I ache for all lives lost in this conflict. Every time I have to interrupt my daily routine (or my sleep) in order to run for shelter, every time I think about complaining about it, I know how much better I have it that my bomb shelter is an integral part of my apartment, where people in Gaza simply have none. Yes.

And none of this is an excuse to levy false accusations. This conflict, as you said, has gone on for almost a century. You arbitrarily decided to blame it all on Israel, and are using stronger and stronger rehtorics in order to do so. Havn't you considered stopping and wondering why these don't work? Why is it that so few Israelies see your point? Do you really believe we are all racist evil sadists? Or is it possible that we see your rehtorics for the bullshit they are?

I think you will agree with me that this conflict will not be resolved by pushing the Palestinians into submission. Why, then, do you think it can be resolved by pushing the Israelies to the same place? If this isn't genocide, why call it so? What purpose does it possibly serve? What purpose does calling Israel "apartheid" serve (just as easily proven wrong as "genocide" or "massacare")? What purpose does ignoring Hamas's decisions and responsibility for the safety of its own people serve? In what way does ignoring relevent and important facts bring the conflict's resolution closer?

The only purpose this serves is cleansing your own concience. You blame the obvious bully. You feel good with yourself. The world is fine.

Well, tough. I don't get to choose. I live here. This is my home. This is where my family and friends live. This is my country you're trashing, for no better reason than to feel better with yourself.

Fuck you!

Shachar

Canada gives you more points if you speak French. The USA requires that you speak English in order to get accepted. In fact, language is a factor for many of the countries you specify.

I will, however, concede a mistake on the immigration policy. It seems (preliminary, I'm still looking into it) that around 2005 the European union decided that's unethical, and has been forcing member states to forego those policies. Today these policies are much less evident than they were.

Which does not mean this is, necessarily, a good thing. I'll tell you what. Let's wait ten more years. If the European union is still around, the member states have not turned Muslim, and these rules are still in effect, let's talk again.

You also said this, however:

combined with the fact that the immigration control employed by Israel has not let any non-Jewish Chinese, Indian or African people gain full citizenship!

This is manifestly and provably wrong. About a decade ago the government decided to start stricter enforcement against illigal immigrant workers. That enforcement exposed a problem: many of those had children born in Israel, speaking Hebrew as their primary language, and being, for all intent and purposes, Israeli. The enforcement meant they were being extradicted to a country they have never even seen.

This resulted in a public outcry. The result is a law that was passed in 2006, that gave illegal residents citizenship under certain conditions. There are not many Indians who enjoyed this law, but you will find plenty of Chinese and African desent people who received citizenship.

There are few things of note here, all totally refuting your assertion of a racist Jew only state. The first is that they did not receive citizenship through some fluke or loophole. The law was changed in particular to allow them to receive it. The second was that this was not some lone legistlator's initiative. This was a result of a public outcry. This is what the country is about. I don't know anyone who thinks this undermines or contradict the Zionist aim.

Glad that you concede that Jewish is a racial trait, not a religious one and did not even bother to refute it.

Being Jewish isn't a racial trait. Discriminating based on it, however, is racist. I didn't think you'd be anal enough to care about this distinction, so I didn't bother making it.

Shachar

Rule of thumb: if you find you need to provide my end of the argument in order to win, you are probably wrong. e.g.:

The reason you won't agree to this is because Israel is a racist Jew only State and you don't want more non-Jews to be there because it would by definition signify the end of the Zionist enterprise.

No, that's not it at all. The Zionist enterprise was about creating a Jewish state, but that term does not mean what you think it means. It is not about creating a state only for Jewish (religion) people, but about creating a national home for the Jewish people. That phrasing is actually the subtitle of the Zionist charter.

Which means Israel is not, and was never meant to be, a Jews only state. If you want to claim otherwise, please provide references.

The reason I would not agree to an indiscriminate return is not because I don't like to see Arabs around (I wouldn't buy a home where I did were that the case). It's because that would turn Israel into an Arab state (i.e. - it would replace one nation's state with another). One look at the personal freedom, economics and personal safety track record of neighboring countries is enough, and that's the case where Arabs rule over Arabs. As a rule, they like me even less than they like themselves.

Your willingness to gamble away my property, my freedom and my life is touching, but I think I'm going to pass none the less.

How many non-Jewish Africans, Chinese and Indians were granted full Israeli Citizenship with equal rights, Israeli passports etc.

A nation state has every right to preserve its character through immigration control. All countries filter out immigrants, and Israel isn't even the only democracy to use religion as a criteria. Your insinuation that that's wrong needs citations.

Now you will want to claim that Jews are not a race and therefore Israel cannot be a racist state.

Strawman. I never made that argument. Next.

Shachar

You would like to live in a world where "nation state" is a dead concept. Regardless of whether I think this is a good aim or not, a simple look at the facts will show you it is not a practical aim.

There are very few states in the world which are not "nation states". Most of those are binational states or multi-national states. They don't fare very well. In the best case end of the spectrum you have Canada and Finland, where it sort-of works, but is very far from the ideal you're trying to paint. On the worst end of the spectrum you have Czechoslovakia and, in particular, Lebanon (which has spent about half of the past century in civil wars).

Then there are non-national states. America is, formally, one. A simple look at a dollar bill will show you just how much it isn't. While it did start out as immigrants' land, we now have an "American nationality", with typical religion, language, and a way of thought that is an American as apple pie.

The only non-national state I can think of which is successful in being one is Australia, in fact. It only does so by celebrating and enshrining the differences. This is something most people are not easily up to.

People tend to group around people who are like them. It's a human thing. I think it is pointless to fight it.

Shachar

Rockets fired since 2001. Blockade started in 2007.

What I wonder is, if the Palestinian have a time machine (which is the only explanation to this, as well as many other, rationalization of their actions), how come they are not rich enough to buy the allegedly pro-Israeli media?

Shachar

I always find the "genocide" mantra strange.

Pick any place in the world where a "genocide" accusation was levied, and you get a death count in the hundreds of thousands at least. Over the past decade, less than ten thousand Palestinian were killed by Israel (this number includes Palestinian killed while holding and using a weapon, which would not, normally, be counted in the "genocide" statistics). If Israel is committing genocide, why is the death toll so low?

Either Israel is attempting genocide, but is being completely incompetent about it, or the genocide accusation is pure bullshit.

Shachar

I live in Israel, in an area which is inside the "green line" (i.e. - it was Israel since 1948). All around the town I live in are Arab cities, all of them also inside the green line, all of their inhabitants Israeli citizens with equal rights to me (though some missing obligations). If a two state solution is scheduled to go through (and unless "areas exchange" change that), all of those currently Israeli citizens are scheduled to remain so.

I suggest you get your facts straight when claiming separation on ethnicity. I am literally[1] holding my breath waiting for your apology for wrongly using "apartheid".

As for the area being small: I'm anxiously waiting to hear your proposed solution. I'm sure it is going to be enlightened, grounded on facts and peaceful.

Shachar

1 - Obviously, I'm not literally holding my breath. Since, however, I don't expect you to apologies either, the two parts of the sentence are equally true.

Not doing business in the US is not the same as deciding never to step foot in it, ever.

Shachar

I think Linus should respect the community. Just because Linus thought a certain compromise was okay doesn't mean he is allowed to make that compromise in the name of the entire community.

Tridge owed Linus nothing, and Linus' entitled response was arrogant and out of place.

I have no idea why you brought the GPL into it. It doesn't matter which free software license the Linux revision control would be under, so long as it is free software. Going proprietary for such infrastructure opens the community up for precisely the sort of danger that actually did end up happening. You cannot yank your software if it's free, regardless of what license it's under.

Shachar

I don't. I'm guessing, based on the fact that I am doing something I'm presuming is similar, and based on the fact that, were I a student today, I'd be joining in.

Mind you, the anti-Israel crowed is similarly motivated. The people spewing party lines accusing Israel of everything and anything (can be seen here on Slashdot whenever the word "Israel" is mentioned) aren't given instructions or coordinated by some central entity. They are giving us their honest opinion, misguided though it is.

How about "freedom of speech"?

Someone suggested the word is "propaganda". This word has a severe negative context, because propaganda usually involves lies. At its core, however, the word merely means actively working to spread an idea (see definition no. 2). I definitely consider what I'm doing to match that narrow meaning.

Shachar

Yes. That's the one I mean.

Linus's decision to go with a proprietary solution for such a central free software project was wrong to begin with. Linus took a huge presumption, agreeing to a EULA on behalf of the entire community. As such, it was Linus's own mess he had to clean up. I think the passage of time only shows that more clearly.

Shachar

Not that discussion again....

Linus blowing up at Andrew Tridgdell for "reverse engineering" the bitkeeper protocol comes to mind.

I will agree that this time around, the complaints are grounded. It does, indeed, seem like a compiler bug. Whether that is a reason to be so critical of gcc 4.9.0, I don't know. It's obvious a serious problem for the kernel.

Shachar

This is not spam. They are doing, essentially, what I'm also doing (on a smaller scale). Essentially, find the misguided ignorant comments and try to enlighten them. Nothing there is automated, which automatically means this is not spam.

Shachar

Yes, it is what I'm saying. However, I don't think even if the balance turned out to be positive on Akamai's side, even that would count as "asking ISP to pay for access".

Imagine a small ISP. Not a lot of hosted content. In order to boost local content, this ISP provides co-location services at lower than usual costs. Due to the same considerations, the ISP pays a lot of peering costs (mostly incoming traffic, not a lot of outgoing traffic).

And then this ISP has an idea: I'll contact Akamai. The Akamai network accounts for over 25% of web traffic. If I have a local Akamai presence, this will greatly reduce my peering costs. Akamai's sales people are aware of this equation, of course. As a result, the deal finally negotiated mean that the ISP is paying Akamai for the privilege of hosting Akamai servers!

And the ISP is ecstatic. Yes, they are hosting a commercial server for free AND paying for the privilege, but they are saving a bundle on their peering costs. This is a straight bandwidth for bandwidth money-equivalent transaction. If Akamai started asking for too much, the ISP could tell them to take a hike. Presumably, for that to happen Akamai would have to ask more than the bandwidth costs it is saving!

Should Akamai choose to play dirty (as far as I know, they never do), they would be in a stronger position than Netflix. After all, you can get Netflix content elsewhere. Conversely, you cannot get to, e.g., apple.com without going through an Akamai server. If Akamai isn't doing it, I don't think there is any danger of Netflix doing it.

Shachar

To be fair, Akamai does charge some ISPs for its service. At least according to someone who actually went over the financial reports, Akamai doesn't get actual money from this, but rather a reduction in the cost to co-locate the servers.

Still, this is not the same thing as TFA. The thing that Akamai charges ISPs for is the peering traffic saved, not access to the content. If an ISP says "no", then no local Akamai cache, and the service is as good as the ISP's bandwidth to other providers that do have an Akamai presence. Neither availability nor performance are hindered by refusing to do business with Akamai, except losing the obvious advantage of a local cache.

Disclaimer:
I (currently) works for Akamai. This post, however, is not affiliated with Akamai in any way or form. The opinions do not represent those of my employer, nor does the information employed come from any data not publicly available.

Shachar