U.N. Passes Resolution Against Israel Settlements, U.S. Abstains

[ingemann]

When I read this thread I think a major problem for Israel are that Israel seem to have bought into their own propaganda, to some extent I thinks it's a feed back loop enabled by American mouth breathers, who fundamental fail to understand Israel as international actor and have bought into the Israeli propaganda and feed it back to Israel.

Israel are medium to small country falling somewhat in the same category as Belgium, Portugal and Greece. Therir GDP per capita are mostly similar to south Europe. Their export and import make up a very large part of their economy. While their economy per capita look South European, their export look more North European in nature focusing on specialised refined products. They have a large (but not worrying high) BOP deficit. Their main export partner are USA and EU which together take around 50% of the Israeli export. On the other hand EU/EFTA more or less have 50% of the Israeli import (mostly specialised products). Israel are pretty dependent on capital transfer from abroad both the American support, but even more money from the diaspora.

So what does this means, it means that if Israel behaved as some of the mouth breathers in this thread suggest they would, it would not be necessary to turn a single gun toward Israel for Israel to collapse in its existing form. It could likely survive as some kind of North Korea style economy, but I'm pretty sure that wouldn't be acceptable for vast majority the Israeli population.

[ingemann]

I don't know why people are praising Obama for this. All this shows is that he is a coward that neither has the guts to stand up for Israel nor vote in favour of the resolution.

I agree all the legacy building Obama do right now are pretty embarrassing. That doesn't mean that he's wrong, but the fact that he haven't done this earlier, make this rather meaningless.

[ingemann]

Also the whole it's the Jew's country, the Palestinians aren't Arab immigrants, they're descendant of the population who have lived in the area since the agricultural revolution, whatever these people called themselves, they have of course had a influx of genes from other groups. But they're more related to the Jews of Biblical times than most Jews are.

In fact geneticist have use Palestinian-Jewish comparison to show that Ashkenazi Jews wasn't descendant of the Khazar (which are common anti-Israel propaganda), but was descendant of Levantine immigrants mixed with central Europeans.

[ingemann]

I don't know why people are praising Obama for this. All this shows is that he is a coward that neither has the guts to stand up for Israel nor vote in favour of the resolution.

I agree all the legacy building Obama do right now are pretty embarrassing. That doesn't mean that he's wrong, but the fact that he haven't done this earlier, make this rather meaningless.

I agree, if he wanted to do this, he should have done this years ago, but now he is doing it out of selfish spite and trying to undermine the incoming Administration. This is entirely out of line and Obama should really avoid doing anything like this during a transition period.

I also object to Obama manufacturing an international crisis during the Christmas Holidays as well as during Hanukah.

It's not a international crisis, it's just harsh word between lame duck administration and one of USA's client states.

[ingemann]

And the Palestinian Arabs are rightful residents of the area as well. There's no point in arguing with that. That's why roughly 2/3rds of Mandatory Palestine was carved out for them when it was partitioned, with the remaining third remaining in British hands until it was eventually ceded to the Jewish reclamation movement.

In that case it's no problem if we move all the Israelis to Antarctican Peninsula, I mean it's much bigger than Israel.

Quality of the land count more than the amount of land.

[ingemann]

And the Palestinian Arabs are rightful residents of the area as well. There's no point in arguing with that. That's why roughly 2/3rds of Mandatory Palestine was carved out for them when it was partitioned, with the remaining third remaining in British hands until it was eventually ceded to the Jewish reclamation movement.

In that case it's no problem if we move all the Israelis to Antarctican Peninsula, I mean it's much bigger than Israel.

Quality of the land count more than the amount of land.

Neither parcel of land has significant natural reserves, at least Israel didn't until they spent decades on innovation.

Regardless, four wars of genocidal aggression and winding up with what you started with sounds pretty good to me. But as long as the Hashemites are able to keep their murderous grip on Jordan, the conflict is unresolveable.

There was a reason that Cisjordan and not Transjordan was home to the strongest local states in the antic. That was that it was much more fertile. Israel was under the Ottomans two province, while Jodan was run from Damascus, thanks to the much larger population in Israel.

[ingemann]

Also the whole it's the Jew's country, the Palestinians aren't Arab immigrants, they're descendant of the population who have lived in the area since the agricultural revolution, whatever these people called themselves, they have of course had a influx of genes from other groups. But they're more related to the Jews of Biblical times than most Jews are.

Good thing we don't customarily delineate cultural and political lines of descent based on genetics. Give me a break.

     In fairness, the descent line is a big part of the approach to the issue adopted by the Israelis.

Yeah, but from what I've seen generally the approach is through normal, good old-fashioned, low-tech genealogy, rather than through creepy hand-wringing about whose genome is most similar to that in some bone dug up in a tel.

Regardless, it's shameful that the United Nations finds all this time to pass these countless dozens of resolutions about big bad Israel, but only rarely does anything censuring countries like Saudi Arabia and the Gulf states manage to wend its way through. Or North Korea, or Eritrea, or China or Russia or Duterte's Philippines or Iran for that matter.

"P1: The Jews have the right to this land, because our holy book says so, so expel those horrible squatters from their land. 
P2: Those "squatters" have lived on that land always and are in fact descendant of the non-diaspora Jews, who just happened to convert to other faiths over time.
P1: How dare you bring forward such creepy evidence"

I support the Israel rights of existence, I even support the 1949 armistice border plus Jerusalem. What I don't support are the slow land grap on the West Bank and the continued legal limbo of its inhabitants. If Israel want to annex the West Bank; fine they just need to give its inhabitants citizenship, if Israel want to treat the non-Jews of the West Banks as a occupied territory; fine just stop settling it.