Israel stole US nuclear secrets to create their own nuclear weapons program, they killed American navy men, they destroyed 90% of the buildings in Gaza and very blatantly committed genocide in the process of doing so, Palestinians prisoners are commonly held without trials or charges i.e. they're hostages. Zionism literally cannot exist without them committing ethnic cleansing because everywhere Israelis live used to be Palestinian properties.
Honestly, what is your point? What are you seeing that the rest of us aren't getting? For the record, my mother's family is mostly Sephardic.
> they killed American navy men
This was about 50 years ago, was accidental, and Israel apologized and paid reparations soon after.
This is a pretty clear example of double standards for Israel - no other country gets demonized for friendly fire incidents.
None of the sailors that survived believe it was accidental. They claim it was a deliberate false-flag attack.
The claims that it was deliberate boil down to "they must have known because there were identifying marks", which can be said about almost any friendly fire incident. In reality, not every operation is executed competently. Plenty of militaries have shot down their own airplanes, for example, despite the existence of several safeguards designed to prevent that.
Alternatively, Israel may well have identified the ship and decided to sink it regardless. The USS Liberty was a SigInt ship that was well-known for monitoring wireless transmissions to hold nations accountable from offshore. Israel, at the time, was engaged in an internationally condemned and illegal military operation in the Golan Heights, and may just as well have sank it consciously to prevent the US from taking leverage of the situation.
We may never know the truth, taking Israel's Military Censor into account.
Your speculation seems a bit farfetched - there's no evidence that intelligence collected by USS Liberty was hurting Israel, and if Israel's goal was to avoid scrutiny, attacking an expensive asset of the world's superpower would have been rather counterproductive.
Israel captured the Golan Heights because it had been used to shell Israeli communities for decades, and that continued even after Syria officially accepted the ceasefire. It would be unreasonable to expect Israel to tolerate that sort of aggression; no capable military would do so.
> It would be unreasonable to expect Israel to tolerate that sort of aggression
It would also be unreasonable to allow Israel to colonize the annexed territory in violation of international law, especially if the goal is to reduce the exposure of Israeli citizens to reparation attacks. The Knesset isn't exactly known for reasonable decisions though, and I'm willing to extend that judgement to the upper echelons of Israeli leadership as well. Maybe I'm bigoted.
Again - evidence-based speculation would be of use if the IDF didn't directly censor all domestic reporting and investigations. An honest postmortum was never going to be an option, even if Israel bombed the Liberty with custards and coffee. Cui bono, you decide.
> if the IDF didn't directly censor all domestic reporting and investigations
This just seems like another double standard. What modern military doesn't censor reporting during a war in its own territory?
> An honest postmortum
Israel and the US settled the matter (with the help of substantial reparations) and went on to become allies. Why would they bother trying to convince anyone else?
And what would the convincing postmortum you're expecting look like? Some kind of third-party investigation? Can you name any military that willingly subjects itself to such investigations?
> What modern military doesn't censor reporting during a war in its own territory?
The ones willing to defer to an ICJ investigation? Hell, an IAEA inspection?
Both Dimona and the Liberty were critically reliant on America's infinite tolerance for Israeli transgression. Kennedy's stance towards Israel could have only convinced Johnson that resistance was futile, there's no way he could raise a finger if he did suspect foul play. The two nations were motley and often disagreeing partners united by a desire to mete out territory of neighboring petrostates. If a closed-door meeting ever decided that secrecy was the cost of keeping oil prices low, not a single American president would put their name on the line to speak up about it.
Not a damning accusation, sure. But it's also the same thing many Americans wondered in 1967.
> The ones willing to defer to an ICJ investigation?
What state has ever consented to an ICJ investigation that was focused on interrogating its military command or other sensitive military assets?
> Hell, an IAEA inspection?
If a state is an IAEA member, their nuclear program is (ostensibly) not a military program, so there should be no military secrets at risk.
> America's infinite tolerance for Israeli transgression
Even if we accept the extraordinary claim that the US would have tolerated what it knew was an intentional attack on an expensive ship, at best that means that we can't infer anything from the US reaction. There are plenty of other reasons to doubt that the attack was intentional. I.e. it's extremely difficult to imagine any risk-benefit analysis under which it would make sense for Israel to suddenly attack a neutral superpower in the middle of a war for its survival.
> There are plenty of other reasons to doubt that the attack was intentional
I don't buy them, especially given Israel's 1967 political situation. Fun discussion though, thanks for entertaining it!
You're putting it gently. They killed him for insisting on inspections of Dimona.
That's ridiculous to anyone who has read the slightest bit about the lengths to which Israel goes to avoid actions against the US.
It seems to track with Seymour Hersh's accusations of Israeli intelligence holding the CIA over a barrel. If the Mossad wanted to maintain their access to satellite surveillance over Russia and Syria, letting the US blackmail them could have jeopardized their cooperation.
Taking into account the lengths to which Israel goes currying favor with the US, pretending to show remorse for a sunken ship is nothing compared to the sham Dimona investigation they put together for the Kennedy administration. Lying isn't beneath their means.
The started off settlement by legally buying property for wealth (mostly absentee) landlords, who were non-Palestinians (they lived in other part of the Ottoman Empire).
America bought the Louisiana Purchase from France. France never had any meaningful presence in that territory; being incapable of defending the territory should America decide to take it anyway is probably a big part of the reason they decided to accept money for it.
Now my question: having purchased that land from France, did America have a right to eject the native people who lived there? Or did France in fact have no right to sell that land which, in all practical ways, actually belonged to the people who lived there?
Israel "bought" that land from people who had no legitimate ownership of the land in the first place.
That was a very different situation. That area had been under ottoman rule for generations. There was a long history of ownership.
The Ottomans had no legitimate right to sell that land out from under the people who actually lived there. The whole premise of Zionism is just one of many cases of European colonialism, and no more legitimate than any of the rest.
Why did the owners (under Ottoman law) not have the right to sell? How is/was that different from any property sale at the time, or now?
It wasn't their land, the Ottomans were just another imperial power.
(I know I'm talking to a wall here, getting you people to think outside of a legalistic mindset is impossible.)
I'm not trying to be specifically legalistic, just trying to see if there is some general principles here that you think apply outside this situation.
You see the rule of the ottomans as invalid, and this all (legalistic) property rights during that period invalid? That seems it would apply everywhere. How are property rights ever established? What does it take to invalidate them?
If I setup a $10b trust fund to buy up Texan land, I can't unilaterally invade Texas and build my ethnostate on it after I've purchased, say, 6-7% of it. That's the percentage of Palestine the Zionists bought before expelling the indigenous people in the Nakba genocide.
Likewise, if you legally purchase double-digit percentages of Indian, Chinese, Brit, Australian land, it doesn't give you the moral or legal precedent to expel the natives from the rest of their land and declare it your state.
You can evict renters from the land and move in yourself.
If they then take to violence against you, you have the right to defend yourself.