Reply #79: For reference [View All]

[Jack Rabbit]

One more time: The West Bank and Gaza are not now, nor have ever been, part of the modern state of Israel.

They are occupied territories and the Fourth Geneva Convention applies to them, whether the Israeli government accepts that fact or not.

As it is, an occupation of land where the occupying power uses the land and its resources for its own benefit rather than those of its residents, to include the |transfer of parts of the population from the occupying power to the occupied land, is a good justification for armed resistance.

If, as someone mistakenly said in post number 4, the land "was always part of Israel" and, based on nationality, 90% of the residents of the West Bank and Gaza are denied equal protection under the law and are routinely removed from their homes in order to make way for housing in which they cannot live or roads on which they cannot travel, then that is a good justification for a separatist movement and armed resistance.

There is clearly a systematic assault by the Israeli government on human rights of the Palestinian people in the occupied territories. To dismiss this by stating "Israel does recognize the needs of the Palestinian people" while at the same time stating the West Bank is part of the state of Israel (again post number 4) is to admit this and to admit that the system of government in the West Bank is not democratic but is an Apartheid-like regime. That doesn't cut it.

Nor does it cut it to raise tu quoque fallacies as is done in posts 41 and 54. The crimes commited by other people in the past do not justify those committed by anyone in the present.