i think he danced around the question of mass mobilization by talking about land ownership, but he didn't really answer it directly. there's some parallels in terms of segregation, but the better comparison in america's history is not to black slavery but to the genocide of it's indigenous population. nor is apartheid really the right comparison or description. it's genocide...

the direct answer is that the american economy relied on black labour, so civil disobedience produced a large amount of leverage in terms of it's ability to shut down the economy. israel does not have the same economic relationship with it's palestinian population. israel wants to be jewish from the bottom up, at all levels of their social hierarchy, and just be done with the palestinian "problem" altogether. so, israel would gleefully jump at the opportunity to replace striking arab israelis with ethnic jews.

i think the best thing to learn from looking at the two systems is how incomparable they are, and the analysis ought to be rooted in not applying methods that made sense in america but do not make sense in the middle east.

in fact, america has been trying very hard recently to create the kind of apartheid state that activists pretend exists by proposing the construction of palestinian factories to produce goods for the israeli market. the logic is it will cut down on unemployment, get the economy running and reduce poverty. it's a bad answer, but it's a bad situation. the israelis have consistently rejected these proposals. they don't want the palestinians to be economically subservient to them, they simply want them to cease to exist.

deathtokoalas
there's far more evidence for bigfoot than there is for jesus.

phil27hardie 
Hay-seuss

deathtokoalas
it's probably actually isis; you have to keep in mind there was no "j" in the alphabet at the time.

Stephanie R
theres more evidence for just about everything than god, not jesus. Jesus was a real person! Just nothing special about him :P

deathtokoalas
there's no real convincing evidence of the historicity of jesus. none of the historians of the time said anything about him. that's not to say there's evidence he didn't exist, but considering his existence is so fundamental to the religion he's the central aspect of, it's reasonable to demand convincing proof that he actually existed and was crucified - and there isn't anything.

i was at one point fooled into thinking there were tax records, but this doesn't hold up, either.

Stephanie R
What I was saying is there is proof there was a man named jesus back in the day. nothing more than that. haha

deathtokoalas
the thing is that there isn't even actually that much.

it's become fashionable in certain academic circles to try and prove jesus didn't exist, and was inventing by the roman hierarchy. it strikes me as an impossible to prove claim. however, the balance of evidence seems to suggest that the "jesus myth" is entirely syncretic. the story about visiting the underworld for three days and rising again is an old pagan motive. other figures were said to walk on the water. etc. once you deconstruct all the stories into their mythological origins, there becomes little reason to think that this "jesus" character has any more historical validity than socrates, odysseus or frodo.

Kestra
you don't need physical proof of jesus, he proves himself to you spiritually.

deathtokoalas
no, i need physical proof. sorry.

Stephanie R
I recommend you reading the bible, then you'll truly know how awful jesus/god really is... although he isn't real. He's about as real as a unicorn.

nightwingplaysmc
How on earth do we get proof of Jesus when he was born 2000 years ago

deathtokoalas
well, we're pretty sure augustus existed.

what is a proof? a proof is a proof, and you know it's a proof, because then it's been proven.

it's a tough question. but i'm not suggesting there's proof he didn't exist. that's the really hard thing to try and argue. you can come up with various arguments, but they all require a leap of faith at some point.

what i'm getting across is more that the proper way to approach something with such a dearth of evidence is skepticism.

with jesus, you've literally got nothing at all. with bigfoot, there are arguably some stool samples. there's native american folklore - which is unlikely to come from nothing at all. with jesus, it's true that the stories also must have a basis, but the fact that they can be deconstructed to non-christian sources indicates there's little reason to think the human was actually a real being. there's this idea that jesus was initially conceived of as this celestial being and was only given human form afterwards, as the stories got confused over the years. taking a similar line of thinking with bigfoot would suggest that you're - at least - dealing with an extinct species.

one of the more convincing arguments i've seen is that the legend has parallels in asia. could it be that the legend is so old as to have pre-migration roots in north asia? far from a proven hypothesis, but an interesting one.

i don't think the idea of a late non-human hominid is really that crazy. the evidence is admittedly pretty sketchy, but it's far more convincing than the total deficit of evidence surrounding the historicity of jesus.

Shia Islam is the righteous path
He was real. And God is real too. Bigfoot is a myth.

deathtokoalas
well, ok, if you say so.

Shia Islam is the righteous path
I do say so. It's a fact.  And it's nice that you were convinced fast, I thought you would resist a bit with an ignorant debate. Good girl :)

deathtokoalas
well, i don't really have much to debate with. i'm up for it, but i'm not really into starting it, and you've gotta give me more than that if you want me to react.