I don't care about Israel

[King]

I don't care about Palestine, either.

[Joe Republic]

YES

Thank FSM somebody else said it too.  This nonsense half a world away is pathetic.

[Lief 🗽]

I hope you guys are trying to be funny?

[King]

I hope you guys are trying to be funny?

No.

What makes the future of Gaza any more important than the future of any other tiny spot on the map anywhere else in there world?  Because it's the holy land?

And what would happen if we just left it alone? Violence? Broken treaties and failed promises? How is that different than the violence and cheating that's already happening?

[Free Palestine]

BUT ITS GAWDS CHOSIN LAND!!!!

[King]

BUT ITS GAWDS CHOSIN LAND!!!!

God loves all land equally.

[Free Palestine]

BUT ITS GAWDS CHOSIN LAND!!!!

God loves all land equally.

BUT DA BIBBLE SAYS GAWD CHOSE ISRUL.

[King]

Thank god we weren't always like this.  Our nation probably would've fallen to ruin in Civil War buildup if we were also divided on the politics of the Crimean War.

[Bo]

Good for you.

[Magic 8-Ball]

I wish this forum would spend less time harping on about Israel - especially since we all know each other's opinions on it by now and no one's changing anyone else's mind - but I can't say that I don't care about it or its future.

[Joe Republic]

I hope you guys are trying to be funny?

Uh, no.  Not deliberately, anyway.

Why should I care about a strip of desert smaller than New Hampshire located thousands of miles away, or the miserable people fighting each other to possess it?

[Хahar 🤔]

I hope you guys are trying to be funny?

No.

What makes the future of Gaza any more important than the future of any other tiny spot on the map anywhere else in there world?  Because it's the holy land?

And what would happen if we just left it alone? Violence? Broken treaties and failed promises? How is that different than the violence and cheating that's already happening?

$$$

That's why it's important.

[Gustaf]

Lol.

Regardless of the intention, this is a joke thread.

This is the kind of stuff that keeps me from being a libertarian - I can actually think of things that make Israel different from other tiny spots of land and reasons why Americans would care (and, no, it isn't religion or the Holy Land).

[Joe Republic]

Lol.

Regardless of the intention, this is a joke thread.

It raises a valid point though.  Americans are being encouraged to take sides on an issue that has very limited relevance to our lives.

This is the kind of stuff that keeps me from being a libertarian

What on earth does that have to do with anything?  I'm not a libertarian, and neither, I believe, is King.

I can actually think of things that make Israel different from other tiny spots of land and reasons why Americans would care (and, no, it isn't religion or the Holy Land).

So go on then.  Convince me that I should care, or even worse, take a side.

[phk]

Good for you.

[Antonio the Sixth]

LOL

[Free Trade is managed by the invisible hand.]

my opinion on Israel is that I have no problem sending the country AID, but we should also be mindful of their neighbors.

[opebo]

Well of course I've never cared about it (the only small strip of land in the world I care about begins at Bang Lamung and ends at about Jomtien.)

[Grumpier Than Uncle Joe]

I don't criticize anyone for not caring about.  I have opinions but the issue is not a passionate one to me.

If thug force was used, which started the lastest conversation, I don't care who it's used by........I get all pissy and stuff when responding to posts about thuggery.

[Free Palestine]

It raises a valid point though.  Americans are being encouraged to take sides on an issue that has very limited relevance to our lives.

The same can be said of most other realms of America's modern foreign policy.

[Bo]

It raises a valid point though.  Americans are being encouraged to take sides on an issue that has very limited relevance to our lives.

The same can be said of most other realms of America's modern foreign policy.

Exactly. Why did we need to send troops to Iraq, halfway around the globe, when they did not pose an immediate threat to us? We should have just minded our own business in this case.

[King]

As Joe said, this has nothing to do with libertarianism.  And I'm not even an isolationist.  I feel there some good things that America can do in the world, but I think Israel is just a giant waste of time.  Every landmark peace treaty on the White House lawn just delays the bombings and occupation of the West Bank by another couple of weeks.  It's all a futile effort.

In the time that it'll take to make peace there, we probably could make peace everywhere else and just have that one spot on the map as the dirty a-hole of the world.

[Gustaf]

Lol.

Regardless of the intention, this is a joke thread.

It raises a valid point though.  Americans are being encouraged to take sides on an issue that has very limited relevance to our lives.

This is the kind of stuff that keeps me from being a libertarian

What on earth does that have to do with anything?  I'm not a libertarian, and neither, I believe, is King.

I can actually think of things that make Israel different from other tiny spots of land and reasons why Americans would care (and, no, it isn't religion or the Holy Land).

So go on then.  Convince me that I should care, or even worse, take a side.

Oh, I don't care about convincing you - if you don't care, you don't care. But it is silly to ask why this is any different from anything else, in fact, so silly that I can't take it seriously.

Libertarians tend to view everything based on extremely abstract principles. Although I think that kind of reasoning has some kind of validity there is a point where it starts to become ridiculous and this thread crosses it for me.

You know why Israel is different. You don't have to agree with it, but don't pretend as if it is incomprehensible. I can't help but feel that it is sort of posing.

The number of Jews in America? The Holocaust? The long-lasting alliance? The fact that Israel is  a democratic state? Acting as if it is any state out there is something I can't really take seriously. It's sort of like arguing that the relationship between parents and children is not something special (another typical libertarian extremism). You can argue that, sure, but acting as if it is incomprehensible why someone would disagree seems silly to me. It is just too removed from ordinary humanity.

[Free Palestine]

The number of Jews in America?

What does that have to do with anything?  Just because two percent of the American population is Jewish, we should waste billions of taxpayer dollars on Israel?  Instead of lobbying, these Jewish groups should just donate their money to Israel, instead of "donating" everyone else's money.

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Which was seventy years ago.

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Which shouldn't even exist.

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Irrelevant.  There are a lot of democratic states in the world.  We don't have to nanny them.

Also, you don't have to be a libertarian to believe that taxpayer dollars should be used for the benefit of those who payed them.

[King]

There's a large number of Muslims in America, also.  Why should we ignore them?  What about the Africans?  There's a ton more people of African descent than Jewish.

Holocaust is so irrelevant of a point for the US supporting Israel that you should feel shame for bringing it up.  Why don't we build a Jewish state in German territory if that's what we have to care about?

And it's not about supporting Israel that I have a problem with.  I don't want to support Palestine either.  I think it's too small of a conflict that's being magnified to look a major one.  It's not.

It only becomes a major conflict if the Egyptians, Jordanians and Saudis get overly involved and I think we're underestimating their intelligence if we think they will serious support just trying to crush or even aggravate a likely a nuclear state like Israel for some low life Palestinians--risking control of their own countries.  They'll talk some talk, but like the Soviets in the Cold War, they don't want to act any more than we do.