Protestors vandalized the NY Public Library yesterday.

[Violet_Crumble]

114. You think it's polite to deny a people's existence?

There's people like that where I live. They're extreme RW/Cooker types and deny the right to self determination of our indigenous peoples. I don't expect to see that sort of attitude at DU. In fact, prior to the jury system being introduced, denying the existence of the Palestinian people earned a tombstone.

Whether you like it or not, and clearly you don't, the Palestinians exist as a nationality. We beat them at some football thing last week. So there! On a serious note, and to pull you away from channeling Joan Peters, what nationality do you think the Palestinians are, and what's the country they're living in? Neither they nor Israelis need to gain your respect to exist.

I see some wilful blindness, or maybe just ignorance of the conflict in positions like yours. Israel has its fair share of terrorists. According to yr logic, you shouldn't be recognising Israel's right to exist because the Israeli govt (remember them? They're the extreme RW nutjobs who love Trump and hated Obama) not only supports terrorists who attack and murder Palestinians in the west bank, but encourages them to do more by handing out thousands of semi automatics.

How is this for a novel idea? How about thinking about both Palestinians.and Israelis as both equally deserving of respect and dignity and not being treated like shit by extremists on both sides? Attitudes such as I saw in your reply are just a bit nauseating, and you want to know why? It's the same attitude most Russians have towards Ukraine, where.theres a refusal to acknowledge Ukraine as being separate from Russia, and they'd also probs follow young people round and harangue them 'politely' and want to film them.

I always assume that people I encounter at DU are basically good people who sometimes aren't armed with all the info they need to make informed.decions about complex geopolitical issues. That's why I'm going to make a book recommendation for you. It's a book called The Palestinian People by Baruch kimmerling and Joel S Migdal, and it's well worth reading to get an understanding of the history of the Palestinians.

Anyway, it's dinnertime, so I'm off to politely tell at some random New Zealanders and demand to know why they think they deserve anyone's respect. They had their chance to gain our respect, dump all that Treaty stuff, and join us at Federation, but from now on they're 'New Zealanders' to all of us.

On edit- I've just read another post of yrs unrelated to the I/P conflict where we have something in common. I hope you don't mind if I PM you?