Israel - The Right to exist as a State?

Does Israel have the right to exist with secure borders free from attack


  • Total voters
    42

EagleSmack

Hall of Fame Member
Feb 16, 2005
44,168
96
48
USA
I find these kind of statements particularly repugnant.

I shouldn't have to defend myself from these sorts of attacks, but here goes:

I have never written anything here which is derogatory towards Jews, Judaism, or even Israelis in general. Yes I believe some Israelis are guilty of war crimes and crimes against humanity, and should be brought before the ICJ. (Just like I believe some Palestinians are also guilty of war crimes) Individuals are criminals because of their actions and it has nothing to do with their race, religion or nationality.

.

In a way this still is a war of attrition. Over the longterm, unpopular dictatorships are unstable. Eventually Egyptians will seize back control of their country. Israel's hostile neighbors continue to grow in strength. The current trend for the US is economic and military stagnation, which isn't good news for Israel. At some point Americans will stop spending tens of billions each year to support brutal unpopular middle east dictatorships and Israeli war crimes and crimes against humanity. Then Israel really will face an existencial threat.

Roger that. :roll:
 

Cliffy

Standing Member
Nov 19, 2008
44,850
193
63
Nakusp, BC
Kind of funny when Canadians talk about the Americans taking Indian land. Was Canada free of First Nation people? Completely unpopulated?
We didn't run around killing our natives. We did the civilized way - we committed cultural genocide by kidnapping their children and forcing them into residential schools.
 

Goober

Hall of Fame Member
Jan 23, 2009
24,691
116
63
Moving
Brutal as in Jews would probably have suffered atrocities greater than those suffered by Palestinians.

However just because your adversary would commit atrocities doesn't give you free reign to commit them yourself.

But following this line of thought, lets suppose that Palestinians did win the ethnic cleansing war back in 1948 and now the tables were reversed. Now the Jews were being treated as badly as Israel treats Gazans today. Lets suppose that the US was giving billions each year to help Palestinians oppress Jews and the news service was full of anti-semitic rhetoric. I'd still be speaking out in opposition to war crimes and crimes against humanity. The only difference would be that I'd be defending the right of Jews to the same human rights as everyone else instead of Palestinians.

The people who helped Jews in Europe during the 1930s and 40s weren't the people who believed the hate propaganda fed to them by their government. They were the people who could see through it and believed that all human beings are entitled to fundamental human rights regardless of race or religion.

EAO

Brutal does not even come close to Genocide - The Arabs would have committed genocide - Do you doubt that? - Transport ships from many nations would be transferring the small remnant of the Jewish population from the newly created state of Greater Palestine -
 

EagleSmack

Hall of Fame Member
Feb 16, 2005
44,168
96
48
USA
I'm not debating whether Arab leaders were ganging up on Israel and intended to eliminate Israel. Its clear that they were and that was their intent. However the 1967 war did not start with an Arab attack against Israel as some people here believe. Israel started that war with a pre-emptive attack. That means Israel started the war, not their Arab neighbors. I'm not debating that Israel's decision to start a war when they did was unfounded or irrational or even a war crime. Given the circumstances, Israel's pre-emptive strike was a reasonable justified decision supported by international law.

So Israel should have waited for their nation to be invaded so the odds were in the favor of the Arabs? They should have waited until the Arabs attacked.

Some people here also believe Israel's army was a "rag-tag" MacGyver sort of patched together at the last minute with bailing wire and twine amateur army. BS! Even though Arabs had numerical superiority, Israel had a well trained professional army, armed with superior weapons and technology which was THE deciding factor in the 1967 war.

Nobody said Israel was a rag tag army. They were superior in everything except numbers and numbers count in war. Can an army with smaller numbers defeat a larger army? Of course, it happens all the time and the results are typically spectacular and talked about for thousands of years.

Also I have linked to evidence which strongly indicates that Israel possessed nuclear weapons in 1967. That means that even if Israel's initial strike went badly, Israel still had nuclear weapons and other unconventional weapons that they could fall back on. Israel's existance as a state was not at stake in this war. Even though the Arab leaders never knew they didn't have a chance of winning the war, Israel's leaders knew they couldn't loose. Israel initiated the 1967 war. I suspect they also deliberately provoked it in attempt to increase their territory.

That's not sour grapes or hoping for anyone's demise. Just a statement of the facts backed up by supporting evidence.

If the Arabs knew they couldn't win in 1967, why did they try it in 1973?

Look back at the 1973 Yom Kippor War when Egypt and Syria launched THEIR pre-emptive attack on Israel. They pushed the Israelis back from the Suez Canal and into the Sinai and it was a near run thing on the Golan Heights with Syria.
The increase in territory is a result of failed Arab aggression. The Israelis even allowed Jordan their artillery strikes into Israel in 1967 saying that they understand Jordan's position and would absorb the attacks providing the cease them in 24 hours. Jordan refused to stop the shelling and then lost the West Bank as a result.
 

EagleSmack

Hall of Fame Member
Feb 16, 2005
44,168
96
48
USA
I could have sworn that someone here claimed Israel defended themselves from an Arab attack in 1967. Maybe I was mistaken...

You didn't hear that from me. Israel sent their whole airforce into Egypt and whiped out the Egyptian AF on the ground.

Regardless, position troops on your border doesn't prove that an attack was planned or imminent. During the entire cold war, Nato and East Block troops were continuously deployed along the border and yet that attack never haapened. Its what nations do when tensions escalate, but doesn't necessarily mean that an attack is imminent.

When you eject a UN Peace Keeping Force from the Sinai and move 100,000 troops and 1000 tanks to the border as well as conduct a Naval Blockade to all Israeli shipping it is a pretty good indication that you're up to no good.

According to what I've read, at the time of the Israeli pre-emptive attack, Egypt's troops were deployed along the Israeli/Egypt border defensively:

Come on now.

These historians support my point that the Egyptians were not planning an attack against Israel at the time Israel attacked and were looking for a diplomatic solution to de-escalate tensions. Nasser had domestic reasons for making belligerent statements regarding Israel.

I have given you a quote of what Nassar said. Here are some more!

"Our aim is the full restoration of the rights of the Palestinian people. In other words, we aim at the destruction of the State of Israel. The immediate aim: perfection of Arab military might. The national aim: the eradication of Israel." – President Nasser of Egypt, November 18, 1965

"Brothers, it is our duty to prepare for the final battle in Palestine." – Nasser, Palestine Day, 1967


"Our basic objective will be the destruction of Israel. The Arab people want to fight . . . The mining of Sharm el Sheikh is a confrontation with Israel. Adopting this measure obligates us to be ready to embark on a general war with Israel." – Nasser, May 27, 1967

"The armies of Egypt, Jordan, Syria and Lebanon are poised on the borders of Israel . . . . to face the challenge, while standing behind us are the armies of Iraq, Algeria, Kuwait, Sudan and the whole Arab nation. This act will astound the world. Today they will know that the Arabs are arranged for battle, the critical hour has arrived. We have reached the stage of serious action and not declarations." – Nasser, May, 30, 1967 after signing a defense pact with Jordan's King Hussein


However I would agree that Egypt's military deployment was such that Israel could justify a pre-emptive attack legally.

Ya think?

I also believe that Israel's military leaders knew their military situation was superior to the combined forces of their Arab neighbors and that Egypt's deployment along their border was actually a stratgic error which created an opportunity they could exploit. They knew that they would likely win a war if they attacked at the time and they deliberately provoked their Arab neighbors in the hope that they would do something to justify starting a war.

Please read the above quotes again and then decide if this opinion of yours holds weight.
 

earth_as_one

Time Out
Jan 5, 2006
7,933
53
48
...In 1967, Israel held neither....thus the absolute necessity of a pre-emptive strike.

Israel could justify a pre-emptive strike. I also think they could have negotiated their way out of this situation but chose war instead, knowing they had the advantage militarily and a nuclear ace in the hole. The Arabs unknowingly offered Israel the opportunity to seize land and Israel took it. I don't agree that Israel's military ever was a rag tag group of people thrown together at the last minute in response to a superior Arab military.

The Zionists never played David to an Arab Goliath. Sometimes they were fairly evenly matched as in the Yom Kippor war, other times it was pretty one sided as in 1947-48 and 2008-09.
 

EagleSmack

Hall of Fame Member
Feb 16, 2005
44,168
96
48
USA
Israel could justify a pre-emptive strike. I also think they could have negotiated their way out of this situation but chose war instead,

Really? Negotiate?

"The armies of Egypt, Jordan, Syria and Lebanon are poised on the borders of Israel . . . . to face the challenge, while standing behind us are the armies of Iraq, Algeria, Kuwait, Sudan and the whole Arab nation. This act will astound the world. Today they will know that the Arabs are arranged for battle, the critical hour has arrived. We have reached the stage of serious action and not declarations." – Nasser, May, 30, 1967 after signing a defense pact with Jordan's King Hussein


knowing they had the advantage militarily and a nuclear ace in the hole.

The had military advantages providing they used it which they did. To sit and wait for the Arabs to attack would have negated a lot of the advantages. Their airpower would have been tied up fighting an air battle instead of raking Arab Convoys that were still pouring into the Sinai. They would have had to deal with fighting off an onslaught on three fronts. That is where the numbers game would have come into effect. Just like in 1973. The Israelis were surprised and got pushed back...for a short time.

The Arabs unknowingly offered Israel the opportunity to seize land and Israel took it. I don't agree that Israel's military ever was a rag tag group of people thrown together at the last minute in response to a superior Arab military.

Who said they were a rag tag army?

The Zionists never played David to an Arab Goliath. Sometimes they were fairly evenly matched as in the Yom Kippor war, other times it was pretty one sided as in 1947-48 and 2008-09.

Zionist? :roll:
 

EagleSmack

Hall of Fame Member
Feb 16, 2005
44,168
96
48
USA
"This is a fight for the homeland – it is either us or the Israelis. There is no middle road. The Jews of Palestine will have to leave. We will facilitate their departure to their former homes. Any of the old Palestine Jewish population who survive may stay, but it is my impression that none of them will survive." – Shukairy, June 1, 1967
 

MHz

Time Out
Mar 16, 2007
41,030
43
48
Red Deer AB
Kind of funny when Canadians talk about the Americans taking Indian land. Was Canada free of First Nation people? Completely unpopulated?
No we slaughtered and cheated them the same as was done in the US, after all England is mother to both Nations.

Following numerous border clashes between Israel and its Arab neighbours, particularly Syria, Egyptian President Gamal Abdel Nasser expelled the United Nations Emergency Force (UNEF) from the Sinai Peninsula in May 1967.[8] The peacekeeping force had been stationed there since 1957, following a British-French-Israeli invasion of Egypt which was launched during the Suez Crisis.[9] Egypt amassed 1,000 tanks and nearly 100,000 soldiers on the Israeli border[10] and closed the Straits of Tiran to all ships flying Israeli flags or carrying strategic materials, receiving strong support from other Arab countries.[11] Israel responded with a similar mobilization that included the call up of 70,000 reservists to augment the regular IDF forces.[12]
On June 5, 1967, Israel launched a preemptive attack on Egypt.[13] The Arab countries denied planning to attack Israel, and asserted that Israel's strike was not preemptive but an unwarranted and illegal act of aggression.[14] Jordan, which had signed a mutual defence treaty with Egypt on May 30, then attacked western Jerusalem and Netanya.[15][16][17]
I was hoping for a detailed list of the incidents from this part of your reply "Following numerous border clashes between Israel and its Arab neighbours, particularly Syria".
 

MHz

Time Out
Mar 16, 2007
41,030
43
48
Red Deer AB
Don't forget that we did give a few of them blankets carrying smallpox. Deliberately.
That was the gift of Christianity according to British Christian Sects and RCC mostly. When those same ones encountered a people who he could not understand (or writings they not read) were classified as demons and utterly destroyed as a people. (the way it Bible puts it if you can understand all languages and read all writing then you have help from the Holy Ghost). Apparently they thought they should have that ability from just reading a book lol
 

MHz

Time Out
Mar 16, 2007
41,030
43
48
Red Deer AB
"This is a fight for the homeland – it is either us or the Israelis. There is no middle road. The Jews of Palestine will have to leave. We will facilitate their departure to their former homes. Any of the old Palestine Jewish population who survive may stay, but it is my impression that none of them will survive." – Shukairy, June 1, 1967
Colpy called them rag-tag, intentionally I might add. Everybody nows that when june of '48 rolled around they were already quite adept at night-raid int Arab villages.

I'm not going to defend the Arab battle plan, the false intel from Moscow didn't help matters much. Two main events, nothing was moving on the plight of the Palestinian refugees and the border skirmishes. I already posted about one with Jordanian troops in which 15 (or so) were killed and a number of houses torched. That would have been in the current West Bank. If the border with Syria was the catalyst (the 14 border events in a month) then they timed in quite nicely as Israel has just finished planning and practicing on how to win such a war. All wars that have been fought since then involved getting control of the air and that gave one side control of how the armies could react. The words 'group up' and 'slaughter' come to mind. Israel improoved on the method Germans used in WWII aircraft instead on mobile artillary.

The link below leads to 3 articles, the first one should be of great interest to American servicemen in particular. Your warship that Israel attacked was never prosocuted as a war crime, your Government's refusal to do so is in itself a crime.
The 2nd suggests Israel was not really in that much danger and about how easily the 6 days went and what the outcome was besides huge gainds in territory.
The history of the Six-Day War (June 1967)
" So why did Israel attack? Intelligence analysts and others have long supposed that Israel attacked to prevent the ship from reporting the impending invasion of the Golan Heights, then imminent despite cease fire pleas by the United States. Israel's defenders reject that explanation. Recent reports in the Israeli and Egyptian press suggest another powerful possibility.
According to eyewitness accounts by Israeli officers and journalists, the Israeli Army - the army that claims to hold itself to a higher moral standard than other armies - executed as many as 1,000 Arab prisoners during the 1967 war.
Historian Gabby Bron wrote in the Yediot Ahronot in Israel that he witnessed Israeli troops executing Egyptian prisoners on the morning of June 8, 1967, in the Sinai town of El Arish.
Bron reported that he saw about 150 Egyptian POWs being held at the El Arish airport where they were sitting on the ground, densely crowded together with their hands held on the back of their necks. Every few minutes, Bron writes, Israeli soldiers would escort an Egyptian POW from the group to a hearing conducted by two men in Israeli army uniforms. Then the man would be taken away, given a spade, and forced to dig his own grave.
I watched as (one) man dug a hole for about 15 minutes, Bron wrote. Afterwards, the (Israeli military) policeman told him to throw the shovel away, and then one of them leveled an Uzi at him and shot two short bursts, each of three or four bullets.
Bron says he witnessed about ten such executions, until the grave was filled. Then an Israeli Colonel threatened him with a revolver, forcing him to leave the area."


"

Yediot Aharonot of April 27 has published an 1976 interview with Moshe Dayan (which was not previously published). Dayan, who was the defense minister in 1967, explains there what led, then, to the decision to attack Syria. In the collective consciousness of the period, Syria was conceived as a serious threat to the security of Israel, and a constant initiator of aggression towards the residents of northern Israel. But according to Dayan, this is 'bull-****' - Syria was not a threat to Israel before 67. Just drop it - he says as an answer to a question about the northern residences - I know how at least 80% of all the incidents with Syria started. We were sending a tractor to the demilitarized zone and we knew that the Syrians will shoot. If they did not shoot, we would instruct the tractor to go deeper, till the Syrians finally got upset and start shooting. Then we employed artillery, and later also the air-force... I did that... and Itzhak Rabin did that, when he was there (as commander of the Northern front, in the early sixties).
And what has led Israel to provoke Syria? According to Dayan, this was the greediness for the land - the idea that it is possible to grab a piece of land and keep it, until the enemy will get tired and give it to us. The Syrian land was, as he says, particularly tempting, since, unlike Gaza and the West bank it was not heavily populated.
The 67 war has brought the big chance to grab the land, and along with the land, the water of the of the Jordan Riverheads. Dayan insists that the decision to attack Syria was not motivated by security reasons: You do not attack the enemy because he is a bastard, but because he threatens you, and the Syrians in the fourth day of the war were not threatening us. He adds that the initiative of Colonel David Elazar to open the Syrian front was assisted by a delegation sent to prime-minister Eshkol by the Northern kibbutz's, who did not even try to hide their greediness to that land."


"The Arab front-line states lost their air forces in the first hour of the war. Over the next 132 hours they also lost the Sinai peninsula and the Gaza Strip (Egypt), East Jerusalem and the West Bank (Jordan), and the Golan Heights (Syria). The despair and psychological demobilization across the Arab world were so great that even the regimes responsible for the defeat were allowed to survive. (Indeed, they survive still.) And that should have been the end of it.
Like most other countries, Israel is built on land that was previously occupied by somebody else. It's no big deal, historically speaking. There is usually a good deal of fighting in the early stages, as the previous tenants resist eviction and their neighbours lend a hand, but then if you win a few wars they accept your borders and the confrontation subsides. By 1967, Israel had effectively reached that stage - so why is there still an Arab-Israeli conflict 35 years later?
Prime Minister Levi Eshkol understood that the 1967 victory could be the basis of a peace settlement guaranteeing Israel's place as an accepted if unloved neighbour of its former enemies.
On June 19, 1967, less than a week after the shooting stopped, his cabinet secretly agreed to withdraw to Israel's pre-war frontiers in the Sinai peninsula and the Golan Heights, returning all the captured land in return for peace, diplomatic recognition, and demilitarization of the territory that would be returned to Egypt and Syria.
But that offer was never actually sent to the Egyptians and the Syrians, and the cabinet was never able to agree on returning the West Bank, the Gaza Strip, and East Jerusalem at all. After four months, it even dropped the idea of a land-for-peace' swap with Egypt and Syria.
Poor little Samson, as Eshkol put it: the choices opened up by the 1967 victory completely paralyzed Israeli diplomacy.
The problem was that Israel's victory was too big. Ultra-nationalist and messianic elements in Israel seized the opportunity to expand into the new territories, setting up settlements everywhere with the explicit purpose of making the conquests politically irreversible by creating facts on the ground.
If anybody objected, they argued that the old borders were unsafe - although Isra "

That 'war' is a battle, the War started when Jews started to make Palestinians refugees, Nov, '48. It is going on today also, the UN has still yet to rectify that. A war-crime cannot be vetoed?
 

MHz

Time Out
Mar 16, 2007
41,030
43
48
Red Deer AB
Say what?

You're going to blame Christianity and the RCC for it? You've got one big ****in chip on your shoulder, don'cha?
It was "Christian" missionaries who gave them the blankets, knowing they were infected.
It was "Christian" missionaries who killed the Natives of Central and South America. That included destruction of all their books etc.

Those are just historical facts. When was the last RCC school for Native children closed down? I put it at about 1950.
 

ironsides

Executive Branch Member
Feb 13, 2009
8,583
60
48
United States
No we slaughtered and cheated them the same as was done in the US, after all England is mother to both Nations.


I was hoping for a detailed list of the incidents from this part of your reply "Following numerous border clashes between Israel and its Arab neighbours, particularly Syria".



While Israel consistently expressed a desire to negotiate a peace with its neighbors, there was no matching sentiment on the Arab side. In an address to the UN General Assembly on October 10, 1960, Foreign Minister Golda Meir challenged Arab leaders to meet with Prime Minister David Ben-Gurion to negotiate a peace settlement. Nasser (Egypt) answered on October 15, saying that Israel was trying to deceive world opinion, and reiterating that his country would never recognize the Jewish State. Nasser's rhetoric became increasingly bellicose; on March 8, 1965 he said:
  • We shall not enter Palestine with its soil covered in sand. We shall enter it with its soil saturated in blood.
A few months later, Nasser expressed the Arabs' goal to be:
  • ... the full restoration of the rights of the Palestinian people. In other words, we aim at the destruction of the State of Israel. The immediate aim: perfection of Arab military might. The national aim: the eradication of Israel.
Other Arab leaders from Syria, Jordan, and Iraq joined in the rhetoric and preparations for war, increasing pressure on Egypt's President Gamal Nasser, perceived as the leader of the Arab world. Syria's attacks along the DMZ grew more frequent in 1965 and 1966. Syria's attacks on Israeli kibbutzim from the Golan Heights provoked a retaliatory strike on April 7, 1967, during which Israeli planes shot down six Syrian MiGs. Israel followed up by re-introducing military forces to the DMZ.
What Led To The Six Day War?
The Six-Day War of June 5-10, 1967 was a war between the Israel army and the armies of the neighboring states of Egypt, Jordan, and Syria. The Arab states of Iraq, Saudi Arabia, Sudan, Tunisia, Morocco and Algeria also contributed troops and arms. At the war's end, Israel had gained control of the Sinai Peninsula, the Gaza Strip, the West Bank, East Jerusalem, and the Golan Heights. The results of the war affect the geopolitics of the region to this day.

Following numerous border clashes between Israel and its Arab neighbours, particularly Syria, Egyptian President Gamal Abdel Nasser expelled the United Nations Emergency Force (UNEF) from the Sinai Peninsula in May 1967. The peacekeeping force had been stationed there since 1957, following a British-French-Israeli invasion of Egypt which was launched during the Suez Crisis. Egypt amassed 1,000 tanks and nearly 100,000 soldiers on the Israeli border and closed the Straits of Tiran to all ships flying Israeli flags or carrying strategic materials, receiving strong support from other Arab countries.
http://www.bethhallelcharleston.org...f5c048c7be7c=7b23172321b64d290b8ebf9be95fa230


By the way, Israel was outgunned and out numbered during the war. You never proved otherwise.
 

Colpy

Hall of Fame Member
Nov 5, 2005
21,887
848
113
70
Saint John, N.B.
It was "Christian" missionaries who gave them the blankets, knowing they were infected.
It was "Christian" missionaries who killed the Natives of Central and South America. That included destruction of all their books etc.

Those are just historical facts. When was the last RCC school for Native children closed down? I put it at about 1950.

Bull****.
 

ironsides

Executive Branch Member
Feb 13, 2009
8,583
60
48
United States
It was "Christian" missionaries who gave them the blankets, knowing they were infected.
It was "Christian" missionaries who killed the Natives of Central and South America. That included destruction of all their books etc.

Those are just historical facts. When was the last RCC school for Native children closed down? I put it at about 1950.

If you want to be more accurate, it was the English who infected the natives of North America with small pox. The Spanish did destroy the civilizations of Central and South America. The French tried to blend in with everybody except the English.
 

EagleSmack

Hall of Fame Member
Feb 16, 2005
44,168
96
48
USA
If you want to be more accurate, it was the English who infected the natives of North America with small pox. The Spanish did destroy the civilizations of Central and South America. The French tried to blend in with everybody except the English.

It's cooler to blame Christians though.