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What I don't understand...is why given everything that is going on in the worls at any given time, so many people are obsessed with a region that is about the size of new jersey with a smaller population.

Gimme a fething break.

What needs to happen for the Israelis and Palestinians to come to the table and broker peace?

 Supertony51 wrote:
What I don't understand...is why given everything that is going on in the worls at any given time, so many people are obsessed with a region that is about the size of new jersey with a smaller population.

Gimme a fething break.

Feel free to start a thread about sheep farming in New Zealand, or amazing greek food recipes.

 Dreadclaw69 wrote:
What needs to happen for the Israelis and Palestinians to come to the table and broker peace?

Universal atheism?

 Shadow Captain Edithae wrote:
Universal atheism?

Would that mitigate underlying political disagreements over land, and other issues?

 Ketara wrote:

 Supertony51 wrote:
What I don't understand...is why given everything that is going on in the worls at any given time, so many people are obsessed with a region that is about the size of new jersey with a smaller population.

Gimme a fething break.

Feel free to start a thread about sheep farming in New Zealand, or amazing greek food recipes.

LOL

I love Kitkat.

Anyway, just saying, with all the crazyness in the world, so many people are obsessed with the whole Israel/Palestine issue......it seems so...trivial.

 Dreadclaw69 wrote:

 Shadow Captain Edithae wrote:
Universal atheism?

Would that mitigate underlying political disagreements over land, and other issues?

No, but ending all the "My god's better than your god and he gave me this land!" crap would get them a step closer to a peaceful resolution.

 Shadow Captain Edithae wrote:

 Dreadclaw69 wrote:
What needs to happen for the Israelis and Palestinians to come to the table and broker peace?

Universal atheism?

Be careful what you wish for.

 Shadow Captain Edithae wrote:

 Dreadclaw69 wrote:
What needs to happen for the Israelis and Palestinians to come to the table and broker peace?

Universal atheism?

This isn't really so much over religion as it is a family quarrel going back thousands of years.

Relapse wrote:

 Shadow Captain Edithae wrote:

 Dreadclaw69 wrote:
What needs to happen for the Israelis and Palestinians to come to the table and broker peace?

Universal atheism?

This isn't really so much over religion as it is a family quarrel going back thousands of years.

The Palestinians aren't the descendants of the original tribes of the Levant. Their Arab, they migrated north. The original people of the land were Semitic, just like the Jews. Obviously, todays Jewish aren't pure descendants either, but the Palestinians don't have that ancient claim.

 djones520 wrote:

Relapse wrote:

 Shadow Captain Edithae wrote:

 Dreadclaw69 wrote:
What needs to happen for the Israelis and Palestinians to come to the table and broker peace?

Universal atheism?

This isn't really so much over religion as it is a family quarrel going back thousands of years.

The Palestinians aren't the descendants of the original tribes of the Levant. Their Arab, they migrated north. The original people of the land were Semitic, just like the Jews. Obviously, todays Jewish aren't pure descendants either, but the Palestinians don't have that ancient claim.

I think it could be stated that since Palestinians are Arab, it is a family argument.

 Jihadin wrote:
Wonder how it would have turned out if Egyptian armored divisions had not moved out from under air cover. Wasn't Jordan though talked into assisting in a attack that had "NO" stamped all over it to draw off Israeli forces from other fronts.

Are you talking about October 1973?

The short answer would be that the Camp David peace process might never have happened.

Arabs are proud people as a rule, and Israel has rubbed their noses in it. Egypt however regained its honour in 1973, first by their commando and combat engineer operations along the Bar Lev line, and secondly because when the tanks rolled into the Sinai they met with initial success, ambushing israeli tanks in column and inflicting bloody defeats on them.
They lost in the end, but it was no longer a pushover, and they won some battles.
After that they could afford peace, and Carter came up with the goods.

in a similar note during a World Cup qualifier match of US vs Iran, the US State Department made open comments asking whether they actually wanted to win this match. The argument being that is Iran inflicts a defeat on the football pitch is deflates the need to beat the US elsewhere.

http://www.fourfourtwo.com/features/98-most-politically-charged-game-world-cup-history

For the record I don't think the match was thrown.


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 Shadow Captain Edithae wrote:

 Dreadclaw69 wrote:

 Shadow Captain Edithae wrote:
Universal atheism?

Would that mitigate underlying political disagreements over land, and other issues?

No, but ending all the "My god's better than your god and he gave me this land!" crap would get them a step closer to a peaceful resolution.

It is hard to disagree with this, even from a religious perspective.

However also remember the groups are also culturally, and racially opposed.
Global atheism would however cut away a lot of the support network for extremists from both sides.

Big trouble is, what horrors would global atheism bring of itself. Global atheism has been tried, under revolutionary communism.

@Orlanth
That had more to do with authoritarianism than it did with atheism. An authoritarian dictator cannot command the absolute loyalty and obedience of his subjects if their loyalty, hearts and minds belong elsewhere I.e. God, with codes of ethics and morality that undermine what the dictator wants to achieve.

And with the extreme Personality Cults that inevitably spring up in these countries, an absolute dictator like Stalin, or Mao, or Kim Jong Un does not seek to stamp out the concept of God, and religion. He seeks to supplant God, creating a Peronality Cult and indeed, a literal religion if I understand North Korea correctly, with himself as the head of State, head of Government, and sole deity.


So those atrocities you refer to were not done out of some system or code of atheist beliefs (which is a hilarious oxymoron - to be an atheist is to lack religious belief), but for the purposes of controlling society and imposing an authoritarian rule.

 djones520 wrote:

The Palestinians aren't the descendants of the original tribes of the Levant. Their Arab, they migrated north. The original people of the land were Semitic, just like the Jews. Obviously, todays Jewish aren't pure descendants either, but the Palestinians don't have that ancient claim.

Lots of Arabs are Semitic too as whether or not you are Semitic is defined by the language you speak, and your antecedents have historically spoken, and Arabic is a Semitic language. In fact I can assure there are more Arab Semites than Jewish ones.

And, lets be honest, while the claim does matter, it shouldn't. At its core the issue is one of imperialism and Israel taking homes from people both recently and historically.

Ryan I think is planning on introducing a Bill in the Senate to stop giving funds to Hamas and the PLO

Paul Ryan? If so that's Congress, not the Senate.

 Shadow Captain Edithae wrote:
some system or code of atheist beliefs (which is a hilarious oxymoron - to be an atheist is to lack religious belief)

One can have a code/system/belief without it being religious.

 dogma wrote:
Paul Ryan? If so that's Congress, not the Senate.

Paul Ryan is a congressman in the House of Representatives.

Congress is the collective term for both houses.

 ScootyPuffJunior wrote:
Congress is the collective term for both houses.

I thought congress was the polite way of saying: the voter got screwed again. ?

 ScootyPuffJunior wrote:
Paul Ryan is a congressman in the House of Representatives.

Congress is the collective term for both houses.

In the US the word "Congress", even when capitalized, can refer to both the House and the collective body. I should have been more precise, but I think the focus of my question was rather obvious regardless.

 dogma wrote:
In the US the word "Congress", even when capitalized, can refer to both the House and the collective body.

Sure, but you were attempting to correct Jihadin after he mistakenly said that Paul Ryan was introducing a bill to the Senate when instead he would be introducing it to the House, of which he is a member. So in the context you were using it that wouldn't necessarily be correct.

No worries though.

I should have been more precise, but I think the focus of my question was rather obvious regardless.

Just holding you to the same standard you hold everyone else. Nothing wrong with being fair!

If you Google Congress the first option is the House of Representatives, the second is a Wiki page about the entire legislative (lol) body comprised of both the House and Senate.

 Ahtman wrote:

One can have a code/system/belief without it being religious.

Oh, indeed.

So if Israel is collecting tax money from the Palestinians but not actually giving it to the Palestinian government, where is it going?

Are they collecting tax money form the Palestinians or just refusing to release budget funds given by them to the PLO? Thats a question.
?

EDIT: found it:

The Israeli government’s decision to freeze the taxes it collects on behalf of the Palestinians from custom and excise duties — funds the Palestinian Authority relies on to pay salaries and provide public services — appears likely to cause a further flare-up.

looks like they're holding the funds in escrow.

What a mess.

Palestinians are getting diplomatic, so freeze their funding, get rthem riled and angry.

Rockets can be dealt with, just hit back and blame everything on the Palestinians.
Diplomacy is harder to handle as Israel is on shaky moral ground, the best place for Israel to make diplomacy fail is at the source, by doing things that keep the Palestinians too angry and divided to progress. Cutting off tax funding is just one of many tools.

So it is that If someone takes a potshot at Israelis the IDF happily takes out a few houses to make sure it doesn't happen again

gameaa wrote:
So it is that If someone takes a potshot at Israelis the IDF happily takes out a few houses to make sure it does happen again

Ammended for truth.


Peaceful Palestinians are far more dangerous, also with the wall and bulldozings Israel is fairly safe. it could be safer with a different strategy, but that wont solve the problem.

May be of interest;

http://news.yahoo.com/france-warns-palestinians-over-escalating-crisis-u-n-165724634.html

 Ketara wrote:
A scary amount of the world is still anti-semitic

I spoke with my grandfather on this subject one time, he said in his day (Born in 1920's and served in WWII in a Navy CB unit) anti-semitic ideas were the norm, in fact it was his opinion (further backed up by recent historical discoveries) that the reason the US govt didn't officially admit to the public that Germany was killing Jews because it would push the US to join with the Axis powers as most Americans would want to ship US Jews to Germany to have them ausrottunginated.

It was the films of the concentration and death camps that turned the tide for most of the first world. However many people, myself included, feel that Israel has overplayed their hand where it comes to the guilt the first world feels for allowing the slaughter of the Jews. The tide is turning, after all you can only play the victim card for so long before people get tired. The US still accepts the victim-hood status for some reason. I think it's because we like to root for an underdog and the Israel lobby has done a great job of making them seem like the underdog in the region. Probably why we got stupid over the Kurds and trashed our relationship with Turkey over them.

 Ketara wrote:
That's not to say casualty figures are completely bogus, but merely to illustrate an example as to where the UN gives certain parties an easy ride, and others not so much. Unfortunately, being the United Nations does not equate to being neutral.

No one is neutral. Everyone has biases, most people wont admit to them. However I will say, if everyone says you stink perhaps a bath is in order.


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 Supertony51 wrote:
What I don't understand...is why given everything that is going on in the worls at any given time, so many people are obsessed with a region that is about the size of new jersey with a smaller population.

Gimme a fething break.

Oil. That's about the size of it. If the Middle East didn't set on top of bajillions of gallons of the stuff we wouldn't give a rat's red pattotie about them and they wouldn't have the money to cause any trouble. They'd just sit about living their 16th century lives and we wouldn't even know the names of their countries.

I argue the solution is an oil rig that can drill through radioactive glass and comfortable anti rad suits for oil workers is the solution to the problem.


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 Ahtman wrote:

 Shadow Captain Edithae wrote:
some system or code of atheist beliefs (which is a hilarious oxymoron - to be an atheist is to lack religious belief)

One can have a code/system/belief without it being religious.

Some would argue it's easier to have a coherent system of morality and ethics without having a religion to muck it all up with supernatural nonsense and men in funny hats telling you what to do.

I'd be one of them.

Part of me thinks it would be best just to expatriate Palestinians into the surrounding countries.

I don't think there's ever going to be a good solution to this problem and I think it takes up far too much international time.