Clever David!

In one foul swoop you have dismantled the Camp David peace accord, years of patient inch by glacial inch negotiation and befouled the memory of the murdered Martyrs who figured so prominently in the road map and a two state solution!

On the one hand, you have nothing whatsoever to say about President Putin's patent manipulation of the Russian constitution and effectively cancel democracy, freedom of the press and freedom of speech in that country, that then allows him to stand for election for his lifetime?

And then have the unmitigated gaul to suggest a peace process should be completely wound up because one partner fails to enforce democratic ideals?

If the patent gerrymander conferred on the current Israeli Government, is not an effective dismantling of the so called democratic process? And effectively encouraged, with ostensibly illegal Jewish settlement!? Then what is?

Whatever you say it is or find convenient?
Alan B.

My Knesset spooks* report:

"Netanyahu is unusually happy today

As Trump's Inauguration is imminent, just one sleep away."

* http://www.mossad.gov.il/eng/careers/Pages/default.aspx

'Democracy'...
Isn't that one of the words the west uses to invade countries?
I don't think they've ever actually created a true sound democracy anywhere to date...

Well Armchair, only here in our west are you completely free to voice an opinion at odds with the government of the day! Or, any other errant poster!

And exampled by this largely uncensored OLO! Where liberal comment allows the government of the day to gauge how folk truly feel about their programs and agenda!

You should come on over? You'll probably like a lot more than Putin's St Petersburg, and we might just love having become one of us? And a far better way to "disappear"!

Rug up and stay warm if you can? And watch out for those snowballs, particularly the ones that hit fair and square in the ear, (hey, dat smarts) with some of it appearing out of the other ear, still frozen?

And conclusive evidence based proof, there's nothing in between to stop it? Ha, ha, ha.
You have a lovely day now y'hear.
Alan B.

How about a multistate solution? Individual Jews live as equal citizens in their own homelands, no DNA criteria for God-chosen overlords?

It's what happens everywhere but Palestine.

Dear Julian,

When you speak of a "solution" you must first state what the "problem" is.

Just in case, if your problem happens to be the Jews, then Hitler already outsmarted you with a far more thorough and lasting solution - and his victims were already supposedly "equal citizens".

Or if your problem happens to be the suffering of Palestinians, then just consider how more they would suffer at the hands of their own leaders once the Jews would no longer be around: as there are no Jews in Syria, let their Syrian brothers and sisters serve as a reminder!

Just in case you still consider your solution (for whatever the problem may be), you should then prepare for a nuclear winter because my family is not going to leave their homes and go to exile, nor volunteer to live under Islamic rule, before showering their 400-or-so nukes over your head first.

The problem is the ongoing dispute between the Palestinians and their implanted overlords, or in the shorthand understood by everybody and his dog (even by Yuyutsu though he seems to pretend otherwise) "the Arab-Israeli conflict". The "problems" which Yuyutsu suggested are red herrings, irrelevant to any events in the last 70 years.

Dear Julian,

Conflict: "A serious disagreement or argument, typically a protracted one"

1.1 A prolonged armed struggle.
1.2 A state of mind in which a person experiences a clash of opposing feelings or needs.
1.3 A serious incompatibility between two or more opinions, principles, or interests.

Problem: "A matter or situation regarded as unwelcome or harmful and needing to be dealt with and overcome"

[Oxford dictionary]

In other words, conflicts are very common and tend to exist in every neighbourhood and every home, also in Australia. Perhaps the only place where conflicts are absent, is the graveyard.

Among the tribes of the Middle-East, one can point at many conflicts, large and small. The major ones include the Sunni-Shiite conflict, the Syrian conflict, the Turkish-Kurd conflict, the Saudi-Iranian conflict, Egypt's conflict with the Muslim brothers, the Mosul battle, the Hamas-Fatah conflict and more. There was no time in history when conflict was not part of daily-life in this region.

As such, Israel has no general conflict with the Arabs: there is peace between Israel and Jordan (in fact, they are now constructing a new common industrial zone), Egypt or Morocco - all Arab; and there is silent cooperation between Israel and Saudi-Arabia and other gulf states. Yes, Israel has a conflict with Iran and its Shiite proxy, Hezbollah, Israel has a conflict with Hamas - an Islamic terrorist organisation and Israel has a conflict with Assad (who believes that not only the Golan Heights, but in fact the whole of Israel should belong to Syria) - but then who hasn't. Israel also had no conflict with the so-called "Palestinians" between 1967 and around 1975-6, when relations between the two were excellent, that is until both the PLO and the Jewish settlers muddied the water, the former brainwashing the local Arabs to call themselves "Palestinians" and hate the Jews, the latter provoking them and occupying their lands and water. Finally, Israel also has deep internal conflicts among its own people.

The question is, why pick and regard just one of those many conflicts as a "problem"?

Yeah yeah, Yuyutsu, the world is full of conflicts. The one the world is reminded of every day as the Arab-Israeli problem is the dispute about people claiming to be ordained by God to be overlords occupying Palestine and imposing their every-expanding racist rule over it. THAT problem. The one that leads to endless war and endless "deals" re-stating God-given overlordship. The one the mainstream news media worldwide mean when they refer to the Arab-Israel problem. The one that can be ended only by the dismantling of the world's only remaining overtly race-supremacist state open to settlement on racist grounds.

Dear Julian,

I like your description: "the world's only remaining overtly race-supremacist state open to settlement on racist grounds" -
implied therein, anything which is covert is not a problem.

You also mention, "The one the world is reminded of every day... The one the mainstream news media worldwide mean".

You might be surprised that most of "the world" is not reminded of anything, never-mind every day, that most of the world has no time for news and media, never-mind mainstream - only some in the bored affluent West are. Some of "the world" for that matter do not even have electricity and their daily problems are far more overwhelming than to find the time to waste listening to exaggerated and over-generalised stories from the Middle-East.

Rather than your "only" expensive solution of dismantling Israel, which would cost the world a nuclear winter and billions of deaths, why not consider the far cheaper solution, by your own admission, of making it all covert. Nobody is able to stop the Jewish settlers, Israel included, but you can STOP THE MEDIA!

P.S. Since you mentioned racism, how do you like this picture? http://s-media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com/originals/78/23/c0/7823c0fd2ad7b63890526ea1ddcc1a1c.jpg

Dear Deluded Julian

Shiite Muslims slaughter Sunni Muslims (which includes Palestians)

and the reverse

all day long in Iraq and Syria. As well as in Lebanon and Jordan some years ago http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_September

But unless whites, be they Jews or Christians, are involved you don't care.

You're one of those racist simpletons who cannot see evil or racism unless, your own kin (ie. whites) are involved.

Plantagenet: "Shiite Muslims slaughter Sunni Muslims (which includes Palestians)"

etc etc

down to

"But unless whites, be they Jews or Christians, are involved you don't care."

That's Moslem bigots killing one another off over religious (not racist) bigotry. I care only if in the process non-Moslems are harmed, or if Moslems are harmed to deny them their human rights independently of their religion such as by Serb or Zionist racists or US imperialists.

"But unless whites, be they Jews or Christians, are involved you don't care."

Wrong. Oppression by tribal savages is always of concern. But if racist oppression goes on and on day after day, year after year, decade after decade, lavishly funded by the world's richest empire and our own government lends its weight to support of racist evil then that's of great concern, intensified when the racists claim God chose them to be overlords

Yuyutsu:

"Rather than your "only" expensive solution of dismantling Israel, which would cost the world a nuclear winter and billions of deaths, why not consider the far cheaper solution, by your own admission, of making it all covert. Nobody is able to stop the Jewish settlers, Israel included, but you can STOP THE MEDIA!

"P.S. Since you mentioned racism, how do you like this picture? http://s-media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com/originals/78/23/c0/7823c0fd2ad7b63890526ea1ddcc1a1c.jpg"

As a scientist I spent most of my working life trying to solve problems (often fairly successfully) but never came up with Yuyutsu's solution - hide it from view. On brushing the idea aside, I'd find it hard to suppress an ad hominem reply. I still do.

People not too recently out of the pram can remember a long-standing and conspicuously evil racist state - the Republic of South Africa (unsurprisingly a close friend of Israel) which thought it would be around forever. But when the rest of the world lost patience with it, it was dismantled. No nuclear winter. No billions of deaths. No sky dark with the clouds of flying red herrings.

When the US lifeline closes Israel will be dismantled, either by its own inhabitants catching the equality bug as the Boers gritted their teeth and did or by the Arabs coming over the wall. Trump is giving them a breathing space, but the future is not theirs as it wasn't the Boers'.

The picture cited by Yuyutsu was missing a caption - showed someone pointing a weapon but without knowing who or why it was impossible to guess its significance.

Dear Julian,

The picture from http://au.pinterest.com/pin/316377942543443020 shows an Israeli soldier training. She is female and a black Ethiopian, that much for racism. Israelis come in all races and even an increasing number of Muslim Israeli-Arabs now volunteer to serve in the Israeli army and protect Israel from ill-meaning Islamists and internationalist-leftists like yourself.

Yes, Israel has its own unpleasant minority of racists, just like Australia and practically any other place, but this is not what Israel is about: Israel today is about people who are determined to survive, thrive and remain independent where they happened to be born, which only happens to be in the Middle East.

Yes, I do suggest that if stories of racism disturb your good sleep at night, then the best you could do about it is to shut off your TV or whatever other media which supplies you with such stories - because my family is not going anywhere!

You seem to take my family for idiots or for suicidal victims of the "equality bug", http://www.livescience.com/28497-parasite-causes-mice-to-not-fear-cats.html, who would just open their door to a flood of hostile blood-thirsty enemies (perhaps in order to avoid some Julian who lives on the other side of the planet calling them "racists"). Dream on - they have the nukes which South Africans didn't have, they are stronger and wiser and they will outlive you, with or without any so-called-"help" from those stupid and clumsy Americans!

Correcting Yuyutsu's deceitful language using dictionary English:

Religion does not determine race.
Skin colour does not determine race.
Place of origin does not determine race.
Genetics determines race and appointing people to be overlords on the ground of genetics is racism on steroids.
Israel's Law of Return (Google it) sets out the racial requirements for eligibility to settle in Palestine as an overlord.
==
Birds of a feather stick together. Note the close relationship between Boer South Africa and racist Israel and that between the notorious racist bigot Donald Trump and Israel (leading to a tut tut even from the Australian Foreign Minister when the racists went ape with new conquests in Palestine.)
==
Yes it is conceivable (though unlikely) that Israel would use nukes to preserve its supposedly God given privileges over lesser beings. It is also conceivable that North Korea would launch a nuclear attack if pressed. If either country did so it would be reduced to a glowing wasteland of glazed silica within a day.
==
True, the God-chosen would not open their doors to submen. The Huns felt the same way in 1945 but the Russians went through the Junkers heartland of Prussia in an avenging storm. The wisest course for Israel once the US munificence ends would be to negotiate in good faith (for once) for a secular one state democracy in which nobody is overlord over anyone else on grounds of race.

Dear Julian,

By the prevailing understanding of what "racism" consists of, yes, some decreasing numbers of Israelis are still racist.
Racism has been the norm in the West for centuries, but is now declining around the world and Israel is no exception.

The belief as-if God chose anyone to overlord others, is only held by a tiny minority and even within that larger minority of Jews who so claim, only few actually so believe. Mainstream Rabbis denounce that idea altogether.

You would hardly find any Israeli who wants to be an overlord. Even the most vehement Jewish settlers (most of whom are practically more American than Israeli, do not care for Israel and operate against its interests) would prefer the land empty for themselves without any "underlings" or cheap Bantu workforce.

On the final balance, America harmed Israel more than it ever helped her. Israel wasn't always allied to America anyway - in its earlier days it was closer to the Soviet Union and France and today it enjoys very close relations with China.

The "Law of Return" is anachronistic, it belonged to a different age and should include a sunset-clause. Yet, so long as Israel is under attack and fights for its survival, it cannot afford to repeal it.

If genetics determines race, then practically all of us are stinking of racism, including anyone who prioritises their children over other-people's children and including myself for preferencing the lives of my family in Israel over the lives of some Arabs whom I never met. If your idea as a good Marxist is to abolish biological parenting, do state so - meanwhile how many African children did you adopt?

Get it? I am a racist because I want my family to live and prosper. I don't care for Jews as such, but statistically I can trust a Jew more than others not to attempt to shoot or knife my family. If a so-called "Palestinian" could prove that they've no harmful intents and will respect the lives and property of my family, then my family would welcome them no less than Jews.

Just to make language as in the dictionary even clearer to try to stymie Yuyutsu's ducking and weaving:

#The issue is not racists in Israel, it's the right of the race-based STATE of Israel to exist as such in the middle of Palestine.

#The Law of Return remains a law governing the right of foreigners to settle as overlords in the parts of Palestine into which the racist State of Israel intrudes and it is exercised every time homes are made for them by Israel's bulldozers.

#Genetics is the determining factor for eligibility to become an overlord under the Law of Return. Google it!

#Apart from wasting billions of taxpayer dollars on shoring up Israel, America is distorting its foreign policy to protect Israel from its enemies far and wide (e.g. see measures against Iran, see routine UN vetoes).

#Even worse, the Australian government supports the continued injustice against the Palestinians within whose homeland it occurs.

#It's not our duty to ignore it e.g. by muzzling the Press or hiding under the bedclothes as Yuyutsu suggests, it's our duty not to.

Dear Julian,

«#The issue is not racists in Israel, it's the right of the race-based STATE of Israel to exist as such in the middle of Palestine.»

The state of Israel is in Israel, not in Palestine. However, it also occupies parts of Palestine and that should stop (because it harms Israel to be in those cursed territories).

While the state of Israel is regrettably racist to some degree, also while you would know by now that I don't like the concept of state in the first place, Israel has the right to exist because it's the only body which stands between my family and a sea of hostile and barbaric Muslims who want to kill them.

«#The Law of Return remains a law governing the right of foreigners to settle as overlords»

False. The Law of Return, like it or not is a different matter, does not mention overlordship, only the right of certain people to become Israeli citizens by an accelerated procedure. Australia has equivalent procedures for former citizens who wish to resume their Australian citizenship.

«which the racist State of Israel intrudes and it is exercised every time homes are made for them by Israel's bulldozers.»

This is to be condemned, but not Israel's existence itself. Israel should be encouraged to improve its behaviour.

«#Genetics is the determining factor for eligibility to become an overlord under the Law of Return.»

Wrong. No DNA tests are conducted. Also, Ivanka Trump for example could become an Israeli citizen any moment she likes despite failing the genetic test. The actual criteria is of being a former citizen of Israel. You may want to debate the question of who is a true descendent of a former citizen, but that's a different matter.

«#Apart from wasting billions of taxpayer dollars on shoring up Israel, America is distorting its foreign policy...»

Then go and complain about America, not about Israel. Israel is not responsible for the idiocy of others.

«the continued injustice against the Palestinians»

Justice? If anyone behaved like them in Australia, they would spend the rest of their life in prison.

More ducking and weaving

“The state of Israel is in Israel, not in Palestine.”

The state of Israel was not in Palestine before the Irgun terrorists set it up in Palestine in 1948. Now it is.

“Israel has the right to exist because it's the only body which stands between my family and a sea of hostile and barbaric Muslims who want to kill them.”

That comment is exactly the same as a plea of British that they had the right to preserve the colonies because the Mau Mau wanted to kill them. They had an alternative – return to their own homeland or negotiate a deal to stay as individuals, but not as overlords, as the colonial states in which they were overlords were dismantled. They negotiated the deal.

“Australia has equivalent procedures [to the Law of Return] for former citizens who wish to resume their Australian citizenship.”

The Law of return does not require evidence that applicants to become Israeli citizens had ever been citizens before. What it requires is that they be Jews, the assumption being that this made them descendants of those whose orgy of land theft and butchery is chronicled in Deuteronomy. Even if this assumption could be verified (unlikely) it would give them no more right to assert a place as immigrating overlords than former German occupiers of Poland or their descendants would have to resume their occupation.

“The actual criteria is of being a former citizen of Israel”

That is not the criterion. Read it again. The term used is “Jew”. That doesn't make a person a former citizen of Israel. The only meaning “Jew” could have is genetic, which in this context means racist.

“Justice? If anyone behaved like them in Australia, they would spend the rest of their life in prison.”

People behaved like them as Resistance heroes, revered by Australians, behaved in enemy-occupied Europe.

Dear Julian,

I'm unfamiliar with the story about the British and the Mau-Mau, but my family neither has the alternatives which they might have had nor is helpless like they were: Israel is their homeland by birth, the land they own is undisputed and as they do not overlord, nor ever considered overlording anyone, they have no chips to bargain.

Indeed, having harmed no one, why should they ever need to bargain away their home and lifestyle? Because some Mr. Julian of distant Australia doesn't like them? They have a great army to protect them, of the world's 8th most powerful superpower (http://www.algemeiner.com/2016/01/21/new-study-ranks-israel-worlds-8th-most-powerful-country/), so all they need is to stick behind it and make the best of their life! Bombs here, rockets there and the nuisance of Jewish nationalism on top, which neither they nor I like, but overall they're probably safer than here, certainly safer than in America and Europe.

You can keep dreaming, Julian, wasting your time admiring petty terrorists as "Resistance heroes", because my family is not going anywhere and won't give away any of its property to you or your "Palestinian" friends.

Yes, Israel is facing serious internal problems (which are none of the so-called "Palestinians"' business), first and foremost its 1967 occupation which corrupts it from inside, along with the Jewish settlers there which it no longer has the strength to uproot. As there is also no-one to talk with on the so-called "Palestinian" side; and since even if there was a negotiating-partner there, still there would be nothing that Israel could offer them (because it cannot control the Jewish settlers anyway), there is no point in attempting negotiations and Israel should simply leave the West Bank along with its Jewish settlers, to be left to their own devices.

Jewish extremism is as a problem for Israel as Muslim extremism in the Arab states. The biggest "achievement" of the "Palestinians" is that their useless stabbings of innocents encourages Jewish extremists to grow and continue taking over Israel. Seems like both the "Palestinians" and the Jewish settlers enjoy sleeping in the same bed, so let them...

If Yuyutsu's family were born in the part of Palestine currently enclosed in the racist State of Israel they should have every right to remain there as equals with all other Palestinians. It is not only some bloke in faraway Australia who rejects the State of Israel, the UN members are prevented from expressing their revulsion only by the US veto on its resolutions[1], and the enclave State itself is kept alive only by massive financial, military and diplomatic support from the US Imperium. That won't hold for ever and eventually the inhabitants will have to negotiate a solution in which a democratic State of Palestine includes adequate guarantees of the security of all its citizens with a birthright to be part of it. Just like in the former European colonies in Africa and in the Republic of South Africa.

Anyway they have a reprieve for now, being flavour of the month with the racist bigot Donald Trump as once they had the fond support of the racist Malanazi State of Boer South Africa.

[1] Look what happened when Obama briefly withdrew the veto.

PS: They'd be well advised to reject any deal in which the State of Palestine is not strictly secular.

Dear Julian,

Are you a matchmaker by trade?

There are those computer-games for little children where they mix and match body-parts: a horse's head, a fat torso and long thin legs, wearing a knight's helmet, a business suit with a tie on top and a mini-skirt below, one sock green the other red, with fin-shoes worn over them.

Surely you get lots of fun from painting this fancy "Palestinian" state.

So much for toys, in reality neither of the people involved want to marry each other.

The Israelis have their own prosperous country, within the pre-1967 borders with Western Jerusalem as their capital, where the residents - Jews and Arabs, Muslims and Druze alike, have and wish to preserve a particular lifestyle. This lifestyle has some elements in common with Western democracies, but also has some unique and different aspects that come from the Hebrew tradition.
The inhabitants over the border, i.e. in Palestine, including East Jerusalem, the West Bank and Gaza, are also a combination of Arabs and Jews, but have a different idea about how life should be as they prefer to play by the millennia-old rules of Middle-Eastern warrior tribes.

Now you request to bring both those people together - what a joke!

I have no idea why you mention those stupid Americans time and again. Their support of Israel was always marginal, incidental and chaotic - mostly rather, they support the Jewish tribe across the border which for the state of Israel is only trouble. Israel has achieved what it has with their ten fingers, their good brains and with much discipline, austerity and perseverance.

«Look what happened when Obama briefly withdrew the veto.»

As you can see, absolutely nothing. Everyone who wanted to direct their revulsion at Israel did so anyway for decades on end. Nobody was ever prevented from doing so. The UN is a dying institution anyway, already totally irrelevant to real life.