Warning, this may offend, and cause arguments.

I have this lady friend online, we're very close. She's hot as hell, and if you 1st met her, you'd think she was just an everyday person from the UK, Europe, US etc.

She's from Morocco, from a Muslim family.

I adore her, its mutual, but the second we discuss the palestine/israel conflict, BANG, arguements.

EVen though she sits in the safe comfort of her rich peaceful suburb in luxury, she rants on about how "her" people, thousands of miles away, are being murdered daily by jews and the west.

She does accept some of my arguments that arabs make it worse for themseleves sometimes and fight each other, but theres an underlying issue here. She wont back down, its like talking to a brick wall. And she probably feels the same way. Why is this?

http://www.iht.com/articles/2006/06/11/news/girl.php

"In the sandy courtyard in Beit Lahiya where the Ghaliya family held their wake, hundreds of women from across Gaza came to give condolences. Many carried flags and chanted hymns of mourning and resistance. A young women sang of revenge.

"We will seek justice for your murderers," she sang, as others chanted with her: "We swear to God, to Muhammad, in the name of Hamas - we will seek justice in your name, oh glorious martyrs.""

It feels like the passion and desire for revenge amongst the arabs starts at birth, and is drilled into them by parents and religious figures.
Likewise, the arrogance and apathy of the west and jews/isrealis is almost a genetic predisposition.

The war will never end. Until one man or woman says "enough, my family is dead, but i seek no revenge or satisfaction of further bloodshed."
Will that happen? will it f***!


One day, every Israeli and Palestinian will be dead from war. On that day, peace will occur.

if(getThingFlags(source) & 0x8){
  do her}
elseif(getThingFlags(source) & 0x4){
  do other babe}
else{
  do a dude}

Innate hatred of Jews. Your rationale arguments will do nothing to influence her.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but didn't the Jews (with help) basically force their way back into Israel, which was occupied by the Palestinians?

The Bride is beautiful, but she's married to another man.

Since when did anyone on a side of an argument "See the light, and admit that he or she is wrong?"

Nope. As long as they can breed...

As for her argument, that "she rants on about how her people, thousands of miles away, are being murdered daily by jews and the west", her own people is doing the same thing

Neither side is in the right in this conflict. That's why it will never be resolved.

It goes back so far that theres really no end in sight.

Arabs got the short end of the stick because Abraham and Sarah were impatient and ****ed up, thus Ismael was born, who technicially fathered the arabs. Since Ishmael and Hagar were forced to leave the camp, this caused probably the first documented Arab/Hebrew resentment in history.

Israel technicially and rightfully IS Hebrew territory, but we can also see they have a hefy track history of loosing it to other nations. (ex. Babylon) So I guess the biggest factor is, in todays liberal and peaceful standpoint, should we adhere to the "you keep what you kill" tradition? Or should we try to be peacekeepers and work something out for both peoples? Personally, I think tradition runs way too strong for any of us to understand or interfere.

This is all if you believe anything from that standpoint. JMO though.

YOU DON'T SAY?!?!?!?1

It would be like the Native Americans taking back the country. Or Mexico taking back the southwest. It may not have been right to take in the first place, but why should they deserve it back now?

How about a little less religious myth and legend, and a little more realistic history and politics.
Palestinian Lands were stolen by the English, and given to the "poor Jews who had ALWAYS been persecuted" in the form of a new country, Israel. Arabs tried to destroy Isreal, and in the 6 day way, Israelies took even more land (which DEFINATELY wasnt theirs, including Jerusalem).
Whos right and whos wrong?

England/Us/UN were right for trying to do a good thing for jews. But were wrong in how they did it.
Israel was right to lash back, but wrong for taking even more land, and to this day, using excessive force against little kids with sticks and stones.
Palestinians were right to fight back when their land was stolen and against Isreal overkill-military actions, but wrong in accepting NO compromise and striking innocent civillians to this day, rather than those responsible.

Whos wrong? EVERYONE!


ps. Any typical Pro-Jewish/USA collaborated biased towards muslims without drawing upon the facts, as a whole, will not be tolerated. You're just part of the problem.

if(getThingFlags(source) & 0x8){
  do her}
elseif(getThingFlags(source) & 0x4){
  do other babe}
else{
  do a dude}

Actually, the real problem is racism ( = fear of anything different to what you know) which is constantly fed by the people in power (via the media) on both sides because chaos and hatred of a common 'enemy' helps keep them in power by allowing their corrupt self-enriching practices to remain unnoticed. This is the same in the East, the West, America, Iran - don't kid yourself.

However, the main difference between Israeli/Western societies and Muslim/Arab societies is that in Muslim societies political pluralism is suppressed and discouraged and thus people think less for themselves (or are afraid to speak out) and their opinions tend to converge with their leaders'.

Edit: Nevermind. I remember hearing this, I remember seeing references, but I can't find it and without them it seems pretty dumb.

Edit: References

The British didn't give Palestine to the Israelis, the Israelis took it for themselves. There are still Palestinians alive today who can remember family members being killed by Zionist terrorists.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cyprus_internment_camps <- British set up internment camps on Cyprus to prevent 'giving' Palestine to Jewish immigrants.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zionist_political_violence <- Terrorism during the establishment of Israel (under the Mandate of Palestine) designed to prevent British immigration quotas from working and because killing Arabs is fun.

There's also a laundry list of historical and religious reasons for mutual racism. Hitler, in particular, had a profound effect on the Arabs.

Your phrasing indicates a very one-sided opinion, JonC, but on the whole you are right. However, whoever is really "right or wrong" is unimportant, because no referee is going to come in and decide the outcome. The focus should be on finding compromising, peaceful solutions that will minimize any side's feeling defeated or cheated. But, again, this is practically impossible as long as people in power have an interest in maintaining an atmosphere of fear and hatred.

EDIT: y did u edit

what did he say!?

Fardreamer hit the nail on the head with the whole learning by rote system in the middle east, individual thought is not encouraged as much as it is here.

if(getThingFlags(source) & 0x8){
  do her}
elseif(getThingFlags(source) & 0x4){
  do other babe}
else{
  do a dude}

From the media I got the impression that Mahmoud Abbas was a cooperative and peaceful man (when he was elected) and the "road map" was a step toward a resolution. Whatever happened to that? Were the plans too unfavorable for the Palestinians?

The things that go on around there are truly awful and I wish people would not get desensitized to it due to the constant media coverage, but that is only a natural reaction.

It's also worth mentioning that certain Arabs and Muslims have a gigantic amount of (blood) money and (bloody) land and if Arabs actually cared about the Palestinians they'd have allowed Palestinian refugees into their countries instead of helping the Israelis push 'em into the sea.

And that the most successful Palestinian leader (by volume of works rather than actual successes) was a terrorist who stole enough from his own people that he got onto the list of the world's 100 richest people.

Something phrased in a profoundly poor way.

I pretty much just said that Israel was founded by terrorism and led by those same terrorists operating under a sugar-coated version of the revisionist philosophy that led to the mass slaughter of Palestinians in the first place, which is why they become quite irate if you talk to them about how great Zionism is. Sorta like, - and this is appropriate to the conversation, - if you created a Nazi movement based on racial tolerance and invited all of the Jewish people you know to join you at your celebratory camp.

But really I just wanted to put to rest the idea that the British gave Palestine over. The British didn't want things to turn out the way they did at all.

The British and their fellow European imperialists who decided to claim the rest of the world as their own are the reason the world is in the sorry state that it is today.

No, the world is in the sorry state that it is today because the world is full of people.

Edit: I know you were being funny, but I'm going to disagree: the Middle East is the reason the world is in the sorry state that it is today. Morally and ethically they're trapped in the stone ages, they're so greedy that history's greatest explorers got where they did because they were trying to avoid having to do business with them, they control the world's economy partly because they were lucky enough to be born where dinosaurs went to die and partly because they have no scruples, and the people who live there are simply delighted by crapping out a new worthless bloodthirsty religion onto the world stage on a regular basis just to watch the wave of death wash over the planet.

And I'm really not kidding about this. Even our modern alphabet and the runic alphabets can be traced back to Egyptian Hieroglyphics through Phoenician. The Middle East has had a profound effect on our culture in every area except our funny concepts of 'evolving culture' and 'technology' which nobody in the Middle East except Israeli computer scientists have managed to figure out.

British people.

Perfectly stated.

Anovis u smell

Well done guys, 20 posts in and no serious flames.
Proud of you all!

if(getThingFlags(source) & 0x8){
  do her}
elseif(getThingFlags(source) & 0x4){
  do other babe}
else{
  do a dude}

Jews hate Palestinians for the same reason. The whole thing has just been an escalating series of violence that just molds with cause each successive generation to see the "bad guys" in a more stereotypical light.

The politics are too complected to really call a who started it, and it really doesn't matter. Of course the Arabs have been acting to like douches to each other and everyone else ever since Israel disappeared back in the Roman era.

All it really comes down to is, Israel has their stuff together, and the Palestinians are the same stupid rabble they've been for thousands of years, so the Palestinians will continue to get owned. I don't feel particularly sorry for either side, but have the Palestinians come out on top won't do anyone else any good, as they are a generally worthless lot.

i vote we turn the entire middle east into a giant crater...









...then stick a flag in it and call dibs on the oil

"they are a generally worthless lot" <-- just the kind of narrow-minded racist spittle that makes you part of the same worthless lot.

So do you think the Israelis hate the Germans as much as they hate the Palestinians? How about the Italians? The Turkish? The Persians? The Greeks? The Iraqis? The Egyptians?

Look, there's a certain... historically disproportionate amount of hate the Israelis dump on the Palestinians. You can try to justify this by looking back 8000 years through history, by reading into fake made-up stories in the Bible, but that's not it. The IDF's behavior towards the Palestinians is a symptom of the same mental imbalance that causes the same complete disregard for civilians in everything else the IDF does.

Too complected for you maybe. And Israel didn't 'disappear' during the Roman era. Are you maybe thinking of the expulsion after the Bar Kokhba revolt? Are you maybe thinking of anything in particular?

Wow, you're dumb. I don't know why I'm responding to you.

Edit: Incidentally, the only reason Jewish people aren't "the same stupid rabble they've been for thousands of years" is because of *******s like you, Obi_Kwiet, who believe it's not murder if they're killing people that you dislike.

Duh. That's exactly what I said. You can't go back and call some kind of fault in that situation, and even if you could, the conflict is so old it would be irrelevant.



Are you? Why don't you go back thorough the last several thousand years of poorly recorded history and try to figure whose fault this is. You can't just point to one bad thing on side did. It's a giant pissing contest. Israel is winning because it's stronger.



Because you're lazy, and like to simplify everything that everyone says down to one of two preconceived stereotypes. In this case pro-Israel or pro-Palestinian.



Bravo on reading comprehension. Also, the way you put it, you make it sound like a good thing.



It would technically be more correct to say that it's a worthless culture. Obviously it's not a racial thing. That would be an irrational and baseless assumption.

The things is, while Israel and Palatine are stuck in an ever descending spiral of violence that further corrupts their cultures as it goes on, Israel has been able to actually produce some useful products and services for the rest of the world. Palatinate, like most other fundamentalist states, sits in the sand enforcing a backward chauvinistic society. They're both both pretty sorry examples of human existence, but at least on of them isn't totally useless.

The IDF's behavior is the same behavior as American soldiers in Iraq and as English soldiers in Northern Ireland and as Roman legionaries in Gaul and as wardens in a prison. It's a general social-psychological phenomenon that will arise whenever one group is "put in charge" of another. Seeing these issues as strictly 'Israeli' or 'Palestinian' is a convenient way of not dealing with the fact that it is basic human nature and both you and I would end up behaving the same way if put on one side or the other.

EDIT: just to make it clear, I am Israeli and have served in the Navy in a non-combat outfit (read: office day job), I never took part in any warfare. But I know plenty of people who have and I've come to understand many things about the society I live in.

Do yourself a favor and go watch TV or something.

Why don't you move to Gaza?

...I know you'd very much like to pretend that we're saying the same thing, but we're not. Read -> Comprehend -> Post (but please don't because you'll probably just post more stupid racist ****).

I'm not going to waste my time with a point-by-point because I think you'll get the message better if I spell it out for you:

1.) Yes you can go back and call some kind of fault in this situation, specifically the modern situation where Revisionist Zionists (read: terrorists) encouraged large aliyahs and engaged in a campaign of violence against both Palestinian civilians and British officials to make the situation in Israel unmanageable.

2.) The Palestinians were never what you describe as a "stupid rabble" and the fact that you think they were demonstrates a fairly fundamental confusion (read: retardation) over exactly what a Palestinian is. It's an etymological drift from Philistine, which - if you read the Bible - were a people who lived in Canaan. But they aren't those people. You see, the Romans - being such excellent students of history that you would probably have gotten along with them very well - essentially renamed the entire Israel region 'Syria-Palaestina' so I guess you can blame them for your abortive attempt at racism. All Palestinian really means is "Arab who should have moved a week earlier."

3.) 'Palatinate' doesn't mean what you think it does.

4.) The fact that I believe someone is entitled to life and their own culture is precisely why I am a better person than you, than Palestinian suicide bombers and the IDF pilots who drop area-denial weapons on Lebanese civilians. You may live in the free world but you don't have free world values - you belong right in there with them.

But here's the thing:

The American government and the American military command tries to prevent civilian casualties wherever logistically possible. I'm not talking about soldier or mercenary psychoses here, I'm talking about actual command decisions. Can you really say the same thing about the IDF?

Bulldozing the houses of suicide bombers as a deterrent?

Using cluster munitions on residential neighborhood?

How many times has Israel launched nuclear bombers against their neighbors only to get turned back at the last second by American interceptors?

And what the hell was the deal with the USS Liberty?


At a certain point you just have to realize that... and when I say this know that I really like Israel even if your government is a completely loony dangerous rogue organization... you guys are sorta, like, asking for it.
Assassinating a terrorist leader is alright, I'm pretty sure even the most jaded and antisemitic Muslim can grasp the concept that the Israelis will probably shove a missile up your butt if you blow up a schoolbus, but when you massacre unarmed standers-by for doing nothing all you're going to prove is that the Israelis will kill you regardless of what you're doing. How is that going to deter terrorism? It raises the odds of getting killed from 1 in 10 to 2 in 10? Whoop-de-doo.

Yeah, yeah, crazy people. I haven't studied the situation in depth, but there's enough back and forth about it that's is a pretty safe assumption that know one is totally innocent. But like said, it doesn't matter. It's been several generations since all that happened, and the conflict has caused two cultures to take an irrational stereotypical view of each other.


Informative, but irrelevant. The only thing that matters here is that they are a reasonably cohesive group of people that respond to oppression by Israel with suicide bombing and other violence.


Ohh spelling errors. Almost as good an argument as random accusations of racism.



Are you stupid? How at any point could you have gotten the idea that I thought that violence by either side is a good thing?

And what's with this moral judgment all of a sudden? You're making a arbitrary, meaningless moral judgments that you can't even rationally back up. Your philosophical world view is totally inconsistent with the idea of the moral absolutes you appealing to. It just one big pretentious appeal to emotion.


Also, what the hell is up with your confusion of race and culture? They are not the same thing. I never said anything about any particular race. Throwing racism out there is lazy, unfounded and pretentious. It also makes you a total hypocrite.

@Joncie:

First of all, your ideas about Americans "trying to prevent casualties wherever logistically possible" are pretty silly. Soldiers are soldiers and war is war. I'm not talking only about troops in the field, I'm talking about every colonel and general up the chain of command. Even with all the best intentions in the world (and no military has those), once you intentionally send troops into the field who are trained and eager to kill "the enemy" you're going to get atrocities. You think the American military is more humane than the Israeli? Do you know how many classroom hours during training are spent on the ethics of combat? And yet, horrible stuff happens when you give teenagers guns and things to shoot at. Big surprise. You condemn bulldozing houses because that's what you hear of on the news. You don't hear of all the other (much worse) things that happen in Iraq and elsewhere because the media is not allowed to report them. Everything we think we know comes through the media.

As for government policy of retaliation, I have a huge problem with the closed-minded militaristic Israeli attitude that unfortunately is the mainstream in most parts of the country. Our corrupt government is mostly busy balancing their political positions and bank accounts, trying to appease the ignorant public demanding retaliation in order to gather enough political support for them to stay on the job and continue their under-the-table affairs. It's a vicious cycle where the public remains ignorant and hungry for revenge because the media is feeding them two things: fear and shopping, which are great for sedating demand for social reform.

Replace "Israel" with "America" and add a couple of mentions of George W. and you'll see things aren't that different wherever the right-wing is in power.

It's been 60 years, Obi_Kwiet. 60 years is not a lot of time for someone to get over massacres and mass-displacements.

In fact, my brief overview of what makes you history-retarded is actually a highly relevant refutation of your 'thousands of years of sand' comment about the Palestinians. I think it's cute how you attempted to dismiss it as irrelevant when it stands alone as proof that you don't have a single clue what you're talking about.

They're about as cohesive as you can expect from a group of people who have their sovereignty and right to travel arbitrarily restricted. In the sense that no, they are not: there are/have been a number of factions, they don't always cooperate very well, and not every Palestinian is in one.

But hey. You're probably a man of anglo-christian descent, and most of your neighbors are too. Let's say the United States sided with Germany in WWI and your massive country got split up into smaller states - let's call one of them Turkey (because I'm not being brazen enough). How cohesive do you think Ohio would be under a similar situation? Those lazy Ohioans have never done anything in thousands of years. Oh ho ho. Shoot me I'm a tard.

First off, it's not racist if it's true in spite of what the PC crowd would lead you to think. The explorers literally were looking for a way to get to India and China without having to barter with the Arabs and the Jews. Saudi Arabia has bribed the Democratic Party to only buy oil from them. And more people have been killed in the name of Abraham's God than for any other reason.

Secondly, while avoiding a meaningless debate about how race and culture are intrinsically linked and it's really impossible to be against one without being against the other, I think your comments about the Palestinians stand for themselves and it was pretty obviously your intent. If it honestly wasn't you probably have Tourettes.

Thirdly, justice and morality are indeed complex concepts but a jerkbag is still a jerkbag. I'm pretty sure the only moral absolute I've brought into the discussion is that killing is wrong, which it indeed is according to both of the religions involved in this particular discussion. I don't condemn the Israeli people or the Palestinian people, but I have no problem condemning Yasser Arafat's bloated corpse, the Israeli government and you because... jerkbag.


Tip: Your spellchecker does not do double-duty as a fact checker.

im sure you can trace pack and find who is originally at fault here. the simple fact is that, if you want that region to EVER improve, then who is at fault is going to have to become a moot point. eventually both sides are going to have to give, and make compromises. both sides are going to have to deal with and find a way to neutralize their own "terrorist" organizations. unless both sides are willing to put in the same effort, nothing will ever be solved.

Fardreamer: Fair enough, I guess. It's also a lot easier to stick to my western ethics because I live in complete peace millions of miles away from armed conflict, so the colors probably look a little different on the ground.

It seems we both agree that a policy for retaliation offers absolutely nothing though, and that's what's really important.

That's part of the problem. FOX NEWS. :downs:

Oh, you're so witty. Fox News is sooo extreme.