What is your opinion on Israel and why? See more specifics...

It is the only functioning Democracy in the Middle East, and helps stabilize the region. It behaves intolerably badly toward the occupied territories. There must be a two-State solution, but the Palestinians could have had that long ago and made many strategic errors to deny it to themselves, which they continue to do. Zionism was a 19th C. phenomenon – the Shoah undoubtedly sped the process, but it was already well underway.

Oh. As to demographics. No State willingly allows its own destruction.

My opinion comes down to when two fight, two are guilty. In this case, even more than two. Terribly complicated situation over there. I haven’t investigated the topic that much so I can’t really say anything sensible about it.

Anyway, I’m curious as to why Israel would have to move away from democracy if the Arab population would outnumber the Jewish population, in your opinion?

Israel as an idea is fine- it has a right to exist and good reasons to exist. It’s political behavior and the USA’s complete backing of their behavior, however, is not. Israel has done things in its wars and with its occupied territories that would cause the UN to step in if it was any other country, but since it’s the USA’s weird little cousin, they don’t.

Yeah, we (America) kind of invented the idea back in the 40s of a Jewish State in the Middle East, but we (America) have been backing it up for all the wrong reasons ever since.

I’ve actually talked to Republicans who have said “Supporting Israel is great because it is one step closer to triggering the End of Days. We have a biblical mandate to support Israel.” And that’s just plain awful.

Natalie Portman is from Israel. How can it be that bad?

I support Israel’s right to exist. @pdworkin pretty much summed it up for me. The only thing I would add is that the Palestinians have fought every inch of the way to make the 2 state solution possible. Sharon was a monster, but then, after his demise, things were a bit better. The guerilla tactics and over the border bombing solves nothing. The inability of the Palestinians to compromise will make the success of a 2 state solution impossible. Our support of them as a country is not one-sided. There are other Arab and European nations that support/have peaceful relations with Israel, including Egypt.

Neither side is without fault, and the Israeli military has done some horrible things, but being as Israel is mostly secular, and the Palestinians are ruled by archaic Shariah laws, and other religious nonsense, I will side with the Israelis. Both sides are guilty of crimes against humanity.

There is no easy solution to the conflict, nor will there ever be as long as the extremists on either side have control.

That region has been historically in conflict for a long time. As for the Six Day War in 1967, the Arabs were told not to start something they couldn’t finish, and Israel kicked their ass and handed it to them. That loss of face has been a stick up the Arabs butt for years.

The end of days rhetoric mentioned by @aphilotus is nonsense of the most maddening kind. Shows why the whole Middle Eastern Religious tripe is in need of another Reformation.

@Vincentt I tried not make my opinion too obvious in the question, in fact I am still making and changing opinions in my own mind regarding the topic. That was part of the reason I was curious to peoples ideas on the topic. But, to answer you question…as the majority shifts, more people will be voted in who are Arab if the government is a representation of the population through majority vote. If you have a basic belief that the Muslim Arabs, in this case primarily the Palestinians, will have very different ideas about how to run a country, what should be law, very different values, then there would be fear attached to this shift in population. It would be way more drastic than the Republicans vs. the Dems I would guess. Some argue Israel could not tolerate this, or rather the Jewish people, so something would have to change. Of course there are many Palestinians who do have similar values as Israeli’s, I don’t mean to paint them with one brush. Anyway, this is another reason why many support the two-state solution (Pres. Clinton actually touched on this recently in an interview I saw).

@eponymoushipster Gene Simmons too.

@JLeslie something for everyone then. let’s get some latkes and chill.

I support Israel, but I don’t support their geopolitics. I believe the two state solution is the only one that can have a future. But only Israel can make that happen.

Why would arabs not be functioning democratic citizens? I don’t believe arabs will breed away the jews. They have been around for some time. I think that Israel will prevail, and it is not the only democracy in the region.

@aphilotus, the idea of a Jewish state extends back much further than the ‘40s, and its modern (circa 1948) incarnation was spearheaded more by the British and the UN.

@kevbo Haven’t had my coffee yet. You’re right, of course. I was overgeneralizing the whole FDR Experience.

I Support Israel, probably for religious reasons mostly. I am not as up on current politics as I am on ancient politics (Bible) so my support is probably not as educated as it should be.
I also support the Palestinians. When I was in Israel in 2001, I noticed that the Israeli’s controlled the airport and the tourism industry. As much as I loved my guide, he made sure to steer us away from the Palestinian areas (and shops.) He even warned us against going into the Palestinian sections of the old city. (Which we pretty much ignored.)
I felt really safe in Israel, even though I was there just as the Palestinians were seizing the Church of the Nativity in Bethlehem and the tanks were rolling in.
I felt sad though, because it was obvious that the Palestinians were being economically oppressed.
I have never completely wrapped my head around the whole conflict, and I know there is a whole “Big picture” that’s not real clear to me, But these were my observations as a tourist. There is something really special about the place that’s for sure. When we arrived I had to fight an overwhelming urge to drop to my knees and kiss the ground, right there on the tarmac. If I felt like I was “home,” I can see how so many other want to fight for it to be home too.
Edit:
I just went back and read your question. I had the Holocaust discussion with our guide when I was there. I was in tears at the Holocaust museum and we had a long talk.. I brought up that very question and it was like he had never even thought of it before. I would recant our conversation, but it would get into a religious discussion and I don’t want to go there. In summary, we left the conversation thinking that the nation of Israel might be the only good thing that came out of the Holocaust, since it came at a time when they had the compassion of the entire world.

In my mind, if Palestine stopped attacking, so would Israel, but if Israel stopped attacking Palestine wouldn’t. This is why I side with Israel.

this is just what I think, most likely influenced by media and such, don’t really have an basis for it.

As I understand it, in the original Palestinian mandate of the 1920’s-1930’s, Britain gave over 70% of the original land called “Palestine” to the Palestinians. The land was east of the Jordan river and was called “Trans-Jordan” at the time. The intention of the Brits was to give Trans-Jordan to the Palestinians and the small piece of land west of the Jordan river to the Jews. When the new mandate was being created in the late 1940’s, the Arabs in Trans-Jordan up and declared themselves an independent nation, claiming no ties to the Palestinians west of the river, even though technically, culturally and historically they are the same ethnic group. This left a sizable population of Arabs without a land, creating the modern day conflict. I could be way off about this, but it seems to me that it was the nation of Jordan that took away land from the Palestinians, not the Israelis. I believe you can read up on the details of this on Wikipedia.

It is not in the interest of most Arab nations to fix this problem because it gives them a common enemy to unite their people against. I might sound like a conspiracy theorist, but does anyone really believe that the Arab governments, like the Saudi Arabian government, are not corrupt? The royal families control billions of dollars of wealth while allowing their citizens to live in poverty. They live carefree, Western-influenced lives of extravagance and decadence, while pushing fundamentalism on its people. The best way to distract your citizens from the corruption of the government is to give them an enemy to rally against and a holy mission in life. Hell, Dubya did it to the American people a few short years ago with the war on Iraq.

Ok, back to the OP questions: Yes, I support Israel for lots of different reasons. I think of that land as the final refuge of the Jews. Even in the freedom of America, I still think that things could go sour for Jews yet again (history does repeat itself) and I imagine I’d be forced to run off to Israel. I also believe the Jews have earned that land. They took what was basically a desert and turned it into a fertile paradise. For the work the Jews put in to the land, they deserve to keep it.

As for solutions, I have no idea. The way the land is being cut-up does not seem reasonable because either Israel or Palestine will have to be cut in half to the connect the Gaza and West Bank areas. The US didn’t require Canada to cede a thin strip of land to connect Washington State to Alaska, but this seems to be what they want to do in Israel. Still, two-states seems better than what’s happening right now.

I sometimes wonder how feasible Israel is as a nation. If Arabs were allowed full citizenship, they would quickly become a majority, effectively turning Israel into an Arab state. So in this global age, Israel has to protect its existence by only allowing Jewish citizens? I just don’t know how this could be sustained for a long period of time.

The Holocaust definitely gave more weight to the Zionist movement of the time. If the Holocaust didn’t happen, I suspect Israel might have come to fruition at a much later date or we would have a very strong Zionist movement today.

Natalie Portman, Bar Rafaeli.. the list goes on! It’s a beautiful country full of contrast and diversity. I support the existence of the country.. as for supporting the government or political views of said government.. to a point. I do however feel that there should be no restrictions on people who have been living there for generations.. there is no reason why they cannot co-exist and share a country.

@Dr_C bar rafaeli, good call.

@Judi I love your subjective/tourist view. Thank you for sharing.

@drdoombot about your first paragraph, I was unaware of these specific details. An aquaintance of mine; when I lived in Raleigh, NC; who was Palestinian said her sister returned to the middle east to live in Jordan (she had been living in TN) which was the first I knew that Palestinians sought out Jordan, and now with the info you have provided you have definitely peaked my interest.

After reading @drdoombot answer I feel compelled to share more of my opinions and curiosities about the subject. I too like the idea that I have a place to go if other countries turn against us. But, I am not sure my own fears or worst case scenarios justify supporting Israel if it is not a righteous cause. So I want to learn more to be sure it is on the side of right to fight for it. I want to know that if it were reversed, and I was on the “other” side that I would still think it is right to fight for Israel.

From my understanding Jews were already buying up the land in the territory even before the UN decision. So they had a lot of ownership. I also agree they have made the country and the land prosperous in the last 70 years, so at this point I can’t see taking the land/country away from the Jewish people, since it seems to have been given to them in a “legal” manner. If it ever was decided that the Jews had to leave I would want them to set fire to everything and let the new settlers start from scratch.

But, I don’t believe in the religious argument. I don’t think you get the land because you were there first. Then we in America might as well move from our land and homes and give it back to the Native Americans. And the idea that the Jews are going to rebuild the temple and fulfill some biblical prophecy is just annyoying to me. But, I do care about the history and protecting the religious monuments of all three religions of Abraham that can be found in Israel.

Some days I wish America had given Wyoming to the Jews after the Holocaust (I choose that state randomly) to give them a safe place to live and prosper. In the end, the people, my people, are more important to me than the land. When I listen to that crazy Iranian President I think his point must make sense to many Arabs if the Germans committed the horrors of the holocaust, why not give the Jews Germany? It does seem that Israel was almost given randomly by an Imperialistic government to the Jews after the Holocaust. I think the countries in favor of it had more geopolitical reasons than caring about the Jews themselves.

I have heard that Palestinian Israeli’s are treated like second class citizens, if that is true I find that to be awful.

I am in favor of the two-state solution, because I don’t see how there can be peace the way it is now.

I hold out hope that the Palestinian leaders will be willing to compromise in the future, I continue to believe there will be peace in the middle east.

Israeli, Arab, Jewish, Muslim. How about people. People. Religion is a poor excuse, race is even worse. How about we call ourselves members of the human race and live together humanely?

@tinyfaery: Well put!

@tinyfaery i agree!
are fairies people too?

@tinyfaery I would love that. I would love if the whole world believed in separation of church and state, and there were no countries based on a particular religion, and no need to fear discrimination. I wish that were the reality.

@JLeslie this is all starting to sound like a John Lennon song

@raredenver That or Gene Rodenberry’s idea of a perfect world.

I often wonder how Ireland would have turned out if the British had responded to IRA attacks in a similar fashion to the natural Israeli response. To transplant a western culture into an eastern region because of a religious affinity and arm them with enough firepower to decimate a continent, is bonkers.

@mammal You’re using a mixed analogy. Britain gave the land to the Jews, the settlers decided to become a democracy, then the US provided them with some arms (the Israelis developed the rest of their arms, as well as their own tactics and military training). There was no one power responsible for the way things happened in that region.

Rather an ignorant remark, @mammal. Perhaps it’s time for you to crack a book.

@pdworkin Well, he has a point in that there are similarities between IRA and the Jewish terrorist groups in the 40’s and their fight leading up to the creation of Israel. But it is as @drdoombot says. But still, rockets, helicopters and weapons killing Palestinians still come with the “Made in the US” on it.

And it says Made in Iran on the ones coming over the Lebanese border. Who is the Saint here?

@pdworkin True.