Right. Given the high quality of discussion on OTC about other issues, it would be nice to have some Troper input on this thorniest of Middle Eastern issues. Tropers wanting a brief overview of Israel should check out its Useful Notes page, or Israel
and Palestine's country profiles on the BBC.
At the outset, however, I want to make something very clear: This thread will be about sharing and discussing news. Discussions about whether the existence of Israel is justified would be off-topic, as would any extended argument or analysis about the countries' history.
So, let's start off:
At the moment, the two countries, prodded by the United States, are currently attempting to negotiate peace. A previous round of talks collapsed in 2010 after Israel refused to order a halt to settlement building on Palestinian land. US mediators will be present.
The aim of the talks is to end the conflict based on the "two state solution" - where independent Palestinian and Israeli states exist alongside each other. Both sides have expressed cynicism, although the US government has said it is "cautiously optimistic".
Key issues of the talks:
- Jerusalem: The city is holy to both Islam and Judaism. Both Palestine and Israel claim it as their capital. Israel has de facto control over most of it, a situation its Prime Minister has said will persist for "eternity". Some campaigners hope it can become an international city under UN or joint Israeli/Palestinian administration.
- Borders and settlements: The Palestinian Authority claims that the land conquered by Israel in the Six Day War of 1967 (the West Bank and the Gaza Strip) is illegally occupied, and must be vacated by Israel in the event of a future Palestinian state. However, there are over 500,000 Israeli citizens living in settlements across the "Green line". Israel claims that a future Palestinian government would oppress or ethnically cleanse them, whilst many settlers claim that the land is rightfully theirs, as they have an ethno-religious link to it as part of the ancestral homeland of the Jewish people.
- Palestinian refugees: In 1948, around 700,000 Palestinian Arabs left the territory of the new Israeli state. The reasons why are still debated - preferably elsewhere. The Palestinian negotiators wish for them and their descendants to have a right of return to Israel. The Israeli government considers only those who were actually forced away all those years ago to have a legitimate claim (if that). The US government considers them all refugees, to Republican fury.
So you can see why its never been fixed. The religious dimension in particular has a lot of people vexed - asking Muslims or Jews to abandon Jerusalem has been likened to asking Catholics to skip communion.
Still, there's hope. Somewhere. The latest developments in the region:
- Israel has released 26 imprisoned Palestinian prisoners convicted of attacks on Israeli civilians and agreed to release another 78 in the future.
- Israel has OK'ed development of 900 new homes east of the "Green Line" in a controversial move ahead of the talks.
- Hamas is to execute publicly two prisoners in Gaza
- The new Palestinian government will not reunite the feuding Gazan and Transjordanian (West Bank) elements of Hamas and Fatah.
edited 15th Aug '13 2:10:49 PM by Achaemenid
HGW XX/7
If Palestinian cartoonists choose to adopt the imagery of Nazi propaganda, they invite the comparison themselves. It's not like they independently developed the stereotypes of European Jew hatred, they've specifically chosen to ape it, knowing what purpose it served originally and knowing what it led to.
Nothing Israel has done excuses Palestinian opinion-formers for choosing to associate themselves with the imagery of the Nazis.
edited 28th Feb '16 5:32:18 AM by Achaemenid
Schild und Schwert der Partei
United Earth
Excuse? There's nothing to excuse. They may well be using Nazi and pre-nazi anti semitic imagery specifically because the Israeli hate it when they do that, because of the horrible memories it evokes, because of the distant fear it summons. It's really, really petty, bilious, and insanely counterproductive, and it is certainly and utterly unapologetic. That's kind of the whole point.
edited 28th Feb '16 6:16:59 AM by TheHandle
Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that.
A procrastination in of itself
The Israelis also hate it when they bomb school buses, that doesn't make it okay for them to do it.
The Israeli goverment would also hate it if they invited former Nazis or modern Neo-Nazis to to vocal "Allies of Palestine".
Something pissing off the Israeli goverment is not a good enough reason to do it.
“And the Bunny nails it!” ~ Gabrael “If the UN can get through a day without everyone strangling everyone else so can we.” ~ Cyran
United Earth
Yup. I always found that "because fuck you, that's why" was very poor justification for anything.
Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that.
(Avatar by Coffee)
Look, BBZNOT.
Good for you, BDS, good for you.
edited 29th Feb '16 8:12:08 AM by desdendelle
The voice of thy brother's blood crieth unto me from the ground
United Earth
@First article: They seem more concerned about having a bad image than having a bad behaviour...
@Second article: "Altruists work at cross-purposes with each other! I shall point at them and laugh!" Touché.
![[down]](https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/smiles/arrow_down.png "[down]"){kind=icon}
*sulks*
edited 29th Feb '16 2:07:04 PM by TheHandle
Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that.
The law in the night
![[up]](https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/smiles/arrow_up.png "[up]"){kind=icon}
Oh the DBS movement never ceases to amaze me.
United Earth
The rite in question consists of a rabbi sucking the blood from the baby's newly-circumcised penis. It would appear that suction tubes are a more sanitary and cost effective solution.
"How is this still a thing?" indeed.
Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that.
(Avatar by Coffee)
Religion, duh. Otherwise anybody who'd have practised that would have probably been convicted off paedophilia and other assorted niceties.
The law in the night
I am still very thankful that circumcision isn't exactly a requirement in order to convert back to Judaism with more liberal rabbis, I get regular circumcision but that traditional method is just too much for modernity.
Inter arma enim silent leges
Actually from what I understand it's actually a hygiene concern that's brining this to ahead. When I heard about it it was because several babies had been forced to see the doctor afterward because they picked up an infection from the rabbi that way.
United Earth
This problem is old. Children have died.
On another topic: Palestinian journalist detained without charge by Israel has not eaten for three months.
(Avatar by Coffee)
Balad and Khadash condemn the GCC for blacklisting Hizballah.
I'm just going 'wat' over here.
My impression is that Hezbollah mostly opperates as a traditional military force. I wouldn't call ISIS a terrorist organization either (though it's clearly an organization that commits terrorism).
(Avatar by Coffee)
An organisation that uses terrorism (as opposed to states using terrorism) is a terrorist organisation. Otherwise, you'd empty the phrase 'terrorist organisation' from any sort of meaning.
The voice of thy brother's blood crieth unto me from the ground
Kinda already is due to overuse. A terrorist organization generally is a cell-based structure incapable of fighting conventionally and thus uses terrorism as a matter of necessity. Daesh, Hezbollah, Ansarallah, they're all militias.
A militia that uses terrorism?
"For a successful technology, reality must take precedence over public relations, for Nature cannot be fooled." - Richard Feynman
Well in Daesh's case, its a hybrid since some of its branches are terror cells and others are just militia's using the brand. Same as AQ these days. Hezbollah on the other hand, while they use siege tactics (the rocket attacks), thats not the same as what AQ or Daesh does.
(Avatar by Coffee)
Study shows half of Israeli Jews support ethnic cleansing:
Eh, the same is probably true among Palestinians though.
A nice butterfly
Eh sounds like one of those surveys with the questions you can easily control one way or another
It has always been the prerogative of children and half-wits to point out that the emperor has no clothes
Wouldn't surprise me.
Thus speaks yoneld:
It's extremely disturbing if that many people actually support expelling all Arabs because they're Arabs, but I don't really set that much store by polls.
Aye. I have shown posters caricaturing enemies that had no specific "racial" markers: other tropes have been found instead.
But it is easier to compare the Palestinians to the Nazis. By labelling anti-semitism born out of crushing, daily oppression by an organization claiming loud and often to work in the name of all Jews, as "the same thing" as anti-semitism born out of scornful, scapegoating privilege, one may distract (oneself, if not others) of who exactly is being currently ground alive under a meticulous machine of oppression and humiliation.
What, Achemenid did you expect them to pain their enemies in anything but the most unflattering light possible, and resort to every dirty trick in the book in doing so? Did you want them to draw gallant and strong and light-bathed IDF men,
◊ dignifiedly smiting weak, mean-looking, brown-skinned rebel scum?
◊
Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that.