Cut Israel Off

[gopher]

Glad to see you admit it was ''dirty work''. But it sure as hell did not advance the interests of the USA one damn bit.

 

[gopher]

Bush ''dirty work'':

 

[Zzarchov]

The problem is blaming the USA. Canada, France, Britain, Russia, Italy, Even Japan have caused regime change in recent years to further our goals.

 

[Extrafire]

It seems many people are unaware of what really transpired in the creation of the state of Israel. There has never been a state or nation of Palestine. There was only the Palestinian mandate governed by the British after the defeat of the Ottoman empire which occupied the area for 400 years, and the majority of the people there were Jews. The British gave 80% of the Palestinian mandate to the Arabs in 1922, which is now called Jordan. In fact, there also was no Jordan, Lebanon, Syria or Iraq at the end of Turkish rule. "They were all created by the European powers out of the ruins of the Turkish Empire."

 

[YoungJoonKim]

Lets blame British..first, The Queen

 

[YoungJoonKim]

It seems many people are unaware of what really transpired in the creation of the state of Israel. There has never been a state or nation of Palestine. There was only the Palestinian mandate governed by the British after the defeat of the Ottoman empire which occupied the area for 400 years, and the majority of the people there were Jews. The British gave 80% of the Palestinian mandate to the Arabs in 1922, which is now called Jordan. In fact, there also was no Jordan, Lebanon, Syria or Iraq at the end of Turkish rule. "They were all created by the European powers out of the ruins of the Turkish Empire."

Interesting indeed.
My World Issue class teacher spoke of, "Jews amazing skill of farming...so much better than Canadians...only if we accept them, we would have been developing much faster"
Jews had plans for their land but...were Arabs the same? [except oil extraction weee]

 

[earth_as_one]

A non-Jewish person living in a Jewish state has the same rights as a Jewish person????

But you are right there never was a nation called Palestine. It was a peaceful region in an unimportant corner of a large empire. The people paid their taxes, farmed, ran businesses and owned property individually and communally. More than a million Muslims, Christians and Jews lived together more or less peacefully fr hundreds of years on this "land without people, for a people without land" as it was described in Zionist propaganda.

Palestine's problems began when heavily armed foreigners showed up with Zionist ideas just over a hundred years ago. Zionists believed the Palestinians who owned the land for centuries/millenia had no rights unless they were Jewish like them, because God promised this land to Jews.

Did God also tell Zionists to rape, torture and murder as well as empty Palestine of non-Jewish Palestinians?

(Interview of Benny Morris)

...born in Kibbutz Ein Hahoresh and was a member of the left-wing Hashomer Hatza'ir youth movement. In the past, he was a reporter for the Jerusalem Post and refused to do military service in the territories. He is now a professor of history at Ben-Gurion University of the Negev in Be'er Sheva...

...According to your new findings, how many cases of Israeli rape were there in 1948?

BM: "About a dozen. In Acre four soldiers raped a girl and murdered her and her father. In Jaffa, soldiers of the Kiryati Brigade raped one girl and tried to rape several more. At Hunin, which is in the Galilee, two girls were raped and then murdered. There were one or two cases of rape at Tantura, south of Haifa. There was one case of rape at Qula, in the center of the country. At the village of Abu Shusha, near Kibbutz Gezer [in the Ramle area] there were four female prisoners, one of whom was raped a number of times. And there were other cases. Usually more than one soldier was involved. Usually there were one or two Palestinian girls. In a large proportion of the cases the event ended with murder. Because neither the victims nor the rapists liked to report these events, we have to assume that the dozen cases of rape that were reported, which I found, are not the whole story. They are just the tip of the iceberg."

According to your findings, how many acts of Israeli massacre were perpetrated in 1948?

BM: "Twenty-four. In some cases four or five people were executed, in others the numbers were 70, 80, 100. There was also a great deal of arbitrary killing. Two old men are spotted walking in a field - they are shot. A woman is found in an abandoned village - she is shot. There are cases such as the village of Dawayima [in the Hebron region], in which a column entered the village with all guns blazing and killed anything that moved.

"The worst cases were Saliha (70-80 killed), Deir Yassin (100-110), Lod (250), Dawayima (hundreds) and perhaps Abu Shusha (70). There is no unequivocal proof of a large-scale massacre at Tantura, but war crimes were perpetrated there. At Jaffa there was a massacre about which nothing had been known until now. The same at Arab al Muwassi, in the north. About half of the acts of massacre were part of Operation Hiram [in the north, in October 1948]: at Safsaf, Saliha, Jish, Eilaboun, Arab al Muwasi, Deir al Asad, Majdal Krum, Sasa. In Operation Hiram there was a unusually high concentration of executions of people against a wall or next to a well in an orderly fashion.

"That can't be chance. It's a pattern. Apparently, various officers who took part in the operation understood that the expulsion order they received permitted them to do these deeds in order to encourage the population to take to the roads. The fact is that no one was punished for these acts of murder. Ben-Gurion silenced the matter. He covered up for the officers who did the massacres."

What you are telling me here, as though by the way, is that in Operation Hiram there was a comprehensive and explicit expulsion order. Is that right?

BM: "Yes. One of the revelations in the book is that on October 31, 1948, the commander of the Northern Front, Moshe Carmel, issued an order in writing to his units to expedite the removal of the Arab population. Carmel took this action immediately after a visit by Ben-Gurion to the Northern Command in Nazareth. There is no doubt in my mind that this order originated with Ben-Gurion. Just as the expulsion order for the city of Lod, which was signed by Yitzhak Rabin, was issued immediately after Ben-Gurion visited the headquarters of Operation Dani [July 1948]." ...

http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/pages/ShArt.jhtml?itemNo=380986&contrassID=2

And that's just what Benny Morris found documented in Israeli archives. More undocumented incidents undoubtedly occurred.

There weren't many problems in this land until the immigrants began taking what belonged to the locals.

...Zionists immediately started seizing land, even land beyond what the UN partition set for the proposed Jewish State. Attacks were from both sides but were instigated by the Zionists seizing land and a reaction to the aggressive ethnic cleansing under way. After the massive ethnic cleansing and expansion beyond the UN suggested boarders, Arab states responded INTO THE AREAS THAT WERE TO BE FOR THE UN PROPOSED PALESTINIAN STATE. Also, Jordan had an agreement with Israel to prevent a Palestinian State so Jordan invaded the West Bank.

"The Zionists were by far the more powerful and better organized force, and by May 1948, when the state of Israel was formally established, about 300,000 Palestinians already had been expelled from their homes or had fled the fighting, and the Zionists controlled a region well beyond the area of the original Jewish state that had been proposed by the UN. Now it's then that Israel was attacked by its neighbors - in May 1948; it's then, after the Zionists had taken control of this much larger part of the region and hundreds of thousands of civilians had been forced out, not before." p132 Understanding Power: The Indispensable Chomsky

The fact that the rights of the majority, 67% of the population, were violated is suppressed in the media. Why in the world would you think it is legitimate for 33% of a population to seize land and carve up the land into 7 parts? Why in the world should 67% of a population ever accept that? These population stats, which highlight just how undemocratic the UN proposal really was, are almost never mentioned in US media....

http://www.representativepress.org/IsraelHistory.html

The myths about Israel's glorious birth have been exposed as nothing more noble than armed robbery. Zionist are no different than other conquerers over the ages which claimed superiority and entitlement.

Rachelle Marshall is a free-lance editor living in Stanford, CA. A member of the International Jewish Peace Union, she writes frequently on the Middle East.

Triumph and Calamity: Israeli Historians Expose Myth of Israel's Birth


By Rachelle Marshall


Every country has its myths—stories that may have no basis in fact but nevertheless serve as vital sources of national unity and strength. What sets the state of Israel apart is that its myths have become accepted as history, not only in Israel, but in much of the rest of the world as well. Thanks to the astuteness of Israel's first prime minister, David Ben-Gurion, and his successors, the conventional view today is that the modern state of Israel was the creation of a heroic and beleaguered people who fled persecution in Europe and, rejected everywhere else, sought refuge in the land that had been historically theirs.
There they were attacked, the mythology relates, first by local terrorists jealous of their success in making the desert bloom, and then by the powerful armies of surrounding Arab states. Against overwhelming odds, outnumbered Jewish soldiers fought off an enemy bent on their annihilation, and the Jewish people survived to build a thriving democracy on what had been an unpopulated wasteland. Ever since, the legend concludes, the tiny nation has been under siege by 100 million Arabs dedicated to its destruction.
Because the myth of Israel's birth was so closely linked to the horrors of the Holocaust, to question its truth was for years as unthinkable as doubting the truth of the Holocaust itself. But today a new breed of historians is challenging much of that myth. Palestinian and other Arab scholars, Western Middle East specialists, and non-Zionist Jews such as as Elmer Berger, Alfred Lilienthal, and Norman Finkelstein have already published well-documented refutations of the official version of Israel's history. The current debunking process, however, is being carried out for the first time by Israeli Jews—a younger generation of historians with impeccable credentials as Zionists, patriotic Israelis and scholars.
Much of their research was made possible by the opening in 1978 of files from the British Public Record and the Israeli State Archives that had been kept closed for 30 years. The information contained in these files, combined with the research of Palestinian historians, has enabled Israeli scholars to present a new perspective on the origins of a conflict that after 60 years shows no signs of abating. A significant aspect of their work is that it reveals the remarkable consistency of Israeli policy throughout those years and the use by successive Israeli leaders of the same strategies and deceptions to achieve their goals.
Benny Morris was among the first of the younger Israeli scholars to receive widespread notice when he refuted Ben-Gurion's long-accepted assertion that the Palestinian refugees of 1947-48 left Palestine at the instruction of Arab leaders. According to Ben-Gurion, "they did so under the assumption that the invasion of Arab armies at the expiration of the mandate will destroy the Jewish state and push all the Jews into the sea, dead or alive." In The Birth of the Palestine Refugee Problem, published in 1988, Morris concluded that Arab leaders had not urged the local population to leave but that the exodus was mainly the result of attacks by the official Jewish army, the Haganah, and the Irgun, a militia headed by Menachem Begin that had carried out assassinations and bombings against both the British and the Palestinians during the British mandate.

Israel's military raids were the main cause of continued violence and hostility...

http://www.wrmea.com/backissues/0795/9507006.htm

The ethnic cleansing never stopped and continues to this day.

Israel's birth is just another sad example of man's inhumanity toward man.

 

[earth_as_one]

So they are second class citizens because magic unwritten laws exist?

Show me a democracy without that feature. I mean, they aren't second class citizens when they have all the same rights and make up part of the government in free elections.

Aparathied South Africa had second class citizens. Saying "Certain religions gain privelage under legislation" Applies to Canada and Catholic schools as well.

Sheesh.

Israel's laws effectively give Jews advantages and rights not afforded non-Jews.

Jews can immigrate to Israel, non-Jews can't. If a non-Jewish Israeli marrries someone who isn't Israeli, they have to give up their Israeli citizenship to live with their non-Jewish spouse and family.

Most of Israel consists of areas where non-Jews aren't allowed to live.

Jewish children go to well funded schools. Non-Jews sent their children to overcrowded and underfunded schools.

The link I gave above documents many other examples of harassment, discrimination and violations of basic human dignity and rights.

 

[Zzarchov]

Israel's laws effectively give Jews advantages and rights not afforded non-Jews.

Different from every other government in the Middle East, Asia and Europe how? Most nations (even democracies like us) have dominant religions which have special rights others do not. But hey, I like having Christmas off work. (Don't forget the Charter of Rights and Freedoms applies to the government not private bodies)

Jews can immigrate to Israel, non-Jews can't. If a non-Jewish Israeli marrries someone who isn't Israeli, they have to give up their Israeli citizenship to live with their non-Jewish spouse and family.

What does immigration have to existing citizenry? Canada also has immigration controls, so does Australia. While I may not agree with their particular plans, many democracies have unpopular (to outsiders) views of who should and shoudlnt' enter their country. Its not about how Israel decides who can move into their country, its about those inside the country and the rights they have.

Most of Israel consists of areas where non-Jews aren't allowed to live.

Again based on private rules. Any free society has this right. If I choose to open up a Maddrass in Sudbury, I can stipulate its only for practicing muslims. If I choose to open up a Members Lodge (or a knockoff) I can stipulate only members (which often will have a religious requirement) can enter.

Its not nice, but you can't force people to like each other. Their are areas in Israel where non-muslims aren't allowed to go too.

Jewish children go to well funded schools. Non-Jews sent their children to overcrowded and underfunded schools.

Oh no! A democracy in which racial divides occur! You mean like predominatly minority poorly funded inner city schools in the US, UK, France and Canada?

All democracies have this, hell, ALL nations have this. It may not be based on religious lines, but its based on a "majority/minority" line.

The link I gave above documents many other examples of harassment, discrimination and violations of basic human dignity and rights.

All of which are present in all world democracies. Their is no such thing as Utopia, why we should place a democracy in a state of war at impossibley higher standards than we ourselves live by is beyond me.

I honestly can see no reason not to give Israel as good a rating as we have. And why should I focus on making sure Israel is a more Utopian land than Canada, fix our own mess first.

 

[earth_as_one]

People here claim that Jews and non-Jews have equal rights in Israel. That's not true and its not as trivial as you portray it. An example

Forbidden Families: Family Unification and Child Registration in East Jerusalem

On 31 July 2003, the Knesset enacted the Nationality and Entry into Israel (Temporary Order) Law, 5763-2003. The law forbids Israelis married to, or who will marry in the future, residents of the Occupied Territories to live in Israel with their spouses. Israelis married to foreign nationals who are not residents of the Occupied Territories are still allowed to submit requests for family unification on their behalf.

The new law also harms children born in the Occupied Territories to parents who are residents of East Jerusalem. The Ministry of the Interior changed its procedures regarding the registration of these children in the Population Registry. Rather than filing a "Request to Register a Child," it became necessary to submit a request for family unification for them. Under the new law, such requests are not allowed. As a result, it is impossible to legalize the children's status in Israel.

The law does not establish a new immigration policy for residents of the Occupied Territories. International law recognizes the right of every state to determine who is entitled to enter its territory, so foreign nationals have no intrinsic right to enter the country. Some countries set immigration quotas, based on varying criteria. However, when foreigners are married to nationals or residents of the state, different rules apply, and there are limitations to the discretion that the government may exercise. As in every case where a state authority exercises discretion, the rules must be reasonable, based on substantive grounds, and applied without discrimination. The issue involved here is not whether the foreign national has a right to enter the state, but the right of citizens and residents of the state to live with their spouses in the country in which they were born.

The law severely infringes the right to family life of Palestinian residents of East Jerusalem. Some residents of East Jerusalem married to residents of the Occupied Territories will now have to live separately from their spouses. Couples that want to live together in Israel, will be breaking the law, and as such will live in constant fear and be unable to lead a normal life. If couples choose to live together in the Occupied Territories, the Israeli spouse will be breaking the law because of the military order that prohibits the entry of Israelis into the Occupied Territories.

Couples who got married before the law was enacted and the spouse from the Occupied Territories did not yet receive a permanent status in Israel, are allowed to live together only if the spouse receives a temporary permit from the Civil Administration. Submitting an application for a temporary permit is difficult and Israel often cancels such permits. Even prior to enactment of the law, couples had difficulty living together in Jerusalem because of the problems entailed in obtaining the permits. Enshrining this situation in law will make the couple's life uncertain, with no chance for favorable change.

The new policy regarding the registration of children creates an unreasonable situation. The Interior Ministry registers some children in the family and allows them to live with their parents in Jerusalem, but forces other children in the family to leave their family or to remain in Jerusalem illegally. The change in policy has turned many children into lawbreakers. Children born in the future will also be breaking the law. Many parents will not obey a law that forbids them to live with their children, so the children will continue to live with their family in Jerusalem, without permits. The children will not be entitled to state health insurance, and the parents will not receive the children's allowance for them from the National Insurance Institute...

http://www.btselem.org/english/Publications/Summaries/200401_Forbidden_Families.asp

Does that sound equal to this:

Interior Minister Meir Sheetrit set off a mini-bombshell Tuesday when he told the Agency's Board of Governors that it is time to cease handing out automatic Israeli citizenship "to any Jew." To that effect, Sheetrit proposed amending the Law of Return. The uproar he managed to generate not only yielded controversial headlines and elicited contentious reactions, but it also overshadowed whatever cogent arguments Sheetrit presented as justification for his radical remedy. If Sheetrit's aim was to promote serious discussion, then he foiled it.

There's no denying the problematic nature of the sort of immigration which Israel has largely attracted in recent years. Broad-minded, frank discourse is highly warranted but not so the alacrity to "make history" and rush to tinker with the foundations of the Jewish state, as Sheetrit stridently and unwisely proposed.

Focusing superficially on the wrong aspect of the issue, Sheetrit raced headlong to the most drastic, dangerous and irresponsible solution. The Law of Return is an ideal, underscoring the state's Jewish character and the profound sense of Jewish solidarity which motivated its founding fathers. As such, it is indeed unlike immigration laws anywhere else. It sets no financial, professional or economic criteria but is based on historical commonality and of a shared lot and identity.

This divergence from the norm, however, hardly makes the Law of Return a candidate for amendment, as Sheetrit recommends. If anything, it should be protected and cherished in an age of burgeoning post-Zionism and inimical Arab aims to divest Israel of its inherent Jewishness.

That said, there is no doubt that immigrants with tenuous Jewish links, if any links at all, have come to comprise the bulk of the aliya reaching this country under the aegis of the law, which allows the entry of grandchildren of a Jew, and their progeny, even if they no longer consider themselves Jewish nor identify with the Jewish collective. It is also true that claims of distant Jewish ancestry (including the fabled "lost tribes") by some particularly exotic newcomers often test credibility. But the Law of Return isn't at fault.

What is wrongheaded is its application.

It is right to admit grandchildren of a Jew who, on their own volition, have decided to bond their future with that of the Jewish nation. Indeed there is every reason to welcome such returnees with open arms and open hearts.
Lacking judgment, however, is the practice of many organizations, especially those operating in the FSU (including the Jewish Agency and Nativ), which pro-actively endeavor to inflate rolls and recruit olim. Their emissaries comb provincial ex-Soviet cities seeking out those who may possibly be of Jewish descent yet are alienated from anything Jewish. They are sometimes coaxed to Israel with promises of higher living standards. Such practices attract not only estranged semi-Jews but downright bogus claimants to Jewish extraction.

Many of those arriving from the Russian-speaking sphere for the past few years have not been Jews but, rather, non-Jews eligible for aliya. Some have energetically sought to reembrace, or indeed embrace, the faith. But others encounter considerable absorption and acculturation difficulties, while the host society is taken aback by patterns of violence hitherto scarce in the Jewish milieu. The same goes for some obvious non-Jewish groupings in Ethiopia and elsewhere. Airlifting non-Jews with an eye to converting them here is misguided. We are nearing the point where we may wonder whether padding population figures is optimal for Israel; whether it doesn't weaken Israel as a Jewish state rather than strengthen it....

http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?pagename=JPost/JPArticle/ShowFull&cid=1192380703775

Laws which turn families into fugitives if they attempt to continue living together, yet welcome anyone claiming even tenuous Jewish blood lines.

That's just one example. I could also talk about schools, housing, employment, bomb shelters... many many examples of two sets of reality. One set for the chosen people, and another for the undesirables.

Thanks to Bush, Israel has made a lot of progess recently putting many of Israel's undesirables behind walls and guard towers. Eventually Israel will have taken as much as they can from those people and then they will turn their attention to Arabs with Israel citizenship aka the "Palestinian Arab problem".

The Logistics of Transfer

July 3, 2002

Let us now look separately at all the various tasks that lie before Israel. A. The International Information Campaign.



Israel faces an exceptionally difficult problem on the international arena in terms of substantiating her position. In some ways, the task is nearly impossible, since it has long been clear that no matter what actions Israel takes, the U.N. and most of the international community will consistently condemn them, and no amount of convincing evidence to the contrary makes any difference. It is a foregone conclusion that this will also be the case with the very politically incorrect idea of resettling the Arabs of Yesha. However, despite these difficulties, it is still necessary for Israel to pursue its international information campaign for two important reasons. The first is that the international community must be made to at least consider the idea of transfer and be made aware of its many advantages. While the chances of winning widespread international support are slim, they are exactly zero if the transfer plan never sees the light of day. The second reason is that Israel does not really need to "convince" the whole world, but needs only a modicum of support from its closest ally - the United States. Even with such limited acceptance, it becomes infinitely easier to carry out the transfer....

...Though many options can be considered for where to create this second Palestinian state (the first one being Jordan), today's geopolitical situation presents two good options for its creation - either on the land of Iraq or of Saudi Arabia. These ideas derive from America's intention to dismantle Saddam Hussein's regime, as well as Saudi Arabia's recently proposed "peace plan," (which unfortunately involves squeezing Israel into its unacceptable pre-1967 borders). Iraq was once already suggested for this role in 1930. Its vast, unpopulated, fertile lands, and a severe scarcity of labor resources made the option ideal at the time. Today, if America is realistically considering toppling Saddam Hussein, the idea of relocating the Palestinian Arabs to Iraq deserves very serious attention. Following the "regime change," a division of Iraq into several autonomous regions (e.g. for the Kurds and Palestinian Arabs) would be one of the best strategic options available. First of all this will forever end Iraq's attempts to gain hegemony in the Arab world (the reason for Iraq's incursion into Kuwait and a major factor in the Iran-Iraq war). Secondly this will remove from the international agenda the looming need for the creation of a Kurdish state (if the Palestinian Arabs need to have two states, the Kurds obviously deserve at least one). And thirdly, this will solve the "Palestinian Arab problem"...

http://www.gamla.org.il/english/article/2002/july/b1a.htm

So as you can see the solution to the "Palestinian Arab problem" is to transfer these undesirables to a "land without people for a people without land".

 

[MikeyDB]

So why are Americans paying more to maintain the state of Israel than they are on educating their children, or providing health care that American families can all afford, or fixing and replacing an ingnored and decaying infrastructure, or paying federal food and drug administrations adequately enough to protect American consumers from poor quality and dangerous products contracted by American corporations through Chinese manufacturers, or providing disaster relief to thousands of Americans (New Orleans Americans not the California type...), or combating America's dependency on petroleum and fossil fuels, or funding hospitals and VA administrations properly?

Why do Americans put Jews ahead of their own people?

 

[Zzarchov]

You know in every county there are laws against whom you can marry and still maintain citizenship right? Even Canada, especially nations you are in a state of dejure or defacto war with.

Nothing you show there is unusual in a modern democracy. They may not be idealisms many of us strive for, but the reality of a democracy is people with opposing views to you also get a say.

Australia favours white immigration. Canada poaches educated staff from developing nations (getting those impoverished nations to pay for the education of people we poach, causing more death and suffering). France segregates long term "immigrants" (Algeria was officially french soil not a colony when most of them "immigrated" to Paris) into Ghettos.

Thats the way the world works. Until Israeli actions are substantially worse than our own, I see no need to condemn them in preference to bettering outselves.

 

[earth_as_one]

MDB: Why do Americans put Jews ahead of their own people?

I don't see this as a Jewish or even a religious problem. This conflict is a human nature problem. I don't see Jews or Palestinians as that different from Canadians or from each other. Canada's past is a variation of Israel and the Occupied territories' present.

Canada almost split up. We still could. But we are currently a one state solution despite our diversity.

Israel and the occupied territories is also one state solution in reality. 4 million people lack citizenship, but the UN recognizes their right to return. Some of them still live in the occupied territores as occupied people. Israel as the occupying force has a responsibility for the safety and security of all non-citizens in the occupied territories as per international law.

The longer Israel occupies this land, the more claim these non-citizens have to citizenship. Children born in Gaza and the West Bank while occupied by Israel should have Israeli citizenship, just like the Algerians had French citizenship.

Another possibility is if the UN recognized all non-citizens (even tenuous Palestinian blood lines) as Israeli citizens... that would effectively impose a one state solution on Israel and and their non-citizens. So much for a Jewish state.

A Jewish state seems to be the main stumbling block between these people continuing to suffer injustice and oppression from justice and freedom. Maybe a one state solution might bring peace. Israel's right to remain Jewish does not outweigh a region's or the world's right to peace and security. The current state/non-state solution maintains a course toward disaster.

Israel risks apartheid-like struggle if two-state solution fails, says Olmert



[FONT=arial,helvetica,sans-serif]· Jewish state is finished without deal, warns PM[/FONT]
[FONT=arial,helvetica,sans-serif]· Effort to renew public backing for peace talks[/FONT]

[FONT=Geneva,Arial,sans-serif]Rory McCarthy in Jerusalem[/FONT]
[FONT=Geneva,Arial,sans-serif]Friday November 30, 2007[/FONT]
[FONT=Geneva,Arial,sans-serif]The Guardian[/FONT]


Israel's prime minister issued a rare warning yesterday that his nation risked being compared to apartheid-era South Africa if it failed to agree an independent state for the Palestinians. In an interview with the Israeli newspaper Ha'aretz, Ehud Olmert said Israel was "finished" if it forced the Palestinians into a struggle for equal rights. If the two-state solution collapsed, he said, Israel would "face a South African-style struggle for equal voting rights, and as soon as that happens, the state of Israel is finished". Israel's supporters abroad would quickly turn against such a state, he said...


http://www.guardian.co.uk/israel/Story/0,,2219485,00.html

 

[Zzarchov]

Ok, stop right there.

The UN can recognize whatever it wants, its not an authoritative body nor was it created to be one. Its a forum for discussion.

Its like saying "Everyone else thinks you should divorce your wife". Good for them, but it isn't their business.

Even if the UN did have the power recognize them as citizens. Great, Citizen doesn't mean equal rights, look around the region (and at the term Dhimmi). Nothing Israel is doing now is unlike what other powers in the region are doing, its far better in fact.

If you want a one state solution, fine, then Israel can settle Gaza and the west Bank all it wants. It can also evict people from whatever land it wants and resettle them wherever it wants (Ie, like China, a security council member).

The UN imposing a one state solution would only make things worse for Palestinians as the urge to just evict everyone from problem areas (ie, places where they fire rockets at you) would only grow when their is no longer any external pressure to avoid doing it.

 

[earth_as_one]

Ok, stop right there.

The UN can recognize whatever it wants, its not an authoritative body nor was it created to be one. Its a forum for discussion.

The UN Charter is a treaty. All members, including Israel are bound by its articles. If Israel cannot abide by this treaty, the honest thing to do would be to unsign itself.

Its like saying "Everyone else thinks you should divorce your wife". Good for them, but it isn't their business.

Even if the UN did have the power recognize them as citizens. Great, Citizen doesn't mean equal rights, look around the region (and at the term Dhimmi). or Arabushim.

Nothing Israel is doing now is unlike what other powers in the region are doing, its far better in fact.

You are being modest. Israel does far more than most countries.

Child fatalities as a consequence of Israel's military campaigns in the Gaza Strip between 28 June 2006 and 26 November 2006

...On 28 June 2006, Israel initiated "Operation Summer Rains" in the Gaza Strip. During this campaign, Israel repeatedly shelled built-up areas and arbitrarily destroyed civilian infrastructure, including power stations and hospitals. Israel's justification for such a campaign was to free Israeli Corporal Gilad Shalit, abducted by Palestinian militants on 25 June, and to stop the launch of Palestinian Qassam rockets into Israel. In November 2006, Israel intensified its military operations by launching a second offensive against Gaza, codenamed "Operation Autumn Clouds". These savage military campaigns were characterised by near-daily incursions into Gaza and indiscriminate heavy shelling which took a heavy toll on the civilian population, including children.

There have been 84 children killed in Gaza by the Israeli Occupying Forces between 28 June 2006 and 26 November 2006. The majority (69%) was aged 13 – 17; however there has still been a tragically high number of younger children (31%) who were killed as a direct result of Israeli military activity in Gaza during this period.

None of these children were involved in combatant activities. Yet, shelling by land and air has been the main cause of death amongst these children, accounting for 78% (65) of fatal cases during this reporting period; while deaths from random open gunfire (17) account for 20% of the total.

In 42 out of 84 cases (50%) children were hit directly by Israeli ammunition: they were hit either in the upper body or in the head by sniper bullets; other gun fire; or missiles which fragmented the child's body...

http://domino.un.org/UNISPAL.NSF/99...9729245292f39ac5852572c00050d93d!OpenDocument

If you want a one state solution, fine, then Israel can settle Gaza and the west Bank all it wants. It can also evict people from whatever land it wants and resettle them wherever it wants (Ie, like China, a security council member).

The UN imposing a one state solution would only make things worse for Palestinians as the urge to just evict everyone from problem areas (ie, places where they fire rockets at you) would only grow when their is no longer any external pressure to avoid doing it.

You missed my point. Israel is now a single state. That's the "facts on the ground" reality.

The tiny walled in remnants of what used to be Palestine cannot be made into a state. No other country has responsibility for the people Israel keeps locked up.

Israel is a place where God's chosen people have full rights, while the people God didn't choose only have partial to no rights.

 

[Zzarchov]

84 kids? Thats it? Thats "worse than anyone else"

How many died when Lebanon shelled its Palestinians? Better comparison:

How many children died because Iraq refused to comply with the UN (as apparently it has to be obeyed) and instead had to deal with sanctions.

I believe the number thrown around is usually a million.

Im no mathmagician, but 1,000,000 > 84

Lets continue with this last line:

"Israel is a place where God's chosen people have full rights, while the people God didn't choose only have partial to no rights."

"Saudi Arabia is a place where God's chosen people have full rights, while the people God didn't choose only have partial to no rights."

"Iran is a place where God's chosen people have full rights, while the people God didn't choose only have partial to no rights."

"Yemen is a place where God's chosen people have full rights, while the people God didn't choose only have partial to no rights."

"Syria is a place where God's chosen people have full rights, while the people God didn't choose only have partial to no rights."

"Dubai is a place where God's chosen people have full rights, while the people God didn't choose only have partial to no rights."

"Egypt is a place where God's chosen people have full rights, while the people God didn't choose only have partial to no rights."

"Sudan is a place where God's chosen people have full rights, while the people God didn't choose only have partial to no rights."

"Qatar is a place where God's chosen people have full rights, while the people God didn't choose only have partial to no rights."

"Russia is a place where God's chosen people have full rights, while the people God didn't choose only have partial to no rights."

"China is a place where people have partial to no rights."

Israel has Muslim leaders and people of varied ethnic backgrounds. Other in the region have only Muslim's in areas of influence (by law) and few allow other ethnic backgrounds to advance in stature.

 

[earth_as_one]

Do any of the above countries have this record?


list of United Nations resolutions that concern Israel
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_the_UN_resolutions_concerning_Israel_and_Palestine

How many are in the process of walling in millions of their non-citizens?
Israeli West Bank barrier
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Israeli_West_Bank_barrier

Do these countries have millions of people living under conditions as bad as this?

Summary


The occupation of Palestinian territory by Israel continues to deepen the economic and social hardship for Palestinians. Citing the right to self-defence from such actions as the continuation of attacks by Palestinian militants on Israeli civilians, the launching of rockets into Israeli cities from the Gaza Strip and the capture of an Israeli corporal, the Israeli army continues to mount military operations in the occupied Palestinian territory, employing arbitrary detention, disproportionate use of force, house demolitions, severe mobility restrictions and closure policies. However, there has been a marked decline in Palestinian-Israeli violence in Gaza since the ceasefire of 26 November 2006.
The Israeli closure system remains a primary cause of poverty and humanitarian crisis in the occupied Palestinian territory, and restricts Palestinian access to health and education services, employment, markets and social and religious networks.
The fiscal situation deteriorated significantly following the legislative elections of January 2006. In line with the principles set by the Quartet on 30 January 2006, the election results led donors to reconsider their aid to the Palestinian Authority. Palestinian GDP declined by approximately 8 per cent in the third quarter of 2006 compared to the same period in 2005. Economic indicators continue to show negative trends. Unemployment and poverty rates remained high, estimated at 30 and 64 per cent respectively, while 65 per cent of households rely on informal borrowing to subsist.
Israeli settlements, land confiscation and the construction of a barrier in the occupied Palestinian territory, contrary to the Geneva Convention and other norms of international law, isolate occupied East Jerusalem, bisect the West Bank and curtail normal economic and social life. Refugees, women and children bear the brunt of these measures. Malnutrition and other health problems afflict a growing number of Palestinians at a time of curtailed access to needed services. In the Gaza Strip alone, 57.5 per cent of children from 6 to 36 months old and 44.9 per cent of pregnant women are anaemic.

http://domino.un.org/UNISPAL.NSF/5b...de28bdd02093a3d2852572f0004ee307!OpenDocument

How many of the countries you list are walling in and starving millions of non-citizens?

The worst case you can point to is the Lebanese military attacking a Palestinian refugee camp, which exists as a result of Israel's ethnic cleansing.

If I recall the economic sanctions imposed on Iraq, remained in place long after they served their original purpose. By the time they were removed, Iraq hadn't been a WMD threat for a almost a decade. In 1998 Iraq allowed the inspectors to go anywhere and talk to anyone. They were convinced everything that could be found, had been found. But the US used its position in the UNSC to maintain the sanctions. Both Iraq and America's leadership share responsibility for the deaths of hundreds of thousands of people due to malnutrition and disease.

"We Think the Price Is Worth It"
Media uncurious about Iraq policy's effects- there or here

By Rahul Mahajan


Lesley Stahl on U.S. sanctions against Iraq: We have heard that a half million children have died. I mean, that's more children than died in Hiroshima. And, you know, is the price worth it?

Secretary of State Madeleine Albright: I think this is a very hard choice, but the price--we think the price is worth it.

--60 Minutes (5/12/96)

Then-Secretary of State Madeleine Albright's quote, calmly asserting that U.S. policy objectives were worth the sacrifice of half a million Arab children, has been much quoted in the Arabic press. It's also been cited in the United States in alternative commentary on the September 11 attacks (e.g., Alexander Cockburn, New York Press, 9/26/01).

http://www.fair.org/index.php?page=1084

By 1998, weapons inspections had become a front for US led spy operations:

Nothing makes a newspaper prouder than a juicy foreign-policy scoop. Except, it seems, when the scoop ends up raising awkward questions about a U.S. administration's drive for war.
Back in 1999, major papers ran front-page investigative stories revealing that the CIA had covertly used U.N. weapons inspectors to spy on Iraq for the U.S.'s own intelligence purposes. "United States officials said today that American spies had worked undercover on teams of United Nations arms inspectors," the New York Times reported (1/7/99). According to the Washington Post (3/2/99), the U.S. "infiltrated agents and espionage equipment for three years into United Nations arms control teams in Iraq to eavesdrop on the Iraqi military without the knowledge of the U.N. agency." Undercover U.S. agents "carried out an ambitious spying operation designed to penetrate Iraq's intelligence apparatus and track the movement of Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein, according to U.S. and U.N. sources," wrote the Boston Globe (1/6/99).
Each of the three news stories ran on the papers' front pages. At first, U.S. officials tried to deny them, but as more details emerged, "spokesmen for the CIA, Pentagon, White House and State Department declined to repeat any categorical denials" (Washington Post, 3/2/99). By the spring of 1999, the UNSCOM spying reported by the papers was accepted as fact by other outlets, and even defended; "Experts say it is naive to believe that the United States and other governments would not have used the opportunity presented by the U.N. commission to spy on a country that provoked the Persian Gulf War in 1991 and that has continued to tangle with U.S. and British forces," USA Today reported (3/3/99).
But now that the Bush administration has placed the inspectors at the center of its rationale for going to war, these same papers have become noticeably queasy about recalling UNSCOM's past spying. The spy scandal badly damaged the credibility of the inspections process, especially after reports that data collected through UNSCOM were later used to pick targets in the December 1998 bombing of Iraq: "National security insiders, blessed with their unprecedented intelligence bonanza from UNSCOM, convinced themselves that bombing Saddam Hussein's internal apparatus would drive the Iraqi leader around the bend," wrote Washington Post analyst William Arkin (1/17/99).
Suddenly, facts that their own correspondents confirmed three years ago in interviews with top U.S. officials are being recycled as mere allegations coming from Saddam Hussein's regime. The UNSCOM team, explained the New York Times' Barbara Crossette in an August 3 story, was replaced "after Mr. Hussein accused the old commission of being an American spy operation and refused to deal with it." She gave no hint that Saddam's "accusation" was reported as fact by her Times colleague, Tim Weiner, in a front-page story three years earlier.

http://www.fair.org/activism/unscom-history.html

No Fly Zones

...Since 1999, the United States and Britain imposed no-fly zones on Iraq, he said. That was by unilateral resolutions, and they used military force to enforce the zones. This unilateral use of force was a continuous gross violation of the United Nations Charter, yet the United Nations did nothing to stem it. The Secretary-General himself said there was no basis for imposing no-fly zones in Iraq...

http://www.un.org/News/Press/docs/2001/ga9917.doc.htm

 

[Dixie Cup]

In my view, the Arabs just have to stop blaming everyone else for their problems, get off their "a***s" and start doing for their people what Isreal has done for theres. They need to stop living in the past and start looking to the future. Hate isn't the way to go. Don't shoot Isreali's and they won't shoot you. Period. Nothing of any consequence will happen until the Arabs can get their s**t together.

JMO

 

[darkbeaver]

In my view, the Arabs just have to stop blaming everyone else for their problems, get off their "a***s" and start doing for their people what Isreal has done for theres. They need to stop living in the past and start looking to the future. Hate isn't the way to go. Don't shoot Isreali's and they won't shoot you. Period. Nothing of any consequence will happen until the Arabs can get their s**t together.

JMO

Are you suggesting that the Palestinians should emulate the Isrealis? How can they do that without a huge armed force? How can they do that without spys in every nation on earth? How can they do that without state sanctioned death squads, without organized starvation of a captive slave population, without prisons filled with political prisoners, free high tech weaponry, strangleholds on media and coporations blackmail murder and theft. What you suggest is impossible nobodys going to let them emulate Isreal.

 

[Zzarchov]

Starving a Million Non-citizens because of "declining" violence?

Do police declare a paedophile as ok to release because of his "Declining" abuse level? .


Russia pounds Chechens into the Dirt.
China smashes every non-Han Minority every chance it gets.
The UK has only recently taken its boot of the neck of Northern Ireland
The Sudan is whiping out everyone who isn't Arab.
Then we can get into pre-fall Iraq and its sister happenings in Syria.

Sorry, thats just the way they world works. Israel, no matter how hard you slice it , is just not even in the top ten of the worlds bad.

A bad day of violence in Israel would be a good day for most African nations. And Average for many other nations that never make the news.

It makes the news because its the holy lands, thats about it. Its not anything to write home about in the world if you discount that fact.