Basically telling the US to attack Iran or else...

http://www.haaretz.com/news/diplomacy-de....

Quote:

Dennis Ross: Saudi king vowed to obtain nuclear bomb after Iran

Former senior U.S. diplomat Dennis Ross confirmed for the first time on Tuesday night that Saudi Arabia’s King Abdullah has explicitly warned the U.S. that if Iran obtains nuclear weapons, Saudi Arabia will seek to do so as well.

“If they get nuclear weapons, we will get nuclear weapons,” Abdullah told Ross during a meeting between the two in April 2009. Ross said he responded to the King’s assertion with a lengthy appeal against nuclear proliferation, but after hearing him out, the king responded by repeating the same line: “If they get nuclear weapons, we will get nuclear weapons.”

And Saudi Arabia would be able to get some real fast from Pakistan...

Earlier this year :
http://www.theaustralian.com.au/nocookie....

Quote:

Saudi Arabia to acquire nuclear weapons to counter Iran

SAUDI Arabia could acquire nuclear warheads within weeks of Iran developing atomic weapons as the threat from Tehran triggers an arms race across the Middle East.

In the event of a successful Iranian nuclear test, Riyadh would immediately launch a twin-track nuclear weapons program.

Warheads would be purchased off the shelf from abroad, with work on a new ballistic missile platform getting under way to build an immediate deterrent, according to Saudi sources.

At the same time, the Saudi kingdom would upgrade its planned civil nuclear program to include a military dimension, beginning uranium enrichment to develop weapons-grade material in the long term.

Now this is basically ``confirmed`` by Dennis Ross.

gah - give up.

Where are we going in this handbasket?

Yep, the Arabs hate/fear the Persians and vice-versa.

-Uwe-

the article should read:

If Iran gets Nukes, do we have to admit that we already have them?

Nothing new under the sun,

Germany was working on nuke weapons, the US had to acquire them before they did.
The US got nuke weapons, the Soviet Union had to develop them, too.
The Brits got them because they wanted to try to stay relevant after the loss of empire.
The French got them because they didn't trust the US to defend them from the Soviets if/when push came to shove.
The Chinese got them to defend themselves from the US and Soviets.
India got them to defend themselves from China.
Pakistan got them to defend themselves from India.
Israel got them so they could be the biggest power in the Middle East.
South Africa wanted them to defend themselves against the rest of black Africa.
Japan wants them to protect themselves from China.
NK has them to defend themselves from the US and others.
Iraq & Libya wanted them to defend themselves from the US and Israel.
Iran wants them to defend themselves from Israel and the US.

And the beat goes on, and on, and on.

I think that I, personally, need a nuclear bomb. I need to protect myself from my protectors.

Peterm wrote..

Israel got them so they could be the biggest power in the Middle East.

Here is the problem with peoples perceptions of Israel in a nutshell. We don't give a **** about being a power in the Middle east, we really just want to be left alone, to trade, to live, to exist. The nuclear weapons are there to stop the mass of Muslim countries from trying to annihilate us, again.

Your view that this was a power play for Israel is disturbing. Do you have anything to back that up?

IMO, it is fairly obvious that Israel intends to annex all of its currently remaining territorial gains through the 1967 war with the exception of Bantustan-like pockets in the West Bank. Based on its Lebanon policies, it also appears that it intends to eventually acquire all territory up to the Litani. Neither is feasible unless they are the biggest power in the Middle East.

You are very disingenuous about the intent of the "mass of Muslim countries". The Arab League unanimously offered decades ago to normalize all aspects of their relationship with Israel if Israel agreed to return the territories conquered in the '67 conflict. Israel categorically refuses to even consider that.

You are absolutely correct on this point: Israel just wants to be left alone with all of its conquered territory, plus with whatever territory it can take in the future.

Quote:

You are very disingenuous about the intent of the "mass of Muslim countries". The Arab League unanimously offered decades ago to normalize all aspects of their relationship with Israel if Israel agreed to return the territories conquered in the '67 conflict. Israel categorically refuses to even consider that.

A propaganda lie from an offer made in bad faith. You see Israel did exactly what you say they never would for a real peace with Egypt. The moral thing to do would be an exchange of populations across a defensible border - basically the Jordan River. Israel has already absorbed the mass of Jews from the Arab world. The Arab countries should be required to absorb the Arab populations that currently stand in the way of a peaceful settlement.

Sushihorn -

The "defensible border" argument is fatuous. It basically requires acceptance of a principle that a country is free to conquer territory outward from its original borders until it reaches a "defensible" border. That would make it perfectly acceptable for France to invade Germany and seize all territory up to the Rhine. For India to invade Pakistan to take all territory up to the Indus. For Poland to invade Lithuania to take all territory up to the Nemunas. Similar examples abound for lots of countries, with and without hostile relationships with one another. That rationale is what Israel uses to justify annexing the Golan, Bantustanizing the West Bank, and is the rationale for annexing the parts of Lebanon south of the Litani.

Your forced population transfer argument is Kafkaesque and is nothing other than an attempt to ethnically cleanse conquered territory of its inhabitants. Yeah, there are war crimes associated with that, but apparently in your view, those shouldn't apply to Israel.

I'm personally tired of the "Anything for Israel" meme. The sooner people realize that it's a NeoCon idea, the better.

The completely unbiblical idea that "Israel is in the Land" is false. That little sliver of land was carved out by the Rothschilds, who had and have felonious motives, and they will be evicted from it once more.

It in no way resembles the land that God set aside for Israel and will give them once they repent and accept the Messiah they rejected over 2000 years ago.

No offense, but I'm going to call ****ALL on all y'all in this one.

Israel has no "right" to the land in my eyes, any more than the "Palestinians" or anyone else who lays claim to that land. It's probably the MOST sought-after and fought-over land this world has ever known, and has been ****ed and re-****ed throughout history more times than any of us can even truly know.


Whoever's got the might, the money and the sheer testicular fortitude to take and keep that land "deserves" it, end of story. I have ZERO hatred for the Jews, consider myself a "mostly" Christian, and would welcome any Muslim who just wants to live in PEACE and be left the **** alone.

Sadly, anyone who wants and/or has power in that region doesn't WANT to be left alone, they always want more. Personally... if the entire "Holy Land" was turned into a glass sheet (let ALL people out before it happens, give them a drop-dead date and NUKE the ****ing place to Kingdom Come), I'd be just ****ing fine. There *******s, fight over radioactive dust on the plain.

/rant


Sorry folks, I'm just tired of everyone claiming the same land and refusing to live WITH each other. This is why we can't have nice things.

I'm in favor of having Disney build a duplicate Israel somewhere in the western US, move all the Israelis into it, then let Iran and the Saudis and whoever the hell else wants them to build nukes. Lots of 'em. Hell, let's sell them nukes.

Wow Peterm99, you do have a way of ignoring key points of history and replacing them with your predefined template of thought concerning Israel's motives. You conveniently ignore that it was the mass of Arab countries that attacked us in 49 and were about to again in 67. Why that means we have to give anything back to anyone (back? to whom, Jordan? It wasn't theirs to begin with) is beyond me. I'm sure if the same situation was applied to you / your country, it would be a totally different matter. You would just bow down and graciously give the territory that you won through the blood of your Sons and Daughters back.

Defensible borders - I live on the so called green line on the eastern edge of Israel. The very same one that idiots like you want us to go back to for a national border. From here I can see, literally, the western border. It doesn't take a rocket scientist to figure out that the weaponry doesn't have to be advanced at all to hit the densely populated and commerce center of Israel. This we're supposed to leave open to a group of people that have sought our destruction since day 1 and continue to do so whenever they get an opportunity. Your argument here is just plain stupid if you weren't aware of the facts, but thats not the case with you, is it? You're quite aware of the facts and choose to push this bull**** anyhow.

Forced population transfer - it already happened to close to a million Jews, when they were forced to leave their properties and belongings in the Arab countries they were made to flee from. You're ok with that though. Here's a thought, those properties can be given to those Arabs that are displaced now, 65 years late.

Landshark, any respect I might have had for you and your posts just completely got blown out of the window with that last comment. Not only is our being returned to our homeland as promised in the Bible (you know, that book that you base your belief system in) a nefarious Rothschild scam (nice, protocol of the elders of zion anyone), but you completely belittle our religion saying we're going to have to convert to christianity eventually.

The list of A-holes on this site is getting longer by the day.

Yonatan... I also think that Israel should return to something similar to the 1967 borders, or some altered/negotiated form of it that allows the larger blocks of Israeli West Bank settlers to remain in exchange for other compromises in other areas.

Now, let me preface this by saying that I have every bit of respect for Israel in the world. But your settlement activities in the West Bank will end up being suicidal.

Why?

Demographics.

As Israeli settlements continue to grow in the West Bank, they are built up in areas around and surrounding existing pockets of existing Palestinian cities. The settlements are then connected with "Israeli-only" roads, walls, checkpoints, etc which only serve to force the Palestinians increasingly into "Bantustan" type cantons. Here's the problem... as the settlements continue to grow, you are also continuing to encircle more and more Palestinians in the process. These Palestinians almost outnumber Israelis, and their birth rates are much higher than those of Jewish Israelis.

The more Palestinian land you push into, the more Palestinians you inadvertently "surround", and the more outnumbered you become, in time, demographically... and, the more the Israeli government will increasingly need to resort to South African-type ethnic policy in order to both continue the settlement growth whilst simulataneously maintaining the Jewish nature of the Israeli state.

You're digging yourself a hole. And this was actually a concept that was described to me by an Israeli-American friend here in California... he says that Israelis refer to this as the "demographic time bomb".

Quote:

I live on the so called green line on the eastern edge of Israel. The very same one that idiots like you want us to go back to for a national border. From here I can see, literally, the western border. It doesn't take a rocket scientist to figure out that the weaponry doesn't have to be advanced at all to hit the densely populated and commerce center of Israel.

It seems that you are, by choice, in a highly indefensible position. Good thing you have good ol' Uncle Cheese to look after you.

Quote:

Forced population transfer - it already happened to close to a million Jews, when they were forced to leave their properties and belongings in the Arab countries they were made to flee from.

Well , first of all, "Jews" are from the tribe of Judah, and not everyone who lives in Israel is from the tribe of Judah. So when you say "Jews", are you only talking about a narrow band of people from one tribe of your country? Or do you mean "Hebrews"? Or "Israel"?

Second, does this negate your country's guilt for doing exactly the same thing to completely innocent men, women and children? An honest read on your own history will likely make you throw up.

Just to be clear, I'm in no way advocating for Arabs or Palestinians (if there is indeed such a thing). I'm just for honesty and balance in viewing the facts.

Peterm
You provide an excellent example of "fatuous" in your foolish arguments.

Your silly amateur philosophy requires real people to commit suicide in order to satisfy some obscure "principle" based on a tissue of lies. The Arabs in the so-called West Bank and Gaza have considerably less of a claim to the land than the Jews. The vast majority of them are descended from Egyptian and Syrian settlers that came to area as labor when Zionists created economic opportunities.

Read Mark Twain's Innocents Abroad for a description of the Holy Land in 1870. This would have been shortly before the formation of the Zionist movement and the place was basically a wasteland with a few tiny oases of population. In those few population centers there was a continuous Jewish presence so the concept you seem to depend upon is totally illegitimate. I suspect you must be European as they have been totally propagandized on the Arab Native, Jewish "settler" meme which blindly and stupidly equates Israeli Jews with European colonialism.

The entire concept of a "Palestinian" West Bank is itself based on ethnic cleansing. There were significant Jewish populations that were driven out by violence - most notably the series of massacres in Hebron starting in 1929.

Arabs make ****ty neighbors, as do muslims generally. Ask the Europeans who are increasingly victimized in their own cities by Arab and muslim gangs. Ask the Kurds who have been under the Arabs' thumb for centuries. Ask the Christian minorities of the Middle East who have been fleeing or converting under persecution for centuries. Ask the Armenians and Greeks who were subjected to genocide by the Turks and Arabs. Ask the Indians who are constantly on guard against Pakistan-based terrorist groups. Ask the Thais who are engaged in a low-level civil war in the south. Ask the African Christians and animists who are regularly subjected to slaving expediions.

Quote:

The Arabs in the so-called West Bank and Gaza have considerably less of a claim to the land than the Jews. The vast majority of them are descended from Egyptian and Syrian settlers that came to area as labor when Zionists created economic opportunities.

Bull****.

The Palestinians are direct ethnic brethren of what were the ORIGINAL "Jews" from pre-Christianic times. Hate to break the news to you, but Jesus was most likely olive skinned and probably very hard to discern from the ethnic stereotype that many contemporary Americans would call a "terrorist".

There was a Jewish diaspora into Europe and other places... but most of the indigenous Jewish folk of Palestine who remained IN Palestine, for the most part, converted to Islam, 500 years after Jesus had come and gone. Sure, some truly "native" Palestinian Jews remained Jewish and continued their practices... and for the most part they lived side by side rather relatively peacefully with the converts to the relatively new religion of "Islam" up until the 1940's. The BIG troubles didn't start in Palestine/Israel until the Europeanized Jews started returning to Palestine. It was the incoming Europeanized Jews who decided that the side by side arrangement was no longer acceptable, and that a new, "pure" Jewish only state should be established. And this began the concept of "Zionism"... which was a Euro-Jewish philosophy, and NOT AT ALL the philosophy of native Palestinian Jews who had been living RELATIVELY peacefully with their Islamic ethnic brethren for centuries.

Now, to yield to your point, I do NOT label European Jews who returned to Israel "colonists". They are Jews, and Israel is their homeland. Fair point. But to cavalierly brush aside the ethnic history of the region and conclude that all Islamic Palestinians have no right to live in what has been their homeland for centuries isn't very fair either. There needs to be a fair, negotiated territorial solution to this that stops short of forcing non-Jewish Palestinians from being forced to live in bantustans.

From what I hear from my Jewish friends here in the States, public opinion polls indicate that about half the Israeli population agrees with me. They will fiercely defend the state they have from agression, but want NO part of a greater "Zionist" movement and understand the problematic legacy that further settlements in the West Bank are creating, and WANT TO END IT.

Bjonsson
Other than a few tribes in the depths of Arabia, there is no evidence for mass conversion of Jews to islam except under extreme duress. There is certainly no evidence that the current Arab settlers are the descendents of the original nation of Israel. Rather, there is overwhelming evidence that they are largely recent colonists from Egypt and Syria. The evidence is linguistic, cultural and genetic.

You seem to have bought into the lie that islam was somehow tolerant. But Mohmmed himself massacred entire tribes of Arabian Jews who refused to convert. And his followers have continued that practice on many occasions. Utterly contrary to the propaganda, the first major pogrom against Jews in Europe was carried out by the muslims of Granda - you know that supposed bastion of "islamic tolerance" in a benighted Christian Europe. 4,000 Jews were massacred there in 1066 - an enormous number at a time when populations were far smaller. The Spanish learned bigotry and intolerance well from their muslim masters.

There were well-documented pogroms against Jews throughout the Arab world. The really good records only begin with the 19th century as Arab "historians" are often quite the storytellers. The history of massacre in the Holy Land is pretty one-sided. The Israelis have shown enormous restraint (foolishly IMO). The Arabs have made their own bed by their complete unwillingness to allow the Jews to live in peace. That has been true regardless of what the borders looked like.

There were terrorist attacks in huge numbers from 1948 to 1967. That makes it quite obvious that the Arabs are lying about the borders being the reason for their hostility. It is their baseless pride and their idiotic superstition that tells them islam is supposed to rule everything. The mere existence of any Jewish state whatsoever is a slap in the face to their mythology and their ethnic bigotry. The Arabs refuse to see themselves as they really are and that self-delusion feeds the conflict.

To those that advocate Israel should withdraw back to its 1967 borders, I ask:

Should the USA also withdraw back to its 1846 borders, giving all of Texas, Arizona, Utah, Nevada, and California, as well as parts of Oklahoma, Colorado and Wyoming back to Mexico?

-Uwe-

"I'm in favor of having Disney build a duplicate Israel somewhere in the western US"

Make something useful out of Nevada

Quote:

Should the USA also withdraw back to its 1846 borders, giving all of Texas, Arizona, Utah, Nevada, and California, as well as parts of Oklahoma, Colorado and Wyoming back to Mexico?

I wonder how many people would be peaceful here, if the UN decided to annex all that land back to Mexico today...

Bjonsson - the "demographics bomb" that you write of is a complete fabrication, just like the population numbers that the PA throws around. It political theater at its best, trying to mold a solution in a preferred direction based upon false data. The world seems to be big on this these days. Just look at the financial shenanigans that make up a majority of the items on this forum.

Also, your acceptance of a tribe of Palestinians living here continuously for the last 2000 years is ridiculous. You know nothing of the nomadic nature of the arab populations that have lived here.

Landshark - we are in a highly defensible position, if we are willing to tell the rest of the world to shove it up their collective asses. I for one am quite ready to do that. Additionally, if uncle cheese kept his cheese in his pants for all of the middle east, it would be quite fine by us. But that's not the way it is, is it?

"Jews are from the tribe of Judah", feel free to visit a few more websites until you get a clue. There are 12 tribes of Israel. They all make up the nation of Israel. I'm not going to get into the history because there's no point to it, you've already made up your mind to buy into the "protocols". Enjoy your pathetic existence.