Violence in Israel after Trump's Jerusalem move

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Re: Violence in Israel after Trump's Jerusalem move

Postby Crimson847 » Wed May 16, 2018 6:31 am

SandTea wrote:I'm pretty sure protests would still happen even if the embassy wasn't moved. Hammas would have just used the same reason they've been using since forever. I don't have a dog in this fight other than it being weird to me that, over a few years it became much more popular to hate on Israel.


According to Pew, public opinion on Israel in the US hasn't changed a whole lot. The percentage of people supporting each side of the conflict is pretty much the same as it was forty years ago when they first started asking this question. What's changed dramatically is that critics of Israel have largely sorted into the Democratic Party, and supporters of Israel have largely sorted into the GOP. So although the percentage of Americans generally who support Israel has remained pretty flat, the percentage of Democrats who do has nosedived. As such, if your social circle is largely composed of Democrats, it will appear that Israel has become much less popular.

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http://www.people-press.org/2018/01/23/ ... par=1&trk=
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"If it were all so simple! If only there were evil people somewhere insidiously committing evil deeds, and it were necessary only to separate them from the rest of us and destroy them; but the line dividing good and evil cuts through the heart of every human being. And who is willing to destroy a piece of his own heart?"
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Re: Violence in Israel after Trump's Jerusalem move

Postby Krashlia » Wed May 16, 2018 6:55 am

I Like Israel, partly for religious-fundamentalist reasons. The other part is because I think that, if all the Middle East as it is now had experienced its best day, Israel would shine brighter than its neighbors. Also I think that this isn't even necessarily about Israel, but some funny politics against the US.

So I can't be brought to hate it.

I think that it needs to be remembered that its relationship with the neighboring populations is less than warm, and that its actually a better country on account of the fact that its closer to being a secular democracy than others. But, I don't think its delusional to say that "it sort of needs to get its human rights issues together", and "we've made some less than optimal decisions in regards to our relationship to it and our involvement in its relationship with its neighbors".

It needs to refocus on securing its own borders, and not being harsher to one segment of the population than others. I mean, do we seriously need to think about the fundamental unfairness of destroying so Arabs home for something one terrorist member of the house did? Does expelling some family from their house and moving in some other guys and letting them keep the stuff once belonging to the other family sound right? Settler groups anyone? And, yeah, the Palestinian political groups have been playing tricks on the borders, creating propaganda, and supporting terrorist attacks against Jewish targets, and using missile attacks. But, that just highlights the importance of cutting out the selective treatment of citizens, desisting in playing chess with ethnic groups and living space, leaving Gaza behind, and securing the Israeli border, thus Reducing the complaints of the rivals to rather clear cases of crying wolf. This strategy would making being a friend much easier I think.

EDIT:
Theres nothing suspicious at all about the fact that democratic support for Israel has taken a straight dive in less than two years. I'm being sarcastic of course, and willing to bet that one of the reasons that this may be so is one that I could only think of as petty and irrational.
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Re: Violence in Israel after Trump's Jerusalem move

Postby Crimson847 » Wed May 16, 2018 7:42 am

Krashlia wrote:EDIT:
Theres nothing suspicious at all about the fact that democratic support for Israel has taken a straight dive in less than two years. I'm being sarcastic of course, and willing to bet that one of the reasons that this may be so is one that I could only think of as petty and irrational.


I can think of three plausible explanations for the timing:

1. Netanyahu's aggressive gargling of Trump's balls

2. Obama's parting shot at Israel in December 2016, and the ensuing fallout

3. US Muslims deserting the GOP after 2016

I'm not sure I'd call any of those petty and irrational. Obviously Netanyahu doesn't represent all Israelis, but as a four-time elected prime minister who's set to surpass David Ben-Gurion as the longest-serving PM in Israeli history, he has a pretty fair claim to speak for the general Israeli public. Meanwhile, Obama remains overwhelmingly popular among Democrats and it makes sense that low-information partisans would take signals from him on policy, not to mention resent the insults against him from the Israeli government and their backers. And of course, it seems entirely reasonable for Muslims to desert a party that has rallied behind a man who advocated banning their kind from entering the country, among other offenses.
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"If it were all so simple! If only there were evil people somewhere insidiously committing evil deeds, and it were necessary only to separate them from the rest of us and destroy them; but the line dividing good and evil cuts through the heart of every human being. And who is willing to destroy a piece of his own heart?"
- Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
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Re: Violence in Israel after Trump's Jerusalem move

Postby Aquila89 » Wed May 16, 2018 7:54 am

Crimson847 wrote:So although the percentage of Americans generally who support Israel has remained pretty flat, the percentage of Democrats who do has nosedived.


That poll was criticized though for being misleading;

The question reads, “In the dispute between Israel and the Palestinians, which side do you sympathize with more, Israel or the Palestinians?” The wording, quite obviously, asks the respondent to make a binary choice between two seemingly exclusive options. (The poll also records the number of those who volunteer an answer of “both” or “neither,” but those options are not offered by the interviewer.)

The poll question is faulty because sympathy for Palestinians should not imply hostility to Israel, nor should sympathy for Israel require disregard for the fate of Palestinians.


Krashlia wrote:Theres nothing suspicious at all about the fact that democratic support for Israel has taken a straight dive in less than two years. I'm being sarcastic of course, and willing to bet that one of the reasons that this may be so is one that I could only think of as petty and irrational.


It's not just about Trump, the percentage of Democrats who sympathize Israel over the Palestinians started to decline under Obama, probably due to the tensions between him and Netanyahu. For instance, Netanyahu addressed Congress in 2015, trying to undercut the Iran deal, and claimed to speak for all the Jews of the world. Jewish Democrats didn't like that very much.
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Re: Violence in Israel after Trump's Jerusalem move

Postby Krashlia » Wed May 16, 2018 4:52 pm

*nasal exhale*

Today I Learned.
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