[QUOTE=garo;380128]Right! And Palestine in being destroyed too. Little by little. It is the stated and unstate" policy for large parts of the Israeli political spectrum and indeed its government. It is not too much of a reach to imagine Netanyahu or Lieberman to finish their meetings with such a statement.[/QUOTE]

Opening statement from Wikipedia on "Final Solution":

[QUOTE]The [B]Final Solution[/B] ([URL="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/German_language"]German[/URL]: [I](die) Endlösung[/I], German pronunciation: [URL="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Help:IPA_for_German"][ˈɛntˌløːzʊŋ][/URL]) or [B]Final Solution to the [URL="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jewish_Question"]Jewish Question[/URL][/B] ([URL="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/German_language"]German[/URL]: [I]die Endlösung der Judenfrage[/I], German pronunciation: [URL="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Help:IPA_for_German"][diː ˈɛntˌløːzʊŋ deːɐ̯ ˈjuːdn̩ˌfʀaːgə][/URL]) was [URL="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nazi_Germany"]Nazi Germany[/URL]'s plan during [URL="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_War_II"]World War II[/URL] to systematically [URL="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Judenfrei"]rid[/URL] Europe of its [URL="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jews"]Jewish population[/URL] through [URL="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Genocide"]genocide[/URL].[/QUOTE]"Palaestina delenda est." anyone?

[url=www.informationclearinghouse.info/article39367.htm]The Root Cause of the Never-Ending Conflict in Palestine; and How to Fix It[/url] -- by a Dutch Jewish WW2 survivor
[quote] By Palestinians, I mean all those who inhabited this region in the centuries during which it was under Turkish rule (1517-1917). Some of those people were Jewish. I include these Jews among the Palestinians, since they took no part in the Zionist colonization of Palestine from about 1890 onwards.

Palestine could be defined as the entire region that the League of Nations assigned to Great Britain by mandate in 1923. This included present-day Jordan, to the east of the river Jordan. Here, however, I am using Palestine to mean the entire British mandate territory with the exception of present-day Jordan. For about the past hundred years, this Palestine, excluding Jordan, has been regarded as an emigration destination for people calling themselves "Zionists." These are people originating from a large number of countries where Jews have lived and still live today. I regard this emigration as unlawful, since it was forced on the local population by foreign powers. The people who lived in this region did not have any resources either to repel this flow of emigrants or to conclusively disprove the political and ideological justifications that were presented for it.

The 1917 Balfour Declaration is regarded as one of these justifications. However, no one maintains that the then government of Great Britain had any authority to assign the land of Palestine to anyone other than the people who were living there. Similarly, although the United Nations assigned a portion of Palestine to the immigrants in the so-called Partition of Palestine in 1947, its own Charter stated that it had no right to do so without obtaining the consent of the mandate territory's population.[/quote]

Let My People Go -by Chris Hedges
 

[URL]http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/let_my_people_go_20140810[/URL]
[QUOTE]Why does God weep in the Promised Land?
God weeps because families, huddled in terror in their homes, are dismembered and killed by Israeli bombs. God weeps because mothers howl in grief over the bodies of their children in [URL="http://www.aljazeera.com/news/middleeast/2014/07/gaza-un-school-hit-201473041918975321.html"]U.N. schools hit[/URL] by Israeli shells. God weeps because the old and disabled, who could not flee the deadly Israeli advance, died helpless and afraid. God weeps because the powerful, here and in Israel, lie and dissemble to justify murder. And God weeps for all those who stand by and do nothing.

God weeps because the assault on Gaza is not about Israel’s right to self-defense or about removing Hamas from power. It is not about achieving peace. God weeps because the assault on Gaza is about the decades-long campaign to destroy and ethnically cleanse the Palestinian people from their land. God weeps because Israel is constructing squalid, lawless and impoverished ghettos where life for Palestinians is barely sustainable. God weeps because Israel restricts or shuts off movement, food, medicine and goods to accentuate the human misery. God weeps because Israel has turned Gaza, now largely without power, running water and sewage [systems], into a vast gulag.

God weeps because the failure to condemn Israeli war crimes by our political establishment and our compliant media betrays the memory of those killed in other genocides, from the Holocaust to Cambodia to Rwanda to Bosnia. God weeps because we have failed to learn the fundamental lesson of the Holocaust, which is not that Jews are unique or eternal victims, but that when you have the capacity to stop genocide, and you do not, you are culpable. And we [Americans], who provide 95 percent of Israel’s weapons, are very culpable.
[/QUOTE]

[QUOTE=ewmayer;380210][url=www.informationclearinghouse.info/article39367.htm]The Root Cause of the Never-Ending Conflict in Palestine; and How to Fix It[/url] -- by a Dutch Jewish WW2 survivor[/QUOTE]

Well, then surely this easily translates into a call for descendants of European colonists to leave the territory they occopied from the native American people. Welcome back to Germany mr. Mayer.

Mayer by the way is a German name transcribed from the Hebrew Meir.

[QUOTE=tha;380276]Well, then surely this easily translates into a call for descendants of European colonists to leave the territory they occopied from the native American people. Welcome back to Germany mr. Mayer.

Mayer by the way is a German name transcribed from the Hebrew Meir.[/QUOTE]Forgive me if I'm wrong, but I believe that Herr Mayer comes from Österreich and not from das Vierte Reich.

[QUOTE=xilman;380280]Forgive me if I'm wrong, but I believe that Herr Mayer comes from Österreich and not from das Vierte Reich.[/QUOTE]

Typically of trolls, when their 'arguments' run headlong into contrary and better-founded counterarguments and/or facts, they resort to ad hominems. It's even funnier when the latter are as ill-conceived as the arguments.

You'll have to forgive tha, he's probably still smarting from having his recent claim to the effect of "US never aided the Syrian rebels" demolished over in the NMET2014 thread.

[QUOTE=ewmayer;380312]
You'll have to forgive tha, he's probably still smarting from having his recent claim to the effect of "US never aided the Syrian rebels" demolished over in the NMET2014 thread.[/QUOTE]

I never stated that the US never aided the Syrian rebels and I was fully aware of the training being given to them in Jordan and the US strategy for the area around Dera'a. I stated that the US aid to the FSA was insufficient and that as a result groups like ISIS had come in much stronger. I still maintain that the current administration has a bad track record and that the lack of support to allies will hunt the US for the next decades.

The quote you gave is so plainly wrong and ridiculous that you practically asked for a reply like I gave you.

I am happy to let the other readers decide just how 'ridiculous' my paraphrase of what you said is:

[QUOTE=tha;380141]The main conflict going on in the Middle East is still Sunni-Shi'i (Saudi-Arabia vs. Iran). Syria is currently the main battlefield together with Iraq. The current Obama administration has been very appeasing towards Iran, but with nothing to show for in return.

Some of the Gulf states have provided backing for what is now ISIS. (or IS or ISIL). [u]When the Obama administration turned down requests for help[/u] as he failed to see the existential threat from Teheran they organized it themselves, as simple as that. [u]We don't want Iran to use Syria as a staging ground for terror on scales never seen before and we don't want ISIS to do that. So, my suggestion is we get into the game ourselves.[/u] Next best is to work with the guys available that best suit our interests and views. If that support is mediocre at best these guys will be forced to cooperate at some level with the guys we don't like at all.[/QUOTE]

Now, if you genuinely believe that "running an illegal covert weapons pipeline to Syrian rebels" is compatible with "turning down request for help from/for Syrian rebels", then there's no point arguing with you. Have a wonderful day, and please consider getting up from behind your keyboard and going to volunteer to do some of the "our-interest-serving fighting of the good fight" you so love to advocate. Wouldn't want others to accuse you of being a "proud member of the 51st chairborne" keyboard-warrior chickenhawk now, would you?

[url=http://mondoweiss.net/2014/08/without-approval-bombshell.html]Israel got tank shell that killed 20 at UN school from US without Obama’s approval — WSJ bombshell[/url]
[quote]When Walt and Mearsheimer published their book on the Israel lobby in 2007, I thought, they’ve scratched the surface, we don’t know the half of it. Well here you go, friends. The Wall Street Journal reports today that even as Barack Obama and Secretary of State John Kerry were trying to brake Israel during the slaughter in Gaza, Israel relied on its “allies” in “Congress and elsewhere in the administration” to dip into American weapons stocks to refill its guns, without Obama’s approval.

And those tank shells were used on a UN school on July 30, killing 20 Palestinian civilians. The US is a partner to this war crime, a Palestinian says in the WSJ article.

It’s a shocking report about Israel’s autonomy inside the US government, in defiance even of the president.
[i]
White House and State Department officials who were leading U.S. efforts to rein in Israel’s military campaign in the Gaza Strip were caught off guard last month when they learned that the Israeli military had been quietly securing supplies of ammunition from the Pentagon without their approval.

Since then the Obama administration has tightened its control on arms transfers to Israel. But Israeli and U.S. officials say that the adroit bureaucratic maneuvering made it plain how little influence the White House and State Department have with the government of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu —and that both sides know it.

In addition, current and former American officials say, U.S.-Israel ties have been hurt by leaks that they believe were meant to undercut the administration’s standing by mischaracterizing its position and delay a cease-fire. The battles have driven U.S.-Israeli relations to the lowest point since President Barack Obama took office.
...
Today, many administration officials say the Gaza conflict—the third between Israel and Hamas in under six years—has persuaded them that Mr. Netanyahu and his national security team are both reckless and untrustworthy.

Israeli officials, in turn, describe the Obama administration as weak and naive, and are doing as much as they can to bypass the White House in favor of allies in Congress and elsewhere in the administration.
[/i]
Allies [i]elsewhere in the administration[/i]? What’s that mean? The lobby’s moles? The piece explicitly references the power of the Israel lobby:
[i]
American officials say they believe they have been able to exert at least some influence over Mr. Netanyahu during the Gaza conflict. But they admit their influence has been weakened as he has used his sway in Washington, from the Pentagon and Congress to lobby groups, to defuse U.S. diplomatic pressure on his government over the past month.[/i][/quote]
I guess it's not enough that Israel [url=http://www.listosaur.com/politics/top-10-recipients-of-united-states-foreign-aid/]has been the largest cumulative US aid recipient[/url] -- and typically also the largest on a per-annum basis -- since WW2. Of course casting U.S. administrations as helpless bystanders in the thrall of AIPAC is disingenuous, as the relationship is far more active than that, especially on the intelligence front:

[url=https://firstlook.org/theintercept/2014/08/04/cash-weapons-surveillance/]Cash, Weapons and Surveillance: the U.S. is a Key Party to Every Israeli Attack[/url]
[quote]The U.S. government has long lavished overwhelming aid on Israel, providing cash, weapons and surveillance technology that play a crucial role in Israel’s attacks on its neighbors. But top secret documents provided by NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden shed substantial new light on how the U.S. and its partners directly enable Israel’s military assaults – such as the one on Gaza.

Over the last decade, the NSA has significantly increased the surveillance assistance it provides to its Israeli counterpart, the Israeli SIGINT National Unit (ISNU; also known as Unit 8200), including data used to monitor and target Palestinians. In many cases, the NSA and ISNU work cooperatively with the British and Canadian spy agencies, the GCHQ and CSEC.

The relationship has, on at least one occasion, entailed the covert payment of a large amount of cash to Israeli operatives. Beyond their own surveillance programs, the American and British surveillance agencies rely on U.S.-supported Arab regimes, including the Jordanian monarchy and even the Palestinian Authority Security Forces, to provide vital spying services regarding Palestinian targets.

The new documents underscore the indispensable, direct involvement of the U.S. government and its key allies in Israeli aggression against its neighbors. That covert support is squarely at odds with the posture of helpless detachment typically adopted by Obama officials and their supporters.

President Obama, in his press conference on Friday, said ”it is heartbreaking to see what’s happening there,” referring to the weeks of civilian deaths in Gaza – “as if he’s just a bystander, watching it all unfold,” observed Brooklyn College Professor Corey Robin. Robin added: ”Obama talks about Gaza as if it were a natural disaster, an uncontrollable biological event.”

Each time Israel attacks Gaza and massacres its trapped civilian population – at the end of 2008, in the fall of 2012, and now again this past month – the same process repeats itself in both U.S. media and government circles: the U.S. government feeds Israel the weapons it uses and steadfastly defends its aggression both publicly and at the U.N.; the U.S. Congress unanimously enacts one resolution after the next to support and enable Israel; and then American media figures pretend that the Israeli attack has nothing to do with their country, that it’s just some sort of unfortunately intractable, distant conflict between two equally intransigent foreign parties in response to which all decent Americans helplessly throw up their hands as though they bear no responsibility.

“The United States has been trying to broker peace in the Middle East for the past 20 years,” wrote the liberal commentator Kevin Drum in Mother Jones, last Tuesday. The following day, CNN reported that the Obama administration ”agreed to Israel’s request to resupply it with several types of ammunition … Among the items being bought are 120mm mortar rounds and 40mm ammunition for grenade launchers.”

The new Snowden documents illustrate a crucial fact: Israeli aggression would be impossible without the constant, lavish support and protection of the U.S. government, which is anything but a neutral, peace-brokering party in these attacks. And the relationship between the NSA and its partners on the one hand, and the Israeli spying agency on the other, is at the center of that enabling.
Tally of UN Vote on July 22, 2014 to investigate violations of international law in West Bank and Gaza (Credit: Ken Roth, Human Rights Watch)[/quote]

Lastly, the opening WSJ piece also explicitly refutes claims by Israel and its apologists of "taking care to minimize civilian casualties":
[quote]White House and State Department officials had already become increasingly disturbed by what they saw as heavy-handed battlefield tactics that they believed risked a humanitarian catastrophe capable of harming regional stability and Israel’s interests.

They were especially concerned that Israel was using artillery, instead of more precision-guided munitions, in densely populated areas. The realization that munitions transfers had been made without their knowledge came as a shock[/quote]

[QUOTE=ewmayer;380327]I am happy to let the other readers decide just how 'ridiculous' my paraphrase of what you said is:

Now, if you genuinely believe that "running an illegal covert weapons pipeline to Syrian rebels" is compatible with "turning down request for help from/for Syrian rebels", then there's no point arguing with you. Have a wonderful day, and please consider getting up from behind your keyboard and going to volunteer to do some of the "our-interest-serving fighting of the good fight" you so love to advocate. Wouldn't want others to accuse you of being a "proud member of the 51st chairborne" keyboard-warrior chickenhawk now, would you?[/QUOTE]

It makes little sense to run a covert weapons pipeline if at the same time you make clear that there are limits to the amount of support you want to give. That makes it easy for the other party to raise the stakes. As far as the rat line is concerned the CIA was late to the party. Most of the weapons that came on the market were already transferred through the Sinaï desert to Gaza and other places in the world. 'The rat line' is a good article. I once had the honor to meet with Seymour Hersh, we discussed the Middle-East and he offered me his email address for exchange of info.

As far as the keyboard chicken hawk remark is concerned, my desert army uniform is still proudly hanging within easy reach, the sand has been washed out of it and my war time badges are sewed on it.

[QUOTE=tha;380971]It makes little sense to run a covert weapons pipeline if at the same time you make clear that there are limits to the amount of support you want to give. That makes it easy for the other party to raise the stakes. As far as the rat line is concerned the CIA was late to the party. Most of the weapons that came on the market were already transferred through the Sinaï desert to Gaza and other places in the world. 'The rat line' is a good article. I once had the honor to meet with Seymour Hersh, we discussed the Middle-East and he offered me his email address for exchange of info.[/QUOTE]
If you still have his e-mail, please be so kind as to forward one question I have for him, namely what he thinks of the shameful non-reporting in the US MSM of the later findings re. the gas attack and the rat line. To hear Hillary tell it, she was blissfully ignorant of the illegal weapons-smuggling even though it occurred on her watch as Secretary of State. Which US executive department is in charge of all of those diplomatic missions and embassies, Hillary?

[QUOTE]As far as the keyboard chicken hawk remark is concerned, my desert army uniform is still proudly hanging within easy reach, the sand has been washed out of it and my war time badges are sewed on it.[/QUOTE]

Then, given the long sorry post-WW2 history of US military "interventions" for the (alleged) purposes of “humanitarian intervention/regime change/spreading-of-freedom-and-democracy”, I am baffled why anyone who participated in one of said misguided, now-clearly-failed operations would be advocating more of the same, or more blindly one-sided US support for a Zionist/racist state of the kind which has turned the entire Muslim world - and increasingly much of the non-Muslim world - against the US.

A friend - who remains a friend even though his perma-hawkish tendencies echo yours - e-mailed yesterday, with these thoughts related to recent events in Iraq:
[quote]My question is who are the idiots who voted in Democrat primaries for people who opposed the surge in Iraq? There's the problem, right there. There can be reasonable disagreement about the wisdom of invading Iraq in 2003 and it is clear that the plan that Iraq would be governed by the INC was a disastrous, idiotic blunder, but the surge was a brilliant success that avoided an far worse outcome that what we have now.[/quote]
As is almost ubiquitous with US military interventions post-WW2, whatever the success of the initial operation (or the followup in this case, as the surge was an attempt to make up for a horribly idiotic and wildly optimistic initial battle plan, predicated on the delusion that air power would allow for quick success with relatively few "boots on the ground", and after the quick success and show of overwhelming might, Iraq would quickly "fall in line" and allow for a smooth transition to 'Merican-style democracy), this was since then entirely undone by political blunders and/or corruption. In Iraq the US supported a known corrupt and Shia-centric poltical bloc, failed to rein the leadership in during the past near-10 years as their corruption and oppression of the other major ethnoreligious groups in the country (Sunnis and Kurds) quickly rivaled the abuses of the Hussein regime, and now acts surprised that pro-Sunni militants - many of whom are US-trained-and-armed former "moderate Syrian rebels" - are running amok.

As with the US support for the Afghan mujahedin in the wake of the Soviet invasion of that country during the Carter presidency, the problem is a combination of lack of follow-through and active support of deeply corrupt but ostensibly "US-friendly" regimes.

Or do you honestly believe that the service or yourself and the millions of others in that region in the past 25 years has been honored by the US political leadership in their decision-making with respect to "nation building"?