youtube link: Non-Violent Protest against Israel Apartheid Wall

[Zzarchov]

Ethnic cleansing is the same thing as genocide.

Forced resettlement is what you are describing. Of course, due to the double meaning of Ethnic cleansings (used by those in favour of Genocide to seem less evil, and by those suffering from Forced resettlement to sound more evil) it also means forced resettlement.

But if you keep using weighted orwellian lingo to try and lie a point across, I will use the same logic. If you want to not have Genocide thrown into your claims, STOP USING A WORD THAT ALSO MEANS GENOCIDE TO TRY AND MANIPULATE PEOPLES EMOTIONS.



As for examples of non-violent protest, "examples" are irrelevant. Violence begets violence, as long as snipers and bombers are sheltered there is justification for more shooting.

If Palestine wants to be free, it has to stop sheltering militants on one hand then being "peaceful" on the other. Stop fighting, stop fighting for years. Then, you will be free. And no amount of bitching will change that. The longer the wait, they worse off they become.

 

[earth_as_one]

Israel/Lebanon, US/UK/Iraq, US/UK/Iran and a potential conflict drawing in Syria, Egypt, Jordan, Saudi Arabia... All related.

Root cause? 4.5 million (and growing) displaced people as a result of Israel's ongoing ethnic cleansing and colonization.

Are these photos of Lebanon fake?

[FONT=Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif]Photos From Israel's War on Lebanon, July 2006[/FONT]
[FONT=Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif]This war has been overwhelmingly approved by the Bush administration and both houses of Congress. Most of the Israeli aircraft, artillery, and weapons deployed in the events depicted here were made in America. American taxpayers give Israel nearly $2 billion of armaments every year.
Warning: Disturbing images[/FONT]​

http://www.vtjp.org/background/imageslebanon.php

That was a few weeks in 2006. Palestinians have been getting hammered like that regularly since the 1940's.

Planning to steal Palestine from Palestinians began decades before Palestinian violence:

One early right-wing Zionist leader was Vladimir Jabotinsky, who wrote in 1923:

Zionism is a colonizing adventure and therefore it stands or falls by the question of armed force. It is important to build, it is important to speak Hebrew, but, unfortunately, it is even more important to be able to shoot--or else I am through with playing at colonization.​

(Quoted in Beit-Hallahmi, Original Sins, (Olive Branch Press 1992), a book by an Israeli professor which I highly recommend. Beit-Hallahmi sums up as follows:

"It was easy to make the Palestinians pay for 2,000 years of persecution. The Palestinians, who have felt the enormous power of this vengeance, were not the historical oppressors of the Jews. They did not put Jews into ghettoes and did not force them to wear yellow stars. They did not plan holocausts. But they had one fault. They were weak and defenseless in the face of real military might, so they were the ideal victims for an abstract revenge..."

http://www.spectacle.org/495/deir.html

Israel declared independance on the ashes of 900,000 people's homes. Palestinian resistance took more than a decade after most of it fell to Israel to become organized.

...

1920s: Some migration of European Jews to Palestine: Jewish population rises from 83,790 in 1922 census (out of 752,048 total) to 174,606 by 1931 (out of 1,033,314 total); more violence in 1929
1930s: Zionist revisionists (Vladimir Jabotinsky and Stern Gang) begin negotiations with Nazis over support for Zionist settlement in Palestine; Jewish population increases more rapidly, reaching 528,702 by 1944 (out of 1,739,624 total)
1935-39: Major Palestinian uprising against Zionist settlements; British disarm Palestinian groups in aftermath
1940s: Armed Zionist groups pressure British to allow Israeli statehood (1944 Stern Gang assassination of British Secretary of State Lord Moyne; 1946 bombing of King David Hotel, with at least 88 killed)
1945-50: US and Britain refuse to open doors to Jewish holocaust refugees, directing flow of migrants to Israel
1948: Deir Yassin massacre, 250 killed by Menachim Begin’s troops; flight of as many as 900,000 unarmed Palestinians to surrounding Arab states; Israeli statehood proclaimed, recognized by US and 32 other states at UN (13 against, 10 abstentions); Palestinians and surrounding Arab states reject Israeli statehood, war ensues; Yitzhak Shamir’s unit assassinates UN mediator, Count Folke Bernadotte
1950s: Israel wins series of military conflicts with Arab states, solidifying position and laying permanent claim to former Palestinian lands
1950s-60s: Beginnings of officially-recognized Middle East terrorism problems, including airplane hijackings and bombings, first carried out by Israel, eventually by Palestinians and others; Ariel Sharon’s unit commits massacre at Qibya in 1953
1964: Founding of Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO)
....

http://www.peoplesgeography.org/Timeline.htm

The longterm trend since then has been an ever increasing number of desperate people with nothing to loose. Over time these people have become meaner and better armed. Man portable munitions have increased the power of a individual soldier.

As soon as 1.3 billion Muslims figure out that armed with RPG-29s and MANPADS, they can knock down concrete walls and have relatively even odds against tanks and low flying aircraft:

Iraqi insurgent video of MANPADS bringing down an American Chinook in Iraq

That was likely a old Russian MANPADS. Iran now has production line set up to make their own modern MANPADS. More accurate, longer range, less affected by counter measures.

http://media.farsnews.com/Media/8411/ImageReports/8411170195/2_8411170195_L600.jpg

http://media.farsnews.com/Media/8411/ImageReports/8411170195/3_8411170195_L600.jpg

http://media.farsnews.com/Media/8411/ImageReports/8411170195/4_8411170195_L600.jpg

http://media.farsnews.com/Media/8411/ImageReports/8411170195/5_8411170195_L600.jpg

http://media.farsnews.com/Media/8411/ImageReports/8411170195/6_8411170195_L600.jpg

http://media.farsnews.com/Media/8411/ImageReports/8411170195/8_8411170195_L600.jpg

http://media.farsnews.com/Media/8411/ImageReports/8411170195/10_8411170195_L600.jpg

http://media.farsnews.com/Media/8411/ImageReports/8411170195/11_8411170195_L600.jpg

Iran, Syria and many other countries make RPG-29's
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RPG-29

RPG-29: The Great Equalizer

At the beginning of the 2006 Israel-Lebanon conflict, the main Israeli concern was a report that Hezbollah possessed Russian Kornet antitank missiles. However, it has been the RPG-29 that is stolen the show. These man-portable lightweight weapons are powerful enough to destroy the Merkava tank, which is reputed to be the most thoroughly armored tank in the world...

http://searchingforthetruth.typepad.com/searching_for_the_truth/2006/08/rpg29_the_great.html

War is a loose-loose proposition. Peace won't happen while Israel continues to ethnically cleanse Palestine of Palestinians and build Jewish only colonies over the ashes. That will only increase the number of people willing to fight their cause.

 

[earth_as_one]

ethnic cleansing

The creation of an ethnically homogenous geographic area through the elimination of unwanted ethnic groups by deportation, forcible displacement, or genocide. Ethnic cleansing also has involved attempts to remove physical vestiges of the targeted group in the territory through the destruction and desecration of monuments, cemeteries, and houses of worship. Although some critics of the term have claimed that ethnic cleansing is simply a form of genocide, defenders of the usage have noted that, whereas the murder of an ethnic, racial, or religious group is the primary intention of a genocidal policy, the chief goal of ethnic cleansing is the establishment of homogenous lands, which may be achieved by any of a number of methods including genocide. The term was widely employed in the 1990s to describe the brutal treatment of Bosniacs (Bosnian Muslims), ethnic Serbs in the Krajina region of Croatia, and ethnic Albanians in the Serbian province of Kosovo during the conflicts that erupted in the wake of the disintegration of Yugoslavia.
For more information on ethnic cleansing, visit Britannica.com.

Creating a Jewish state by displacing millions of non-Jews is Ethnic Cleansing. Razing their homes and cemetaries and building Jewish only colonies over the ashes is Ethnic Cleansing.

 

[Just the Facts]

That's not accurate either. 800,000 Palestinians were forcible removed from their homes to make way for Israel. Over time Israel has expanded continuously displacing more people into a smaller and more fragmented areas. Now 4.5 million people live in a series walled in prison camps.

Actually very few were forcibly removed, most left voluntarily thinking they would return when the Jews were pushed into the sea. Sometimes things just don't work out as planned.

Palestinians don't have a monopoly on being displaced, but they're they only ones who still consider themselves refugees generations later. There are many Jews in Israel who can rightfully call themselves refugees - how many Jews have been displaced from the Arab world in the last 60 years? Heck, by Palestinian standards I'm a refugee too - you don't mind if I blow up the bus you're riding on to protest the loss of my ancestral home, right? That would make me a freedom fighter.

 

[Just the Facts]

Root cause? 4.5 million (and growing) displaced people as a result of Israel's ongoing ethnic cleansing and colonization.

The number of displaced persons was in the thousands. Hundreds of thousands left of their own accord. To say 4.5 million and counting is just plain silly. That's like saying 50 millions Jews were killed in the Holocaust, and counting.

Furthermore, those who stayed behind are today prospering in Israel. They growing in numbers are a legitimate threat to the future of Israel as a Jewish state.

Yet they are afforded all the protections and rights of Israeli citizenship.

We all know what happens to Jews who accidentally wander into Palestinian terroritory without military protection. Tip: if you're a Jew lost in Ramallah - DO NOT GO TO A POLICE STATION FOR DIRECTIONS!!

 

[Just the Facts]

Peace won't happen while Israel continues to ethnically cleanse Palestine of Palestinians and build Jewish only colonies over the ashes. That will only increase the number of people willing to fight their cause.

Like in Gaza. Oh, wait....

 

[earth_as_one]

This myth about hundreds of thousands of people suddenly volunteering to abandon everything they own except what they could carry, not only doesn't make sense, it has been disproven by Israeli historians using Israeli government archives.


Quote:
The History of Israel Reconsidered

Sunday, March 11, 2007 Printer friendly versionby gyaku
http://gyaku.jp/en/index.php?plugin=...pappe-book.jpg


Professor Ilan Pappe is an Israeli historian and senior lecturer of Political Science at Haifa University. He is the author of numerous books, including A History of Modern Palestine, The Modern Middle East, The Israel/Palestine Question and, most recently, The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine, published in 2006. On March 8, he spoke at a small colloquium in Tokyo organized by the NIHU Program Islamic Area Studies, University of Tokyo Unit, on the path of personal experiences that brought him to write his new book. The following is a transcript of his lecture, tentatively titled "The History of Israel Reconsidered" by organizers of the event.


Ilan Pappe: Thank you for inviting me, it's a pleasure to be here....

...When I started in Oxford, in England, in the early 1980s, quite a lot of new material about 1948 was opened. And I started looking at the archives in Israel, in the United Kingdom, in France, in the United States, and also the United Nations opened its archives when I started working on this. They had interesting archives in Geneva, and in New York.

And suddenly I began to see a picture of 1948 that I was not familiar with...

...we found out that the Zionist leadership, the Israeli leadership, regardless of the peace plans of the United Nations, contemplated long before 1948 the dispossession of the Palestinians, the expulsion of the Palestinians. So it was not that as a result of the war that the Palestinians lost their homes. It was as a result of a Jewish, Zionist, Israeli ― call it what you want ― plan that Palestine was ethnically cleansed in 1948 of its original indigenous population...

The entire of the lecture here:
http://gyaku.jp/en/index.php?cmd=contentview&pid=000119


Benny Morris:

Quote:
Survival of the Fittest? An Interview with Benny Morris with Ari Shavit

....Morris: The revised book is a double-edged sword. It is based on many documents that were not available to me when I wrote the original book, most of them from the Israel Defense Forces Archives. What the new material shows is that there were far more Israeli acts of massacre than I had previously thought. To my surprise, there were also many cases of rape. In the months of April-May 1948, units of the Haganah [the pre-state defense force that was the precursor of the IDF] were given operational orders that stated explicitly that they were to uproot the villagers, expel them and destroy the villages themselves...

The entire interview here
http://www.logosjournal.com/morris.htm

Its easier to steal a person's home, dignity and future and impose injustice and injustice if you think of "them" as criminals and terrorists with ulterior motives rather than just ordinary people like the rest of "us".

Until you walked a mile in their shoes, you can't judge them. Watch this documentary and you will see the other side of this dispute:

Dispatches: In The Killing Zone
http://youtube.com/watch?v=gssGg8Mnu5U

 

[earth_as_one]

Like in Gaza. Oh, wait....

Israel abandoned Gaza because they knew these colonies were undefendable militarily and morally. In exchange Israel hoped to be able to slice up the West Bank.

What Israel did would be like an armed robber shooting your family and taking everything you own and then giving you back your empty wallet. Would you be grateful?

18 August 2005

Sharon's Strategy Succeeds (For Now)

By Gwynne Dyer


...Which brings us to Ariel Sharon, formerly the hardest of
hard-liners and the moving force behind the whole policy of creating Jewish
settlements on conquered Palestinian land after 1967. Has he actually
changed his spots, or is the evacuation of the Gaza Strip just a
smoke-screen for his real intentions? Well, listen to him.

"I think it is important that they (Gaza settlers) know that what
they did was not in vain. There are certainly great achievements, with the
big (West Bank) settlements that will remain in Israeli hands." He is
removing 8,500 Jewish settlers from the Gaza Strip (where they lived
surrounded by 1.3 million Arabs and could never be secure anyway) in order
to secure the position of some 400,000 Jewish settlers on formerly
Palestinian land in the West Bank. That's not exactly a defeat for Zionism,
if it works.

It all comes down to what Israelis call the"demographic problem."
Most of them want to live in a state that is both Jewish and democratic,
but for decades now some of them have also nourished the dream that that
state could include all or almost all of former Palestine. Palestinians
have a much higher birth-rate than Israelis, however, and despite the
immigration of a million people of Jewish descent from the countries of the
former Soviet Union over the past fifteen years, Arabs now make up almost
exactly half the people living under the Israeli government's control.

Or rather, they would, if Ariel Sharon was not pulling the Jewish
settlers out of the Gaza Strip and redefining the territory's 1.3 million
Arabs as no longer Israel's responsibility. The withdrawal also ends a
pointless waste of Israeli lives: nearly a hundred Israeli soldiers have
been killed trying to protect the hopelessly vulnerable settlements. (Some
of them started calling themselves "human flak-jackets.")...

http://www.gwynnedyer.net/articles/Gwynne Dyer article_ Sharon's Strategy Succeeds.txt

8,500 setters surrounded by 1.3 million Arabs in one of the world's most densely populated areas. The settlers had unlimited water for their greenhouses, while the Arabs suffered from a lack of potable water. While Israeli settlers watered their plants, Israeli soldiers ripped up Arab water and sewer mains.

20 October 2004
i. Introduction

Late on 28 September 2004 large numbers of Israeli Defence Force (IDF) tanks, bulldozers and armoured personnel carriers moved into Northern Gaza from permanent bases in Nissanit settlement, Erez Industrial Zone and the Eastern Border, tearing up roads and flattening homes and crops as they pushed forward. Israeli Army units established strategic positions on high ground overlooking the Jabalia, Izbet Beit Hanoun and Beit Lahia areas; troops also deployed along the main road between Jabalia camp and Beit Hanoun and on the northern and eastern sides of Jabalia camp.

Over the next 17 days the IDF remained in control of Northern Gaza. An estimated 200 armoured vehicles were on the ground in towns, villages and densely populated refugee camps, launching regular raids into civilian areas, firing on Palestinian targets from the air and ground, sealing off Palestinian neighbourhoods and restricting movement of civilians and humanitarian/emergency relief workers. Large swathes of agricultural land were leveled and there was widespread damage to public and private property – homes, schools, commercial interests - and public infrastructure. IDF bulldozers dug deep trenches across several main roads, severing sewage, water and electricity lines...

http://www.monabaker.com/pMachine/more.php?id=A2401_0_1_0_M

Should Palestinians be grateful?

 

[Just the Facts]

This myth about hundreds of thousands of people suddenly volunteering to abandon everything they own except what they could carry, not only doesn't make sense, it has been disproven by Israeli historians using Israeli government archives.

They didn't volunteer to abandon everything they own, the volunteered to get out of the way of the invading Arab armies so as not to be mistaken for Jews and accidentally slaughtered along with them. Nice try though.

I can't believe I actually read your links, but once again a complete waste of time. Israeli government archives that the Zionists had a plan to expel Arabs. Nothing, absolutely nothing, about them in fact carrying out such a plan. The Arabs saved them the trouble by leaving on their own.

Until you walked a mile in their shoes, you can't judge them.

I told you, I am in their shoes. By Palestinian standards, I am a refugee. Maybe they should walk a mile in my shoes and learn the meaning of getting on with life.

 

[Just the Facts]

Israel abandoned Gaza because they knew these colonies were undefendable militarily and morally. In exchange Israel hoped to be able to slice up the West Bank.

Doesn't matter why they left Gaza. They left Gaza, period. Two years later, what have the Palestinians accomplished there? What the Israeli's made into the most productive agricultural land in the middle east, the Palestinains turned into a military terrorist training wasteland. The Israeli's have been gone for two years now. What are the Palestinians doing with the water now?

8,500 setters surrounded by 1.3 million Arabs in one of the world's most densely populated areas. The settlers had unlimited water for their greenhouses, while the Arabs suffered from a lack of potable water. While Israeli settlers watered their plants, Israeli soldiers ripped up Arab water and sewer mains.

And when the settlers left, the Palestinians demo'd the greenhouses. Good thinking.

Over the next 17 days the IDF remained in control of Northern Gaza. An estimated 200 armoured vehicles were on the ground in towns, villages and densely populated refugee camps, launching regular raids into civilian areas, firing on Palestinian targets from the air and ground, sealing off Palestinian neighbourhoods and restricting movement of civilians and humanitarian/emergency relief workers

And they did this because? They were bored? Had too many rounds of ammo in storage so decided to use Palestinains as target practice? What nonsense. Ignore the provocations commited by the Palestinians and just focus on the Israeli response. Typical.

 

[Just the Facts]

Should Palestinians be grateful?

Just to give a little balance and context to events around september 28, 2004:

http://www.johnstonsarchive.net/terrorism/terrisrael-8.html

13 Jan 2004 1 killed, 3 injured in shooting attack on car in Samaria 14 Jan 2004 4 killed (including 2 soldiers), 10 injured in suicide bombing (one terrorist also killed) in Gaza Strip at Erez Crossing 29 Jan 2004 11 killed (including 1 Ethiopian), over 50 injured in suicide bombing (one terrorist, a Palestinian policeman, also killed) on bus in Jerusalem 22 Feb 2004 8 killed (including 1 soldier and 1 teenager), over 60 injured (including 11 students) in suicide bombing on bus in Jerusalem 26 Feb 2004 1 soldier killed, 2 soldiers injured by two terrorists in shooting attack at Erez Crossing between the Gaza Strip and Israel; the terrorists were also killed by soldiers 27 Feb 2004 2 killed in shooting attack along the Green Line 6 Mar 2004 2 Palestinian police officers killed (along with four terrorists) in attack with guns and two car bombs at Erez 14 Mar 2004 10 killed, 16 injured in twin suicide bombings (5 killed immediately by first explosion, second explosion killed 3 immediately and fatally injured 2) (two terrorists also killed) at the port of Ashdod; the terrorists may have intended to reach chemical storage facilities 19 Mar 2004 1 killed (a Christian Arab) in a drive-by shooting in Jerusalem 3 Apr 2004 1 adult killed and 1 teenager injured in shooting attack in Avnei Hefetz 17 Apr 2004 1 policeman killed, 3 policemen injured in suicide bombing (one terrorist also killed) at Erez Crossing 25 Apr 2004 1 policeman killed, 3 policemen injured in shooting attack in Hebron 2 May 2004 5 killed (including 4 children), 3 injured (including 2 soldiers) in shooting attack at Gush Katif in Gaza Strip 11 May 2004 6 soldiers killed in bombing of armored personnel carrier in Gaza City 12 May 2004 5 soldiers killed, 3 soldiers injured in apparent anti-tank rocket attack on their vehicle near Rafah 14 May 2004 2 soldiers killed, 2 soldiers injured in sniper attack in Rafah, Gaza Strip 22 May 2004 1 soldier and several Palestinians injured in suicide bombing (one terrorist killed) at Bakaot checkpoint, northern Jordan valley 29 May 2004 1 soldier killed in shooting attack near Nablus 21 Jun 2004 1 citizen of Thailand killed by mortar attack in Kfar Darom, Gaza Strip, associated with attempt to infiltrate the settlement 27 Jun 2004 1 soldier killed, 5 soldiers injured in bombing by Hamas terrorists who tunneled under an Israeli outpost in the Gaza Strip 28 Jun 2004 (0815)2 killed (including 1 child), 11 injured by Kassam rocket striking near a nursery school in Sderot, Gaza Strip 29 Jun 2004 1 killed in shooting attack in Beit Rima, a village unde Palestinian authority near Ramallah 4 Jul 2004 1 killed, 1 injured in shooting attack near Yabad 6 Jul 2004 1 soldier killed, 3 soldiers injured during anti-terrorist operations in Nablus 11 Jul 2004 (0700) 1 soldier killed, 33 injured by bombing at bus stop in Tel Aviv 11 Aug 2004 2 Palestinians killed, 18 people injured (including 6 police officers) by bombing near Qalandiyah checkpoint at northern entrance to Jerusalem 13 Aug 2004 1 killed in shooting attack at entrance to Itamar in Samaria 31 Aug 2004 (1500)16 killed (including 1 child), 100 injured in twin suicide bombings on two buses in Beersheba; explosions occurred minutes apart after both buses left the same bus stop; some passengers, hearing the first explosion, succeeding in escaping the second bus before the second explosion8 Sep 2004 One terrorist died when a car bomb he was driving exploded at the Baka al-Sharkiyeh checkpoint at the West Bank 14 Sep 2004 2 soliders injured in suicide bombing (one terrorist also killed) south of Qalqilyah 22 Sep 2004 2 police officers killed, 17 Israelis injured in suicide bombing (one terrorist also killed) at the French Hill junction in northern Jerusalem 23 Sep 2004 2 soldiers killed, 1 soldier and 1 civilian injured in shooting and grenade attack at miliary post near Morag, Gaza Strip 24 Sep 2004 1 killed in mortar attack on Gush Katif, Gaza Strip 29 Sep 2004 1 soldier killed, 2 soldiers injured in attack on IDF post near Beit Hanoun, Gaza Strip 30 Sep 2004 1 killed in attack in Nissanit; first victim shot, second was medic killed by grenade as he came to aid 6 Oct 2004 1 Thai citizen killed in Kfar Darom, Gaza Strip 19 Oct 2004 1 soldier killed near Mevo Dotan in Samaria shooting attack 21 Oct 2004 1 soldier killed by bomb in Gaza Strip 28 Oct 2004 1 soldier killed, 6 soldiers injured in mortar attack at Morag, Gaza Strip 1 Nov 2004 3 killed, 30 injured in suicide bombing at market in Tel Aviv 7 Dec 2004 1 soldier killed by bomb near Karni Corssing in Gaza Strip, 4 soldiers injured in shooting attack during his evacuation 12 Dec 2004 5 soldiers killed, 5 soldiers injured by 1.5-ton bomb placed in tunnel under IDF post at Rafah crossing, followed by shooting and second bombing 14 Dec 2004 1 Thai killed, 2 injured (one Thai, one Nepalese) in mortar attack at Ganei tal, Gush Katif, Gaza Strip 21 Dec 2004 1 killed in stabbing attack outside her house near Beit Shemesh 22 Dec 2004 1 killed in shooting attack west of Hebron



Should Israel NOT be building a wall?

 

[Zzarchov]

Steal Palestine?

1.) If there was any stealing going on, its over, its already been stolen and the statute of limitations is gone. Next.

2.) So.. How come Jewish people who had been living in that region of the ottoman empire for millenias don't count? To say nothing of the Palestinian Arabs, Samaritans, Christians and Druze who did side with the creation of Israel.


And Israel should be building a wall, where ever it damn well wants. If Palestine doesn't like it, they should really stop fighting.

 

[darkbeaver]

If they stop fighting they die. The Zionists should all disappear.

 

[earth_as_one]

They didn't volunteer to abandon everything they own, the volunteered to get out of the way of the invading Arab armies so as not to be mistaken for Jews and accidentally slaughtered along with them. Nice try though.

I can't believe I actually read your links, but once again a complete waste of time. Israeli government archives that the Zionists had a plan to expel Arabs. Nothing, absolutely nothing, about them in fact carrying out such a plan. The Arabs saved them the trouble by leaving on their own.

I told you, I am in their shoes. By Palestinian standards, I am a refugee. Maybe they should walk a mile in my shoes and learn the meaning of getting on with life.

Are you saying that you were forcibly evicted from your home by soldiers and lost everything you owned? Do you live under constant threat of being killed by bombs and bullets? Do supersonic aircraft breaking the sound barrier above your home keep you up through the night? Have you ever been in an ambulance, stuck at a military checkpoint watching a love one die? How exactly does one "get on with their life" when they live under the level of injustice and oppression suffered by Palestinians? You can't go anywhere because no country will take you. Your ability to provide for yourself and your family is severely restricted by blockades, military checkpoints and random acts of violence.

The facts as per the Israeli government archives paint a much different picture than the myths you believe and more or less agree with what the people displaced by Israel's creation have been saying all along.

Only a few wealthy people fled before their towns were captured. Most people displaced by the creation of Israel had a choice between staying (and risking murder and rape) or running for their lives. Most people did what most people would normally do when given such a choice. They ran for their lives. Some people which chose to stay were raped and murdered, others were left alone, but most people who tried to stay in their homes were herded like cattle to Israel's borders. Soldiers fired shots over their heads to keep them moving and shot anyone who offered any resistance. Does that sound voluntary to you?

TEN YEARS OF RESEARCH INTO THE 1947-49 WAR
The expulsion of the Palestinians re-examined

...Palestinian and Arab historians have always maintained that this was an expulsion. The vast majority of the refugees (estimated at between 700,000 and 900,000) were, they say, forced to leave, first, as a result of clashes between Israelis and Palestinians, and then by the Arab-Israeli war, in which a political-military strategy of expulsion had been marked by several massacres...

...The exodus was divided into two broadly equal waves: one before and one after the decisive turning-point of the declaration of the State of Israel on 14 May 1948 and the intervention of the armies of the neighbouring Arab states on the following day. One can agree that the flight of thousands of well-to-do Palestinians during the first few weeks following the adoption of the UN partition plan - particularly from Haifa and Jaffa - was essentially voluntary. The question is what was the truth of the departures that happened subsequently?

In the opening pages of "The Birth of the Palestinian Refugee Problem", Benny Morris offers the outlines of an overall answer: using a map that shows the 369 Arab towns and villages in Israel (within its 1949 borders), he lists, area by area, the reasons for the departure of the local population (9). In 45 cases he admits that he does not know. The inhabitants of the other 228 localities left under attack by Jewish troops, and in 41 cases they were expelled by military force. In 90 other localities, the Palestinians were in a state of panic following the fall of a neighbouring town or village, or for fear of an enemy attack, or because of rumours circulated by the Jewish army - particularly after the 9 April 1948 massacre of 250 inhabitants of Deir Yassin, where the news of the killings swept the country like wildfire.

By contrast, he found only six cases of departures at the instigation of local Arab authorities. "There is no evidence to show that the Arab states and the AHC wanted a mass exodus or issued blanket orders or appeals to the Palestinians to flee their homes (though in certain areas the inhabitants of specific villages were ordered by Arab commanders or the AHC to leave, mainly for strategic reasons)." ("The Birth of the Palestinian Refugee Problem", p. 129). On the contrary, anyone who fled was actually threatened with "severe punishment". As for the broadcasts by Arab radio stations allegedly calling on people to flee, a detailed listening to recordings of their programmes of that period shows that the claims were invented for pure propaganda...

http://mondediplo.com/1997/12/palestine

Here is personal testimony from a witness regarding these events:

In these extracts from his memoir, Father Audeh Rantisi remembers the horrific scenes that confronted him, aged 11, when his family were brutally deported from their home of many generations to make what life they could for themselves in the refugee camps of Ramallah

[SIZE=-1]Father Rantisi was born in Lyda, now the site of Ben Gurion Airport, in 1937. From 1955 to 1958 he attended the Bible College of Wales, moving in 1963 to continue his studies at Aurora College in the state of Illinois. He then served as a missionary in Sudan. In 1965 he opened the Evangelical Home for Boys in Ramallah, West Bank. In 1976 Father Rantisi was elected as Ramallah's deputy mayor and he is now the director of the orphanage of the Evangelical Home of Boys.[/SIZE]

[SIZE=-1]From "Blessed are the Peacemakers ...The History of a Palestinian Christian"[/SIZE]
​

[SIZE=-1][/SIZE]
[SIZE=-1]I cannot forget three horror-filled days in July of 1948. The pain sears my memory, and I cannot rid myself of it no matter how hard I try.[/SIZE]
[SIZE=-1][/SIZE]
[SIZE=-1] First, Israeli soldiers forced thousands of Palestinians from their homes near the Mediterranean coast, even though some families had lived in the same houses for centuries. (My family had been in the town of Lydda in

Palestine at least 1,600 years). Then, without water, we stumbled into the hills and continued for three deadly days. The Jewish soldiers followed, occasionally shooting over our heads to scare us and keep us moving.[/SIZE] [SIZE=-1]Terror filled my eleven-year-old mind as I wondered what would happen. I remembered overhearing my father and his friends express alarm about recent massacres by Jewish terrorists. Would they kill us, too?[/SIZE]
[SIZE=-1][/SIZE]
[SIZE=-1] We did not know what to do, except to follow orders and stumble blindly up the rocky hills. I walked hand in hand with my grandfather, who carried our only remaining possessions-a small tin of sugar and some milk for my aunt's two-year-old son, sick with typhoid.[/SIZE]
[SIZE=-1][/SIZE]
[SIZE=-1] The horror began when Zionist soldiers deceived us into leaving our homes, then would not let us go back, driving us through a small gate just outside Lydda. I remember the scene well: thousands of frightened people being herded like cattle through the narrow opening by armed soldiers firing overhead. In front of me a cart wobbled toward the gate. Alongside, a lady struggled, carrying her baby, pressed by the crowd. Suddenly, in the jostling of the throngs, the child fell. The mother shrieked in agony as the cart's metal-rimmed wheel ran over her baby's neck. That infant's death was the most awful sight I had ever seen.[/SIZE]
[SIZE=-1][/SIZE]
[SIZE=-1] Outside the gate the soldiers stopped us and ordered everyone to throw all valuables onto a blanket. One young man and his wife of six weeks, friends of our family, stood near me. He refused to give up his money. Almost casually, the soldier pulled up his rifle and shot the man. He fell, bleeding and dying while his bride screamed and cried. I felt nauseated and sick, my whole body numbed by shock waves. That night I cried, too, as I tried to sleep alongside thousands on the ground. Would I ever see my home again? Would the soldiers kill my loved ones, too?[/SIZE]
[SIZE=-1][/SIZE]
[SIZE=-1] Early the next morning we heard more shots and sprang up. A bullet just missed me and killed a donkey nearby. Everybody started running as a stampede. I was terror-stricken when I lost sight of my family, and I frantically searched all day as the crowd moved along.[/SIZE]
[SIZE=-1][/SIZE]
[SIZE=-1] That second night, after the soldiers let us stop, I wandered among the masses of people, desperately searching and calling. Suddenly in the darkness I heard my father's voice. I shouted out to him. What joy was in me! I had thought I would never see him again. As he and my mother held me close, I knew I could face whatever was necessary. The next day brought more dreadful experiences. Still branded on my memory is a small child beside the road, sucking the breast of its dead mother. Along the way I saw many stagger and fall. Others lay dead or dying in the scorching midsummer heat. Scores of pregnant women miscarried, and their babies died along the wayside. The wife of my father's cousin became very thirsty. After a long while she said she could not continue. Soon she slumped down and was dead. Since we could not carry her we wrapped her in cloth, and after praying, just left her beside a tree. I don't know what happened to her body.[/SIZE]
[SIZE=-1][/SIZE]
[SIZE=-1] We eventually found a well, but had no way to get water. Some of the men tied a rope around my father's cousin and lowered him down, then pulled him out, and gave us water squeezed from his clothing. The few drops helped, but thirst still tormented me as I marched along in the shadeless, one-hundred plus degree heat.[/SIZE]
[SIZE=-1][/SIZE]
[SIZE=-1] We trudged nearly twenty miles up rocky hills, then down into deep valleys, then up again, gradually higher and higher. Finally we found a main road, where some Arabs met us. They took some of us in trucks to Ramallah, ten miles north of Jerusalem. I lived in a refugee tent camp for the next three and one-half years. We later learned that two Jewish families had taken over our family home in Lydda.[/SIZE]
[SIZE=-1][/SIZE]
[SIZE=-1] Those wretched days and nights in mid-July of 1948 continue as a lifelong nightmare because Zionists took away our home of many centuries. For me and a million other Palestinian Arabs, tragedy had marred our lives forever.
[/SIZE]
[SIZE=-1] Throughout his life my father remembered and suffered. For thirty-one years before his death in 1979, he kept the large metal key to our house in Lydda.
[/SIZE]
[SIZE=-1] After more than four decades I still bear the emotional scars of the Zionist invasion. Yet, as an adult, I see what I did not fully understand then: that the Jews are also human beings, themselves driven by fear, victims of history's worst outrages, rabidly, sometimes almost mindlessly searching for security. Lamentably, they have victimized my people.[/SIZE]
[SIZE=-1][/SIZE]
[SIZE=-1] Four years after our flight from Lydda I dedicated my life to the service of Jesus Christ. Like me and my fellow refugees, Jesus had lived in adverse circumstances, often with only a stone for a pillow. As with his fellow Jews two thousand years ago and the Palestinians today, an outside power controlled his homeland-my homeland. They tortured and killed him in Jerusalem, only ten miles from Ramallah, and my new home. He was the victim of terrible indignities. Nevertheless, Jesus prayed on behalf of those who engineered his death, "Father, forgive them..."[/SIZE]
[SIZE=-1]Can I do less?[/SIZE]

http://www.alnakba.org/testimony/audeh.htm

Does that sound voluntary? Or do you believe Father Rantisi is lying? I can find hundreds more stories like this.

In order for your beliefs about the creation of Israel to be true, not only would people like Father Rantisi have to be lying, but Israeli historians would also have to be lying. Perhaps you can tell me why Israeli historians are lying about Israel's past.

 

[Zzarchov]

Supersonic Jets keeping you up at night?

Thats your injustice? Actually I HAVE lived near an airport.


Earth as one, nothing you say will show any injustice unless you can show this occurred at a point when Palestinian militants or foriegn powers marching through Palestine were not attacking Israeli citizenry.

So, what was occuring when there was no violent attack on Israeli Citizens.

 

[earth_as_one]

Steal Palestine?

1.) If there was any stealing going on, its over, its already been stolen and the statute of limitations is gone. Next.

2.) So.. How come Jewish people who had been living in that region of the ottoman empire for millenias don't count? To say nothing of the Palestinian Arabs, Samaritans, Christians and Druze who did side with the creation of Israel.


And Israel should be building a wall, where ever it damn well wants. If Palestine doesn't like it, they should really stop fighting.

Even groups like Hamas recognize the right of Jewish Palestinians to continue living in Palestine.

People displaced by Israel have been waiting nearly 60 years for freedom and justice. Each day that goes by Israel razes a few more homes

Ian Katz in Rafah, Gaza
Friday May 11, 2001
The Guardian

Mr Abu-Marzuq bulldozed into a statistic

Smartly dressed in brown trousers and a short-sleeved shirt, Walid Rifat Abu-Marzuq, 45, is sitting on the rubble that is all that remains of his two-storey house.


It is unlikely that Mr Abu-Marzuq will earn so much as a footnote in the history of the second Palestinian uprising. He is not among the more than 430 Palestinians who have died, nor one of the Tanzim gunmen engaged in the cat and mouse war against Israel.

But early yesterday morning the seven-month conflict came crashing into Mr Abu-Marzuq's home. "It was around 12.30am. The first we heard was shouting and we opened the door and found them coming towards us," he said. "There were two bulldozers and five tanks. We just had time to pick up the children and carry them out."

Mr Abu-Marzuq, his wife, and their six children, aged between five and 19...

http://www.guardian.co.uk/israel/Story/0,2763,489115,00.html

anexes more land

13 Feb. 2006: Israel has de facto annexed the Jordan Valley
In the Jordan Valley , the eastern strip of the West Bank, Israel has instituted a regime of permits and harsh restrictions on the movement of Palestinians. These actions have, in effect, served to annex the area to Israel . This is the essential finding of research recently conducted by B'Tselem.
As a rule, the army forbids the entry of Palestinians to the Jordan Valley . Only Palestinians listed as residents of the area are allowed to enter. Severing the Jordan Valley from the rest of the West Bank severely violates the human rights of the Palestinian population. The action has been taken although the government has made no decision in the matter, and without informing the public.

The eastern strip of the West Bank is 120 kilometers long, and runs from the northern Dead Sea , in the south, to the Green Line south of Beit She'an, in the north. It is fifteen kilometers wide. Some 47,000 Palestinians live in this area in about twenty permanent communities, including the city of Jericho . Thousands more live in temporary communities.

Since the occupation of the West Bank began, in 1967, every Israeli government has considered this strip to be the "eastern border" of Israel and has sought to annex it....

http://www.btselem.org/English/Settlements/20060213_Annexation_of_the_Jordan_Valley.asp

and builds more walls. If you want to see an act of bravery:

This is a video shot by two Americans at a peaceful protest in a village in Palestine. These people, a mixture of Israelis, Palestinians and internationals, were protesting against the wall being built by the Israeli government that is stealing Palestinian land illegally...

WARNING CONTAINS SCENES OF VIOLENCE

If this wasn't so sad, this story would be hilarious:

Art prankster sprays Israeli wall

Banksy's spray paint picture on security wall

Enlarge Image

Secretive "guerrilla" artist Banksy has decorated Israel's controversial West Bank barrier with satirical images of life on the other side...

...

Banksy said he was threatened by Israeli security forces

Another picture shows the head of a white horse appearing to poke through, while he has also painted a ladder going over the wall.
The 425-mile (680-kilometre) long barrier, made of concrete walls and razor-wire fences, is still being erected by Israeli authorities...

...

Banksy is well known for his art stunts around the world

He condemned the wall but described it as "the ultimate activity holiday destination for graffiti writers"...

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/entertainment/4748063.stm

Here is another viewpoint:

By Hassan El-Najjar

Al-Jazeerah, News Commentary
May 10, 2006

...These conditions are (in Israeli conflict terminology) recognition of Israel, renouncing violence, and accepting previous agreements.

In objective conflict terminology, these conditions include, first, recognition of Israel without an Israeli reciprocal recognition of the Palestinian state. The second condition is announcing an end to the Palestinian armed struggle against the Israeli occupation, which means an acceptance of the occupation. The third condition is endorsing the previous Fateh government agreements with Israel, which did not lead to an end to the Israeli occupation, a pre-requisite to the establishment of the Palestinian state.

These conditions cannot be acceptable by a government elected with a landslide to safeguard the rights of its people...

http://www.jewishtoronto.net/content_display.html?ArticleID=183469

What would be left to negotiate?

 

[earth_as_one]

Supersonic Jets keeping you up at night?

Thats your injustice? Actually I HAVE lived near an airport.


Earth as one, nothing you say will show any injustice unless you can show this occurred at a point when Palestinian militants or foriegn powers marching through Palestine were not attacking Israeli citizenry.

So, what was occuring when there was no violent attack on Israeli Citizens.

Strange on how you seize desperately on the small stuff and try to portray it as nothing and then what, that validates what Israel does to these people???

But if sonic booms are frequent enough, occuring continuously throughout the day and night, they become a health hazard:

3 November 2005

Medics condemn Gaza sonic booms

Israel continues to control Gaza's airspace, coastline and borders

Doctors' groups have filed a petition at the Israeli Supreme Court seeking to halt air force jets from breaking the sound barrier over the Gaza Strip.
The UN says the tactic is an abuse of human rights, causing widespread fear especially among children, and medics say it induces miscarriages....


http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/4402326.stm

After a while, it becomes a kind of collective torture.

 

[CDNBear]

After a while, it becomes a kind of collective torture.

As sellectively outraged as always, eh earth as one?
Just like worrying when the Hezbollah or Hamas will start launching rockets into their neighbourhoods.

 

[earth_as_one]

I post references to rape, murder, torture stretching back to Israel's creation. Its not selective to point out the root causes of this war.

Israel's ethnic cleansing continues as we debate this issue. Its not selective to point that out either.

I'm not outraged. I'm sharing information. I trust the inherent goodness in all of us to recognize fundamental injustices. The problem as I see it is most good people don't know both sides of this conflict.

So far I have yet to see an act of violence against Israel which isn't headlines, yet I can point to many many examples of similar violence and worse which never makes our news. If I'm being selective, then I am selectively posting information people don't already know.

We all know well those rockets you reference as well as the suicide bombings, hijackings, etc.... We know all too well every act of violence committed by the displaced people against Israelis. But why is it we don't know how this girl died?

http://www.palestinemonitor.org/new_web/iman_hams_cover.htm

Why don't we know what modern Israeli historians know about Israel's creation? Why do we know these myths instead?

Why don't we know about the suffering of Palestinians? Is it because they are not really people like Israelis? Is it because they are all terrorists and criminals?

The violence you describe is a consequence of Israeli responsibility for creating 4 million displaced people, most of whom have never known freedom or justice their entire lives or committed an act of violence. As their numbers increase and they are forced into ever smaller walled in areas, their determination for justice and freedom will grow. Some will resort to violence and others will resort to non-violence. But people without basic human rights will never accept anything less than freedom and justice. That's human nature.

Do these people have freedom or justice?

 

[Zzarchov]

You still haven't shown Palestinians being abused at a point before the started attacking Jewish Residents of the area.

From what I can see, those Arab tribes who don't try and whipe out people because they are Jewish, they tend to live fairly well in Israel, far better than they would in neighbouring countries and infinately better than Jewish people would in neighbouring countries.


Of course its impossible for you to show a point when Arab Palestinians weren't attacking Jewish, Druze, Christian and Samaritan Palestinians..that had been going on since it was an Ottoman province.