On the future of "Israel" and "Palestine"

Some interesting thoughts - thanks for the post.

 

Agree. very nice.

This is muslim thinking. Not a leader is needed - an essence is needed. A way is needed. "Where are we heading to? --World jihad? or silicon valleys? --starting to contribute to modern science? or more religious school? -- liberty for women or more shooting of women in the football stadiums?

The muslim world is a living comedy theater. The leaders never say or do what they think. Its time for the people to take over and I am eager to see the first real muslim democracy (expt turkey, secular, until the next revolution).

All nations of the world intervene in political issues / conflicts etc if they have an interest for a certain outcome. So does the US.
About Iran in 1953 I don't know jack so I can't reply.

Nice try. The religious nature of these countries is responsible for all of the things I mentioned, not "imperialism". Was "imperialism" also responsible for 9/11, or was it Israel? The preachings of hate (=religious nature, more or less) is reponsible.

I will try to convince you for the last time that Israel is not an apartheid country. Here are couple of facts that might make you reconsider. If this won't help, there is nothing I can do further.
A) the technion is the best technological institute in the middle east and one of the world's leading institutions (did my B.Sc. and M.Sc there). According to its regulations, at least 15% of the students must be Israeli arabs, even if their performance in the evaluation exams don't make it to 15%. (in 1998, 4 arab students of the technion were jailed after spying for the Hizbollah. but that's a different story)
B) In northern Israel, there is more than 50% chance that once admitted into the hospital, an Israeli arab doctor will take care of you.
C) Have you heared of Azmi Bishara?. Can you see a member of the US congress expressing support for Al Kaeda?
Or Ahmed Tibi. Can you see a member of the US congress service simultenaously as the advisor of Bin-Laden?
D) There were never busses, pubs, or any other public building which was "for jews only". This also includes the 1960's, where the racial tensions segragation in the US were in their peak.
E) I live in Nazareth Illit. My neighbour from left, is a christian arab, my neighbour from right, is a muslim israeli arab. I had great time last Christmas, they invited my family to join the festivity.
F) I speak Arabic, it is a mandatory subject in Israeli jewish schools.
G) You have never been in Israel.
H) There is an arab minister in the government, as was in the previous government.
I) Israeli Arabs get the same social security/child care/unemployment payments as any other citizens. They have also exactly the same duties, except for serving in the military (a minor one...)
(Im tired, I promise I could go on and on and on)

Yes, the Israeli arab minority is discriminated. That one could understand, no? after all, their brothers in the west bank and gaza are in an armed conflict against Israel. They identify with them. Sometimes even more than that. They representative in the Israeli parliament kiss in public with Israel worst enemies. But be sure, if one could "quantify" discrimination levels, i'm sure that the muslims of the ghettos of Paris, the indians/pakistans of london, the hispanic/blacks of the USA will score much higher.

Israel is not an apartheid. Even if you repeat it again and again, this would not convince anyone who has the very slightest idea about Israel, but make you look and sound even more "from outer space"

unlike the people who usually argue with me here, I do have self-critisism: I preach against the militarism in my society. I preach against the religious jews who mix it with politics, against the settlements, and many more things. But I am not turkish, not algerian, nor indian and not a pakistani. I don't run away for a better pay check and quality of life. Life in Israel, albeit all trouble, is sweet. We have a society with a lot of solidarity, unprecedented in the world, and this is very unique. The economy is booming.
I do fight for a change according to my point of view and I respect other points of view. Israel is a pluralist society, as a muslim, you might find it impossible to understand, even though you already made your escape to the west. This is the priviledge in being Israeli living in the only real democracy in the middle east. I can change, and I will change!

Israel is not a perfect country. No country is perfect. But it is a 2000 year old dream of the jewish people which has become reality. I toured Israel from south to north with a french friend of mine, showing him around. this place, among many around, excites me to tears again and again on each and every visit.

p.s. 2 days ago, I met an american jew near the walls of the old city. He approached me and asked me to sign a petition: "Jerusalem will never be divided". I yelled at him for 30 minutes, that what he does is simply immoral. He can not send my kid to war and then take a flight back to the US and live the good life with beers and hamburgers infront of the TV. Either he joins the glorious zionist dream, or he shuts up and gets lost.

I'm sorry gauharjk. Such sentences I would expect to hear in a bin-laden audio cassette.. thank god that you didn't name them : "the crusaders". Although below my intellectual threshold I will reply to this.... But have a tip: you should stop quoting the b*llsh*t that you hear in your mosque... not good for your rep....

Not only "Christian Zionists" support Israel. All of the western world, without exception, supports Israel. The "christians" do not rule any country, nor the "christian zionists". Yet each and every western country has rich bilateral scientific economic and cultural relations with Israel, embassy, daily (pretty crowdy...) flights, and so on. That includes china and turkey. not the most "christian zionists" I could think of....
You can turn your eye blind on it if you feel uncomfortable with that fact, that would be very gauharjk of you. Keep living in the world you have drawn in your mind based on the facts you like and leaving the facts you don't like, the majority of the facts, forgotten.
Care to explain me about the world war you are refering to some other time after "star trek the next next generation" is out....

 

And why is that? because the Arab rulers are puppets of CIA USA

and the day when ME Govt's start representing their people, when there is real democracy in Middle East will be dooms day for isreal

oh and you forgot, Hamas was democratically elected ..but since that does not suits interest of USA/isreal ... so ....

 

who said that Israel is a democracy???

of course the Israelis said so, but who is stupid enough to believe that Israel is a democracy from the first place?

the illegal state of Israel is Zionist, not democracy.

you may see different parties there running for elections, but the major parties who can lead the illegal state are all Zionist,

Zionism is the political movement that rule that illegal entity, you can google to learn more about the principles of Zionism which is worse than Nazism,

that illegal entity has no official borders, to keep the door open to steal more of course, but if we consider it from Jordan Valley to Mediterranean Sea, then 1/3 of the population do not have even basic rights, so how can it be a democracy?

if it does not include West Bank and Gaza, then to make people live under cruel illegal occupation and force illegal settlements on them, does not sound like democracy for me.

 

imad, you are definately the funniest of the Israel haters I like you man.
Even if I ask you about your opinion regarding the avocado plantations in the sea of Nazareth your reply will be:

"Israel is occupation cruel illegal force steal more land big nazism"


Please forgive me for not having discussions with you in the future, but I ask you to keep posting in any case. Your posts makes me even more proud of the Israeli education system.

 

I did not post to discuss with you, thou you are free to post and correct me if I posted something wrong, I have noticed this earlier with other Israeli posters, they post old propaganda no matter how many times its been debunked and here, and when they run out of logic they resort to ridicule the other,

the question in case you did not get it, how can you say Israel is a real democracy, giving the two points in my previous post in this thread? when they have millions of Palestinians under their illegal occupation without even basic rights?

 

Richard Landes' examination of "news" created in Palestine:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uL8ANySuSuk


hey guys! can i join the discussion?

 

imad, although I promised not to, I will try. I hope you will understand, please try:

Democracy is (wikipedia):

I put the keyword for you in bold. The Israeli citizens, regardless of ethnicity (22% of which ARE palestinians), color, religion, gender, etc', are equal under law. The palestinians in the west bank in Gaza are not Israeli citizens. Hence, Israel complies with the above definition. Don't they teach in Jordanian schools what is the meaning of "democracy"?

 

is this only what you know about democracy?

when we say democracy, we have two parts, the theoretical part, which you partly mentioned (again inaccurately from Wikipedia ) and the practical,

it is known that in a democratic system, problems and conflicts are solved by law, take a recent example, the bulldozing of Palestinian houses, under the excuse of "illegality", in a democratic system this should be dealt in a court, where both parties are well represented, not dealt with by military bulldozers protected by army from "stone-throwing" Palestinians.

as for citizens or not citizens, if I to use your logic, then the so-called Israel is not a state because it does not have official known borders, so how can you distinguish who is a citizen and who is not? can you tell exactly what are the borders of Israel?

this is of course in addition to the non-recent acts on which Israel established, how can it be a democracy when it committed and still committing ethnic cleansing? and do not allow those who been expelled from their properties to go back to their homes and lands, since their status is "refugees" according to the international law.

 

imad, you are simply hopeless You have a grave problem with logic. This disables your ability to think.

There is only one definition for the word "democracy", having "one part", which says

citizens Citizens Citizens
Man with Israeli I.D. = citizen Man with no Israeli ID = not citizen. Israeli citizenship can never be taken under law.
Get it? not the most complicated piece of logic I could think of.... Israel perfectly complies with this definition, and is the only democracy in the middle east (=all other middle east countries do not)

Do you have a better definition for what people call "democracy"? Care to share it with us? That would be perfect! Please click "edit" in wikipedia and enhance the knowledge of humanity! don't forget to mention there also the "practical" part.... and bring some good references! thanks! fantastic!

 

I really understand fully what you are trying to think, but try even if for a short moment to think behind that definition that you copied and pasted from wikipedia, you did not have to do so since they teach you the meaning of it in schools there,

I hope it will work this time... let us assume that a group of bank robbers came and occupied a neighborhood, kicked half the residents, took their homes, and then held an election to choose a leader, saying that the other half of residents who are not bank robbers and who stayed, can't vote, simply because they are not "in the family" and of course the ones been kicked are not allowed to come back and vote, because for sure, those won't vote for a bank robber..

does this make it a democracy?

is it like, whoever does not agree, is either a terrorist, can't think, ridiculous.. hmm this is the normal attitude to be expected from an Israeli, and I can't blame you for it, since you won't find better.

according to the definition part alone (without looking at the practical part) then countries like Syria is democratic too, Iraq under Saddam is also democratic, Algeria is democratic ...etc

This is of course without touching the subject of all the citizens who hold Israeli ID's, and since you mentioned it, are you saying that all who hold these ID's have equal rights?

 

The bank robbers can be terrible and terrorist and whatever, and still live in a democracy. yes. a democracy of the bank robbers. no logical problem with that.

I assume you personally know many Israelis? great! you surprise me!

Amazing. You are incapable of understanding 1+1. Sorry. Read the definition again. and again. and again. and again.
How on earth according to the defition part alone, without looking at the "practical part", you find Syria and Iraq democratic? Are your logical abilities completely absent?
Democracy is a form of government in which state-power is held by the majority of citizens within a country or a state.

state-power is held by the majority of the citizens.
Iraqi state-power was held by sadam husein. not by the majority of citizens. Syria is controlled by the alawi minority and the "Baath", not by the majority of citizens. Jordan is controlled by the hashemite family, not the majority of the citizens.

Making use of words which are not defined, that both parties don't understand exactly the same meaning, is worth absolutely nothing. It is a conversation between deaf people. So please explain to me what is democracy, and then we can discuss which countries in the world are democratic or not under your definition.
You have an imaginary meaning for the word "democracy", which is not what I (and the western world) know. No problem. Your right. In that case, please define "democracy". To help me understand you, I can help you start. Forget about Israel palestine iraq etc', think only about "democracy".
Now, complete the following sentence: "Democracy is _____________________________ . "

At the moment, from the logic in your posts I understand that your definition of democracy is:
"a democracy is a country belonging to a set of countries which is determined by imad from digital point".

 

I have seen many Israelis here and it's not surprising that they almost have the same attitude,

according to the definition alone, yes, those regimes are also democracies, since 99.98% of the people voted for them

Edit: just realized, that I should have explained more because I doubt you would understand the above, and maybe you will think that I m saying Iraq was a democracy under Saddam

now Iraq under Saddam, and many other dictatorial regimes claimed they are democracy, and made elections, and got 99%+ according to the definition here the majority put them in power, but...

we must look at the practical side of it, only then, we will know if it is a true democracy or not, so .. according to you, sorry the definition without practical is useless,

I hope you will understand now, you do not have to agree of course, now, look at the practical democracy of Israel, and tell me is it a true democracy?

 

democary is not 1+1=2 or a =b and b=c hence a=c
There is no point in arguing over some definition, there is not any IETF RFC whose conditions need to be met in order to become "democratic"

If US orders to kill all Chinese visitors in North American then would it still be a proud democracy ? after all they were not citizens US?

and chaos if you could have read a few lins more from the wikipedia article that you are vehemently quoting then you could have also read

 

if that is all that matters and that is all that is required to support a country, then i would like to remined you that Hitler was elected democraticly and enjoyed the support of the germans. They also had great power and were sucessful in science and technology. they were powerful and they thought that they are better than the rest of the races.
but we know now that the main cause of that evil was their racisim and bigotry. are you sure you want to continue your insistance that you are better than the arabs? or even that much different that you should be treated differently? are you sure you want to walk in that path even if you don't go that far?

 

and how can we forget someone was saying just a few posts earlier

and now this guy is teaching us the principles of democracy !!

these words were such a master piece that I am thinking about adding them to my signature and print a few dozen copies for handing out to friends

and you aren't being racist aren't you Chaos?

 

I totally agree, no wonder Nazism and Zionism have so many similarities, they even collaborated at some point during history.

 

just asking the question. i do not think he represent all the jewish people or israelis.

 

I can't follow the logical thinking of these guys ..... amazing.

imad, I can't answer you further until you define exactly to me what is a "democracy" according to your understanding. You must be co-operative in order for us to make progress. please refer (again) to my last post. waiting for your definition of democracy. Include also the "practical part".

With how many have you talked to one than 1 minute?

 

why you guys keep mixing between politics and religions?