Israel...
- Thread starter dancing-loon
- Start date
Oh you're welcome.
But I'll leave the clowning to the clowns...............you know, the guys so stupid they believe the USA is still occupying a Germany....that has no Constitution.
Speaking of which, I don't even think you are insulting the correct poster......
(sighs....rolls eyes)
It Figures.
Top Olmert Aide Puts New Pressure on Him to Quit
Pressure on Prime Minister Ehud Olmert of Israel to step down increased Thursday when Tzipi Livni, his foreign minister and a member of the same political party, urged preparations for new elections.
Ms. Livni — who until now had kept silent on the high-profile corruption investigation engulfing Mr. Olmert — said their party, Kadima, was “at a point in which it must make decisions and prepare for any scenario, including early elections.”
The remarks by Ms. Livni, who is a frontrunner to succeed Mr. Olmert, seemed to be a political step designed to move Israeli politics into a post-Olmert era.
Ms. Livni’s statement, which was reported widely on Israeli news Web sites, was less emphatic than Mr. Barak’s, in that she did not call explicitly for the prime minister to resign.
Yet her comments carry weight because she is the first senior member of Mr. Olmert’s own party to question his leadership during the current corruption inquiry.
Full article here: http://www.nytimes.com/2008/05/30/wo...hp&oref=slogin
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She seems to have a cool head, but would she make a better PM? Anything less than giving the Palestinians their land back and compensate them for the damage, the pain and suffering is useless and won't end the hostilities, nor better Israel's image as a bully!
I would like to see the Orthodox Jews come to power, who recognize the sin the Zionists are committing against the Palestinians and the world.
Pressure on Prime Minister Ehud Olmert of Israel to step down increased Thursday when Tzipi Livni, his foreign minister and a member of the same political party, urged preparations for new elections.
Ms. Livni — who until now had kept silent on the high-profile corruption investigation engulfing Mr. Olmert — said their party, Kadima, was “at a point in which it must make decisions and prepare for any scenario, including early elections.”
The remarks by Ms. Livni, who is a frontrunner to succeed Mr. Olmert, seemed to be a political step designed to move Israeli politics into a post-Olmert era.
Ms. Livni’s statement, which was reported widely on Israeli news Web sites, was less emphatic than Mr. Barak’s, in that she did not call explicitly for the prime minister to resign.
Yet her comments carry weight because she is the first senior member of Mr. Olmert’s own party to question his leadership during the current corruption inquiry.
Full article here: http://www.nytimes.com/2008/05/30/wo...hp&oref=slogin
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She seems to have a cool head, but would she make a better PM? Anything less than giving the Palestinians their land back and compensate them for the damage, the pain and suffering is useless and won't end the hostilities, nor better Israel's image as a bully!
I would like to see the Orthodox Jews come to power, who recognize the sin the Zionists are committing against the Palestinians and the world.
Even Israelis can see the parallels:
No its not exactly the same. But its close enough...
"Palestinians are not being rounded up and put in gas chambers,"
Neither were Jewish people - before 1940
Woof!
Neither were Jewish people - before 1940
Woof!
Talk about living in a ghetto...
GAZA — The American State Department has withdrawn all Fulbright grants to Palestinian students in Gaza hoping to pursue advanced degrees at American institutions this fall because Israel has not granted them permission to leave.
Israel has isolated this coastal strip, which is run by the militant group Hamas. Given that policy, the United States Consulate in Jerusalem said the grant money had been “redirected” to students elsewhere out of concern that it would go to waste if the Palestinian students were forced to remain in Gaza.
A letter was sent by e-mail to the students on Thursday telling them of the cancellation. Abdulrahman Abdullah, 30, who had been hoping to study for an M.B.A. at one of several American universities on his Fulbright, was in shock when he read it.
“If we are talking about peace and mutual understanding, it means investing in people who will later contribute to Palestinian society,” he said. “I am against Hamas. Their acts and policies are wrong. Israel talks about a Palestinian state. But who will build that state if we can get no training?”
Read on about Israel's reaction here: http://www.nytimes.com/2008/05/30/wo...hp&oref=slogin
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The Zionists!! I can only shake my head!
GAZA — The American State Department has withdrawn all Fulbright grants to Palestinian students in Gaza hoping to pursue advanced degrees at American institutions this fall because Israel has not granted them permission to leave.
Israel has isolated this coastal strip, which is run by the militant group Hamas. Given that policy, the United States Consulate in Jerusalem said the grant money had been “redirected” to students elsewhere out of concern that it would go to waste if the Palestinian students were forced to remain in Gaza.
A letter was sent by e-mail to the students on Thursday telling them of the cancellation. Abdulrahman Abdullah, 30, who had been hoping to study for an M.B.A. at one of several American universities on his Fulbright, was in shock when he read it.
“If we are talking about peace and mutual understanding, it means investing in people who will later contribute to Palestinian society,” he said. “I am against Hamas. Their acts and policies are wrong. Israel talks about a Palestinian state. But who will build that state if we can get no training?”
Read on about Israel's reaction here: http://www.nytimes.com/2008/05/30/wo...hp&oref=slogin
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The Zionists!! I can only shake my head!
Is being a crimminal a prerequisite to becoming an Israeli leader or do they become crimminals after attaining power?
Can you name a country without corrupt politicians? I can't think of any off hand.
Doesn't anyone else find AI report above disturbing? The Occupied Palestinian Territories is a human rights catastrophe. Some people here blame Palestinians for their problems. To a certain degree that's tru, but its not as big a factor as portrayed by pro-Israel propaganda. The original cause of their problems was a huge injustice. Jewish refugees fleeing Nazi Europe fled to Palestine during the 1930's and 40's. Zionists ethnically cleansed Palestine of most non-Jews. Since the 1948 war, these people have lost their rights and their property in successive waves of ethnic cleansing and rolling annexations. Israel's border remain fluid and expanding. The original people and their descendants are continuously squeezed into what has now become a series of concentration camps.
Israel and the OPT is an international disgrace. No group of people should should have to suffer decades injustice and oppression. This area will be a root cause of violence in the region until millions of Palestinians have fundamental human rights, freedom and justice.
Those of you who believe that Palestinian violence rather than Israeli violence is the cause of Palestinian suffering, should consider that these people have no rights or freedoms. How many years should people wait as what used to be their land is continually annexed and occupied by Jewish only colonies?
Its been over 60 years. Is that long enough to wait before fighting for fundamental human rights and justice?
Could those of you who support what Israel does to these people please answer this question:
How long should people wait before they should fight for freedom and justice?
They would have had freedom and justice if they had accepted the 1947 UN partition plan instead of attacking Israel because anything less than everything was not good enough.
JTF,
you are ignoring a few important "facts".
1) Palestinians were never consulted before the UN partition plan was announced.
2) Zionists attacked Palestinians first without provocation.
3) Palestinians were mostly unarmed civilians and were not belligerents during the 1948 war.
4) Ongoing Zionist atrocities against innocent civilians caused Arab intervention. Israel declaring independance was just the final straw.
Jewish Israeli Historian Ilan Pappe
Palestinians have not had freedom and justice since 1947. They never had a say in the 1947 UN partition plan. They were attacked, raped and murdered for five months before Israel declared independance.
Look at a recent map.
All of Israel and the Occupied Palestinian Territories are controlled by Zionists. Most of the West Bank is off limits to Palestinians. Gaza is an open air prison.
Who was not satisfied with less than everything again?
The facts are Zionists invaded, occupied, conquered and ethnically cleansed most of Palestine. Palestinians never asked for an invasion of European Jewish refugees. They never asked to be ethnically cleansed or forcefully relocated into concentration camps. They are victims and the world has ignored their suffering for 60 years.
How long should Palestinians wait for freedom and justice before fighting back is justified? Is 60 years long enough?
you are ignoring a few important "facts".
1) Palestinians were never consulted before the UN partition plan was announced.
2) Zionists attacked Palestinians first without provocation.
3) Palestinians were mostly unarmed civilians and were not belligerents during the 1948 war.
4) Ongoing Zionist atrocities against innocent civilians caused Arab intervention. Israel declaring independance was just the final straw.
Jewish Israeli Historian Ilan Pappe
Palestinians have not had freedom and justice since 1947. They never had a say in the 1947 UN partition plan. They were attacked, raped and murdered for five months before Israel declared independance.
Look at a recent map.
All of Israel and the Occupied Palestinian Territories are controlled by Zionists. Most of the West Bank is off limits to Palestinians. Gaza is an open air prison.
Who was not satisfied with less than everything again?
The facts are Zionists invaded, occupied, conquered and ethnically cleansed most of Palestine. Palestinians never asked for an invasion of European Jewish refugees. They never asked to be ethnically cleansed or forcefully relocated into concentration camps. They are victims and the world has ignored their suffering for 60 years.
How long should Palestinians wait for freedom and justice before fighting back is justified? Is 60 years long enough?
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That's nonsense. Zionists and Arabs were both guilty of atrocities against each other on an ongoing basis for decades before 1948. It's not possible for anyone to say "who started it".
What's more, you've acknowledged the above in our past discussions. Then you come back and post the same propaganda again. That's exactly the kind of tactic that makes it very difficult for me to take the Palestinian cause seriously.
In any case, even if we were to accept your four points above as gospel truth, it changes nothing. If the Palestinians had accepted the partition plan, there would be no refugees, no suffering in the "occupied" territories (I prefer "disputed" territories) and there would be no need to hold out for right of return because no one would have left in the first place.
And guess what, your "4 million" refugees would have been 4 million Israeli citizens. Who would win an election with those numbers? Do the math. Palestinians would have been able to VOTE Israel out of existance TODAY if it had not been for their belligerance.
Eat them apples.
You're confusing "facts" with "lies".
Interesting:
The Arabs who became refugees in 1948 were not expelled by Israel but left on their own to facilitate the destruction of Israel, according to a senior Palestinian journalist writing in a Palestinian daily.
Edit to add (for people who can't be bothered to read links)
Conclusion
It is clear from these statements that there is general acknowledgement among Palestinians that Arab leaders bear responsibility for the mass flight of Arabs from Israel in 1948, and were the cause of the "refugee" problem. Furthermore, the fact that this information has been validated by public figures and refugees in the Palestinian Authority media itself confirms that this responsibility is well-known - even though for propaganda purposes its leaders continue to blame Israel publicly for "the expulsion."
http://www.pmw.org.il/Bulletins_may2008.html#b200508
I think you'd be hard pressed to find anyone's suffering less ignored.
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That would be correct - simply because if anyone condemns Israel, they are drowned out in cries of "shame" "anti semite" "Holocost" - and Uncle Sammy will just veto the censure anyhow.
You get your opinions from this website? http://www.pmw.org.il/
No wonder your opinions are so distorted. Check my source in comparison. Its far more qualified than yours:
Professor Ilan Pappe
History Department, University of Exeter (Cornwall Campus)
E-mail: i.pappe@exeter.ac.uk
I was born in Haifa (Israel) in 1954. I received my D. Phil in Politics from Oxford University in 1984. Between 1984 and 2007 I was a Senior Lecturer in the Department of Political Science in Haifa University.
My research fields are the following: History of the Palestine Question; Middle Eastern History; Nationalism; Multiculturalism and Ethnic Studies; Theories of Historiographies; Power and Knowledge and Cultural Studies.
http://www.centres.ex.ac.uk/exceps/staff/pappe/
Yes atrocities were committed by each side in an escalating tit-for-tat that started soon after zionist Jewish refugees arrived enmasse to take possession of a land without people for a people without land. Zionists definitely started the ethnic cleansing. Israel's own records as documented by Israeli historians like Pappe, Benny Morris and others clearly show early zionists started preparing for their ethnic cleansing campaign in the 1930's and then executed their plans as soon as they had the upper hand.
The claim that statements by Arab leaders caused the mass exodus of Arabs defies common sense and is not supported by the evidence. The truth is that most Arab leaders urged the Palestinian population to stay at home, but fear of violent death at the hands of the Zionist forces led most of them to flee. This is not to deny that some Arab commanders did instruct Palestinian civilians to evacuate their homes during the fighting, either to make sure that they did not get caught in a firefight or to ensure that they were not killed by the Zionist forces engaged in ethnically cleansing Palestinians.
I can also find many other Israeli historians which back up Pappe's claims about the causes of the Arab exodus.
Invasion of European Jews?
Nice myth, but there were plenty of Jews already there. Residents who never asked for a wave of Arabs to come streaming in from the other Ottoman territories (before anyone says ancient history this is still *barely* in living memory).
In the end, who disrupted the population balance of who doesn't matter.
Israel is there, its citizens were born there and most of the "palestinians wanting to return home" were not.
You don't get to choose who your ancestors were, and you are not responsible for their crimes, nor entitled to their benefits.
Palestine is firing on Israel, regardless of who started it, that makes it a warzone. If Palestine doesn't want to be a warzone (and its the one who is suffering from it more) it should stop shooting.
As for Pappe, he has an odd bend of refusing to acknowledge all the truth, ie, the Arab newspaper headlines that tell people point blank, get the hell out - staying helps the jews.
He reminds me alot of Sam P. Langley, he has an Idea, he wants to be right, and regardless of what it takes he'll try to make people think he is.
Nice myth, but there were plenty of Jews already there. Residents who never asked for a wave of Arabs to come streaming in from the other Ottoman territories (before anyone says ancient history this is still *barely* in living memory).
In the end, who disrupted the population balance of who doesn't matter.
Israel is there, its citizens were born there and most of the "palestinians wanting to return home" were not.
You don't get to choose who your ancestors were, and you are not responsible for their crimes, nor entitled to their benefits.
Palestine is firing on Israel, regardless of who started it, that makes it a warzone. If Palestine doesn't want to be a warzone (and its the one who is suffering from it more) it should stop shooting.
As for Pappe, he has an odd bend of refusing to acknowledge all the truth, ie, the Arab newspaper headlines that tell people point blank, get the hell out - staying helps the jews.
He reminds me alot of Sam P. Langley, he has an Idea, he wants to be right, and regardless of what it takes he'll try to make people think he is.
Nice try, but those are the opinions of Palestinian Arabs, not "a website".
They arrived en masse with money to buy land from landlords. They developed the land creating an economy which spurned Arabs to begin arriving en masse to take jobs.
Don't try to create the impression that zionists arrived with guns and swords and started throwing Arabs out of their homes. The zionist plot was to BUY the land.
Their hand is as upper as it's ever been. Still, we have over a million Arabs in Israel. We have no Jews in Jordan, no Jews in Gaza, Jews in the west bank being subject to eviction as a fundamental clause to any peace negotiations, and an insignificant percentage of Jews who lived in the rest of the Arab world remain.
Still, you insist upon your claims of ethnic cleansing? Your argument makes as much sense as that Iraqi guy claiming there are no Americans in Baghdad while standing in front of the tanks. Give it up.
Some non-Jewish Arabs and their descendants have avoided ethnic cleansing... so far.
76 percent of Israeli Jews give some degree of support to transferring Israeli Arabs to a future Palestinian state:
http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?pagename=JPost%2FJPArticle%2FShowFull&cid=1206632376762
But Israeli Arabs aren't what we are talking about. The problem is the 600,000-800,000 people who were ethnically cleansed from what is today Israel and their descendents who remain nationless refugees since Israel's creation. We are also probably talking about hundreds/thousands of Jews who fled as refugees from Arab areas during the conflict and later on. We are talking about people treated unjustly.
But let's assume for a moment JTF is right and these people were not terrorized out of their homes. Lets assume they left based on their free will. Consider the logic behind that conclusion in order to answer these questions:
Is that a good reason to confiscate their homes, farms, and business? Is that a good reason to block their return to their homes? Is that a good reason to nullify their citizenship in the country they were born?
If the answer to those questions aren't clear then consider the exact same question another way. The Zionist movement also encouraged Jews from Europe and elsewhere to emigrate to Israel. Is that a good reason to confiscate their homes, farms, and business in their respective countries? Is that a good reason to block their return to their homes if they choose to do so? Is that a good reason to nullify their citizenship in the countries they were born?
The just and fair answer to all of these questions is no. Nobody has the right to usurp the political and civil rights of another citizen PERIOD, regardless of the circumstances.
But let's be honest here. Its obvious even to Israel's defenders that most Palestinians were terrorized out of their homes, farms, and businesses. Their lame explanations defy common sense. People don't willingly abandon their homes, properties and business. They don't willingly agree to foreigners building condos, shopping malls and airports over their razed villages and cemetaries. Most who fled believed that if they stayed, this is what they could expect:
Now that makes sense. I can understand why people would flee. I expect the experiences by many who stayed behind and survived also wasn't pleasant. Many Israeli Arabs somehow managed to remain in Israel. Some managed to keep their property, but many others became internally displaced persons within Israel and still have not been properly compensated for lossing their homes to European refugees and their descendants. I also expect some Israeli Arabs were hidden by their Jewish neighbors just like Anne Frank's experience. I even read a story during my research about a Jewish Israeli officer who defied orders to expulse every non-Jew in his home town. The people he saved and their descendants are still there and are grateful. I wish I could find that story again.
War isn't black and white. Atrocities and acts of compassion were committed by all sides.
Benny Morris (interview above) is unflinchingly honest about events even though he is a defender of Zionism. Since Benny Morris, many other Jewish Israeli historians have uncovered additional evidence supporting Benny Morris's description of deliberate atrocities in order to carry out a premeditated ethnic cleansing campaign.
This isn't about bringing those who committed these crimes so many decades ago to justice. Most are dead anyway. I raise these points so that people understand how Israel and the Occupied Palestinian Territories got to the current situation. The solution is what Benny Morris did above. Unflinchingly tell the truth as supported objectively by the evidence.
The current propaganda helps maintain the status quo which unltimately is unmaintainable. In the longrun, Israel must change and these people must have freedom and justice. The alternative is a war where all sides eventually anihilate each other.
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If there was the slightest murmur of hope that these people could live together in peace and dignity with repect for each others rights, then I would agree with you wholeheartedly.
Unfortunately, the Arabs chose war, and you know as well as I do, as do the Palestinians by their own admission, that allowing these refugees and their offspring back would be the death of every Jew in Israel.
That's just the sad reality of it.