Max Keiser sounds irrationally aggressive, and then the other guy acts like a slimy liar and makes me positively reconsider everything Keiser says.

Correct. You also leave behind arrogance and entitlement issues.

/racism "He's good at basketball and he's good at swatting flies!" /racism

So they collected a montage of thoughtless, violently aggressive responses from drunk Jewish boys (and one girl). This shows that not every Jewish youth is a wise or caring person. It doesn't say anything of substance about Israeli Jews or American Jews as people, their political views, or what they think of Obama.

I view this video as a lazy attempt to paint Jews as racists and extremists. Why didn't they go out on the street and talk to some adults? Or someone who was actually sober? No one should be shocked that filming groups of drunken boys yields filthy language and posturing.

I'm a 20-something educated Jew, who has been to Israel twice, and I thought Obama's comments on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict were meritorious. The Palestinians get a state, if they give up violence and recognize Israel's right to exist. Israel must allow for a Palestinian economy to function, stop official support of "settling", relocate or arrange exchanges for existing settlements, and prevent the creation of new settlements.

Palestinian violence creates enough support for those on the political right in Israel so that they can continue to dominate the government and maintain the status quo. Until and unless the Palestinians find a leader like MLK or Gandhi, who embraces nonviolence and unites the majority of Palestinians under that banner, I doubt that the status quo will shift in any significant way.

Gee, he is very brave. All of those British people without access to the internet, who can't possibly Google around to find a Palestinian charity.

"People will die because of the BBC decision!"

Maybe the Queen will knight him and give him a destrier and a lance.

*quixote

It's a character and a joke. The actual guy is playing a 'gamer' who has made a parody video of Yahtzee.

*discard

In this context, yes semitic means Jewish.

Are there Israeli settlers? Yes. Have they sometimes had government support and sometimes not? Yes. Do some of those settlers think they have a divine right to settle in the West Bank and Gaza strip? Yes.
However, the State of Israel has never claimed a divine right to take something away from the Palestinians. Israel does claim a right to exist, which is not recognized by Hamas.

The Nazis weren't about "taking something away from others" - that's simply thievery; they were primarily focused on the extermination of inferior races and persons, even to the detriment of their war effort.

Yes, if someone is dead, they are dead, but it does matter how they died.

And finally, there are certainly plenty of individuals involved in this conflict who believe that peace is attainable without the "total destruction of the other side."

Ok, so you added some good details to this unilateral plan for peace; the UN comes in and enforces it, the US and EU broker the agreements.

Then there would be far fewer attacks on Israel; I agree. Still, what does Israel do when one or more of those attacks occurs? I feel like you didn't answer my question earlier. If no one dies, I presume you'd say Israel should sit tight and continue to maintain a peace. At what point would Israel be justified in ending a peace in response to an attack?

I also can plainly see the potential for some whackjob Israeli showing up in a mosque with a rifle; it happened once before. However, there's a large difference between one murderous, identifiable zealot unconnected to the Israeli government, which is the kind of attack that has never met with the approval of the Israeli people, and a suicide bombing or a rocket barrage, which has been accepted as a valid tactic by the vast majority of the Palestinian people.

To Geo, if you've never seen such a "worldwide shift of opinion against Israel's actions," then I must ask if you've ever read the news before? Israel has always been castigated for military action, this reaction by the international community looks like nothing new to me, except insofar as it was possibly more supportive than it has been in the past of Israel's right to defend itself.

Furthermore, you might as well flip your first statement around and apply it to Gaza and the West Bank - Israel has rotated through various governments that push land-for-peace, aggressive peace talks, and of course military action. The Palestinians have, in my experience, more often had leadership interested in pursuing military action.

I'll just disagree briefly with your interpretation of what Solvent said - he said "alleged atrocities." There's no "maybe there was an atrocity or two, maybe there wasn't." At this point in history, given the staggering amount of documentary and testamentary evidence of the premeditated murder of millions of civilians for reasons of religion, race, politics, and sexual orientation, there can be no denying of the Holocaust.

As to applying the label of anti-semitism. I do think that someone is anti-semitic when they call for the destruction of the State of Israel. Now, I feel that plenty of people bandy about the anti-semitic label in the context of political criticism too easily - certainly the State of Israel is deserving of critique in a number of areas, none of which rise to the level of advocating its destruction.

Still, when people tell me that the Israelis are behaving like Nazis, or that Zionism is Nazism, I consider them anti-semitic, because I know what makes a Nazi a Nazi, and that practically everyone agrees that the Nazis were as pure evil as you can get, and had to be crushed with violence. If Nazi=Pure Evil and Israel=Nazi, then they must think that Israel=Pure Evil, then it seems evident that they think Israel should be destroyed.

If Israel is destroyed, many many many Jews die, who are not pure evil, and that, again, is anti-semitic.

Tomorrow I'll write up a response to your prior post, because I think you give a shit, and I know I give a shit, and probably some other people on here would actually prefer discussion instead of jingoism.

Solvent, for someone who says "question, think, and understand," you sure seem to eat up the holocaust denial stuff. I mean, did they pay off all of those elderly jews to lie to the Shoah Foundation? No, I forgot, we're all "in" on the conspiracy.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shoah_Foundation

So...ok. What's the other option for Israel? What's the plan?

First pull out, bulldoze the checkpoints and the walls, open the borders, remove all of the settlements, release all of Palestinians imprisoned in Israel, call off any pending assassinations, restore the borders to where they were in '67, then peace?

I suppose the flip answer is "that's a good start," but I think you'll agree that there isn't a hell of a lot of trust on either side.

Let's say for the sake of discussion Israel did all of those things, and then there were a couple of rocket attacks and a suicide bombing in the space of a month.

What do you think the right response for Israel would be then? I'm not saying that I know, and I realize that this is a rather extended hypothetical, but I'd rather have a relatively friendly discussion about how all this is going to end than an endless discussion of blame assignment.

Everyone else has the finger-pointing covered, I think.

I would add that I found one semi-decent pro-Israel clip (not the one I posted this evening) that wasn't war-porn, Faux News, lame propaganda, or softcore of Israel's fighting chicks in 15-odd pages of YouTube. Certainly the "grassroots" media is with the Palestinians, whatever the credentialed journos think.

Edit: Oh, and do I think Israel should have or needs nukes? No. There's no one to use them on, anyway. Do I think they'll give them up, any more than I think India, Pakistan, or China will? No. Do I think they'll ever use them? No. Do I think that there's a far greater possibility of an Iranian nuclear weapon going off? Uh, yes.

Another Edit: As to comparisons with those colonial wars. The salient difference between the colonial struggles you mentioned and the conflict in Israel is that neither side in this conflict has anywhere to go back to. I'd say a closer comparison are the U.S./Native American wars, unfortunately.

Maybe that's a philosophical difference between the typical American response to Israel's actions and the typical European response - some Europeans view the conflict through the prism of their colonial experience, and therefore see the struggle as between colonizer and native population, and most Americans...don't.

I will also disagree here with qm and say that, whether there were Palestinians 60 years ago or not, there are Palestinians now, with a unique culture and identity separate from other peoples in the region.

Furthermore, plenty of the people who identify as Palestinians have ancestry in the region, and certainly a great deal of them have some kind of right to live in the area if they wish, as part of an independent Palestinian state or the State of Israel.

What they don't have a right to do is demand the end of the State of Israel and the death or expulsion of its residents.

I would add that Egypt borders the Gaza strip, and has not allowed aid through. I would also hasten to add that I wouldn't be surprised if they are doing so at the request of Israel, but I don't know either way. Something to think about.

Separately, dead tofu, I will admit that I have very little knowledge of the Talmud, but I would say that I personally disavow all of the statements on that page, whether they are translated properly or taken out of context, and doubt that you could find ten thousand Jews in the entire world who agreed with those statements.

I know that you could find similarly abhorrent statements in the texts of any of the major religions, and that those statements have very little to do with the actual practice of most of the members of those religions.

I also don't much like Menachem Begin. He's kind a Nixonian figure to Israel; he led violent activity against the British before Israeli independence, signed a peace treaty with Egypt (giving back the Sinai), and then ordered the unsuccessful invasion of Lebanon after the attempted assassination of Israel's diplomat to the UK.

He's the quote from the speech he gave after the no-confidence vote in the Knesset regarding the war in Lebanon:

"The children of Israel will happily go to school and joyfully return home, just like the children in Washington, in Moscow, and in Peking, in Paris and in Rome, in Oslo, in Stockholm and in Copenhagen. The fate of... Jewish children has been different from all the children of the world throughout the generations. No more. We will defend our children. If the hand of any two-footed animal is raised against them, that hand will be cut off, and our children will grow up in joy in the homes of their parents."

He's talking about killing people who try kill Israeli children.

See this site for more examples of misquotes: http://www.camera.org/index.asp?x_article=766&x_context=2

You're ignorant, Farhad. Yehoshua is Joshua. Which is my name.

Yeshua, on the other hand...http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yeshua_(name)

Furthermore, I'm not simply "peddling a line of bullshit."

You are antagonistic without acknowledging any of the truth of what I say - it does not strengthen your case, it weakens it.

If you have some disagreement about my understanding of the history of the region, explain it instead of simply calling me a liar. Your rage is apparent, but unsupported.

Do you disagree that the elections that put Hamas in power were free? That they are expressing the will of their populace? Would you absolve Americans from responsibility for Bush's mistakes around the world? I wouldn't. If I'm not mistaken, the current economic crisis we're suffering seems connected to policies of this past government.

As an American, I abhor most of what the Bush administration has said and done to this country and our civil liberties, not to mention the world and our standing in it.

As to Lebanon, it's my understanding that the head of Hezbollah apologized for the war in Lebanon, until he heard that the Israelis considered it a defeat. Then he proclaimed that it was a tremendous victory for Lebanon. As a matter of fact, the Lebanon border had been very quiet up until this latest conflict, and still remains relatively quiet.

Israel sets very high goals for itself, and when it does not meet them, it considers that a failure. I don't think that's wrong, but I don't think that means that Israel should stop protecting itself.

Do I think the invasion of Gaza will lead to peace all by itself? Of course not. Do I think it will cause some problems for Israel? Yes. However, I believe that it holds significant hope for doing more good than harm, as far as peace in the region is concerned.

Are you here for reasoned discussion, Farhad, or simply to have others agree with you and foment hatred against Israel and the Jewish people?

It is the refusal to find common ground and accept disagreement without demeaning and vilifying the other side that makes this conflict intractable. That way of thought perpetuates the problem.