McConnell wants to weaken filibuster

[Torie]

Not by much really. It only obtains to amendments, not to final passage. Hopefully it will be nixed entirely come 2017. 

[Torie]

Oh look, the Zionists got angry for being called what they really are.
Maybe next time I'll call you neocons if you're so delicate flowers.

Maybe it would be better to stop labeling posters at all, in such a caustic way. True, all Zionism means is that you support the existence of the Jewish Israeli state, as opposed to liquidating it (an opinion that is certainly mainstream, with which about what 80% of the US public agrees) but you mean it as an insult. There is no need to be so hostile to other posters personally. Just attack their ideas if you don't like them. I vehemently disagree with the subject poster as to all those Israeli settlements in the hinterlands of the West Bank (some of them illegal under Israeli law), but I don't call him an irredentist Zionist on steroids. I just focus on why I think that approach is unwise and wrong. Just a thought.

[Torie]

Nice use of Zionist as a snarl word. Yes, I do believe that the Jews should have a state...

Who cares?  Nobody deserves a state and they certainly don't deserve a state carved out of land where other people are living.  If everyone is treated the same most of Britain would have to decamp back to Germany and France and America would have to be emptied back to... everywhere.  "Jews should have a state" is 100% garbage.  Face it unless you are native American or some other type of person who traces their prehistoric roots back to a completely uninhabited land you should have a grand total of jacksh**t.  If you have a nice comfy home in Europe or the United States you should just thank god and move on with your life.  Well you can ask for your own country but no on is under any obligation Biblical or otherwise to provide it and certainly not at their expense nor at the expense of a small Palestinian child.

Well, tough.

The Jews are back where they originated, after every country in the world made very clear they either actively wanted us dead or just didn't care if we were wiped out. And they have roughly 300 nuclear weapons, as well. More than enough to wipe out any country that simply can't abide by Jews existing. So Israel is here to stay. Jews are here to stay.

This is the top-notic Zionist offense.

"We have nukes, and we don't really care about the rest of the world or our allies. We cannot be trusted with nuclear weapons ourselves, but we'll bitch and moan about how the Iranians don't deserve them."

It seems a fitting response to "You don't deserve safety in the diaspora, and you don't deserve a state of your own."

The only response to that is "Well, we took it. Deal with it."

Jews in the United States and Europe must be getting rounded up by the thousands and killed.

Oh, wait.

How much have you been paying attention to Europe over the last few years? They're being terrorized and attacked on a regular basis, and Neo-Nazi parties are rising in many nations.

As for the US, it's definitely one of the best countries in the world for Jews. I'm sure if the worst happened, they'd be willing to serve as a haven for - oh, wait. The last time that happened, they let six million die.

Oh really?  We "let" 6 million die? The full consequences of the Holocaust were not known until late in the war.  What would you have done to save those in the concentration campus if you were Roosevelt? Your comments are extremely disrespectful.  You do realize hundreds of thousands of Americans died fighting the Nazis, right?  

Yes, I do. The Allies defeated Hitler for the sake of global security.

However, FDR did not do a thing to prevent or mitigate the effects of the Holocaust. He refused to target the death camp infrastructure. He refused to allow refugees to settle in the US.

And it's not true that the full scope of the Holocaust wasn't known. Jewish groups were working overtime to make people aware of the facts. Mainstream media didn't cover it. The leaders were turned away at the white house. People had other priorities, and six million died.

Yes, having watched a very good documentary on this on Netflix, the US attitude about saving Jews when it was possible to save many of them, was disappointing - to put it mildly. The sad truth is that being anti-Jew was socially acceptable back then among the WASP ruling class, which did rule back then, particularly when it came to foreign policy. My tribe in this aspect back then really quite repels me. Thank heavens those days are largely over. The one man who was a real hero during all of this was Winston Churchill. But then he represented at one point a heavily Jewish constituency in Manchester at one point, so he got to know many, and liked and empathized with them, in a way Roosevelt at that point never had. And after the war, the US was equally callous for too long a period.

If I had been Jewish, I would have done what the Jews did after WWII to secure a state. Among other things, a couple of hundred thousand Jews were essentially stateless, with nowhere to go really. The US among other nations, had a pathetically parsimonious quota about Jewish immigration. Disgusting really. And the first nation to propose in the UN that a Jewish state be carved out of a part of Palestine was the Soviet Union, yes the Soviet Union, not the US.

And it's quite horrifying, that in some quarters, being anti-Jew is becoming more socially acceptable again. It does remind one that a Jewish state is in fact really necessary.

[Torie]

As for the US, it's definitely one of the best countries in the world for Jews. I'm sure if the worst happened, they'd be willing to serve as a haven for - oh, wait. The last time that happened, they let six million die.

Nobody knew at the time that was going to happen, including the European Jews themselves. If they did quite a few more would've gone to countries that didn't limit or even encouraged Jewish immigration, like Spain, the Dominican Republic, Bolivia, Japanese-occupied Manchuria, or for that matter the Soviet Union.

Also, your line of argument in this thread is really great for testing whatever sympathy people have for Israel. I wonder if you're a Palestinian troll.

The ruling class in the US was well aware that Nazi Germany was stripping Jews of all of their rights, including citizenship, and treated them like dogs (well far worse then dogs, more like rats with bubonic plague). Did the US open its doors to Jewish immigration during the 1936 through 1938 period, while it was still possible for Jews to get out? No. And the same policy was in place after WWII ended, with 200,000 or so stateless Jews wandering around, and locked up in camps essentially. The US ruling class running the US in government was also well aware of the death camps, and did nothing to interfere with the efficient processing of exterminating Jews, like bombing the camps, and taking them out, and the rails that went to them. If that is not shocking to the conscience, I don't know what is.

[Torie]

Yes, the US had other moral flaws at the time, of which we should be ashamed. Correct.

[Torie]

What financial assistance, and in what form (most of it seems to be about arms purchases from the US with loan guarantees), should be extended by the US to Israel, at this point in time, is an entirely different issue, which should be decided on its own merits. The amount of money involved in the larger scheme of things, is relatively small. But yes, Israel is in a much better position now than at prior points in time, to pay its own way.