Israel - Palestine Conflict. **Mod note in OP - updated 1st August**

porsche959 wrote: »

"they are inching towards the zionist ideal of occupying the entire region."

I truly hope you are correct. In general, I prefer civilisations that don't behead infidels, don't subjugate women and don't execute gays.

All Palestinians are still humans, and not all are Muslims.
But you keep carrying on like that. well done.

speedboatchase wrote: »

I addressed that when I said: "I understand the sympathy that Palestine evokes, especially when women and children are killed in bombing raids."

But Irish people go overboard and many subscribe to a simplistic narrative in their minds that makes them think Palestine is Ireland circa-1916. If I were gay I wouldn't hold aloft a flag of a country that would have me executed for my life choices.

So we should want those children to be bombed is what you're saying?

speedboatchase wrote: »

I addressed that when I said: "I understand the sympathy that Palestine evokes, especially when women and children are killed in bombing raids."

But Irish people go overboard and many subscribe to a simplistic narrative in their minds that makes them think Palestine is Ireland circa-1916. If I were gay I wouldn't hold aloft a flag of a country that would have me executed for my life choices.

As a person said above, 'because they are good people'. No decent person can stand back and watch the slaughter of innocent civilians and war crimes committed by Israel.

Homosexuality is not illegal in Palestine, although they do have some way to go with regards to LGBT rights.

You've heard of "Pinkwashing"?

Pinkwashing

The phrase “Pinkwashing” was coined in 1985 by Breast Cancer Action to identify companies that claimed to support women with breast cancer while actually profiting from their illness

Since 2010, this term has been adopted by anti-occupation activists in the context of Israeli/Palestinian conflict, to describe Israel’s audience-focused marketing strategy where the image of gay-friendliness is utilized to improve Israel's image in the international arena and, its critics asserts, to divert the international attention from its human rights violations in Palestine.

However, with the continued rise of the far-right and extreme far-right in Israel, one would have to ask the question how much longer LGBT rights will be observed in the country?

The Catholic church does not condone or accept Homosexuals at all. It's not unheard of for gay men or women to be attacked in our capital city just for being gay.

Any right minded person should be able to show support for the innocent, unarmed, non combatant civilians of any country who are being slaughtered without worrying about specific policies or the religious doctrine of that country.

You do not have to move to Palestine and take citizenship to support the Palestinian people against oppression and slaughter.

Dan_Solo wrote: »

Once again I find it laughable that pro-IDF/Zionists are trying to paint a pretty propaganda picture of Israel as being "like us" when it is a disgusting RACIST state where citizenship rights, and indeed bomb shelter rights, are dependent on a person's ethnicity.

Man there's a lot wrong with our little country and I don't respect most of our politicians. But Christ they're a breath of fresh air, when compared to the hate filled xenophobes that sit around the Israeli cabinet table.

dav3 wrote: »

Homosexuality is not illegal in Palestine, although they do have some way to go with regards to LGBT rights.

It is in Gaza: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LGBT_rights_by_country_or_territory#Middle_East

However, with the continued rise of the far-right and extreme far-right in Israel, one would have to ask the question how much longer LGBT rights will be observed in the country?

Unless it's the same type of far-right neo-Nazism we see in Eastern Europe, then, no.

From Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LGBT_rights_in_Israel

Recent polls have indicated that a majority of Israelis support same-sex marriage, despite some social conservatism.[3] Tel Aviv has frequently been referred to by publishers as one of the most gay friendly cities in the world,[4] famous for its annual Pride Parade and gay beach,[5] earning it the nickname "the gay capital of the Middle East" by Out Magazine.[6] According to LGBT travelers, it was ranked as the best gay city in 2011,[7] despite reports of some LGBT violence during the 2000s,[8] which were criticized by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and President Shimon Peres. A monument dedicated to the LGBT victims persecuted by Nazis during World War II will be erected in Tel Aviv

I skimmed over that wiki and there's no mention of discrimination on there, with the exception of the Palestine part.

Palestinian society tends to be conservative with Muslim, Christian and secular families alike tending to see homosexuality and cross-dressing as immoral acts, deserving of condemnation.

An article about Gideon Levy

Is Gideon Levy the most hated man in Israel or just the most heroic?


http://tinyurl.com/22n3dyz

A few quotes from the article

“My biggest struggle,” he says, “is to rehumanize the Palestinians. There’s a whole machinery of brainwashing in Israel which really accompanies each of us from early childhood, and I’m a product of this machinery as much as anyone else. [We are taught] a few narratives that it’s very hard to break. That we Israelis are the ultimate and only victims. That the Palestinians are born to kill, and their hatred is irrational. That the Palestinians are not human beings like us… So you get a society without any moral doubts, without any questions marks, with hardly public debate. To raise your voice against all this is very hard.”

"He seems so at home in the world of book festivals and black coffee that it is hard, at first, to picture him on the last occasion he was in Gaza – in November, 2006, before the Israeli government changed the law to stop him going."

“The brainwashing machinery is so efficient that trying [to undo it is] almost like trying to turn an omelette back to an egg. It makes people so full of ignorance and cruelty.”

"Israel “frequently targeted medical crews, [and] shelled a UN-run school that served as a shelter for residents, who bled to death over days as the IDF prevented their evacuation by shooting and shelling... A state that takes such steps is no longer distinguishable from a terror organisation. They say as a justification that Hamas hides among the civilian population. As if the Defence Ministry in Tel Aviv is not located in the heart of a civilian population! As if there are places in Gaza that are not in the heart of a civilian population!”

"He appeals to anybody who is sincerely concerned about Israel’s safety and security to join him in telling Israelis the truth in plain language. “A real friend does not pick up the bill for an addict’s drugs: he packs the friend off to rehab instead. Today, only those who speak up against Israel’s policies – who denounce the occupation, the blockade, and the war – are the nation’s true friends.” The people who defend Israel’s current course are “betraying the country” by encouraging it on “the path to disaster. A child who has seen his house destroyed, his brother killed, and his father humiliated will not easily forgive.”

"These supposed ‘friends of Israel’ are in practice friends of Islamic fundamentalism, he believes."

"Levy believes the greatest myth – the one hanging over the Middle East like perfume sprayed onto a corpse – is the idea of the current ‘peace talks’ led by the United States....."
"..he is convinced it was “a scam” from the start, doomed to fail. How does he know? “There is a very simple litmus test for any peace talks. A necessity for peace is for Israel to dismantle settlements in the West Bank. So if you are going to dismantle settlements soon, you’d stop building more now, right? They carried on building them all through Oslo. And today, Netanyahu is refusing to freeze construction, the barest of the bare minimum. It tells you all you need.”

"He refuses to cede Israel to people “who wave their Israeli flags made in China and dream of a Knesset cleansed of Arabs and an Israel with no [human rights organisation] B’Tselem.” "


As a counter balance here is the opinion of Coalition Chairman MK Yariv Levin (Likud)

Coalition Chairman Yariv Levin wants Gideon Levy put on trial for spreading lies 'in the service of the enemy'.

http://www.israelnationalnews.com/News/News.aspx/183678#.U-Noi2MmboY

A quote from the article

"In no other country would anyone have published the evil screeds he writes, and I believe that [in other countries,] legal proceedings would have been initiated against him – proceedings of the kind that are initiated against people who harm the soldiers even as they charge forward.