"We're not going to have 500 years"

[winterbadger]

Thanks to selki for pointing out this article. There are some thigns I don't like about this guy, but I think he's about 99% correct in the observations he makes.

Comments

[winterbadger]

Arab municipalities are poor (and often very corrupt--a few are notorious for it)
Corruption is no respecter of sectarian differences; there's plenty of corruption in the Jewish parts of Israel too. The real question is why the Arab towns are uniformly poorer.

The restrictions only apply to Palestinian Arabs--and unlike South Africa, Israel doesn't lay legal claim to the West Bank and Gaza.
Well, it occupies all of the West Bank, so it hardly needs to make a claim that wouldn't be recognized anywhere outside of Israel anyway.

Furthermore, there are legitimate security considerations involved, even though the actions are not always proportionate.
Security considerations do not explain the destruction of Palestinian agriculture, homes, businesses, and government offices.

(We can't rule them, we can't kick them out and a binational state is ludicrous.)
Not to mention that the Palestinians, like everyone else, have an inherent right to self-determination.

But the constant grinding down of Israel in the liberal press gets me down. Israel is the fount of all evil, the Palestinians are poor and oppressed...
Well, this is what happens when Jews have a state of their own; they get held to account when they are repressive, violent, and unjust. Israel is not the fount of all evil, but they *are* acting in an evil way, and, yes, the Palestinians *are* poor and oppressed.

It makes me very sad to think it, but sometimes it's occured to me that the founding of Israel was a test for Jews from HaShem, to see if we could be just and fair rulers, or if we would just do as others had done to us. And it seems to me that the latter is predominating over the former.

And we just don't understand why the Palestinians don't and didn't do the same.
Well, give them several thousand years of statelessness and they may develop the same traits and behaviours that the Jews have done.

But it's hard to convince someone there's a point in planting a tree or building a wall when the next day settlers or the IDF may come along and bulldoze it.