The same case can be made that Political Islam (like that of Hamas) belongs to the 7th century. I guess this would make Political Zionism 1200 years more advanced.

This is an interesting point. It's always been part of the negotiation that Israeli settlers won't be allowed to stay in what becomes Palestine, and yet it seems out of the question to expel Arabs from Israel. This makes sense, of course. Arabs know they're reasonably safe in Israel and have political rights. Everyone knows that Jews who remain in the new Palestine without Israel's explicit protection will be massacred.

But think about what this implies.

Well, this is ironic. The Nazis didn't come into power in Germany because people blindly believed what the government said. The Nazis came to power largely because people bought into weird conspiracy theories blaming the Jews for their problems. You know, the kind of thing you're pushing right now.

If you want to confirm this you can read a book. Or you can find any educated American and get him or her drunk and they'll confirm it.

I'll try to be brief, but it's a challenge.

1a. Do the Palestinians have any legitimate claim to an independent state?

I'll answer this "no," but for somewhat technical reasons. "Legitimate" seems too related to law or legal authority, and I don't believe there's any legal authority through which the Palestinians have a "legitimate claim" to an independent state. Someone else could answer it "yes" by pointing to U.N. general assembly resolutions, but I don't accept the U.N. as any kind of legal authority. It's reasonable for Palestinians to want to have an independent state, and maybe that's more in the spirit of what you're asking. I'm skeptical that this is the primary desire of Palestinians.

1b. Should the state of Palestine never exist?

If a state can be established that isn't regularly attacking Israel, I don't have an objection. I have serious doubts about whether such a state can live in peace with Israel. I don't think much would change if it were recognized as a state. There would still be regular attacks, responses, and recriminations.

2. Do Jews have the ultimate right (as in it can pre-empt all other claims) to Jerusalem? (I understand the city to be claimed by Palestinians and Israelis as a capital.) That is, does either group have a sole claim to the city, or should/can it exist as a capital of two independent nations?

I don't think Jews have an ultimate right to Jerusalem. I can't think of any situation where I would say an ethnic or religious group has a "right" to some land. As a practical matter, Israel will not give it up. (It's as unrealistic as Turkey giving up Istanbul.) However, the deal offered in 2000 shows some Israelis are willing to give up some parts of Jerusalem to be a capital of Palestine. I'm skeptical that this would work in practice, but I have no objection to it being tried.

3) Do you believe the expansion of Jewish settlements into what the Palestinians claim is Palestinian lands is justified? (Or do you believe Palestinians have no legitimate land claims, so the question is moot?)

While I don't believe the Palestinians have "legitimate" land claims, I can still try to answer the first question. The expansion of Jewish settlements into new parts of the West Bank makes the effective land area for a future Palestinian state smaller. I think this is a reasonable price the Palestinians should pay for decades of committing, encouraging and rewarding terrorism. Imagine there were a magical force field that determined the border, and that every time there were a Palestinian terrorist attack on Israel that force field expanded outward by one meter. I would consider that a good thing. I would feel differently if Palestinians discouraged terrorism and punished terrorists.

4. And finally, if there should be a two-state solution, what border should Israel occupy now? Was the 1947 plan that was devised by the UN inherently flawed or biased against Israel, or was it only the Arab wars against Israel that made the original plan unworkable?

The peace deal offered in 2000 gives a realistic idea: something close to the 1967 borders but with land swaps to account for Jerusalem and the "facts on the ground." I don't know if the 1947 partition plan was workable in 1947, but I seriously don't think it is today. There has been too much population growth and movement since then, in addition to other issues.

I hope this isn't too controversial, but I'm actually against Hitler.

You modified my quote. Here is the original:


To me it's quite clear that when I wrote "quoting such a post" I was referring to a hypothetical post by someone else giving some "relevant action the U.N. could take if it weren't for U.S. influence." Instead you took away the first sentence to make it look like I was asking for you to quote a post in which I was dismissing without reading. If you did this on purpose, that's some A+ dishonesty. If you really didn't understand what I was asking for, then we are -- quite literally -- writing in different languages.


I already did my part by putting a number of labelled clear true-or-false style statements and either indicating whether I believed them to be true-or-false, often with explanations as to why. If other people were interested in having a useful discussion, they would take some of these statements and say whether they believe them to be true or false and give some explanation. Their explanations could involve new true-or-false statements to consider and discuss. The fact that no one is doing this supports my belief that this thread is not really about discussing the conflict. The thread is about demonizing Jews.

There are apparently a lot of people on bitcointalk who think it's very important to keep Jew hatred threads high on the Politics and Society forum, from this one to the "Jews did 9/11" one. Something is rotten here.

To those of you pushing this "International Zionism Did 911" bullshit: We know you're Nazis. I just wanted to make sure that you know we know.

Bwaahaaahaaa. Oh, that's funny. Since this is such a bizarre interpretation of what I said, I'll assume you're just trolling. I mean, come on. It's obvious that I was describing "what if the Romani had started moving to build a homeland like the Jews did," to make a hypothetical point. If I were saying the Romani could've avoided the Holocaust by doing so, it would imply I thought the Jews avoided it by moving to (what is now) Israel. To be clear: I don't think that. Six million Jews were killed in the Holocaust. I think if the people opposing me in this thread have their way, six million more Jews will be killed in Israel. I think that's a bad thing.

In case anyone actually doesn't understand what I said or its context, I'm happy to clarify. Earlier I said something like this:

(JHKA) If there were very little Jew hatred in the world, the Arab-Israeli conflict would be about as important as the conflict in Kashmir.

As with most of my statements and questions, this was ignored.

My hypothetical is to acknowledge: (1) It's not just the Jews that are hated, as one can see by looking at the Romani. (2) The conflict in Kashmir would be seen as far more important if Westerners were racist against one of the sides.

It's an imperfect comparison. The important thing with the Jews is that they are hated by Muslims (going all the way back to conflicts with Mohammed) and by the West (hmm, to some degree this traces all the way back to the roots of Christianity [Christ-killers!]...interesting). That's what makes both the West and the Islamic world side against Israel, and draws so much attention to the conflict. I'm not sure of any history between Islam and the Romani. I'm sure someone could google it for me. I think there's bad blood between Islam and Hinduism (death to all polytheists!), but that at least doesn't date back to Mohammed. Well, the death to polytheists does, but not Hinduism specifically. The West isn't really antagonistic towards Indians. The most racist image of India in the West is Apu from The Simpsons. I'll bet Jews would love it if that were the most racist image of Jews.

The part that makes the comparison good is that India was under British rule until the late 1940s, just like the Palestinian Mandate. In both cases the land was divided into -- very roughly speaking -- a Muslim part (Pakistan) and a non-Muslim part (India). [By the way, is Pakistan "occupied territory"?] In both cases there's a conflict about who has part of the land, and the conflicts have both been violent. So why aren't we seeing constant threads and propaganda about Kashmir? No Jews. My point was, well, maybe if instead of fighting Indians the Pakistanis were fighting the Roma, there would be a lot more propaganda. You know, about how the Pakistanis got "gypped" -- that kind of thing.

People may also wonder why we're talking about the Roma at all. Well, I was responding to Bryant Coleman bringing up the Roma (and others) who died in the Holocaust. (Well, he generalized to those who died in WW2.) He did this because he mistakenly believed I was implying only Jews died in the Holocaust. (You can tell it's a mistaken belief because he hasn't supported it by quoting anything I've written. While most of the victims of the Holocaust were Jewish, there were about five million non-Jewish victims. In addition, obviously millions more died fighting in WW2.) He did this after I brought up the fact that six million Jews died in the Holocaust. I brought that up as a response to this quote from him:


I interpreted this comment to mean that Bryant Coleman is a Holocaust denier. A common form of Holocaust denial is saying that the number of Jews who were killed (six million) is exaggerated. Since then, he indicated he agreed six million Jews were killed in the Holocaust. It's good that he's not a Holocaust denier. We have more than enough of them on this thread already.

But it leaves me to wonder: what in the holy fuck did the phrase above mean? Does Bryant Coleman think only a few hundred Jews live in Israel? Surely not. Then...what? As I mentioned before, the only charitable interpretation I can think of is that it was just a typo. He meant to write "million" but wrote "hundred". It's a strange typo. Not quite "there" vs. "their." But, honestly, I can't make any sense of it. I can't help but wonder if he might be a Holocaust denier, but backed away from it because it makes him sound crazy and dumb.

Oh, by the way, to those of you who are Holocaust deniers: most of the world thinks you're crazy and dumb. Given the crowd on this thread, that might need to be said explicitly. Like earlier when I mentioned the classic question with a presumption: "When did you stop beating your wife?" It later became clear to me that that might be confusing to the Muslims on this thread. I should've made it explicitly clear that the rest of the world things beating your wife is a bad thing. Sorry I wasn't clear about that before.

First: I said that 6 million Jews were killed in the holocaust as a direct response to the following quote from you:


Everyone can decide for themselves why you wrote "gassing a few hundred Jews" if you agree that 6 million Jews were killed in the holocaust as your latest post suggests. What "few hundred Jews" were you referring to? The most charitable explanation I can find is that you meant to type "few million Jews" but accidentally wrote "few hundred Jews".

Second: I agree that other minority groups were targeted by the Nazis. I don't believe I've written anything to suggest otherwise, but you're welcome to quote me if you think I have. It's obvious why Jews have been the focus in this thread, given the topic.

But I'm glad BitMos and you brought up these other victims. The Roma, for example, are still treated terribly in Europe from what I read. It's too bad this problem is ignored.

In a thread where so many people have trouble with simple factual statements, I'm hesitant to bring in counterfactuals/hypotheticals. Still, I will. I wonder what would've happened if many of the Romani had immigrated to, say, Kashmir in the early part of the 20th century. (They do have northern Indian ties historically, so it isn't so far-fetched.) Suppose that at the end of British rule in the late 1940s the Romani declared an independent state in part of Kashmir. Clearly there would be lots of armed conflict in that region, just as there is today. However, I imagine we'd hear much more about the Kashmir conflict and most of what we'd hear would be cartoonish misinformation about evil Gypsies lying, cheating and oppressing poor indigenous Muslim children who just want peace and crayons. The reason would be racism.

Your critique would be more convincing if there were a post somewhere in the thread stating, for example, some relevant action the U.N. could take if it weren't for U.S. influence. I mean, you could really call me out for saying "don't got time to read" by quoting such a post, but you can't because it's not there.

Any fair minded person reading this thread will see I responded "reasonably" to people who made reasonable posts. I responded dismissively to people who repeat nonsense while being utterly incapable of comprehending information contrary to what they already believe (e.g., redzeronazi).

A useful discussion about this issue would involve making a sequence of clear, unambiguous true-or-false style statements and having people who disagree indicate which they think are true and which they think are false. That's the first step to determining the nature of a disagreement. I tried to do this. Most of the participants on the thread ignored these statements and ignored clarifying questions I tried to ask. They continued to simply assert that there was some country called Palestine (there wasn't) that was "illegally invaded" by Jews (rather than there being waves of immigration) and that there was some kind of unspecified "agreement" that Israel made and is not holding to. I challenge anyone to simply count the number of clear statements I've made and clear questions I've asked that have been completely ignored. The people expecting me to respond to them when they're not responding to me are the ones being unreasonable.

In the end things will probably work out for everyone. The Jew haters will get their dead Jews and I'll get to exterminate the Nazi human species.

That obituary request is hilarious.

My first answer to the question "Is Hillary Clinton Trustworthy?" is "obviously not!" Someone once called her a "congenital liar" and that fits.

But that's a bit specific because it's about trusting her to be truthful. We should expand our horizons and ask: Can Hillary Clinton to be trusted to lie?

For example, if you need to trust her to cover up Bill Clinton's rapes including visits to an underage sex slave island, then I think it's safe to say she can be trusted to do everything in her power to cover things like that up. So can the media.

I answered this question earlier:

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=1012231.msg11073918#msg11073918

If it wasn't Jihadis, then why did the Muslim world celebrate it?

I think the word you're looking for is "true", not "bad".

Holy shit. I argued so well in this thread that I became a "Full Member" and get to have an avatar. In honor of the thread I thought I'd remember a very special day in Palestinian history: September 11, 2001. What a happy day for them.

Everyone ignored this, but I think it's important. The fact that "Palestinians receive one of the highest levels of aid in the world" is completely consistent with my assertion "most of the world hates Jews." Palestinians are being rewarded for killing Jews. However, it's completely inconsistent with the assertion "The U.S. is preventing help getting to the Palestinians" which people seem to be making here (especially regarding the U.S. influence on the U.N.). Maybe you're not being clear about the kind of "help" you have in mind. I'd ask, but everyone would ignore the question.

To clarify about my missing post: I wrote a massive wall of text replying to everything in great detail and demolishing all arguments against the legitimacy and in favor of the right of return. The post mention the KKK was meant to be a clarification of a small part of that post. I probably clicked "edit" instead of "quote" and edited by massive post to almost nothing.

Since presenting claims without evidence is popular in this thread, I'll just expect you to accept that I won the argument completely in that lost post. You're welcome.

Something can only be "illegal" if it's against the law. Which law do you mean?

Again, you're not the question answering sort, I know. I capitalized the I in "Israel" in your quote because it seems like you forgot to.

Um. No that's a link to one of your posts. Be careful or people might catch on to the fact that we're the same person and this whole thread is just a fucking game. And obviously you know whether or not I'm paid to do this, because you know whether or not you're paid to do this.

What agreements are you referring to? Your * referenced a map. This map talked about the British mandate, the UN partition plan of 1947, Israeli independence in 1948 followed by the attacks by Arab neighbors, and finally the Six Day War in 1967. Which of these are "agreements"? The only one that seems close to an "agreement" is the UN partition plan of 1947, but the Palestinians rejected it, not the Israelis. A plan is only an "agreement" when both sides agree.

While I have asked you many questions in the previous paragraph, I know you're incapable of answering questions. I mean, if you can't even attempt to answer a "fill in the blank" question about what action the U.N. could/should take if the U.S. didn't have a veto, when YOU'RE the one who wrote "the action," then it's clear you really can't answer even the simplest question. So you don't have to bother. Just keep posting uninformed dumb bullshit that ignores everything I say. People seem to enjoy it.