Talk:Israel/Archive2

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Would the Middle East really be a better place if Israel was gone + A bit more

I'm adding this because I feel that this article is a bit one sided (as much as I love this wiki, on some subjects there is only one side (like religion, pseudoscience, and logic) some aren't as simple)

A couple of thoughts and fact checks: first of all, in the article it says that the borders weren't clearly marked in order to allow expansion. This is incorrect, they were not clearly marked but only by the wish of the marker the British used to mark the border on the map which caused tension over who gets the area within the widt of the marker. Second of all, the idependence war was initiated by the Arab Union, the only people who say Israel initiated it are conspiracy theorists. Second of all, if you initiate a war, and you lose it, don't whine over the fact that you lose some of your territory. If Israel had lost they would have lost all their territory. You don't see Mexico commuting acts of terror over the fact that they lost so much land in the Mexican American war even though America started the war. Third, if Israel never existed, a lot of modern medicine and technology wouldn't exist. I highly doubt a state of Palestine would have been so tech forward. Third, even if Israel for some reason decided to evacuate right now, Palestine has no standing army, they have no government uncontrolled by a terrorist organization (yes Hamas is a terrorist organization) and would probably be invaded by Egypt/Lebanon/Jordan within a year. Another thing is that in a bunch of African countries people are committing far more atrocious war crimes every day than Israel ever committed. The IDF is a lot more moral than so many other country's armies (for Pete's sake they give a warning before an air strike) but no one cares about the areas occupied by China and Russia now do they. Another point is that even if Palestine won a war and gained control they would become a religious country and be far less liberal than Israel. I agree that Israel needs work such as lest leniency for the religious or better yet a separation of church and state but I think it's a whole lot better than the state of Palestine. The Palestinians make themselves look like vicime but with some fact checking you can see that it is sometimes if not most of the time either a twisted truth or a utter lie. (Example: a Palestinian swimmer in the Rio Olympics claimed that Israel wouldn't let her practice in an Olympic swimming pool when after some fact checking you can see that she never officially asked permission).

If anyone has an answer to any of these points I would love to hear them but I'm fairly sure most if not all of the points are rock solid^{— Unsigned, by: Potpie / talk / contribs}

"Second of all, if you initiate a war, and you lose it, don't whine over the fact that you lose some of your territory. If Israel had lost they would have lost all their territory." Goes against the very fact that acquiring land by means of war is illegal under international law. Whining has nothing to do with anything. I'll repeat: the acquisition of territory by means of war is illegal under international law. There is absolutely nothing in your response that screams "rock solid" to me, because you are seemingly unaware that

the international community (including the International Committee of the Red Cross, the UN General Assembly, Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch) in all of its constituents across the board without ANY exceptions has stated multiple times that acquiring land by means of war, and the land-sea-air blockade of the Gaza Strip is illegal. It constitutes a form of collective punishment (again illegal under international law) against the civilian population. Frankly there is nothing else to say other than your write up is a pile of, excuse my language

shit. A pile of shit. Caseinpointfan2 (talk) 23:24, 3 July 2020 (UTC)

"acquiring land by means of war is illegal under international law". And going to war is? Israel didn't occupy those territories to build hotels and mine oil there, it did so to demilitarize bordering territories and push back the source of aggression. Also, is it me or do most people express unhealthy interest towards Israel in particular? People don't seem to be as distressed about China occupying Taiwan or Russia occupying Crimea. People also don't care about the fact that palestinians were massacred in Jordan in the 80s after they tried to "fight for their rights" there, but every killed armed palestinian "freedom fighter" by IDF must first undergo the process of being recognized as NOT an unarmed palestinian child. Hypocrisy is strong with this article, the ending statement of its introduction doesn't even try to hide it.

I would also like to point out that I never signed under accepting the international law. Neither did my relatives nor anyone I know. The prevalent law is the law of the state one currently resides in, or the law one makes up if in position of such power. The International Law is both a bureaucratic nonsense AND a means to express some bias towards Israel; most of muslim and African countries don't give a single shit about basic human rights, let alone International Laws, yet all bitching and moaning is directed almost entirely at Israel. It's a small and only Jewish country. Give it a rest, guys, just carry on building your islamic paradise in Western Europe and Democratic US states. Leave Israel be. 2.206.169.21 (talk) 08:52, 12 October 2020 (UTC)

Firstly, your grasp of international politics is very weak. China does not in fact occupy Taiwan, Taiwan claims to be the rightful capital of China. Secondly, statements such as "most of muslim and African countries don't give a single shit about basic human rights, let alone International Laws, yet all bitching and moaning is directed almost entirely at Israel." are grossly incorrect. While the dominant factions may indeed not care one iota for human rights, there may be other factions within the governments who do, not to mention the potentially diverse positions of the citizenry. To your complaint that we only criticize Israel, I have only puzzlement. Our article on Muslim majority countries such as Iran and Saudi Arabia are hardly glowing with praise. Thirdly, "Give it a rest, guys, just carry on building your islamic paradise in Western Europe and Democratic US states." seems to infer that the editors of this wiki are mostly Muslim. I can assure you that this inference is absurd, and furthermore is based on pure conjecture. Fourthly, international law, despite being weak and toothless in most cases, seeks to impose a set of standards on all nations, large or small. This means that there can be no exceptions, as a standard that only applies to one applies to no one, since it is unrealistic to expect it to be followed if you yourself are unwilling to bear the same weight. Finally, your cries for us to ignore Israel are ignorant, for if it is engaging in authoritarian behavior, it is within the purview of this wiki to document such behavior and refute the excuses given. In conclusion, I find your complaints ignorant and devoid of merit, sad pathetic things without virtue or worth. Good day. ☭Comrade GC☭^{Ministry of Praise} 13:46, 12 October 2020 (UTC)

Apartheid? Again

Of course the label 'Apartheid' is bound to stir some emotions on both sides. At RationalWiki our job is to sort out the fact from fiction and clear up misunderstandings. Same with this article as any other.

If we're going to examine the claim of Israeli Apartheid, we need to define what Apartheid is. In South Africa, businesses would only serve or employ people of a certain ethnicity. People of a certain ethnicity are confined to version neighborhoods, often separated by a wall barrier. Roads are segregated based on race. Typically one race controls all of this, using these laws for their benefit. The other race(s) get the short end of the stick, with bad infrastructure and employment.

Sound familiar? It's the West Bank. Now in Israel proper, Arabs and Jews can live in peace without much trouble. But in the West Bank, there is segregated housing, race-based roads, employment discrimination, and different laws for different races. The Jews get to sit in the prefabricated houses on the hills that are built to code, while the Arabs have to live in shoddy packed housing in the valleys where rainwater and sewage flows in the streets. The Jews get the clean wide highways while the Arabs get the rundown bumpy alleyways. Jewish neighborhoods are protected by tall barriers while Arab ghettos are raided by Israeli commandos.

This is segregation, and even though Israel proper does not have these policies, the fact that they are implemented in the West Bank by Israel means Israel is an Apartheid state. To say it isn't is to deny the reality before your eyes and to whitewash the truth. Applesauce (talk) 23:32, 14 December 2016 (UTC)

Doesn't Israel also force contraception on ethopian woman ? Diacelium (talk) 23:45, 14 December 2016 (UTC)

Except if you are going to call Israel an Apartheid state, you must also do the same for Syria and Lebanon, which also treat the Palestinians like shit. Jordan, not so much; more societal racism than anything overt by the government. Egypt... I don't even know. Turkey, well, depends on your view of Cyprus. Morocco? It keeps getting brought up for something I don't really understand. Russia is... weird.

The problem for me with the WB is the question of "what's the future"? If Israel is going to keep control of the entire thing for the next century, at some point you basically have millions of people without any country or basic semblance of society, so yes, that road eventually does lead to Apartheid. We can argue till we are blue in the face of when that demarcation is, but it will be at some point. If Israel plans to give up control of the bulk of the WB to an independent state, well, why isn't it happening? It's been half a century; surely even without an agreement Israel could say "this contiguous giant chunk is yours, do what you want with it". If Israel plans to carve out chunks of it piece by piece, which is what appears to be happening, are they going to grant the people citizenship or not? Israel offered citizenship when it annexed Jerusalem, but not when it kept expanding settlements into the WB. Because if you take the land but kick out the people, that's definitely a crime against humanity of one form or another. CorruptUser (talk) 23:49, 14 December 2016 (UTC)

Which is precisely why we should link to a better researched and more neutral source than this article. So I put the link to Wikipedia in, which is a much more in depth and nuanced discussion than the crap you, Applesauce, keep reinserting. On another note, how many black ministers did Apartheid South Africa have? How many black ambassadors? How many black members in its national soccer rugby and cricket teams? Worzelpete (talk) 00:01, 15 December 2016 (UTC)

@CU Many Palestinians don't want to be Syrian, Lebanese, or Jordanian as this would mean forfeiting their refugee status preventing them from being able to return. Regardless, racism (in a xenophobic way) does exist in all of those societies. Our page on the Western Sahara already mentions the apartheid conditions that Morroco has imposed on them. I have not researched much about the Cyprus conflict but both the Greek Cypriots, backed by Greece, and the Turkish Cypriots, backed by Turkey, were responsible for ethnic cleansing during the civil war; the country, from what I understand, is plagued by racism. There may be an argument to make that the crime of apartheid is being committed but I heard of this argument. I am unaware of any modern claim of segregation in Russia but I do know that before Lenin, Tsarist Russia had a strong segregational society which separated White Rus from the Central Asians.--Owlman (talk) (mail) 00:30, 15 December 2016 (UTC)

Why I made the latest reversion

There were several edits made to the article which were added without any source and written in such a way as to bias the reader toward one particular viewpoint. I fully understand that RationalWiki has SPOV rather than Neutral POV, but that still doesn't excuse the text that was added here.

• This edit isn't too bad, but there is the problem of it being unsourced, which apparently the author of the edit really doesn't like. It's a whole lot of minutia about how same-sex marriages work in Israel, when marriage law isn't even the subject of the section ('Human rights').
• The next edit is where it gets bad. Here the author deletes an entire (SOURCED!) paragraph and replaces it with a pro-Israel screed. The screed berates Palestine for not having more liberal domestic policies, while completely ignoring the point of pro-Palestine critics with regards to gay rights in Israel, namely that gay rights is used as a dodge by pro-Israel people during arguments about the conflict.

What's the problem here? Unsourced statements and between-the-lines innuendo are big problems with these edits, but the biggest problem is that the editor is ideologically-driven to edit the article in favor of one side, in a topic that this community has repeatedly fought over in the past and decided should be neutral (unlike articles on religion or politics). PBfreespace (talk) 23:41, 8 September 2017 (UTC)

The list of political parties right now is severely outdated.

Prior to the 2019 elections many events have taken place including, for example, the dissolution of Zionist Union and more importantly the formation of Kahol-Lavan (which now includes Yesh Atid).

Many other parties were formed or gained prominence, e.g. the batshit insane dumb PR act controversial Zehut.

In addition, there's no mention at all of Meretz, which is relatively well-known too and has been around when the article was updated the last time. --RIFF WAVEfmt (talk) 07:32, 12 October 2019 (UTC)

DuceMoo revamp

Done with what I'm gonna do to the Israel article. @Bongolian thoughts? Chef Moosolini’s Ristorante Italiano^{Make a Reservation} 22:17, 13 June 2020 (UTC)

File:The_captivity_of_Judah.jpg leads to deadend

I tried finding out who painted the image, when, etc. to implement in the article. When clicking https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/File:The_captivity_of_Judah.jpg and going to source, it leads to http://clipart.christiansunite.com/1251110461/Old_Testament_Clipart/Old_Testament003.jpg, a deadend. — Godless Raven ^talk_stalk^walk_balk 🌹 10:21, 15 June 2020 (UTC)

Seems like a WP Commons issue, not a ratwiki problem. Techpriest ^{(I am Alpharius! / / / )} 11:53, 15 June 2020 (UTC)

Edit war

And there I was thinking my Israel expansion would be entirely non-controversial. lol 🎄Chef Moosolini’s Ristorante Italiano🎄^{Ask about our holiday specials!} 21:36, 3 December 2020 (UTC)

Would the BoN obsessed with this page like to present any arguments before they cut out large, well-cited, and relevant portions of text?-Flandres (talk) 23:56, 5 December 2020 (UTC)

The funny thing is that I’m also pro-Israel. I’m just not super thin-skinned when it comes to acknowledging the state’s many faults. 🎄Chef Moosolini’s Ristorante Italiano🎄^{Ask about our holiday specials!} 23:58, 5 December 2020 (UTC)

Bibi

What does Bibi mean please? Harry Potter (talk) 21:54, 16 May 2021 (UTC)

It’s a nickname for Benjamin Netanyahu, can’t say I know where it comes from. Christopher (talk) 21:58, 16 May 2021 (UTC)

I believe it was a childhood nickname, kept around because it makes him..."down to earth" as a politician.-Flandres (talk) 22:11, 16 May 2021 (UTC)

Israel has too many dmn parties

I get it's weird to bi-partisan Americans, but Knesset is not exceptionaly unproductive, and that wouldn't make it less democratic anyway. So I removed it. The partisan election council is not an actual problem either, since the parties are there to check each other and have judicial review. I probably should add more information about the actual democratic defeciancies though.--Nngnna (talk) 18:43, 16 August 2021 (UTC)

Sources

This page makes some claims that aren't supported by facts. Notably the section on the Nation State Law is quite badly flawed. I don't intend to get into a political debate saying this, and I have no intention of editing the page. It is a subject ripe for edit wars. If you do genuinely critical reading around the subject there is a lot of analysis of the law. The sources cited are from fairly explicitly anti-Israel sources, Middle East Eye and Al Jazeera. There are better, more neutral sources on the law that disagree with the analysis currently presented here. Dancer (talk) 14:53, 12 March 2022 (UTC)

Edit to add; This may be completely useless, so I apologise in advance, I was wondering if it would be possible for people who do want to edit this page to create a sandbox version for the purpose of discussing the politics of Israel and the Palestinians in a way that accounts for the opposing viewpoints. I feel like the whole subject is so polarising that finding ways to reach a consensus that satisfies opposing views would be good. Dancer (talk) 15:00, 12 March 2022 (UTC)

Origin of Six Day War

This article doesn’t mention that Egypt committed an act of war by blocking’s Israel’s access to the Red Sea via the Straits of Tiran.

Torture Section missing citations?

Just noticed that there is some uncited paragraphs in the bottom half in this section. The first half appears to be fine and correlates with the citiation, but the bottom half just don't have any references anywhere.

Did anyone forget to add it or was it accidentally deleted? --Mofosyne (talk)

interesting article

http://www.tabletmag.com/jewish-news-and-politics/176673/emotional-nakba^{— Unsigned, by: 66.87.114.44 / talk / contribs}

"What used to be Palestine"??

"A lot of stress also arises because Israel currently occupies the territory of what used to be Palestine; the Muslim Palestinians demand their own state and want Israel to stop treating them like garbage."

How come the so called Rational Wiki talks about a non existing past state? Until the establishment of the PA (Palestinian Authority) through the Oslo accords in the 90s, "Palestine" never existed. It's as simple as that. The second part of the statement is also incorrect, and written in a way that doesn't fit a serious wiki.^{— Unsigned, by: 5.29.21.176 / talk / contribs}

There is so much wrong with this, but first of all, Palestine was a British mandate before the creation of the modern state of Israel. Palestine was also guaranteed its own territory through the UN partitioning, which is all (to varying degrees) occupied by Israel. Also, attempts to deny the injustices faced by Palestinians is pure denialism. You might want to read RationalWiki:What is a RationalWiki article? Plutocow (talk) 20:20, 9 April 2022 (UTC)

Regardless, that was neither well phrased nor cleverly phrased. I have tried to touch it up. --Bertrc (talk) 02:19, 10 November 2022 (UTC)