Isolationist Israel?

iBrian

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Seems like Israel is turnnig the screw, and even Washington is being openly critical of Sharon's speech.

In nutshell, Israel is trying to push the issue of protectionism to the point of isolationism - but this is a tactic that can only be a form of diplomatic posturing, as Israel is the country with the world's largest debts, and it's military is effectively paid for by the United States of America.

So the grounds from which it can even became to negotiate pushing forward as it claims are quite remarkable, not least that the attempt seems particularly embarrassing to the US.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/middle_east/3332981.stm
The United States has warned Israel against taking any unilateral measures to separate itself from Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza.

Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon had outlined a "disengagement plan" in case the roadmap peace plan failed.

But the White House said the US was committed to a negotiated settlement between the two sides under the American-backed roadmap.

Palestinians and Jewish settlers have denounced Mr Sharon's proposed steps.

The United States "would oppose any unilateral steps that block the road towards negotiations under the roadmap that leads to the two-state vision," said White House spokesman Scott McClellan.

"A settlement must be negotiated and we would oppose any Israeli effort to impose a settlement," he said.

The BBC's Rob Watson in Washington says the fact that this White House has close relations with Mr Sharon makes this criticism all the more striking.
 
Mahathir was right.

No malice toward our Jewish friends here and elsewhere.

But I am inclined to think that Mahathir is right in saying that Jews, I however might have to limit Jews to Israelis, make others fight wars for themselves.

Israel got the most aid from the U.S., and the U.S. is always ready to supply it with more of fire power.

And the U.N. does not seem to have any strength to make Israel observe the resolutions it has drawn in its regard.

Maybe the Jews are indeed the Chosen people of God, and God as I always say being a person makes choices and has His biases and whims. If God is with the Jews, what can the Arabs and the Muslims and the Palestinians do, but be satisfied with whatever crumbs falling from the table of Jacob.

Arabs and Muslims and specially the Palestinians should study very seriously and for very practical ends how the Jews make the U.S. cater to their needs and wants and desires.

One thing I notice is that the Jews don't seem to exert very decisive influence in the Far East, like in Japan and China. Or maybe I am wrong, they also have very controlling hold on the governments or governmental personalities in these countries.

You say anything against Jews, and the U.S. and the EU countries would seem to be jumping up and down to be their polemicists or apologists and to threaten you with cutting down economic favors or sales of war equipment and materiel.

That is one mystery to me.


Susma Rio Sep

PS Now, the firework will come from our Jewish friends here in this website . . . ?
 
Personally, I make a very real distinction between "the Jews" as a diverse religious and cultural group, and the "Nation State of Israel", which I see primarily as a political group.

I do not consider it appropriate to equate "Jewish thought" as equivalent to "Israeli Nationalsim", anymore than "Christian thinking" is therefore faithfully represented by "US Patriotism".
 
Amen to that.

I said:
Personally, I make a very real distinction between "the Jews" as a diverse religious and cultural group, and the "Nation State of Israel", which I see primarily as a political group.

I do not consider it appropriate to equate "Jewish thought" as equivalent to "Israeli Nationalsim", anymore than "Christian thinking" is therefore faithfully represented by "US Patriotism".

Amen to that; and best to stick to my musings on what is a religion.

Best regards,

Susma Rio Sep
 
And I would further make a distinction between the nation-state of Israel and the current leadership there. Sharon holds power by keeping the threat of terror alive and gains support through his war on terrorism. He has no political stake in having peace. To be fair, I don't think Arafat and Hammas do either - which is a major part of the problem.

The current US Administration doesn't need Israel as much as previous ones have - with the new democratic regime in Iraq coming shortly, they can buy all the excess war machinery, so supporting Israel becomes less necessary.
 
You're completely right that violence and the threat of violence seems to be the thread that keeps both Sharon and Arafat in office.
 
fireworks, eh?

first of all, i don't like sharon. i think he's been a disastrous leader who has fed on despair. worse, i think people who think like him reward delusion and encourage the abrogation of responsibility.

even Washington is being openly critical of Sharon's speech.
you say that as if there was nobody in washington (or in the jewish community) who thinks he's a pain in the arse!

In nutshell, Israel is trying to push the issue of protectionism to the point of isolationism
that's not what i'd call it. the israelis are desperate for a way to protect themselves from suicide bombers. so would you be if you had to walk through a metal detector and a security guard to get into a restaurant. a lot of people think the wall will help. i personally think that no sooner is it completed than the terrorists will find some way to circumvent it. if it was likely to work, i'd be more in favour. secondly, the idea of unilateral separation was first touted by barak and the left wing. it was seen by the right wing and the settlement movement as accepting the 1967 ceasefire lines and thereby accepting that israel would no longer include the west bank, so they objected to it. however, seeing that sharon, historically a friend of the settlement movement, has - to their way of thought - betrayed their vision, they are trying to coopt it as a means of grabbing land and creating what they call "facts on the ground" in order to include as many of the settlements within the new border - it is that that is souring the wall for many people.

but this is a tactic that can only be a form of diplomatic posturing
right, because nobody else ever engages in diplomatic posturing, especially the palestinians. i think that sharon thinks it's a way of pushing them back to the negotiating table.

as Israel is the country with the world's largest debts, and it's military is effectively paid for by the United States of America.
!!!!!!! where are these statistics from?? as a matter of fact, the country that gets the largest amount of aid from the US is - wait for it - EGYPT. where on earth did you come up with this?

The United States "would oppose any unilateral steps that block the road towards negotiations under the roadmap that leads to the two-state vision," said White House spokesman Scott McClellan.
this is taken by many people to mean if the wall doesn't follow the 1967 ceasefire lines, like i said above. but, yes, i'm sure the US doesn't want sharon imposing a settlement which will give the palestinians endless causes for complaint. let us also not forget that the last unilateral separation - barak's withdrawal of israeli forces from lebanon - has not exactly resulted in any softening of attitudes there.

No malice toward our Jewish friends here and elsewhere.

But I am inclined to think that Mahathir is right in saying that Jews, I however might have to limit Jews to Israelis, make others fight wars for themselves.
and which wars are these? did anyone else fight for the israelis in their wars? since when are the israelis not prepared to fight for themselves, or act unilaterally? and isn't that exactly what people criticise them for? things like when they destroyed saddam's nuclear reactor (built by the french, i might add)! so, what should they be allowed to do, in your expert opinion? wait until they're dead to react? perhaps you think that it was only the israelis that wanted saddam out of kuwait? the idea that the israeli government can somehow manipulate enormously powerful and rich governments the US and the UK into embarking on a war like one we've just had in iraq is patently ridiculous. how exactly do you suppose this armtwisting is done? your logic seems to be that because something like the removal of saddam is in the interest of israel, then israel must have "made" the US and UK go to war against him! the removal of saddam was in the interest of a hell of a lot of people, but yet - as usual - it is the israelis that are blamed.

did you actually read what mahathir said? it was the most profoundly antisemitic claptrap and it referred to jews, not israelis. saying "no malice" does not make the sentiment any less malicious on mahathir's part - or offensive on yours. jewish friends, forsooth. do you really believe that repeating conspiracy theories and expecting them to be taken seriously is conducive to dialogue?

And the U.N. does not seem to have any strength to make Israel observe the resolutions it has drawn in its regard.
israel is not the only country to disregard UN resolutions. the general assembly is a talking-shop, always has been. you can get anything through it providing it has a majority, even if that majority is made up of st. lucia, luxembourg and tonga. it's about as representative as a student union. israel is systematically excluded from almost every aspect of the UN, blackballed by the arab states and their oil-hungry supporters. israel doesn't have any oil - gave its only reserves back with the sinai in exchange for peace with egypt - yet somehow it is supposed to exert more influence than OPEC!

Maybe the Jews are indeed the Chosen people of God, and God as I always say being a person makes choices and has His biases and whims.
we don't see G!D as a person. these are your perceptions, not ours. and then again, i thought you were restricting your remarks to israel. clearly not.

One thing I notice is that the Jews don't seem to exert very decisive influence in the Far East, like in Japan and China. Or maybe I am wrong, they also have very controlling hold on the governments or governmental personalities in these countries.
yes, maybe we all meet in a big room in the centre of the earth and chant mystic runes and dance around in robes. sheesh. why not visit davidicke.com while you're at it?

You say anything against Jews, and the U.S. and the EU countries would seem to be jumping up and down to be their polemicists or apologists and to threaten you with cutting down economic favors or sales of war equipment and material.
really? the EU is so pro-israel? according to a recent survey, 59% of the population think israel is the "biggest threat to world peace" - that's more than iran, incidentally. and the mayor of london - where i live - has just described george bush as the biggest threat to human life on the planet! there is a total lack of proportion.

I do not consider it appropriate to equate "Jewish thought" as equivalent to "Israeli Nationalism", anymore than "Christian thinking" is therefore faithfully represented by "US Patriotism"

OK, but is patriotism always wrong, then? zionism is part of jewish thought. however, the best definition of it is *the jewish right of self-determination as expressed in the nation-state* - which is a) no more than what the palestinians are asking for and b) not mutually exclusive of this. nonetheless, there is a body of thought that apparently seems to think that we are the only ethnic group on the planet not entitled to our own nation-state. until we get beyond this narrow conception of the nation-state i don't think that is going to be transcended - as much as i think we ought to do so. where are we supposed to go, exactly? we're threatened with murder both in israel and in the diaspora. it doesn't even feel safe to be jewish in britain these days, what with islamic fundamentalists making common cause with anarchists and the extreme left. and this visceral hatred of israel frightens the hell out of us. i'm not going to be party to ritualised scapegoating of israel, no matter how much i disagree with its current government.

Sharon holds power by keeping the threat of terror alive and gains support through his war on terrorism. He has no political stake in having peace. To be fair, I don't think Arafat and Hamas do either - which is a major part of the problem.
nonetheless, he was democratically elected in a free media environment - unlike arafat or hamas. and to really be fair, the "threat of terror" didn't need him to 'keep it alive'! he came to power not by exaggerating the threat of terrorism, which was already a problem, but by his promise to deliver peace and security, which barak had manifestly failed to do despite his conciliatory profile. what he has failed to do, however, to nobody's surprise, is *deliver* on his promise. however, you could now say, sadly, that both groups are in a "mexican stand-off" - nobody wants to blink first.

b'shalom

bananabrain
 
The point about Washington being critical is that Washington is usually more concilliatory - in public at least.

The posturing - well, of course *that* is a normal part of the diplomatic process. What is odd is that this is a posturing that has no conceivable pay off. It's like an empty gesture, which is why it seems somewhat odd.

As for the debts issue - bad use of terms on my part - but in my "Philips World Atlas" its figures for 1993 had Israel with both the highest debt per capita, and the highest aid per captia, of any other country - actually almost twice of any other. A presumption would be that this was indicative of a general trend - at least in the 1990s. Certainly Egypt got a big lump sum a budget or so ago (when the expected aid to Israel was actually reduced), but even then, it would be interesting to see how that possible trend has fared.

Btw - bb - did you ever watch the BBC series a couple of years back - "The Fifty Years War"? Interesting stuff - bought the book in paperback, but still haven't actually read through it all yet. Peres has got quite a past, but last I heard he was the last great hope for peace. Is he still knocking around the opposition leadership?
 
washington is conciliatory with israel because they knows what a bunch of stubborn, bloodyminded hard-arses the israelis can be. public pressure doesn't work, but private pressure does. public pronouncements are about message management, not content. especially in the middle east.

What is odd is that this is a posturing that has no conceivable pay off.
it's not at all odd when you understand more about sharon's political powerbase. it has a domestic political payoff - the more sharon postures, the less hassle he gets from the not-one-inch rightwingers in his own coalition. what i always suggest to get a feel for the way things actually operate is for people to read the left-wing (although imho that just means moderate in this context) israeli paper ha-aretz. of particular interest is this analysis of what the half of israeli society that thinks sharon is wrong are currently thinking. it's also a pretty good summary of my own opinion about him:

http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/374846.html

ah, per capita. i thought it might be something like that. that's because israel has something like 6.5m people, which is a lot less than egypt, which has over 70m. there are some up-to-date stats here:

http://www.unfpa.org/swp/2003/presskit/pdf/indicators_eng.pdf

other peculiarities are the fact that it is an OECD "advanced economy" with a strongly-developed hi-tech sector which contributes a lot to the debt, i'd have thought. not that the americans don't give them a lot of cash, too! however, the way you put it makes it seem like they sit around with their feet up surrounded by piles of armaments paid for by the americans, which is hardly the case. you're talking about a country about the size of wales surrounded by much larger unfriendly countries with bigger populations and oil wealth. naturally, the israelis have made it a point to develop their own defence and technology industries given their geopolitical position. either way, 1993 was a long time ago - before the madrid process started; in fact shamir was still running things. since then, as a result of the rabin era and the oslo accords, followed by the hi-tech boom, the israelis have become far more integrated with the rest of the world in economic terms. i expect things are somewhat different nowadays, despite the intifada.

i didn't see that series - and, to be honest, you have to go back a lot longer than 50 years to understand how the conflict really came about. it wasn't a matter of jews arriving in israel in 1948 and setting up.

peres is a bit like arafat, really. he says all the right things but he doesn't ever really deliver. unlike the current government, he looks and sounds great on the BBC but doesn't come across as a leader to the israeli public. unlike arafat, though, it's not because he's actually ambivalent. the trouble is that he is such a big figure that he destabilises the doves. if he retired properly there might be some chance of another figure emerging, but he just hangs around waiting for another chance. that's what scuppered amram mitzna, ehud barak and even rabin to a certain extent. the peace camp don't have someone with both international appeal as a statesman and security credentials - in other words someone with the clout and stature of rabin; some people expected sharon to metamorphose into this, as he definitely has shown the toughness required in the past, as when he bulldozed the settlement of yamit when the sinai was given back. unfortunately the electoral system keeps allowing the settlers and the rejectionists to hold the rest of the country to ransom. and every suicide bomber results in a hardening of attitudes - that's what defeated barak in the end, together with arafat's running circles round him

b'shalom

bananabrain
 
Namaste all,

besides which, the Israeli Arms industry is alive and well. they can produce the majority of their small arms and squad automatic weapons in their own factories. to wit: the venerable Uzi. though that weapon is being phased out in the Israel military... it's still a highly reliable weapon with a great rate of fire.

good suppression weapon.. though not too accurate :) eh.. trade offs.
 
To me the whole situation seems beyond confusing and strange with sub-ideas that I haven't even heard of. I will not therefore to put my foot in the situation as much as I can and will only say what I've heard through various sources (as bananabrain seems to be a great authority on the subject).

The whole concept is insanely blown beyond proportions. The way in which Israel was founded was fairly unusual in ridding Palestinians of their land to place the survivors of the holocaust. Then the Palestinians were (unsurprisingly irritated). This isn't anything they hadn't seen before with Irgun and Haganah but now there were about half a million+ additional people. Wars ensue (1948 right up to the last "real" war of '73) as to who owns the land. Both sides start bombing the absolute crap out of each other, whether it be with US altered M60 "Sabras" or RPG-7DVs on the back of a truck.

It seems to me that both sides really are as bad as each other.

Firstly everyone sides against Israel purely because we see more of it in the news. The Israeli's get targeted every day with suicide bombers and the constant threat of the Intifada. This is daily punishment on their behalf and something that is seemingly going to hang over their heads forever.

But this never gave anyone the excuse to bomb the absolute hell out of Palestine. The Israelis seem to act with more and more political immunity (such as in the Gulf War when the media was drawn to Kuwait so the Israeli government bombed a few more settlements). This continues as neither side it willing to place down arms in the slightest with the "he started so he can put his gun down first" except on a different scale with nuclear ordinance.

The only steps to be taken are via the US... who were the only nation to abstain from the resolution concerning the barrier. A one sided bargain at that. Then they refuse to speak with the democratically elected Arafat. Now we all know about his past but surely they should be able to try and resolve things rather than "you did that 20 years ago". Though to be fair, this also seems to be Israel's defence with the Zionists in the states anytime diplomatic opinion goes away from them. "Remember what you did in WW2" and then come lapping at their heels. By no means am I saying the atrocities of the holocaust were passable - it's an absolute atrocity that happened under the noses of the world where millions were killed and an unforgettable occasion. What I am saying is that in order to get anywhere both sides will have to temporarily set things aside and try and compromise.

It's no good blocking people out with a barrier as much as it is bombing children on buses. It doesn't mean either side should then proceed to continue to do it but on heightened levels.

Neither side wants to make a step towards peace without compromising a single one of it's values and the only nation with the might who can begin to think about negotiating are the US. Due to Zionist lobbying they act towards the Israeli's and refuse to speak to Arafat which means the situation goes nowhere. All the death and argument? Who owns which bit of land - it's the 21st century and people are still dying over enclosures.
 
bananabrain said:
bloody hell vaj, you certainly know a lot about guns for a dharma jockey.

bb

hehe... i know...

it's the product of a mis-spent youth :) and lots of your money training me in the fine art of warfare.

what can i say? i was a much differernt person back then. i did some things that i never could consider doing today... eh.. people change :) i like to believe that i've changed for the better, but who can say?

by the by... you should see my disaster supplies! i've got enough gear and equipment ready to go that i could live indefinitely in the wilderness, should it come to that. it's all about having a good knife!

on a side note... i used to subscribe to a magazine called "Guns and Ammo", which i had sent to my office. you'd be surprised at how infrequently one is bothered when they have copies of Guns and Ammo sitting on their reading table ;)
 
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