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.