Question on Israel and international politics.

[DetlefK]

I am unable to come up with an example, so maybe someone else knows one.

Which other nation, except Israel, conducts military, economic and legal repression against a minority-group, with actions that are illegal under international law, and is NOT a pariah-state?

[sabbat hunter]

1. Just remember

the blockade of Gaza is legal under international law when making such assertions.

[DetlefK]

2. Bombing of civilian areas and concerted destruction of private property is not.

[sabbat hunter]

4. when the weapons and enemy

deliberately hides within civilian population it is perfectly legal to take them out as long as care is taken to try and minimize civilian casualties. Considering that Israel would warn occupants of buildings, use missile strikes so precise that they hit a specific apartment, they covered that as well for the most part.

The civilian deaths in Gaza are tragic, but when your enemy hides among civilians like cowards that is what is going to happen unfortunately.

Maybe next time Hamas (hopefully there won't be a next time though), won't be cowards and will obey the rules of war on their end and not hide among civilians.

[DanTex]

7. Highly doubtful that the entire Gaza massacre was justified even under the most generous

interpretation of requirement to avoid civilian casualties.

Other things, like the settlement building, are plainly and uncontrovertibly violations of international law.

[sabbat hunter]

10. Agreed

the settlements are illegal in the West Bank and should be removed ASAP.

As for Gaza, when your enemy cowardly hides among the civilians, you are required to take care to minimize civilian casualties. IMHO Israel did that. If they wanted, they could have used far less precise methods to flatten all of gaza, which would have been against the rules of war.

[DanTex]

16. The thing about Gaza is, you have to really, really believe IDF in order to believe that the

violence was justified. I frankly don't. I wouldn't believe it if the US did it either. I didn't believe there were WMDs in Iraq. I don't believe a lot of things that governments at war say, particularly right-wing governments.

There are all sorts of reports of civilians being deliberately targeted in Gaza. Schools, hospitals, etc. These come from Palestinian witnesses and civilians, and from human rights groups like Amnesty and HRW. Groups which Israel won't allow back into Gaza to do more thorough reporting, an obvious effort to prevent independent evaluation of the events that happened there, in order to maintain the plausibility of the claims that civilian casualties were avoided.

On top of that, even if we believe that there were no non-military targets that were intentionally targeted, only IDF knows the formula that they use to calculate how much collateral damage is justified versus the importance of military targets, and only they know whether they actually stick by that formula. So again we are in "trust IDF" mode. Just looking at the total death toll and damage, in contrast to the level of the threat Israel faced, I can't possibly imagine that this formula can be considered remotely humane. Even people in the US government have commented that it is disproportionate. There are reports of entire buildings with families in them being destroyed because of intelligence that a single Hamas was in it.

This is the same government that builds settlements and claims they are necessary for national security. And now I'm supposed believe that the killings in Gaza were also necessary for national security, and that every one of them was the outcome of a careful calculation of military objectives versus collateral damage? I doubt it.

[Scootaloo]

18. Again with this shit?

"They COULD just commit total genocide; but they didn't! So let's praise them for their restraint!"

[Israeli]

24. No words sabbat hunter....

http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-4565726,00.html

Just watch the video .... if thats not flattened then please give me another adjective to describe the destruction . .....or is it okay that we flattened only parts of Gaza and not all ?

[Divernan]

26. Missiles precise enough to hit "a specific apartment" yet 18,000 housing units destroyed?

According to your rationalization/explanation/justification, there were Hamas soldiers in all of these 18,000 housing units? No? well, then obviously the Israelis were far from precise. Any other explaination for how blocks and blocks of entire apartment buildings were destroyed?

http://electronicintifada.net/blogs/ali-abunimah/see-yourself-aerial-and-panoramic-views-show-devastation-gaza

The video (in this link) published by the Gaza-based video production company MediaTown, shows an aerial view of the devastated Shujaiya neighborhood of Gaza City. On 20 July, the area was subjected to indiscriminate artillery bombardment by Israel that was so intense that it shocked even US military officers. A total of 2,168 people were killed, 521 of them children, during Israel’s 51-day bombardment of the Gaza Strip that ended in a ceasefire agreement on 26 August.

Such images help us to understand the reality behind the shocking statistics about the physical destruction: 108,000 people have had their homes destroyed or severely damaged and will need permanent rehousing, according to the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (UN OCHA).

As the ceasefire allows for more in-depth assessments “it is clear that the scale of damage is unprecedented, with approximately 13 percent of the housing stock affected,” UN OCHA says. “Five percent of the housing stock is uninhabitable – an estimated 18,000 housing units have been either destroyed or severely damaged.” This on top of a shortage of 71,000 housing units before the Israeli attack.

Since there is no functioning airport in Gaza and Israel controls the skies, many people have wondered how the aerial video was taken. Another video published by MediaTown in March shows the company’s crew demonstrating their use of a quadcopter remote control aircraft similar to this one to make a video:

UN satellite imaging

The United Nations Institute for Training and Research (UNITAR) has published a series of satellite images showing areas of Gaza before and after the Israeli bombardment. Such maps are used by international agencies to make overall damage assessments.
http://www.unitar.org/unosat/maps/PSE

For instance, using satellite images, the UN estimated that as of 25 July, the Israeli bombardment had completely destroyed 700 structures and severely damaged 316 others in (a “structure” might be an individual house or an entire apartment block with a number of individual units) in the eastern Gaza City districts of Shujaiya, Tuffah and Shaaf (see the PDF below).
Gaza Crisis Atlas

UN OCHA has published another invaluable resource, the Gaza Crisis Atlas.

Viewable online, it contains numerous maps and satellite images with neighborhood-by-neighborhood information about the destruction in Gaza.
http://www.ochaopt.org/GazaCrisisAtlas2014/#/0

[azurnoir]

15. Those firing rockets leave the area after firing and are no longer present when the F-17's arrive

something Israel is well aware of but yet bombs anyway knowing those they claim are the targets are gone and uses a political perversion of the term Human Shields to cover for civilian deaths, how are they 'shields' when they will be bombed regardless?

[King_David]

3. That's a question ?

Sounds like a statement .



Also against IP rules.

And what minority group?

Jews are the minority group in the Middle East and everywhere in the world except maybe Brooklyn and in the Jewish state .

[DanTex]

6. Why against I/P rules?

[King_David]

8. Read them.

[DanTex]

9. I don't see the violation, hence my question...

[sabbat hunter]

11. here are the rules

New Threads

New threads must be based on a recently-published news item or op-ed piece. They may not be based on editorial cartoons or photographs. Citations and references should include a link to the original source. Exceptions will be allowed if, based on prior approval, the moderators feel a thread is appropriate.
All threads must be based on material originally published no more than 3 weeks ago. The "clock" does not restart if an article is republished. Exceptions will be allowed, if based on prior approval, the moderators feel a thread is appropriate.
The subject heading for threads must contain the title of the source article. The only exception is when you must shorten long titles or to make the subject of the article more clear.
Editorializations and comments are to be saved for the Message body and must be separate and distinct from the text of the article.

[DanTex]

13. Thanks.

[King_David]

12. New Threads

New threads must be based on a recently-published news item or op-ed piece. They may not be based on editorial cartoons or photographs. Citations and references should include a link to the original source. Exceptions will be allowed if, based on prior approval, the moderators feel a thread is appropriate.

[DanTex]

14. Thanks.

[DetlefK]

19. I didn't read the rules, but...

I don't see how the demand for citation (as mentioned further down) is of relevance. My question is of broad concern, not connected to a particular recent event.

To my knowledge, the international acceptance of Israel's actions is not rewarded to other nations with similar human-rights abuses.
I would like to know, which other nations also get a pass.
I would like to know, whether Israel gets a preferential, unique treatment.

[Shaktimaan]

20. In what way,

Does Israel get a pass?

As compared to any other state, Israel has more condemnations from UN groups like the UNHRC, (more, in fact, than every other nation's added together), more resolutions criticizing it than any other, is the only UN member state ineligible to apply for security council seats, etc.

If anything I'd say the reverse is true. That Israel faces outsize criticism as compared to other states' regardless of the level of human rights violations they're responsible for.

Basically, name any country that's been involved in a conflict. The US? China? Russia? Greece? Turkey? Morocco?

It might be harder to name a country that has faced greater condemnation... North Korea, I guess. Maybe Myanmar? Iraq?

[DanTex]

21. Despite the condemnations from the UN and many Human Rights Groups, Israel is not

way a pariah state. South Africa was a Pariah State. The occupation and expanding of settlements has been going on for some 50 years now, and yet Israel has avoided any real international sanctions. On the contrary, despite the widespread and recognized human rights abuses and international crimes, Israel continues to get huge amounts of aid from the US, and is, officially at least, considered an enlightened liberal democracy, etc.

There might be a parallel, but I can't think of one offhand.

[Shaktimaan]

23. What widespread hr abuses are you thinking of?

Israel receives weapons from the US, but they don't receive any economic aid.

Realistically, Israel IS a liberal democracy. It's not a pariah state because it hasn't objectively engaged in policies that spur committed, coordinated international action.

[DanTex]

5. I can't think of any. South Africa was a total pariah state during apartheid.

There are other nations whose crimes are as or more egregious than Israel's, but they are all pariahs.

Support from the US, which includes defending Israel at the UN and threatening vetos, has a lot to do with it. Israel also has strong PR.

[Shaktimaan]

22. Who else are you considering "pariah" states?

As compared to most other states, I don't see what you'd consider as particularly egregious human rights abuses on the part of Israel.

Nor can I think of many other states that have faced similar widespread international criticism, sanctions, etc. South Africa suffered widespread sanctions... Who else are you including?

China's abuses in Tibet far outweigh anything Israel engaged in. They face zero consequences.

The US war in Iraq dwarfs anything that ever occurred in the IP conflict. In a handful of years they managed to kill more civilians than the almost 100 year old IP conflict has people, both civilian and soldier.

I'm not sure what metric you're using here to determine either human rights abuses or international condemnation. Israel IS a liberal democracy, and consistently scores alongside other democracies in Freedom Indexes. Comparatively speaking, there's nothing about IP that stands out as particularly egregious. The central crime usually cited regarding Israel's creation would be the Nakba.. 750,000 people displaced. That same year one million were killed during the Indian partition. What states does Israel compare unfavorably against in your exercise here?

[DanTex]

25. South Africa is the clearest point of comparison.

There are gradations of being a "pariah" state. Most countries in the Middle East are looked down upon to varying degrees. Then there are places like China and Russia which are viewed with suspicion, and yet dealt with for economic reasons.

The human rights abuses I'm referring to are the treatment of Palestinians in occupied territories. There are a few aspects to this.

First is the conditions imposed on Palestinians, and the comparison here is to South Africa's treatment of blacks, which turned South Africa into a pariah state.

Then there is the seizing of land. For comparison, when Russia decides to claim parts of Ukraine for itself, the entire world condemns them immediately and there is talk of sanctions and to on. Yet Israel seized the territory in 1967, has held it for almost 50 years, and has gradually but consistently settled the land they are occupying. Are there other countries that have seized foreign land by force like this recently? Saddam Hussein invading Kuwait comes to mind. In that case the US intervened with force.

And then there is military aggression, violence against civilians, retributive home demolitions, widespread reports of targeting if medical workers, the overall disproportionality of the aggression, etc. as occurred recently in Gaza but has happened on many other occasions.

These are the main issues. I'm leaving out problems with the supposed liberal democracy within Israel itself, many of whose policies would make the looniest right-wing christians in the US blush. For example, imagine if there were no inter-religious marriages in the US, if immigration laws openly favored white christians, and if a Canadian married to an American could acquire citizenship but not a Mexican, etc. But, despite these things (and problems with freedom of press, separation of church and state, treatment of Arab Israeli citizens, etc.), Israel is not nearly as bad as many many nations when looking at domestic situations.

I'm also leaving out creation sins of Israel, not just the Nakba, but then the creation sins of many nations are as bad or worse. One thing that distinguishes Israel here is that they continue to insist that these sins were not in fact sins. They don't take responsibility for the Nabka, for example, and the whole world has basically accepted that the right of people forcefully evicted to return to their homes must be sacrificed in the face of Israel's interests in maintaining ethnic purity.



There are a few reasons I think Israel can get away with this. First, the people they are repressing are Arab Muslims, and anti-Arab racism and Islamophobia are among the remaining kinds prejudice that are still not taboo. In fact, across western nations you find prominent politicians making blatantly anti-Arab or anti-Arab statements without much consequence. People actually Islamophobia it to get elected, and you have examples of legislation, like banning minarets in Switzerland. When right-wingers say that Obama is a Muslim, they don't even need to add "and that means he's a bad person that can't be trusted" -- this is understood.

The second reason, is support from the US. The Israeli lobby is very powerful here. And also, the US believes it's in its national interest to support Israel, and the US has a history of backing unpleasant regimes when it thinks it is in its interest.

[oberliner]

27. Whom did Israel seize the territory from in 1967?

What happened when Israel tried to return the territory back to those countries?

Why was the territory occupied by those countries in the first place?

[DanTex]

29. You don't know? Territory was taken from Egypt, Jordan, and Syria,

including UN-designated Palestinian land, at the time controlled by Egypt and Jordan since the 1948 war.

[oberliner]

30. That is not true

How can you take territory from countries that are illegally occupying said territory?

Edit to add: Not sure what you mean when you write "controlled by Egypt and Jordan" rather than illegally occupied by.

[DanTex]

32. The legality of the Egyptian occupation, at the least, is questionable.

Certainly more than the Israeli occupation which is flatly illegal and has been for 50 years. The Jordanian occupation was more just annexation, Egypt tried to set up some kind of Palestinian authority in Gaza.

How do you take territory? Well, Israel did it with guns and tanks. You're not seriously defending the legality of the Israeli territorial acquisitions in 1967 and occupation on the grounds that the previous Arab occupations were also illegal. What next ... maybe Israeli was actually trying to liberate the Palestinians from Jordan and Egypt! This can go in all sorts of bizarre directions.

The other Arab countries were the same ones that supported the Palestinians during the civil war in 1948 -- being under Jordanian or Egyptian rule was much closer to self-determination than being under Israeli rule. Not that it matters, of course, if all occupations are equally illegal, than Israel has been violating international law for 50 years. If, say, China decided to invade Crimea, occupy it for 50 years, build settlements and subject native Crimeans to the kind of brutality that Palestinians have lived with, the fact that Russia had occupied them last wouldn't serve as justification.

If you are suggesting that without Israel, Palestine would have ended up being part of Jordan and Egypt, that is possible. Or maybe Jordan and Egypt would have been temporary rulers while a Palestinian state was formed. Either way, I would imagine that 100% of Palestinians would have preferred either outcome versus living under the repressive occupation by Israel.

[sabbat hunter]

35. Jordan

had no intention of a Palestine. In fact prior to Israel declaring its independence, King Abdullah I of Jordan proposed to Golda Meir that they (meaning the leaders of what would be Israel) do not declare their state and instead allow him to absorb the entire area into Jordan, and in return he would guarantee that they had representation in his parliament.

[King_David]

36. Where are you reading this?

Did you just make it all up?

Share your sources.

[Shaktimaan]

37. Seriously?

Did you read any of this somewhere or are you just making assumptions that seem super obvious to you so you're assuming they're true without checking?

Certainly more than the Israeli occupation which is flatly illegal and has been for 50 years.

"Flatly illegal" based on what? All occupations aren't equally illegal, the rules for occupation are spelled out in The Hague convention and geneva conventions.

T

he other Arab countries were the same ones that supported the Palestinians during the civil war in 1948 -- being under Jordanian or Egyptian rule was much closer to self-determination than being under Israeli rule.

That's ridiculous logic for starters. It's just totally nonsensical.

Beyond the broken logic though, is the reality that the Palestinians only achieved any semblance of self rule following the Oslo accords, during the Israeli occupation. Prior to Oslo there was no government, elected officials, constitution or land under their authority.

When the Palestinians living in the West Bank attempted semi-self rule against Jordan's wishes in the 70s, the army was sent in to crush any resistance. Between 3,400-20,000 Palestinians were killed, and thousands more deported to Lebanon.

Palestinians living in the West Bank and Gaza actually have self-rule. The state of Palestine has been officially recognized by most UN member states.

Either way, I would imagine that 100% of Palestinians would have preferred either outcome versus living under the repressive occupation by Israel.

Ok. Why?

The Palestinians' only gained any opportunities for an independent state via Israel.

[DanTex]

38. I could ask you the same thing.

In fact, this isn't the first time that things I've read on this board have veered significantly from any history book I've seen. Just the other day I was told that the Zionist migrants mainly settled on land without any people on it, that there wasn't really a native Arab population in most of Palestine. Then I'm told that the territories seized by Israel in 1967 were legally up for grabs due to the fact that a Palestinian state hadn't been established there.

As far as the Jordanian occupation, let's start with Wikipedia:

Unlike any other Arab country to which they fled after the 1948 Arab–Israeli War, Palestinian refugees in the West Bank (and on the East Bank) were given Jordanian citizenship on the same basis as existing residents. However, many of the refugees continued to live in camps and relied on UNRWA assistance for sustenance. Palestinian refugees constituted more than a third of the kingdom's population of 1.5 million.

In the Jordanian parliament, the West and East Banks received 30 seats each, having roughly equal populations. The first elections were held on 11 April 1950. Although the West Bank had not yet been annexed, its residents were permitted to vote. The last Jordanian elections in which West Bank residents would vote were those of April 1967, but their parliamentary representatives would continue in office until 1988, when West Bank seats were finally abolished.

Wow, Jordanian citizenship on the same basis as existing residents! Seats in the Jordanian parliament to the West Bank! You'll have to remind me of when Israel did that. I also don't recall checkpoints, security walls, curfews, etc. Must have missed that chapter.

Calling what the the Palestinians have in the West Bank "self-rule" is preposterous. It's not self-rule when there are foreign troops occupying and people can't move freely and Israel takes whatever land it wants to build settlements on. It's like claiming that student council makes high-school students under self-rule. The closest thing to self-rule occurred in Gaza, but as HRW and other have argued, Gaza is still occupied since Israel still maintained effective control there even without the physical presence of troops, for example, when Israel put Gaza "on a diet" as a form of collective punishment for voting the wrong party.

Either way, I would imagine that 100% of Palestinians would have preferred either outcome versus living under the repressive occupation by Israel.

Ok. Why?

The Palestinians' only gained any opportunities for an independent state via Israel.

Why? Well, first of all, conditions under Israeli occupation are clearly worse than they were under Jordanian occupation. Trying to predict what would have happened if Israel had not invaded is difficult and necessarily speculative, but the point of comparison is 50 years of brutal occupation and settlement building, which is going to continue into the forseeable future (if I had to bet, my money would be on another 50 years of occupation). If Jordan ruled, maybe Palestinians would be treated like second-class Jordanian citizens, similar to the way Arab Israelis are treated now. Maybe pressure from other Arab nations would have resulted in Jordan given them their own state. But, either way, could the conditions of Palestinians in occupied territories possibly have turned out worse?

[Shaktimaan]

41. Let's do this one at a time.

In fact, this isn't the first time that things I've read on this board have veered significantly from any history book I've seen. Just the other day I was told that the Zionist migrants mainly settled on land without any people on it, that there wasn't really a native Arab population in most of Palestine.

Right. This is why I asked you what history books you've been reading. Both of those points are entirely accurate. For confirmation all you have to do is look up the areas in pre-47 Palestine where Jewish immigrants settled versus where Arab villages/cities existed. There were absolutely examples of zionists purchasing land occupied by Arab farmers who were then evicted. But the vast majority of Zionist settlements was on unoccupied land. Look at a demographic map from 1900 and compare it with a later one. The British conducted censuses.

The urbanization of native Arabs during this period was primarily due to other factors. For example the modernized farming techniques European transplants used drove prices down, leaving many Arab farmers unable to earn a living wage. The ideological discrimination against hiring Arab labor on the part of zionists resulted in these former agrarian workers to flock to cities for work.

There were plenty of negative/disruptive effects the mass Zionist immigration had on native palestinian communities. There's plenty if areas worth criticizing. But the historical facts are well documented, and aren't really under dispute.

Regarding the areas of Palestine inhabited by existing communities... In 1900 there were around 500,000 people living in an area currently housing about 20,000,000. That includes modern day Israel, Jordan, Gaza and the West Bank. (Out of this area, only land west of the Jordan river was open to Jewish immigration... Around 27% of the total.) Places like the Negev are still relatively uninhabited today. Of course most of the land wasn't already occupied.

I am curious what books you've read that gave you conflicting information.

[DanTex]

44. One more time, then, I'd ask you the same question.

Here's the thread I was talking about:
http://www.democraticunderground.com/?com=view_post&forum=1134&pid=79100

I'll cut and paste for you:

The First Aliyah (1882– 1903), as we covered in Chapter 4, saw the immigration of 25,000 Jews into Palestine. But this group was mostly made up of people who were far more interested in parting company with Russia than anything ideological. As much as half would leave Palestine upon arriving, observing the lack of developed land and opportunity. 7 Many of the immigrants were surprised to find little cultivable land available, on the one hand, and the presence of another culture on the other. After a three-month stay in Palestine in 1891, Ahad Ha’am (pen name of Asher Ginzberg), a prominent Eastern European Jewish essayist and Zionist leader, wrote the following in a piece entitled “Truth from the Land of Palestine”:

We abroad are used to believing that Eretz Israel is now almost totally desolate, a desert that is not sowed, and that anyone who wishes to purchase land there may come and purchase as much as he desires. But in truth this is not the case. Throughout the country it is difficult to find fields that are not sowed. Only sand dunes and stony mountains that are not fit to grow anything but fruit trees – and this is only after hard labor and great expense of clearing and reclamation – only these are not cultivated. 8

The Second Aliyah (1904– 14) consisted of 30,000 Jews and resulted in an equal, and maybe greater, return rate than that of the first, 9 but the immigrants in this wave arrived with a larger sense of political purpose. The Jews of the second wave of immigration were steely in their resolve and fired with socialist zeal. The majority was secular and gave little thought to what some saw as the religiosity of their situation. As Mandel clarifies:

Back home they had denied or denounced both Jewish tradition and czarist government as well as God. They were no more subdued before Ottoman writ and Arab custom. They brought with them an air and swagger of rebelliousness. They were revolutionaries, come to create a new heaven and a new earth.... 10

With focused intent the immigrants of the Second Aliyah continued what the earlier immigrants had inaugurated, though somewhat feebly. They acquired as much land as possible so as to begin to “create for the Jewish people a home in Palestine.” 11 Through the “conquest of labor,” Zionists at the turn of the century applied a philosophy slightly divergent from many of the earlier immigrants, namely, an emphasis on establishing settlements that would operate exclusively on Jewish labor. In other words, the fellahin who had just been reduced to tenant farmers as a result of the Ottoman land laws and Zionist land purchases would now be unwelcome on the land altogether.

Harms, Gregory; Ferry, Todd M. (2012-06-14). The Palestine-Israel Conflict: A Basic Introduction (Kindle Locations 1158-1182). Pluto Press. Kindle Edition.

You are mistaking "sparsely populated" for "empty". Yes, obviously population density is much higher now than back then. That's because now there are things like major cities and refugee camps, whereas in 1900 there were mostly subsistence farmers.

And it also makes perfect sense that most of the arable land would have been used, the nature of people (and plants and animals, for that matter) being to spread out over habitable territory. It would have been quite odd if the native Arabs had left large swaths of farmable land unused, so that on the off chance that a group of Europeans decided to move there to establish an ethnically homogeneous nation, they wouldn't have to displace the native population.

[Shaktimaan]

33. Sorry, what?

UN designated Palestinian land?

Besides the point that the UN doesn't have the authority to "designate" land to any state, there's the fact that no Palestinian state even existed to designate land to. What are you talking about?

[Shaktimaan]

28. There's a problem with your reasoning.

None of the states you listed meet any of the standards you set for being a "pariah." None have trade embargoes or university exclusions against them. None have been threatened with ICC or UN investigations. Trade and travel haven't been outlawed or even condemned by wide consensuses.

Yet all of them, china, Russia, ME states like Syria, Lebanon, Libya, Kuwait, etc., enforce policies violating human rights regularly on scales that dwarf Israel's most egregious scandals. Saudi Arabia arrests rape victims for adultery. No one suggests they be held to any acceptable standard. China's occupation (annexation), of Tibet includes every aspect you fault Israel for, but at an exponential scale, both in violence, oppression and transfer of Han settlers to Tibet's interior. No condemnations are voiced.

There are other nations whose crimes are as or more egregious than Israel's, but they are all pariahs.

Ok then. Who are they?

Then there is the seizing of land. For comparison, when Russia decides to claim parts of Ukraine for itself, the entire world condemns them immediately and there is talk of sanctions and to on. Yet Israel seized the territory in 1967, has held it for almost 50 years, and has gradually but consistently settled the land they are occupying. Are there other countries that have seized foreign land by force like this recently? Saddam Hussein invading Kuwait comes to mind. In that case the US intervened with force.

Ukraine and Kuwait are poor parallels for a few reasons. Firstly, they were/are both sovereign states with clear borders long since recognized by the international community. Next, (in the case of Kuwait at least, I don't know as much about the Russian incursion), saddam's intent was annexation. This was never a military occupation resulting from a conflict between their two states. You're right about how rare it is in modern times for a country to just unilaterally invade a neighboring sovereign state, intending to simply annex it on to their own.

In Israel's case were dealing with an entirely different set of circumstances. The land Israel occupied during the six day war was invaded as part of a defensive response to Arab states' aggression. In the case of Jordan especially, who Israel all-but-begged to stay out of the war, only to attack Israel from the WB and Jerusalem, aka: the areas later occupied by the IDF, following Jordan's withdrawal.

The people inhabiting the WB and EJ were then Jordanian citizens; the OPTs were de jure unclaimed territory, (discounting the Jordanian attempt to annex them, as it went unrecognized by all states but one, Britain.) No movement yet existed that claimed the OPTs as the Palestinian state, (in fact the PLO's 1964 charter specifically named these lands as NOT part of Palestine, which they claimed to be under Israeli occupation. This clause was later rescinded.)

But at the time, the expectation that the OPTs were rightfully Palestinian land that Israel should cede to Palestine didn't exist, and wouldn't have made sense. Until 1988 the people in question were citizens of an existing state.

The OPT itself contained areas that indigenous Jews, now Israelis, had themselves been expelled from less than 20 years earlier. Places like east Jerusalem contain the world's most significant religious and historical sites in Judaism. Hebron had (until the 1929 massacre and expulsion), a significant Jewish population for nearly 3,000 years.

Point being, it wasn't foreign land belonging to another state. It was land they not only lived on until recently, and in some cases still owned, but land they were specifically entitled to settle, as granted by the League of Nations mandate, the terms of which remained legally valid until a sovereign power assumes control. This is expected to occur as part of the negotiated two state settlement bt Israel and Palestine. This is why no countries keep their embassies in Jerusalem, (even though Israel claims it as it's capital.) Until a treaty between Israel and Palestine validates the legal border, areas like Jerusalem, (all of it), are technically disputed.

Don't take this as an argument in support of settlements in the OPT. As part of any realistic treaty, everyone knows that all but the largest settlement blocks along the border will have to be abandoned. That said, the initial settlement projects in the 60s are not exactly the colonial enterprise, (stealing Palestinian land while simultaneously denying them self-determination), that you portrayed in your post.

[DanTex]

31. "Pariah" is a sliding scale, from North Korea on one end, to, say, the UK on the other.

The China example you bring up is a good one -- a nation that should be more of a pariah than it is, given their consistent and egregious human rights violations. I believe that the reason the US doesn't deal with them more harshly is economic.

Nevertheless, China is definitely well further along on the pariah scale than Israel. We don't ship China billions of dollars of weapons to use in their repression, and then allow their leader to say things like "never question us".

Other pariah states: Iran, Sudan, Zimbabwe, Cuba, etc.


Regarding seizing of land. It is absurd to suggest that Palestinian territories were "up for grabs" in 1967 due to the fact that there wasn't a formal Palestinian state at the time. First, there was the original UN partition, which Israel had already exceeded in the 1948 war, and thereafter there was the armistice lined, which served as the border for 20 years until 1967. And after the 1967 war, the UN declared that territorial gains as a result of military action were illegitimate, resolution 242, and that the Israeli military was obligated to withdraw. You might argue that the Jordanian occupation pre-1967 was also illegitimate, but at best that means replacing one illegitimate occupation with another, and still the territories were seized militarily. So, as far as seizing foreign lands militarily, the comparison to Kuwait or Ukraine is valid.

There is the question of intent, and this is tricky, because Israeli is not a single person that can have intents in the same way that a human can. However, to the extent that intent can be discerned from actions, the fact that Israel has been building settlements for 50 years now, along with the very fact that they've held the territories this long, pretty much rules out the claim that territorial acquisition was not part of the equation.

Looking further back to the history of the Zionist movement provides further support for this claim. Basically, the idea was to build a Jewish homeland in a place that already had a native population, and it was understood (and obvious) that this couldn't work without displacing the native population and acquiring territory. Even if we concede that the 1948 acquisitions are legitimate based on the principle that if you are attacked, you get to take some of the land from the people who attack you (does this principle show up elsewhere in modern history, I actually don't know), the expansion of borders while maintaining the desired level of ethnic purity couldn't have happened without the Nakba. And, as I've pointed out since 1967 the settlements have grown consistently. So if there were no territorial acquisition motive at all in 1967, that would be an aberration in an otherwise long sequence of events that consistently involved acquiring territory and displacing Arabs to maintain Jewish homogeneity.

Of course, the 1967 war wasn't all about territorial acquisition. In fact I tend to agree that at the outset, it was more about self-defense than, and only later did territory become a larger objective. However, is feeling unsafe a legitimate reason to grab land by force from one's neighbors? I doubt it. Neither Russia nor Saddam, to my knowledge, came out and claimed that they wanted more land so they were going to invade. Saddam claimed that Kuwait was depressing the price of oil and violating OPEC quotas. Russia claims it is protecting the democratically elected regime from a Western supported coup. In all cases, it is still territory acquired militarily.

More important than all this is that Israel still occupies the territories, it still imposes what is in effect apartheid on the Arab population there, and it still continues to build settlements. In fact, Israel's position would be more defensible if the original settlements had been colonial enterprises, rather than the more recent ones. In that situation Israel could say, look, sorry, we did some bad stuff in the past (but so did most every other country), but now we are going to play by the rules. That's not what's happened.

[Shaktimaan]

34. Huh?

Nevertheless, China is definitely well further along on the pariah scale than Israel. We don't ship China billions of dollars of weapons to use in their repression, and then allow their leader to say things like "never question us".

US trade with china exceeds 250 billion each year. It's the second largest trade relationship on earth. We don't need to give them billions in weapons because we give them hundreds of billions in cash.

We never allow their leader to tell us never to question them? Really? That makes them a pariah? Does it matter that we DO allow them to keep an artificially low currency rate which creates a trade deficit absurdly skewed in their favor? Because that example, unlike yours, actually matters.

So far your two examples of why China's more of a pariah than Israel apply to every other state on earth as well. China has a permanent seat on the UNSC, has the second largest economy on the planet, and currently trades with every, single, other country.

How exactly are they "more of a pariah" than Israel?

[DanTex]

39. Let's run some numbers.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_GDP_(PPP)
http://www.ustr.gov/countries-regions/china-mongolia-taiwan/peoples-republic-china
http://www.ustr.gov/countries-regions/europe-middle-east/middle-east/north-africa/israel

China's GDP is $13T. Isreal's GDP is $270B.
US trade with China totalled $579B. With Israel trade was $45B.

So trade with China amounts to 4.5% of China's GDP, whereas trade with Israel amounts to 16.7% of Israel's GDP. Clearly, Israel benefits more from trade with the US than China.

Also, to say that we "give them" hundreds of billions in cash is absurd. Trade consists of imports and exports primarily between private entities in either country. This is not a "gift". A "gift" is what we do with weapons to Israel. At the amount of $3B per year, which is 1% of Israel's GDP.

Not only that, but the US actively collaborates with Israel on the development of military technologies, and shares these technologies. This is the opposite of the situation with China, where China tries to steal our technologies, and we actively try to prevent them.

Economic relations between the US and China aren't as smooth as you make them out to be. There are periodic sanctions and tariffs in response to economic or political events, for example, after Tiananmen Square.

[Shaktimaan]

40. Seriously?

You're arguing that the reason that US trade with Israel makes up more of their GDP than wrt China is because of the international community's view of China as a pariah? (Compared to Israel?)

I'm sorry but that makes absolutely no sense at all.

If you're trying to demonstrate that china is ostracized in the global community, then you need to find evidence to support THAT. Percentage of US trade vs their respective GDPs has nothing to do with your premise.

This conversation is moronic. I'm done.

[DanTex]

45. I'm arguing that China is more of a Pariah than Israel for a number of reasons.

"Moronic" is the fact that you're even arguing this point. You were the one who brought up international trade as a rebuttal, I merely pointed out that, even measuring by trade, Israel benefits more from trade with the US than China.

Of course, there is more to international relations than trade, for example military aid (you seem to be confused as to the difference between trade and aid -- trade is not "giving them money" as you put it). I encourage you to read my last post again.

[Mosby]

17. Israel is not an example of what your asking about

Last edited Fri Aug 29, 2014, 02:40 PM - Edit history (1)

But Turkey is:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Turkish_invasion_of_Cyprus

Also KSA, Kuwait, Quatar, UAE and Bahrain. They all discriminate against non-muslims and practice apartheid.

[Abu Mezur]

43. loaded question

I mean, there are a lot of parts to the question to which not everyone will agree.

You might say Russia does those things.

[Abu Mezur]

46. Actually the best answer to this is . . .

ISIS.

[uppityperson]

47. ISIS is a nation? No, they are a group, the OP asked for a nation.