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Kasz216 on 17 January 2008
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superchunk said:
starcraft said:
superchunk said:
 

@starcraft -- Yes, at this point we should just agree to disagree. Though I still don't understand how a people who have international laws backing them should not be compensated for their lands and homes that were stolen. :(


I sympathise with the Palestinian's plight, I really do. And in a fair world they would be entitled to compensation from somewhere. It is just that any attrocities that current Israeli jews might have committed tend to be the kind that simply come with war, and are normally in response to, or immediately followed by a retaliation from the Palestinians. The major oppressions you are talking about were committed mainly by third party nations or Jews (and Israeli Arabs) that have died, and were mainly committed against Palestinians that have died.

So my point is not that the Palestinians are not suffering, but that it is unfair to blame their suffering on Israel, and especially on currently living Israeli's by compelling them to pay compensation. Most currently living Israeli's (Jew and Arab) were born in their country and from their perspective cannot be expected to know anything beyond the fact that many Palestinians would be quite happy for them to permanantly disappear, and many (though a smaller number) actively pursue this goal through war.

If Israel were to offer substantial assistence to help form a Palestinian state and eradicate poverty (they already do, but I mean something drastic) in an entirely voluntary environment as a neighbour helping another neighbour, I would be completely behind that. I just think that any payment that was obviously made as some sort of 'compensation' would force currently living Israeli's to admit wrong doing for something that was set in motion long before they were born or old enough to prevent it. Just like the Palestinians, they have known only war.

The Palestinians live an extremely unfair life, but two wrongs do not make a right, and it is just as unfair to blame the people's current plight on modern Israel.


EDITED!!! I just realized I read the quote wrong as shown by starcraft below. My fault, sorry. Will read mrore carefully next time.

I'm not going to go into detail the atrocities that Israel and the settler movement have pushed on to the Arab population. You really need to read more about the Green land laws, how everyday life is for an Arab living in the occupied territories, the state of their economy, the continued aggression from settlers, and so on, so you can get a better understanding of how bad it really ist.

Just as US has and continues to make ammends to Native Americans and Australia does the same with its native people's, so should Israel. It is just the ethically right thing to do.


Is that all your really asking for? American level ammends? Cause you know, those arn't to great. They also took a long time, a lot of negotiations and during those negotiations the Native Americans didn't attack the US during those negotiations.

Also while achknowledged as "There own states" they really arn't and have little to no power outside of their own communities. They also have horrible living conditions and one group of native americans have withdrawn themselves from the treaty and i believe named themselves there own country.

Even those ammends arn't perfect. Things like this take a LOT of time. And no violence. Those who was reperations had to stop resisting first.

The settler program is horrible but it's also not going to stop until they aren't given a reason to. Even those reasons may not be enough as the Settler program is widely argued as defensive mesaures against hostile nations. However once the violence stops i'm sure the US would stop the Israeli settler program. (Assuming the democrats win, the only republican i can see who would stop it is Mccain, well and Ron Paul but he's really more of a libretarian pretending to be a republican from what i can tell.  Then again even Bush wanted to stop them.  He just didn't have the guts to.)

Even then some of these settlements will likely have to be allowed to stay in Israeli lands for purposes of defensive warfare... atleast in the short term. (Which in the world of city states is a decade or so atleast.)