I'm wondering exactly what are the suggested solutions of the people debating here. b/c batching about the jews really isn't going to help, so how about some constructive ideas.

AZ-2 state. that I got.

What are the suggestion everyone else would make. please be specific, I am very interested in hearing some ideas, and I am not being sarcastic this time.

My solution is for everyone to stop caring about their cause and just learn to live together.

Because that's the only way it's going to happen IMO.

HIPPIE'D?

Long hair not necessary.... losing dogmatic attitudes necessary

Didn't I just state that's not my job? And I'm not batching about the Jews, I'm batching about Israel and its government. It's just like how I disagree with and do not support other countries and their governments. My concern is only that one country doesn't abuse another. In this case, Israel has done so to the Palestinians. They should be made to stop and undo that. How they do it is their problem (seeing as they like.. created it in the first place an' all).

I do completely agree with post #52, BTW.

Maybe Israel can banish all the Palestinians to the Phantom Zone. I'm not sure that's a positive solution, though.

Click to view attachment

Did it work?

I was more picturing Yasser Arafar with his hands pressed to the glass

cmon man you know that's what I meant give me a break on semantics kthx. anyway, I just don't see a point in batching w/o a point of view on viable solutions. that's like crying over spilled milk but being unwilling to offer any ideas for cleaning it up. doesn't matter whose milk it is.

LMH is right, but I think its reasonable to not expect that to occur, if the last 5000 years are any example. so does anyone have a viable solution?

A set of 2 chicks at the same time for every dude.

Problem solved, let's go get a taco.

WINNER!!!

Click to view attachment

Picky, picky

maybe we could put mahmoud, G.W., and Chavez in there too.

*does not do commissions*

Dood, my priorities have changed. And the more I hear and find out about this topic, the more they keep shifting against the side of Israel. My solution is to turn the entire place into one secular, democratic nation with all the Israeli Jews and all the Palestinians to live there with each other. Nobody has to MOVE or TRANSPLANT everywhere. And it would be named Palestine because sorry, 60 years isn't long enough to make me think: "Well, too late, sucks to be you, Palestinians, they're there now."

"Viable solutions" are only relative to goals and priorities. Mine just keep shifting to restoring the country of Palestine in FULL. Because that's the only wrong I've seen that needs righting.

And the more I read these threads, the less I find myself caring about Israel existing in any of these solutions. Were I in the Israelis' place, the logical conclusion I would draw is that my presence in the Middle East is not in the interest of the general welfare -- it's purely my own selfish interest.

And I like you, AZ. You're intelligent and thoughtful in your views and positions. But in all these threads, the logic behind these arguments I keep hearing = . The more I read, the less I find myself thinking any "viable" solution involves Israel existing. So change its government and its name; whoever wants to live there lives there.

I think I am agreeing with this.

thank you, while I may not agree with you 100 percent, I do see the value in your idea.

Why thank you. I appreciate that (honest, no sarcasm or anything).

Anyway, I'm passionate about this issue. I'm passionate about a country my family hasn't lived in for 2,000 years. Now I would like to think I've handled myself in a better manner here then I have in past threads that deal with issues close to my heart.

The bottom line is that we both want something similar. We both want peace, where Israelis and Palestinians can live in peace.
That said I have to disagree with you about Israel not existing.

Firstly, there's the homeland issue. You don't care. I get that. I'm really not asking you to. I'm just asking you to look at it from someone else's perspective. During WWII we were slaughtered for no other reason then some dickweed dictator's insane racial prejudices. That capped off 5,000 years of persecution.
We tried to flee the Nazis, but we found the doors of the western democracies, the cradles of liberty, closed. Canada, a country I love very much, has possibly the worst record when it comes to this.

So look at it like that; every country you've settled in has persecuted you at one time or another, and when things got REALLY bad the nations of the world closed their doors to you. That's where the need and desire for a Jewish homeland comes from. From the belief that if a nation decided to start killing Jews again, we're not sure we would find sanctuary anywhere else.

I'm not opposed to establishing a Palestinian state, in fact I would like to see it happen. I would also like to see Israel continue to exist though.

Second of all, there's no nation of Palestine to restore. The country was called Israel and Judea during Biblical times. After the Romans kicked us out they renamed it Palestine. Then it became a Byzantine province, then a territory of the Ottoman Empire. After that it became a UN Mandate, under the supervision of the British, until they pulled out and the State of Israel emerged following the Israeli War of Independence.
The Arabs living in Israel are actually Jordanian in decent. After Jordon refused to take them in following the Six Day War they took the title of "Palestinians."
Before that the term "Palestine" was simply a secular name for the region the Romans came up with.

So there is no nation of Palestine to restore. That's not to say that I don't think one should be established, it should. The West Bank should be handed over to the PLO and moulded into a new Palestinian homeland.
I just don't think Israel should be forced out of existence to create that homeland.

We all try (most of us do, at least). I've my own share of handlings I wish I'd gone about better.

Agreed. I'm not sure as to the circumstances of why there were Jewish refugee quotas here in the United States that failed to permit their full immigration here should they have chosen, but thus far, the US completely failed here. The rest of the western nations seemed no different.

On the face of it looking back at, that would appear to be the case. However, the idea of a "nation" being an independent autonomous political entity is comparatively new. It's a false argument to suggest that Palestine didn't really exist as a nation prior to Israel's creation. A lot of current nations didn't really exist by that reasoning either.

*shrug* The Palestinians, regardless of who they're descended from and what they're actually called, have lived there for roughly the last 2000 years. The Israeli Jews have migrated in sporadically over about the last 100. I think, if anything, it's much more the case of the entire place correctly being the Palestinian "homeland", with the consideration of creating a Jewish homeland there at their sufferance. There would certainly have been a Palestinian nation there today had Zionists not headed them off at the pass.

The Jewish people essentially moved into someone else's home (who had no problems letting them live there), kept moving in, took the home and announced it to the public as belonging to the Jewish people now and following their religion, and telling the owners, "Well, yeah, we'd like to create some rooms that belong to you guys".

So now, we have:
<Israel> Give us a viable solution to this problem.
<me> Uh... move out of the house you guys took from the people who were living there?
<Israel> Stop batching about our people and give us a viable solution to the problem.
<me> .... It IS viable. There are plenty of viable solutions. All the immediate participants (on all sides) just refuse to acknowledge any of them as such because they refuse to admit that their transgressions need to be undone.

So the issue isn't any lack of viable solutions. It's that the involved parties are choosing, of their own free accord, never to relinquish the spoils they've enjoyed from their wrongs. And this is fundamentally important because it draws a much clearer line on what those parties are entitled to and what they aren't. The rest of the world can't be forced to continue proffering "viable solutions" to problems the Middle East keep choosing to create because of their refusal to grow up. So I don't see Israel as being entitled to be there. Despite the shameful behavior of Western nations ostensibly sympathetic to the plight of the jewish people, no one forced the Jews to take Palestinian land.

The other problem I have with your reasoning is that if some bigger, bruter force comes to militarily oust the Israeli government and stays there for 60 years or whatever, they have just as legitimate a claim to being there as you claim Israel has now, based on your arguments.

I am not. Glue, you above all should know, the lesson NEVER learned is that forcing a political system upon ANYONE is not accepted in any way. Besides, isn't that what they have been trying to accomplish for this entire time? Separate countries/segregation is the only legitimate outcome. Of course it's all Britain's fault but no one there seems to care about that.

The thing is, I don't see the solution you're suggesting as being viable. You can't go into Israel and say "ok, we've decided that you're not going to be a country anymore. Those people who've been sending suicide bombers into your malls, restaurants, and buses? They're running things now."

And no, no one forced the Jews of 1948 to pick Palestine. How is punishing modern Israelis by tacking away their country just by any stretch of the imagination? That's not even considering the homeland question.


So your answer is "sorry people keep trying to kill you and the countries of the word deny you sanctuary, but hey, you don't get a homeland"? Come on.
That's more or less....

Rest of the world: We don't like you, if you live here we're going to persecute you.
Jewish people: Fine, we'll have our own country, we won't bother you anymore, just don't bother us.
Rest of the world: No fair! You don't get to have your own country! You have to live here, where we've already said we're going to persecute us!

No, a Jewish homeland is needed. During the 1920's, in Europe anyway, genocide was considered a thing of the past, a relatively recent past, but past non the less. There was no way a European nation could even consider slaughtering millions of people based on race going into 1933 right? Look what happened. Just prior to Hitler coming to power millions of Jews thought of themselves as Germans, Poles, ect.... first, and Jews second. That feeling has never returned, because the Holocaust proved that if allowed, people would turn on us.
I'll say that I'd like to think that I'm a Canadian first, and a Jew second (it's easier considering I'm half Loyalist), but there's always that "warning" sign in the back of my mind. Simply put we don't trust the western democracies to look out for us, despite the pretty words they carve on monuments. We asked for their help during our darkest days, but they said "tough luck."
So if we can't count on them for help we figure we have to count on ourselves, and having a homeland we control would serve as a safe haven should the Holocaust 2.0 ever start up.

Now I admit the creation of the State of Israel was handeled in a piss poor manor. Yet it was established, and is now the only Jewish state in existence. It's become the homeland we need. There are problems with it, lots of problems, and I'm more then willing to split it with the Palestinians. Yet I don't support it's eradication as an independent entity.

Lets say you create the secular nation of Palestine, where Jews and Muslims frolic together under the soda pop waterfall in the jelly bean field, etc etc.....That's all well and good, except for the fact that you now run the risk of some dickweed Palestinian national (and they exist, despite what some think) being elected to power and 1) kicking the Jews out, 2) limiting the civil liberties of Jews, or 3) closing the country off from further Jewish immigration. And then we lose what left we have of a homeland.
So no, a secular, all inclusive nation of Palestine is unacceptable and not viable because it eliminates the only Jewish state in the world.

Now if you want to take some patch of land elsewhere in the world and award it as a Jewish state as part of the creation of a secular Palestine, then you're on to something.
Of course you would have to arrange for settlement, the creation of infrastructure, the recognition of statehood by the Muslim world, recognition of independence from whichever nation the land formally belonged to, and guaranteeing rights to visit Palestine for the purposes of making pilgrimages to Holy sites.
Essentially if the powers that be can promise the establishment of a new Jewish state somewhere else in the world, and help that new state get off the ground, then yes, I'm willing to listen to plans for a new secular nation of Palestine.
In short, you can't take away our homeland without promising us a new one somewhere else. Was it LM who said Montana? I'm fine with that.

Now as nice of a solution as that is, I don't see it happening. I don't see essentially transplanting a nation gaining any ground in the foreign affairs circles.
So if both groups want to claim that small patch of sand in the Middle East as their own, I say let them split it, and let each group run their own affairs. That's the viable solution I see. And I agree with you when you say the leaders of the parties involved are too pig headed to see a viable solution.
Both the Israeli and Palestinian leaders are acting like children, blinded to a viable solution.

We (you and I) just disagree about what that solution is.
*Although I would be willing to consider yours if you included the creation of a new Jewish state elsewhere as part of the deal to create a secular Palestine*

That's actually not what they've been trying to accomplish all this time. They've been trying to accomplish separate nations, which is all Israel is willing to concede. The proposal of a secular, non-sectarian Palestine is from the Fatah faction of the PLO and the Neturei Karta Jews. If it's democratic and they don't like that political system, they can vote it away.

Beyond that, my understanding is that the majority of both Jews and Palestinians in the region did not have any problem co-existing before Israel's declaring independence. While that has probably decreased since then, think the majority would still peacefully co-exist now (more or less). So the only ones who don't want that are conservative hardliner minorities from every side who somehow keep managing to exert control over the population. Why should a small group who are only preserving their own interests keep perpetuating misery?

In any case, that entire land should go back to being Palestine. The Israeli government needs to go away. If Jewish people still want to live there, that should be between them and Palestine. And the US should have no business backing Israel. If they insist on being in the Middle East, then they should pay for it themselves and we'll see how long they last. I've no problems with all the Israeli Jews moving here. Mosta those IDF chicks are hotties.

The same way Jews couldn't go into Palestine and say, "Okay, we've decided that this is our country now"?

And who says we can't return a country that was taken from someone else? "We" can do anything. Just like we, the world, went into Germany an' stopped them from fully genociding someone. Israel is coming to us for a solution, then they're gonna get the solution we give them. They come to us for money, it's our choice to give it to them or not.

At the moment, I see it as quite the less evil compared to continuing to allow them to sit on land they took just recently from those who nowhave nothing.

Countries of the world denied them sanctuary?

Seeing as that's what you told the Palestinians...
And, I'm sorry, but the rest is just whining. Nobody said you can't have your own country. I am saying:

1. You can't have it by taking it from someone else. Period.
2. Just because the world probably should've treated you better doesn't mean they "owe" you your own country. There's a lotta people who don't get to have their own country.
3. If you couldn't negotiate a better solution than let's-take-someone-else's-land, it's nobody else's fault but your own.
4. And if you insist on staying there and getting killed by all your neighbors, that's also nobody else's fault but your own.
5. The world isn't obligated to put up with all the problems created by your "solution".

And yet, no matter how macho Israel tries to act, they and their neighbors are still constantly dumping their problem on the rest of the world. Even worse, the rest of us are stupid enough to keep getting involved.
Too bad. I don't even care that there is any Jewish state in the world (in the same way I don't care that there's any other type of state in the world). Why would it be different were it anyone else besides Jews? I don't even believe any ethnic group "needs" their own country, much less any religious group. There is nothing so special about "the only Jewish state in the world" that makes me recognize any legitimacy in depriving another population of their country.

And what you describe are the same risks had by every other nation and any other people.

Taking somebody else's home is taking somebody else's home. Sure, the Palestinians have terrorists and desperat nutjobs doing all kindsa unethical things. But the Palestinians as a whole were the not the ones who took someone else's land and chance for a country away. Why does the illegitimate squatter get to keep it? Lack of charity and generosity from the neighborhood to a poor, starving man does not justify that man taking someone else's house.

I fully support giving some other patch of land as a Jewish state. But that solution is no more "viable" to the selfish parties involved in this entire debate than any other. The other complication in all this is the whole crackpot "Holy Land" business.
As am I. It's got more natural resources than Israel does, I'd think.
My greater concern is that the world isn't their babysitters. And seeing as I think most Palestinians would be happy just to get all their land back, they're less the problem I see here.

But I want you to read your own words carefully:
Now who're the "terrorists"? Israel's the one that took land from someone else. And they're the ones trying to hold it hostage. Why am I supposed to respect that? Because of the Holocaust?

I once read someone describing Israel as the abused child who grows up to be abusive. I think there is some truth in that. "Never Forget" cuts both ways. "Never allow it to happen again," okay. "Never allow ourselves to be defined by anything else," eh I'm not so sure.

You know what gets me is that there are people who don't believe Isreal should exist because it was a land grab and that they were not there first. I don't hear those same people saying that America people should not exist either.

The fact of the matter is that every country got their country by force of some nature and its theirs now.

If Mexico sent suicide bombers at us over and over we would sit back and take it? We would probably end up the capitial of Mexico again.

It took America a while to get a conscience on the whole "native American genocide" thing, and by that point they were already totally wiped out... in Israel's case, this is still history that people were alive to witness.

if youtube had existed, the u.s. wouldnt.

Not to go off on a tangent or anything, but Mexico (and other parts south) already have an invasion force of between 10 and 20 million in the United States right now. And we aren't doing anything about it.

RECONQUISTA'D!

If by "invasion" you mean "supporting the US economy by taking shitty jobs that nobody else wants" then okay.

Trust me when I say I had already thought of that but since just being here is not as extreme like suicide bombers I did not use that anology.

***edit*** at first I thought you were talking about illeagles then I read that.

that was funny.

I would say invasion by "draining the u.s. social security/medicaid programs and taking the jobs below minimum wage so citizens/legal residents can't get them, then sending most of the money to other countries and helping their economies."
that's here in GA though, maybe its different in TX.

lol, nobody can legally get a job below minimum wage, that's the point

I don't begrudge people who work hard for a living. I don't agree with the illegal entry thing, but I'm not willing to demonize anyone over it.

FWIW, I'm not demonizing the people that are sneaking in just to work and support their families. We've got a cherry system set up for them to do that.

I'm demonizing the ones that want to turn the United States in to New New Mexico.

And being snarky.

All at the same time!

I don't want anyone to think I'm demonizing. my wife came here from Mexico. she paid a fine and did the paperwork to get her residency. she also worked and paid taxes. she is proud to be from Mexico but realizes that many of the people coming now using all the govt programs available without paying taxes are part of the problem with our economy.

and again I am forced to throw in that the fair tax could help this.

Edited and Fix'd for me...

Sounds like a typical topic at my house.

Sort of more on-topic, I could point to areas of government spending that have made a much greater contribution to our current economic situation.

A-men Brother the fair tax would solve a myriad of problems

The only problem I have with the fair tax has been the people advocating it.

hey!

Maybe this should go in another thread, but what in the nine hells is a "fair" tax? And who''re the ones defining "fair"? Hehehe..

fairtax.org

"It abolishes all federal personal and corporate income taxes, gift, estate, capital gains, alternative minimum, Social Security, Medicare, and self-employment taxes and replaces them with one simple, visible, federal retail sales tax administered primarily by existing state sales tax authorities."

oops

I meant like, the national figures advocating it

I knowed that...HUCKABEE'D!

Don't get me wrong, I have nothing against Huckabee as a person

but no way in hell would I want him leading the free world

ARGH!!! We disagree again...

Ohhh, the sales tax thing. Corps'll never let that fly, I'd think. They get most of their deductions based on the argument that their business expenses are some other business's taxable income.

*buys on the internet*

yeah, the flat tax sounds awesome to me

Corporations do not pay taxes.

More correctly, corporations pass what they pay in taxes on to consumers.

In any event, under the Fair Tax business are not taxed on business to business purchases for the production of goods and services.

Hmm.. still never fly. Americans oppose anything that forces them to realize the truth of their financial situation, regardless of party/philosophical bent.