Israel

[War on Want]

Israel is an overrated country and its government is super sh**tty. We should not fund their military or be a major ally as they can take care of themselves and obiously do not care about our funding to please us.

[War on Want]

I have said this before and I will say this again we have no business supporting Israel in the Middle East. It goes against our interests as they really do not support Democracy among the Arabs and are far too brash and their government is ridiculous for us to support them. I do not care what the Bible says here, it is not our guide to foriegn policy and if you, like I, think that God will always bless the Jewish people, then you can believe they do not need our help anymore. I still support humanitarian funds to Israel but they do not need military funding anymore.

[War on Want]

One of the curious things about this issue is the way it seems to cause otherwise reasonable people (or at least people who normally appear to be capable of being reasonable) to think and say things that they would, probably, find disgusting in just about any other context.

Quite right. Methinks it's because Israel is a quasi-religious subject (and religion does these sorts of things).

Yeah pretty much. Does anybody really think Ben or jmfsct would like Israel at all it were, say, Zoarastrian?

[War on Want]

Rocket hits Israel, second violation of Gaza truce

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If there is one thing we've learned it's that this will never stop until all the Jews are gone.  If every Jew left every settlement in the West Bank would anybody be shocked if two days later rockets started flying out of there?  Would anybody be shocked if the anti-Zionists around here defended the rocket attacks?

Don't be ridiculous. Would anyone here be surprised if Israel attacked Iran tommorow and all of the Zionists here defended Israel?

[War on Want]

..and The Great War ended all future wars.

Weimar Era germany was unstable and lacked strong democratic institutions. Present day germany has democratic institutions. Not really comparable.

They had fairly strong democratic institutions, it is just that much of the populace was pissed off at the government for following Versailles. The Social Democrats were the largest party until 1933, when the Nazis were elected.

[War on Want]

I hope Labor can pull something off here but I really doubt anything will happen...

[War on Want]

Unfortunately, Netanyahu supports a two state solution.

He was probably pressured into it, dammit.

Oh boo hoo, what did you think was going to happen? This same insanity over and over again for hundreds of years. The only solution is a two state solution and one where neither nation has an official religion and a solution in which each country can posess all of the rights of a soverign nation(read:a military)

[War on Want]

That is correct. The Christians in the area aren't exactly huge supporters of ultra-Zionists or the settlers, if you observe how they vote.

Exactly, most areas with large amounts of Christians vote for far-left wing parties. Of course there aren't that many Christians left in Palestine/Israel because of a variety of issues. Actually there was a pretty large migration of Christians away from Israel after 1948.