Capitol Hill Blue Forums Political Issues Foreign Policy & News The Triumph of US/Israeli Policy in Palestine

[quote=rporter314]
I guess I will just be disappointed once again that someone can't answer simple questions.

I think this condition is quite prevalent among advocates (especially 'white' advocates) of group victimhood. And I think that many of them know it, and that is why they go to such lengths to over-compensate for it and atone for their feelings of guilt (they transfer the guilt to those who do not agree with their angst). So, to these folks who secretly believe themselves to be racially or culturally superior, members of a 'victim' group are never to be held responsible for their own actions. The 'victim' group's circumstances are always the fault of the power structure (as long as it is 'white' or has embraced the "white social construct"). The bad things members of a 'victim' group may do is beyond their control because they are simply reacting to a life of oppression and "acting out" that anger. They are not capable of truely functioning like a fully realized human because they have been denied the opportunity by the prevalent power structure to explore higher avenues. etc.

...

I love an argument based upon the unsupported assumption of one person then presented as the basis for one's own suppositions and conjectures. It makes following the discussion so, well, hopeless.

...I only ask that we take it to its own thread.

[quote=Phil Hoskins
I love an argument based upon the unsupported assumption of one person then presented as the basis for one's own suppositions and conjectures. It makes following the discussion so, well, hopeless.

Instead, the Saudi monarch, who brokered a power-sharing deal between Abbas's Fatah faction and rivals Hamas in February, urged both sides to talk to each other, saying the infighting was benefiting only the Israelis.

If we take just the past week when Israel’s Prime Minister Olmert and the Palestinian President Abbas met with other leaders in Sharm el-Sheikh to discuss the way forward for Palestinians, what emerged was the usual proviso - any concessions made by Israel would depend on Abbas’ progress in bringing an end to violence. This completely ignores the ongoing violence of Israel’s occupation and, in effect, requires the Palestinians to submit to that occupation before they will get any concessions from Israel.

Israel now sends $1.2 billion in "defense" products to the United States--up dramatically from $270 million in 1999. In 2006 Israel exported $3.4 billion in defense products--well over a billion more than it received in US military aid. That makes Israel the fourth-largest arms dealer in the world, overtaking Britain.

Much of this growth has been in the so-called "homeland security" sector. Before 9/11 homeland security barely existed as an industry. By the end of this year, Israeli exports in the sector will reach $1.2 billion--an increase of 20 percent. The key products and services are high-tech fences, unmanned drones, biometric IDs, video and audio surveillance gear, air passenger profiling and prisoner interrogation systems--precisely the tools and technologies Israel has used to lock in the occupied territories.

And that is why the chaos in Gaza and the rest of the region doesn't threaten the bottom line in Tel Aviv, and may actually boost it. Israel has learned to turn endless war into a brand asset, pitching its uprooting, occupation and containment of the Palestinian people as a half-century head start in the "global war on terror."