nsguy

I don't think I missed any of your points.

I'm being called a liar for pointing out that in general people living in occupied territories do not have the rights of the citizens of the occupier, which is the exact situation here, and for which Israel is labelled as an "Apartheid State", since there's no Apartheid in Israel proper, only supposedly in said occupied territories.

I think you're factually wrong on your "What people are asking" statement. Different people are asking different things. However, you can totally ask that question as an individual and we can discuss it.

Palestinians do have a say in their own affairs. But you're saying "letting the Palestinian government meaningfully control Palestine". When you say Palestine do you mean the west bank? Would you agree that in Gaza Israeli did let the Palestinians "meaningfully control Gaza"? What was the outcome of that? What do you propose can be done differently in the west bank for example? What level of say/control do you feel would balance Israel's security needs with the Palestinian's need to have a say/meaningful control? Let's talk specifics.

By the way, I'm totally not an expert in post WW-II Germany, I don't really know if we can apply the same methods or not: https://www.historyandpolicy.org/policy-papers/papers/german...

There was West Germany and East Germany. There was "denazification" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Denazification (e.g. promoting of Nazi ideas had a death penalty under the occupation, do you think that'll fly with Israel vs. Palestinians vs. the world?). There were war crime trials for top level Nazis.

EDIT: It's also worth mentioning that when the west bank was occupied by Israel in 1967 it was considered to be part of Jordan and Jordan didn't give up that claim until their peace agreement with Israel. But if your point is that Israel should have at that point given the people living in this area a measure of autonomy to run most aspects of their lives I think I can agree. There was definitely some self governing, e.g. at the city level. I think the demand was of Israel to return this to Jordan at that point in time and Israel refused since it meant there would be large Arab armies 10 minute tank drive from Tel-Aviv. (e.g.). I wasn't around in 1967 and I haven't studied that period in detail.

I just want to apologize for part of the tone of my response.

I don't think we're gonna get anywhere here otherwise.

[EDIT: I'll take 50% of the blame for this going sideways.]

I think you're a reasonable person so I'm not going to argue much ;) I don't see the UN as a successful organization. It's just a mirror though to what this world looks like.

https://www.europarl.europa.eu/doceo/document/E-9-2023-00193...

"The appointment of Ali Bahreini, Ambassador of the Islamic Republic of Iran and Permanent Representative to the United Nations, to chair the 2023 United Nations Human Rights Council (UNHRC) Social Forum (2 and 3 November 2023), is nothing more than a slap in the face given the human rights situation of most Iranians, particularly women, and the repeated executions in the wake of the ongoing protests in the country and, more generally, the Islamic Republic's gross human rights violations and its catastrophic and politicised handling of the COVID-19 pandemic, when its refusal to import Western vaccines cost hundreds of thousands of lives."

The Uyghurs did not launch rockets on Beijing. As far as I can tell they did not blow up any buses or restaurants in Beijing either. To contrast suicide bombings in Tel-Aviv and Jerusalem were a weekly affair during the early 2000's. And Palestinians fires 10's of thousands of rockets into Israeli cities.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Terrorism_in_China#Chronology_...

Ofcourse China is not justified in what they're doing to the Uyghurs. Israel also did not respond to the significantly larger attacks on its civilian population like China.

You've decided that Israel is engaged in racist human rights violation and not self-defense. I think that's the crux of the issue. I think Israel is engaging in self defense and during the course of the self-defense inevitably human rights are violated. This is true on a personal level and it's true on the level of a country. We violate the human rights of criminals we put in prison. If you're killing someone else to defend yourself as an individual you are "violating their human rights".

The world largely stands by as China genocides the Uyghurs. No campus encampments. No boycotts. No heated HN discussions. 10 million people effectively being wiped out.

We're unlikely to have a productive discussion anyways because we're so far apart and this is not a good medium to handle something like this topic. People that are entrenched in certain positions don't seem to want to give them up.

However I'm not claiming all criticism on Israel is because "the people behind this project are of Jewish ancestry". But certainly antisemitism plays a role. It plays a role in Arab views on Israel and that in turn plays a huge role in the world's take. That's just one of the ways it plays out. There are other factors including geopolitics. I would go so far to say that the majority of criticism of Israel is not in good faith, but sure, not all of it is because there are Jews involved. But certainly that accounts for some portion.

> Imagine a defense lawyer making the following argument: "Your honor, my client would never have broken into that house, and stolen that woman's necklace. It goes against everything he was raised to believe in. BTW it was never hers to begin with, so it couldn't have been stolen from her anyway."

I was going after this analogy which feels completely wrong.

> all strong critiques in regard to the founding of the State of Israel or its modern policies are basically the Dreyfuss Affair all over again.

I disagree with this statement. There's no problem with any critique of Israel in general. Where it becomes a problem is when Israel is singled out. E.g. if there is no critique of the founding of Jordan, which was given as a gift by the British to the Hashemites for helping them during the Arab revolt, then I think this is a problem. Then there is "critique" and there is stuff that's not critique. But for people that are interested in reopening the question of how various countries were founded in general in the 18th, 19th, and 20th century, sure we can have this discussion and include Israel in it for sure. For people whose main focus is simply attacking Israel by any means possible, I think that's a problem. I'm totally with John Lennon "Imagine" on a purely romantic idealistic way, but then there's reality.

I am coming to this from an emotional point for sure. And ranting.

This is what our discussion looks like from my perspective.

> you have to be of a very specific mindset to see message after message about the evil UN and not say, "uh, did we go off the rails somewhere?"

Me: "We can measure "unjustly singled out"" + China and the Uyghurs is one example we can look at.

> The China claims are straight up lies

False. Then you try to weasel your way out of that.

> the implication that other human rights abuses aren't policed is another google-able lie

False. You refuse to engage on any factual basis to support your incorrect statement.

> Please don't troll me.

> I haven't read more than a couple sentences of these obsessive rants

> This isn't behavior I expect to see on HN

> it looks like its a consistent issue, across multiple threads: you ask questions addressed long ago

You did not actually address any question I had for you.

[EDIT: deleted]

I'm sorry but you are still avoiding my topic. Is or isn't Israel singled out by the UN? What is the metric of your choice? What is your opinion/position? Pick Asad killing 600,000 civilians or pick other examples of your choice and metrics of your choice.

UN Security Council resolutions against China is technically a dumb example on my side but my original statement you called a lie was:

> We can measure "unjustly singled out" fairly well.

> How much condemnation from the UN has China received for what it's doing to the Uyghurs?

> How many times has the UN security council discussed that vs. discussions related to Israel?

You googled that and found it's a lie. That means China was discussed more times? (veto isn't relevant to this question) The UN has otherwise condemned China (veto isn't relevant to that either) more times than Israel? What exactly is the lie here?

The US vetoes some/most security council resolutions against Israel. And sure, China can and will veto resolutions against itself. So that is your counter argument? As I said, you pick the metric. How many vetoed resolutions were there against Israel and how many against China? How many meetings to discuss these issues? If the security council wants to make a statement, as it seems to want to do endlessly against the US and Israel, then certainly it can keep bringing proposals and let China veto them, right?

What about the general assembly? China has no vetoes there.

I picked China off the top of my head as one of an infinite list of severe human rights violations that the UN shrugs off. Maybe it wasn't the best example. We can pick the Turkish and the Kurds. We can pick Syria. We can pick Azerbaijan. We can pick Pakistan. Saudi's actions in Yemen. I mean literally the list of "bad things that happen in the world that nobody cares about because no Jews" is endless. Most of the world is in a terrible state. You're nitpicking me on veto rights but you're not addressing my point.

Israel is singled out. It is the target of endless lies and racism. It is the target of antisemitism. There is no doubt about that and I'm not sure how you can be a "Zionist" and not see that.

This does not mean everything Israel does is right or that there's no criticism to be levelled at it. My argument isn't Israel should get a free pass because look how bad the world is. My argument is Israel is subject to antisemitism and double standards.

And this is before we even start debating the facts of the war and the history of the conflict.

EDIT:

"The Preoccupation of the United Nations with Israel: Evidence and Theory" - https://www.econstor.eu/bitstream/10419/105108/1/cesifo_wp50...

"The UN and Israel: A history of discrimination" - https://heinonline.org/HOL/LandingPage?handle=hein.journals/...

"The United Nations Human Rights Council and Israel: Sour Old Wine in a New Bottle" - https://heinonline.org/HOL/LandingPage?handle=hein.journals/...

I'm not sure what "Zionist Terrorist" is getting us here in relation to Yigal Amir. There is very little relationship between that dude, who is a religious extremist, and the secular zionists that founded Israel.

I can't really debate your other statements because it's pretty short of facts. I seriously doubt the truth of "zionism brought terrorism to the middle east" as there were e.g. massacres of Jews in the region (Hebron, or Tsfat) that predate zionism.

And sure, Lehi were terrorists, I'm not super familiar with the Bernadotte story but that's well into the conflict, not by any means that start of it.

From my perspective it was the Palestinians, through Hamas, that derailed the Oslo accords. By any measure you can choose, the Palestinian violent opposition to peace eclipsed the Israeli one. Also while Israel has a government with the ability to enforce policy, the Palestinians never had any centralized authority that talks for all of them. While Israel was putting extreme right activists in detention with no trial, the Palestinians were letting Hamas out of their jails with a "revolving door".

"יו"ר מפלגת העבודה ח"כ אהוד ברק, אמר אתמול כי אם היה פלשתינאי ובגיל המתאים, ייתכן שהיה מצטרף לארגון טרור. ברק אמר את הדברים בתוכנית "פגישה אישית" שתשודר הערב בערוץ הכבלים, בתשובה לשאלת המראיין גדעון לוי, מה הוא, שלחם בטרור הרבה שנים, היה עושה כפלשתינאי צעיר. ברק הוסיף, כי זוהי שאלה לא הוגנת מאחר וארגוני הטרור פועלים בצורה לא הומנית, חמורה ושפלה ועוסקים בהריגת אזרחים, נשים וילדים חפים מפשע, דבר שיש לגנותו ולפעול נגדו."

"ברק אמר אמש ל"הארץ", כי דבריו לא היו בגדר פליטת פה. "למיטב זכרוני יצחק שמיר אמר דבר דומה. בן גוריון, כשנדרש לתאר את עוצמת השנאההערבית נגדנו אמר דבר דומה, וגם דיין אמר דבר דומה. ההתעסקות התקשורתית בעניין הזה היא מגוחכת. מה רצו שאומר? שאם הייתי צעיר פלשתינאי שהווייתו מינקותו היא הוויה פלשתינאית, הייתי הופך להיות מורה בכיתה ג' בבית ספר עממי?" מהליכוד נמסר בתגובה, כי ברק ירד מהפסים, וכי אינו מתאים עוד לייצג מפלגה ציונית במדינת ישראל. "בדבריו ברק מעודד פלשתינאים בגיל המתאים להצטרף לארגוני טרור"."

https://www.haaretz.co.il/news/politics/2011-11-16/ty-articl...

I need to find the actual interview if we want to be super precise. But either way, the way this is referred to in the Pro-Palestinian narrative that you're presenting here is incorrect.

Barak isn't saying that Palestinians have no other venue for rising against the "brutal oppression". He's just stating the fact that if he was a Palestinian, and grew up under that ideology, and was in the right age, he would probably be in those organization. He is not justifying that. The point I was making is that Israelis don't view Palestinians as inferior. They view them as wrong, brainwashed, driven by extreme ideologies, etc.

Israel is a democracy. It's not a "facade of democracy". It's not labelling all Palestinians as "human animals" though there were certainly a lot of heated statements and emotions after the Oct 7th attack on Israel. There is no Apartheid. It's armed to the teeth because its neighbours want to destroy it. Settlers in general can't shoot and kill children and get away with it though I do agree that there should be better law enforcement in the west bank (and ideally no settlers until its status is resolved). That's my perspective anyways which I think is well in line with the facts and reality.

I'm not "invoking a defense". I'm stating facts. You give me a definition of "forcibly expropriated land" and we'll compare it against the facts for Israel and all other countries in the world and see what comes up. It's not going to support your thesis.

The trial analogy is also completely false. The appropriate adjustments to this story is that nobody broke into that house, you actually own the house and it's always been in your family, no necklace was stolen, but you're still put on trial for stealing a necklace that doesn't exist from your own house because you're Jewish.

Your last statement of "fact" is also not fact. It is simply not factually true that all the people that lived in the region have been living and thriving there for thousands of years since before the Israelites. Many Palestinians have immigrated to the area in fairly recent times. Many Gazans are from Egypt. There are probably some Palestinians who do trace back to the Israelites. In general much of the population of the Levant and the middle east in general, including the Israeli Jews from all over the place, goes way back but there's no specific historic continuity of Palestinians in Israel for the most part. There was plenty of population movement and immigration. This is well supported history with plenty of archaeological evidence.

I also think the characterization of Israel as being "founded on the belief that its claim to the land and resources was categorically more legitimate than" is also false. There was no comparison of legitimacy of various claims simply because there were no other claims at the time. Israel was definitely founded on the (factual) belief that it is the historic homeland of the Jewish people who feel a strong connection to it. What we see in practice is that a person of Italian heritage, living in California, taken by force from Mexico, with the aboriginal inhabitants confined to a reserve and all their resources literally stolen after they were genocided and ethnically cleansed, is telling Israeli Jews why their country, founded on their historical land, where they went as refugees in more recent times because they had nowhere to go to, is illegitimate. If we want to litigate every country's legitimacy going back 3000 years, sure, let's do that. Are you an immigrant in Canada? better start packing since you're going back to where your ancient ancestors used to live. This is ofcourse all total nonsense.

Clearly people in this discussion are getting different views of reality. There is definitely a long term rise in extremism in Israel but what that means to someone who is closely familiar with Israel and someone who is not can be two very different things.

I don't think people outside Israel think that Israelis are engaged in self reflection. That aspect isn't something that's reported on. There are some Israelis that don't care about innocents in Gaza, and it's easy to just pick up that story if it furthers the reality that you believe in. Reality isn't one, or two, or one hundred stories. It is a continuum.

Israel being a "western colonial enterprise" is not an analysis. It is a talking point. I've seen it hundreds if not thousands of times in online discourse on this topic. It's something that has been pushed for some time (a decade or two?) in various circles. The history of Israel can be studied superficially in one semester in University. To really understand the period and all the nuances, and the related historical processes, get a PhD. There are good lectures on YouTube by historians and good resources on the Internet that give you a taste but you need to put in time.

It's also about the semantics, what exactly do these terms mean, a common theme in the information war arena is to use words in unusual ways or to redefine them in a way more convenient to your cause.

I agree there are a lot of differences. My point though still stands I think. The reason Palestinians don't enjoy equal rights to Israelis is that they live in an occupied territory of still to be determined status. Whatever process happened in Germany after WW-II failed to happen in the west bank after 1967. Israel would love to resolve this problem, ofcourse on terms it can live with. Israel and the Palestinians have not been able to get to terms they can both live with (understatement of the day) and so the situation persists.

I also think my other point stands that if Israel did annex the West Bank and/or Gaza and give Palestinians equal rights, as it did in Jerusalem or the Golan Heights that would not be viewed as an acceptable solution. The reason I raise this is because criticism is levelled at Israel for not doing that. The Palestinians would not consider this to resolve the conflict and neither would anyone else, they say exactly what you're saying here. I'm not saying the reason Israel isn't doing it is international law but surely the lack of acceptance from anyone to this solution is part of that thought process (and also the question of maintaining Jewish majority in Israel).

Palestinians did get some control, they got total control of Gaza in 2005, partial control earlier of Gaza and the West Bank as part of the Oslo accords.

I also want to be clear that I'm opposed to Israeli settlement in the west bank. I don't think that's helpful. I also don't think it's the real problem here. The legal status of the west bank in Israeli law is still occupied territory, there hasn't been any formal annexation.

One thing I can say as to the annexation/reunification of Jerusalem is that Israel is doing a much better job than Jordan did in maintaining and protecting the rights of all religions to have access to their holy sites. When Jerusalem was under Jordanian control Jews could not access it at all and I think Christians also less than today. So I think Israel is a reasonable guardian of this place and all its citizens and visitors are treated fairly. The final status of Jerusalem would presumably be something agreed to as part of the (maybe never) peace agreement. I think between leaving it "occupied" and the current status the current status is/was the better option for everyone.

There are voices by the way in the right wing of Israel calling for annexation and granting of citizenship.

I don't think Israel is "flaunting" international law more so than most of the rest of the world. It just happens to be in an unsolvable mess of a situation. Israel and Israelis really wanted this resolved in the peace process of the early 90's and were willing to go a long way towards what Palestinians were asking for, but didn't really meet a partner. So to blame this solely on Israel, which is admittedly to some degree in a position of power, but is also very vulnerable, is not fair. I would say at least half the blame is on the Palestinians.

I'm saying they could not vote in the US which is what the discussion is about. The Palestinians also had elections. I don't think what people are asking Israel to do here is to let the Palestinians have elections while being occupied?

The total physical occupation of Germany lasted 11 years. The final status of Germany was only determined in 1990 in the 2+4 agreement. That's a 45 year period. The US still has bases in Germany.

Honestly it's a bit of a blur to me but I do agree that Baruch Goldstein's attack was likely another destabilizing factor. It stood out at the time as something completely insane. For the sake of historical accuracy though Hamas' suicide attacks predate that event, e.g.: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mehola_Junction_bombing

Israeli prime minister Yitzhak Rabin condemned the attack, describing Goldstein as a "degenerate murderer" and "a shame on Zionism and an embarrassment to Judaism" - which is important.

I'm not trolling. Can you make a coherent counter argument that's not "I'm a Zionist stop embarrassing us". I'm stupid. Explain your position to me. Is your point "ofcourse the security council is not going to go after China" or is your point "they go after China, who is really committing a genocide, just the same way they go after Israel fighting a war", or is your point "China is cool, Israel is committing the terrible crimes and so ofcourse the UN goes after it"?

Tell me what you're claiming and what metric or some objective method we should use to measure your claim. I'm claiming Israel is picked on in the UN disproportionately. I can't even tell from your reply what's your position on this topic.

I wouldn't call myself a Zionist. I'm an (ex-)Israeli. The right of the Jewish people to live in Israel is an axiom for me. It's ridiculous that's debated. It's a fact and Israel is not going away.

I think your point is maybe don't use China as an excuse. That's maybe fair enough. But it's not the topic. I'm not debating whether Israel should have a pass for genocide because China does, I'm debating whether Israel is disproportionately attacked which is what I would consider antisemitism. This claim can be debated independently of the other multiple things there are to debate here. Israel should not have free pass to do anything and it should also not be subjected to the lynch mob it's being subjected to, these are not mutually exclusive.

Didn't the FLLF attack Palestinians? [ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Front_for_the_Liberation_of_Le... ]

Did Israel also fire rockets on its north from Lebanon? Did it try to assassinate it's ambassador to the UK?

Do you have other references to the theory that the reason Israel went to war with Lebanon was FLLF's operations that it blamed on Palestinians? Why would it go to war over people killing each other in Lebanon, it doesn't pass the smell test.

Anyways, in this conflict cherry-picking is a big problem. Pro-Palestinians are very good at cherry picking some questionable Israeli action while totally ignoring the rest of the story. You can't understand reality by cherry picking certain things and spinning a theory to accommodate them. That's how conspiracy theorists think. The scientific method is to try and falsify your theory and really test whether it stands the test of the other events, not the ones' your cherry picking. And naturally for every story check multiple sources to try and get a sense of what really happened. If you're ignoring the rocket attacks on Israel, and other PLO attacks on Israel, and the attempt to assassinate the UK ambassador, as factors in your theory, then maybe your theory is wrong.

Jews maintained a pretty strong connection to the land. They keep praying to be in Jerusalem and Zion. The connection is a central part of their identity and faith. Jews also generally stayed together as a people and a group and genetics do show this connection. It's not exactly a secret that Jews had a country in the region- it's mentioned in the most popular book in existence.

I'd say the connection of Israeli Jews to the land is stronger than the connection of most citizens of most countries to their land. To descibe that as "tenuous" is at best unfair.

[EDIT: erased a bit of not so nice retort]

Israel's right wing isn't very different than right wing parties in other parts of the western world. I'm not a fan of Israel's extreme right but conflating the violence between Israelis and Palestinians with either the rise of fascism or South Africa is just again yield to propaganda. The various governments of the Palestinians, the PA or the Hamas, make the Israeli right wing look centric. Put aside the various labels that are intended to dehumanize the Israelis, after Israel tried in earnest to make peace roughly around the proposed two state solution and was met by a wave of Hamas suicide bombers that impacted at some level every single Israeli, what do you think is an actual solution here?

Hamas is super popular. This is maybe a biased source but do you own research, there are no shortage of polls: https://www.fdd.org/analysis/2024/03/22/poll-hamas-remains-p...

I'm originally from Israel. No Israeli that I know thinks that Palestinians are inferior. Famously the ex-Israeli Prime Minister Barak said that if he were a Palestinian he might have become a terrorist himself. I'm not saying it's not a thing in certain right wing circles but painting all of Israel with this brush is not right. If anything there's a tiny minority in Israel that would consider Palestinians inferior to Israelis (or Muslims inferior to Jews or whatever). Plenty of right wing nazis everywhere in the world.

You're also wrong on the Palestinians willing to move forward. They had plenty of chances. They absolutely do want domination. For the most part the story that land was unjustly stolen is factually wrong. Land was bought by Jews during Ottoman times legally. Palestinians never had a country so that couldn't have been stolen from them either. Palestinians were displaced during 1948, in a war Arabs started against the new state of Israel. Read Israel's declaration of independence to see how Israel would have preferred that play out. Palestinians, and the Arab countries, have inflicted plenty of harm on Jews in the middle east. Jews were ethnically cleansed from most Arab countries and more land was stolen from Jews in the middle east than the entire area of Israel. But sure, the topic of harm and reparations can be discussed once Palestinians decide to stop using violence to pursue their goals (of domination). This is not about reparations anyways.

This fairy tale you're telling yourself here is some westernized story that has nothing to do with the reality on the ground. Sorry if I'm sounding patronizing.

EDIT: and by the way we can totally reverse Canada and New Zealand for example? Let's use those as test cases for your anti-colonialism fix the world sentiment and see how it goes? Those guys have zero claim of any sorts to the land they're on. Israel at least has something.

And they changed it under pressure and as a PR manoeuvre. They never really changed their views.

Let's do a thought experiment. Please give this a honest consideration.

If the Uyghurs had 40,000 combatants. And if they were dug in tunnels under Uyghur cities. And fires 10's of thousands of rockets into Chinese cities. And killed thousands of people with hundreds of suicide bombings. Their cities were mined and booby trapped. Their combatants were well trained, armed with RPGs, sniper rifles, machine guns.

Then the Uyghurs raided some Chinese city, killing 1200 people, taking hundreds of hostages.

What do you think China would do?

China isn't bombing them because it doesn't need to bomb them.

Uyghurs have less people that care about them in the international community, for sure. I'm not sure they're not suffering a lot more than the Palestinians are.

#1 - The China claims are not a lie, e.g.: https://www.reuters.com/world/china/un-body-rejects-historic...

You don't get to say "I Googled it and it's a lie". How many security council resolutions and UN general assembly resolutions are there condemning China vs. how many condemning Israel? If you say it's a lie let's have those numbers.

The best I can find Googling is: "Joint Statement on Behalf of 50 countries in the UN General Assembly" which is very different than the criticism Israel is getting from the UN.

#2 - This is not the argument at all. I'm not even debating "human rights abuses" though I think there's plenty to debate there. Even under the lies propagated by Israel's critics Israel is receiving unfair treatment.

#3 - Show me the proof. Don't say "Googleable lies". How are human rights abuses by Palestinians in the west bank and Gaza enforced by the UN? In Syria? Saudi Arabia? Iran? I mean the list is endless. Give me some measurable criteria that supports your ridiculous claim that equal standards are applied to Israel. Again, without even debating the validity of the claims against Israel, many of which are debatable.

#4 - "We" get attacked by the world for using force to defend "our" citizens. The offense in question is daring to do what other countries have done and what international law allows countries to do to defend themselves. Wars are not a sterile matter. The US and the UK e.g. had many questionable incidents in their various endeavours to guy fight random bad guys around the world. Israel is far from perfect and we can ask for a much better government than the bunch of morons running it and we can be critical of many things, but what we're seeing isn't legitimate criticism, what we're seeing is a political lynch mob.

#5 - So we should have handed it to Syria, without a peace agreement, so we can have Iran's militias on the high ground above Israel's north and more cities in rocket range? Or we should have kept it as "occupied" territory where people would say "Apartheid", how can you not give those guys rights? Make up your mind, either Israel is "Apartheid" for not giving e.g. Palestinians voting rights, or those are occupied territories that are waiting for a peace agreement? And that ignoring the legal debate about the precise status of those territories.

Sure. I'm not doing a PhD thesis on this topic. I just came up with one example on the fly. I don't think it's particularly unconvincing but anyways. My main point is that we can actual quantitatively convince ourselves that Israel is singled out.

Re: Golan heights that's a particularly interesting example since if Israel does not let people vote in occupied territories then it's condemned as an "Apartheid State". But if it does then it's condemned for something else. Basically Israel can not win, condamned if it does, condamned if it doesn't.

You might be right. I'm not an expert on the legalese of their peace contracts with Israel. I think giving the Palestinians autonomy was part of the agreement with Egypt. In which case, it's a matter between Israel and the Palestinians.

Wikipedia says: "International law defines sovereign states as having a permanent population, defined territory, a government not under another, and the capacity to interact with other states.[2] "

Taiwan has a permanent population, it has a government not under another, and it has the capacity to interact with other states (and does). There's no doubt Taiwan is a state and the only reason it's not universally recognized as one is China.

"Palestine" has no defined territory, no government, and really no capacity to interact with other states as one.

Wikipedia goes on to say: "There are also entities that do not have control over any territory or do not unequivocally meet the declarative criteria for statehood but have been recognised to exist as sovereign entities by at least one other state." including Palestine in this list.

It feels like the statehood of Palestinians should be a matter between them, Israel, Jordan and Egypt, the three countries that own the land that Palestinians desire to have as their state. Can the world declare that California is a state if the US doesn't want it to be?

Btw re: admission to the UN: "The requisite conditions are five in number: to be admitted to membership in the United Nations, an applicant must (1) be a State; (2) be peace-loving; (3) accept the obligations of the Charter; (4) be able to carry out these obligations; and (5) be willing to do so."

Palestinians are not a country. What other members of the UN are not countries? I believe other countries have opposed to the Palestinians becoming UN members. The last time around 9 countries voted against and 25 abstained. So I guess 34 did not support that purely symbolic vote (since the UN general assembly can't give the Palestinians membership, only the UN security council can).

It's a body made out of countries. Many of which are not free, not democratic, do not support basic human rights. What has the UN done that's turned great and made the world a better place? Top 3 examples?

It's worth mentioning that Rabin's murder was almost certainly related/triggered to the wave of suicide bombing attacks by Hamas that came as a response to the peace process. The Israeli right was up in arms about how the peace process was leading to terrorism. I.e. the root cause of this was Palestinians, not Israelis.

Israel did use to build fighter jets. It built the Kfir. It planned to build a next gen airplane (The Lavi) but was pressured by the US to cancel that plan and instead buy F16s. The US also affects control of what Israeli weapons systems can be sold to who. Presumably part of the agreement to cancel the Lavi project was some sort of US commitment to supply Israel instead.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IAI_Lavi

Sure. I'm a Zionist. No problem with that.

And yes, you're totally wrong on that account.