Slashdot Mirror
Israel Passes Photoshop Law To Combat Anorexia
Hugh Pickens writes "The Atlantic reports that the Israeli parliament has passed legislation that prohibits fashion media and advertising with models who fall below the World Health Organization's standard for malnutrition banning underweight models as determined by Body Mass Index. The new law also stipulates that any ad which uses airbrushing, computer editing, or any other form of Photoshop editing to create a slimmer model must clearly state that fact. Advertising campaigns created outside of Israel must comply with the legislation's standards in order to appear in Israel. 'I realized that only legislation can change the situation,' says Rachel Adato, an Israeli parliament member with a background in medicine. 'There was no time to educate so many people, and the change had be forced on the industry. There was no time to waste, so many girls were dieting to death.' The measure has been controversial within Israel for raising the question of where free speech bumps up against the fashion industry's responsibility — and its possible harm — to its customers' psychological well-being. Donald Downs, a professor at the University of Wisconsin and an expert on the First Amendment, says that it would be very tough to pass something like Israel's law in the US Congress. 'In the US, it would be hard to justify this type of law on either legal or normative policy grounds,' says Downs. 'The Israeli law is paternalistic in that it prohibits something because of the effect it might have on others in the longer term.'"
Semitic
You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means.
What political party do you join when you don't like Bible-thumpers *or* hippies?
Why not? The government sees fit to utterly destroy Joe Public's privacy in the name of 'combatting terrorism', but they won't put a kink in the advertising industry's portrayal of an unobtainable ideal as a factual status quo? Who's running the US anyway? Oh, wait, silly me...
'The Economy' is a giant Ponzi scheme whose most pitiable suckers are the youngest among us and the yet-unborn.
Those blonde shiksa with the skinny waists and the big boobs, Rachel, I can't keep my Baruch's eyes from wandering!
Comment removed based on user account deletion
I've seen a paper about it: the most significant contributor to anorexia is social context, specially advertising. The fashion industry is, therefore, responsible for what they put on ads. I fail to see what's the issue here: it's common knowledge that "free speech" doesn't mean "free to say whatever you want". If they put an ad with underweight, photoshopped models, then they are harming everyone who's watching, in a medical sense, and must refrain from doing so.
I rarely respond to comments. Also, don't ask for clarifications: a brain and Google are faster, believe me!
Back in the glory days of super models a la Cindy Crawford and Tyra Banks, from what CC said the typical size for a model was 6. Now, they're 0s and 2s. Some of them are downright repulsive. There's a pretty nasty pic of Gisele Bunchken post-pregnancy and it looks like she was trying to starve off the weight. Might as well drape the clothes over a wire hanger if that's what they're aiming for.
I swear to God...I swear to God! That is NOT how you treat your human!
What BMI range will be acceptable for models?
If you truly believe that BMI is an accurate measure of somebody's overall health, you have some learning to do. It's simply a ratio of a person's weight to their height. It does not take into account the fact that muscle mass is denser than fat mass, nor does it consider other factors like bone density (which can be an indicator of good health, even though it will increase your BMI).
This isn't about encouraging "fat fucks", this is about realizing that a size 0 is unhealthy, especially on a woman who's 5'11". Magazines have been promoting an impossible image of what the ideal woman actually looks like for decades, and any attempts at self-policing have largely failed. Photoshop just makes it worse, because they can take somebody who's actually really beautiful in real life, and make her "better"... It's airbrushing for the 21st century.
By the standards of the fashion industry, I'm morbidly obese... *gasp* she wears a size 12?!?! By any rational standard, however, my weight is exactly where it should be for a woman of my size. I'm fit and healthy, and that's all that matters. Women come in different shapes and sizes, and they need to promote that realism. It's a sad state of affairs that porn is the only place you can find realistically proportioned women in print, and that's because their buyers are usually interested in different... attributes....
They are no more "human" and entitled to human rights, then this building I'm sitting in. The people inside the building have a right to free speech, but not the building itself.
My AC stalker: " I personally agree with your posts most of the time, but that won't keep me from modding you troll"
Exactly! Since the major problem of Palestinian-Israeli relations cannot be immediately solved, Israel should abandon all efforts to solve its domestic issues.
'The Israeli law is paternalistic in that it prohibits something because of the effect it might have on others in the longer term.'
Isn't this the reason we have warnings on boxes of cigarettes?
'In the US, it would be hard to justify this type of law on either legal or normative policy grounds,' says Downs. 'The Israeli law is paternalistic in that it prohibits something because of the effect it might have on others in the longer term.'"
The US already has a law that "paternalistic in that it prohibits something because of the effect it might have on others in the longer term". It is the FDA law that prohibits unsubstantiated medical claims because it might cause people to ignore treatments that actually work. The issue of under weight and Photoshoped images is that they cause people to attempt to attain that standard and cause health issues. This has been proven to happen.
These 'photoshop' regulations and proposals generally require some sort of written disclaimer if a model has been photoshopped. However, that seems like a very questionable assumption about how this stuff works...
Does anybody seriously suspect that advertisements prove compelling because we are deceived by them in some trivial 'I believe that this advertisement is a representative depiction of reality." sense that could be refuted simply by a textual disclaimer?
The idea that this is an information problem, caused by people just not knowing certain facts, seems about as naive(or deliberately toothless) as believing that you can make somebody stop gambling or buying lottery tickets with a dose of stats 101... It's nonsense. Do people advance these proposals because they actually do believe that? Or do they submit them because the alternative of banning photoshopping is just too dire; but Something Must Be Done?
But why only for women. There's also a problem with men in most magazines. Most of them look like they spend 16 hours a day in a gym and are probably on steroids. Should we start to legislate how much muscle men pictured in magazines can have. Because if we don't we might have too many young men experimenting with steroids.
Anthropic principle: We see the universe the way it is because if it were different we would not be here to see it.
I can't readily find any data just for Israel, but I find the law's author's assertion that "We also know that the first cause of death in the age group of 15-24 is anorexia" to be highly suspect. In the US, 46% of deaths ages 15-24 are accidents (33% motor vehicles), then there's homicide, suicide, cancer & other illnesses. Anorexia is nowhere near the top as a cause of death. Israelis have cars and murders and cancer just like Americans (ok, probably less cars & murders, but still); I find it hard to believe that their stats are terribly different.
The article itself says that mortality rates are 4% for anorexia, which is bad, but surely all the 10% with eating disorders she cites don't have anorexia?
I definitely know less than Doctor WHO.
Just another ignorant American.
The irony in Palestinian Israeli relations is that they're *both* descended from the same people who once made up the Hebrew tribe in ancient Israel. Not that either would ever admit it. It's kind of a bizarre situation. It would be actually be funny, if they weren't killing and oppressing each other with such deadly seriousness.
What political party do you join when you don't like Bible-thumpers *or* hippies?
There's actually a rather direct connection between the obesity epidemic and the presentation of skeletally thin models as a standard of beauty. An awful lot of basically healthy teenage girls try to starve themselves into looking like models, inevitably fail (girls who become models are already naturally very thin, even before they start the starvation diets) and "rebound" and end up weighing more than they did before. (Starvation sets off all kinds of nasty reactions in the body, and one of the things it does is encourage the body to pack on as much fat as possible when food becomes plentiful again; this made sense for our ancestors, living in times of feast alternating with famine, but it's terrible in the modern world.) After a few cycles of this, they end up with deeply screwed up metabolisms and lifelong problems maintaining a healthy weight. I don't know how much of the modern obsesity problem is attributable to this phenomenon, but I'm guessing it's a non-trivial amount.
The correlation between ignorance of statistics and using "correlation is not causation" as an argument is close to 1.
I am very pro first amendment, but the idea of disclaimers on impossibly obtainable body proportions sounds as good as those white rectangles on the cigarette boxes. Women, and to a lesser, but increasing amount, men, are getting severely programmed by all the fake crap we do to our mass media people of fiction. I don't know if this is an American thing, or not even a thing at all, maybe I'm just out in left field here, maybe it's generational, I have no pattern - point I am making is that lots of women seem really put off by their body image, and they dont care that members of the appropriate gender think they look fine, or great, or even perfect. They just want to drop 30% of their body weight, to anorexic levels, stab their fellow with a rib, I dunno what the end goal is man, I'm just sick of cute girls crabbing about a little belly or having real thighs. So sick of it. This is probably my most ranty, less focused slashdot post in a long while, so I'm sorry about that. It's super frustrating to tell someone they look really beautiful and have them gaze off into the distance, miserable they aren't a jpeg and unwilling to ever embrace themselves or enjoy life until that day. We should all be extremely grateful that there's no great way to apply these photoshop techniques to moving images, yet. We'll be even worse off when that happens.
slashdot: where everyone yells sarcastic metaphors to themselves to understand the issue
It's like saying that they don't know what they're talking about.
Saying that Palestinians should not be kept walled into ghettos is not antisemitic. Disagreeing with Israeli government policy is not antisemitic. Being in favor of a two-state solution is not antisemitic. Criticizing Israel is not antisemitic.
When you don't "use that word correctly", you are doing a lot more than using a wrong "naming convention". You are factually incorrect.
You are welcome on my lawn.
Ever notice how cereal boxes say stuff like "enlarged to show texture." or how all car commercials present the text "trained driver on closed course" or cigartte cartons proclaim, "we're pretty sure this is going to kill you."
ok. i paraphrased the last one, but these are all because we do pass laws requiring that companies don't misrepresent their products. The cereal flakes are actually quite small. You won't be doing donuts in that car. The action figures do not walk and talk. If we have decided that people are going to feel so ripped off by the actual size of their cereal flakes that we need laws governing how you can depict your cereal, it stands to reason that we might need to inform people that those models have been digitally altered to conform to unattainable levels of beauty.
I think you're going to have some trouble getting Jews to stop their ritual circumcision. Hey, it's part of their culture, and if they believe their god demands that skin be cut from a boy's penis as part of a religious ceremony, I don't think they're going to give up just because you say so, Stormwatch.
Some cultures stretch necks, some scarify the skin, some pull the earlobes using bones and some cut skin off the penises of boys. Human beings are weird, what can you say? When your god tells you to do something, you don't ask questions, I guess.
You are welcome on my lawn.
...mmmm....no, I think he does. One can be an anti-Semite, or one can be anti-Semitic, and they mean the same thing, essentially. It's commonly misspelled "Semetic", though, so maybe you're thinking of that.
Or you're thinking of the Semites, a Biblical term referring to the descendants of one of Noah's sons. Or you're thinking of the ethnic umbrella group, which refers to anyone who speaks a Semitic language, which is pretty much the entire Arabian peninsula since Arabic and Hebrew are the two most common. Amharic is in there, too, as well as a bunch of others. So, yes, in that sense it is ironic to say that someone criticizing the Israelis for their treatment of Palestinians is an anti-Semite.
However, in English, the term has been overwhelmingly used to refer to discrimination against Jews, so if you have a gripe with that, take it up with the late 19th century. Whether the claim of antisemitism is valid or not is another issue, but his use of the word is correct.
This unbiased moderation brought to you by the Porcine Aviation Group!
Oddly enough I expect the unrealistic portrait to being thin=beautiful causes obesity. For a lot of people when they realize they cannot reach the level of beuity, they give up and let themselves go. A lot people are polarized in their thinking, if I can be thin, I might as well get use to being fat. Showing people of healthy weight will keep expectations at a good level, and they don't feel bad about not trying to get too thin.
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
Someone who is actually fit, with more muscle and lean body mass, can actually show up as unhealthy when using BMI with the way we measure it.....
Light travels faster than sound. This is why some people appear bright until you hear them speak.........
You don't understand. Put aside for a moment the implicit ridiculous comparison of circumcision to the mutilation committed against young women in Africa.
Think about communities where circumcision is most common:
Arabs
Americans (US)
Jews
By condemning circumcision as an evil practice, you get to condemn not only ALL of those troublesome Middle-Easterners, but also the United States in general! It's a pretty diversely targetted insult. But, it does seem a bit like pissing into the wind. ;-)
I think you should go talk to a Palestinian, preferably one whose land has been taken away from them as a result of things like the settlements and that apartheid wall Israel is building.
And it's not Israel that's the evil entity. It's the Israeli government. I imagine the Israelis on an individual level are generally pretty cool people.
And for the record, it is FUCKING DISGUSTING that people like you would try to suppress the debate about the Israeli government's treatment of the Palestinians by throwing the word "anti-Semitic" around. You have no fucking clue what real anti-Semitism looks like, asshole. Shitheads like you are diluting the meaning of that phrase, rendering it useless for describing ACTUAL anti-Semites.
:(){
'In the US, it would be hard to justify this type of law on either legal or normative policy grounds,' says Downs. 'The Israeli law is paternalistic in that it prohibits something because of the effect it might have on others in the longer term.'"
Whereas in the US laws are passed on the effect they may have on contributors to those who are passing them.
I'm pretty libertarian, but I'm 100% OK with that requirement by itself. Labeling laws help consumers make informed decisions about their purchases, which is a basic requirement of a free market. For example, I fully support a store's right to sell ground beef containing "pink slime" as long as it's clearly labeled as such. Along those lines, let Israel require companies to state that their images do not depict genuine humans. I'd like to be able to show my daughter that I'm not just making this stuff up, that models in magazines really don't look like that in real life and aren't a reasonable standard to judge yourself by.
Dewey, what part of this looks like authorities should be involved?
Wish I had mod points. Most people have no idea that both people co-existed in relative harmony for hundreds, if not thousands of years. Not only that, there's some indication the "Palestinians" have converted their faith twice...once to Christianity during the Byzantine era, and then eventually to Muslim when the Ottomans took over...
Advertising is not free speech. We already have tons of laws about what can be said in advertisements. We have entire categories of products banned from advertising via various forms of media.
And, besides that, fuck push advertisers. They don't inform. They don't help. They play upon human psychology and insecurity to make people feel inferior if they don't have The Product. They try to associate themselves with warm, fuzzy feelings to make people feel good about The Product. They do not operate on a rational level. The sooner we're rid of them entirely the better.
--Jeremy
Jesus was a liberal
This is the information age. Maybe we should let people who can't effectively process information just die out.
This might not be the typical Slashdot comment. I post it anyway because anorexia was part of my live for many years.
My daughter has had anorexia. As a dad I watched my daughter identify herself with wrong and manipulated social standards (mainly fashion / beauty magazines) For her the images of her idols were reality. Nothing could change her mind. Over a period of 2-3 years she gradually slided down into anorexia. As a parent we tried to help and we sought professional help but mostly in vain. She only became more careful with exposing her 'behavior'. Unfortunately the switch only came after she reached 81.5 pounds (37kg) and was hospitalized for over 8 weeks. Specialists say that a few pounds less and she would not have survived it .
How do you explain to an 15 year old that everything she reads about her idols is manipulated / orchestrated? Warning messages in beauty and fashion magazines seem like a good effort to me. I consider myself liberal, normally I am against (government) control and over legislation. Normally I would immediately condemn such a legislation. But I also don't want any parent to experience what we experienced. Don't make the mistake that it can not happen to you. We are a normal family, no family history of drugs or mental disorders. We are realistic, we all enjoyed higher education. And still anorexia was a harsh reality for us.
Lucky my daughter got better. She is now back on a 'normal weight' but her fight is far from over. >5 years after she is still selective in what she eats, she still counts her calorie intake. But she can now place what happened to her and detect warning signals herself. Next September she will start her final year at university.
Pseudoscience, you mean. Circumcision is not connected with cancer prevention at all. On the other hand, this is a procedure that destroys half the penile skin (it is double-layered, keep in mind), and more precisely its most erotically sensitive bits , so it's no surprise that it is clearly linked to erectile dysfunction . Oh, how about over a hundred baby deaths , every year, in the USA alone, or life-lasting psychological effects ?
As a mutilated man, I'd fully support a return to Hadrian's law: a total ban, under penalty of death. Stern, but fair!
Circumcision is child abuse.
There should be no Free Speech for non-humans. A corporation does not have any political or human rights necessities for Free Speech because a) all the humans that make up the corporation already have that right and b) it isn't human, so human rights don't apply.
I understand the line needs to be defined and corporations will circumvent the issue by paying people to make their speech for them - but the law is pretty good at wiping the floor with people too obviously circumventing it.
Assorted stuff I do sometimes: Lemuria.org
Lack of circumcision - Circumcision during infancy or in childhood provides partial protection against penile cancer, but this is not the case when performed in adulthood.[12] It has been suggested that the reduction in risk may be due to reduced risk of phimosis;[12][10] other possible mechanisms include reduction in risk of smegma and HPV infection.[10] Several authors have proposed circumcision as a possible strategy for penile cancer prevention;[13][14][15] however, the American Cancer Society point to the rarity of the disease and note that neither the American Academy of Pediatrics nor the Canadian Academy of Pediatrics recommend routine neonatal circumcision
"Who is the Journal of Quantum Physics going to believe?" --Stephen Hawking
But why only for women. There's also a problem with men in most magazines. Most of them look like they spend 16 hours a day in a gym and are probably on steroids. Should we start to legislate how much muscle men pictured in magazines can have. Because if we don't we might have too many young men experimenting with steroids.
Society places an exponential weight on how a woman looks versus how a man looks. Little girls are being indoctrinated with the idea that "thin, and nothing else, is sexy" from a very early age, and feel shamed for not meeting those standards.
Boys, on the other hand, do not. They are indoctrinated with other messages, like competition and winning, and are given pro athletes to idolize and want to be.
It's also a negative influence, but at least athletes are actually performing the acts they do in the games. No one will argue that boys playing sports is bad for their health (even though it could be, look at how many kids are injured in organized school sports), but girls starving themselves for an ideal only made possible by photoshopping is much more harmful.
More Twoson than Cupertino
Models aren't the product
That all depends on your definition of 'product'.
"All these years believing you're the signified monkey, only to find out you're just a big hunk of nobody cares."
Nope. I heard circumcision may even cause premature ejaculation, as you have less "feedback", meaning less control... also, circumcision increases attrition in sex, making it less pleasant for women as well, even painful. I even read some testimonials from females (not sure how legit these are) who wondered how any woman could tolerate living with a cut man.
Circumcision is child abuse.
Since they are not,
ORLY? http://photoblog.msnbc.msn.com/_news/2011/02/23/6115591-palestinian-house-inside-cage-in-jewish-settlement?lite
You're on the wrong side of the scale, mate. You're talking about weight lifters and athletes who register as false-positives for obesity.
The article is about people coming in UNDER weight, and I've never seen any false-positives on that end. Using myself as an example (I'm 6'2") I would have to weigh less than 140lbs to register as "underweight." My GF standing 5'3" would be in double-digits to fail the criteria.
For any metric lovers: at 1.9m, I would have to weigh 63kg or more to pass this criteria. A 1.6m person would need a mere 47kg. TFA doesn't say anything about upper limits on the BMI
This signature is false.
Apartheid, apartheid, apartheid, settlements, settlements, settlements.
interesting.
All throughout Arabia, Shiite Muslims kill Sunni Muslims, nobody cares.
Sunni Muslims kill Shiite Muslims, nobody cars.
But if an Israeli kills a Palestinian - Apartheid, apartheid, apartheid.
Border disputes are border disputes all across the world. But if one party of a border dispute is Israel, it's occupation, settlement, apartheid racist.
If you talk to anyone who is actually knowledgeable about BMI, you will learn that BMI is a terrible way to determine if a particular individual is a healthy weight or not. BMI is designed to determine whether or not a population is a healthy weight and as a shortcut for that it works reasonably well. BMI is a measure that was not designed to evaluate an individuals health. For example, when I graduated college I had a BMI of just over 30, which is considered obese, yet I had a body fat percentage of 4%, which is generally considered unhealthily low.
The truth is that all men having power ought to be mistrusted. James Madison
And yet Israel still treats their Palestinian neighbors better than most of the nearby contries treat their Palestinian refuge camps. Naturally, the same people who blame the former on "teh Evil Jews" also blame the latter on "teh Evil Jews" (as well as the national debt, the behavior of Hollywood, and price of gas ,.....).
It's anti-semitic in the sense that it's usually mentioned as part of some larger anti-semitic rant.
On the other half of your comment - if Palestinians were launching rockets at my neighborhood school, I would have been vigorously advocating a Carthaginian peace myself, so I can only admire Israel's restraint in the circumstances.
Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
Saying that Palestinians should not be kept walled into ghettos is not antisemitic
Sure it's not antisemetic, but it's sure the hell not a walled ghetto. The majority of them live better than everyone else in the region unless they're rich, or royalty. And some of them live better than the Israeli's that they keep trying to kill.
Om, nomnomnom...
It's like saying that they don't know what they're talking about.
Saying that Palestinians should not be kept walled into ghettos is not antisemitic. Disagreeing with Israeli government policy is not antisemitic. Being in favor of a two-state solution is not antisemitic. Criticizing Israel is not antisemitic.
When you don't "use that word correctly", you are doing a lot more than using a wrong "naming convention". You are factually incorrect.
You're saying he's being anti-semantic?
The road to tyranny has always been paved with claims of necessity.
Correlation is hardly a "direct connection". Girls are coming out of elementary school obese, and it's not because they are trying to look like their favorite haute couture models. It's because of shit food, and a culture that coddles girls and accepts them for "how they are" and their "inner beauty". In times when moms cooked, fashion demanded tiny waists, and neurosis was still a disease, girls had fewer problems maintaining their figure.
Fuck it, I'll take the hit as I'm always brutally honest...you wanna fix the whole problem? you do? then get rid of the gay fashion designers! Every designer I've seen picking those sickly bony bitches has been queer as a three dollar bill, which hey, you wanna be gay? Not a problem with that, but what I DO have a problem with is YOU choosing what is fashionable and sexy for women! That would be like picking a straight guy like me and expecting them to make guys look sexy...WTF?
To any gay fashion designers out there as a straight man, let me give y'all a little advice, mmmkay? WE LIKE TITS! Some (like me) prefer the gal to be natural, some don't care, but we ALL like some nice soft titties. Oh and butts is nice too, don't have to be no J-Lo park a 6 pack on 'em, but something nice and grab worthy is a plus.
But what you will find most men do NOT like is a woman that is so damned starved looking that when she takes a drink you can watch it moving like Slim Goodbody, that's gross. And have you ever been around a woman that damned starved for any length of time? Man ALL they do is bitch and whine and complain! There ain't nothing more bitchy on this entire planet than a starved female on some damned diet, let me tell you! And then when you finally get her to just eat a damned sandwich to STFU, who she gonna blame if she gained 1/16th of a ounce? that would be YOU!
Of course YOU ain't having to listen to that because you are going home to some dude that probably looks like Vin Diesel and would tell you to STFU if you said shit about how many calories he's got to put away to keep them big ass arms up. So do us straight guys a favor and just knock that shit off, okay? If you want something straight lined to hang them ugly ass fashions on go get one of them jap robots, then at least we guys can see "See sweetie, its just a damned robot so quit complaining about eating that damned rabbit food and try some of this BBQ" and won't have to worry about our women trying to look like them crackheads you been modeling, mmmkay?
ACs don't waste your time replying, your posts are never seen by me.
"Right to exist"? What does that even mean? Does Palestine have a "right to exist"? Did the Seminole Nation have a "right to exist"? Hell, what does "right to exist" even mean when we're talking about nations?
"Right to exist" is a formulation created specifically for this one instance. Look throughout history and find me another example of a nation asserting a "right to exist" except by existing. "Right to exist" is a rhetorical flourish meant to promote a notion of specialness. A "right to exist" does not confer a "right to subjugate another people" and it doesn't confer "a right to break the laws of another country in order to influence its foreign policy" or "a right to demand protection".
A nation can exist as long as it either "conquers everyone around it" or "learn to live in peace with those around it".
I'm not trying to establish some moral equivalence between Israel and Palestine, but their little act is getting tiresome.
You are welcome on my lawn.
None of these other countries claim to be, or are held up as (A) democracies on a par with the US or the nations of Europe (B) Important allies whose interests are the same as the interests of Europe and the US.
I wish more people would open their eyes to some reality when it comes to "Palestinians ". For some reason there was no recognized "Palestinian" state until after 1967. It was under Jordanian and Egyptian rule after England finished fucking up the region and finally left.. Anything England missed fucking up the middle east was taken care of by the French.
Many Palestinians voluntarily evacuated their homes in 48 when the surrounding Arab countries told them the war would take about a week. No body ever mentions that 800 thousand Jews were forced to flee their homes in Arab countries with nothing more than the clothes they were wearing. Do you think the Arab countries would support the Jews right of return today? Palestinians were allowed to move into Jordan with very little, if any, restrictions and the first thing they did as a group was stage an armed revolt against the Jordanian government who then created the refugee camps. The "Palestinians" were also damn near the only group of people on the planet who openly supported Saddam Hussein's invasion of Kuwait in 1991. Subsequently over 400 thousand were kicked out of Kuwait after the war. None of Palestinian supporters have stepped up with anything other than bombastic rhetoric and political dogma. Saudi Arabia alone could practically buy a state for the "Palestinians". Yasser Arafat died a billionaire be skimming any aid provided to help the people.
The last thing the "Palestinian" leaders want today is peace. They are making tons of money importing goods through their tunnel system and collecting tax revenue. The "Palestinian" leaders with influence live in their fancy villas in Lebanon and other countries so they never actually experience any inconveniences of the little people.
And right now which part of "Palestine" should Isreal deal with? They do not even have a united country government. The "Palestinians" cannot even agree with one another let alone any 3rd party. It's way past time for them to just admit the have lost every meaningful military conflict and start adjusting their outlook on life and drop the hate propaganda.
They have about the same chance Mexico has of the US handing back Mexican territory obtained using US military actions. And for those complaining about the US always supporting Isreal they should realize US support is the only thing that has kept Isreal from demolishing the entire area once and for all. The US aid is also used to provide the US with some leverage when it comes to Isreal selling it's advanced military hardware to countries like China. But if the Israeli aid goes away so should any other aid in the region.
Hell, the US wasn't even a very enthusiastic supporter of Isreal until 1973 when Isreal started arming their nuclear warheads to glass Damascus and Cairo. And while all this nonsense goes on the average Ahmed on the street gets the shitty end of the stick as usual and will continue to do so until the pro-palestinian groups admit that Palestinian actions and poor decisions represent the largest reason for the conflict.
Under this logic, the government could censor pretty much anything. Some insane person went on a murderous rampage? Video games were the trigger. Ban video games!
This is extremely scary to me. Especially since we're considering banning/censoring things due to the stupidity of others. I don't care for such slippery slopes.
Filthy, filthy copyrapists!
No, he's saying that these other people are killing each other, but for some reason only Israel gets criticized.
What? Occupation equals Apartheid? You are not making sense.
Clever signature text goes here.