Jump to content

hpslugga

Legacy Members
  • Posts

    3266
  • Joined

Everything posted by hpslugga

  1. It's a kind of self-reinforcing form of psychosis, especially with people like Dershowitz that went so far as to state, on Harvard's website, that Norman Finkelstein's late mother was a Nazi collaborator. His evidence? She survived the Holocaust!!! How could she do that unless she was a collaborator?!?! JUST ASKING QUESTIONS!!! At the end of the day, their whole schtick is exactly that: schtick. Every logical fallacy known to man has been used by characters like that to justify the occupation, and every argument they've used to justify the occupation is a logical fallacy. The political right likes to bitch about so-called "identity politics," and yet they cannot for the life of them actually identify it when it's staring them dead in the face...off the reflection of the fucking mirror.
  2. Since this is the second time that rocket surgeon's name has been dropped here, I would be remiss if I didn't refer everyone to the absolute best takedown anyone has ever done on him (and think of the territory that covers): https://www.amazon.com/Beyond-Chutzpah-Misuse-Anti-Semitism-History-ebook/dp/B072X6XGBM
  3. Not so much genocide as it is "force them to live lives so unbearable that they'll eventually all pack their shit and leave." Either way, no, there's no way of stopping it outside of the US excusing itself from the issue.
  4. It's based on a similar saying, which is that if you took McCarthy's testicles and threw them into a drinking straw, it'd look like two kernels of corn rolling around in a storm drain.
  5. If that's her fate, I would then recommend that AOC swing by MTG's office, pop open the mail slot and say "hola! Dame un orden de panochitas...uh 1,2,3,4,5?"
  6. Oh I don't dispute any of this. My only point was to answer your question "why is nothing done?" Nothing is done because we more than abuse our power to veto anything, and in fact everything, that even vaguely criticizes Israel. We've even vetoed resolutions that merely call on all members to observe international law. That's extreme. That's like a lawyer saying "ok. I'm sitting here in a court room, with my bar card. I went to college, studied for the LSAT, passed the LSAT, went to law school, got my JD, passed the bar exam, I pay my bar fees on time every time, etc. I'm sitting here today as an officer of the court...AND FUCK THE LAW! But I would still like to make money off of it!"
  7. Weapon? That blonde bitch is so stupid that she'd leave herself to AOC to slap a ham sandwich on her back and starve her to death.
  8. And I would suggest to @DonkeyCigars that's the one defect of the UN: permanent members and what power they possess. Essentially, the UNSC is like a DA's office, except that it just takes one of the five assistant DA's to thwart any attempt at potential prosecution, even if the other 4 actively want it. Realistically, you're never going to get those 5 to relinquish the veto powers they possess in the UN, but if by some snowball's chance in hell they did, there's no way that Israel would still be occupying those three places at this point in history.
  9. And I should have added that the missing pieces, when put into practice, effectively broke up the West Bank into 3 cantons. So 3 West Bank cantons, East Jerusalem, Gaza, no border security, no air space security, no aquifer security, etc. That's even more offensive than when South Africa had the fucking bantustans.
  10. It wouldn't be a two-party state. It'd simply be two states with, optimally, what international legal scholars call "functional contiguity" between Gaza, the West Bank, and East Jerusalem. And in case you're wondering what that means, it refers to infrastructure. It'd be like if the US had a super highway between, let's say, Washington state and Alaska.
  11. Right, and the chasm between that and the next is most likely not within our lifetimes.
  12. If you’re referring to Camp David during the Clinton years, the figure was actually even higher. The figures I’ve seen suggest that Israel was willing to give back 94-96% of the land. The reason Camp David failed, and Israeli negotiator Schlomo Ben Ami has since conceded this, is that the missing 4-6% were pieces of fairly high value to the Palestinians. More importantly, however: -There was no mention of restoration of water rights -There was no mention of restoration of air space rights -There was no mention of withdrawing checkpoints -There was no mention of cessation of tree uprootings, farmland destruction, house demolitions, etc -Speaking of house demolitions, there was no mention of easing of difficulties obtaining house construction permits That, above all, is why Ben Ami himself conceded that the Camp David deal was impossible and that no Palestinian leader, not even that incompetent buffoon Saeb Erekat, would have accepted it. That’s also why Clinton came forth with his parameters at Taba near the end of his term...but Taba failed because Barak prematurely withdrew his negotiators. In fact if one takes Israeli political commentary even half serious, one comes away with the impression that Taba was just a last ditch election ploy and not a serious negotiation effort. More on that later. If anyone is curious about this, I’d suggest reading scholarship by Clayton Swisher and Ron Pundak. Since 1967, Israel has not made a good faith effort to resolve the occupation. That is what makes the occupation illegal, and there’s international precedent for such a label. Namibia took its case against South African occupation to the ICJ back in 1971. The ICJ subsequently ruled that the occupation was illegal because the occupier ceased attempting good faith efforts at a resolution. Israel has repeatedly sabotaged opportunities at good faith efforts, with the lone exception (and even that was forced upon them with no real alternative) being Camp David in 1978. And that was Egypt, not Palestine. They’ve repeatedly engaged in what the Likud government in particular calls “mowing the lawn,” which is when they go into Gaza and smash the place up with about 1-2k civilian casualties and untold property damage, they murdered 20k people in Lebanon to quash what Avner Yaniv called “Arafat’s peace offensive,” they’ve illegally blockaded Gaza for going on 16 years, they continue to expand settlement construction in the West Bank, and most importantly, they continue to beg the US to do their bidding on the international arena (Biden just vetoed an SC resolution this past week). Those are all the exact opposite of what any ICJ would call “good faith efforts.”
  13. If by "real" you mean "ideal," I sort of agree. The most ideal thing is for there not to be states at all, but that's another fight for another day. The two-state settlement is the goal now because that's the ultimate achievement within the context of the facts on the ground. Or as Chomsky puts it, "the two state settlement is the least rotten of all solutions;" the tacit concession being of course that it's still rotten.
  14. Which is why I said it's a gray area and that the rockets "could fall into that category." If they could, for example, show that they were intending to hit military personnel with that, there's no issue. What taps that shit down from "anything goes" into a "gray area" is the fact that those rockets have killed 28 people in the last 20 or so years. No one with a moral compass is trying to justify that. What honest people are saying is that even if these rockets are as grim as Israeli blowhards love to make believe, there's no comparison between that and what Israel does in the Occupied Territories. The reason I even brought that shit up is because the previous poster was going on about rockets as if that was the key issue to the last 54 years of this nightmare. It isn't, and he's dead wrong to imply that. He said "Is it lawful according to UN Charter you cite for Hamas to lob rockets at Israel?" Is it lawful to lob white phosphorous grenades at a school? Is it lawful to bomb UNRWA warehouses? Is it lawful to destroy homes? Is it lawful to construct settlement blocs in occupied territory? Is it lawful to construct walls around said settlement blocs? Those activities have done far more damage to the Palestinians than those "rockets" have done to the Israelis, and the Israeli actions are flatly, black and white, ipso facto illegal. That was my only point.
  15. Scary thing is that he’s encountered much worse than that.
  16. It's not up to me to make it easy for you or anyone else. I didn't get to my position by challenging random HF/SB posters as to their sources. I sought them out myself. https://ihl-databases.icrc.org/customary-ihl/eng/docs/v1_rul_rule145 https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/news/2014/08/mounting-evidence-deliberate-attacks-gaza-health-workers-israeli-army/ https://www.hrw.org/news/2014/09/11/israel-depth-look-gaza-school-attacks# https://www.hrw.org/sites/default/files/reports/iopt0309webwcover.pdf http://www.btselem.org/press_releases/20010207 http://www.btselem.org/publications/summaries/200202_policy_of_destruction https://www.justice.gov/sites/default/files/eoir/legacy/2013/06/14/israel_0694.pdf https://www.un.org/press/en/2004/icj616.doc.htm
  17. With all due respect, that's been done...precisely with the bolded portion of the quote to which you were responding.
  18. My opinion is not relevant. As to these “rockets,” first of all they’re not even rockets. They’re precious more than enhanced fireworks. But even there, you have a problem because there’s a concept in international law called belligerent reprisals. A people that are struggling to win self-determination against a party that’s determined to deny them that have permission to achieve those aims by any means necessary. These “rockets,” as people in the west are so feverishly trying to label them, could very well fall into that category. The law hasn’t been perfectly clear on that question. What is clear, and this is what people like you either aren’t aware of or conveniently overlook in service of some ideological nonsense, is what the IDF does in the Occupied Territories is far more illegal (and immoral) than the very worst of what Hamas or the PLO have ever even been accused of. The issue of belligerent reprisals represent a gray area. But what Israel's doing isn’t a gray area. What they’re doing is ipso facto in violation of the law and is also repulsively immoral. Judging by the rhetoric you use, you likely only consume mainstream media in the US, so you only get that fairy tale that the Israelis are so fond of telling: the story that they, the country that’s been militarily occupying Palestine for over 50 years, bombing hospitals, bombing schools, bombing UNRWA warehouses, lobbing white phosphorus grenades at same, uprooting trees, demolishing homes, systematically torturing political prisoners, et al in the process, are the “victims” and that the other side of those actions are the “victimizers.” Who has the moral high ground? That’s not even close, but it’s not even relevant. The question is “what does the law say?” Now, if you want to conflate the law with morality as if they were one and the same, that makes Israel look even worse: -They have not one atom of sovereignty over the 3 aforementioned areas. -Accordingly, they have no right to impose military blockades in Gaza. -They have no right to break up the West Bank by cantonizing them vis a vis establishing settlement blocs. -They have no right to erect walls to protect those settlements (which is about 80% of the wall). This statement, incidentally, isn’t the least bit controversial as it’s been affirmed by an International Court of Justice advisory opinion which was not only unanimous (a rare feat for the ICJ just by itself), it included the US justice, Thomas Buergenthal; a Czech-born Holocaust survivor. It also included UK justice Rosalyn Higgins, who is also Jewish. -They have no right to impose checkpoints -They have no right to restrict air space -They have no right to restrict access to water -They have no right to demolish homes When I say “they have no right,” that’s not some bleeding-hearted appeal to emotion; that’s a literal fact. They have no legal protections to do any of these things because they are all in contradiction to international law. Apologists are fond of arguing that “well international law doesn’t count,” but that’s just rhetorical douchebaggery at work. If international law “doesn’t count,” then Israel wouldn’t even exist. The modern state of Israel is a creation of international law. Without international law, that whole place would still be Palestine.
  19. You already know where that will end.
  20. And to be sure, there are historic comparisons for what they're doing but they're not flattering in the slightest. You know what was also unsustainable? Suharto's invasion and occupation of East Timor. That went on for over 20 years and abruptly ended when Clinton's WH sent them a message that essentially informed them "the game is up." When they did that, the Indonesians packed their shit and went home.
  21. Even with that, I have no reason to suspect that it'll play out the way you imply. The only route to the two state settlement is through us. We have to stop giving support to the rejectionist policies that they've been implementing for decades. As long as we stop providing cover, they have no reason to stop doing what they're doing. We have given very vague hints at that (Camp David Accord, Obama's abstention vote near the end of his term, and most importantly the Clinton Parameters), but there's much work to be done and that's going to have to come from civilian activism; not just from crossing our fingers and hoping that some candidate from these two Business Parties "does the right thing."
  22. The one thing I'll say about it is this: Israel spent the better part of about 30 years doing nothing but undermine the PLO. After Arafat's death, the Palestinians were left with two choices for representation: A) Abbas and the so-called Palestinian Authority, which together have been nothing but a puppet for Israel and the US, and B) Hamas. Those are two rotten choices, but Hamas is the less rotten of the two. The PA is nothing but a small band of filthy collaborators who couldn't be bothered to give two shits about your average Gazan or West Banker. Israel, on the other hand, has (nominally speaking) a full-on parliamentary system. They have a much greater variety of options, and yet they continue to go with Bibi and the rest of those thugs. They have no excuse. I've had a lot of things to say about Labour over the last 14 years when I began studying this topic, but I'll never accuse them of being filthy collaborators with the Palestinian Authority. That would be insane. Point being; the political dynamics in those two places are not comparable in the slightest.
  23. I liked how Finkelstein summarized it. He picked out two guys from the audience; John and Dan: "Dan is throttling John. John is choking. John is suffocating. John's face is turning blue. John scratches Dan. Dan is appalled. Dan says "HE SCRATCHED ME!!! I HAVE TO THROTTLE HIM IN SELF-DEFENSE!!!" Considering the unprecedented level of aid the US gives to Israel, I would say even a country with nukes isn't capable of destroying Israel. That was the big falderal about Iran's "pursuit of nuclear weapons," but the reality is that even if Iran did have a nuke and even if they began to arm it with the intent to launch it at Israel, the US would vaporize the entire country in 30 seconds, well before that fucker could launch.
×
×
  • Create New...