that Iran's government should change to one less hostile to Israel? There is not much difference between stances either direction right down to the impotent threats of violence and some support to proxies in the respecitve opponent's neighborhood.
Iran nuke deal
- Thread starter MilesGregarius
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Formaldehyde
Both Fair And Balanced
Perhaps it is time for Israel to walk the walk instead of just talking about it in terms of other countries. Let's see them destroy their nuclear weapons they still pretend they don't have, and finally join the nations who have signed the non-proliferation treaty. Let's see them stop committing terrorist acts against Palestinians and others. Let's see them become a peaceful modern country instead of an authoritarian warmongering one.
as Israel is not an NPT party it does walk the walk in adhering to the NPT requirements as a non-signatory.
Formaldehyde
Both Fair And Balanced
Don't you find that blatantly hypocritical? Why should we even pretend to support a "rogue nation" which continues to engage in terrorism? A nation which literally stole our nuclear secrets?
Hold on, when did Israel become 'authoritarian?' I'm glad you're branching out from 'racist' and 'violent' but I'm not sure how despotic Israel's government could be under any rational stretch of imagination.
Tahuti
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Well, a false narrative have been sketched in general. Israel does not need to oppose Iran at all and many prominent Israelis such as Meir Dagan oppose an Israeli strike on Iran.
Netanyahu convinced himself that Iran is a mortal threat to Israel to gain the US' trust, who in turn opposes Iran to maintain control over the Arab gulf states. Indirectly, Netanyahu is doing the bidding of Saudi Arabia, Qatar and the UAE and neither friend nor foe seems to notice!
Formaldehyde
Both Fair And Balanced
Any nation that conservative these days is clearly authoritarian. Take the US, for example.
Not to mention a large segment of the population has even declared they would forsake democracy altogether and become a dictatorship instead, after they are supposedly threatened to be outnumbered by Muslims in the future.
Sure, there are exceptions just like in the US. But the nation just had a chance to send Netanyahu home to preach hatred there to a much more limited audience, instead of the US Congress and elsewhere. But they didn't do so. Did they?
I really would love to hear your definition of authoritarianism.
Presumably there is polling on this?
Tahuti
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I agree democracy can lead to bad outcomes. On the other hand, in Israel, only minor parties can rely on a standard demographic. Netanyahu clearly had skills in convincing the nation that he was 'right'.
Paul in Saudi
Emperor
Seems to me there is a choice, we can have
1) Sanctions against Iran that make them more batshit determined to build a nuke
-or-
2) A deal that lifts sanctions and prohibits nukes.
I see no other options. Of the two I would prefer to take the bold risk of Option Two. We can return to Option One later if need be.
1) Sanctions against Iran that make them more batshit determined to build a nuke
-or-
2) A deal that lifts sanctions and prohibits nukes.
I see no other options. Of the two I would prefer to take the bold risk of Option Two. We can return to Option One later if need be.
Iran going nuclear is third or fourth on the list of dangerous consequences of this deal.
First is the $150B+ in assets that will be freed, which will no doubt be spent heavily on conventional weapons and conitnued sponsoring of terrorist organizations in the region. Frankly, I don't believe the Iranian people have the stomach to demand those funds be used to build non-military infrastructure or develop social programs, let alone the stomach to act on those demands when Khamenei says, "No."
Second is the threat of Iran going nuclear, which will push neighboring Arab states to go nuclear themselves, probably before Iran achieves it, assuming they even abide by Obama's empty promises of verification.
Third is the threat of any Arab nation's nukes falling into the hands of religious extremists. The Iranian government may only want nukes as a status symbol, but the likelihood that fringe elements actively willing to use a nuke will obtain one is greatly increased.
Obama's claims of negotiating from a "position of strength and principle," when the deal violates several of Obama's stated principles and demonstrates a complete willingness to cave into Tehran, would make for some great punchlines, but Hollywood is very effective at blacklisting anyone critical of the administration.
I can only wonder at what sort of positive engagement with the West we can expect as a result, from a people who openly despise our stance on social issues such as the legalization of same-sex marriage. I'm sure in their arrogance they believe Hollywood will conquer all, even though that's a top target for anti-American hatred.
It's not as though Iran promised to cease sponsoring terrorists groups, or even to soften its official stance against America or Israel. It hasn't even been a week since their leaders proudly marched in Quds Day celebrations. They openly profess their continued hatred for the West, especially America and Israel, and continue to claim the agreement does nothing to prevent them from developing nuclear weapons.
Meanwhile, Congress is powerless to stop the agreement. It can vote against it, which Obama will veto, but assuming the Democrats obey their party taskmasters, and they always do, there's no way for Congress to overturn the veto. This puts any consequences firmly on the shoulders of Obama and Kerry (and the Euro negotiators), but given the left's dominance of academia and education, it could be a century or more before historians even openly admit as much. No doubt for the next several decades, if a nuke is used in the Middle East by anyone other than the West or Israel, they'll bend over backwards to blame it on Bush.
The whole thing reeks of an arrogant administration too self-absorbed to know better. Truly, history is poorly taught in American schools. Above all other obligations, we should be striving to keep nuclear weapons in as few hands as possible. It's our own damn fault they even exist.
It prohibits nukes in statement only. They have plenty of time to hide any illicit refinement or research before inspectors are allowed in, given the required 24 day notice of inspection. They've just been given a sizeable cash infusion for the procurement of conventional weapons, including missiles capable of delivering warheads. They openly state that their intentions have not changed one bit. They've repeatedly undermined past verification efforts.
And the deal openly allows them to pursue nukes inside a decade, assuming they dutifully obey it.
Only a fool would think this deal is anything but an invitation for more conflict in the region, with a potential to grow into a major regional, and from there global, conflict. And with China laying claim to the South China Sea, and from there the rest of the South Pacific, it's entirely possible the the US will be unable to deploy forces in a timely manner if necessary.
It would have been far better to continue sanctions until ISIS was literally invading, rather than essentially arming them to fight ISIS, while giving every other Arab state cause to secretly develop their own nuclear weapons, exponentially increasing the likelihood that one or more fall into the hands of extremists and are actually used.
Formaldehyde
Both Fair And Balanced
Here is a diagram instead of the US presidential candidates in 2008:
Asa you can see, there is a clear trend to become more authoritarian the further right you go. The only outliers are considered to be oddballs by their own party.
Yup. There a number of them. Here is one:
Israel's dark future : Democracy in the Jewish state is doomed
it is just a matter of time before Israel becomes even more authoritarian and reactionary. Then the next step is a dictatorship out of fear that their Jewish state would have to truly become democratic for all, instead of being a pretense of a democracy as it is now.Israeli Jews are revealing their declining support for democracy in a number of ways
Israelis do not necessarily see themselves as making a choice between democracy and permanent occupation. Yaron Ezrahi, a political scientist at Hebrew University, has described an Israeli ideological divide that is much wider and more profound than the divide between, say, American Democrats and Republicans.
One side, Ezrahi has said, champions "the Enlightenment ideal of progress" and "a deep sense of the limits of military force, and a commitment to liberal-democratic values." And the other, "founded on a long memory of persecution, genocide, and a bitter struggle for survival, is pessimistic, distrustful of non-Jews, and believing only in Jewish power and solidarity."
It is this latter view that Netanyahu represents, and that is increasingly dominant in Israeli politics. Israel's looming turn toward ethnic supremacy and authoritarianism is, quite simply, popular. In October, the Israeli Democracy Institute published its most recent findings on Israeli attitudes toward their state and its future. What it found was alarming.
Light Blue: Democracy first
Dark Blue: Jewish and Democratic
Medium Blue: Jewish first
When asked whether the state of Israel should privilege its Jewish identity or its democratic one, only 24 percent of Israeli Jews said "both." That is a precipitous decline from 48 percent in 2010. Israeli Jews, then, increasingly see those two ideas as in tension. The idea that Israel can be both is now held by less than a quarter of Israeli Jews. They know a choice is coming.
While only 39 percent of Jewish Israelis believe Israel should privilege its Jewish identity over its democracy, it is the most popular position. This view is particularly popular among Israel's rapidly growing Ultra-Orthodox population.
Israeli Jews are revealing their declining support for democracy in other ways. For example, 63 percent of Jewish Israelis say Jews should not have more rights than Arab Israelis — not a very large majority, but a majority.
The Israeli Democracy Institute points out, though, that 74 percent of Jewish Israelis say that "crucial national decisions on matters of peace and security should be made by a Jewish majority." Sixty-one percent say Jewish Israelis should be the group that decides on governance and economic issues.
In other words, Jewish Israelis express an abstract desire for democracy, but do not support enacting it in practice. Rather, they want a state that gives Jews greater political rights and authority.
It is hardly surprising, then, that Israelis continue to elect right-wing governments that make it quite clear their policy is to keep Palestinians under a perpetual occupation that denies them basic rights. Even the political center-left, which nominally supports a peace deal, has campaigned on economic issues because it knows the policy of peace has been largely rejected by voters.
Israeli democracy, already conditional, is becoming more so
Assaf Sharon, co-founder and academic director of the left-leaning think tank Molad, told me that Israel is at risk of something subtler but more fundamental than the erosion of democratic institutions: erosion of the idea that democracy is worthwhile in the first place.
Sharon sees the risk of a growing "majority dictatorship" in Israel. "It's an erosion of some core democratic understandings," he said. "You can see how these nationalistic trends are seeping into the culture, into the education system, into people's subconscious."
In late 2014, Netanyahu and other members of the Israeli right put forward a bill that seemed, to much of the world, intended to force Israelis to privilege their Jewish identity over their democratic identity. Called the "nationality bill," it would have declared Israel as "the national state of the Jewish people." But about a quarter of Israel's citizenry is non-Jewish. Many of those are ethnic Arabs who would otherwise be considered Palestinian (many identify as such). The bill would not deny them any legal rights, but it would announce them as somehow not a part of their own country.
That implied exclusion of Arabs was reinforced during the final days of Netanyahu's reelection campaign, when he sent text messages warning that "Arab voters are coming out in droves to the polls," funded by "foreign money." That Netanyahu likely meant it as a cynical ploy to get out the vote is not the point. The point is that it was effective, promoted by a party that has the levers of power and has used those levers before to marginalize the country's largest minority.
Members of the Israeli left are concerned that they could be the next to be marginalized, and it is easy to see why. Forty-six percent of Israelis support a law banning public criticism of the government, according to the Democracy Institute's findings. New Israeli public school textbooks are teaching Israeli children that their country is meant to be more Jewish than it is democratic. Israeli sociologist Idan Yaron found recently from his research observing high schoolers, "The students think that being left-wing is almost worse than being an Arab."
As an early hint of the restrictions to come, right-wing political leaders have been seeking to restrict NGOs that they see as hostile to Israel by barring them from receiving certain sorts of funding, at times by circumventing the country's own attorney general and supreme court. In 2013, members of Netanyahu's Likud Party put forward a bill to impose higher taxes on NGOs based specifically on whether they took political positions deemed anti-Israel, and in 2014 proposed a bill restricting them from registering to operate in Israel at all.
Here is a diagram instead of the US presidential candidates in 2008:
Asa you can see, there is a clear trend to become more authoritarian the further right you go. The only outliers are considered to be oddballs by their own party.
I wasn't aware that politicalcompass was taken seriously.
"Dictatorship" is not the opposite of democracy.
Consider the source of the post.
Formaldehyde
Both Fair And Balanced
I didn't realize that ignoring the obvious relationship between ultraconservatives and authoritarianism was taken seriously.
democracy > antonyms
Tahuti
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The problem of one of the articles' argument is that Belgian, British, Dutch and French colonial possessions are separated from the mainland by vast swathes of ocean and are islands or exclaves. This presents logistical problems when maintaining military control.
We dug our own graves when we applied modern infrastructure to the East Indies because surprise, surprise, Indonesian revolutionaries could use them against us. Everyone else did.
Israel doesn't have any of those problems. They don't build infrastructure for the Palestinians and they are not separated by oceans from them. It's much easier to maintain control. A closer parellel would be Siberia: Connected with the heartland by even more land and relatively free of infrastructure, though the latter had a lot to do with it's low population density.
Also, the graph indicates it is becoming more polarised. The 'democracy first' is increasing rapidly as well.
Formaldehyde
Both Fair And Balanced
I guess that is why five other countries have also been directly involved in this negotiation. Because, as usual, it is all OBAMA's fault.
What you should be asking is why the authoritarian conservatives are so against this obvious step in the right direction.
Isn't that what this agreement is all about?
And I'm sure you feel exactly the same way about Israel. Right?
But the discovery is hardly the "fault" of the US. It was quite inevitable.
That is why the authoritarian ultraconservatives will become more and more hostile towards the country truly becoming a democracy, instead of a theocratic democracy as it supposedly is now. They realize the inevitable. That Israel must eventually change one way or the other. It is no more right for them to subjugate the possible future majority of the population than it was for Iraq or South Africa to do so.
If it's obvious you must know something I don't. Please give me the knowledge.
All that democracy means is that every resident of a given country gets a vote in running the affairs of it. Dictatorship is hardly the only alternative.
kramerfan86
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I find all the gnashing of teeth over "supporting terrorism" to be ridiculous considering just about every country arms and supports insurgents when it favors them. I mean i guess you can pretend that the revolutionaries the west supports are freedom fighters and the ones iran supports are terrorists, but its fairly standard geopolitics.
And all this "iran wants to make nukes" talk is based on what? hasnt every piece of intel from a major intelligence agency including Israel's own said Iran was not doing that?
And all this "iran wants to make nukes" talk is based on what? hasnt every piece of intel from a major intelligence agency including Israel's own said Iran was not doing that?
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