9 hours ago, Evil Penevil said:

I consider weapons for Israel to be the best possible use of my tax dollars. Truly bang forf the buck.

Opinions differ and those opinions that differ with your own are fast gaining traction.

3 minutes ago, Thingamabob said:

The GCC welcomes any move to change the current regime in Tehran.

By their preference before regime changes in the GCC.

5 hours ago, richard_smith237 said:

You'd do well to accomodate just a dash of reality - and I'm not referring to this thread as an attempt to point score in an argument I'm struggling to engage with - but in general - your trolling is ridiculous, and if its not trolling then just stick to the pub part of the forum and continue asking whether Y-Fronts are as comfortable as regular boxer shorts - its easier to skip over your banal idiocy there.

Although, 99-days out of 100, I prefer the Farang Pub, by far...

Since February 28th, these have become exceptional times.

I am seeing things, or should I say WE are seeing things, we never have seen before....such as

Baboons running Washington and Israel, and Idiots rattling Nuclear Sabers.

In addition, we are seeing a REAL SENSE OF UNREALITY about how most in Israel actually see their Reality, which is among the scariest of things.

It is like they are living in another dimension, or some disconnected bubble.

When this happens, there is never an option for reason to prevail.

Many, many Jews living in the USA, which is MANY, agree with me....

BELIEVE ME....!!!!!

11 hours ago, placnx said:

Well, the Genocide Convention includes unspecified punishment. In the case of counries committing aggression, some have ended up losing territory.

So, why shouldn't Palestine lose some territory after their attempted genocide of Israel ?

22 minutes ago, GammaGlobulin said:

Although, 99-days out of 100, I prefer the Farang Pub, by far...

Since February 28th, these have become exceptional times.

I am seeing things, or should I say WE are seeing things, we never have seen before....such as

Baboons running Washington and Israel, and Idiots rattling Nuclear Sabers.

In addition, we are seeing a REAL SENSE OF UNREALITY about how most in Israel actually see their Reality, which is among the scariest of things.

It is like they are living in another dimension, or some disconnected bubble.

When this happens, there is never an option for reason to prevail.

Many, many Jews living in the USA, which is MANY, agree with me....

BELIEVE ME....!!!!!

Do you meet many American Jews when you are floating aroung up in space ?

Do you all hang around on the same cloud ?

52 minutes ago, GammaGlobulin said:

Since February 28th, these have become exceptional times. ... I am seeing things, or should I say WE are seeing things, we never have seen before....such as. ...

Baboons running Washington and Israel, and Idiots rattling Nuclear Sabers.

Oh contraire, when have baboons & idiots not been running things. My whole life time, it's been nothing but war, death, profits.

Will never change, and they have it down to a science.

3 hours ago, Chomper Higgot said:

By their preference before regime changes in the GCC.

?

18 hours ago, richard_smith237 said:

Did history start in 1947 ??? Care to go back a little further...

Those maps always start in 1947 as if history began there - it didn’t.

Jewish presence in the region goes back thousands of years. The kingdoms of King David and King Solomon were early Israelite states - the foundation of Jewish identity - and later the Hasmonean Kingdom was a fully recognised Jewish kingdom in historical terms. Jews remained in the region continuously, even as a minority, through successive empires.

By the late Ottoman and British Mandate for Palestine period, the area was not an independent Palestinian state but a territory with mixed populations, where Jewish immigration increased significantly - especially due to persecution in Europe. That immigration created tensions, but it wasn’t a case of a fully sovereign Palestinian country being taken over. The situation was already complex long before 1947.

The 1947 United Nations partition plan proposed two states - one Jewish and one Arab. That plan was accepted by Jewish leadership and rejected by Arab leadership, and the 1948 war followed. So the map changes after that aren’t the result of a one-sided process starting in 1947, but of a conflict rooted in competing claims, population shifts, and war.

https://preview.redd.it/people-seem-to-have-forgotten-history-israel-didnt-exist-v0-nk3t4e562ctb1.jpg?width=640&crop=smart&auto=webp&s=176bc233b920e73ec8af8de9b8806fb886fa230d

If you want to go back as far as any written history tells us (whether true or not), about 2,000 years ago, at the end of the Jews’ Exodus, they ended up in Canaan, which is now called Palestine. There, they took over their land by force, killing a lot of Canaanites (sound familiar?). The Canaanites are the ancestors of the current-day Palestinians.

So, who should "own" this land now called Palestine or Israel?

18 hours ago, Nick Carter icp said:

That picture has been posted and debunked about 6 times already on this forum

I challenge you to "debunk it."

18 hours ago, Nick Carter icp said:

That picture has been posted and debunked about 6 times already on this forum

18 hours ago, Nick Carter icp said:

That picture has been posted and debunked about 6 times already on this forum

18 hours ago, Nick Carter icp said:

ISource FourMaps.jpg (1800×1200)

Expand

That picture has been posted and debunked about 6 times already on this forum

I challenge you to "debunk" it. It seems to be accepted as true all over the Internet, including Wikipedia. Do you think Wikipedia’s content shown below needs to be "debunked”?

31 minutes ago, WDSmart said:

I challenge you to "debunk it."

I challenge you to "debunk" it. It seems to be accepted as true all over the Internet, including Wikipedia. Do you think Wikipedia’s content shown below needs to be "debunked”?

This shows who ruled the land and when .

Borat .... funny stuff.

Sorry to interrupt your serious debate.

4 hours ago, Nick Carter icp said:

why shouldn't Palestine lose some territory

Can you describe or illustrate what you consider the territory of Palestine to be? 🙂

4 minutes ago, Packer said:

Can you describe or illustrate what you consider the territory of Palestine to be? 🙂

The vacant space between your ears

11 minutes ago, Nick Carter icp said:

The vacant space between your ears

There's no need to be so defensive. You claim that there is a Palestinian territory, that Palestine exists, that Palestine has territory. It stands to reason that you believe the territory of Palestine that you believe exists has borders. It's only a simple geography based question. 🙂

2 hours ago, Nick Carter icp said:

This shows who ruled the land and when .

These photos are hard to decipher but easy to debunk. And I must ask you, what was your source of these?

The 1872 map does show the area of Palestine as the Ottoman Empire, but does not recognize it as a state because at that time, only territories under the control of one of the Western powers were called a "state."

The 1917 map is correct. Britain did believe it "owned" the territory because Britain was powerful, mostly White, and Christian.

The 1949 map bypasses the 1947 map, which shows the territory Britain and the UN “gave” to the Jews, without any consideration for the resident Arabs, and AFTER a Palestinian uprising rejecting the UN’s right to give away their land without even consulting them.

The 1967 map shows the further reduction of Palestinian land after various clashes between the Palestinians and the Israelis - Palestinians trying to retake or at least hold on to their land, and the Israelis trying to take more land.

The 2000 map shows much the same condition of Palestine as the "Present" map I first posted in this exchange, so if that one is "debunked," then this one is too.

A map today, 2026, would show Gaza as greatly reduced to just a sliver, and the West Bank being continually taken by Israeli settlers by expelling the Palestinian Arabs who live there.

The bottom line is Israel has been expanding its control of the territory once called Palestine using their military, and will continue to do so until ALL the land of the territory that used to be called "Palestine" is Israel. I recommend that Israel go back to the 1947 UN boundaries, with an international-led force, if necessary.

1 hour ago, Packer said:

There's no need to be so defensive. You claim that there is a Palestinian territory, that Palestine exists, that Palestine has territory. It stands to reason that you believe the territory of Palestine that you believe exists has borders. It's only a simple geography based question. 🙂

Gaza and the Judea/west bank

41 minutes ago, WDSmart said:

The 1917 map is correct. Britain did believe it "owned" the territory because Britain was powerful, mostly White, and Christian.

Those reasons are nothing to do with it .

Britain reluctantly took control of the land when the Ottoman empire fell .

Britain didn't want the land

To Exist, Yes, For sure and to exist in peace.

But to grab land, slaughter civilians, commit war crimes, with no efficient sanctions from the UN,. the international community and with the support of America ? Then obviously it's NO.

1 hour ago, Sigmund said:

To Exist, Yes, For sure and to exist in peace.

But to grab land, slaughter civilians, commit war crimes, with no efficient sanctions from the UN,.

Palestine/Hamas did ALL of the above .

So, they shouldn't exist either

5 hours ago, WDSmart said:

If you want to go back as far as any written history tells us (whether true or not), about 2,000 years ago, at the end of the Jews’ Exodus, they ended up in Canaan, which is now called Palestine. There, they took over their land by force, killing a lot of Canaanites (sound familiar?). The Canaanites are the ancestors of the current-day Palestinians.

So, who should "own" this land now called Palestine or Israel?

I think that is part of the issue when we look at the 'Israel connundrum' from a binary perspective.

That account compresses thousands of years of history into a very neat moral story, but it is not completely accurate.

First, the land was not simply "Canaan, now called Palestine". In antiquity it was known by different names in different periods - including Canaan, the kingdoms of Israel and Judah, Judaea, and later Syria Palaestina under Rome. The term "Palestine" became the standard imperial name much later, after the Roman period.

Second, yes - Jews absolutely did live on that land, and not just briefly. There were ancient Israelite and Judean kingdoms there, a Jewish religious and political centre developed there, and even after conquest, exile, and dispersal, Jewish communities remained in parts of the land continuously for centuries.

Third, the claim that today’s Palestinians are simply "the Canaanites" is too blunt to be treated as settled fact.

Modern populations in the Levant, including Palestinians, Jews, Lebanese and other groups, show varying degrees of ancestry linked to ancient peoples of the region, including Bronze Age Canaanite populations. In other words, ancestry in that land is shared and layered, not exclusive to one modern nation.

So the stronger historical point is not that one side is fake and the other real. It is that both Jews and Palestinians have deep roots connected to the land.

As for who should "own" it now - basing modern sovereignty on who conquered what 2,000 or 3,000 years ago is a dead end. If that were the rule, very few states anywhere would survive scrutiny. The more serious case is this:

- Jews have a legitimate homeland claim because Jewish identity, religion, memory, language, and nationhood were formed there, and there was continuous Jewish presence even through exile and empire.

- Palestinians also have a legitimate homeland claim because they lived there for generations as the land’s Arab population and developed their own national identity there.

The modern conflict is between two peoples with real attachments, not one indigenous people and one invented one. The UN’s 1947 partition plan itself recognised competing claims by proposing both a Jewish state and an Arab state.

So - Yes, Jews lived on that land historically - that is not in doubt. And yes, Palestinians also have deep roots there. The honest conclusion is not that one people has no claim, but that both do.

Israel can still be understood as a Jewish homeland because Jewish people originated there historically, maintained a continuous connection to it, and were internationally recognised in the 20th century as having a national claim there - even though that does not erase the Palestinian claim.

The land was lived on by Jews as well - historically, continuously, and in ways central to Jewish identity. So the question is not whether Israel can be a Jewish homeland - it plainly can - but whether one homeland must cancel the other. History suggests it does not.

My argument on this matter has always been - not that Israel has sole right, and not that the Palestinian people have sole right - but both have rights - and a liable solution needs to be achieved and that can't happen with Hamas and Hezbollah in the picture.

16 minutes ago, richard_smith237 said:

My argument on this matter has always been - not that Israel has sole right, and not that the Palestinian people have sole right - but both have rights - and a liable solution needs to be achieved and that can't happen with Hamas and Hezbollah in the picture.

I agree with the message of this summary of your post above.

And, as I’ve said many times before, I think the borders of Israel and Palestine should go back to the 1947 UN division, which was before all the military conflicts that have gone on since, rather than just allowing one side (or the other) to take all the land just because they have the stronger military assets.

8 hours ago, WDSmart said:

I challenge you to "debunk it."

I'll accept that challenge!

The four maps are misleading in the use of the word "Palestinian." As has been explained a dozen times, you have to distinguish between Palestine as the name of a geographic region and its use in reference to a "political entity" such a nation or kingdom or province thereof. 

According to a heavy-duty source, the Encyclopedia Britannica:  "After Roman times the name [Palestine] had no official status until after World War I and the end of rule by the Ottoman Empire, when it was adopted for one of the regions mandated to Great Britain."  https://www.britannica.com/place/Palestine

 

There had never been an independent kingdom, nation, country or state called Palestine before the PLO declared the creation of the State of Palestine in 1988.  It's true people have lived for millennia in the geographic area we today call Palestine and these people could have been the ancestors of some current Palestinians as well as ancestors of some Israeli Jews, but they didn't have a country.  You have to go back to Biblical times and the Iron Age to find centuries in which people who were actually born in historical Palestine ruled  the region.  That would be the Kingdoms of  Israel  and Judah.

The first map, 1947, shows tiny blotches of "Jewish settlements" in white. The implication is the rest of the land, in green, was owned by Palestinian Arabs. That is simply not true.

When the British took over Mandatory Palestine in 1920, about 80% of the land had been owned by the Ottoman empire. Under the terms of the League of Nations' mandate, the U.K. retained ownership of this land. Most of it was desert, swamp or scrubland that wasn't of much use to anyone at that time.

The arable land, as well as urban properties in Jerusalem and other cities, was largely in the hands of abstentee landlords in Istanbul, Cairo, Damascus and Beirut or religious institutions like mosques, churches and monastaries or convents.

Arab peasant farmers, many of whom were recent immigrants to Palestine, owned relatively little of the land. It's wrong to imp[y that nearly all the land in Palestine was in 1947 owned by descendents of the land's early inhabitants.

The second map of the proposed U.N. partition is accurate. The Jews were given more land than the Arabs for two reasons: 1) the Jewish allotment included the Negrev Desert, was was largely desolate at the time. The U.N. hoped the Zionists would make the desert "bloom," as they had shown some skill at reclaiming desert and other wasteland; 2) up to half a million Jewish refugees from the Holocaust were expected to settle in Israel and the Jewish state would need space for them.

The third map is extremely misleading in that no "Palestinian land" existed between 1949 and 1967. In the first Arab-Israeli War, Jordan snatched up the West Bank and Egypt occupied Gaza. Jordan annexed the West Bank, making it part of Jordan, while Egypt kept Gaza under Egyptian administration. Here's what that map should look like:

The fourth map is accurate for the time it was published (2014). However, the map writer skipped some interesting years. Here's what the map of Israel looked like after the 1967 war when it occupied the Sinai Peninsula as well as the West Bank and Gaza.

Israel withdrew from the Sinai in 1982 and from parts of the West Bank in 1995, then the Gaza Strip in 2005. That left the map as you see it in the fourth map of the OP.

One thing maps like this should note is that Israel has only two official borders, one with Egypt and one with Jordan. It's other borders have not been formally recognized through bolateral treaties.

1 hour ago, Evil Penevil said:

I'll accept that challenge!

Why bro? You cant convince them LOL.

1 hour ago, Yagoda said:

Why bro? You cant convince them LOL.

I know, but I feel it is important to stand against attempts to demonize Israel. I can't let them win by default.

4 minutes ago, Evil Penevil said:

I know, but I feel it is important to stand against attempts to demonize Israel. I can't let them win by default.

No need for anyone to demonize Israel, they are more than capable to do that on there own.

10 minutes ago, Jeff the Chef said:

No need for anyone to demonize Israel, they are more than capable to do that on there own.

Only in the eyes of hardcore antisemites. To anyone else, Jews are defending themselves against an existential threat.

The answer is no. Israel started out by bombing the British embassy at its inception. It was Israel's very first official act. Something that never seems to be mentioned. It has continued to perpetrate acts of terrorism to the present day. Horrible country. Horrible people.

The reality of Truth against hate

https://fb.watch/GmrIQmIkhn/?fs=e

On 4/6/2026 at 1:28 PM, Hummin said:

Your version starts the story too late

Not sure its his version.

1 hour ago, Evil Penevil said:

Only in the eyes of hardcore antisemites. To anyone else, Jews are defending themselves against an existential threat.

Public support for Israel has declined significantly, with unfavourable views predominating in 20 of 24 surveyed nations as of 2025. While the U.S. and some European nations (Germany, UK) have historically provided strong support, public sentiment in many Western countries is now divided. Favourable views are higher in Nigeria and Kenya, while Israel faces low public support in Spain, Sweden, and Japan.

United States: Support has narrowed, with roughly equal sympathy for Israelis (36%) and Palestinians (41%) in 2026, marking a shift from previous, stronger pro-Israel sentiments. Western Europe: Favourability toward Israel reached new lows in 2025 in countries like Germany (-44), France (-48), Denmark (-54), Italy (-52), and Spain (-55).Declining Support: High negativity towards Israel exists in Australia, Greece, and the Netherlands, where around three-quarters or more of the public hold unfavorable views.