This is apparently going to come up a lot: Trump got Israel, the Palestinians and Iran way more right than Biden, yet Trump was and remains unfit to be President and Biden -- well, we'll see. Both things can be true.
I think Ms. Weiss should take the Administration, not just various Congresspeople, to task for its behavior and its prono…
This is apparently going to come up a lot: Trump got Israel, the Palestinians and Iran way more right than Biden, yet Trump was and remains unfit to be President and Biden -- well, we'll see. Both things can be true.
I think Ms. Weiss should take the Administration, not just various Congresspeople, to task for its behavior and its pronouncements. They were wrong to refund UNRWA, wrong to rejoin the UNHRC, wrong to want to remove sanctions on Iran and wrong to lecture Israel (about Sheikh Jarrah, about its security policies in general and about its handling of the Hamas attacks in particular). And as she points out, this kind of wrong is also dangerous.
But one can do that without extolling Trump. If you want nuanced opinions, there you have one: The Biden administration is egregiously, dangerously wrong on Israel and the Middle East, and Trump has no business being President.
I note you are able to articulate specifics against Biden/ Dems (UNRWA, UNHRC, sanctions etc), but are unable or unwilling to be honest about why Trump was a bad President. His policies were great.
I see below you don't like his "character", and don't trust him to continue support for Israel, if he feels insulted, for instance. These are valid, tho if I use them as criteria in comparison to Biden, Trump seems a bit better and a bit more trustworthy. Those who believe Biden, including his many untrue statements, may think differently.
I don't trust Biden on Israel. I think it likely that Biden will work in the established Democratic pattern, which is to be cruel to Israel and put it at risk, but in manageable ways. Trump is unrestrained, so he could be great for Israel (as he has been) or terrible, depending on his feelings.
But I don't vote for an American President solely based on Israel and I don't vote solely based on specific policies.
Hey Berkowitz, fellow Jew here: is it worth it? To go to your grave insisting Trump shouldn't have been president? What matters, personality or policy? What matters more to a Jew - looking cool in front of progressive friends or Israel? For me, it doesn't seem like it's worth it.
I'm not sure I *have* progressive friends. I have progressive family, but they're stuck with me regardless of my politics. Which is all by way of saying that I couldn't care less what progressive strangers think of me because of a post on social media (and I have the posts to prove it).
But your question is valid regardless. My answer is that *character* is a bedrock requirement if you want my vote. You don't have to be someone I'd follow off a cliff, but insulting POWs will get you off the list.
Part of the issue is that the President represents and reflects the country - at least to an extent. Part is that I don't trust someone of Trump's apparent character to *continue* to pursue policies I approve of. Part is that his flaws resulted in executive-branch behavior that was simply incompetent -- not something I want to see in an Administration. And of course there was the whole "stolen-election" thing, which is disqualifying and then some.
Michael, I think you're being dishonest about character. Few if any of our American presidents are pillars of integrity. Trump brought peace to the Middle East for four years. Now the world is coming apart since he stepped into office. We even had one of our pipelines sabotaged ... the Russians are testing Biden, the Pals are testing Biden, it's a free for all. They didn't do this to Trump because he was a strong and decisive leader.
I don't see him so much strong and decisive as heedless, but heedless can sometimes work out well, especially in cases like the Middle East where the prevailing wisdom was so stupid.
And I don't need to extol the virtues of other presidents to disqualify Trump on character grounds. From what I read, pro-Trump people look to him as God's anointed and anti-Trump people think he's the Antichrist. I don't subscribe to either of those attitudes.
Part 2 - just to be clear, I'm not dismissing your concerns of Trump's character, and I promptly lost my support for him after the election fraud claims which were just never ending and were radicalizing ppl for no reason. But I do not regret voting for him, and between the two candidates, I would do it again. In politics, unlike life, many time our choices are binary and we are forced to choose someone who we normally wouldn't vote for. In Trump's case, I was happy to vote for him because I wasn't just voting against Biden's Obama agenda+the squad, I was voting for Trump's pro Israel policies.
That happened after the election so it's not an excuse. I mean, I think you're being intellectually dishonest about the character thing. I don't know if you voted for Biden but using your own logic he's said plenty of things that would disqualify him from being president. He also happened to be VP when the Iran deal happened, and pretty much said he'd go back to it during his campaign. But putting all that aside: I think you're coming up with excuses because you've been gas-lit for the past four years that Trump is the worst thing to happen to humanity since Hitler (yes they said it) even while he actually brokered peace deals in the middle east that have been the best thing to happen since the conflict. I'm sorry but you can't win this one. Something as nebulous and subjective as "character" holds no weight against his policies towards Israel and its results. It's simple. And I'm sure the people who bank on conflict and crises in the middle east weren't too happy about Trump and circulated their opinions about Trump's "character", wanting him out of office, widely through social media and other news outlets. Trump did good things for Israel and that matters to me, even more now when I see the opposite of that coming to fruition.
"That happened after the election so it's not an excuse." I'm not sure what "that" is and I'm not sure what I'm supposedly using it to excuse. Perhaps you can elaborate.
I'm hard-pressed to think of a single statement so bad that it would disqualify someone for the Presidency, and though I don't care for Biden I doubt that he's said anything that would disqualify him. With Trump I picked the first thing that came to mind, but he said outrageous and offensive things on an almost daily basis.
As I say, I'm not a Biden fan. I'm particularly against the Iran deal, and while they're less radically ill-considered I'm also quite unhappy with his Title IX policies and crime-bill work.
It's always risky to assume you know why someone is saying what he's saying, and I'm afraid you came up lemons this time. I haven't been "gas-lit" (and as an aside, having seen the movie "Gaslight" I think everybody is using that term incorrectly) about Trump. I've defended him on occasion against unsupported charges of racism and praised his handling of Israel and Iran.
But because of what I perceive as his character flaws I have never believed that I could count on him. Were he to be offended by something that Israel did or start collecting Persian rugs I would not assume that he'd set his personal feelings aside to do the right thing by Israel.
So I'm very concerned about Biden, but I prefer to trust in God's protection than to risk His displeasure by supporting someone I think is unfit.
The thing that happened after the election=fraud claims. I prefer to trust in Gods protection too, which is why I’m not crying that Biden won. It happened and I moved on. However I did feel like it was my duty to do what I could when I had the power to do so, to change the tide.
Here's a good question: what do you think of DeSantis as president, because your future choice is massively wrongminded leftists who think Iran needs to be coddled and Israel is evil versus people who espouse Trump's basic set of policies without his personal narcissism or distasteful rhetoric, but still kowtowing to his personal brand out of political necessity
That's an interesting question. I guess it'll depend on the details when-and-if the question arises. I don't think you can say what my future choice will be between, but I know how to find out: Wait.
I can give you some of my thinking, though: Sucking up to Trump would be a mark against him, but wouldn't disqualify him. Promoting the "stolen-election" idea would.
How about taking Israel to task for its share of the blame? I'm not blameless if I keep a fenced in area of captives over on one section of my property when they try what they can to hurt me. Maybe if I allow them some economic opportunities they will focus more on their happy lives than on me.
Israel isn't keeping the Gazans captive, nor denying them economic opportunity. It does vet their imports since they started using those to attack Israel. Given the opportunity to attack Israel or to improve their standard of living they choose the former. Ask them.
My understanding was that the borders have been mostly sealed since 2007, and that even fishing along the coast is restricted significantly. Of course there is a very strong case to be made about short term safety issues, but you can't put a covered pot on the stove, add heat, and ask it not to boil. Israel, having taken over the control of the land, would be more secure long term if they had some moderate effort to build the people there's lives up so that they move beyond hatred and have something to lose - or else they are happy to risk losing everything by attacking.
Israel does plenty, at great expense and often with considerable risk, for the sake of the Gazans, but it can't live their lives for them and if they insist on prioritizing their malevolence over their good living then that's how it's going to be.
You are correct that Israel restricts use of the coastal waters, which have been used to smuggle arms into Gaza. It also controls its border with Gaza, as any country would. In normal times many Gazans come into Israel for work and medical treatment.
Gaza also has a border with Egypt, which isn't much interested in allowing arms to be smuggled in either.
If you'll permit me, you're making a common mistake of the timeline: Israel was in Gaza in the first place after Egypt, which controlled Gaza, made war on Israel. Israel vacated Gaza (Egypt had zero interest in getting it back, it seems) and left greenhouses and other economic infrastructure behind in the hopes that the Gazans would turn their attention to their own development. Instead, they destroyed the infrastructure in a fit of pique, voted Hamas into power and attacked Israel. It was at *that* point that Israel instituted a blockade to reduce the flow of arms and other military supplies.
OK, if Israel would allow Egypt to come in and occupy it no problem then. I'm not anti-Israel on the point, btw. I'm more of the mindset that the entirety of the history since the six day war is the west not letting Israel enjoy the spoils of war. But, Israel can do more or can not be surprised at getting attacked. Miserable people will do miserable things. If it doesn't own the solutions, it will own the repercussions. In the same way as the wealthy of a society can either seek the improvement of the less fortunate or accept a high rate of property crime.
I don't understand any of that. Why would Egypt occupying Gaza help? Egypt doesn't want it, the Gazans don't want it.
And saying Israel "can do more" doesn't mean much. Nor should Israel have to "do more". The Gazans are in this fix because of their own bad -- and I mean both practically and morally -- decisions, past and present. If Israel could save the situation by generosity I'd advise it to do so, even though the recipients are about as undeserving as can be found.
But given that it can't, I'm not going to wag my finger at it as if it was at fault.
Same situation as US in terms of the Northern Triangle. You can fix root of problem or accept the downstream effects of the problem. No moral imperatives, in any case, just practical facts. IF Israel addresses the roots of the problem, the cycle will end. If they don't, they accept the current situation as their preference.
The root of the problem is the Arab/Muslim refusal to accept the presence of a Jewish state in this location. I don't expect Israel will "address" that.
Many Arab nations have moved past that once anything else important was on the table (in this case, Iran). Palestinians would easily move past it if they all had jobs in a productive economy.
As I wrote in other comments, Israel is not preventing Palestinians from having jobs and a productive economy.
It's worth adding that I like to believe that if someone were preventing me from getting a good job my response, however desperate, would not be to blow a day-care up.
For Israel, it's like the saying "It's not your fault, it's just your ass". They don't have a moral obligation to do anything at all, it's free choice to do so or not. But don't bitch to me about getting attacked as the violin gets smaller every decade.
My entire argument is a refutation of that, that a caged group of people at some point in time becomes the responsibility of the captor, including their mindset. If my neighbor attacked me so I locked them in their house forever, including their offspring, and I control all access to the house, when do I own the outcome - not the original offender, but the second generation after that, the third? If I just keep it locked, I'm perpetuating the situation and by such action preferring it to alternatives. So I can take whatever action I want when they throw feces from the windows as I pass, again, I'm in total control. But I can't really expect anything different to happen or for the residents to change if I make no changes.
You place blame on Israel for Gazans attempting mass murder of Israelis. That's irrational. And they were "caged" because of the over 1000 deaths incurred in Israel in a 5 year span before that. Palestinians have agency. They chose to be pawns even when it's detrimental to them. Btw, remember when Jordan annexed the west bank in war? I don't remember the "Palestinians" having any problems then being under Jordanian control. I mean, if they're their own country, they should have, right? Oh, and let's not forget the amount of two-state peace solutions have been offered to palestinians, who never even agreed to come to the table for them. They hate Jews. They hate Israel. They want the whole state or nothing. I have little sympathy when people continuously murder or attempt to murder people, and then cry to the world about how oppressed they are, and when offered a way out, reject it. Next.
I would say they have terrible leadership more than anything. It’s pretty sad. I’m not pointing fingers and putting collective blame on individuals. At the same time I’d say most are radicalized to blame Israel for everything and have no interest in putting down their arms for peace.
It's a tough issue to navigate, their responsibility as a collective and as individuals. On the one hand, I wouldn't take an individual Gazan and make assumptions about what he thinks (unless for some reason I *had* to). On the other, they did vote Hamas into power, approval for killing random Jews never drops below about 80% in their polls (you couldn't get 80% approval for apple pie in America), and on the rare occasions that someone protests Hamas policies it's more "You're just hurting your own people" than "You know, it's just wrong to bomb a day-care center."
So I tend to treat individuals without prejudice, but when dealing with the collective not worry too much about the effect on the individuals (within the laws of armed conflict, of course).
You mentioned work opportunity in Israel for Gazan, so I responded accordingly. There's nothing stopping Gazans from developing their own economy. Most countries don't base their GNP on their citizens working abroad.
This is apparently going to come up a lot: Trump got Israel, the Palestinians and Iran way more right than Biden, yet Trump was and remains unfit to be President and Biden -- well, we'll see. Both things can be true.
I think Ms. Weiss should take the Administration, not just various Congresspeople, to task for its behavior and its pronouncements. They were wrong to refund UNRWA, wrong to rejoin the UNHRC, wrong to want to remove sanctions on Iran and wrong to lecture Israel (about Sheikh Jarrah, about its security policies in general and about its handling of the Hamas attacks in particular). And as she points out, this kind of wrong is also dangerous.
But one can do that without extolling Trump. If you want nuanced opinions, there you have one: The Biden administration is egregiously, dangerously wrong on Israel and the Middle East, and Trump has no business being President.
I note you are able to articulate specifics against Biden/ Dems (UNRWA, UNHRC, sanctions etc), but are unable or unwilling to be honest about why Trump was a bad President. His policies were great.
I see below you don't like his "character", and don't trust him to continue support for Israel, if he feels insulted, for instance. These are valid, tho if I use them as criteria in comparison to Biden, Trump seems a bit better and a bit more trustworthy. Those who believe Biden, including his many untrue statements, may think differently.
I don't trust Biden on Israel. I think it likely that Biden will work in the established Democratic pattern, which is to be cruel to Israel and put it at risk, but in manageable ways. Trump is unrestrained, so he could be great for Israel (as he has been) or terrible, depending on his feelings.
But I don't vote for an American President solely based on Israel and I don't vote solely based on specific policies.
Hey Berkowitz, fellow Jew here: is it worth it? To go to your grave insisting Trump shouldn't have been president? What matters, personality or policy? What matters more to a Jew - looking cool in front of progressive friends or Israel? For me, it doesn't seem like it's worth it.
I'm not sure I *have* progressive friends. I have progressive family, but they're stuck with me regardless of my politics. Which is all by way of saying that I couldn't care less what progressive strangers think of me because of a post on social media (and I have the posts to prove it).
But your question is valid regardless. My answer is that *character* is a bedrock requirement if you want my vote. You don't have to be someone I'd follow off a cliff, but insulting POWs will get you off the list.
Part of the issue is that the President represents and reflects the country - at least to an extent. Part is that I don't trust someone of Trump's apparent character to *continue* to pursue policies I approve of. Part is that his flaws resulted in executive-branch behavior that was simply incompetent -- not something I want to see in an Administration. And of course there was the whole "stolen-election" thing, which is disqualifying and then some.
Michael, I think you're being dishonest about character. Few if any of our American presidents are pillars of integrity. Trump brought peace to the Middle East for four years. Now the world is coming apart since he stepped into office. We even had one of our pipelines sabotaged ... the Russians are testing Biden, the Pals are testing Biden, it's a free for all. They didn't do this to Trump because he was a strong and decisive leader.
I don't see him so much strong and decisive as heedless, but heedless can sometimes work out well, especially in cases like the Middle East where the prevailing wisdom was so stupid.
And I don't need to extol the virtues of other presidents to disqualify Trump on character grounds. From what I read, pro-Trump people look to him as God's anointed and anti-Trump people think he's the Antichrist. I don't subscribe to either of those attitudes.
Part 2 - just to be clear, I'm not dismissing your concerns of Trump's character, and I promptly lost my support for him after the election fraud claims which were just never ending and were radicalizing ppl for no reason. But I do not regret voting for him, and between the two candidates, I would do it again. In politics, unlike life, many time our choices are binary and we are forced to choose someone who we normally wouldn't vote for. In Trump's case, I was happy to vote for him because I wasn't just voting against Biden's Obama agenda+the squad, I was voting for Trump's pro Israel policies.
Understood. I'm not judging anybody who voted for him, but I won't do it.
That happened after the election so it's not an excuse. I mean, I think you're being intellectually dishonest about the character thing. I don't know if you voted for Biden but using your own logic he's said plenty of things that would disqualify him from being president. He also happened to be VP when the Iran deal happened, and pretty much said he'd go back to it during his campaign. But putting all that aside: I think you're coming up with excuses because you've been gas-lit for the past four years that Trump is the worst thing to happen to humanity since Hitler (yes they said it) even while he actually brokered peace deals in the middle east that have been the best thing to happen since the conflict. I'm sorry but you can't win this one. Something as nebulous and subjective as "character" holds no weight against his policies towards Israel and its results. It's simple. And I'm sure the people who bank on conflict and crises in the middle east weren't too happy about Trump and circulated their opinions about Trump's "character", wanting him out of office, widely through social media and other news outlets. Trump did good things for Israel and that matters to me, even more now when I see the opposite of that coming to fruition.
"That happened after the election so it's not an excuse." I'm not sure what "that" is and I'm not sure what I'm supposedly using it to excuse. Perhaps you can elaborate.
I'm hard-pressed to think of a single statement so bad that it would disqualify someone for the Presidency, and though I don't care for Biden I doubt that he's said anything that would disqualify him. With Trump I picked the first thing that came to mind, but he said outrageous and offensive things on an almost daily basis.
As I say, I'm not a Biden fan. I'm particularly against the Iran deal, and while they're less radically ill-considered I'm also quite unhappy with his Title IX policies and crime-bill work.
It's always risky to assume you know why someone is saying what he's saying, and I'm afraid you came up lemons this time. I haven't been "gas-lit" (and as an aside, having seen the movie "Gaslight" I think everybody is using that term incorrectly) about Trump. I've defended him on occasion against unsupported charges of racism and praised his handling of Israel and Iran.
But because of what I perceive as his character flaws I have never believed that I could count on him. Were he to be offended by something that Israel did or start collecting Persian rugs I would not assume that he'd set his personal feelings aside to do the right thing by Israel.
So I'm very concerned about Biden, but I prefer to trust in God's protection than to risk His displeasure by supporting someone I think is unfit.
The thing that happened after the election=fraud claims. I prefer to trust in Gods protection too, which is why I’m not crying that Biden won. It happened and I moved on. However I did feel like it was my duty to do what I could when I had the power to do so, to change the tide.
Here's a good question: what do you think of DeSantis as president, because your future choice is massively wrongminded leftists who think Iran needs to be coddled and Israel is evil versus people who espouse Trump's basic set of policies without his personal narcissism or distasteful rhetoric, but still kowtowing to his personal brand out of political necessity
That's an interesting question. I guess it'll depend on the details when-and-if the question arises. I don't think you can say what my future choice will be between, but I know how to find out: Wait.
I can give you some of my thinking, though: Sucking up to Trump would be a mark against him, but wouldn't disqualify him. Promoting the "stolen-election" idea would.
How about taking Israel to task for its share of the blame? I'm not blameless if I keep a fenced in area of captives over on one section of my property when they try what they can to hurt me. Maybe if I allow them some economic opportunities they will focus more on their happy lives than on me.
Israel isn't keeping the Gazans captive, nor denying them economic opportunity. It does vet their imports since they started using those to attack Israel. Given the opportunity to attack Israel or to improve their standard of living they choose the former. Ask them.
My understanding was that the borders have been mostly sealed since 2007, and that even fishing along the coast is restricted significantly. Of course there is a very strong case to be made about short term safety issues, but you can't put a covered pot on the stove, add heat, and ask it not to boil. Israel, having taken over the control of the land, would be more secure long term if they had some moderate effort to build the people there's lives up so that they move beyond hatred and have something to lose - or else they are happy to risk losing everything by attacking.
Israel does plenty, at great expense and often with considerable risk, for the sake of the Gazans, but it can't live their lives for them and if they insist on prioritizing their malevolence over their good living then that's how it's going to be.
You are correct that Israel restricts use of the coastal waters, which have been used to smuggle arms into Gaza. It also controls its border with Gaza, as any country would. In normal times many Gazans come into Israel for work and medical treatment.
Gaza also has a border with Egypt, which isn't much interested in allowing arms to be smuggled in either.
If you'll permit me, you're making a common mistake of the timeline: Israel was in Gaza in the first place after Egypt, which controlled Gaza, made war on Israel. Israel vacated Gaza (Egypt had zero interest in getting it back, it seems) and left greenhouses and other economic infrastructure behind in the hopes that the Gazans would turn their attention to their own development. Instead, they destroyed the infrastructure in a fit of pique, voted Hamas into power and attacked Israel. It was at *that* point that Israel instituted a blockade to reduce the flow of arms and other military supplies.
OK, if Israel would allow Egypt to come in and occupy it no problem then. I'm not anti-Israel on the point, btw. I'm more of the mindset that the entirety of the history since the six day war is the west not letting Israel enjoy the spoils of war. But, Israel can do more or can not be surprised at getting attacked. Miserable people will do miserable things. If it doesn't own the solutions, it will own the repercussions. In the same way as the wealthy of a society can either seek the improvement of the less fortunate or accept a high rate of property crime.
I don't understand any of that. Why would Egypt occupying Gaza help? Egypt doesn't want it, the Gazans don't want it.
And saying Israel "can do more" doesn't mean much. Nor should Israel have to "do more". The Gazans are in this fix because of their own bad -- and I mean both practically and morally -- decisions, past and present. If Israel could save the situation by generosity I'd advise it to do so, even though the recipients are about as undeserving as can be found.
But given that it can't, I'm not going to wag my finger at it as if it was at fault.
Same situation as US in terms of the Northern Triangle. You can fix root of problem or accept the downstream effects of the problem. No moral imperatives, in any case, just practical facts. IF Israel addresses the roots of the problem, the cycle will end. If they don't, they accept the current situation as their preference.
The root of the problem is the Arab/Muslim refusal to accept the presence of a Jewish state in this location. I don't expect Israel will "address" that.
Many Arab nations have moved past that once anything else important was on the table (in this case, Iran). Palestinians would easily move past it if they all had jobs in a productive economy.
As I wrote in other comments, Israel is not preventing Palestinians from having jobs and a productive economy.
It's worth adding that I like to believe that if someone were preventing me from getting a good job my response, however desperate, would not be to blow a day-care up.
For Israel, it's like the saying "It's not your fault, it's just your ass". They don't have a moral obligation to do anything at all, it's free choice to do so or not. But don't bitch to me about getting attacked as the violin gets smaller every decade.
The root of the problem is that Gaza continuously shows that their only interest is hurting Jews and will do so to their own detriment.
My entire argument is a refutation of that, that a caged group of people at some point in time becomes the responsibility of the captor, including their mindset. If my neighbor attacked me so I locked them in their house forever, including their offspring, and I control all access to the house, when do I own the outcome - not the original offender, but the second generation after that, the third? If I just keep it locked, I'm perpetuating the situation and by such action preferring it to alternatives. So I can take whatever action I want when they throw feces from the windows as I pass, again, I'm in total control. But I can't really expect anything different to happen or for the residents to change if I make no changes.
You place blame on Israel for Gazans attempting mass murder of Israelis. That's irrational. And they were "caged" because of the over 1000 deaths incurred in Israel in a 5 year span before that. Palestinians have agency. They chose to be pawns even when it's detrimental to them. Btw, remember when Jordan annexed the west bank in war? I don't remember the "Palestinians" having any problems then being under Jordanian control. I mean, if they're their own country, they should have, right? Oh, and let's not forget the amount of two-state peace solutions have been offered to palestinians, who never even agreed to come to the table for them. They hate Jews. They hate Israel. They want the whole state or nothing. I have little sympathy when people continuously murder or attempt to murder people, and then cry to the world about how oppressed they are, and when offered a way out, reject it. Next.
I would say they have terrible leadership more than anything. It’s pretty sad. I’m not pointing fingers and putting collective blame on individuals. At the same time I’d say most are radicalized to blame Israel for everything and have no interest in putting down their arms for peace.
It's a tough issue to navigate, their responsibility as a collective and as individuals. On the one hand, I wouldn't take an individual Gazan and make assumptions about what he thinks (unless for some reason I *had* to). On the other, they did vote Hamas into power, approval for killing random Jews never drops below about 80% in their polls (you couldn't get 80% approval for apple pie in America), and on the rare occasions that someone protests Hamas policies it's more "You're just hurting your own people" than "You know, it's just wrong to bomb a day-care center."
So I tend to treat individuals without prejudice, but when dealing with the collective not worry too much about the effect on the individuals (within the laws of armed conflict, of course).
Also, have there been "normal times" since 2007? I truly understand it to be no. No work opportunity from Gaza to Israel. But idk.
Thousands of Gazans typically have permits to work in Israel. It fluctuates with the security situation, but here's on piece describing it from a couple of years ago: https://www.al-monitor.com/originals/2020/02/isreal-issues-work-permits-gaza-merchants-understandings.html
This proves my case. 1% of the population can work outside of the zone after 14 years of zero allowances.
You mentioned work opportunity in Israel for Gazan, so I responded accordingly. There's nothing stopping Gazans from developing their own economy. Most countries don't base their GNP on their citizens working abroad.
Can I trust that you made that statement after reviewing some opposing viewpoints and web searching the barriers to economic activity in Gaza?
Wondering if you're texting this as you're waiting in line for gas?
There's a joke there, but it went over my head.
Blaming the administration for the gas lines, saying they are generally doing a bad job and giving another example.
Ah. I didn't know about that. Is it because of the pipeline hack?