations will be more and more skewed away from what the Palestinians want.
I think just about the only "trump card" that the Palestinians have and which for some reason they have never chosen to play is the following: Demand incorporation into Israel! Imagine if both Hamas and Fatah said that they wanted their people to all become Israelis and for the Gaza strip and the West Bank to be formally annexed by Israel (in which case Palestinians and Arab-Israelis would instantly become close to 50% of the population of the country and in a position to win an election).
Yeah, so back on topic, gentlemen.
Here are more examples of homophobic and misogynist hate from supposedly enlightened and gay-loving Israel supporters. I think the Canada-Israel Committee should have considered leaving their post about Libby intact - they were representing their constituency well, judging from the hate they're spewing on her Facebook wall and twitter!
I guess someone forgot to tell Michael Schonberger (Menachem) about the pinkwash campaign too!
One can see actually who is ugly from the hate he spews, what an ass nubby he is.
You know I had not quite realized the full extent at how whacked these people are.
Is this guy on the executive of the Canada-Israel Committee? If not, then he is just one of thousands of pseudo-anonymous cranks who spew their hate on talk radio and in the comments sections of various blogs. As much as I object to the Canada-Israel Committee, I'm not going to hold them responsible for what individual people who are not members of that organization choose to tweet. I would to have any of the progressive organizations I sympathize with be forced to take responsibility for nutbars to (for example) express support for the people who bombed the Royal Bank in Ottawa.
Well, Stockholm, considering that the CIC posted a homophobic tweet of their own before they remembered, oopsie, we're supposed to be pinkwashing, not gaybashing, I stand by my comments.
I don't hold the pro-Palestinian cause/community responsible for the viciously homophobic comments from the Khadr family and I'm sure it wouldn't be hard to find posting from some fundamentalist Muslims that gays shoudl all be killed - so what? Tell me something I didn't know. The CIC shoudl be forced to apologize for what was put out under their rubrik. Its not their problem if one individual crackpot who has no ties to them chooses to tweet bigoted comments as an individual.
Are all Muslims the same to you or something, Stockholm? Since when were the Khadrs associated with Palestinian solidarity?
Yeah, Michelle, excellent point. The main difference between the CIC, and their homophobic pro-Israel ideological fellow-travelling commenters, is that the CIC only lets its guard down once in a while.
I don't think all Muslims are the same. Not all Muslims are Al-CIA'da as is the case with at least one of the Khadrs.
...and since when is "Menachem" part of the Canada-Israel Committee?
Maybe this is none of my business, but I find this absurd and offensive. Stockholm said nothing of the kind here. This kind of deliberate twisting of people's words to try and paint them as something approaching racist is ugly and unfair. Now, apologies to Stockholm, because you haven't asked for someone to stand up for you here, but I feel strongly about this kind of comment, and have been at the receiving end of quite a few of them myself. I flagged it for the moderators as well.