What a spiritually enlightened person you are

In the face of such israeli depravity you expect me to be spiritually serene? What are you? Some superior being who has no emotions & refuses to engage with a situation of outright evil?

When Palestinian suicide bombers kill as many as Israel did in Lebanon and Gaza since 2008 then maybe I can muster the rage you demand. We can all see how much sympathy you can manage for Palestinians.

I don’t hate Israel or Israelis. I hate injustice. And Israel’s Occupation and prosecution of the Gaza war was the height of injustice. Save the pscyhotherapy for someone who can use it. I’d offer it to you but I know you’re beyond reason or help.

There are only 2.6% of the population over 65 years of age because they just don’t live that long.

The Samouni family story is the most horrendous of all but in Australia today we have an old jew claiming they are all lies. Bullshit he says. Israel don’t behave like that.

The world can see the truth of the phosphorous bombs, the destruction, the brutal killing of children and their mothers but not the old jew in Australia.

Who has no connection at all with Israel as he was born in Australia in 1935, which means his parents have no connection to any place called Israel.

There is this delusion about Israel – it might exist in fact because there are people and buildings and a big bully army but in law it does not exist as a state at all and never has.

Resolution 181 was illegal as well as immoral in any language because the owners of the land were not given a vote on their land being given to someone else.

I supported Israel sort of until Sabra and Shatila.

I agree with what you’re saying. I was reacting to the appalling horror of this post and in doing so probably went off the rails and seemed to isolate Israel more than I would in a calm moment. I would definitely include my own country, the United States, in what I was saying about Israel. I’ve expressed incredible outrage at what my country has done in Iraq and Afghanistan over the past several years (and at our foreign policy generally). And we commit atrocities on a much larger scale. The one thing that gives me hope here in America is that a larger and larger percentage of the population seems to be calling for a different foreign policy. There seems to me to be such a vast gulf between the mass of American people and our leadership. That’s not to excuse our complicity in what our government does, for the fact is we ARE complicit as Americans. We’re supposed to be a democracy after all. I don’t quite see the corollary in Israel where the vile treatment of Palestinians seems to more directly mirror popular Israeli attitudes, but maybe I’m missing something.

And your point about who does deserve to be in the community of nations is well taken. From what vantage would the United States have the right to include or exclude Israel from the community of nations given our own dark historical record, and the massive War Crime that is our War on Iraq and Afghanistan? The speculation is itself beyond fanciful given our ‘special relationship’ with Israel and the fact that we aid and abet and fully support Israeli actions. So I see the irony and don’t know what to do with it. I just want both America and Israel to change, and my anger probably gets the better of my rhetoric at times.

I very much hope Israel is reined in and forced to treat Palestinians like human beings, but I’m not sure who does deserve to be in the community of nations, if you probe too deeply into what various countries have done.