[toraway]

For the sake of argument, let's concede that every point you make is 100% true, it's apartheid and racism.

How does that possibly make the act of keeping an ethnic minority of 1 million+ people with zero political agency confined in a walled-in ghetto that is routinely bombed into rubble, where the ability to import even basic humanitarian aid is entirely at the mercy of external security forces anything other than apartheid?

It would be much easier to make your argument without absurd contortions of logic if Israel actually agreed to a two state solution and gave Palestinians true political agency and right to self-determination. Then they could get away with washing their hands of any culpability, instead of vaguely pointing to the Palestinian Authority which both de jure and de facto is missing most of the attributes of an actual state. First and foremost being controlling a border, instead of Israel's "security control" granting the IDF complete freedom of movement and power to block any goods from entering/exiting the occupied territories.

The PA is closer to a city government with fewer powers than even a U.S. state, let alone an actual nation state. As long as that remains unchanged, Israel bears both legal and moral responsibility for the residents, and difficult to view the gross disparities between the rights of Israelis proper and those residing in the occupied areas as anything other than apartheid.

[spwa4]

So here's where your argument first goes wrong: Israel agreed to a two state solution many times. You do realize that the very origin of hamas was as a reaction to the two state solution, after the agreement was agreed/signed? They started massacring Palestinians to prevent it, spoiling Bill Clinton's "I made peace in Israel" party. Remember?

But this generalizes. Since 1880 what eventually became the Israeli government has made a great many attempts to make peace. Between 45 BC and 1970 ironically "Palestine" referred to the Jewish government in a bunch areas, most now called Israel (before "Palestine" is was "Judaea" and "Samaria"), a term chosen by, of all people, Julius Caesar. He chose it specifically to insult the Jews living there. A fact that, while totally lost on everyone today, was not lost on the KGB's Egyptian spy with the name "Yasser Arafat". Everything about Palestinians, including the name of their supposed ethnicity, is chosen with the specific purpose of making whoever lives there the enemies of the Jews, and this was so chosen by the Soviet Union (yes, it wasn't yet dead at that time). It's crazy how many people the Israeli government made peace with. The Caliph al Islam (ie. the leader of the Ottoman empire). The King of England. The UN Security Council. US presidents. General secretaries of the Soviet Union. KGB spies calling themselves "president of Palestine". The list goes on and on and on and on.

All Israeli peace attempts were in fact rejected by Arabs, dozen of peace attempts by now. Even by islamic institutions when they still existed. Islamic institions in Jerusalem at one point went so far as to create new SS units to exterminate Jews. Yes, really, that SS. There's history here.

> How does that possibly make the act of keeping an ethnic minority of 1 million+ people with zero political agency confined in a walled-in ghetto

It doesn't, of course. The problem is that that's not what happened. What happened is that muslim leadership consistently chose and enforced this outcome for other muslims (not just in Israel, but equally in Sudan, Syria, Egypt, Lybia, Iran, to various extents. This is their standard way of operating). Then they blame the result ... on the Jews. That is partly what the war with Iran is about. On Syrian Sunnis, then on Alawites, now on Sunnis again. On Lybian families. And so on, it's not like they're changing tactics.

Another big wrong point: US states have a ridiculous amount of power, imho, far more power than a European nation state has these days.

[toraway]

  > Another big wrong point: US states have a ridiculous amount of power, imho, far more power than a European nation state has these days.

A nation-state choosing to delegate power by treaty agreements does not mean they have lost the ability to exercise that power. Any state in the EU can withdraw at any time, as evidenced by Brexit.

Setting that aside, US states are prevented by the constitution from exercising control over trade or migration across their borders within the US, conducting independent foreign policy, issuing passports, are unrecognized by any other country, etc so that argument doesn't withstand the slightest scrutiny and is somewhat absurd. What they do have is an independent legal system and police powers that the federal government respects as settled law (with give and take on specific areas but still constrained by the judiciary).

Israel can and does override any action the PA may take at any time, once again on the basis of "security". There is very limited de jure autonomy and non-existent de facto autonomy. Much like how a state can override decisions a city makes, the difference still being that Israel again uses "security" as an ever present wildcard without judicial limitations that act as guardrails such as exist in US municipal governance.

[spwa4]

> A nation-state choosing to delegate power by treaty agreements does not mean they have lost the ability to exercise that power. Any state in the EU can withdraw at any time, as evidenced by Brexit.

All I can say is that there is legal definitions about that, and to suggest you go read them. No, EU states cannot withdraw, just like US states cannot withdraw (the constitution forbids it, and some interpret the constitution as if it authorizes the US military to act against congress to prevent it. But even if you disagree with that, the constitution authorizes pretty extreme measures to prevent US states from withdrawing. More importantly, a US state would be immediately kicked out of the global financial system due to debts to the FED, which would decimate even California's economy in weeks or less, despite those debts being entirely fictional), and the UK violated a LOT of treaties withdrawing and it absolutely is not legally possible. They did it anyway for 3 reasons.

Why did the UK do it anyway? First, it was in the EU, but not in the Eurozone (and so did not owe massive debts to the ECB, and the ECB could not simply bankrupt UK banks on a whim like they did with Greek and Italian banks). Second, the EU does not have an army, and certainly not one authorized to act against member countries. Third, the really important core economies (France, formerly the UK, and Germany) have simply stopped respecting their own laws and treaties. A de-facto situation was created by the UK and the system just pretends everything is fine, like Europe always does. The EU was originally a conglomerate, a company, and so it has always worked to accept what states do, and they threaten countries with economic measures, with loan repayments, foreclosures, mass-layoffs, bank closures, that sort of thing. Countries do what they want and send a military squad "with clear instructions". If you want to see what a total disaster the UK withdrawal was (and is), go visit Northern Ireland and talk to a few people how and why goods are traded there.

You see, states make laws, but as is demonstrated every week these days, don't see their own actions as bound by laws, or treaties, or ... at all. And I don't just mean the US, or Iran but equally countries like Spain or France or ...

[xg15]

And yet you can find maps with arab villages all over present-day Israel that were completely erased. There were battles in the War of Independence (independence from what?) to take over the large cities like Jaffa and Haifa and expel the population. How did that happen if Israel was always so peace-seeking?

> Since 1880 what eventually became the Israeli government has made a great many attempts to make peace.

Yes, like the UN partition plan. Usually, if one party says "no", I'd think this would mean "we have to renegotiate and find another solution" and not "ok, then we can just take everything by force". But the rules seem to be different here.

> It doesn't, of course. The problem is that that's not what happened. What happened is that muslim leadership consistently chose and enforced this outcome for other muslims (not just in Israel, but equally in Sudan, Syria, Egypt, Lybia, Iran, to various extents. This is their standard way of operating). Then they blame the result ... on the Jews.

Last time I checked, it was the IDF who keeps up the blockade of Gaza and controls everything that goes in and out, not any kind of muslim army.

[spwa4]

> And yet you can find maps with arab villages all over present-day Israel that were completely erased. There were battles in the War of Independence (independence from what?) ...

Independence from the British Empire that took over in an attempt to stop the wave of muslim genocides that started after WW1. Genocides on the Armenians. On the Kurds. On Jews. And so forth.

> How did that happen if Israel was always so peace-seeking?

Ah. Ok. The Palestinian government (this refers at this point in time to Jewish body under British colonial rule) made a deal with the British. They would deliver soldiers for England's wars and in trade they'd get independence. Same deal Australia made. Of course ... they delivered soldiers ... and independence, well, Britain said "no". VERY much the same deal as Australia. In fact, British soldiers started brutally repressing all independence movements, and that brutality led to more and more fights between islamic indepence movements, Jewish independence movements (famously "Irgun", "Haganah" and "Lehi". Irgun and Haganah are now the IDF, and Lehi ... was congratulated, thoroughly thanked for their performance in the war of independence and its outcome, and ... asked to leave. For good reason). Once these fights got really in gear, there's this little thing that happened in Europe involving Hitler, muslims helped the Nazis in hopes of stopping Jewish immigration to the middle east, but obviously that achieved the exact opposite of what they wanted. It resulted more Jewish immigration, a LOT more in fact, which led to yet more tensions. Even between Lehi and Jewish immigrants, but especially between islamic independence (and ... let's be honest, islamic genocide movements, the guys who had gotten to massacre so many peoples. Kurds, Armennians, Greeks, ... but were thoroughly unsatisfied with their mostly failed genocide on the Jews). However, under the circumstances, everyone still saw the British as their main enemy. However, the impossible happened: the British retreated and really just left. But this can be described as "put the Palestinian government in power". At this point, the tensions between Jewish independence movements and islamic ... let's charitably call them independence movements exploded (not that I claim Irgun or especially Lehi were ... afraid of a warcrime or two or ten. But the islamic ones were still WAY worse. In their defence, the convention of Geneve didn't exist yet). Obviously, as everyone knows, the Jews won. As reaction the surrounding Arab countries all attacked. The Jews won again. 20+ years of war. The Jews won again. The Palestinian government renamed itself "Israel" to undo the insult Julius Caesar made (full name "Eretz Israel"). In reaction, muslims attacked all Jews not living in Israel, which cause ANOTHER wave of Jewish immigration to Israel. Then the communists decided to attack the Jews (the hero of Chernobyl, Valery Legasov, got his position in the party, and his academic position, by removing Jewish students from the Kurchatov institute. He even makes a reference in his famous tapes that one of his actions to remove them, removing a doctorate thesis written by a Jewish student, has something to do with causing the accident. Not clear exactly what do). Which caused ANOTHER wave of Jewish immigration (including quite a few Russians, millions in fact, who were perfectly willing to pretend to be Jewish to escape communism, which of course turned out to be a very good decision). Much later the Iranian revolution happened, swearing to complete the genocide on the Jews ... which caused ANOTHER wave of Jewish immigration (not that large, but still)

At some point during this, Israel did the unthinkable. They almost uniformly chose the side of the US. It was thought ex-communist Russians would protest, but "strangely" to everybody who has not yet talked to some ex-Soviet people, these Russian immigrants had no objections to that at all. A lot of them have since served allied to the US military, some even in the US military directly. Most arabs chose the side of the Russians (the Soviets, then later the Russian Federation, you see, the nazis were unavailable after 1944). So the Soviets recruited 100 spies to create a "independence movement". One of them, with nom-de-guerre "The Wise Egyptian" succeeded. Better known with his name shortened, in Arabic: "Yasser Arafat (el-Masri)", who chose the name for his "resistance movement": PLO (Palestine Liberation Organization). Strangely, they did not really see Israel as their enemy, rather the US. Strange that. Communist-funded. See US as their enemy. But to do that, they started massacring Jews, killed some teams the Olympics, and managed to survive a few IDF attacks. So they got a state from the UN, in trade for normalizing relations. Then, surprisingly a group of religious zealots got enough support, and especially weapons, not from Netanyahu, but from leftists (they still use communist-designed weapons, their famous rocket is named "Katushya", Russian for "little girl", the title of a famous Russian folk song, and their weapons are still mostly Kalashnikov rifles), and spoiled Clinton's big "peace in the middle east" moment. You see, Palestinians (and Hezbollah, and the Houthi's) are paid, mostly by the UN, to attack Jews. The amounts are staggering, and ... Israel taxes this money. That represents ... 1/8th of Israel's economy.

And here we are.

And despite all this, leftist parties do not see any of what happened as their fault. They blame Jews for refusing to get killed (and obviously, the problem Moscow really has with Israel, even today, is that Israel makes access to oil possible for the west. It is not lost on Russia that all the losing parties of WW2 (Germany, Japan, Turkey) lacked access to oil, and all the winning parties (US, Russia) had all the oil they could want.

The goal of paying hamas and the PLO these absurd amounts of money, is to deny the West access to oil. Which is why Russia has not (yet) turned on Iran. Iran is still blocking western access to oil. It's coming, though. It's the mullahs only way out, the only way to keep their kids in American universities and keep their mansions in central London and New York (did you know that's what allah commands? Mansions in central London. Villas in New York. Raise your kids in American, Christian, universities. Most of the daughters are not wearing veils. And by "not wearing veils" I mean "posting bikini shots on Instagram", and apparently several sons do the same with alcohol parties, even some in Iran itself. In case anyone is still wondering why the Mossad is so incredibly successful at recruiting Iranians and where they contact and recruit operatives, I hope this explains that matter). I have actually read the quran, but I must have somehow missed the part about the expensive villas). So I expect the mullahs to chose western money (sorry I mean "peace") which will suck for Iranians (no peace for them, of course it's not like Russia is offering them peace either), but will suck a LOT more for Russia, socialists (yes, really), and the UN.

You judge whether this all makes the world more, or less peaceful. All sides have behaved despicably, though again, there is no comparison and the islamic movements have behaved a LOT worse. And the only thing communists/socialists/UN have planned for Palestinians is eradicating them (just ask a few Afghans) ... just not quite yet.

> Last time I checked, it was the IDF who keeps up the blockade of Gaza and controls everything that goes in and out, not any kind of muslim army.

You need to get your eyes examined and look to the South and the East. It is in fact muslim armies blockading both Gaza and the west bank.