does Israel have 'a right to exist"?

nobody in this conflict is sticking to the laws of war. and what they are doing will not protect them in the long run, it will make them less secure.

You're very critical but yopu've never offered up a feasible alternative.

maybe they're being heavy handed in what they are doing - but should they sit back and let the missles land? it's lose-lose at the moment for everyone while there's still this hatred for the jewish state

I have but you refuse to contemplate it. you say it's already been tried. well so has invading lebanon and look how that helped.
it created the very terrorist group you are now invading for the second time in order to defeat.
do you suppose hizbullah will be replaced by the lebanese league of happy clappers after all this shit

the hatred is not only on the arab side. when I was there I met Jewish settlers in Hebron who were filled with hatred

i'm in no doubt there is - but the arabs want 'southern lebanon' back from the jews by wiping them out.

joe can argue this better than me!

The Jewish settlement movement sickens me to the core... I don't think anyone is trying to paint Israel whiter than white... but there is clearly one aggressor in this conflict and it is not Israel.

Let me repost something I wrote in the Iran thread... Some of Israel’s efforts for peace:

1967 - Land for peace was rejected by the Arabs as its acceptance would also give legitimacy to Israel.

1993 – Since the Oslo Accords Israel have been striving to meet the goals set out during the talks, the PA was formed (which governed education, police, health, etc.), areas like Gaza have been handed back, etc. Yet the Palestinians haven't given an inch - they're still launching attack after attack.

1998 - The Wye River Memorandum which was never implemented as the Arabs initiated the Al-Aqsa Intifada.

2000 - The Camp David proposition was rejected despite the fact 90% of the west bank, 100% of Gaza and East Jerusalem were offered to the Palestinians.

2001 – The Taba Summit was rejected despite Israel offering the pre-1967 borders (with minor adjustments to the west bank borders as permitted by resolution 242), the right to return and billions of dollars worth of compensation to Palestinian refugees (despite no Arab states offering compensation for the expelled Jewish refugees), Palestinian sovereignty over its airspace, etc.

2002 - Israel accepted working towards the Arab Peace Initiative as long as the Palestinians put an end to their terror attacks - Hamas responded with a suicide attack which they stated was to derail the peace process.

Now I ask you what more can we do? Every time we try for peace we are attacked... We had left Lebanon a long time ago, we left them to rebuild the nation, we ignored the build up of militants on our borders, we didn't interfere with the arms entering their nation... We left them as we wanted peace.

But in keeping with the tragedy of the middle east, Hizbullah did not want peace and they plunged the region into conflict once more.... This seems to be the eternal ballad of the Middle Eastern mindset.

this is my point. there are two aggressors and both of them think they are fighting for their survival.
untill they can see the viewpoint of the other they are both fucked.
Israel claims the moral highground but destroying another country full of innocent children is just as bad as the perpetrators of the holocaust destroying innocent jewish children. murder is murder is murder

and the settlers are Israeli you can't seperate them out they are part of the problem and israel is responsible for them

Of course you can seperate them out! If you can seperate Hizbullah from the Lebanese then I can seperate the settlers from Israel.

Killing is killing and Genocide is Genocide.... two very different things.

We have offered the Palestnians countless peace proposals as I have just demonstrated... If the Palestinians are unwilling to explore this avenue what choice are we left with?

You're living in an anti-zionist fantasy world bruv.

I am becoming more and more anti Isael thats true. that's why I started this thread. Zionism seems to me to be a fundamentalist land grab based on the teachings of a god who I don't beleive in. It has provoked a reaction amongst another set of god quoters- the islamic fundamentalists.

It would be laughable were it not so tragic
can anybody seriously beleive that the supreme creator of the universe cares wether one part of his creation or the other lives in one particular part of his planet or not.:spangled:

Early Zionism was a socialist movement founded by atheist Jews... It had nothing to do with a g-d you do not believe in... It was about fleeing the anti-Semitism we suffered in the exile and returning to our ancestral homeland.

Yes.

I don't want to delve into it as your occidental arrogance will only ridicule me.

fair enough but I would say enlightened reason rather than the occident stuff
have to go out now

What does ones religious beliefs have to do with where the Jews came from? 80% of Ashkenazi Jews share the same DNA (and I'm sure its the same with Sephardic) - we can all trace our genealogy back to Israel.... Historically its where we originated.

Interfaith laws and the exclusion of Jews from western society meant that there was very little dilution of the Jewish ethnic group... One does not have to be religious to be Jewish.

they are one and the same, it's straight atheist arrogance.

sorry you've lost me now !!!! you say you dont belive in the jewish faith yet your still jewish ???


are you serious the jewish arnt a race its a faith base and for you not to belive in this faith would put yopu out of that base i.e if you was to convert to islam/catholisam would you still be a jew ?

I'm sorry you're mistaken, up until very recently I was not religious in the slightest - yet genetically I would still be classed as Jewish.

Evolutionary science has rejected the old race model, thousands of years of interbreeding has left no demographic genetically pure to one ancestral group... There is no such thing as the Caucasian or Mongoloid races.

This can be demonstrated by looking at the research of Andrew Merriweather: In Southern Colorado there are a group of Hispanics that trace their ancestry to Spanish settlers from the 1500s. Their history claims they didn't mix with the indigenous population but genetics contradicts their belief: about 85% of them carry mitochondrial DNA of Native American origin; While other genetic markers show a strong European heritage.

This is an example of the dilution of a population over 500 years - it seems hard to believe that 1 race would remain pure after 30,000.

However there is no escaping that ethnic groups exist, these can be defined by obvious traits like skin pigment, eye shape or hidden genetic indifferences. This is best summerised here, this tells us that ethnic groups ... be applied when a Jew converts from Judaism.

I'm a college drop out that makes guitars for a living... the educational system failed me

I may disagree with you on some of this but the system's not done too bad - what did you study??

forgive me for my cynic but why the hell not surly the gene pool is mixed it dont matter wht the religion let me put this way if you was adopted as a baby and braught up as a catholic for example would this still make you a jew if your birth mother was jewish and birth father was prodastant ????