Like China, there is really nothing… Dissuading murderous governments like Saudi Arabia from changing their ways. They can execute children, they can harvest organs, in prison huge numbers of religious minorities, and really there’s absolutely nothing any of us can do about it. Short of war, there’s absolutely nothing that can be done.
That's not true at all. We buy and use their oil, we supply them weapons etc. All that we need to do is to make sure that it's clear to our politician that such things matter to Americans. I'm just not sure that's the case though.
You make an excellent point: What WOULD happen if we stopped buying oil from Saudi Arabia, and slapped an 80% tariff on all Chinese made goods? Would these regimes change their ways, or begin a major pivot away from America? I’ve always been fascinated by the friendship between China and the Middle East. No pesky human rights to worry about, just the flow of oil and money is opposite directions.
There are countless ways for those countries to retaliate: war, terrorism, cyber attacks, disinformation campaigns, corporate or political espionage, releasing state secrets, stoking geopolitical tensions, creating anti-US coalitions, etc.
Not saying that punitive actions can’t be effective, but the US is still vulnerable to some forms of retaliation, especially if get initial action is as sudden and dramatic as the ones you describe.
> war, terrorism, cyber attacks, disinformation campaigns, corporate or political espionage, releasing state secrets, stoking geopolitical tensions, creating anti-US coalitions, etc.
You just listed every thing what The New Axis has done in the previous decade.
> Would these regimes change their ways, or begin a major pivot away from America?
Pivot to whom? China needs a large population of consumers. Besides the US they have their choice of countries full of young poor people, countries full of thrifty old people, and countries with consumers that are too small. They could drop the US if they’re willing to have a massive financial contraction. The US holds the ultimate trump card too, we need them less and less, and we can remove all shipping security guarantees for Chinese goods and watch their international trade collapse. It’s hard to fund influence campaigns when your economic house of cards crumbles around you.
The China envisioned in Made in China 2025 already has access to a large population of consumers: the Chinese population.
And the whole point of the Belt and Road initiative and their aircraft carrier program is to remove dependence on the US backed shipping security apparatus.
> The China envisioned in Made in China 2025 already has access to a large population of consumers: the Chinese population.
Not for long. The Chinese population is aging incredibly rapidly. Younger Chinese who could contribute to a stable consumer base will instead be crushed attempting to support the accelerating number in older generations retiring.
Older Chinese are still consumers, they'll bog down younger Chinese no more than US consumers will. It's not like US consumers are providing anything other than capital and a market as it stands. And a transition to higher end products and associated manufacturing means less low end workers (and less workers overall) needed to make that happen.
> Older Chinese are still consumers, they'll bog down younger Chinese no more than US consumers will.
On average people consume less and save more as they age. After retirement saving dries up and consumption takes a dive. After people turn 80 their activity falls off a cliff and they hardly spend anything. Their major costs are healthcare related but that’s a financial burden not a consumption boost for most societies including China.
I'm not sure that the idea that their population is aging follows the data. Their population age bubbles are younger than the US's. Their two bubbles are what are our older gen x and middle of the road millennials.
Additionally, they have a different retirement system that doesn't dry up for individuals the same way. If it's important for China that older citizens continue being consumers, they'll make that happen.
Wouldn't companies like Boeing lose out from Chinese market if US does that? Many US companies don't want to lose out the Chinese market, also US also exports stuff like agriculture produce to China.
Won't work, Afghanistan has no (legal) exports to speak of, and still there is the taliban gaining power. Iran and North Korea are hindered by very strict sanctions, yet their governments aren't any better.
War might work, if at least some larger part of the population wants change, like in Iraq. Sanctions didn't ever work.
Sanctions on Iraq did work, Saddam was contained. Might even have been swept away in the Arab spring later on. Unfortunately a bunch of religious fanatics invaded Iraq using a false pretense because God wanted them to. These fanatics didn't believe in diplomacy. After overthrowing the Taliban and the Baathists, they spurned all hopes of a negotiated peace and tried to wipe their foes off the map and remake the region in their own image. The defeated Baathist army was dismantled, the Taliban remnants hunted instead of negotiated with. Even the spurned Iraninans would have de-denuclearized out of fear in 2003 but why settle for that when you can have it all with regime change? And now here we are debating the evil of these once vanquished foes...
Saddam Hussein was contained regarding neighboring states. As to atrocities towards the Iraqi people, sanctions and loosing the wars just put those into full gear, because Hussein had to quell the brewing rebellion. So you are right, sanctions may work in preventing a war. But they do nothing beneficial for the internal workings of a country, like executing teens for protesting in the OP.
Although that is true, the US imports less and less oil from Saudi. In fact, it’s been dropping steeply since shale oil became cheaper in 2014 and we haven’t imported less from Saudi since the oil glut of the mid-1980s.[1] I don’t think the US stopping Saudi oil imports is going to worry them as China is their major market now and China is another repressive regime. We should stop protecting their shipping though as we do for the entire globe still.
> How much oil does the US buy from Iran? I think actual embargoes make a difference.
Iran is still a brutal repressive regime. Sanctions make it more difficult for Iran to gain and project power but don’t stop them from committing horrific crimes against minorities and generally innocent Iranians.
I think that’s simplistic. The CIA (not saying they did stand up things) tried the opposite and supported a failing regime that was more open but did little for the lower classes so the revolutionaries came in took over and showed the previous regime how to really be tyrannical.
Most Iranians would depose the current leadership if they had free elections, so it’s not as if the population wants them, but like China, and North Korea only one party can have legitimate candidates and they have the guns.
> Most Iranians would depose the current leadership if they had free elections
I wonder which agency played a role in stopping an elected government from assuming power. Its reeks double standards if its ok for USA/CIA to obstruct democracy but if somebody else does it -- oh the horror and injustice.
As long as fountainheads of brutal regimes, be it Shah of Iran or the crown prince of SA, are 'our' guy -- totally kosher.
The Cia is really helped out by what they do being so immoral people don't want to believe they did it. Everyone always wants to try to look at alternate takes of things where theyre not drug and gun smuggling kingpins that topples governments for more black ops money.
Definitely Iran used to be our second favorite ally in the region. However, if they were overthrown their footsies with Russia probably would kind of muddy things ... kind of like Turkey where you’re not sure they’ll always be on your side or that you can be in their side.
One of the huge advantages to the US/Saudi collaboration is the pricing of oil in dollars. The supply helped for a time, and we've weaned off it a bit through fracking, but that's a game of diminishing returns.
The worry for the US is if oil becomes priced in yuan and sold in yuan. It undermines the purchasing power of the US dollar while at the same time diminishing the effectiveness of US sanctions.
We don't have exile, no penal colonies, no ostracism, no corporal punishment and life term prison sentences are at least as cruel and more expensive than execution.
Unfortunately there are no cheap and efficient options for removing someone permanently from society right now outside of death penalty.
Outlawing people may work, but for various reasons it is non starter. You cannot lift protection from the law nowadays from someone.
Also reminds me of certain country that indiscriminately murders innocent non-citizens around the world... Truly different places, different justifications...
In addition to what others called out, we could also open our borders and allow people from these places to come and live with us instead. Foot voting is very powerful and even if just a small percentage leaves these countries that can become a real problem for those governments and create pressure to change.
Given the fact that Saudi Arabia is an US' puppet regime, they(the US) could do everything they want with it.
If you go to Saudi Arabia you will see that Arabia is made of hundreds of different loosely integrated ethnic groups, Saudis are just one of them that took the power in the country.
Removing the Saudis from power is extremely simple, they can just support other ethnic groups. The problem is that you never know if what is created is much worse than what it is there today, just like what happened in Egypt choosing the Muslim Brotherhood or in Libya, unstabilizing all the north of Africa.
China is a totally different thing. China is a gigantic country, almost a continent with more than 1200 million people, a big army,powerful industry, natural defenses and ethnically dominated by Han people.
Not really. While China improved its “natural defenses” by very unnaturally invading and subjugating Tibet it is still ringed by hostile countries or, in the case of Russia and North Korea, highly temperamental countries with very few natural barriers apart from the Himalayas which only covers one side. This is the reason the Great Wall was built.
> Short of war, there’s absolutely nothing that can be done
Here are some things that can be done:
- Stop exporting weapons and military and police equipment.
- Support women and them starting their own businesses, so they'll make money and get more influence in society. Women are, when looking at large numbers of people, more often altruistic minded (compared to men) and less likely to be psychopaths.
- Education, provide for free over the Internet.
- Support pro democracy organizations. But I guess one would need to be careful, if doing this, so people won't just start protesting on the street and get shot down, for example see in Iran recently (https://www.reuters.com/article/us-iran-gasoline-protests-id...).
another reason for me to go renewable. downvote me but i can't justify paying a country for their oil when they do this type of humanitarian violations to a child. same reason i refuse to buy apple and nike. i can do without until others realize that if they don't play fairly they don't get to play at all, at least without my money.
From what I gather, even though some of the offences were committed by him when he was a minor, some of them weren't. So it's not like they are applying "death penalty for children" as the article claims.
I don't know, I'm just saying that the article mentions that only some of the offences were committed when he was a minor, so the title of this submission is misleading.
If anybody knows the crimes Mustafa was accused of, that would be interesting. I did a search but I couldn't find any details. From the article, it seems they were "thought crimes". Something of some religious significance perhaps?
Some context: Mustafa was charged with participating in the Arab Spring uprisings during 2011-2012, where the discriminated Shia minority rose up again the government.
I got some flack giving a presentation that mentioned civilian participation in my organisations business by Chinese companies. The US Admiral that I was talking to (the topic was innovation - so no secrets) railed about us collaborating with entities that were alien to our core values. I could not reply - without unemployment - but all the time I thought about US support for Saudi - where the Admiral undoubtedly had served, and what kind of core values does that demonstrate?
Yeah, there are very few countries so far/further from core western values than Saudi Arabia. Which isn't outlandish considering how diverse world is, but the very strong and friendly relationships and military support from US is frikkin' crazy and amoral.
The country is run by psychopath cutting journalists to pieces at foreign embassies. I mean we're talking about the same level of primitive evil as some African dictators that ended with pretty harsh sentences at International Court of Justice.
And Trump basically pardoned the guy in the media from what I recall. I am curious if Biden's administration will change the US approach to him/SA or they keep quiet for enjoying their military bases there.
Media outrage means next to nothing for these people, tomorrow the world will be outraged about the next topic. Imagine people like Putin living in their own world, outside situation has very little effect on their luxurious lives.
Concrete steps that would financially hurt those holding power, ie sanctions for their foreign accounts/investments means at least something.
Nope, the whole point of oil is that is has a VERY low value. Even "very expensive" oil at 140$ per barrel (that was the peak I think) makes $0.875 dollar per liter of crude oil, about 30 MJ worth of energy. Additionally you can make plastic, and ... out of it.
But it's far cheaper than the cheapest brand of bottled water, which apparently comes in at about $1.4 per liter, a little under double the price of the most expensive oil we've ever had.
The normal price say $60-80 per barrel these days, is 0.4$, or about 1/4th to 1/3rd of the price of bottled water.
Unless soldiers carry solar panels as suggested by VP Kamala Harris into the field. I guess night combat will be called on account of no sun ;) Gas still has a high energy density, so it will be important for the foreseeable future, military applications or otherwise.
The commercially available panels with the highest specific power are about 700 W/kg (with an estimated upper bound of 1.2 W/kg) [1], in comparison to gasoline which is 12.5kWh/kg. Solar exposure can be about 5-6 hours of full sun equivalent per day. So the breakeven point would be about two to three days of charging!
How about you compare the bulk price of untreated water to barrels of oil? I've no idea which will come out on top but at least the comparison will be fairer.
Answer: most countries need dollars, because they need to import oil. If oil was not sold in dollars, the demand for dollars would be much lower.
Therefore, the US needs to control oil producers. If one producer gets out of line and decides to sell oil in another currency, the US will attack them.
And that is to say nothing about all the dictatorships the US sponsored in South America. The US was more than happy to train torturers in modern torture techniques.
Certainly. I think this is, to me, the clearest case for why the US has a moral imperative to contribute to mitigating the ensuing problems in that region (just as western Europe has one for much of the MENA region, ...), including hosting refugees and asylum seekers seeking protection in the US, providing aid when it is done accountably and constructively, etc.
Considering past history, I’d strongly recommend the US to not attempt to help, with the possible exception of the removal and prosecution of their puppets.
Western Europe has some things to make up for, but the US isn't involved in MENA? Remember Iran? I would blame Libya on Europe, but not the other wars.
I didn't say, and wouldn't say, that the US wasn't involved in MENA. I can understand how my previous comment may have implied that, for which I apologize, so it's worth clarifying. There's simply a difference in scale of involvement, as far as I can tell. Since you mentioned Iran, it looks even worse for the British than it does for the US by my reading. The coup in 1953, for instance, was spearheaded by the British who solicited US assistance, and was only the end of a long line of British exploitation of Iranian leadership (and oil) and the start of a slightly-shorter line of American exploitation of Iranian leaders.
Most of North Africa would probably be shared by the British and the French, Afghanistan seems to be shared by most of the "Global North" at this point, and so on. I definitely wouldn't say that the US doesn't have any responsibility here.
Without taking a side, most realpolitiks of the era will tell you (with a straight face)
those dictatorships were aligned to America's "core values" - specifically anti-Communist.
Oh yes. The US tends to conflate capitalism with democracy when we all know capitalism works a lot more efficiently without a democracy to hold it back.
Core values being US/G7/NATO geopolitical strategy in the Middle East.
It's Realpolitik. If we refused to work with anyone who didn't mirror Western values, do you think that would be possible? I mean, do we just refuse to even engage most of Africa, the Middle East and Asia? That doesn't seem realistic.
Unassumed realism is not the mark of adulthood. If you sincerely agree then the stance you should hold is "I support atrocities if they benefit me and I don't care if other countries violate human rights".
From then on we can have a good discussion. But the above is using realism as an excuse instead of fully assuming it and taking it to its conclusion.
If you care about ethics, then you would try to improve the situation in Saudi Arabia, which is much more fragile and more subject to US influence, instead of trying to do so in China which is a superpower you will only ever antagonize.
The comment above wasn't about prioritizing the best targets to pursue your ethical goals. It's about ignoring them but pretending they still matter. They don't matter. If we care about ethics at all we wouldn't orchestrate coups instead of forgoing a bit of oil revenue.
I do sympathize with how it must have felt during that presentation, but I do wonder why anyone would take the words of any high ranking US military official serious at all, at anything they say. After all, they are just representatives of an ideologically warped criminal enterprise, perpetually serving the interests of a questionable industry that rose to prominence during WW1 and WW2.
War is a racket and so is the industry that feeds on the perceived threat of one. The humongous US military budget ends up (at least a substantial of it) in private pockets somehow. The US is of course not the only country playing that racket, but it certainly is the undisputed biggest player. Speaking truth to principles and morals is simply out of the question for anyone involved, with that amount of capital changing hands.
Those (in this case, the general) who implicitly consent to doing wrong, should not preach others. If this said general had resigned to protest the USA's support for Saudi, yes, one can listen to his 'sayings'.
The difference is that one of these regimes exists only because of US support. And the other has proven it's willing to infringe on intellectual property rights and steal technology when it's convenient to do so.
Executing a kid for protests that didn't get anywhere is an indicator of fragility. Do they really think it sends a signal of strength to go through with this? This makes it seem like when there's a proper insurrection organized by adults it will have a real chance of toppling the regime.
Such a tragedy, to execute a teenager for such "crimes". It makes me sad, and angry... Not only they kill children in Yemen, but also their own citizens.
What can we do about this, maybe not much, these tyrants are supported by their friends in the West, but we can surely try. Pressure politicians to stop supporting them, selling them weapons, allowing their dirty money into the financial system.
Maybe even smaller steps could make an impact, like what if Muslims stop going to Hajj as long as these monsters are in powers. They earn big money from that.
And good old Uncle Sam sells 10 billion a year in weapons to these pricks - along with billions in aid for Israel to "mow the grass" (IDF phrase) in Gaza. Disgraceful.
Oh, please. Hamas would kill every man woman and child in Israel without batting an eye if it had the means to do so (heck, so would the PLO). And they actually say it explicitly in their media, something western media rarely covers.
> 'The Day of Judgment will not come about until Moslems fight Jews and kill them. Then, the Jews will hide behind rocks and trees, and the rocks and trees will cry out: 'O Moslem, there is a Jew hiding behind me, come and kill him.'
And yet you bring up "mowing the lawn", which is an unfortunate reality in which Israel has to sacrifice soldiers every few years in order to keep fighting this genocidal organization which does not respect the lives of its own, uses them as human shields and is happy when the Arab death count is high because it just brings negative coverage on Israel.
P.S. I can already see the downvotes coming, which I'm pretty sure are from people who don't live here and have no clue. I guess reading a Noam Chomsky book makes everyone an expert nowdays.
My guess is that like in the above case, one side will wipe out the other. That is why both sides are playing for keeps. I don’t think you can carve out a tenable country out of the West Bank and the Gaza Strip. Israel without the West Bank probably doesn’t work either.
Oh wow, does one extremist group in Palestine express their desire to kill their enemy? How shocking! Do you have any idea how the state of Israel was made possible? Through pure terrorism. Which continues to this day. When you oppress and terrorise a people for generations, do you expect them to just take it and accept their fate, as if they deserve it some how?
"Every Jew had the right to enter Palestine; only active retaliation would deter the Arabs; only Jewish armed force would ensure the Jewish state"
It's pretty easy for you to sit infront of your computer calling them "chimps", while you have nothing to worry about. You should be ashamed of yourself.
Any anti-semitism? The whole god damn world was pretty anti-semetic. Do you think only Germany was anti-semetic during WW2 and before that the jews had no issues in the world? People were awful during these times, so don't come and say Palestine was a place full at anti-semetic people, and so they some how deserved what came to them. That is incorrect, ignorant and just as sad of an argument as using Hamas as an excuse. Israel killed a 17-year old boy Yesterday in Nablus, Ahmad Dawood was his name. What does your "anti-semetic" view of the old world have to do with that if I may ask?
Once again, another clueless and anonymous coward commenting. To compare the Irgun to the Hamas (who's an offshoot of the Muslim Brotherhood) is preposterous, and it is clear to me that you're an idiot. The Irgun was essentially founded because of the bloody riots of 1929, and it was not even a mainstream organization.
Do you know how the Arab presence in Palestine was made possible? Through violent military conquests:
You will never have piece in the Middle East when there are people who want to kill all the Jews, and Israel State who want to kill people.
The thing people forget Jews are not Government of Israel. Israel as a state was hell bent on keeping the aggression and conflict going. New every Jew nor citizen of Israel is a murderous bloodthirsty war criminal.
You lack historical context there, what about Israelis expelling people from their homes, people who lived there for centuries? There's no good and bad side there, it's 2+ sides fighting for limited space and resources (and colonial and neocolonial powers steering the whole thing to suit their geo-political interests of the day). It's ugly all over, no matter which way you look at it...
Plus, many Arabs left their homes because they told them to do so. They expected them to be able to come back after they finish killing the Jews, which never happened, and hopefully never will.
The Nakba happened in living memory though. We can't do anything about the 7th century but we can do something about the current occupation and circumscribing of Palestinian lives. Namely a) Boycotts b) Divestment c) Sanctions.
The "Nakba" is the result of their own leaders starting a war against the nascent Jewish state and telling the Arabs to leave their homes and come back once they're done getting rid of the Jews - something that never happened, and hopefully never will.
They Arabs had multiple opportunities to settle this conflict, it's purely a result of their own making.
Are you seriously comparing conquests and migrations of the 7th century and a thing that happened in our life time? Well, my life time at least... I actually went to high-school with a Palestinian kid who immigrated with his parents to Yugoslavia. His family was kicked out of their apartment and put into a camp and he spent a part of his young life locked there. In his own words the hardest was that the camp was relatively near where they used to live and they could actually see their old building's roofs from the camp, through the wire fence, knowing that someone else now lives in their home. It's a recent event still very alive in mind and souls of Palestinian people, not some ancient story from time when Anglo-Saxons still ruled the Britain and Slavs haven't moved to Europe yet.
It's not dehumanization when the group is based on literally killing of Jews (Not even just in Israel). He didn't say Palestinians as a whole.
When you show compassion for the cruel you'll end up being cruel to the merciful.
Calling for the destruction of Israel isn't calling to kill the Jews?
Calling for Jihad against the Jews and quoting Islamic religious texts to provide justification for fighting against and killing the Jews isn't an incitement for genocide?
This reads just like mein kampf, if this was written by a white person you would call him a nazi.
I don't think there is any chance for me to convince you, but the Hamas covenant is an old document, written by religious fundamentalists who also were inflamed by decades of conflict on their homeland and holy land (and whatever you think of it, you can't deny that the people who are losing the war and the land must feel wronged). So I cut them some slack and don't take the religious raving seriously. As the Wikipedia page you linked explains, Hamas itself has moved on and is far from monolithic: various of its leaders have multiple times declared in the past 15 years that they've moved away from that original covenant. The second sentence of the Wikipedia entry literally states that Hamas has a new charter since 2017.
So why would you fixate on a piece of text written 33 years ago by angered fundamentalists, that has also been multiple times rejected by the leaders of the same movement and that is now superseded by a more recent one? If you want to hate someone, it's easy to cling to a single piece of damning, black-and-white evidence, however outdated and contested. Don't you think you should consider more elements, at least to give your views some balance?
It's their actions not just this document. It's the calling of Jihad that's not changed. Calling for the destruction of Israel that has not changed.
If they wanted to "change", their action would reflect that, what you linked is just a lipstick on a pig to appeal to the westerns media and mind set to look more tolerant but they truly aren't.
If ISIS suddenly had a more "tolerant" charter and leadership would you change their mind about them?
Hamas is a movement with a religious fundamentalist basis, I don't think that "tolerance" is what you should expect from them. But this is not a beauty contest. Just use Occam's razor: they call to "Jihad" (struggle) because foreigners have come and displaced them from their homeland (well beyond what the international community- including the western nations- considers legal). It is just preposterous to attribute racial or religious hatred to those who fight back an invasion of their homeland. If China came and invaded your land, would you fight back because you are an anti-Asian racist? And after all, wouldn't being invaded and oppressed by China make you a bit into a racist, at least on the long run and while the struggle stands?
Everyone doesn't like a specific group doesn't matter what the basis is or reason, but that wasn't the point of the argument, that point was about dehumanization.
You want to struggle against oppressors, ok , I get that but when you say you want the utter annihilation and destruction of a racial group when you praise and actively work to bomb busses, stab people in the street and in their homes, when you dig tunnels to pop up in the Kibbutz dining room, when you blow incendiary balloons that destroy forests and nature reserves killing countless wild life you are not human, you are an evil daemon that should be eradicated just as was done with nazi Germany and ISIS.
> when you say you want the utter annihilation and destruction of a racial group
We already established that they don't say that.
> when you praise and actively work to bomb busses, stab people in the street and in their homes...
If your country had been invaded and utterly militarily overwhelmed by another country, now intent on building cities and installing their population on your former land, what would you do to free it, where would you stop and just throw your arms up and say "well, I can't do anything"?
In a situation like that, there will always be someone who is willing to use any means to make the occupation and the oppression as costly as possible for the oppressor. It's not racial hatred, it's that when you cannot hit the army you'll hit whatever you can.
When Israel will have given back all the territory that has illegally appropriated (illegally according to the western nations, not some backwards middle Eastern dictatorship) then it will be in a position to denounce any continuing terrorism from Hamas. Before that, it's just complaining because its victims fight back.
> We already established that they don't say that.
We haven't, you didn't.
> when you cannot hit the army
They do but it's just easier to just cut a fence and stab children sleeping, that's not legitimate struggle that's barbarism and terrorisms.
> willing to use any means
That's exactly the point, when the end justify the means. What they do, how they operate that's evil. It has nothing to do with justice.
> your country had been invaded
The PLO was founded in 64 way before any occupation of the west bank and gaza so your point of fighting your oppressor is moot unless you consider the occupation the entire state of Israel then your legal argument is void.
They didn't struggle against their Egyptian and Jordanian "occupation" but when it's Jews, oy vey.
> The PLO was founded in 64 way before any occupation of the west bank and gaza so your point of fighting your oppressor is moot unless you consider the occupation the entire state of Israel then your legal argument is void
And ~50 years after Palestinians were promised self-rule, Jews were promised the right to move to Palestine, and Palestinians said they're against the mass migration of Jews there that displaced them.
Why is it that you think Palestinians only have the right to Gaza and the West Bank when they were the majority across the whole of Palestine less than a hundred years ago ( what, two generations?) ? The PLO didn't see it that way in 64, only a few decades after Palestinians had their land stolen ans themselves evicted from it by new settlers.
> Palestinians said they're against the mass migration of Jews
Ofc they would. So what? They weren't the rulers or had any form of government, most of the land didn't belong to them no matter how gerrymandering maps you want to draw. It was the British mandate before the ottoman before that.....
> mass migration of Jews there that displaced them
It didn't. The land Jews settled on was purchased since the 1880s.
A lot of those Palestinians were immigrants themselves who came to Palestine for work, and the Jewish population were the ones that hired them.
Most of Palestine before the Jews started to immigrate and built was deserts and swamps, no one wanted to live there until the Jewish population terraformed them to be livable.
> Why is it that you think Palestinians only have the right to Gaza and the West Bank
Because they lost the war they started, you can't start a war lose and then cry that you lost territory.
They didn't want a Jewish state at all, or be under Jewish rule.
That's how countries form, that's how borders are made. Every other country in the world was formed by conflict it's just that most of those countries annihilated the other side long ago so there is almost no one left to hear their voice or go on a twitter rampage.
> you can't start a war lose and then cry that you lost territory. ... That's how countries form, that's how borders are made.
Actually, according to international law, you cannot lose territory by war, even if you started it. I'm sure you think this is absurd, but it really is necessary.
“Without this absolute prohibition, acquisitive states would have a strong incentive to obfuscate the origins of the territorial acquisition, leading us backwards to the days when borders were impediments to overcome, rather than frontiers to respect.”
Also, once you occupied someone else's territory (necessarily for a temporary period) to transfer your own civilian population in it is a war crime:
"The prohibition on deporting or transferring parts of a State’s own civilian population into the territory it occupies is set forth in the Fourth Geneva Convention.[1] It is a grave breach of Additional Protocol I.[2] Under the Statute of the International Criminal Court, “the transfer, directly or indirectly, by the Occupying Power of parts of its own civilian population into the territory it occupies” constitutes a war crime in international armed conflicts."
> They didn't want a Jewish state at all, or be under Jewish rule.
Let's not be disingenuous here. Palestinians could never be part of a Jewish state, because Israel is a Jewish nation and a democracy. It simply cannot include millions of Palestinians as citizens- and I don't mean it as a critique (I also come from a national state formed out of a preexistent ethnic, linguistic and religious unity). It's a matter of fact. Israel wanted the land but not its original population ("the bride and the dowry" - https://www.amazon.com/Bride-Dowry-Israel-Palestinians-After... )
> it's just that most of those countries annihilated the other side long ago so there is almost no one left to hear their voice...
So you think that Jews now have a right to do the evil they didn't get to before, because they didn't have a nation when conquers and pillage were still accepted?
I'm not going to debate International law on HN, it's a complicated issue with a lot of details and I'm not an International law lawyer and interpreting the law at face value without going back the intent of the law when it was formed is wrong but then I'm sure you agree with every law your country pass without judgment right?
> Israel wanted the land but not its original population
It's probably true that the founders didn't want to control the Arab population (not out of racisms) but as it turns out they have 2 million Arab citizens. I do agree that a one state solution couldn't work now demographically as that would be an apartheid state.
> so you think that Jews now have a right to do the evil
Who is dehumanizing who now...
The point was the formation of Israel in 48, the parent talked about territories other than gaza and the west bank, It's just that it's disingenuous to pick on Israel at that time saying they are the baddies just because they won, they were fighting for survival and against the annihilation of the Jews in that region and that one of the reasons that this still an issue because unlike other countries Israel did not annihilate their enemies, if the Arabs won in 48 there wouldn't be a debate because all the Israeli Jews would be dead and the world would go on like it's another day and just mark it in the footnote of history as the 2nd Jewish holocaust and that's it.
I do think the west bank occupation is wrong and should be "solved" but it's far from evil because intent matters, why there is an occupation matters, they reasons behind Israel actions matter, actions Israel don't make as the occupying force matter.
But I'm closing this discussion because it leads to nowhere and the bots downvoting me within 1 minute of commenting needs a break, have a good day.
> I do think the west bank occupation is wrong and should be "solved" but it's far from evil because intent matters
I think the intent (insofar as it's the result of planning and not simply the result of multiple individual initiatives) is clear: to create an irreversible situation on the ground so that, if the time comes, there will be no viable solution to give those territories back.
That said, Israel is also very careful to avoid full scale ethnic cleansing and genocide, partly for ethical and cultural reasons (they're modern Europeans after all, and they want to be considered as such) and partly because ambiguity is what keeps the occupation sustainable. It cannot be done if they alienate the support of the western nations.
> the bots downvoting me within 1 minute of commenting needs a break,
Yep, true about the bots, I was upvoted within a few seconds for my last submissions. So it's either a bot or someone who has an alert set up on new comments in this subthread. Maybe @dang could give it a look.
1) a two state solution, in which, somehow, Gaza and the West-Bank must be free to pass goods and humans with zero Israeli involvement (how? a tunnel?)
2) a one-state solution (a greater Israel) with a Jewish minority
Because I see cynicism in the actions of Likud (and others)_that have ramped up a lot since the assassination of Itzhak Rabin in 1995 by a right wing settler.
I see cynicism in allowing right wing marches through the Arab quarter of Jerusalem.
I see cynicism in settlements built upon annexed land.
I see cynicism in deliberate provocative actions designed to goad Palestinians into predictable action.
Hamas was democratically elected in Gaza, like it or not. (I don't, I see them as essentially right wing nationalists. I see them maintaining power even more the hard Israel strikes Gaza. It's the unfortunate result of squashing 2 million people into a giant prison camp where the passage of products and people requires the approval of an outside entity.)
I don't recall anyone working with the Palestinian Authority to offer any "carrot" to complement the "stick"
(incentivizing support for PA vs punishing Hamas)
I see hard line nationalists in Israel with no actual path forward. Do they really think they can treat 4 million people (both territories combined) as inconsequential forever? Is genocide and "death to Arabs" an actual game plan for some extremists?
The settler thing is blatantly copying the old American "how the west was won" plot line, ship in new immigrants and send them to the frontier to defend/expand it.
and yes, I've spent significant time in Israel and I'm not trying to push some unrealistic story here, I'm trying to say that you don't even realize how right wing your bathwater has become...
BUT... the topic was "Saudi Arabia cuts a youths head off for being rebellious"... and I am disgusted at how "The West" speaks of democracy and values and rails on China, but gives Saudi Arabia a break and prefers to sell them weapons.
Egypt and support for Sisi (and Mubarak) is also disgusting...
Do you know who was promising in Egypt? Anwar Sadat. Look what happened to him...
Why do I have to pick from your two options? Who knows what possibilities lie ahead given enough time.
> Hamas was democratically elected in Gaza, like it or not. (I don't, I see them as essentially right wing nationalists. I see them maintaining power even more the hard Israel strikes Gaza.
Sorry, but what do you expect Israel to do here? Hamas shells Israel continuously, it's easy for outsiders to virtue signal and tell Israel not to attack back, but they would've done 10 times worse.
> It's the unfortunate result of squashing 2 million people into a giant prison camp where the passage of products and people requires the approval of an outside entity.)
Why is it when people bring up the "blockade" of Gaza they always conveniently forget that Gaza is also bordered by Egypt, who are also cutting them off, yet no one ever blames their "brothers" and yet expects Israel to open up the border.
It's important to note that Egypt is also run by an autocratic regime which is fearful of the influence of hamas and other revolutionary parties like Muslim brotherhood.
I think Israel for all their supposed military intelligence is thinking extremely short sighted, ultimately it's best for them that they make peace with the people around them by giving them equal rights and not provoking them by stealing their land.
In the decades to come, the political situation can change dramatically in the middle East and Israel may find itself among Arab countries that are no longer monarchies and won't ignore the Palestinian situation
I see the hypocrisy, but you didn't mean to downplay the very real murder that just happened to a journalist by one of 'our guys'? Or is beating up a journalist worse than mursering him these days? I guess it depends on which side you seem to be standing on. Nice try
When I hear Saudi Arabia I always remember William Sampson, a Canadian citizen who was arrested while working in SA and tortured so badly he lost his mind for a time. Needless to say he confessed to everything countless times.
Nobody was even talking about Russia, something has gone seriously wrong if you preemptively have to defend torture in paranoid expectation of downplaying other torture.
Saudi Arabia is just practically ISIS.
Their ruling elite is following same fundamentalist version of islam as isis.
PS : I don't mean to start a flamewar or offend anyone. But just how is this any different than ISIS capturing western journalists and doing all the unspeakable horrible things to those caught in their system.
That's not very surprising considering the Canadian government recently paid 10M dollars to an enemy combatant and terrorist who murdered and wounded several US Soldiers [0]. And of course, received full apologies from Trudeau.
Khadr was an enemy combatant in an invasion of his country, abducted illegally when he was a child (15 year old), taken to Guantanamo, probably tortured, and sued for murder ( since when does Guantanamo have jurisdiction over killing between armed men in a war in Afghanistan??).
You really have to have a very fucked up view of the world to think illegally detaining and torturing a child is OK, whatever the circumstances. Where are the trials for the US war criminals in Afghanistan ? Why are their war crimes acceptable, but fucking children get sent to Guantanamo for fighting?!
I don't think it would change but free countries should break off diplomatic relations with SA based on these kind of political killings. But then the US does it. And now Canada is playing with arresting political dissidents. Maybe the world is just going through the next iteration. Rome burned. America will burn too. But maybe the next iteration will be better.
The USA has the death penalty for children, so lets jump off the high horse on that one.
Mustafa al-Darwish also was older than 18 for part of it (And one assumes the terrorism charge would have been later in the timeline) which fits with SA saying they no long execute children, which would make them better than the USA on that issue.
The problem with this comment is that it fails to account for the fact that US and other democratic countries have a reasonable judicial system that while flawed is not totally under the thumb of the government. One can be sure that a death sentence in western courts is atleast well debated and pondered over, the same unfortunately can't be said of middle East, where just writing bad about a ruler can get u chopped to pieces.
Uh, I think he got downvoted for being wrong, not for being reasonable. The US used to execute people who were minors when they committed their offense, but no longer does. It was abolished by the Supreme Court in 2005, and the last time it happened was in 2003 (the execution of a 32 year old man who, when he was 17, deliberately burned two people to death.) So his information is almost two decades out of date.
When was the last time the USA killed a child for a photo they didn't like? If you were to be a child and got killed in the US, you surely deserved it. If you were a child and got killed in Saud, you probably just pissed off some little fascist.
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[ 3.4 ms ] story [ 209 ms ] threadNot saying that punitive actions can’t be effective, but the US is still vulnerable to some forms of retaliation, especially if get initial action is as sudden and dramatic as the ones you describe.
You just listed every thing what The New Axis has done in the previous decade.
China tariff: they’d devalue the yuan. They already have capital controls that keep money from leaving the country. Regime would be fine.
At the end of the day, might as well trade with them for our own benefit.
Pivot to whom? China needs a large population of consumers. Besides the US they have their choice of countries full of young poor people, countries full of thrifty old people, and countries with consumers that are too small. They could drop the US if they’re willing to have a massive financial contraction. The US holds the ultimate trump card too, we need them less and less, and we can remove all shipping security guarantees for Chinese goods and watch their international trade collapse. It’s hard to fund influence campaigns when your economic house of cards crumbles around you.
And the whole point of the Belt and Road initiative and their aircraft carrier program is to remove dependence on the US backed shipping security apparatus.
Not for long. The Chinese population is aging incredibly rapidly. Younger Chinese who could contribute to a stable consumer base will instead be crushed attempting to support the accelerating number in older generations retiring.
On average people consume less and save more as they age. After retirement saving dries up and consumption takes a dive. After people turn 80 their activity falls off a cliff and they hardly spend anything. Their major costs are healthcare related but that’s a financial burden not a consumption boost for most societies including China.
https://www.statista.com/statistics/1101677/population-distr...
Additionally, they have a different retirement system that doesn't dry up for individuals the same way. If it's important for China that older citizens continue being consumers, they'll make that happen.
War might work, if at least some larger part of the population wants change, like in Iraq. Sanctions didn't ever work.
We actually buy a very small amount these days. US is a net exporter.
https://www.eia.gov/dnav/pet/hist/LeafHandler.ashx?n=PET&s=M...
Most international trade is denominated in USD, often even when trade is between two non-US companies.
Although that is true, the US imports less and less oil from Saudi. In fact, it’s been dropping steeply since shale oil became cheaper in 2014 and we haven’t imported less from Saudi since the oil glut of the mid-1980s.[1] I don’t think the US stopping Saudi oil imports is going to worry them as China is their major market now and China is another repressive regime. We should stop protecting their shipping though as we do for the entire globe still.
1: https://www.eia.gov/dnav/pet/hist/LeafHandler.ashx?n=PET&s=M...
Iran is still a brutal repressive regime. Sanctions make it more difficult for Iran to gain and project power but don’t stop them from committing horrific crimes against minorities and generally innocent Iranians.
Whatever it is now, it has been brought in to existence by US (CIA) intervention
Most Iranians would depose the current leadership if they had free elections, so it’s not as if the population wants them, but like China, and North Korea only one party can have legitimate candidates and they have the guns.
I wonder which agency played a role in stopping an elected government from assuming power. Its reeks double standards if its ok for USA/CIA to obstruct democracy but if somebody else does it -- oh the horror and injustice.
As long as fountainheads of brutal regimes, be it Shah of Iran or the crown prince of SA, are 'our' guy -- totally kosher.
The US and the UK are the primary reasons why there aren't any meaningful elections in Iran anymore.
* selling them US debt, aka they fund the deficits (national and private).
* selling them weapons and financial services
* habit, traditions etc Where else will we keep our aircraft carriers?
* they're a defacto ally of Israel and they generally help on our special projects in the middle east.
I don't like that we support them. I think Iran is a much better choice in the region. But that's why we keep doing it...
The worry for the US is if oil becomes priced in yuan and sold in yuan. It undermines the purchasing power of the US dollar while at the same time diminishing the effectiveness of US sanctions.
https://www.scmp.com/economy/china-economy/article/3128103/c...
this reminds me of another country, takes pride in its democracy, where citizens love marijuana, government don’t.
different places, different basis for prosecution.
Unfortunately there are no cheap and efficient options for removing someone permanently from society right now outside of death penalty.
Outlawing people may work, but for various reasons it is non starter. You cannot lift protection from the law nowadays from someone.
Embargo them to the neck, like Japan before WW2.
If you go to Saudi Arabia you will see that Arabia is made of hundreds of different loosely integrated ethnic groups, Saudis are just one of them that took the power in the country.
Removing the Saudis from power is extremely simple, they can just support other ethnic groups. The problem is that you never know if what is created is much worse than what it is there today, just like what happened in Egypt choosing the Muslim Brotherhood or in Libya, unstabilizing all the north of Africa.
China is a totally different thing. China is a gigantic country, almost a continent with more than 1200 million people, a big army,powerful industry, natural defenses and ethnically dominated by Han people.
Not really. While China improved its “natural defenses” by very unnaturally invading and subjugating Tibet it is still ringed by hostile countries or, in the case of Russia and North Korea, highly temperamental countries with very few natural barriers apart from the Himalayas which only covers one side. This is the reason the Great Wall was built.
The opposite is true here.
Here are some things that can be done:
- Stop exporting weapons and military and police equipment.
- Support women and them starting their own businesses, so they'll make money and get more influence in society. Women are, when looking at large numbers of people, more often altruistic minded (compared to men) and less likely to be psychopaths.
- Education, provide for free over the Internet.
- Support pro democracy organizations. But I guess one would need to be careful, if doing this, so people won't just start protesting on the street and get shot down, for example see in Iran recently (https://www.reuters.com/article/us-iran-gasoline-protests-id...).
Saudi Arabia just gets a free pass because their collaboration is important to America's strategic interests.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2011%E2%80%932012_Saudi_Arabia...
There wasn't really any "uprising" in terms of armed people actually trying to overthrow the government was there?
Sorry if I'm taking uprising too literally...
Egyptian Women and the Arab Spring 1/2 (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fbCSYJDeoCI)
Egyptian Women and the Arab Spring 2/2 (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5dfbW8FfHbQ)
Ten years after the Arab Spring, is there still hope for democracy? 1/2 (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yIhDQ6YVOvQ)
Ten years after the Arab Spring, is there still hope for democracy? 2/2 (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YxN7FCNOD4I)
The country is run by psychopath cutting journalists to pieces at foreign embassies. I mean we're talking about the same level of primitive evil as some African dictators that ended with pretty harsh sentences at International Court of Justice.
And Trump basically pardoned the guy in the media from what I recall. I am curious if Biden's administration will change the US approach to him/SA or they keep quiet for enjoying their military bases there.
Concrete steps that would financially hurt those holding power, ie sanctions for their foreign accounts/investments means at least something.
But it's far cheaper than the cheapest brand of bottled water, which apparently comes in at about $1.4 per liter, a little under double the price of the most expensive oil we've ever had.
The normal price say $60-80 per barrel these days, is 0.4$, or about 1/4th to 1/3rd of the price of bottled water.
The commercially available panels with the highest specific power are about 700 W/kg (with an estimated upper bound of 1.2 W/kg) [1], in comparison to gasoline which is 12.5kWh/kg. Solar exposure can be about 5-6 hours of full sun equivalent per day. So the breakeven point would be about two to three days of charging!
[1] https://www.osti.gov/pages/servlets/purl/1485564)
2) most countries import oil
1 + 2 = ???
Answer: most countries need dollars, because they need to import oil. If oil was not sold in dollars, the demand for dollars would be much lower.
Therefore, the US needs to control oil producers. If one producer gets out of line and decides to sell oil in another currency, the US will attack them.
Most of North Africa would probably be shared by the British and the French, Afghanistan seems to be shared by most of the "Global North" at this point, and so on. I definitely wouldn't say that the US doesn't have any responsibility here.
Just remember the Taliban started as a US sponsored group that fought the Soviet invasion.
It's Realpolitik. If we refused to work with anyone who didn't mirror Western values, do you think that would be possible? I mean, do we just refuse to even engage most of Africa, the Middle East and Asia? That doesn't seem realistic.
Realism is the mark of adulthood.
From then on we can have a good discussion. But the above is using realism as an excuse instead of fully assuming it and taking it to its conclusion.
Adulthood means that you need to prioritize your goals, choose your battles, and set the stage for the progress you want to make.
Simply refusing to deal with anyone that doesn't adhere to your ethical values is what my teenage daughter does, quite literally.
The comment above wasn't about prioritizing the best targets to pursue your ethical goals. It's about ignoring them but pretending they still matter. They don't matter. If we care about ethics at all we wouldn't orchestrate coups instead of forgoing a bit of oil revenue.
War is a racket and so is the industry that feeds on the perceived threat of one. The humongous US military budget ends up (at least a substantial of it) in private pockets somehow. The US is of course not the only country playing that racket, but it certainly is the undisputed biggest player. Speaking truth to principles and morals is simply out of the question for anyone involved, with that amount of capital changing hands.
Also, because you didn't ask him the question, you don't know that he would agree with the SA "wrong".
My comment that the general wasn't even asked this question, was a bit of a different point, it unfortunately distracts from my main point.
What can we do about this, maybe not much, these tyrants are supported by their friends in the West, but we can surely try. Pressure politicians to stop supporting them, selling them weapons, allowing their dirty money into the financial system.
Maybe even smaller steps could make an impact, like what if Muslims stop going to Hajj as long as these monsters are in powers. They earn big money from that.
https://www.brookings.edu/blog/order-from-chaos/2021/02/04/i...
https://besacenter.org/mowing-grass-gaza/
https://fas.org/irp/world/para/docs/880818a.htm
> 'The Day of Judgment will not come about until Moslems fight Jews and kill them. Then, the Jews will hide behind rocks and trees, and the rocks and trees will cry out: 'O Moslem, there is a Jew hiding behind me, come and kill him.'
And yet you bring up "mowing the lawn", which is an unfortunate reality in which Israel has to sacrifice soldiers every few years in order to keep fighting this genocidal organization which does not respect the lives of its own, uses them as human shields and is happy when the Arab death count is high because it just brings negative coverage on Israel.
P.S. I can already see the downvotes coming, which I'm pretty sure are from people who don't live here and have no clue. I guess reading a Noam Chomsky book makes everyone an expert nowdays.
See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gombe_Chimpanzee_War
My guess is that like in the above case, one side will wipe out the other. That is why both sides are playing for keeps. I don’t think you can carve out a tenable country out of the West Bank and the Gaza Strip. Israel without the West Bank probably doesn’t work either.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Irgun
"Every Jew had the right to enter Palestine; only active retaliation would deter the Arabs; only Jewish armed force would ensure the Jewish state"
It's pretty easy for you to sit infront of your computer calling them "chimps", while you have nothing to worry about. You should be ashamed of yourself.
Do you know how the Arab presence in Palestine was made possible? Through violent military conquests:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Muslim_conquest_of_the_Levant#...
I am (moderate) Muslim, but I know enough hardliners in the Arab countries and within my own family who believe in that phrasing verbatim.
You will never have piece in the Middle East when there are people who want to kill all the Jews, and Israel State who want to kill people.
The thing people forget Jews are not Government of Israel. Israel as a state was hell bent on keeping the aggression and conflict going. New every Jew nor citizen of Israel is a murderous bloodthirsty war criminal.
What about Arabs conquering Palestine in the 7th century and expelling people from their homes? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Muslim_conquest_of_the_Levant#...
Plus, many Arabs left their homes because they told them to do so. They expected them to be able to come back after they finish killing the Jews, which never happened, and hopefully never will.
They Arabs had multiple opportunities to settle this conflict, it's purely a result of their own making.
How far in history do we need to go for context?
- 67 (6 day war)?
- 64 (PLO founding)
- 48 (Israel independence)?
- 1920 Nebi Musa riots, 1921 Jaffa riots, 1929 Palestine riots, 1936–1939 Arab revolt in Palestine?
https://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/origin-of-quot-palestin...
Yours is a textbook example of de-humanisation of the enemy. Once you believe this, you can allow yourself any atrocity. And you do.
This is literally bullshit.
Calling for the destruction of Israel isn't calling to kill the Jews?
Calling for Jihad against the Jews and quoting Islamic religious texts to provide justification for fighting against and killing the Jews isn't an incitement for genocide?
This reads just like mein kampf, if this was written by a white person you would call him a nazi.
So why would you fixate on a piece of text written 33 years ago by angered fundamentalists, that has also been multiple times rejected by the leaders of the same movement and that is now superseded by a more recent one? If you want to hate someone, it's easy to cling to a single piece of damning, black-and-white evidence, however outdated and contested. Don't you think you should consider more elements, at least to give your views some balance?
You can check the new charter here:
https://www.middleeasteye.net/news/hamas-2017-document-full
It's their actions not just this document. It's the calling of Jihad that's not changed. Calling for the destruction of Israel that has not changed. If they wanted to "change", their action would reflect that, what you linked is just a lipstick on a pig to appeal to the westerns media and mind set to look more tolerant but they truly aren't.
If ISIS suddenly had a more "tolerant" charter and leadership would you change their mind about them?
You want to struggle against oppressors, ok , I get that but when you say you want the utter annihilation and destruction of a racial group when you praise and actively work to bomb busses, stab people in the street and in their homes, when you dig tunnels to pop up in the Kibbutz dining room, when you blow incendiary balloons that destroy forests and nature reserves killing countless wild life you are not human, you are an evil daemon that should be eradicated just as was done with nazi Germany and ISIS.
We already established that they don't say that.
> when you praise and actively work to bomb busses, stab people in the street and in their homes...
If your country had been invaded and utterly militarily overwhelmed by another country, now intent on building cities and installing their population on your former land, what would you do to free it, where would you stop and just throw your arms up and say "well, I can't do anything"?
In a situation like that, there will always be someone who is willing to use any means to make the occupation and the oppression as costly as possible for the oppressor. It's not racial hatred, it's that when you cannot hit the army you'll hit whatever you can.
When Israel will have given back all the territory that has illegally appropriated (illegally according to the western nations, not some backwards middle Eastern dictatorship) then it will be in a position to denounce any continuing terrorism from Hamas. Before that, it's just complaining because its victims fight back.
We haven't, you didn't.
> when you cannot hit the army
They do but it's just easier to just cut a fence and stab children sleeping, that's not legitimate struggle that's barbarism and terrorisms.
> willing to use any means
That's exactly the point, when the end justify the means. What they do, how they operate that's evil. It has nothing to do with justice.
> your country had been invaded
The PLO was founded in 64 way before any occupation of the west bank and gaza so your point of fighting your oppressor is moot unless you consider the occupation the entire state of Israel then your legal argument is void.
They didn't struggle against their Egyptian and Jordanian "occupation" but when it's Jews, oy vey.
And ~50 years after Palestinians were promised self-rule, Jews were promised the right to move to Palestine, and Palestinians said they're against the mass migration of Jews there that displaced them.
Why is it that you think Palestinians only have the right to Gaza and the West Bank when they were the majority across the whole of Palestine less than a hundred years ago ( what, two generations?) ? The PLO didn't see it that way in 64, only a few decades after Palestinians had their land stolen ans themselves evicted from it by new settlers.
Ofc they would. So what? They weren't the rulers or had any form of government, most of the land didn't belong to them no matter how gerrymandering maps you want to draw. It was the British mandate before the ottoman before that.....
> mass migration of Jews there that displaced them
It didn't. The land Jews settled on was purchased since the 1880s.
A lot of those Palestinians were immigrants themselves who came to Palestine for work, and the Jewish population were the ones that hired them. Most of Palestine before the Jews started to immigrate and built was deserts and swamps, no one wanted to live there until the Jewish population terraformed them to be livable.
> Why is it that you think Palestinians only have the right to Gaza and the West Bank
Because they lost the war they started, you can't start a war lose and then cry that you lost territory. They didn't want a Jewish state at all, or be under Jewish rule.
That's how countries form, that's how borders are made. Every other country in the world was formed by conflict it's just that most of those countries annihilated the other side long ago so there is almost no one left to hear their voice or go on a twitter rampage.
Actually, according to international law, you cannot lose territory by war, even if you started it. I'm sure you think this is absurd, but it really is necessary.
https://www.ohchr.org/EN/NewsEvents/Pages/DisplayNews.aspx?N...
“Without this absolute prohibition, acquisitive states would have a strong incentive to obfuscate the origins of the territorial acquisition, leading us backwards to the days when borders were impediments to overcome, rather than frontiers to respect.”
Also, once you occupied someone else's territory (necessarily for a temporary period) to transfer your own civilian population in it is a war crime:
https://ihl-databases.icrc.org/customary-ihl/eng/docs/v1_rul...
"The prohibition on deporting or transferring parts of a State’s own civilian population into the territory it occupies is set forth in the Fourth Geneva Convention.[1] It is a grave breach of Additional Protocol I.[2] Under the Statute of the International Criminal Court, “the transfer, directly or indirectly, by the Occupying Power of parts of its own civilian population into the territory it occupies” constitutes a war crime in international armed conflicts."
> They didn't want a Jewish state at all, or be under Jewish rule.
Let's not be disingenuous here. Palestinians could never be part of a Jewish state, because Israel is a Jewish nation and a democracy. It simply cannot include millions of Palestinians as citizens- and I don't mean it as a critique (I also come from a national state formed out of a preexistent ethnic, linguistic and religious unity). It's a matter of fact. Israel wanted the land but not its original population ("the bride and the dowry" - https://www.amazon.com/Bride-Dowry-Israel-Palestinians-After... )
> it's just that most of those countries annihilated the other side long ago so there is almost no one left to hear their voice...
So you think that Jews now have a right to do the evil they didn't get to before, because they didn't have a nation when conquers and pillage were still accepted?
> Israel wanted the land but not its original population
It's probably true that the founders didn't want to control the Arab population (not out of racisms) but as it turns out they have 2 million Arab citizens. I do agree that a one state solution couldn't work now demographically as that would be an apartheid state.
> so you think that Jews now have a right to do the evil
Who is dehumanizing who now...
The point was the formation of Israel in 48, the parent talked about territories other than gaza and the west bank, It's just that it's disingenuous to pick on Israel at that time saying they are the baddies just because they won, they were fighting for survival and against the annihilation of the Jews in that region and that one of the reasons that this still an issue because unlike other countries Israel did not annihilate their enemies, if the Arabs won in 48 there wouldn't be a debate because all the Israeli Jews would be dead and the world would go on like it's another day and just mark it in the footnote of history as the 2nd Jewish holocaust and that's it.
I do think the west bank occupation is wrong and should be "solved" but it's far from evil because intent matters, why there is an occupation matters, they reasons behind Israel actions matter, actions Israel don't make as the occupying force matter.
But I'm closing this discussion because it leads to nowhere and the bots downvoting me within 1 minute of commenting needs a break, have a good day.
I think the intent (insofar as it's the result of planning and not simply the result of multiple individual initiatives) is clear: to create an irreversible situation on the ground so that, if the time comes, there will be no viable solution to give those territories back.
That said, Israel is also very careful to avoid full scale ethnic cleansing and genocide, partly for ethical and cultural reasons (they're modern Europeans after all, and they want to be considered as such) and partly because ambiguity is what keeps the occupation sustainable. It cannot be done if they alienate the support of the western nations.
> the bots downvoting me within 1 minute of commenting needs a break,
Yep, true about the bots, I was upvoted within a few seconds for my last submissions. So it's either a bot or someone who has an alert set up on new comments in this subthread. Maybe @dang could give it a look.
1) a two state solution, in which, somehow, Gaza and the West-Bank must be free to pass goods and humans with zero Israeli involvement (how? a tunnel?)
2) a one-state solution (a greater Israel) with a Jewish minority
Because I see cynicism in the actions of Likud (and others)_that have ramped up a lot since the assassination of Itzhak Rabin in 1995 by a right wing settler.
I see cynicism in allowing right wing marches through the Arab quarter of Jerusalem.
I see cynicism in settlements built upon annexed land.
I see cynicism in deliberate provocative actions designed to goad Palestinians into predictable action.
Hamas was democratically elected in Gaza, like it or not. (I don't, I see them as essentially right wing nationalists. I see them maintaining power even more the hard Israel strikes Gaza. It's the unfortunate result of squashing 2 million people into a giant prison camp where the passage of products and people requires the approval of an outside entity.)
I don't recall anyone working with the Palestinian Authority to offer any "carrot" to complement the "stick" (incentivizing support for PA vs punishing Hamas)
I see hard line nationalists in Israel with no actual path forward. Do they really think they can treat 4 million people (both territories combined) as inconsequential forever? Is genocide and "death to Arabs" an actual game plan for some extremists?
The settler thing is blatantly copying the old American "how the west was won" plot line, ship in new immigrants and send them to the frontier to defend/expand it.
and yes, I've spent significant time in Israel and I'm not trying to push some unrealistic story here, I'm trying to say that you don't even realize how right wing your bathwater has become...
BUT... the topic was "Saudi Arabia cuts a youths head off for being rebellious"... and I am disgusted at how "The West" speaks of democracy and values and rails on China, but gives Saudi Arabia a break and prefers to sell them weapons. Egypt and support for Sisi (and Mubarak) is also disgusting...
Do you know who was promising in Egypt? Anwar Sadat. Look what happened to him...
> Hamas was democratically elected in Gaza, like it or not. (I don't, I see them as essentially right wing nationalists. I see them maintaining power even more the hard Israel strikes Gaza.
Sorry, but what do you expect Israel to do here? Hamas shells Israel continuously, it's easy for outsiders to virtue signal and tell Israel not to attack back, but they would've done 10 times worse.
> It's the unfortunate result of squashing 2 million people into a giant prison camp where the passage of products and people requires the approval of an outside entity.)
Why is it when people bring up the "blockade" of Gaza they always conveniently forget that Gaza is also bordered by Egypt, who are also cutting them off, yet no one ever blames their "brothers" and yet expects Israel to open up the border.
The europeans are doing it smarter by selling them cars and nice clothing with "high value" brand names on it....
https://www.newstalk.com/news/german-mayor-issues-bill-to-is...
Also there's a lot of advertisements for homing missiles made in Germany ...
"Aerospace and Defense" is a very nice company name for a weapons manufacturer.
After a year and quality problems because of using inferior components ( and so reducing their BOM), the client reverted his decision.
While your comment was being sarcastic. Quality is a thing and it's not just slapping brand names on it.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iNM-zZgNSM8
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Sampson_(author)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Khalid_El-Masri
b) While it is technically true, I assume the prevalence is orders of magnitude smaller. Still, cases like Abu Zubaydah are extremely disturbing.
PS : I don't mean to start a flamewar or offend anyone. But just how is this any different than ISIS capturing western journalists and doing all the unspeakable horrible things to those caught in their system.
That's not very surprising considering the Canadian government recently paid 10M dollars to an enemy combatant and terrorist who murdered and wounded several US Soldiers [0]. And of course, received full apologies from Trudeau.
[0] https://www.foxnews.com/us/us-veteran-blinded-in-omar-khadr-...
Khadr was an enemy combatant in an invasion of his country, abducted illegally when he was a child (15 year old), taken to Guantanamo, probably tortured, and sued for murder ( since when does Guantanamo have jurisdiction over killing between armed men in a war in Afghanistan??).
You really have to have a very fucked up view of the world to think illegally detaining and torturing a child is OK, whatever the circumstances. Where are the trials for the US war criminals in Afghanistan ? Why are their war crimes acceptable, but fucking children get sent to Guantanamo for fighting?!
You undermine your own narrative by even mentioning SOME (not all) of the basic facts.
Mustafa al-Darwish also was older than 18 for part of it (And one assumes the terrorism charge would have been later in the timeline) which fits with SA saying they no long execute children, which would make them better than the USA on that issue.
The 2005 SCOTUS decision abolishing it: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roper_v._Simmons
When was the last time the USA killed a child for a photo they didn't like? If you were to be a child and got killed in the US, you surely deserved it. If you were a child and got killed in Saud, you probably just pissed off some little fascist.