Netanyahu: I will not uproot a single Israeli

[bemildred]

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu held a press conference in Davos on Friday and said that he does not intend on uprooting any Israeli citizen.

Netanyahu's statement came as a response to a question about his commitment to the Jordan Valley. "I do not intend to evacuate any settlements or uproot a single Israeli," he said.

---

Netanyahu stressed that Kerry is not trying to bring the two sides to sign a framework agreement but solely to put forth ideas for a path toward progress in the negotiations.

He also rejected the warnings against an economic boycott on Israel due to settlement construction. "I actually see great interest on the part of international companies to invest in Israel," he said.

http://www.haaretz.com/news/diplomacy-defense/1.570418

[R. Daneel Olivaw]

1. I have to continue to shake my head...

The USA gives billions in aid to Israel... helping it continue its practices of apartheid.

The USA should show some democratic tendencies and tell Israel to pull out or it will get no more aid in any form.

BDS

And when this kind of just action is put forward the screamers appear claiming anti-Semitism.

Israel is an apartheid state, and the sooner the USA admits it the better it will be for human rights.

[aranthus]

4. That's because you go too far.

If all you said was that the refusal to withdraw from the Jordan Valley or to withdraw the settlements was a complete non-starter that shows that Netanyahu isn't serious about negotiating, then not only would none of us say that you were anti-Semitic, most of us (myself included) would agree with you. But the claims that Israel is an apartheid state, and support for BDS that seeks to replace Israel with an Arab state go over the line. So don't complain. You don't have the right.

[R. Daneel Olivaw]

6. If you don't like it then change it, but don't pretend to call me a bigot or anti-Semite

simply because you can't seem to handle the truth. The settlers were there before Netan-nutty, the USA aided the apartheid state before Sharon, and the settlers have been digging in their heels illegally for a generation...illegally. Illegally with Israel's blessing. You understand that part, right?

But I'm supposed to be diplomatic? For what I ask: a pat on the head?

Bullshit.

The thing that you should be railing against is a system that is built on conquest, subjugation and murder when it suits it's purpose.

But if you are not railing against it then you must be fore it. Prove me wrong.

[Mosby]

10. You see what you did there?

Fact: Israeli/Jewish Settlers building houses and creating neighborhoods and towns on disputed land.

You:
...a system that is built on conquest, subjugation and murder when it suits it's purpose.


That kind of batshit crazy hyperbole is why I think you struggle with credibility here.

Just trying to help.

[R. Daneel Olivaw]

12. Ah yes, you pull the "disputed land" poop out of your backside...

Good for you. You earned a cookie.

I guess that the term "disputed land" is supposed to make land theft go down that much easier in the land of the apartheid picnic.

[Scootaloo]

29. It's "disputed land" in the same way that there's a climate change "controversy"

[King_David]

11. The batshit hyperbole as Mosby calls it

From you doesn't come from YOUR opposition to the occupation or YOUR solidarity with the Palestinians Mr ...

Shaayecanaan and Bemildred and Jefferson are a different story ... But not you mister .

[R. Daneel Olivaw]

13. Aren't you late to go speak for the world someplace?

[Violet_Crumble]

15. Conquest, subjugation and murder isn't hyperbole...

That's what occupation is. To hyperbolise something is to over-exaggerate and change something so it no longer resembles what it actually is.

So, how would you like to see the conquest, subjugation and murder that goes on candy-coated into? Israel's just paying a friendly visit to the West Bank and doesn't mean to do any harm at all to the Palestinians living there, like taking their land, destroying their homes, killing civilians?

[King_David]

18. Damage control ?

[Violet_Crumble]

22. Well, 'damage control' is a cute euphemism for conquest, subjugation and murder...

Kind of a weird way of looking at what Israel does in the West Bank, but if you've got to candy-coat it, I guess as long as it works for you, that's all that matters as long as you don't take to haranguing others and insisting they don't speak in realities...

[Scootaloo]

30. Strange that you use those 63 as pawns, yourself

Funny, I don't see you bringing them up except to damn people for criticizing Israeli policy towards, you know, five million Palestinians. Blithely ignoring the obvious question of course, of why there are Palestinian refugees in syria in the first place, why they're refugees, from what, and why they can't end that status.

Also interesting how it's always Zionists talking about the "loathsomeness of Jews," while insisting it's all these other people talking about such things - despite their very clearly not doing so.

And of course the good ol' "other people do bad things, so this bad thing is okay!" argument.

[King_David]

33. "always Zionists talking about the "loathsomeness of Jews,"

What a strange thing to say , even for a self described AntiZionist .

BTW when most extremists talk of
"Zionists " it means "Jew" really.

[R. Daneel Olivaw]

36. Have you noticed when some can't defend their hollow position, and can't refute

the criticisms leveled against Israeli apartheid, they go right for the "you hate the Jews" card?

It doesn't work any longer, and nobody is buying their victimization bullshit in the same way they used to. People are waking up to that nonsense.


The victims perversely have become the victimizers.

[R. Daneel Olivaw]

37. I asked the author of the hidden post to prove me wrong.

But if you are not railing against it then you must be for it. Prove me wrong.

All they were able to do was throw baseless accusations of me hating Jews.

Amateurish at best that was.

[azurnoir]

16. your constant need to conflate the most extreme of any ProPalestinian movement with

anyone who supports the principle of it BDS is nonviolent protest is similar to one of us comparing any Pro whatever it is your pro to Baruch Goldstein -it is simplistic and inaccurate and I'm being very polite

On BDS are you then claiming that the Native American Studies Association is wishing to see Israel as you claim destroyed?


Read more at http://indiancountrytodaymedianetwork.com/2013/12/29/native-american-studies-association-boycott-israel

[aranthus]

19. There's no conflation.

Anyone who officially supports the Palestinian BDS movement either does not recognize what the movement is really about or else they support it. Now, of course there could be a boycott movement that expressly rejects the extreme ideas of BDS and simply wants to force Israel to withdraw from the West Bank. That would be an altogether different and independent movement, but I've never heard of it.

[Violet_Crumble]

23. How does someone 'officially' support something?

Does that mean there's people who don't 'officially' support it, but support it nonetheless?

[aranthus]

24. Admittedly not the best way of saying it.

What I'm talking about are those people who expressly support a movement, or who lend support to a movement without saying that they are doing so. Given the noxious element of the Palestinian BDS movement, I would hope that people of good will would want to distance themselves from it, even if they support some kind of boycott. And given the nature of the movement, in the absence of any express statement to the contrary, it's a fair assumption that the people who support boycotts against Israel support BDS. So it's fair to ask about that, and get a good answer.

[azurnoir]

41. so you are saying we should judge all movements by their most extreme elements?

does that apply all around or only to Palestinian/Arab movements?

[aranthus]

43. No, that isn't what I'm saying at all.

I'm saying that the creators and leaders of a movement/organization have the right to decide what that movement/organization is and means. A Buddhist has no right to tell the Pope what it means to be Catholic. The Palestinians who created the Palestinian Civil BDS movement have the right to state what it is about. It's completely presumptuous of western Leftists to glom onto that movement and then claim that it is something else. PACBI is the official BDS organization, and it states the mainstream BDS position. If you want a different boycott, then start a different boycott movement that expressly rejects the demand for right of return. By the way, since, as I recall, you support right of return, does that mean that you are an extremist? And if so, why are you complaining that the extreme position is the mainstream?

[Scootaloo]

32. So what is it "really about," and what is the source of your received wisdom on that?

[aranthus]

38. I take the Palestinians at their word.

According to the PACBI website http://www.pacbi.org/etemplate.php?id=66

The goals of the movement regarding Israel are:

1. Ending its occupation and colonization of all Arab lands and dismantling the Wall;
2. Recognizing the fundamental rights of the Arab-Palestinian citizens of Israel to full equality; and
3. Respecting, protecting and promoting the rights of Palestinian refugees to return to their homes and properties as stipulated in UN resolution 194.

Omar Barghouti, the principle founder of the movement, has said the same.

Now most people wouldn't have a problem with the first two goals, although what the movement means by equal rights (civil or national) is a question. The real deal killer is number three. Recognition and enforcement of right of return would destroy Israel as a Jewish state, and turn it into an Arab state with a Jewish minority. That's just wrong and unacceptable.

[Scootaloo]

40. Ah huh.

Again, I suggest to you, look at the things you are comparing.

The right of Palestinian refugees to return, as stipulated in UN resolution 194
vs.
The desire of Israel to preserve an ethnic majority engineered through ethnic cleansing

Now please, give me a sensible argument about why I should accept Israel's desires over Palestinian's rights? Make it good.

[aranthus]

42. Since you haven't stated the comparison honestly, there is no point.

You aren't interested in an honest discussion, only one that confirms your prejudices. So that everyone else can see what I'm talking about, I will state the comparison as it should be stated.

I am comparing the claim of Palestinian Arabs to a right of return to the actual right of Israeli Jews to a state of their own. So let's break it down.

1. The Palestinians do not have a right of return for several reasons
A. There simply is no such right in actual international usage.
1) There has been no such right adopted in international usage for any set of refugees prior to the Palestinians.
2) The UN has no moral standing to declare rights of any kind, so UNGAR 194 is irrelevant.
3) There has been no such right applied to any other group of refugees contemporaneous with or following the Palestinians.

B. Even if there was a right of return for refugees in general it is conditional
1) Aggressor nations (those that start wars) lose their rights to territory and repatriation.
2) The Palestinians started the war that made them refugees, so they don't have any right to return to lands that they lost.

C. Even if there was a right of return it has never been applied to any but the first generation of refugees.


2. The Jews have a right to a state in Israel.
A. The right to statehood belongs to nations; the cultural ideological grouping of people.
B. The Jewish community living in Palestine at the time of independence was such a nation.
C. Therefore they had and still have the right of national existence.
D. The claim that all/most Pal refugees are innocent victims of ethnic cleansing without which Israel would not exist, is a lie.

3. The right of national existence takes precedence over any demand to return.
A. The right of national existence is the international equivalent of the right to life.
B. Without that right, none of the others has any meaning.

[Scootaloo]

44. You make some puzzling arguments

Most of which are patently dishonest. Good thing you start off by calling me dishonest, before lying like a rug Sort of like how Aquart and David so love to accuse others of hating Jews before spouting off their own Jew-hating bullshit. Spare these deflection techniques for youtube comments, please.

1. The Palestinians do not have a right of return for several reasons
A. There simply is no such right in actual international usage.
1) There has been no such right adopted in international usage for any set of refugees prior to the Palestinians.
2) The UN has no moral standing to declare rights of any kind, so UNGAR is irrelevant.
3) There has been no such right applied to any other group of refugees contemporaneous with or following the Palestinians.

A.While the Universal Declaration of Human Rights is not per se law, it is the foundational principle behind international laws brought by the United Nations. Article 13 of this declaration does indeed enshrine the right of return for refugees as a human right, and as shown, this has in fact been the bases for the passage of UN resolutions pertaining to and supporting exactly that.
1) Considering that the Palestinians were the second major refugee crisis after the foundation of the UN - the first being the equally bullshit India / Pakistan Partition - arguing that it was not applied prior to them is facetious.
2) Your argument from morality is subjective and arbitrary, and inherently conflicts with your simultaneous attempt to argue from legal semantics. Further, if the UN as an entity lacks the "moral authority" to declare human rights, then it very certainly lacked any moral authority to partition this territory in the first place - if you want to argue that the UN is so lacking in "moral authority" then you must also argue then that the establishment of Israel was not just illegitimate but also innately immoral. Otherwise, you're simply cherry-picking and rendering your own argument worthless. Good luck with that.
3) I really suggest you conduct some research outside of harry's Place before trying to make this argument.

B. Even if there was a right of return for refugees in general it is conditional
1) Aggressor nations (those that start wars) lose their rights to territory and repatriation.
2) The Palestinians started the war that made them refugees, so they don't have any right to return to lands that they lost.

b. Now you're just getting strange. You're arguing that if there was a right (which there is, but you just tried to argue there isn't), then it would follow the preconditions you think it should (which in point of fact it doesn't.) In science we call this "making shit up." You are swift on your way to becoming the Deepak Chopra of this discussion Aranthus.
1) Not at all true.
2) Again, not at all true.

C. Even if there was a right of return it has never been applied to any but the first generation of refugees.

Most such situations have been resolved within a single generation. See the aforementioned India / Pakistan crisis. The Palestinians are given a supposedly unique treatment because their condition is actually unique - There just aren't a whole lot of refugee situations that have persisted for seventy years. Had 194 simply been accepted within the few years after it had been passed by the UN in 1948, it wouldn't even be an issue - the multi-generational complications of the Palestinian refugee situation is entirely a product of Israeli intransigence.

2. The Jews have a right to a state in Israel.
A. The right to statehood belongs to nations; the cultural ideological grouping of people.
B. The Jewish community living in Palestine at the time of independence was such a nation.
C. Therefore they had and still have the right of national existence.
D. The claim that all/most Pal refugees are innocent victims of ethnic cleansing without which Israel would not exist, is a lie.

2. The trouble is that this state was imposed upon the native people of the territory for the benefit of a mostly-immigrant population and expanded - greatly so - at the expense of those natives.
a) The right to statehood does not come with a right to displace, destroy, and otherwise violate the other people of the territory you wish to claim.
b) Good for them. Doesn't change the fact that they were, even at the densest points of Jewish populations - Jaffa and Haifa - they were still well within the minority of the population. Any state established would have, by default, been Arab-majority, unless it was established in a weird patchwork of neighborhood-by-neighborhood microstatelets.
c) Again, good for them. As you just noted however, nations and states are different things. One is identity, the other is territory.
d) So I suppose they fell out of the sky? Sorry, but when a minority population seizes a territory, and becomes the majority in less than a year, and suddenly there's hundreds of thousands of refugees from the former majority population, there's only one fucking thing that can cause that - ethnic cleansing. it's not a question of "innocence" or not - there are right bastards everywhere. doesn't change the fact that it was ethnic cleansing.

3. The right of national existence takes precedence over any demand to return.
A. The right of national existence is the international equivalent of the right to life.
B. Without that right, none of the others has any meaning.

3. Except we're not talking about national existence in contrast to right of return. we're talking about the preservation of a particular ethnicity's asserted dominance in contrast to right of return. These are different things, and your conflation of them is little different from the cranks who associate the United States' current white majority with the United States itself.
a.) Further, no state has a right to exist. States are organizations. Think of them in a light similar to a club, or a corporation. They exist, for as long as they exist, until they stop existing. israel has no more right to existence than Russia, Rhodesia, Sudan, or Songhai.
b.) Nice attempt at a deepity, but it's dependent on a fallacy. sorry.

[R. Daneel Olivaw]

45. .

[aranthus]

46. That's because you start from prejudice.

And in order to justify it you then warp facts evidence and logic to fit them. For example, your argument based on Article 13 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights is both illogical and false. Illogical because you are trying to buttress a document created by an organization without moral standing (UNGAR 194) with a document created by the same organization. If one lacks moral authority, then they both do. False, because Article 13 doesn't refer to, and is not about refugees. You follow that up with an equally false assertion that if the UN lacks moral standing then Israel is illegitimate. But that just shows your prejudice again. Here's why. First I've never claimed that Israel's legitimacy derives from UNGAR 181. In fact it doesn't. But you assume that Israel has no legitimacy, and that it can only be valid if the UN says so. This is nonsense. Israel has the same right to exist as any other country and it doesn't depend on the blessing of the UN.

I could go on, but what would be the point? You're hopelessly biased, and incapable of dealing with evidence and/or logic that conflicts with your anti-Israel prejudice. Have a nice day.

[Scootaloo]

47. Aranthus, disagreeing with you does not equal prejudice or bias

In this particular case, I'm disagreeing with you because you're flat-out wrong. Inconceivable, I know, but, well, it's bound to happen to everyone once in a while and today is one of your days.

You try to combine legalistic semantic-wrangling with spurious and subjective moral arguments. What's worse, beyond the inherent logical conflict, is that your position happens to be on the wrong side of both concepts.

If you want to argue that the UN has no moral authority - and you do make that claim - and that this lack of moral authority translates into a lack of reason to adhere to international laws - which is exactly your point - then we must of course apply this standard across the board, to everything. not just the cherry-picked resolutions you personally don't approve of. it really doesn't matter if you claimed that resolution 181 is the source of Israel's legitimacy. The plain fact is that we're talking about a legal entity - a state - generated through that method. if you want to argue that the UN's resolutions are worthless because of whatever you judge to be a moral failing, then well, that means there's no reason to respect the existence of Israel (or several other nations as a point of fact, but let's do stay on-target)

We agree that Israel has the same right to exist as any other country. Our difference lies in the fact that I believe such rights are eternally zero - there have been too many nations and states and countries and empires swept into history's dustbin to pretend there is any sort of actual "right to exist" for them. See my citation of Rhodesia and Songhai. In fact pay special attention to Rhodesia, because that's the nation you seem to want Israel to emulate.

You associate a nation-state with a particular ethnic grouping. Sadly for you, states don't - and in point of fact can't - work this way without developing gross dysfunctions. You argue that the right of return would "destroy Israel," but what you never actually come up with a coherent argument for how this would happen. Would Israel fall into the sea? Would Godzilla attack? Would it get struck by a sudden appearance of antimatter that happened to have exactly the same mass as Israel? Or is this just hyperbolic nonsense?

It is hyperbolic nonsense. There is no threat to Israel's existence from the right of return, only the potential for a moderate challenge to one ethnic group's place of dominance and privilege in what is - so I've been told - a democratic, first-world, western state. As there are not enough refugees to reverse this majority, even if they were to all come to Israel (an unlikely prospect), even that is only a potential challenge. You come off sounding like you just walked out of a 1956 pro-segregation rally then, because your argument is simply a plea to preserve one race's place of dominance over another, with scaremongering tactics about apocalyptic disaster should your desires not be heeded.

So again. Why should your desires be seen as more valuable than their rights? I no longer ask that you "make it good," I realize that's probably impossible. But could you at least make it internally consistent?

[Jefferson23]

2. The way it appears now, he might not have to...bastards...the whole bad lot of them. n/t

[R. Daneel Olivaw]

3. Hey, this is the piece process.

[aranthus]

5. So why is Kerry bothering?

The refusal to withdraw from the Jordan Valley or to withdraw the settlements is a complete non-starter that shows that Netanyahu isn't serious about negotiating. The refusal of the Palestinians to agree without a formal Israel recognition of the right of return is a complete non-starter which shows that Abbas isn't serious. If neither side is serious, then why are we bothering? I'd say put pressure on both sides, but I doubt that would work with either of them.

[R. Daneel Olivaw]

7. Two things.

The Jordan valley is Palestinian by right: being within the West Bank. ROR, although I know it will never happen, showns the thin veneer of Israeli democracy that was built on ethnic cleansing of 700,000 Palestinians.

[aranthus]

8. You believe lies. There's nothing to talk to you about. Have a nice day. n/t

[R. Daneel Olivaw]

9. HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!

I guess you tole me.

Do you care to define what are lies?

[Violet_Crumble]

14. I guess it's something to put on the resume...

These incessant peace processes are just an exercise in spinning wheels, imo. Pretty depressing thought, but things are only going to change when both Israelis and Palestinians elect leaders who are seriously prepared to sit down and really negotiate. And when the US takes on a role of impartial mediator, something it hasn't done to date...

[bemildred]

17. I believe Mr. Kerry actually intends to do something.

Not sure exactly what, not sure it matters, but he is annoying people who you know are going to be a pain in the ass about it. This is uncharacteristic of US politicians, particularly from the Patrician set, who are not up to something.

Otherwise, carry on. I quite agree that, at least in some quarters, where we are now is the sort of place the Peace Process was supposed to end up. Ever since I witnessed the Paris Peace Process 40 years ago or so, I have always assumed any "peace process" was a stall. If you want to make peace, you have a peace conference and get on with it.

[Mosby]

20. I have been thinking the same thing

Seems like Kerry is expending a tremendous amount of energy on this and for what?

The two sides are further apart than ever.

There must be some sort of consensus on something.

[bemildred]

21. One theory I've seen is that it's his last chance to make his mark, so to speak.

It's easy to make up others though. I can think of several just sitting here. And the news is so baroque these days I hesitate to appeal to common sense any more.

It could be as simple as nothing left to lose too, the Middle East is such a behavior sink these days there is no need to worry about making it worse.

[Scootaloo]

31. Well, look at those two things

1) Israel has absolutely no legitimate claim to the Jordan Valley. Or any other portion of the west bank. Zero. None. Zilch.

2) On the other hand, refugees do have a right to return home. Of course after nearly seventy years of forced exile for some and forty for others, the practicality raises some issues that need to be addressed, but point blank, they have the right.

You're saying that because Abbas is insisting on the implementation of a right that Israel happens to not like means he's not serious, and you put that on the same level as a demand from Netanyahu that he has no right to make. That's just not how it works.

Now, as for why Kerry is trying... well, I'd say he's not. I've come to the realization that no US president or their cabinet is actually interested in a good resolution to this issue, as they are as happening to be the guy in office when some resolution was achieved. it's a feather in the cap and nothing more.

[shaayecanaan]

25. I can't see any way forward other than sanctions nt

[bemildred]

34. It's coming now.

As Mr. Along or one of those guys used to say ten years ago WRT Iraq: "The landslide has started, the pebbles no longer get a vote."

[ZombieHorde]

26. So much fighting over labels.

Our tools have become our masters. Identity manipulation is big business.

[bemildred]

35. Much more convenient when you don't want to talk about substance.

Bullshit rules.

[ZombieHorde]

39. What is much more convenient?

I doubt either side is consciously hiding behind their labels. More likely most of them actually believe in all of that nonsense and think it is so much more important than human life and human dignity.