Nuclear weapons on your doorstep is self-explanatory. One is sufficient to wreck havoc on a country and economy the size of Israel’s. Of course they won’t have a single weapon and each missile will have multiple warheads. Each of which can be targeted on a different location.

The idea that Iran will not be a threat because they might have ‘a’ missile is fallacious – they will have a large number of warheads and quickly (once they have the weapons-grade uranium)

That they are attempting to build this capability makes them a credible threat even before they get the capability (at which point they unequivocally are.)

Iran with Nuclear weapons is to Israel what Soviet missiles in Cuba would have been to the US.

An unacceptable threat

I agree the power imbalance is large but that is more a function of the historical pattern of war in the Middle East – that of larger wars with larger sovereign states (Egypt, Jordan, Syria etc) and Israel’s need to build a military machine strong enough to fight and win a two front war. Their near defeat in the first week of the 1974 Yom Kippur war taught Israel that it could take no chances. Peace with Egypt and Jordan has not changed Israeli military preparedness because, as we are learning with the increasingly dictatorial and anti Israel stance of the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt, that the peace accords may not always hold. I still believe that for all Israel’s bristling bruising tactics and massive military build up that it desires a lasting peace with the Palestinians. Getting both sides to a point where they are close enough to do a deal is very difficult in the fog of even the smaller regional war like skirmishes. Frankly until the Iranian nuclear situation is resolved, very little will be accomplished because that, more than anything else right now, is dominating strategic thinking at the highest levels in Israel right now.

Luc
It doesn’t matter whether you call the departure fleeing – at stake is the stated reasons for the departure. The Palestinians’ entire grievance industry is built on the story that the Israelis were the ones who caused ALL the departure/fleeing – the quotes I posted prove the opposite to be the case, quotes from substantial Arab eye witnesses to what happened on the ground. No one denies the Palestinians are refugees but their cause would be better served, as would the wider cause of peace, if they would tell the truth about what happened. That will never happen because there is still great mileage to be made (eg your almost 4500 posts the vast majority of which are on this subject) blaming Israel for everything. Israel is far from blameless and you actually have cited things over the years that are legitimate grievances. Like any dispute, there are two sides to every story – but when the foundation point of the story begins with a distortion then ….well he have the current messy impasse.

If you have seen the deeds in the camps then post links to them. Are you saying that the millions of acres of land legally bought that those transactions (all provable) have just been manufactured out of thin air because that’s essentially what you are alleging.

There will always be an eloquent writer who will encapsulate the story of post WW2 Palestine as the Palestinians see it that will be seen to people like you as providing finality to the argument. The left never believe they are wrong, only that their message was not properly explained. So quoting from and citing such writers in no way make your case any better because you exist in a profoundly anti Israeli bubble that broaches no dissent from the party line. No evidence will ever be sufficient to change your mind.

Changing the subject to the West Bank doesn’t help. For every brutal occupation story there is are parallel stories of the brutal effects of the suicide bombers and the murders committed by Palestinian terrorists.

The object is peace – a peace that almost every Israeli and Palestinian yearns for. A two state solution is achievable but ALL the Arab protagonists will have to accept Israel’s right to exist and renounce terror. If that could be verifiably achieved I believe Israel would even dismantle the most aggregious of the West Bank settlements. Will Hamas and Hezbollah ever recognise Israel and permanently renounce terror – I hope so but I doubt it – Arafat decided when offered 97% of what he asked for that war with Israel was a better option despite being urged by many Arab allies to take the deal.

Benny Morris (a historian that even Noam Chomsky believes) put the actual numbers of Palestinian Arab settlers displaced in the thick of the fighting specifically by the military actions of the Israelis (as opposed to the voluntary departure as detailed by so many Arab commentators in the prior post) at a few thousand. The descendants of those specific families can and should be compensated but the entire peace process is held hostage

What you call a voluntary departure most would call fleeing. Those who flee become refugees. The United Nations has determined those refugees have the right to return, and the only people who can negotiate to amend that right are the Palestinians. The United nations determines who is a refugee and the world accepts their figures.

The bare facts are as I have repeatedly outlined. For fuller explanation see “One Palestine, Complete” by Tom Segev or any other of the myriad references on my sadly neglected blog. Soon, more time will become available for that blog, and I need to revise quite a lot there as my understanding of the situation has advanced, and I look forward to promoting a fuller understanding amongst Kiwis, real Kiwis.

The issue of land deeds is a favourite of Zionists. The Zionists have always taken great care to erase evidence of Arab occupation of Palestine that reaches back millennia. Take a stroll through any refugee camp and you will find deeds and keys.

Look, your distortions don’t work in 94% of the world. We know what happened. We know what is happening now. Instead of going back to reinvent history, you guys need to look seriously at how you can survive in an increasingly hostile world, and that hostility is generated by your own actions. On a scale of barbarism, Hamas ranks a 6 but you guys are only one below the perpetrators of the Holocaust. Pick a number, as your US presidential candidate of choice famously said.

As regards history, the new starting point is UNGA242. It gets reaffirmed every year by almost unanimous acclamation – the exceptions are Israel, of course, and the US, a fellow rogue state, and the odd hanger on depending on how much they are paid or which party is in power. But you lose every year in a landslide. The reason is simple. You represent a time past, a time of European domination, of military conquest, of genocide of any population that stands in the way. But times have changed.

And we all understand that, unlike Ilan Pappe, Benny Morris couldn’t stand the heat of truthtelling and subsequently set out to contradict the factual evidence. Search the Democracy Now archives for his confrontation with Norman Finkelstein. And Finkelstein on Dershowitz was pretty good too! And don’t quote Chomsky in support of your case. He lost interest in the Zionist project when he understood the extent of the racism involved. I’m on his side!

And all your propaganda about the evil Hamas (have you read Khaled Mishaal’s story? Expelled from his village at gunpoint when he was 12) and how if the rockets stopped peace would break out, tell that to the Palestinians in the West Bank who are under constant threat of arbitrary arrest, detention, checkpoints and execution at will by either the IDF cowards or the similarly cowardly settlers, and no rockets involved. And your settlers send their raw sewage down to the Palestinians as drinking water.

We all see the situation for what it is. A brutal colonial style occupation and it will not be permanent, your hasbara notwithstanding.

Cheers.

Migration of Jews has occured for around 2000 years – some into Palestine occured under the Ottomon rule (foestering economic revival) – long before (settlement to enable Jewish self government) Zionism was planned at Basel in 1897. This would have continued but for Ottomon Turk defeat in WW1 and European takeover of its ME territories.

That this required immigration to realise a Jewish majority, rather than an Arab majority, became the contention with local residents the closer it came to being realised.

The British decided fostering such a goal was a means to justify a colonial mandate for them, so supported Zionism. Then in 1939 decided to block any further Jewish migration – betray the terms that underpined the award of the League of Nations mandate.

Then the UN determined post WW2 to partition the land into 2 parts where each had a local majority – this migration would continue but only into the Jewish majority “state of Israel”.

The real problem since then is not the continued existence of the Jewish state but the consequences of military defeat for the Arab armies in 1948 – in terms of Palestinians in exile and the further loss of territory. These are things that a two state peace cannot restore and the anger and PTS of that have yet to really be put to rest. The illegal settlement building since 1967 (the so called obstacle to a land for peace swap) is still only a secondary factor in the continuance of the conflict.

Let’s not get too concerned about what happened, to whom, how and why.

The summary killing of spies and collaborators – or those considered to be spies and collaborators – goes back a long time. The killers were continuing a long tradition.

Israel’s secret intelligence agencies have been killing those deemed enemies of Israel since at least the founding of the Jewish State. Don’t remember trials of French and German technicians and scientists working for Egypt, Syria, Libya. What were their crimes again?

During WW2 Britain gave German spies two choices. Turn and work for us, or die. Those who chose death or thought the English were bluffing were hanged often at Pentonville Jail or shot at a military barracks. No-one bothered with trials. It was legal to execute spies and ‘spies’ without trial.

The US executed German spies. During the Battle of the Bulge (the last-ditch German offensive against the Allies into Belgium and northern France in December 1944) the Americans captured English speaking German soldiers wearing American uniform. All were shot, mostly within hours.

Both sides shot the other’s spies during World War 1.

Every war, even back to Bibilical times and beyond, spies were executed.

Collaborators were executed, too. They were considered traitors. The American citizen William Joyce (Lord Haw Haw) was hanged by the British. The Norwegians shot Vidkun Quisling. Both were given trials, but the end was never in doubt.

French women had their heads shaved and they were shamed for having slept with German servicemen.

Colonel Claus Graf von Stauffenberg and a host of generals and other dissidents were either shot or hanged because the regime deemed them traitors. Well, they had tried to kill Hitler with a bomb.

But some collaborators get away with it, such as the American, British, French, and Swiss financiers and industrialists who supported the Nazi regime all the way through. Indeed the US Government compensated them after the war for their losses.

So, I wouldn’t worry too much about the killings reported the other day. Hamas were cleansing their patch of people deemed traitors to the cause. Ugly, but it’s been going on for a long time.

Benny Morris (a historian that even Noam Chomsky believes) put the actual numbers of Palestinian Arab settlers displaced in the thick of the fighting specifically by the military actions of the Israelis (as opposed to the voluntary departure as detailed by so many Arab commentators in the prior post) at a few thousand. The descendants of those specific families can and should be compensated but the entire peace process is held hostage to a fiction that Israel stole the land off the Palestinians. All your lectures and pontificating can’t change the history you refuse to accept. We get that you care about the plight of the Palestinians but you are looking in the wrong places for the causes of their plight.

You need to understand something. Demonising Palestinians, even if it were true!, does not diminish the justice of their claim

Simply put, European Jewry and the Western imperialist powers, later joined and superseded by the USA, dispossessed the Palestinians of their land. That’s the story in a nutshell. I accept entirely the perceived need of European Jewry to make a new home, but that need does not ride roughshod over the rights of the natives of Palestine.

And while UNGA181 was bereft of morality, it did not demand movements of populations. That was done by the better armed Jews after Palestinians had exhausted their military resources fighting the British – a cause as noble as that of now fighting their Israeli oppressors.

As soon as Israel stops being supported by the US, and that will happen one day, Israel will be plunged into a permanently weakened state that may, eventually, indeed result in its ultimate demise. Far better to cease this ridiculous hasbara deluge and settle now, generously, with limited right of return and outsized compensation, that will at least ensure a generation or two of peace before future Israelis accept responsibility for the injustices of their forefathers and forge one nation from the river to the sea.

And by the way, quite a bit of the sea will be in a different place from where it is now…bye bye Tel Aviv?

Simply – there is no point “solving” (like some abstract question) the “root cause” of the conflict if it doesnt stop the conflict.

Scott1,
A ceasefire isn’t unethical, but the root cause of the conflict remains.

Global PR machine? What like the BBC, most of the European press, a good chunk of the US mainstream media, NZ Herald, Radio NZ, Australia’s ABC, Canada’s CBC all of whom can be relied upon to swallow Pallywood (staged injuries and incidents), publish Palestinian claims without challenge and vilify Israel. Its a PR machine the Israelis have to fight daily.

On the issue of the Palestinian repression of women, gays and in fact anyone who dissents, its not Israel’s job to ‘introduce’ these enlightenments of western culture to their neighbours – one would hope they would get to that point because its the right thing to do. It’s instructive to draw the contrast with the free and open society that is Israel where even Arabs have full equal citizenship rights, gay couples can live lives together without fear of retribution, where people can protest the government and not be arrested and where newspapers and magazines that are highly critical of the Israeli government can thrive. Try doing ANY of that in Gaza and see how that works out.

Yozza you are a true disciple of the hard left and you can always be relied upon to spout their rhetoric. John Minto will be proud of you. Fortunately even in NZ it’s a constituency of 1%.

I don’t think you have really thought through the consequences of fetishising ‘ethics’/'means’

And I’m not entirely sure that one would consider arranging a ceasefire, and just not hand-wringing over that it is in some sense still unfair, is exactly “unethical”.

the alternative would be like failing to save a drowning person because it might make you to break a promise. surely that is the unethical option.

Fuck, even I’m sick of my own typing!

It took 4,416 comments, but at last Luc has written something that will be met with universal acclaim.