[Flash Walken]

Originally Posted by Manhattanboy

That is why this thread should be locked. Q's post saying " meh, nothing new, just the usual from a garbage pariah state" adds absolutely nothing to the discussion and while not technically anti-semetic is inflammatory and very offensive to many, non-Jews and Jews alike, including myself, a staunch supporter of Israel, but critical when circumstances warrant.

This opinion is not uncommon nor is it anything remotely resembling racism, hate speech or inflammatory.

From Haaretz:

This is how, with our own hands, we turned the problem of the occupation into an issue for the entire Western world, and the Palestinians into the West's proteges: Faced with an occupying power that is simultaneously unresponsive and self-righteous, the West feels moral and political responsibility for the Palestinians' fate, just as in the past, Western public opinion felt deep sympathy for the Jewish state.

This feeling of responsibility has increased in recent years, after it became clear that the Israeli right has no intention of responding to Palestinian demands for freedom and independence. Under the guise of security considerations and the war on terror hides the real, ideological reason: In the right's view, recognizing the equal national rights of the Palestinians means forgoing exclusive Jewish ownership of the Land of Israel. From the point of view of members of the Israeli rejectionist front, recognizing the equality of Jewish and Arab rights on both sides of the Green Line is tantamount to betraying Jewish history.

But since the number of people who are still prepared to buy an argument of this kind is diminishing worldwide, Israel is on a collision course with all our allies and supporters. And at the end of this road, it is liable to become a pariah state.

From the Economist:

Clearly, Europe’s antipathy towards Israel is more than just loud protest. Many Israelis think they can no longer count on public opinion in Europe—and, to a much lesser extent, America—and that where popular sentiment leads, democratic politicians will sooner or later follow. They see the rising number and vehemence of demonstrations against Israel’s wars, and as a result fear “delegitimisation”: the turning of Israel into a pariah state, outside polite international society.

A global poll in and about several countries, conducted for the BBC long before the latest strife in Gaza, reported that negative views of Israel’s influence in the world outweighed positive ones by more than two to one (see chart 1). In aggregate, Americans saw Israel favourably; Europeans did not. But plenty of Americans worry about Israel’s reputation. Barack Obama has fretted about his country’s “limited” ability to manage the “international fallout” were a Palestinian state no longer within reach. Delegitimisation, says Einat Wilf, a former Israeli parliamentarian and one of the authors of a three-year, as-yet-unpublished study of the topic at the Jewish People Policy Institute (JPPI) in Jerusalem, is becoming “a strategic threat”.

From the journal, Foreign Policy, Via The Wall Street Journal:

In a 1977 article in Foreign Policy, the political scientist Richard K. Betts singled out Taiwan, South Africa and Israel as "pariah states" that had run afoul of nuclear-nonproliferation treaties. In more recent years, the label has been applied to such norm-breaking nations as North Korea, Iran, Myanmar, Sudan and Syria.

From Haaretz:

This is the only way to understand why public opinion polls in Israel show consistently overwhelming support for the two-state solution and the evacuation of the settlements, while in practice few Israelis give expression to this when they cast their ballots.

What this shows is that the Israeli voter needs firm support from the outside in order to extract his sane parts from the shelter in which he’s been hiding them for the past half-century or so. Only intervention by the international community can undo the balance of terror that Israelis maintain inside themselves, between knowing what’s good and doing what’s bad.

Only “involuntary treatment” of Israeli rejectionism, executed with sincere concern for the country’s fate, would demonstrate to its citizens that there is no correct way to live an incorrect life, enable them to forgo their megalomania and help them release their sanity from its hiding place.

“He is forced until he says ‘I want to,’” the Gemara says, recognizing the duality of the will and the fact that coercion sometimes helps a person in his struggle against inner factors that otherwise prevent him from realizing his true will.

Those who have Israel’s welfare at heart, and the Jewish lobbies abroad, need to stop listening only to the will of official Israel, which is unrelated to the Israelis’ true will.

Official Israel might stamp its feet and cry “anti-Semites!” or, “by what right?” – but the nation in Israel, whose right hand doesn’t know what its left is doing, is only waiting for genuine help from the outside. Help that will enable us to be healed of the curse of ruling the Palestinian people. Israel is not Russia and it is not Iran, and its citizens will not accept pariah status indefinitely.