Okay now imagine how you'd feel if a bunch of other countries tried to force your country to obligate it's military to the defense of another country.

And NATO would be far weaker without Turkey, certainly not worth kicking them out because they delayed Finland for several months. Have some patience

Let's be real, Democrats aren't going to stand up against fossil fuels in a meaningful way right now. I mean I'm all for them compared to Republicans because they don't want to build gas chambers for trans people and illegal immigrants but still

Burn down the planet and poison the air for profit

Then why oppress so hard?

Not true at all, they all fear revolution

Hey my freedoms are worth more than someone else's life /s

> Without a path to remove weapons from society (not saying this is the answer) we need to come together to figure out how we can make mental health more accessible

Violence and crime are not mental health issues, you don't need to have a mental health problem to decide to commit a crime or to impulsively commit a crime.

Why people commit crimes is a complicated and multifaceted issue, as is how we define what actions are crimes, but don't fall for the right-wing that it's just "mental health." When they say "mental health" what they mean is "some people are just crazy and you can't do anything about it" which is untrue and a distraction from solving real problems

Gee I wonder what about occupying people's homes and communities for decades could possibly motivate someone to join an armed group

India tries to stand apart from all the major powers/blocs: US, Russia, EU, and especially China. It doesn't want to be best friends with any of them nor enemies, even regarding it's territorial disputes with China is pretty passive.

"Non-alignment" has been India's foreign policy strategy for decades

When Israel annexed the Golan Heights in 1981, did it ask the opinion of anyone living there?

> The omicron variant is milder than the previous variants so there’s less urgency to get the shot.

Which ironically has made it deadlier because it spreads easier and thus infects more people. Even if a smaller.percentage of them die it's overall deadlier than previous variants in that sense

> You continue to mischaracterize Israel’s defensive actions as conquest

Annexing territory through force without the consent of the people living there is conquest. I don't know what else to tell you. It's the difference between Israel's occupation of the Sinai and it's annexation of the Golan Heights, one is different than the other.

Can you answer me a simple question, when Israel annexed the Golan Heights did it ask any of the people living there what they thought about it?

>You mischaracterize as conquest how Israel came to exist; the territory was granted by the previous owner, the British, who took it from the Ottomans, who took it from…, who took it from the Jews

If we're going to go this far back in history, let's not forget that the Jews took what became Israel from people living there already. I think it's dumb to talk about who conquered who in the Iron Age when it comes to informing modern international relations but if we must let's remember the Israelites took Canaan though force. It's in the Bible

>You claim that Israel is undemocratic when it’s the only fucking democracy in the entire fucking region and, although as imperfect as any other democracy, uses that government to protect the rights of its citizens to a far greater extent than any other country in the region, including the fifth of the population who are Arabs who enjoy far greater rights than any other Arab in any other Arab nation.

The authoritarian of Arab states around Israel doesn't excuse Israel's behavior. I can talk all day about how the Arab states around Israel violate basic human rights of people, and they absolutely do. I mean look at Syria. But none of that excuses another country commiting its own human rights violations.

You never once acknowledged that Israel didn't ask the people who it forcibly took into it's territory if they wanted to be part of Israel

You can't pretend that's not real

You understand that by advocating for the right of conquest you are giving an excuse to Israel's enemies as well correct? As in, if you're saying its okay for Israel to take from others by force its okay for others to take from Israel by force as well.

I don't believe in "might makes right" but of course its undeniable that for the majority of human history thats pretty much how things were done.

However as nations and as people when we aspire to be something better than that, when we talk about protecting human rights, democracy, etc then you have to leave things like "right by conquest" behind.

Just as the United States must come to terms with its ugly racist and bloody past of slavery and literally conquering most of a continent, Israel too should honestly confront the human rights violations that were perpetuated in its creation. And it should also stop with the on-going human rights violations its perpetuating in places like Gaza, Golan Heights, and the West Bank.

Otherwise it can never claim to really be a "secular democracy" as you originally said.

I think it would be helpful if you acknowledged that Israel governs and taxes people in the West Bank and Golan Heights without their consent and without granting them representation in Israeli government on par with citizens. Its a simple fact, but sometimes simple facts can be the hardest things to accept.

> I love how your response begins with excusing the Jews getting displaced from land that was theirs and ends with mischaracterizing how Jews got it back

I am not excusing forced displacement of people, the exact opposite in fact.

>As though it was taken by force and not given by the British, who owned it. As though the Jews who moved there didn’t purchase land. As though there weren’t any Jews still living there.

I never said no Jews were living in what this today Israel before it was Israel. And it was taken by force by the British, who did indeed decide to create a Jewish homeland there but you are ignoring one key point

Neither the British who wanted to create a Jewish homeland nor the people coming there to live, asked or seemed to care what the majority of people already living there thought about it

>Then you lament that Syria, which never made any overtures to leave Israel in peace and used the strategic high-ground that is the Golan Heights to terrorize the Israelis living below, somehow deserved to get that land back.

I'm not saying Israel has to give it back without peace, and it's under no obligation to do so without peace, but nothing justifies annexing territory without the consent of the people living there

>And if the people of the West Bank have to live in semi-occupation (1% of which are settlements) to ensure that Israelis can live in relative peace, then so-fucking-be-it

This is what I mean by forgoing democracy when it's inconvenient. You're outright supporting the permanent occupation of territory and the subjectation of it's people. Palestinians are people with human rights which includes the right of self determination and representation in government, to keep them under permanent military occupation is an act of tyranny and evilness

> This seems rather disingenuous since they were forced to leave.

I'm not going to say that the Jewish people have never suffered forced displacement in history. But so have many many many people throughout history, why is the case of Israel so special that it gets to try and undo a historical tragedy by perpetrating a modern one?

>Balfour was in 1917, well before Israel gained independence. It also highlights how people love to claim, without any irony, how undemocratic Israel is while pointing to their alleged victims, who are not even close to being free, democratic states, and are also massively guilty of colonialism

I never said Balfour was after independence, I said it was a hallmark in the colonization of Europeans (most of them Jewish) of the Mandate of Palestine and was encouraged by the colonial power of Britain. Britain never asked the people living in Palestine if they wanted an independent state or wanted mass immigration.

And I never said Israel's neighbors are democratic but two wrongs don't make a right

>What fucking conquest? Israel was attacked, gained control of those areas, which are strategically important for the security of the country, and offered them back in exchange for the simple concessions of accepting their existence.

Taking territory and annexing it through force is conquest. It doesn't matter if the conflict in which these lands were taken was defensive, the fact that they were taken and annexed without the consent of the people living there or the country it belongs to is conquest.

What your describing about offering back the land in exchange for peace is perfectly fine, and what Israel did with Egypt for example when it returned the Sinai. However Israel has made no such offer to return the Golan Heights to Syria in exchange for peace, and has in fact annexed the Golan Heights as its own (again without the consent of anyone living there)

Likewise it's occupation of the West Bank is not for the purpose of exchange for peace, it already has peace with Jordan. Instead the intent in the West Bank is clearly settlement, annexation, and displacement of the people who lived there before 1967.

The current government of Israel has explicitly called for annexation of West Bank territories on the basis that it has a "natural right" to the land https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/2022-12-28/ty-article/.premium/natural-right-to-the-land-of-israel-netanyahu-lays-out-west-bank-annexation-plans/00000185-5955-dbd5-abe7-59f5c5d60000

A "natural right" which of course doesn't extend to non-Jewish people living there

>First of all, those things are not mutually exclusive. Second of all, when has that choice ever been made?

It's made every day Israel denies people that it governs representation in government. It was made when the decision that the Mandate of Palestine should be made a homeland for Jewish people and a Jewish majority state, despite the fact that the people actually living there didn't want that and weren't asked.

Ask yourself, in the Zionist movement that motivated hundreds of thousands of people to immigrant to the Palestine Mandate and then Israel was there any part of that where they said "we should do this with the consent of the people already living there?"

Did you know many Palestinians residents of the West Bank are not only under military occupation by Israel, including being tried in military courts, but are also taxed by Israel? https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Israeli_Military_Order

Yes the US also has an ugly history and it's built on tragic disregard for the lives of people who weren't considered important or were just "in the way"

I mean "it's their ancestorial homeland" doesn't much anything. A Kingdom of Israel existed in the 700s BC sure but plenty of other people of other ethnic backgrounds lived and settled in this area before during and after the period that was dominated by people of the Jewish faith. Why don't they have a claim to the area as well as their own ancestorial homeland?

>The main thing that Israelis focus on is never again allowing ethnic Jews to be without a homeland or subject to extermination.

This kind of highlights the contradictions in the stated purpose and values of Israel. It's supposed to be a democratic state AND a Jewish state, but in order to make and preserve it as a Jewish state it's had to do some very undemocratic things. Not least of all was promoting immigration en masse to the British Mandate of Palestine before and after the Balfour Declaration. In essence an act of colonialism as the British never gave the people living there any say in the matter and the Jewish immigrants didn't care to ask either. These anti democratic actions were necessary to make the area majority Jewish

And today of course you have the conquest and settlement of the Golan Heights and West Bank, which Israel clearly intents to annex.

Whenever Israel has had to choose between it's Jewish identity and it's democratic identity it's always chosen the Jewish identity.

Well you see the difference is that they have God on their side so it's okay

Israel has always been conflicted with it's supposed democratic identity and the "God has decreed this land is ours and no one else's" identity

Racists and bigots

They may get to same sex marriage first, can't be too sure which will happen next

But you seem to have a problem with terrorists AND Arabs.

And you still are not answering my question.

>What further security justification is there for occupying the West Bank? What justification is there for settling Israelis citizens there

It is unfortunate that too many people on both sides believe the only way to resolve this is to destroy and kill the other

> It is used as a base of for terrorists.

Then why settle your citizens there?!?!?

>Your nothing more than an Arab apologist.

An Arab apologist? Not a terrorist apologist? I think the mask is slipping off.

Do you think Arabs should be allowed to live in Israel or the West Bank?

Thanks for providing a source, I actually appreciate it. Not sure if this guy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eugene_Kontorovich is the best legal mind on the subject but at least its a source. I mean he's been involved in drafting laws for state legislatures that make it illegal to boycott Israel, yikes.