> Given that designation as a separate state, complaining that they can't vote in Israeli elections is like complaining that Canadians can't vote in US elections.

I don’t remember the US ever occupying Canada.

Not like that at all, and this is a clearly biased take even considering this line on its own.

Do you recall the US occupying the Philippines? Did they get a vote?

How about Puerto Rico today?

The US is still a democratic republic.

Why is your definition of democratic the valid one?

Mine is, a country is only a real democracy if ALL people it rules over have the same set of rights. Israel isn't a democracy and so isn't the DRC, despite the fact that it has democratic in its name.

USA is not a real democracy either in your definition.

Correct.

I like how these people think the checkmate move is assume the person they’re talking to is a blind supporter of the USA for some reason, and have zero response when they realize that rationally applying the same rules to everybody really does mean Israel doesn’t pass the bar for a democracy.

Where do you get these ideas?

Yes, Filipinos did vote for a territorial government as laid out in the Philippine Organic Act of 1902.

Yes, Puerto Ricans vote. It's a territory. They have their own devolved government.

At no point did Filipinos have the ability to vote for Senators, Congressmen, or the President. Same for Puerto Ricans. US has other territories too, by the way, with the same restrictions.

You have no problem calling the US a democracy, but when the same rules are applied elsewhere you have a problem?

Nothing like moving the goal posts, conflating a whole bunch of different issues, and then projecting statements on to me when you’re called out nonsense.

Hope that works out for you.

I actually don’t think the United States is a functioning democracy for what is worth.

The people of PR voted against becoming a State.

And if they hadn't, would that make the US less of a democratic republic? Not relevant.

Also, see Guam, US Virgin Islands, etc who didn't vote for anything.

It’s incredibly relevant as there has yet to be an election if people in Palestine want to be a part of Israel.

Look, you really like to talk with confidence, but every time you bring up a a point, you pull a whatabout. Have you even looked into what the people you’re so very concerned with want? That’s the most relevant part of all. It’s not your feelings. It’s what the people you say you care about want. It doesn’t appear they want what you want for them, and you’re big mad about that bro.

Keep carrying that white man’s burden.

> > Given that designation as a separate state, complaining that they can't vote in Israeli elections is like complaining that Canadians can't vote in US elections.

> I don’t remember the US ever occupying Canada.

I'm confused by this.

Normally under international law, it is illegal to allow people in occupied territory to vote or otherwise integrate them into civil government.

Israel has even gotten criticized by the UN human rights council for allowing elections in occupied territory (in golan heights, so not Palestinian occupied territory) http://undocs.org/A/HRC/37/L.18

I’m not sure why you’re confused.

An occupying force holding its own elections in an occupied place is indeed illegal (your reference was about Israeli people holding elections in the Golan heights).

Comparing an _occupied_ people’s attempt to hold elections in the occupied place (Palestinian people in Palestine) to two separate non-occupied states (USA and Canada) is nonsense.

Hope that helps.

There is an argument to be made that if the Palestinians have to ask permission to become a real state from Israel, then their "government" isn't really a government, and that all the Palestinians are in thrall to Tel Aviv, a government which rules them but does not represent them, whose laws bind them but for whom they may not vote.

There is such a valid argument. But the Oslo accords officially created the PA, which rules over the Palestinians in the West Bank. And Gaza is ruled by Hamas. The Palestinians are governed by a mix of Israeli military law and PA laws, which originate from Jordan, I believe.

Some argue that in practice, Israel has control over all the Palestinians, so in practice there is one large apartheid state. I don't believe this argument is valid, for the reasons I outlined above; I think it doesn't make sense for Palestinians to fight for their own State, have a semi-autonomous government that rules over them in practice (two if you count Hamas), fight to get international recognition for this Palestinian State and get it from many countries, but claim that they are being ruled by Tel Aviv.

(Of course the situation is murky - I think the important thing isn't what label we give this, it's to know what the facts are. Those above are the relevant facts, I believe. If you agree with me on the facts but choose to label it in one way vs. another, I think that's a less important discussion at that point.)

And Bibi supported and kept Hamas in power so Israeli society could labor under the delusion that keeping Palestinians out of sight and out of mind was a viable plan. Until it wasn’t.

He’s been elected again and again, and has been steadfast in preventing self governance from ever taking hold. To the degree Israel is a “democracy” it is because there is voter consensus that there can be no Palestinian self rule.

He's a believer. He want several things that can't be well understood by the non-religious. He wants the al Aqsa mosque demolished/removed, so the temple can be rebuilt. He wants all of Jerusalem. And, even what he would call all of "Greater Israel" eventually. In that order, but he's willing to settle for those things out of order if it looks possible. A peaceful neighboring Palestine doesn't allow for any of that. A peaceful, neighboring Palestine wouldn't, for instance, ever do anything that could be used as an excuse to seize territory, or to remove Palestinians (via any of the various forms of ethnic cleansing). This thing in Gaza may well have been dragged out, just in the hopes that the people in the West Bank would be provoked into doing something, or that Iron Dome might shoot down something in just such a way as that the debris would fall on al Aqsa.

All of this will seem like the dumbest bullshit to you. Why would anyone want that? But there are millions of people in Israel that want nothing more than this. And he is their leader.

None of that seems accurate, not when it comes to Netanyahu. He's not a religious zealot and almost certainly isn't pursuing anything because of religion.

> But there are millions of people in Israel that want nothing more than this. And he is their leader.

I don't think there are millions in Israel that want Al Aqsa demolished, that is a delusion that has no historical basis at all. There are of course religious extremists who want really bad things, but they are a relatively small minority of the population.

Most of the population just wants to live in peace and safety. They believe there is no safety to be found with a Palestinian state next door (with good reason, see what happened in Gaza).

> This thing in Gaza may well have been dragged out, just in the hopes that [...] or Iron Dome might shoot down something in just such a way as that the debris would fall on al Aqsa.

This is a ridiculous line of thinking. Hamas (and Iran) are shooting rockets at Israel, including at al Aqsa, Israel is spending millions with the iron dome to shoot down those rockets, and you think it's part of a nefarious Israeli plan to destroy al Aqsa?

> I don't think there are millions in Israel that want Al Aqsa demolished,

There are well over 1 million ultra-orthodox. There's also a not-really-countable number of non-ultra-orthodox who want the same thing, but their opinions are a bit more diverse. Say, somewhere around 1.6-2 million. That's plural millions, as far as I understand grammar.

>They believe there is no safety to be found with a Palestinian state next door (with good reason, see what happened in Gaza).

They also believe there's no safety for a single state solution, because Palestinians will eventually become the majority, and vote out the jews. There is of course, an unspoken third option as well. No one would admit to favoring that.

> Israel is spending millions with the iron dome to shoot down those rockets,

The debris has to land somewhere. It doesn't just evaporate. Could someone finagle it so that it lands where they want? Would be a beat trick. Just have to wait for the right trajectory, one would think.

> There are well over 1 million ultra-orthodox. There's also a not-really-countable number of non-ultra-orthodox who want the same thing, but their opinions are a bit more diverse. Say, somewhere around 1.6-2 million. That's plural millions, as far as I understand grammar.

First, you're assuming that all ultra-Orthodox want to see Al Aqsa demolished, which is a huge assumption that is probably not correct.

Second, in a country of 9 million people, I think it's misleading to say that "millions want" when referring to less than 2 million. I think saying about a country of 9m people that "millions want to see an incredibly important place/monument destroyed" gives a very wrong impression of what is the general spirit here, and is especially misleading because "Al Aqsa is in danger" has been a common worry of the Palestinians for a hundred years, with very little factual basis for that worry, IMO.

> They also believe there's no safety for a single state solution, because Palestinians will eventually become the majority, and vote out the jews.

Of course. The one state solution is a ridiculous non-solution as acknowledged by every official international body that has ever considered the problem, and as acknowledged by about 99% of the people living in the region. And as agreed by the parties themselves in the Oslo accords and ensuing future peace process in which the plan was to find a way to create two states living side by side.

> There is of course, an unspoken third option as well. No one would admit to favoring that.

Unfortunately, you're wrong about that. There is a small, minority, but currently influential group of Israelis that pretty explicitly espouses the idea of, in their words, "voluntary relocation". Which everyone reads as a pretty implicit call for ethnic cleansing.

> The debris has to land somewhere. It doesn't just evaporate.

No kidding. Plenty of people have been hurt by this debris, and I've seen pieces of it - those can be pretty big chunks of metal falling on people's heads.

Still, the implication that it would somehow be part of Israel's plan to destroy Al Aqsa to keep the war going so that maybe debris from rockets that Israel shoots down would land on Al Aqsa, and the implication that this would then be Israel's fault, and not the fault of the people shooting the rockets at Al Aqsa in the first place, is... I don't know what to even call it beyond morally absurd.

You're partially right, and I've stated many times that I think Israel has acted in morally wrong ways for the last 15 years of Netanyahu's rule.

But I think it's important to understand that the reason the Israeli electorate went down this path is because of the failure of the peace process in the 1990s and 2000s. The Israeli public multiple times elected leaders pursuing peace. Even former right-wing hawks turned around and pursued peace. And some things came out of it, like the creation of the PA which gave limited self-governance to the Palestinians.

But eventually, the Palestinians turned down what were perceived to be very serious and generous peace offers by the Israeli public, walked away from the negotiations, and started a terrible wave of terror attacks.

Similarly, Israel removed all settlers and all army personnel from Gaza, the result of which was the election of Hamas, with a sworn mission to destroy Israel, and constant rocket attacks on Israel.

So the way the Israeli public (correctly) sees it, there is no "partner for peace", and even when peace was very seriously pursued and positive steps taken to give Palestinians what they ostensibly wanted, the result was violence directed at Israel.

That is why there was a turn away from pursuing peace and just trying to "live with the situation".

Nit: the Israeli government is in Jerusalem, not Tel Aviv.

A city of Palestine? This strengthens the point.

In what sense do you mean that Jerusalem is a city of Palestine?

Likely that it (or, specifically, East Jerusalem, West Jerusalem was Israeli both under the partition and the 1949 Armistice Agreement) is part of the territory Israel occupied after 1967 that wasn't Israel, despite later being decalred as annexed, and is generally not viewed internationally as Israeli territory.

Likely, but since as you say West Jerusalem is Israeli, and the government of Israel is in West Jerusalem on a practical basis, calling it a Palestinian city is both wrong, and making a point that I think is worth stating explicitly.