Serious Question: Israel

What's the word for the type of logical fallacy where you falsely present a subject as having only two possible arguments, when in reality there are more?

That's what you just did.

If one considers that the book of exodus never actually occurred then this becomes quite simple. The Jewish people have no claim to the land other than their own invented holy mandate.

We need to remove the Israelis from the region and issue an apology (quite the christian thing to do) for the injustices we have caused against the region's Muslim population.

This would be an incredible act of good faith if led by the United States and could give us some much needed credibility with the Arab world.

komenator wrote:

The other view is that Palestinians were inhabitants of the land for thousands of years themselves, and had that land unfairly taken away from them following WW2, even though they did side with the allies during the war.

This "view" is entirely false.

1) No one thinks that the Palestinians have inhabited the land for thousands of years. Some of them have been there for hundreds of years. Many of them are nomadic arabs who migrated to that land to benefit from the gold rush of the Zionist movement. (Oh, it's NOT a gold rush? Really? Take a look at the other Arab countries and tell me that the arabs that live in israel are not better off).

2) The Palestinians Arabs sided with the Germans during WW2.

3) There is no Palestinian Arab people to even qualify for an independent state. For example, Gazans and West Bank Arabs hate each other more than they hate Israelis.

When Obama took office, even Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel, one of the most prominent Israeli proponents in the country, had become aware of the extent of Israeli involvement in areas that had taken the “special relationship” into an area of disaster for the United States. This is what was discovered:

The military and intelligence organizations in the United States had been penetrated by Israel, not only through our normal broad partnership but the planting of “moles,” many from the Christian Zionist community who were taking direction from Israel and not the United States. The result wasn’t just limited to falsification of intelligence, both leading to endless phony terror alerts and non-existent enemies but to skewing operations in a manner to guarantee their failure with significant American cost in both lives and money.

The massive spy network uncovered by Sibel Edmonds had been tracked, almost entirely to Israel. Edmonds had been silenced by National Security Letters issued by John Ashcroft, leading Christian Zionist in the Bush Administration and constant “private” visitor to Israel. After 6 years of spying at the highest levels of the White House, Department of State, Congress and the Pentagon, the network grew even more, accessing nearly all top US intelligence and selling it on the open market.

Most disastrous of the stolen intelligence was the data on the new JSF, the F35 Joint Strike Fighter. All data on this new $300 billion dollar project fell into Israeli hands in 2008, information that may have turned the air superiority fighter meant to rule the skies for the next 30 years into a “target sled.” This is the biggest intelligence attack on the US since the Pollard/Israeli scandal. Pollard, an American Jew reputedly associated with Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu, stole America’s battle plans for the defense of NATO, our entire spy/surveillance network plans and full ultra-top secret detailed plans that could have negated America’s nuclear deterrent during the most dangerous times of the Cold War. Pollard’s information was sold to the Soviets by Israel, information that could have let Russia win World War III.

The Israeli attack on Gaza was timed to an American change of administration and done without consultation. Broad intelligence sources indicate that the attacks were not in relatiation to any terrorist activity but are spoken of “behind closed doors” by top US officials as ethnic cleansing not unlike the issues that brought NATO into conflict with Serbia. The systematic nature of the attack, destroying water-treatment, schools, hospitals, food storage, power generation and the massive loss of life, especially among children, has soured many in the Obama camp on Israel

Israel’s use of the Jewish lobby in the US to hold up President Obama’s domestic agenda and their use of Jewish controlled media to embarrass the President has caused more bitterness. With Jewish controlled/owned Fox, CNN (Wolf Blitzer, formerly of the Jerusalem Post), ABC, CBS, NBC networks and other major news sources all working in concert against, particularly President Obama’s health care initiative, Israel is seen as “flexing its muscle” even more. The believed rationale is the removal of all non-Jews from Israel, dead or alive, with a powerless US government paying the bills and fighting the massive terrorist backlash for generations.

"Take a look at the other Arab countries and tell me that the arabs that live in israel are not better off"

This is a foolish statement. I live in Jordan. The Palestinians in Israel are much, much worse off than Jordanians. Much worse off.

I have also traveled and spent time in Syria, Lebanon, and Egypt. The Arabs in Israel, on the whole, are much, much worse off.

"For example, Gazans and West Bank Arabs hate each other more than they hate Israelis."

This too is pure nonsense and, based off of my experience of living in the ME, totally not true.

The fact of the matter is that the Palestinians have lived there for many thousands of years and that the nonsense you state about Israel being an empty land until the Zionists made the desert bloom has been exposed as a complete fabrication.

That being said, the vast majority of Palestinians are willing to accept International law, which means Israel going back to its pre 1967 borders.

The Palestinians and Israelis just need to bury the hatchet and get along. Until then, America should have a hands off policy in the region. Both sides act like petulant children.

brillianceismymiddlename wrote:

The Palestinians and Israelis just need to bury the hatchet and get along. Until then, America should have a hands off policy in the region. Both sides act like petulant children.

The Israelis have the hatchet, not the Palis

I am so sick of Israel and the pro zionist lobby here in the States. Jews who don't back Israel building no settlements barely get mentioned in the US media. But the Jews in the US who want more settlements are all over the media. The US Jew-zionist are hurting the US and don't care because their first love is Israel not the US. Anytime you have people in the US who have a greater love for for another nation then your own you have trouble around the corner. ..and the US Jews don't care about America and only care about Israel.

"We need to remove the Israelis from the region"

If by Israelis you mean Jews perhaps you should be discussing the issue with Hitler, Goebbels, and Co, they had a similar plan of action.

It is healthy to discuss the Israeli/Palestinian conflict, but to border on antisemitism and factual inaccuracies is ridiculous. Remember Judaism is not rabid Zionism.

Thor wrote:

"We need to remove the Israelis from the region"

If by Israelis you mean Jews perhaps you should be discussing the issue with Hitler, Goebbels, and Co, they had a similar plan of action.

It is healthy to discuss the Israeli/Palestinian conflict, but to border on antisemitism and factual inaccuracies is ridiculous. Remember Judaism is not rabid Zionism.

.

Atually Hitler et al were Zionists. They were all for removing the Jews from Germany and sending them off to Palestine.

Himmler in particular worked closely with the World Zionist Organization to get many Jews to Palestine.

ewrafasd: What's the word for the type of logical fallacy where you falsely present a subject as having only two possible arguments, when in reality there are more?

Here you go:

Beyond that, he's close to posing the question as if the legitimacy of Israel as a state is in doubt. It's not. It was ratified as a state by the United Nations in 1948.

If Israel's legitimacy as a state is in question, so might as well be that of any nation born in the last century (as are a number of Israel's neighbors) if not earlier. Why not talk about whether the US really "deserves" to have a country?

Harry Truman made the US recognize Israel to get domestic Jewish votes in FL and NY over the protestations of Sec of State George Marshall, who almost, but did not, resign as an act of protest

(Then again there are questions about how much Marshall, and FDR, knew about the Pearl Harbor attack IN ADVANCE)

Remember the USS Liberty (& LBJ's reaction "I am not gonig to embarrass an ally"...nevermind the dead US servicemen eh?) and Jonanthan Pollard

Criticizing Israel today gets one automatically labelled an anti-Semite

Isreal's influence in the media is out of proportion to its' potential value as a US "ally"

anonymous atheist wrote:

If one considers that the book of exodus never actually occurred then this becomes quite simple. The Jewish people have no claim to the land other than their own invented holy mandate.

We need to remove the Israelis from the region and issue an apology (quite the christian thing to do) for the injustices we have caused against the region's Muslim population.

This would be an incredible act of good faith if led by the United States and could give us some much needed credibility with the Arab world.

Even if you were correct (i.e. that the book of Exodus is fictional) BOTH the Muslims and the Jews ACCEPT it's legitimacy. It seems like that would make it as relevant as any other "fictional book" such as the US Constitution.

Fact: The earliest proponents of a Jewish state in the area surrounding Jerusalem were white, Evangelist, American former colonists who thought that placing the Jews in the M.E. would bring the Christians one step closer to the Second Coming.

People often ask why the U.S. doesn't tell Israel to stand down or just stop supporting them all together. Truth is, the U.S. has been intertwined with Israel since 150 years before it's existence, and it would be extremely complicated to back out now.

Furthermore, while many of the current Israelis are indeed immigrants from Europe and Russia (and more), many were also former M.E. nomads as well. Pre-WWII, neither Israel NOR Palestine existed. They were all a part of the Ottoman Empire and later a British mandate. The concept of nationality is an extremely modern development. Why do people consider it ok that the U.S. carved up/invaded/purchased its vast swath of territory, but for Israel to stake a small claim around an area it's people lived in is a great injustice? (I'm not talking about the humanitarian injustice that occurs in the Gaza strip. That I do disagree with, and I do feel that Israel should respect international accords in reverting to pre-1967 borders. I'm talking about the right for Israel to exist as a nation, which I do believe it has.)

There's a double standard here that seems to be based on time. For example, Germany, Poland, Belgium, etc. were all still Prussia in the early 20th century, but no one seems to continue to whine about all the land poor Germany lost after WWI. After WWII, though, Israel declares a state and shows that it has the strength to defend its right to exist, and people seem much less willing to accept that.

Well, them's my thoughts, based on the facts.

Ah. I see that "nsmb, phallusy" has much more succinctly made the point I was trying to make. Well done.