Israel/Palestine
In reply to the discussion: The Global March to Jerusalem, a brave and admirable attempt to awaken the world’s conscience [View all]Ken Burch
(50,254 posts)I've mainly lived in very right-wing areas.
What you are doing isn't questioning my values or having a sincere dialogue. I'd be interested in that. You are refusing to accept that I believe what I say I believe, and you are setting up false things for me to agree to to validate my beliefs.
I want Hamas to leave power. OK? Can you please just accept that that is settled and that I don't secretly support them?
It's disgusting that you keep implying that the only way I can PROVE I don't support them is to say "ok, the Occupation was right after all". It's not either/or. And there's no way to know that the Occupation would forever have kept Hamas from taking over Gaza.
What I don't support is Western supremacism or the notion that only "the West" cares about freedom.
I'm open to other ideas about the West Bank...but you haven't provided any...and especially you haven't provided any evidence that keeping the Occupation in place in Gaza would have made a better Gaza OR that not taking the IDF out of the West Bank is going to produce Palestinian democracy. You also haven't made any real case for the idea that a fully democratic Palestine would gladly make MORE concessions to Israel than the existing Palestinian leadership has been willing to make, or that rank-and-file Palestinians would ever have just accepted living under permanent Israeli military occupation as their natural station in life. The United States has been democratic(more or less)for many years, and has launched just as many wars(mostly unjustified, other than the involvement in World War II, which should have started earlier)as any dictatorship. Democracy doesn't necessarily produce a nation of saints.