if not for Israel's Iron Dome system, the fight would be much worst ??

[Mariatenebre]

Cracker Barrel fires gay peple on the spot. Chik-Fil-A donates money to 2nd class citizenship efforts (or at least, did, until the hard PR spank.) The Scouts as an organization may not be a "Christian organization" but bucktons of its membership is, and boots gay people.

I don't really see any religion except the ones that sorta stay out of the temporal stuff for the most part like the broader mainstream Buddhist sects as having much claim to a "well WE don't persecute anyone, we're better than those other evil religions that do." Because it's all coming from the same place, fundamentalist interpretations of really friggin old holy books.

Well as an update Cracker Barrel does not fire gay people anymore although it did. Chick Fil A is still anti gay though.

Chick-fil-a is tasty for fast food and the owner is free in the country I live in to donate to whom he wishes... just as I am free to not eat his chicken...

Yeah when he donates to groups that wants gays dead and finances such things as the Kill the Gays Bill in Uganda there is a problem.

I can't imagine a whole lot of people who would like it if after 200 years on their land in the U.S., England came over and gave it back to the Native American tribe that used to live there. Can you? lol.

It's not really a religious conflict and the teachings of the various holy books aren't really pertinent. Take any two religious countries or cultures and put them into geopolitical conflict and they will make it religious on the flags and banners and propaganda, but that's almost never what wars are actually about.

Well first of all the Jews needed a homeland free of persecution so that is why Israel was created. Israel was also created to give discriminated Jews a seperate place from the Arab Pallys who wouldn't give them basic human dignity. In America Native peoples own land and have equal rights. Jews could never be treated equal in Palestine or in any other Muslim country.

Religion has become one of the banner causes, just like here in the US "Creationism," is a banner cause that isn't actually about religion - it's about solidarity and separating "us," from "them." Which is why it's pointless to argue science with a Creationist, because that is NOT the point.

History has amply shown that Jews and Arabs can live together, so what's different now?

Jews and Arabs can live together. However Muslims can not live with anyone without treating them like shit. Plus when they conquered the Jews they treated them like second class citizens as Dhimmis. The Muslim treatment of Dhimmis rivals even that of Apartheid and segregation.

Ya know? I will have to agree with you. Palestine should be able to be a country. Israel is being, what do I want to say here?, irresponsible. They, well no, there will never be a solution to this. This has been going on for how many centuries? I do believe Palestine needs to be a country, but Israel needs to get with it and just let them! There! That made sense, didn't it?
Sorry, a lot of Canadian Mist and water tonite.

Israel can not let them be a country when they wish to destroy them. Palestine had made it clear that they will not be satisfied with their own country but want all of Israel destroyed.

This surprises me. I haven't had a problem with you before this. I thought you came here and made your positions quite well.
Forget my opening to this post, bourbon don't ya know. But I have to point out to you this is quite vicious. Please go back to when you came here.

Of course my post is viscious. It describes the butchering Pallys and their Liberal apologists.

Yes; absolutely. Fatah - the organisation formerly headed by Yasser Arafat, and currently headed by Mahmoud Abbas, the President of Palestine. Hamas merely won parliamentary elections and then basically conducted a civil war to control Gaza without consulting the legal President. Fatah continues to control the West Bank and the bulk of Palestinian territory (except for Israeli colonial incursions of course).


Partly what we have seen in the last week is Hamas trying to convince Palestinians to shoot its way to statehood (an approach which deserves to fail), and Fatah trying to convince Palestinians to negotiate and use the tools of diplomacy (an approach encouraged by the UN, obviously, and which deserves to succeed.) This doesn't suit the madman Israeli prime minister Netanyahu, who "retaliated" by ordering more colonisation of Palestine by Israeli extremist theocrats.

I was delighted to see France and the UK recall their ambassadors to Israel to object . Something the US and Canada should have done as well.

The best chance for peace comes from the electoral failure of Hamas and Netanyahu, with a successful showing by Abbas, and probably Tzipi Livni on the Israeli side. So hopefully they'll all have elections soon.

The Israelis have full right to take the land form the so called Palestinians when they are fighting to destroy them. This is simple logic. It is France and UK with their clear Liberal stupidity and anti semitism who need to stop siding with savages.

I dunno, the problem with Israel to me (as I've voiced before on this forum) is you can't have twelve children and give candy to one and expect the other eleven to play nice. No matter how many brilliant diplomats you toss at the situation, nothing positive will become of it. I do not fault Israelis or Palestinians or their offshoots for the issue, mostly the United Nations for even creating the Jewish state to begin with without acknowledging other cultures and ethnicities in the area. Ya'll know, WW2 aftermath and all that jazz.

The passive-aggressiveness and borderline psychopathic personalities required to be in international relations/politics allowed me to shrug off any prospective career in that arena with relative ease after my Freshmen year...

You only give candy to children that play nice. Kids that act like brats and thugs don't get any candy.

 

[xbuzzerx]

That's "tenet", a seriously-held belief. A "tenant" is someone residing on some premises.

If peace really were a "tenant" of all religions, we wouldn't have any problems. Unfortunately, although it is a tenet, it is also frequently a shunned cousin.

Sadly so true.

One thing that baffled the Romans was how some particular piece of land could be considered "holy". Too bad they didn't stamp the concept out.

The Romans themselves considered Rome sacred in a way and had special laws surrounding even entering it so I'm not sure why the concept mystified them.

Islam does endorse killing and violence. It advocates Jihad against all disbelievers as these verses show.
http://www.thereligionofpeace.com/Quran/023-violence.htm

I can also show many verses which are racist, sexist and homophobic.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jihad

Jihad is about as misunderstood in the English language as the word "geisha" is.

It could be interpreted as anything from "maintain your faith in the face of people trying to restrict it" to "defense against an invader of another religion" to 20,000 things in between.

One thing is certain however is that if you try to claim jihad exclusively or primarily means "go out and aggressively war on anyone not Muslim" you're going to have a majority of Muslim scholars/theologians disagreeing with your definition of it.

Additionally I'm certain you don't mean to imply that things in other religions cannot be interpreted in ways that seem harsh, cruel or negative to modern sensibilities. Like exiling women who are in their "unclean time" or cutting off your hand if it causes you to sin or hitting your children with rods.

 

[Kulindahr]

The Romans themselves considered Rome sacred in a way and had special laws surrounding even entering it so I'm not sure why the concept mystified them.

For one's home city, they understood it, which played a small part in granting Jerusalem more privileges. But regarding open areas where sheep covered the ground with shit to be holy made about as much sense to them as a God who couldn't be represented in stone.

 

[White Eagle]

I guess I need to apologize for last nite. It dawned on me this AM that today would have been our 32nd anniversary.
The cats caused it.

 

[Stardreamer]

Just as an aside on the subject title, Iron Dome has performed far better than expected. I understand the local mayors in cities all though southern Israel are fighting to get new units placed to cover their communities. The Short Range ballistic missiles and artillery range that Iron Dome operates in was thought to be impossible to effectively protect against but the system works. After a lot of ridicule from skeptics over the years Missile Defense seems to be proving out in all the ranges.