Philosophy Discussion Forums | A Humans-Only Club for Open-Minded Discussion & Debate

[Sy Borg]

Jews were ethnically cleansed from all neighbouring Arab nations. Does that matter? No, it's only Jews. Actually, it's culturally cleansed. The idea that there's genocide against Palestinians is rich, given that they are racially more or less the same as Israelis, not to mention other neighbouring Arab nations. Meanwhile the UN runs cchools that teach Palestinian children to hate Israel - using money donated by the west, not by other Arab nations,

The below can provide at least a little balance against the clear and fierce anti-Semitism on this thread:

Emergency Special Sessions of the United Nations General Assembly are rare. No such session has ever been convened with respect to the Chinese occupation of Tibet, the Indonesian occupation of East Timor, the Syrian occupation of Lebanon, the slaughters in Rwanda, the disappearances in Zaire or the horrors of Bosnia. In fact, during the last 15 years they have been called only to condemn Israel.

Whereas Arab states have traditionally used UN fora to demonize and isolate Israel (for example, they routinely attempt to deny Israel its credentials), they now believe they enjoy "Western" support which emboldens them.

The latest Emergency Special Session, called to address Israeli construction at the Har Homa site, set in motion steps to de-legitimize Israel and to bring it to its knees. During its July meeting, the Session considered a resolution that requested member states "not to allow any import of goods produced and manufactured in occupied Palestinian territories, including Jerusalem" -- a virtual boycott and collective sanctions against the state.

During its November meeting, it took a further step towards making Israel an outlaw state. In a vote of 139 to 3 with 13 abstentions, it set in motion the eventual convening of states parties to the Fourth Geneva Convention, which grew out of the Nazi occupation of Europe. Thus, that Convention will now be employed against the people who were Hitler's victims. The resolutions of the November meeting requested that the Swiss government, as the depository of this Geneva Convention, convene by February 1998 a meeting of experts to initiate the process of condemning Israel for violating the Convention. This was done despite the admonition of Switzerland's UN Observer that such action could damage the peace process and politicize international humanitarian law.

As a result of such bias, the UN has lost credibility. It is no surprise that the Oslo agreements were negotiated outside of, and contained no role for, the UN. Though Israel has been the subject of aggressive wars in 1948, 1967 and 1973 and the victim of countless terrorist attacks, the Security Council and the General Assembly have never once censured its assailants. As Thomas M. Franck, Professor of International Law at New York University, has written, "...the UN is a place of convoluted realities. The Assembly's majority has also done its best to achieve an anti-Israeli politicization of the Secretariat."

It is not just an issue of anti-Israel bias; it is difficult to ignore an anti-Jewish bent in many instances. For 50 years the UN has condemned virtually every conceivable form of racism. It has established programs to combat racism and its multiple facets -- including xenophobia -- but had consistently refused to do the same against anti-Semitism until 1993, and then, only under intense US pressure.

Instead, the General Assembly established two Special Committees and two "special units" in the Secretariat devoted exclusively to Israeli practices, costing millions of dollars yearly. These produce anti-Israeli and Anti-Zionist pamphlets, booklets, papers and films, which are even distributed in the UN's six official languages to school children around the world.

The intense hostility that Israel faces in the UN and the anti-Semitic reverberations are illustrated by two events that occurred at the Commission on Human Rights in 1991 and 1997. During the 1991 session, the Syrian Ambassador repeated the Damascus Blood Libel that Jews killed Christian children to use their blood to make Matzoth. The Western democracies could not be stirred to challenge this age-old anti-Semitic libel (which the Ottoman Sultan as the ruler of Syria, denounced when it surfaced in the 1840s). It took intense US pressure to procure a challenge to this libel in the record, and then only months after the Syrian representative emphasized to the Commission, "it's true, it's true, it's true."

On 11 March 1997, the Palestinian representative charged, in a chamber packed with 500 people including the representatives of 53 states and hundreds of non-governmental organizations, that the Israeli Government had injected 300 Palestinian children with the HIV virus. Despite the repeated interventions of the Governments of Israel and the US, and UN Watch, this modern Blood Libel stands unchallenged and unrefuted on the UN record. No appropriate action by any UN body or official has been taken to date.

The Chairman of the Commission on Human Rights, a Czech, agreed to place on the record his letter to the Ambassador of Israel, sharing his "concern as to the charge made" against Israel -- "an allegation made without evidence, on the basis of a newspaper article ... proved completely false." The Chairman reneged on his agreement after he was called to task by a delegation of Arab Ambassadors and received no support from other regional groups -- including Western Europe.

Blood Libels are vicious and persistent carriers of anti-Semitism. The "Protocols of the Learned Elders of Zion" were but a fiction of the Czarist police in the 1890s. Yet they are a well of anti-Semitic pollution -- published today in thousands of copies world-wide. The Damascus Blood Libel was raised 150 years later in the Commission on Human Rights. The latest PLO Blood Libel bears the imprimatur of the UN record and has yet to be removed by consolidated action of the Commission or by any UN agency or official on the public record. (Nor was there any rebuke in 1992 to a UN document circulated in the Commission by the PLO observer, which stated that Israelis "celebrating ...Yom Kippur, are never fully happy even on religious occasions unless their celebrations, as usual, are marked by Palestinian blood.")

The treatment of Israel in the UN is often dismissed as realpolitik -- the power of Arab numbers -- and recently, as a reaction to Israel's Likud government and Prime Minister Netanyahu. Yet even during the hopeful days of the Rabin/Peres peace negotiations there were the usual anti-Israel resolutions passed each year in the UN General Assembly and 5 in the Commission on Human Rights.

Since the Oslo accords, 259 Israelis have been killed and 5000 injured by Palestinian terror attacks. During the same period, 34 resolutions deploring Israel were passed at the UN, but not one against the terror attacks. The unique treatment of Israel cannot be explained on purely political grounds. Though anti-Semitic canards can go unchallenged in the UN, the mere reference in the 1997 Commission on Human Rights to an allegedly blasphemous reference to Islam, by a UN expert and from an academic source, brought a rebuff by consensus by the Chair, and the deletion of the offending sentence.

The viciousness with which Israel is attacked, and the reluctance of even democratic states to defend Israel or to accord it the same latitude for mistakes and wrongs that it freely and reciprocally accords other states, has a special quality and origin.

There is ample justification for the conclusion of Professor Anne Bayefsky of York University, Canada, writing of the UN Human Rights system: "It is the tool of those who would make Israel the archetypal human rights violator in the world today. It is a breeding ground for anti-Semitism. It is a sanctuary for moral relativists. In short, it is a scandal."

The infamous "Zionism is Racism" resolution was passed in 1975 when Yitzhak Rabin was Prime Minister. Describing the circumstances of the passage of the resolution, a representative in the chamber stated that "hatred was crawling on the floor." Although the resolution was rescinded in 1991, anti-Semitism in UN fora is still a force to be reckoned with, bearing in mind that 25 Member States voted against repealing the resolution and 13 abstained.

Anti-Semitism is not dead. Although anti-Semitic incidents have declined and a multi-cultural acceptance has produced wider tolerance in many states including the US, a 2000-year-old virus has mutated, and lives on, often in a disguised form. And the existence and achievements of the Jewish state in an area of relative backwardness stimulate anti-Semitism and furnish a respectable cover. Once anti-Semitism had a religious basis but, with the declining significance of religion in the West, anti-Semitism in church circles has relatively little standing as such.

https://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/an ... ed-nations

[Belindi]

Jews were ethnically cleansed from all neighbouring Arab nations. Does that matter? No, it's only Jews. Actually, it's culturally cleansed. The idea that there's genocide against Palestinians is rich, given that they are racially more or less the same as Israelis, not to mention other neighbouring Arab nations. Meanwhile the UN runs cchools that teach Palestinian children to hate Israel - using money donated by the west, not by other Arab nations,

The below can provide at least a little balance against the clear and fierce anti-Semitism on this thread:

Emergency Special Sessions of the United Nations General Assembly are rare. No such session has ever been convened with respect to the Chinese occupation of Tibet, the Indonesian occupation of East Timor, the Syrian occupation of Lebanon, the slaughters in Rwanda, the disappearances in Zaire or the horrors of Bosnia. In fact, during the last 15 years they have been called only to condemn Israel.

Whereas Arab states have traditionally used UN fora to demonize and isolate Israel (for example, they routinely attempt to deny Israel its credentials), they now believe they enjoy "Western" support which emboldens them.

The latest Emergency Special Session, called to address Israeli construction at the Har Homa site, set in motion steps to de-legitimize Israel and to bring it to its knees. During its July meeting, the Session considered a resolution that requested member states "not to allow any import of goods produced and manufactured in occupied Palestinian territories, including Jerusalem" -- a virtual boycott and collective sanctions against the state.

During its November meeting, it took a further step towards making Israel an outlaw state. In a vote of 139 to 3 with 13 abstentions, it set in motion the eventual convening of states parties to the Fourth Geneva Convention, which grew out of the Nazi occupation of Europe. Thus, that Convention will now be employed against the people who were Hitler's victims. The resolutions of the November meeting requested that the Swiss government, as the depository of this Geneva Convention, convene by February 1998 a meeting of experts to initiate the process of condemning Israel for violating the Convention. This was done despite the admonition of Switzerland's UN Observer that such action could damage the peace process and politicize international humanitarian law.

As a result of such bias, the UN has lost credibility. It is no surprise that the Oslo agreements were negotiated outside of, and contained no role for, the UN. Though Israel has been the subject of aggressive wars in 1948, 1967 and 1973 and the victim of countless terrorist attacks, the Security Council and the General Assembly have never once censured its assailants. As Thomas M. Franck, Professor of International Law at New York University, has written, "...the UN is a place of convoluted realities. The Assembly's majority has also done its best to achieve an anti-Israeli politicization of the Secretariat."

It is not just an issue of anti-Israel bias; it is difficult to ignore an anti-Jewish bent in many instances. For 50 years the UN has condemned virtually every conceivable form of racism. It has established programs to combat racism and its multiple facets -- including xenophobia -- but had consistently refused to do the same against anti-Semitism until 1993, and then, only under intense US pressure.

Instead, the General Assembly established two Special Committees and two "special units" in the Secretariat devoted exclusively to Israeli practices, costing millions of dollars yearly. These produce anti-Israeli and Anti-Zionist pamphlets, booklets, papers and films, which are even distributed in the UN's six official languages to school children around the world.

The intense hostility that Israel faces in the UN and the anti-Semitic reverberations are illustrated by two events that occurred at the Commission on Human Rights in 1991 and 1997. During the 1991 session, the Syrian Ambassador repeated the Damascus Blood Libel that Jews killed Christian children to use their blood to make Matzoth. The Western democracies could not be stirred to challenge this age-old anti-Semitic libel (which the Ottoman Sultan as the ruler of Syria, denounced when it surfaced in the 1840s). It took intense US pressure to procure a challenge to this libel in the record, and then only months after the Syrian representative emphasized to the Commission, "it's true, it's true, it's true."

On 11 March 1997, the Palestinian representative charged, in a chamber packed with 500 people including the representatives of 53 states and hundreds of non-governmental organizations, that the Israeli Government had injected 300 Palestinian children with the HIV virus. Despite the repeated interventions of the Governments of Israel and the US, and UN Watch, this modern Blood Libel stands unchallenged and unrefuted on the UN record. No appropriate action by any UN body or official has been taken to date.

The Chairman of the Commission on Human Rights, a Czech, agreed to place on the record his letter to the Ambassador of Israel, sharing his "concern as to the charge made" against Israel -- "an allegation made without evidence, on the basis of a newspaper article ... proved completely false." The Chairman reneged on his agreement after he was called to task by a delegation of Arab Ambassadors and received no support from other regional groups -- including Western Europe.

Blood Libels are vicious and persistent carriers of anti-Semitism. The "Protocols of the Learned Elders of Zion" were but a fiction of the Czarist police in the 1890s. Yet they are a well of anti-Semitic pollution -- published today in thousands of copies world-wide. The Damascus Blood Libel was raised 150 years later in the Commission on Human Rights. The latest PLO Blood Libel bears the imprimatur of the UN record and has yet to be removed by consolidated action of the Commission or by any UN agency or official on the public record. (Nor was there any rebuke in 1992 to a UN document circulated in the Commission by the PLO observer, which stated that Israelis "celebrating ...Yom Kippur, are never fully happy even on religious occasions unless their celebrations, as usual, are marked by Palestinian blood.")

The treatment of Israel in the UN is often dismissed as realpolitik -- the power of Arab numbers -- and recently, as a reaction to Israel's Likud government and Prime Minister Netanyahu. Yet even during the hopeful days of the Rabin/Peres peace negotiations there were the usual anti-Israel resolutions passed each year in the UN General Assembly and 5 in the Commission on Human Rights.

Since the Oslo accords, 259 Israelis have been killed and 5000 injured by Palestinian terror attacks. During the same period, 34 resolutions deploring Israel were passed at the UN, but not one against the terror attacks. The unique treatment of Israel cannot be explained on purely political grounds. Though anti-Semitic canards can go unchallenged in the UN, the mere reference in the 1997 Commission on Human Rights to an allegedly blasphemous reference to Islam, by a UN expert and from an academic source, brought a rebuff by consensus by the Chair, and the deletion of the offending sentence.

The viciousness with which Israel is attacked, and the reluctance of even democratic states to defend Israel or to accord it the same latitude for mistakes and wrongs that it freely and reciprocally accords other states, has a special quality and origin.

There is ample justification for the conclusion of Professor Anne Bayefsky of York University, Canada, writing of the UN Human Rights system: "It is the tool of those who would make Israel the archetypal human rights violator in the world today. It is a breeding ground for anti-Semitism. It is a sanctuary for moral relativists. In short, it is a scandal."

The infamous "Zionism is Racism" resolution was passed in 1975 when Yitzhak Rabin was Prime Minister. Describing the circumstances of the passage of the resolution, a representative in the chamber stated that "hatred was crawling on the floor." Although the resolution was rescinded in 1991, anti-Semitism in UN fora is still a force to be reckoned with, bearing in mind that 25 Member States voted against repealing the resolution and 13 abstained.

Anti-Semitism is not dead. Although anti-Semitic incidents have declined and a multi-cultural acceptance has produced wider tolerance in many states including the US, a 2000-year-old virus has mutated, and lives on, often in a disguised form. And the existence and achievements of the Jewish state in an area of relative backwardness stimulate anti-Semitism and furnish a respectable cover. Once anti-Semitism had a religious basis but, with the declining significance of religion in the West, anti-Semitism in church circles has relatively little standing as such.

https://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/an ... ed-nations

Do you not want Netanyahu and his regime to stop killing civilians?
Sy Borg, I am afraid you have been got at by which ever media you read.

[Belindi]

ZIONISM is genocide.

Imagine, if you will, that a radical Catholic Irish party took power in Northern Ireland, and voted for a "Right of Return policy", for all Catholics of Irish descent.
The law is then used to evict any Protestant, from rented or owned accomodation. They are thrown onto the street, whilst an American from New York who is a Catholic claiming Irish descent is offered their home rent free with a stipend to help them start a new life in Northern Ireland.

What would be your reaction?
But when you object the Irish who support the "Right of Return", scream justification for this on the basis of "Potato Famine", and the great hunger of the 19thC.

Yet this is exactly what is happening, daily, to Palestinians living in the West Bank.

Let us also imagine that the remianing Protestants are corralled into a small area of Ulster, whereby inports and exports are restricted by the Catholic Irish ,and periodically bombed by Eire levelling homes, blowing up hosptials, and universities. Periodically political goups of Protestants form and gather small bands of fighters from the orphan population -
(It being noted that in the October attack 80% of the fighters were orpans and none ofver the age of 24)
- To try to take revenge on their hopeless situation.
In response Catholic Irish systematically continue the destruction of the enclave, targetting refugee camps, UN workers, journalists, hospitals, and areas of land where they had previously told the Protestants to flee to.

But --- The Potato Famine!!! Remember that!

The above are such relevant parallels with the attacks on Gaza and the West Bank! I am sorry that the constraints on the length of posts are such that you don't write at length and in your passionate style about the Potato Famine in Ireland. I dare suggest the Potato Famine in Ireland merits a separate post.

But would that be a justification for a policy of Right of Return, do you think.
No matter how devastating it was?

The right of return for Palestinians should be based on lands that illegal settlers in Israel have appropriated. The 1967 boundaries would be a reasonable compromise.

The potato famine in Ireland and the subsequent deliberate starvation of native Irish by the British government was sufficient justification for the right of return from America for Irish emigres.I myself have the right to an Irish passport as my Irish mother was born before Irish partition. One of my sons, a Scot, has dual nationality as he was born in Ireland. I don't actually know if Ireland extends right of return to Americans of Irish descent whose ancestors fled to America from potato famine, oppression, and cruelty led by prime minister Lord John Russell, and Charles Trevelyan. Nor do I know for how many generations Irish ancestry gives the right to apply for Irish citizenship.
There is no real comparison between modern Ireland and modern Israel. The similarity is in the oppression by the English regime headed by Lord John Russell at the time of the potato famine and the oppressive regime of Netanyahu. In both cases human wellbeing , and human suffering are held to be nothing compared with the wealth and political strength of the oppressor.

[Sy Borg]

Jews were ethnically cleansed from all neighbouring Arab nations. Does that matter? No, it's only Jews. Actually, it's culturally cleansed. The idea that there's genocide against Palestinians is rich, given that they are racially more or less the same as Israelis, not to mention other neighbouring Arab nations. Meanwhile the UN runs cchools that teach Palestinian children to hate Israel - using money donated by the west, not by other Arab nations,

The below can provide at least a little balance against the clear and fierce anti-Semitism on this thread:

Emergency Special Sessions of the United Nations General Assembly are rare. No such session has ever been convened with respect to the Chinese occupation of Tibet, the Indonesian occupation of East Timor, the Syrian occupation of Lebanon, the slaughters in Rwanda, the disappearances in Zaire or the horrors of Bosnia. In fact, during the last 15 years they have been called only to condemn Israel.

Whereas Arab states have traditionally used UN fora to demonize and isolate Israel (for example, they routinely attempt to deny Israel its credentials), they now believe they enjoy "Western" support which emboldens them.

The latest Emergency Special Session, called to address Israeli construction at the Har Homa site, set in motion steps to de-legitimize Israel and to bring it to its knees. During its July meeting, the Session considered a resolution that requested member states "not to allow any import of goods produced and manufactured in occupied Palestinian territories, including Jerusalem" -- a virtual boycott and collective sanctions against the state.

During its November meeting, it took a further step towards making Israel an outlaw state. In a vote of 139 to 3 with 13 abstentions, it set in motion the eventual convening of states parties to the Fourth Geneva Convention, which grew out of the Nazi occupation of Europe. Thus, that Convention will now be employed against the people who were Hitler's victims. The resolutions of the November meeting requested that the Swiss government, as the depository of this Geneva Convention, convene by February 1998 a meeting of experts to initiate the process of condemning Israel for violating the Convention. This was done despite the admonition of Switzerland's UN Observer that such action could damage the peace process and politicize international humanitarian law.

As a result of such bias, the UN has lost credibility. It is no surprise that the Oslo agreements were negotiated outside of, and contained no role for, the UN. Though Israel has been the subject of aggressive wars in 1948, 1967 and 1973 and the victim of countless terrorist attacks, the Security Council and the General Assembly have never once censured its assailants. As Thomas M. Franck, Professor of International Law at New York University, has written, "...the UN is a place of convoluted realities. The Assembly's majority has also done its best to achieve an anti-Israeli politicization of the Secretariat."

It is not just an issue of anti-Israel bias; it is difficult to ignore an anti-Jewish bent in many instances. For 50 years the UN has condemned virtually every conceivable form of racism. It has established programs to combat racism and its multiple facets -- including xenophobia -- but had consistently refused to do the same against anti-Semitism until 1993, and then, only under intense US pressure.

Instead, the General Assembly established two Special Committees and two "special units" in the Secretariat devoted exclusively to Israeli practices, costing millions of dollars yearly. These produce anti-Israeli and Anti-Zionist pamphlets, booklets, papers and films, which are even distributed in the UN's six official languages to school children around the world.

The intense hostility that Israel faces in the UN and the anti-Semitic reverberations are illustrated by two events that occurred at the Commission on Human Rights in 1991 and 1997. During the 1991 session, the Syrian Ambassador repeated the Damascus Blood Libel that Jews killed Christian children to use their blood to make Matzoth. The Western democracies could not be stirred to challenge this age-old anti-Semitic libel (which the Ottoman Sultan as the ruler of Syria, denounced when it surfaced in the 1840s). It took intense US pressure to procure a challenge to this libel in the record, and then only months after the Syrian representative emphasized to the Commission, "it's true, it's true, it's true."

On 11 March 1997, the Palestinian representative charged, in a chamber packed with 500 people including the representatives of 53 states and hundreds of non-governmental organizations, that the Israeli Government had injected 300 Palestinian children with the HIV virus. Despite the repeated interventions of the Governments of Israel and the US, and UN Watch, this modern Blood Libel stands unchallenged and unrefuted on the UN record. No appropriate action by any UN body or official has been taken to date.

The Chairman of the Commission on Human Rights, a Czech, agreed to place on the record his letter to the Ambassador of Israel, sharing his "concern as to the charge made" against Israel -- "an allegation made without evidence, on the basis of a newspaper article ... proved completely false." The Chairman reneged on his agreement after he was called to task by a delegation of Arab Ambassadors and received no support from other regional groups -- including Western Europe.

Blood Libels are vicious and persistent carriers of anti-Semitism. The "Protocols of the Learned Elders of Zion" were but a fiction of the Czarist police in the 1890s. Yet they are a well of anti-Semitic pollution -- published today in thousands of copies world-wide. The Damascus Blood Libel was raised 150 years later in the Commission on Human Rights. The latest PLO Blood Libel bears the imprimatur of the UN record and has yet to be removed by consolidated action of the Commission or by any UN agency or official on the public record. (Nor was there any rebuke in 1992 to a UN document circulated in the Commission by the PLO observer, which stated that Israelis "celebrating ...Yom Kippur, are never fully happy even on religious occasions unless their celebrations, as usual, are marked by Palestinian blood.")

The treatment of Israel in the UN is often dismissed as realpolitik -- the power of Arab numbers -- and recently, as a reaction to Israel's Likud government and Prime Minister Netanyahu. Yet even during the hopeful days of the Rabin/Peres peace negotiations there were the usual anti-Israel resolutions passed each year in the UN General Assembly and 5 in the Commission on Human Rights.

Since the Oslo accords, 259 Israelis have been killed and 5000 injured by Palestinian terror attacks. During the same period, 34 resolutions deploring Israel were passed at the UN, but not one against the terror attacks. The unique treatment of Israel cannot be explained on purely political grounds. Though anti-Semitic canards can go unchallenged in the UN, the mere reference in the 1997 Commission on Human Rights to an allegedly blasphemous reference to Islam, by a UN expert and from an academic source, brought a rebuff by consensus by the Chair, and the deletion of the offending sentence.

The viciousness with which Israel is attacked, and the reluctance of even democratic states to defend Israel or to accord it the same latitude for mistakes and wrongs that it freely and reciprocally accords other states, has a special quality and origin.

There is ample justification for the conclusion of Professor Anne Bayefsky of York University, Canada, writing of the UN Human Rights system: "It is the tool of those who would make Israel the archetypal human rights violator in the world today. It is a breeding ground for anti-Semitism. It is a sanctuary for moral relativists. In short, it is a scandal."

The infamous "Zionism is Racism" resolution was passed in 1975 when Yitzhak Rabin was Prime Minister. Describing the circumstances of the passage of the resolution, a representative in the chamber stated that "hatred was crawling on the floor." Although the resolution was rescinded in 1991, anti-Semitism in UN fora is still a force to be reckoned with, bearing in mind that 25 Member States voted against repealing the resolution and 13 abstained.

Anti-Semitism is not dead. Although anti-Semitic incidents have declined and a multi-cultural acceptance has produced wider tolerance in many states including the US, a 2000-year-old virus has mutated, and lives on, often in a disguised form. And the existence and achievements of the Jewish state in an area of relative backwardness stimulate anti-Semitism and furnish a respectable cover. Once anti-Semitism had a religious basis but, with the declining significance of religion in the West, anti-Semitism in church circles has relatively little standing as such.

https://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/an ... ed-nations

Do you not want Netanyahu and his regime to stop killing civilians?
Sy Borg, I am afraid you have been got at by which ever media you read.

Actually, it's you and others who have been turned by media.

If the media focused on Yemen and ignored Palestine you'd be demanding action against the Houthis and ignore Palestine, just as you ignore the 300,000+ killings in Yemen.

Do you not want Xi to stop crushing the Tibetans and the Uyghurs? You and the media certainly don't seem interested, although the Palestinian situation - plastered over the media 24/7 is of paramount importance to you ... until the next big story takes your interest.

It's petty clear that my views are simply my views on this, unaffected by media. That's because I look at humans as a species, and as a subsystem of the planet. What I see is a time of upheaval around the world, a time of change, where the current systems are breaking down - both human and ecosystems. Israel/Palestine is one tiny reflection of this extinction event, and I have pointed out other flashpoints as global systems break down, eg. Uyghurs, and in Yemen, Syria, South Sudan, Afghanistan, Somalia, DRC, Mexico, Mali, Haiti, Burma, Burkina Faso and Niger - all those people who Palestine-lovers don't give the slightest damn about ... unless the media tells them to.

In this context, nations need to look after themselves, because no one is coming to the rescue any more. Metaphorically, the world's sheriff was sacked for corruption (Iraq) and increasingly lawlessness will reign.

One might complain that this is defeatist or pessimistic, but life always bounces back after extinction events. Still, the short and medium term prognoses can only be described as calamitous. We think there is trouble in Palestine. That will be small potatoes compared with what's coming - and to the west too, not just the developing world.

The upshot is that I see no reason to follow the crowd in hating on Israel for doing far less than many other so-called "oppressors" are doing around the world. Israel is the only country in the Middle east that treats women and gays like full human beings, so I see no reason to single them out for special hostility and judgement, given all the cruelty we happily ignore in China, Ukraine, Yemen, Syria, South Sudan, Afghanistan, Somalia, DRC, Mexico, Mali, Haiti, Burma, Burkina Faso, Niger ............

[Belindi]

Jews were ethnically cleansed from all neighbouring Arab nations. Does that matter? No, it's only Jews. Actually, it's culturally cleansed. The idea that there's genocide against Palestinians is rich, given that they are racially more or less the same as Israelis, not to mention other neighbouring Arab nations. Meanwhile the UN runs cchools that teach Palestinian children to hate Israel - using money donated by the west, not by other Arab nations,

The below can provide at least a little balance against the clear and fierce anti-Semitism on this thread:

Emergency Special Sessions of the United Nations General Assembly are rare. No such session has ever been convened with respect to the Chinese occupation of Tibet, the Indonesian occupation of East Timor, the Syrian occupation of Lebanon, the slaughters in Rwanda, the disappearances in Zaire or the horrors of Bosnia. In fact, during the last 15 years they have been called only to condemn Israel.

Whereas Arab states have traditionally used UN fora to demonize and isolate Israel (for example, they routinely attempt to deny Israel its credentials), they now believe they enjoy "Western" support which emboldens them.

The latest Emergency Special Session, called to address Israeli construction at the Har Homa site, set in motion steps to de-legitimize Israel and to bring it to its knees. During its July meeting, the Session considered a resolution that requested member states "not to allow any import of goods produced and manufactured in occupied Palestinian territories, including Jerusalem" -- a virtual boycott and collective sanctions against the state.

During its November meeting, it took a further step towards making Israel an outlaw state. In a vote of 139 to 3 with 13 abstentions, it set in motion the eventual convening of states parties to the Fourth Geneva Convention, which grew out of the Nazi occupation of Europe. Thus, that Convention will now be employed against the people who were Hitler's victims. The resolutions of the November meeting requested that the Swiss government, as the depository of this Geneva Convention, convene by February 1998 a meeting of experts to initiate the process of condemning Israel for violating the Convention. This was done despite the admonition of Switzerland's UN Observer that such action could damage the peace process and politicize international humanitarian law.

As a result of such bias, the UN has lost credibility. It is no surprise that the Oslo agreements were negotiated outside of, and contained no role for, the UN. Though Israel has been the subject of aggressive wars in 1948, 1967 and 1973 and the victim of countless terrorist attacks, the Security Council and the General Assembly have never once censured its assailants. As Thomas M. Franck, Professor of International Law at New York University, has written, "...the UN is a place of convoluted realities. The Assembly's majority has also done its best to achieve an anti-Israeli politicization of the Secretariat."

It is not just an issue of anti-Israel bias; it is difficult to ignore an anti-Jewish bent in many instances. For 50 years the UN has condemned virtually every conceivable form of racism. It has established programs to combat racism and its multiple facets -- including xenophobia -- but had consistently refused to do the same against anti-Semitism until 1993, and then, only under intense US pressure.

Instead, the General Assembly established two Special Committees and two "special units" in the Secretariat devoted exclusively to Israeli practices, costing millions of dollars yearly. These produce anti-Israeli and Anti-Zionist pamphlets, booklets, papers and films, which are even distributed in the UN's six official languages to school children around the world.

The intense hostility that Israel faces in the UN and the anti-Semitic reverberations are illustrated by two events that occurred at the Commission on Human Rights in 1991 and 1997. During the 1991 session, the Syrian Ambassador repeated the Damascus Blood Libel that Jews killed Christian children to use their blood to make Matzoth. The Western democracies could not be stirred to challenge this age-old anti-Semitic libel (which the Ottoman Sultan as the ruler of Syria, denounced when it surfaced in the 1840s). It took intense US pressure to procure a challenge to this libel in the record, and then only months after the Syrian representative emphasized to the Commission, "it's true, it's true, it's true."

On 11 March 1997, the Palestinian representative charged, in a chamber packed with 500 people including the representatives of 53 states and hundreds of non-governmental organizations, that the Israeli Government had injected 300 Palestinian children with the HIV virus. Despite the repeated interventions of the Governments of Israel and the US, and UN Watch, this modern Blood Libel stands unchallenged and unrefuted on the UN record. No appropriate action by any UN body or official has been taken to date.

The Chairman of the Commission on Human Rights, a Czech, agreed to place on the record his letter to the Ambassador of Israel, sharing his "concern as to the charge made" against Israel -- "an allegation made without evidence, on the basis of a newspaper article ... proved completely false." The Chairman reneged on his agreement after he was called to task by a delegation of Arab Ambassadors and received no support from other regional groups -- including Western Europe.

Blood Libels are vicious and persistent carriers of anti-Semitism. The "Protocols of the Learned Elders of Zion" were but a fiction of the Czarist police in the 1890s. Yet they are a well of anti-Semitic pollution -- published today in thousands of copies world-wide. The Damascus Blood Libel was raised 150 years later in the Commission on Human Rights. The latest PLO Blood Libel bears the imprimatur of the UN record and has yet to be removed by consolidated action of the Commission or by any UN agency or official on the public record. (Nor was there any rebuke in 1992 to a UN document circulated in the Commission by the PLO observer, which stated that Israelis "celebrating ...Yom Kippur, are never fully happy even on religious occasions unless their celebrations, as usual, are marked by Palestinian blood.")

The treatment of Israel in the UN is often dismissed as realpolitik -- the power of Arab numbers -- and recently, as a reaction to Israel's Likud government and Prime Minister Netanyahu. Yet even during the hopeful days of the Rabin/Peres peace negotiations there were the usual anti-Israel resolutions passed each year in the UN General Assembly and 5 in the Commission on Human Rights.

Since the Oslo accords, 259 Israelis have been killed and 5000 injured by Palestinian terror attacks. During the same period, 34 resolutions deploring Israel were passed at the UN, but not one against the terror attacks. The unique treatment of Israel cannot be explained on purely political grounds. Though anti-Semitic canards can go unchallenged in the UN, the mere reference in the 1997 Commission on Human Rights to an allegedly blasphemous reference to Islam, by a UN expert and from an academic source, brought a rebuff by consensus by the Chair, and the deletion of the offending sentence.

The viciousness with which Israel is attacked, and the reluctance of even democratic states to defend Israel or to accord it the same latitude for mistakes and wrongs that it freely and reciprocally accords other states, has a special quality and origin.

There is ample justification for the conclusion of Professor Anne Bayefsky of York University, Canada, writing of the UN Human Rights system: "It is the tool of those who would make Israel the archetypal human rights violator in the world today. It is a breeding ground for anti-Semitism. It is a sanctuary for moral relativists. In short, it is a scandal."

The infamous "Zionism is Racism" resolution was passed in 1975 when Yitzhak Rabin was Prime Minister. Describing the circumstances of the passage of the resolution, a representative in the chamber stated that "hatred was crawling on the floor." Although the resolution was rescinded in 1991, anti-Semitism in UN fora is still a force to be reckoned with, bearing in mind that 25 Member States voted against repealing the resolution and 13 abstained.

Anti-Semitism is not dead. Although anti-Semitic incidents have declined and a multi-cultural acceptance has produced wider tolerance in many states including the US, a 2000-year-old virus has mutated, and lives on, often in a disguised form. And the existence and achievements of the Jewish state in an area of relative backwardness stimulate anti-Semitism and furnish a respectable cover. Once anti-Semitism had a religious basis but, with the declining significance of religion in the West, anti-Semitism in church circles has relatively little standing as such.

https://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/an ... ed-nations

Do you not want Netanyahu and his regime to stop killing civilians?
Sy Borg, I am afraid you have been got at by which ever media you read.

Actually, it's you and others who have been turned by media.

If the media focused on Yemen and ignored Palestine you'd be demanding action against the Houthis and ignore Palestine, just as you ignore the 300,000+ killings in Yemen.

Do you not want Xi to stop crushing the Tibetans and the Uyghurs? You and the media certainly don't seem interested, although the Palestinian situation - plastered over the media 24/7 is of paramount importance to you ... until the next big story takes your interest.

It's petty clear that my views are simply my views on this, unaffected by media. That's because I look at humans as a species, and as a subsystem of the planet. What I see is a time of upheaval around the world, a time of change, where the current systems are breaking down - both human and ecosystems. Israel/Palestine is one tiny reflection of this extinction event, and I have pointed out other flashpoints as global systems break down, eg. Uyghurs, and in Yemen, Syria, South Sudan, Afghanistan, Somalia, DRC, Mexico, Mali, Haiti, Burma, Burkina Faso and Niger - all those people who Palestine-lovers don't give the slightest damn about ... unless the media tells them to.

In this context, nations need to look after themselves, because no one is coming to the rescue any more. Metaphorically, the world's sheriff was sacked for corruption (Iraq) and increasingly lawlessness will reign.

One might complain that this is defeatist or pessimistic, but life always bounces back after extinction events. Still, the short and medium term prognoses can only be described as calamitous. We think there is trouble in Palestine. That will be small potatoes compared with what's coming - and to the west too, not just the developing world.

The upshot is that I see no reason to follow the crowd in hating on Israel for doing far less than many other so-called "oppressors" are doing around the world. Israel is the only country in the Middle east that treats women and gays like full human beings, so I see no reason to single them out for special hostility and judgement, given all the cruelty we happily ignore in China, Ukraine, Yemen, Syria, South Sudan, Afghanistan, Somalia, DRC, Mexico, Mali, Haiti, Burma, Burkina Faso, Niger ............

True, I am influenced by The Guardian newspaper and by Al Jazeera on television. Somewhat also by the BBC. I am also influenced by friends and relatives who have something of the same culture of beliefs and the same moral principles as myself. There are objective criteria for trusting some public media and distrusting other public media one of the most important of which is freedom of reportage from commercial interests and political interference.

[Sculptor1]

ZIONISM is genocide.

Imagine, if you will, that a radical Catholic Irish party took power in Northern Ireland, and voted for a "Right of Return policy", for all Catholics of Irish descent.
The law is then used to evict any Protestant, from rented or owned accomodation. They are thrown onto the street, whilst an American from New York who is a Catholic claiming Irish descent is offered their home rent free with a stipend to help them start a new life in Northern Ireland.

What would be your reaction?
But when you object the Irish who support the "Right of Return", scream justification for this on the basis of "Potato Famine", and the great hunger of the 19thC.

Yet this is exactly what is happening, daily, to Palestinians living in the West Bank.

Let us also imagine that the remianing Protestants are corralled into a small area of Ulster, whereby inports and exports are restricted by the Catholic Irish ,and periodically bombed by Eire levelling homes, blowing up hosptials, and universities. Periodically political goups of Protestants form and gather small bands of fighters from the orphan population -
(It being noted that in the October attack 80% of the fighters were orpans and none ofver the age of 24)
- To try to take revenge on their hopeless situation.
In response Catholic Irish systematically continue the destruction of the enclave, targetting refugee camps, UN workers, journalists, hospitals, and areas of land where they had previously told the Protestants to flee to.

But --- The Potato Famine!!! Remember that!

The above are such relevant parallels with the attacks on Gaza and the West Bank! I am sorry that the constraints on the length of posts are such that you don't write at length and in your passionate style about the Potato Famine in Ireland. I dare suggest the Potato Famine in Ireland merits a separate post.

But would that be a justification for a policy of Right of Return, do you think.
No matter how devastating it was?

The right of return for Palestinians should be based on lands that illegal settlers in Israel have appropriated. The 1967 boundaries would be a reasonable compromise.

Sadly, Isreali law makes these evictions perfectly legal despite several floutings of UN resulutions concerning the right to restore lands stolen.

The potato famine in Ireland and the subsequent deliberate starvation of native Irish by the British government was sufficient justification for the right of return from America for Irish emigres.I myself have the right to an Irish passport as my Irish mother was born before Irish partition. One of my sons, a Scot, has dual nationality as he was born in Ireland. I don't actually know if Ireland extends right of return to Americans of Irish descent whose ancestors fled to America from potato famine, oppression, and cruelty led by prime minister Lord John Russell, and Charles Trevelyan. Nor do I know for how many generations Irish ancestry gives the right to apply for Irish citizenship.

Does that right also include the eviction of non Catholics from the homes they have enjoyed for generations?

There is no real comparison between modern Ireland and modern Israel. The similarity is in the oppression by the English regime headed by Lord John Russell at the time of the potato famine and the oppressive regime of Netanyahu. In both cases human wellbeing , and human suffering are held to be nothing compared with the wealth and political strength of the oppressor.

You are right of course.
It was just a thought experiement. The Isreali example is far more ridiculous since there has not been a Jewish state in the regions since the last one disolved by the Emperor Hadrian.
It would be a strange world to set back all the boundaries and borders back to 160AD.
There would be a lot of Americans and Australians looking for a home in Germany, England and Spain, as well as many other countries. Indeed many "English" would be looking to Germany to house them, whilst the Welsh would want to "return" eastwards.

[Sy Borg]

Jews were ethnically cleansed from all neighbouring Arab nations. Does that matter? No, it's only Jews. Actually, it's culturally cleansed. The idea that there's genocide against Palestinians is rich, given that they are racially more or less the same as Israelis, not to mention other neighbouring Arab nations. Meanwhile the UN runs cchools that teach Palestinian children to hate Israel - using money donated by the west, not by other Arab nations,

The below can provide at least a little balance against the clear and fierce anti-Semitism on this thread:



https://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/an ... ed-nations

Do you not want Netanyahu and his regime to stop killing civilians?
Sy Borg, I am afraid you have been got at by which ever media you read.

Actually, it's you and others who have been turned by media.

If the media focused on Yemen and ignored Palestine you'd be demanding action against the Houthis and ignore Palestine, just as you ignore the 300,000+ killings in Yemen.

Do you not want Xi to stop crushing the Tibetans and the Uyghurs? You and the media certainly don't seem interested, although the Palestinian situation - plastered over the media 24/7 is of paramount importance to you ... until the next big story takes your interest.

It's petty clear that my views are simply my views on this, unaffected by media. That's because I look at humans as a species, and as a subsystem of the planet. What I see is a time of upheaval around the world, a time of change, where the current systems are breaking down - both human and ecosystems. Israel/Palestine is one tiny reflection of this extinction event, and I have pointed out other flashpoints as global systems break down, eg. Uyghurs, and in Yemen, Syria, South Sudan, Afghanistan, Somalia, DRC, Mexico, Mali, Haiti, Burma, Burkina Faso and Niger - all those people who Palestine-lovers don't give the slightest damn about ... unless the media tells them to.

In this context, nations need to look after themselves, because no one is coming to the rescue any more. Metaphorically, the world's sheriff was sacked for corruption (Iraq) and increasingly lawlessness will reign.

One might complain that this is defeatist or pessimistic, but life always bounces back after extinction events. Still, the short and medium term prognoses can only be described as calamitous. We think there is trouble in Palestine. That will be small potatoes compared with what's coming - and to the west too, not just the developing world.

The upshot is that I see no reason to follow the crowd in hating on Israel for doing far less than many other so-called "oppressors" are doing around the world. Israel is the only country in the Middle east that treats women and gays like full human beings, so I see no reason to single them out for special hostility and judgement, given all the cruelty we happily ignore in China, Ukraine, Yemen, Syria, South Sudan, Afghanistan, Somalia, DRC, Mexico, Mali, Haiti, Burma, Burkina Faso, Niger ............

True, I am influenced by The Guardian newspaper and by Al Jazeera on television. Somewhat also by the BBC. I am also influenced by friends and relatives who have something of the same culture of beliefs and the same moral principles as myself. There are objective criteria for trusting some public media and distrusting other public media one of the most important of which is freedom of reportage from commercial interests and political interference.

I used to trust those outlets too. However, their studious ignoring of all the other hotspots in the world to focus exclusively on Israel shows that they cannot be trusted either.

There is no logic to that singular focus, only bias.

[Consul]

The left antisemitism/antizionism we're currently seeing is not a new phenomenon:

"During the late 1960s and early 1970s, the American far left repeatedly denounced Israel as a criminal regime resembling Nazi Germany and enthusiastically endorsed the Arab guerilla movement’s terrorist campaign to eradicate the Jewish state.
[...]
SDS’s New Left Notes also supported Palestinian terrorist attacks on Israeli airliners as one of the “requirements of total war, of resistance to the [Israeli] occupier.”"
(pp. 8-9)

(Norwood, Stephen H. Antisemitism and the American Far Left. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2013.)

Is it fair to observe, d'you think, that this book was written by someone who had an established position on these matters, and that the book they wrote reflects that position? In other words, I'm suggesting that it isn't 'objective' just because it's in a published book.

N.B. I do not challenge a single specific word of what was written, I merely observe that it may reflect a partisan viewpoint.

What I quoted is not a biased interpretation but a description of facts, which you can check for yourself if you don't trust Norwood.

[Consul]

Antisemitism is defined as hatred of Jews!

According to the Israel-sponsored IHRA definition, it also includes the act of criticising the political state of Israel.

"Manifestations [of antisemitism] might include the targeting of the state of Israel, conceived as a Jewish collectivity. However, criticism of Israel similar to that leveled against any other country cannot be regarded as antisemitic [my emphasis]."

Source: https://www.state.gov/defining-antisemitism/

[Pattern-chaser]

The below can provide at least a little balance against the clear and fierce anti-Semitism on this thread:

Emergency Special Sessions of the United Nations General Assembly are rare.

[...]

Once anti-Semitism had a religious basis but, with the declining significance of religion in the West, anti-Semitism in church circles has relatively little standing as such.

https://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/an ... ed-nations

Do we think that the "Jewish Virtual Library" offers an unbiased view on these matters? I do not discount what you have quoted, but only observe that this awful conflicts gives rise to many, different, views and judgements by those who care to express a view...?

Sy Borg, I am afraid you have been got at by which ever media you read.

Actually, it's you and others who have been turned by media.

Are you sure? Given the lies and propaganda released by all sides in this conflict, it is very difficult, I think, to determine who's telling the truth, and who isn't. Even then, I don't think it's as simple as expressing The truth; this issue is very far from simple, and there are many aspects of it that spread across many cultural areas. Our media are far from innocent, I think.

[Pattern-chaser]

Antisemitism is defined as hatred of Jews!

According to the Israel-sponsored IHRA definition, it also includes the act of criticising the political state of Israel.

"Manifestations [of antisemitism] might include the targeting of the state of Israel, conceived as a Jewish collectivity. However, criticism of Israel similar to that leveled against any other country cannot be regarded as antisemitic [my emphasis]."

Source: https://www.state.gov/defining-antisemitism/

But, but, but ... I referred to the IHRA 'definition', not to that of the US government. The text you quote seems to offer a more balanced view.

[Belindi]

The above are such relevant parallels with the attacks on Gaza and the West Bank! I am sorry that the constraints on the length of posts are such that you don't write at length and in your passionate style about the Potato Famine in Ireland. I dare suggest the Potato Famine in Ireland merits a separate post.

But would that be a justification for a policy of Right of Return, do you think.
No matter how devastating it was?

The right of return for Palestinians should be based on lands that illegal settlers in Israel have appropriated. The 1967 boundaries would be a reasonable compromise.

Sadly, Isreali law makes these evictions perfectly legal despite several floutings of UN resulutions concerning the right to restore lands stolen.

The potato famine in Ireland and the subsequent deliberate starvation of native Irish by the British government was sufficient justification for the right of return from America for Irish emigres.I myself have the right to an Irish passport as my Irish mother was born before Irish partition. One of my sons, a Scot, has dual nationality as he was born in Ireland. I don't actually know if Ireland extends right of return to Americans of Irish descent whose ancestors fled to America from potato famine, oppression, and cruelty led by prime minister Lord John Russell, and Charles Trevelyan. Nor do I know for how many generations Irish ancestry gives the right to apply for Irish citizenship.

Does that right also include the eviction of non Catholics from the homes they have enjoyed for generations?

There is no real comparison between modern Ireland and modern Israel. The similarity is in the oppression by the English regime headed by Lord John Russell at the time of the potato famine and the oppressive regime of Netanyahu. In both cases human wellbeing , and human suffering are held to be nothing compared with the wealth and political strength of the oppressor.

You are right of course.
It was just a thought experiement. The Isreali example is far more ridiculous since there has not been a Jewish state in the regions since the last one disolved by the Emperor Hadrian.
It would be a strange world to set back all the boundaries and borders back to 160AD.
There would be a lot of Americans and Australians looking for a home in Germany, England and Spain, as well as many other countries. Indeed many "English" would be looking to Germany to house them, whilst the Welsh would want to "return" eastwards.

For practical reasons we need time limits on right to return and restitution of property. These are emotive matters which include the recent victimhood of Jews by Nazi Germany. By contrast the wrongs that Cromwell did to Ireland have passed into history.
My Ulster Irish ancestors within recorded memory who were Roman Catholics became Unitarians. Whether this action was pragmatic or principled is not recorded, however I believe pragmatism and principle each is a good reason for changing, with the proviso that individuals retain rights over institutions. The rights of all individuals over all institutions is clearly not being upheld by people who bomb civilians .

[Sculptor1]

But would that be a justification for a policy of Right of Return, do you think.
No matter how devastating it was?

The right of return for Palestinians should be based on lands that illegal settlers in Israel have appropriated. The 1967 boundaries would be a reasonable compromise.

Sadly, Isreali law makes these evictions perfectly legal despite several floutings of UN resulutions concerning the right to restore lands stolen.

The potato famine in Ireland and the subsequent deliberate starvation of native Irish by the British government was sufficient justification for the right of return from America for Irish emigres.I myself have the right to an Irish passport as my Irish mother was born before Irish partition. One of my sons, a Scot, has dual nationality as he was born in Ireland. I don't actually know if Ireland extends right of return to Americans of Irish descent whose ancestors fled to America from potato famine, oppression, and cruelty led by prime minister Lord John Russell, and Charles Trevelyan. Nor do I know for how many generations Irish ancestry gives the right to apply for Irish citizenship.

Does that right also include the eviction of non Catholics from the homes they have enjoyed for generations?

There is no real comparison between modern Ireland and modern Israel. The similarity is in the oppression by the English regime headed by Lord John Russell at the time of the potato famine and the oppressive regime of Netanyahu. In both cases human wellbeing , and human suffering are held to be nothing compared with the wealth and political strength of the oppressor.

You are right of course.
It was just a thought experiement. The Isreali example is far more ridiculous since there has not been a Jewish state in the regions since the last one disolved by the Emperor Hadrian.
It would be a strange world to set back all the boundaries and borders back to 160AD.
There would be a lot of Americans and Australians looking for a home in Germany, England and Spain, as well as many other countries. Indeed many "English" would be looking to Germany to house them, whilst the Welsh would want to "return" eastwards.

For practical reasons we need time limits on right to return and restitution of property. These are emotive matters which include the recent victimhood of Jews by Nazi Germany. By contrast the wrongs that Cromwell did to Ireland have passed into history.
My Ulster Irish ancestors within recorded memory who were Roman Catholics became Unitarians. Whether this action was pragmatic or principled is not recorded, however I believe pragmatism and principle each is a good reason for changing, with the proviso that individuals retain rights over institutions. The rights of all individuals over all institutions is clearly not being upheld by people who bomb civilians .

What limit would you place, and how would you even judge ANY right.
There is not a single person claiming Jewish descent that could begin to trace their ancestry back more than a few generations and it is doubtful if any of them ever had ancestors fro the region.
I'm pretty sure they could collect a bunch of genetic indicators, but that would lead to more absurdities.

[Belindi]

The right of return for Palestinians should be based on lands that illegal settlers in Israel have appropriated. The 1967 boundaries would be a reasonable compromise.

Sadly, Isreali law makes these evictions perfectly legal despite several floutings of UN resulutions concerning the right to restore lands stolen.

The potato famine in Ireland and the subsequent deliberate starvation of native Irish by the British government was sufficient justification for the right of return from America for Irish emigres.I myself have the right to an Irish passport as my Irish mother was born before Irish partition. One of my sons, a Scot, has dual nationality as he was born in Ireland. I don't actually know if Ireland extends right of return to Americans of Irish descent whose ancestors fled to America from potato famine, oppression, and cruelty led by prime minister Lord John Russell, and Charles Trevelyan. Nor do I know for how many generations Irish ancestry gives the right to apply for Irish citizenship.

Does that right also include the eviction of non Catholics from the homes they have enjoyed for generations?

There is no real comparison between modern Ireland and modern Israel. The similarity is in the oppression by the English regime headed by Lord John Russell at the time of the potato famine and the oppressive regime of Netanyahu. In both cases human wellbeing , and human suffering are held to be nothing compared with the wealth and political strength of the oppressor.

You are right of course.
It was just a thought experiement. The Isreali example is far more ridiculous since there has not been a Jewish state in the regions since the last one disolved by the Emperor Hadrian.
It would be a strange world to set back all the boundaries and borders back to 160AD.
There would be a lot of Americans and Australians looking for a home in Germany, England and Spain, as well as many other countries. Indeed many "English" would be looking to Germany to house them, whilst the Welsh would want to "return" eastwards.

For practical reasons we need time limits on right to return and restitution of property. These are emotive matters which include the recent victimhood of Jews by Nazi Germany. By contrast the wrongs that Cromwell did to Ireland have passed into history.
My Ulster Irish ancestors within recorded memory who were Roman Catholics became Unitarians. Whether this action was pragmatic or principled is not recorded, however I believe pragmatism and principle each is a good reason for changing, with the proviso that individuals retain rights over institutions. The rights of all individuals over all institutions is clearly not being upheld by people who bomb civilians .

What limit would you place, and how would you even judge ANY right.
There is not a single person claiming Jewish descent that could begin to trace their ancestry back more than a few generations and it is doubtful if any of them ever had ancestors fro the region.
I'm pretty sure they could collect a bunch of genetic indicators, but that would lead to more absurdities.

Quite true. The Nazis' Aryanism was a political lie and so too is Zionism. However Israel has been a legal political entity so that many Israelis whether or not they are Jews feel they have a right to live in that place. Their right to live in that location is real and is based on their honest work and nothing to do with the daft fabrication that is Zionism, nor is the right extended to the illegal settlers. I think it's not unduly hard to separate illegal from legal settlers, so there would be restitution of stolen land to the farmers from whom it was stolen.

The state of Israel, insofar as it has prospered by allowing illegal settlers , should be responsible for
supporting and rehousing any descendants of illegal settlers.

[Sy Borg]

The below can provide at least a little balance against the clear and fierce anti-Semitism on this thread:

Emergency Special Sessions of the United Nations General Assembly are rare.

[...]

Once anti-Semitism had a religious basis but, with the declining significance of religion in the West, anti-Semitism in church circles has relatively little standing as such.

https://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/an ... ed-nations

Do we think that the "Jewish Virtual Library" offers an unbiased view on these matters? I do not discount what you have quoted, but only observe that this awful conflicts gives rise to many, different, views and judgements by those who care to express a view...?

That is because no other publications provide an alternative to the usual Jews = evil oppressors and Arabs = innocent saints.

Are you saying that Al Jazeera, The Guardian and the BBC are more objective.

Yet no one gives a damn about Tibet or the Uyghurs. They might as well all die. Who cares, right? Whereas Palestinians - with their tunnels, rockets, sexism and homophobia - are the most important people in the world.

There is actual genocide - not the concocted nonsense about Palestine genocide when there are indistinguishable Arabs all around them - but a true type of people being eliminated and replaced by Han Chinese.

No one started a thread about it. No one cared. No one showed passion. But, should Israel dare to retaliate after being hit with rockets and kidnappings, that inspire much anger and passion.

Sy Borg, I am afraid you have been got at by which ever media you read.

Actually, it's you and others who have been turned by media.

Are you sure? Given the lies and propaganda released by all sides in this conflict, it is very difficult, I think, to determine who's telling the truth, and who isn't. Even then, I don't think it's as simple as expressing The truth; this issue is very far from simple, and there are many aspects of it that spread across many cultural areas. Our media are far from innocent, I think.

Yes, I am sure, and thanks for patronising me. I have had to go searching to find any alternative view to the standard narrative. I did not accept the media's standard line because I instinctively saw the injustice of judging those who retaliate against those who send bombs and the celebrating of civilian deaths. Then I saw about the upwell of anti-semitism on university campuses, including Ivy League presidents refusing to treat calls for Jewish genocide as problematic in itself. Imagine the response if any other group was subject to calls for genocide.

I could, like others here, consume exclusively the biased tripe of mainstream media without checking against alternative media outlets. However, while not being Jewish myself, I had relatives sent to the gas ovens and the offspring of refugees forced out of their country with nothing but their clothes under threat of death. So I'm pretty sensitive to anti-semitism - and I am seeing a LOT of it on the forum and elsewhere.

Much of it is subtle, not overt. However, Israel is judged and much fuss is made about Palestine humanitarian issues - yet nothing whatsoever is said at any time about any other humanitarian disasters in the world. Palestine is far from the worst disaster - so the over focus on Palestine can only be unmistakeable anti-Semitism. It cannot possibly be anything else. The lack of even-handedness makes it obvious.