What are you talking about?

This isn't actually true. The Arab birthrate in Israel and surrounding countries, including the Palestinian territories, is decreasing while the Jewish Israeli birth rate is one of the highest in the developed world. Immigration from Europe is also increasing. The UN figures that in Israel Proper, the Jews will remain in the majority for a long time based on current trends.

Netanyahu has many negative traits but stupidity isn't one of them. While not dealing with the Israeli-Palestinian conflict in the best of ways, he is keeping violence and death to a minimum. Israel's response to the current chaos in the surrounding countries has also be appropriately muted, just reminders for others to stay away from Israel. His response to the recent fire from Gaza was nothing compared to what other politicians have done. Netanyahu is also one of the few leaders in the developed world that implemented the correct response to the Great Recession, making Israel one of the countries not to suffer from much economic hardship, which also helps the Palestinians.

People on the Pro-Palestinian side weren't treating Gaza settlements as minimal when they existed.

I think its about numbers. The number of Conservatives Elite as you described them is very small, not enough to win a election by being more honesty about their beliefs. Even in non-democratic systems, the Elite need a broader base of political support than the Elite. Current Elite Conservatism in the United States is all about allowing the wealthy to keep more of their money, its about protecting a Rentier class almost. Its very Gilded Age. This isn't an issue you can win elections with. Esoteric Conservatism gets Elite Conservatives the votes they need to implement their preferred policies.

My ultimate feeling is that eventually Israel would do to the West Bank what it did in Gaza, withdraw and leave the Palestinians to govern it as they please even if they use it as a launching pad against Israel. It won't exactly be like the Gaza withdrawl, I think many settlements close to the Green Line are going to be incorporated into Israel but those away from the Green Line are going to be given the choice of leaving or staying and risking it.

I don't quite get Bibi hate. Even those who are inclined to hate all Israeli politicians because of thier beliefs seem to reserve a special place for Netanyahu. The hatred directed at him seems much more personal than that aimed at Sharon or Olmert or any other post-Oslo Israeli PM. Even Begin, the founder of Likud, didn't get this level of personal hatred.

My feeling is that the elite of American Conservatism think they can't win an election if they ran on what they really believed in. The red meat given to the Conservatives Proles is to secure their vote in order to win elections.

I think that most Israeli's want out of the West Bank ASAP and realize that permanent occupation is not possible. The issue is that they basically don't trust Palestinian leadership, whom they view as outright elimination or too cowardly to do anything.

As for the Settlements, Israel never intended to give up Jerusalem since the conclusion of the Six Day War. It's a lesson learned cr how Jordan treated Jewish sites during their rule over the city. I believe that the Israelis never intended for a perfect swap.

Sorry for my comment about Netanyahu but a lot of people view him as evil incarnate when he isn't.

Israel is not moving rightward. Everybody kept predicting that Israel's last election would be a great victory for the Far right but it wasn't. The victors were the center-left parties and the current government has nobody from an Ultra-Orthodox party in it.

I disagree strongly with this analysis as it pertains to the Israeli side. The settlers are a red hearing. There hasn't been an expansion to any settlement in a long time and the Israeli government has demonstrated that they have what it takes to dismantle them if they think its necessary as Gaza withdrawal demonstrated. I also disagree with the portrayal of Netanyahu as some blood thirsty sociopath. Israeli reaction to Hamas' terrorism has been much more restrained under him than it was under his predecessors. He has demonstrated that he can accept a bad deal from his perspective like he did for the release of Shalit. What Netanyahu is not willing to do is enter into a grand bargain that would basically mean nothing for Israel. Like the rest of Isreali society, he has grown cynical of Palestinian leadership.

And more good reason. I believe that the evidence demonstrates that nearly all Palestinians are in the rejectionist camp and that their allies, Muslim or Western, keep encouraging them on in their rejectionism. There are no shortages of examples of people who are ostensibly pro-Israel to basically make a great sacrifice for nothing. I can't think of any pro-Palestinian person encouraging the Palestinians to make any compromise or sacrifice. The message to the Palestinians from their allies is to be obstinate and fight on to the bitter end regardless of the cost. What then Palestinians and their allies want is the destruction of Israel. Anything else would be a tremendous miscarriage of justice to them.

It's worse than that, the anti-Zionists ask Jews to refrain from actions that would be logical in other persecuted groups. We are asked not to have a nationalistic reaction to the exclusions and persecution we had to endure. If we were any other persecuted group, a nationalist reaction would be celebrated or at least understood. However, since we are Jews it's. not tolerated.

I'd say yes, Gaza withdrawal was a failure in many ways. Palestinian leadership so it as an opportunity to launch attacks against Israel rather than do something constructive and people still insist Gaza is occupied when its not.

Hamas uses their control over the Gaza Strip to fire a barrage of missles, i.e. make war as a state against Israel, and oppress women and anybody who disagrees with them.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2013/mar/05/gaza-marathon-cancelled-hamas-bans-women

Meanwhile their sometime ally in the war against Israel blames the recent massacre of Muslims in Burma on Jews:

http://hurryupharry.org/2013/03/01/puppetmasters/

At what point do we get to call a duck a duck.

Um, lets see. Last time I checked Israeli Arabs sat in the Knesset, served in the Israeli government in all positions from minor bureaucratic posts to the Supreme Court and in the IDF. In fact, an Arab Israeli Judge, George Karra, provided over the trial of ex-Israeli Moshe Katsav for rape.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moshe_Katsav#Rape_and_sexual_harassment_case

Meanwhile, more people have been killed in the recent conflict in Syria than the entire Arab-Israeli conflict since 1948.

The Jews of the Yishuv have dealt in good faith with the Arabs of Israel/Palestine/the wider Middle East since the late 19th century and were met with rejection every time. After WWI, after the Peel Commission, after WWII and Israel's War for Independence, and after the Six-Day War and Yom Kippur War. The Arab response has always been "No Israel, No Israel." Some hide this message and some say it openly but its been the same.

Even after Oslo, Arafat was offered basically everything he wanted by Barak and rejected it in favor of Intifada II, which recent documents and statements have revealed was pre-medited. The Olmert government was willing to give even more than Barak was, relinquishing control over the Jewish Quarter in the Old City of Jerusalem to the Palestinians and got rejected. When Sharon withdrew from Gaza, the response was war rather than something more constructive. Abbas demanded a halt to settlement construction, Netanyahu halted settlement construction and things went no where because Abbas made more demands.

Its Arab leadership in general and Palestinian leadership in particular that argues in bad faith and that keeps trying to refight Israel's War for Independence. When Arab leadership negotiated in good faith like Sadat or like King Hussein of Jordan, the Israeli government responded in good faith even when Israel was under dreaded Likud leadership like it was during the talks with Sadat.

A lot of people call thesmelves progressive because liberal has kind of been made a dirty word in America since the 1970s by the GOP. Thats the main reason why liberals started calling themselves progressive. I also think that a lot of liberals call themselves progressives because the associate liberal with the Democratic politicians that got us into the Vietnam quagmire and its a way to differentiate themselves.

Progressives also see liberals as people to weak to stand up and fight for their own ideas and feel that they constantly cower to conservatives.

Yes, a lot of Evangelicals place great pressure on being politically conservative and for members of the church to conform to those standards.

I sometimes joke that Christianity is simultaneously the world's largest and smallest religion because of this.

I think the idea that liberals/progressives are heathen comes from the version of Evangelical Christinanity that sees everybody who isn't an Evangelical Christian as a heathen because of the emphasis on being born again. Christians who do not fall under this model, Mainstream Protestants, Catholics, Mormons, and Eastern Orthodox Christians are heathen because of this. Non-Christians like me are heathen by definition. Part of the problem is that Evangelical Christians use the generic Christian to identify themselves while other Christians aer more specific usually, referring to themselves as Catholic or Presbyterian or Greek Orthodox or what not. This creates an association between the generic word Christian and the specific Evangelical Christian that really shouldn't exist.

Anonymous is just a sign of the negative sides of the internet. For all its wonders, the internet also gives a lot of petty and not so petty power to people who really shouldn't have it. People use it to bully and shame. We seem to have reinvented the pillory for the twenty-first except this time every community gets to put the non-ideologially correct into it. We really need to a golden rule for the internet, "whatever would be hateful to you in real life, do not do to others on the internet."

I thought that the Anarchists were expelled from the International because the Communists thought that anarchism was too religious as a philosophy while Marxism was more scientific?

Like I said in my intial post, it might be worth it to bring over the entire Fantastic Four plus somebody else. Not only do you get Reed Richards, but you get two first class bruisers and ace pilots, and Invisible Woman for defense. They already know how to work as a team and faced alien invasions, super villains, and evil scientists before. With Superman, they'll practically be invulnerable.

If we want somebody whose a powerful magic user but are worried about what they could bring over, why not Belgarath or Polgara. They don't have the Orb of Aldur but each is more adapt at using the Will and the Word than Belgarion.

Belgarion, who gets autocorrected to Bulgarian, isn't dumb pet se. He suffers from Superman's problem, that he is so powerful he doesn't need to think about strategy.

Considering how much our rich are behaving in the real world, no I don't believe that the many of the super-rich will voluntarily depart with their money even to fight evil. Most likely, they will simply find away to get the rest of us to pay while asking for more tax cuts and government contracts.