saxitoxin wrote:Germany changed its flag from the Swastika because peace was more important than symbology. Israel should also not fly a Nazi-inspired flag; it is considered an offensive symbol by Orthodox Jewry (it is banned in Sephardic temples) and Arabs. However, if Israel wants to eschew personal responsibility and choose to keep flying it, that's fine. It just shouldn't whine like a welfare mom out of food stamps if offensive military operations continue due to its choices.
Does this go for Turkey, Pakistan, Algeria, England, Denmark and Switzerland as well? They each have religious symbols on their flags as well.
Just sayin' is all.
Changing the flag shouldn't be any position between states attempting to make peace.
Saxi wrote: If Israel wants to abandon the pretense that it's a secular state and admit it's a fundamentalist nutjob theocracy, though, that's fine.
Like the other theocracies around the world, eh?
Saxi wrote:My tax dollars don't go to fund the Boy Scouts. Taxes are forcibly collected from Israeli Arab citizens to pay for luxury vacations for American and Canadian Jews during which they are taught a revisionist and racist version of history. If private parties want to pay to teach pseudo-science, eugenics, etc., that's fine. Arabs shouldn't be forced to pay their money to fund an education program that teaches they are dogs.
Yeah, you're right! After all, not a single dime of the taxes you are forced to pay go to anything you disagree with, right?
Hey, I'm all for not using tax payer money to fund stupid stuff, but I don't think I or any other nation has the right to tell Israel what they can spend their own tax dollars on. Nor base a peace between separate peoples upon such a trivial thing.
On a side note, I'm all for eliminating foreign aid, to everyone. Including Israel and the Palestinians (and everyone else, sink or swim bitchez!).
Saxi wrote:
They don't need to agree. Israel is treading water in the deep end of the pool. If they don't want to agree to reasonable requests, that's their right. If I were the Israelis I would choose the path of least pain and voluntarily agree to concessions sooner rather than having them imposed through force of arms later. But I don't care either way. What will come, will come.
Oh, it could well come to that one day. But rest assured, if that day comes, I can pretty much be sure the Palestinian question will be resolved. As will the Iranian, Iraqi, Egyptian, Syrian, and every other problem in the region will be solved. It'll be an irradiated death zone under which a good chunk of the world's oil will be trapped under for thousands of years.....
Good talkin' with ya, Saxi. I enjoy these conversations.
Peace (something not likely in the region in question but between people like us is easy even though we may well disagree on things).