The Hezbollah, Facts and Fictions...

[Logic 7]

That is a bunch of BS that the Hezbollah was using the U.N as a shield.

A U.N guy is not going to say that okay, Hezbollah is nearby bomb us to hell along with the Hezbollah. They would give them the area where Hezbollah is and say stop targeting us, go to the left or right. Or north or south.

Second, we all know about Hezbollah, what about israeli crimes, bombing of civilian areas, using cluster munitions that have killed 2 Lebanese each and every single day.

U.S.S Liberty,

El Arish Massacre.

Qana 1996, don't even try to say those 800 + civilians and U.N peacekeepers were Hezbollah, it is not going to wash.

Well in this forum you will find out, that it is ok to kill thousands of innoncent peoples +150 soldiers, as long as it is claim as self deffense, but when you kill 30 innoncent peoples and 130 soldiers, you are automatically a terrorists, a nation like israel can do war crimes as they wish, same with united states, and china, all of them doesnt recognize the international court of the Hague , which only them can define if a nation did a war crime or not, pretty pathetic.

 

[I think not]

Well in this forum you will find out, that it is ok to kill thousands of innoncent peoples +150 soldiers, as long as it is claim as self deffense, but when you kill 30 innoncent peoples and 130 soldiers, you are automatically a terrorists, a nation like israel can do war crimes as they wish, same with united states, and china, all of them doesnt recognize the international court of the Hague , which only them can define if a nation did a war crime or not, pretty pathetic.

You forgot the French complicity in the Rwandan genocide.

 

[CDNBear]

Well in this forum you will find out, that it is ok to kill thousands of innoncent peoples +150 soldiers, as long as it is claim as self deffense, but when you kill 30 innoncent peoples and 130 soldiers, you are automatically a terrorists, a nation like israel can do war crimes as they wish, same with united states, and china, all of them doesnt recognize the international court of the Hague , which only them can define if a nation did a war crime or not, pretty pathetic.

You are beginning to scare me.

Do you really expect us to believe that the Hezbollah have only killed 130 Soldiers and 30 30 innocent civilians?

I fear your particapation in that group, as truly come to affect your mind adversly. You made more sence before you jumped to topics that require some depth perception.

 

[earth_as_one]

I see the usual suspects still have not or can not rebuttle here.

But I wanted to add,,,

The typical hype and labling of Bush as the leader of a Christian crusade and cries for him to be tried as a war criminal, are interesting.

He makes a couple of off hand remarks to the effect and it is now gospel. The Hezbollah has consistantly, not merely called, yelled, screamed for the abolition of Israel, but the complete annialation of Israelis.

Can gopher or Question Everything please tell me why Bush and Israel are the bad guys and the Hezbollah are the good guys.

By their logic as posted so far, it seems they're rooting for the wrong team.

Or is it really just their hypocracy at its best?

Hezbollah didn't exist until Israel invaded Lebanon. They are the reason why Israel left Lebanon. Hezbollah is the reason why Israel's recent invasion attempt of Lebanon failed. Say what you like about Hezbollah, it changes none of these facts.

By the way, Hezbollah's calls for an end to the racist state of Israel, not genocide of Israelis. From their viewpoint, its like calling for an end to Arpartheid, not a slaughter of white South Africans. Get your facts straight.

I am surprised CDNbear. This letter could have been addressed to you personally:

February 23, 2006
From the CANADA PALESTINE ASSOCIATION
Open letter to the Assembly of First Nations

...Perhaps the chiefs, elders and leaders of the Assembly of First Nations don’t know the history of the Zionist movement. In fact, it was coined on the model of the European settler colonialist movement that preceded it four hundred years earlier and committed the genocide against the indigenous peoples. The Zionist movement was also built on the South Africa, Zimbabwe, Angola, Guinea Bissau, Mozambique, Algeria and other European settler colonialist models of the same era – late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.
Here is what the first Zionist Congress held in Basle, Switzerland (in Europe) in 1897 listed as some of the aims of the movement:
“Zionism strives to create for the Jewish people a homeland in Palestine secured by public law. The congress contemplates the following means to the attainment of this end:
1- The promotion on suitable lines of the colonization of Palestine by Jewish agricultural and industrial workers.” (our emphasis)
And Theodor Herzl, the founder of political Zionism, wrote in his book The Jewish State in 1896:
“We should there form a portion of the rampart of Europe against Asia, an outpost of civilization as opposed to barbarism.” (our emphasis)
So doesn’t this logic sound familiar? We are sure that it is painfully familiar to your ancestors and to your people who face racism on a daily basis.
We are sorry that we do not have the means...
http://www.jewsforajustpeace.com/pages/afn01.html

What foreigners do to Palestinians is very similar to what Europeans did to the first nations' peoples. I'm surprised you can't recognize the injustice of colonialism when its happening to someone else.

 

[Colpy]

Earth as One said:

By the way, Hezbollah's calls for an end to the racist state of Israel, not genocide of Israelis. From their viewpoint, its like calling for an end to Arpartheid, not a slaughter of white South Africans. Get your facts straight.

You are right about one thing......Nasrallah does not call for the genocide of Israelis......he calls for the genocide of all JEWS worldwide........witness the attack on a Jewish community centre in ARGENTINA, a fact which you guys like to ignore, as it doesn't quite fit your narrow-minded little fantasy of Hezbollah as hero.......BTW, that attack left 86 dead and over 200 injured.

If that's not enough, how about Nasrallah's own words?

"If they (Jews) all gather in Israel, it will save us the trouble of going after them worldwide." (Daily Star, Oct. 23, 2002)

Or why was Hezbollah murdering LEBANESE Jews? You know, they are supposed to be PROTECTING poor innocent Lebanese civilians..........

I must confess, I am getting sick and bone-tired of apologists for Hezbollah, which is nothing but an organization of Islamofascist puppets of Iran and Syria, two of the worst human rights abusers on earth.

Pull your head out of the sand....please!

 

[northstar]

How Hezzbollah, has tried to be a CANADIAN Organization!!! I wonder if they planned to apply for a Charity Organization Grant????

Hezbollah in Canada
Hezbollah is believed to have an active presence in Canada. According to Canadian intelligence, Hezbollah raises money, recruits terrorists, purchases military supplies, and forges travel documents in Canada. Money is raised through credit card scams and counterfeit rings. In two cases, alleged Hezbollah agents wanted for terrorist activities overseas were found hiding in Canada. Hezbollah theft rings have stolen luxury cars in Canada and sent them to Lebanon for use by senior Hezbollah officials.
The North Carolina Hezbollah terror cell was part of a larger Hezbollah network that raised funds and procured dual-use technologies for Hezbollah. The Canadian part of the network was allegedly run by Mohammed Hassan Dbouk and his brother-in-law Ali Adham Amhaz, who allegedly received money from Hezbollah officials in Lebanon and engaged in credit card and banking scams in Canada in order to finance the purchase in Canada and the U.S. of military items which were then smuggled into Lebanon.
Amhaz was indicted in North Carolina in March 2001 on charges of providing material support to Hezbollah. In October 2001, Canadian authorities arrested him based on an American arrest warrant calling for his extradition. Amhaz was freed in December 2001 after the U.S. dropped the arrest warrant; the U.S. indictment against him still stands. Dbouk fled to Lebanon.
The Canadian government first argued that a distinction could be made between Hezbollah's military and political/humanitarian wings. It therefore listed Hezbollah's military wing as a banned terrorist organization but refused to include its political arm. After domestic and international pressure, Canada finally banned the entire Hezbollah organization in December 2002.

p.s. they are here, just because they are banned means they just can't advertise it....and the sympathizers help.

source-
http://www.adl.org/terror/hezbollah_print.asp

 

[northstar]

Sympathizer's listen up...Hezbollah has a charity, give money and support a suicide bomber today...

Hezbollah in Europe

Hezbollah is known to maintain terror cells and a terror infrastructure throughout Europe.

In particular, the organization uses Europe as an operational launching pad for Hezbollah operatives to enter Israel in order to conduct attacks, assist other operatives already there, or conduct surveillance and collect intelligence on Israeli targets.

Operationally, traveling from Europe provides Hezbollah operatives with "cover" and a European logistical support cell provides operatives with information and resources for travel, including fraudulent travel documents.

In 2002, for example, Israeli forces in Hebron apprehended Fawzi Ayoub,
a Canadian citizen of Lebanese descent who traveled from Lebanon to Europe on his Canadian passport.

In Europe he is believed to have met with a Hezbollah operative who supplied him with a fake American passport for his entry into Israel.

He stayed in Jerusalem and reportedly attempted to approach arms brokers. The exact purpose of Ayoub's mission remains unclear.

A year earlier, Israeli authorities arrested Hezbollah operative Jihad (Gerard) Shuman, a Lebanese citizen with British nationality.

Shuman flew from Lebanon to Britain on his Lebanese passport.

After a briefing with a Hezbollah operative in Britain, he flew from Britain to Israel on his British passport and stayed in Jerusalem where he was later arrested.

A search of his possessions, according to Israeli authorities, revealed a yarmulka, a timer, tourist maps of the Jerusalem area, a large sum of money, a video camera, disposable cameras and several cellular phones.

Germany has been identified as Hezbollah's main fund raising center in Europe.

Most of the funds come from charitable organizations and are officially earmarked for Hezbollah's social welfare work.

In 2002, Germany closed down two charitable organizations raising money for Hezbollah: the al-Shahid Social Relief Institution, which was the German branch of a Lebanese charitable organization, and the al-Aqsa Fund, a Hamas front that also raised funds for Hezbollah. ...

in early November 2004 Dutch Foreign Minister Ben Bot called for Hezbollah to be added to the list. [of terrorists organizations...

 

[northstar]

This is what hezbollah teach their children about History and the Jews...

http://switch5.castup.net/frames/20041020_MemriTV_Popup/video_480x360.asp?ai=214&ar=968wmv&ak=nullchildren being taught to hate jews

 

[CDNBear]

Hezbollah didn't exist until Israel invaded Lebanon. They are the reason why Israel left Lebanon. Hezbollah is the reason why Israel's recent invasion attempt of Lebanon failed. Say what you like about Hezbollah, it changes none of these facts.

By the way, Hezbollah's calls for an end to the racist state of Israel, not genocide of Israelis. From their viewpoint, its like calling for an end to Arpartheid, not a slaughter of white South Africans. Get your facts straight.

I am surprised CDNbear. This letter could have been addressed to you personally:



What foreigners do to Palestinians is very similar to what Europeans did to the first nations' peoples. I'm surprised you can't recognize the injustice of colonialism when its happening to someone else.

No the reason why Israel's recent reaction to Hezbollah's recent attack was ended, was because Israel did not unleash its entire might. It resrtained itself hugely.

The leader of the Hezbollah has stated clearly, that he wants to remove all Jews from the planet. It does not get any clearer then that.

I can and do recognise colonialism when I see it. This ain't it. Israel is Jewish land. Taken from them 1000's of years ago. Now they hold it. The people that had lived on it illegally are still welcome. If they wish to live in peace. They do not.

That is like having the UN grant the Six Nations the whole of the Great Lakes Region, because it was theirs. Then bitching at them because they have to forcefully fight of the people displced by the UN ruling.

Now that is a proper Native riddon anology. Please stop dragging my ancestry into this. It has not bearing nor any relivance on the matter. It is tantammount to comparing apples to goats.

 

[earth_as_one]

I agree with your analogy somewhat. In fact first nations people have a better claim to their ancentral homelands than Jews who were born somewhere else and have now returned to ethnically cleanse the current inhabitants and turn Palestine into pure Jewish state. At least for first nations people, the injustice is more recent and they still occupy remnants of the land.

But if Jews have a right to correct a historical injustice through injustice, then so does everyone else who has an ancestor who suffered an injustice.

That means that in the distant future, descendants of first nations could claim the same right as Israel to ethnically cleanse Canada and the United States. By that logic, I think I have some land coming to me in Italy and Poland.

Imagine the carnage if everyone in the world claimed the right to slaughter and ethnically cleanse their ancestral homeland as some Jews do now in Palestine.

But what is going on in Palestine has nothing to do with righting a historical wrong. Israel has superior firepower over the natives, just like the Europeans did when they showed up in North America. Jewish immigrants can do to the native Palestinians pretty much whatever they want... including lobbing shells onto residential areas and public beaches and there is little the natives can do about it except attack Israel with ineffective homemade rockets and suicide bombers.

But what goes around comes around. Sooner or later 1.3 billion Muslims are going to hold Israel accountable for its genocidal slaughter and ethnic cleansing. No empire lasts forever. As Israel's failed invasion demonstrated, Israel can be defeated.

Don't take that as a wish on my part for further violence. Enough people have died since Jews began colonizing Palestine. I wish the Jews that emigrated to Palestine brought peace and harmony, rather than war and injustice. I do not support violent acts committed by either side in this conflict. But I can also understand why people who have lost all their possessions and now watch their children die would feel anger against those responsible. Who wouldn't? I also understand why Jews who have suffered so much for so long would desire a homeland they could control.

You know whats really sad here? Genetically, Palestinians and Jews are as close to each other as brothers.

Jews Are The Genetic Brothers Of Palestinians, Syrians, And Lebanese

If a common heritage conferred peace, then perhaps the long history of conflict in the Middle East would have been resolved years ago. For, according to a new scientific study, Jews are the genetic brothers of Palestinians, Syrians and Lebanese, and they all share a common genetic lineage that stretches back thousands of years.

"Jews and Arabs are all really children of Abraham," says Harry Ostrer, M.D., Director of the Human Genetics Program at New York University School of Medicine, an author of the new study by an international team of researchers in the United States, Europe, and Israel. "And all have preserved their Middle Eastern genetic roots over 4,000 years," he says.

The researchers analyzed the Y chromosome, which is usually passed unchanged from father to son, of more than 1,000 men worldwide. Throughout human history, alterations have occurred in the sequence of chemical bases that make up the DNA in this so-called male chromosome, leaving variations that can be pinpointed with modern genetic techniques. Related populations carry the same specific variations. In this way, scientists can track descendants of large populations and determine their common ancestors.
Specific regions of the Y chromosome were analyzed in 1,371 men from 29 worldwide populations, including Jews and non-Jews from the Middle East, North Africa, sub-Saharan Africa, and Europe.

The study, published in the May 9 issue of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, found that Jewish men shared a common set of genetic signatures with non-Jews from the Middle East, including Palestinians, Syrians, and Lebanese, and these signatures diverged significantly from non-Jewish men outside of this region. Consequently, Jews and Arabs share a common ancestor and are more closely related to one another than to non-Jews from other areas of the world....

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2000/05/000509003653.htm?

Jews and Palestininas are really the same race, if such a thing as race exists. The most likely history of Jews and Palestinians is that not all Jews left Palestine 2000 years ago. Many stayed and some of their decendants later converted to Christianity and Islam. Now we have a situation where the descendants of the people who left Palestine 2000 years ago have returned to kill the descendants of the people who stayed.

Also I would like to know where you got the idea that the people who lived in Palestine before the Jewish immigrants lived on the land illegally or were welcome to stay as long as they wished to remain in peace. Most of the people forced off their land acquired it legally. About 800,000 people were ethnically cleansed off their land regardless of whether they tried to coexist peacefully with the immigrants or not. Israel's war of independance was fought against armies from Egypt, Jordan, Syria and Lebanon. Few Palestinians took part in that war. But when that war was over, the Jewish immigrants drove most of the non-Jewish natives off the land. Sort of like the "trail of tears" but on a much bigger scale. That action was illegal and the UN has condemned Israel repeated for that crime against humanity.

 

[Colpy]

But if Jews have a right to correct a historical injustice through injustice, then so does everyone else who has an ancestor who suffered an injustice.

That means that in the distant future, descendants of first nations could claim the same right as Israel to ethnically cleanse Canada and the United States. By that logic, I think I have some land coming to me in Italy and Poland.

What the Hell are you talking about?

There are LOTS of Arabs that live in Israel proper.....they vote, elect Arabs as village mayors and members of the Knesset, and they rarely cause trouble......because they are better of as ISRAELI Arabs than they would be as Arabs in the ARAB states......and they know it. Good Lord, the Bedouin actually FIGHT for the state of Israel.......and very well.

Not only that, there were as many Jews ethnically cleansed from Arab states as there were Arabs that left Israel.............but the Arabs can't let it go.........

The Jewish refugees were absorbed by Israel, the Palestinian refugees have been turned away by the Arab states, left iin poverty, anquish, and desperation because the Arabs can use them to batter Israel on the world stage..................


Everybody hears when Israel fires a stray shell, but when I bring up Hezbollah's attacks on Jews thousands of miles away from Israel.............it is carefully ignored. When I bring up Nasrallah's statement about murdering all Jews........it is carefully ignored, when the poster above points out how Hamas and Hezbollah teach children to hate Jews as Jews, ...............it is carefully ignored.

Neither side is perfect......but the organizations called Hamas and Hezbollah are bent on REAL genocide.......and to support then is simply unconscionable.

 

[earth_as_one]

No there are a few Arabs still left in Israel. Some were protected from the Nakba by their Palestinian Jew neighbors, others were able to hide. Most were forcibly evicted. Many of those that stayed had to endure injustices.

Israeli historian Benny Morris:

Survival of the Fittest? An Interview with Benny Morris

with​

Ari Shavit​

Benny Morris says he was always a Zionist. People were mistaken when they labeled him a post-Zionist, when they thought that his historical study on the birth of the Palestinian refugee problem was intended to undercut the Zionist enterprise. Nonsense, Morris says, that’s completely unfounded. Some readers simply misread the book. They didn’t read it with the same detachment, the same moral neutrality, with which it was written. So they came to the mistaken conclusion that when Morris describes the cruelest deeds that the Zionist movement perpetrated in 1948 he is actually being condemnatory, that when he describes the large-scale expulsion operations he is being denunciatory. They did not conceive that the great documenter of the sins of Zionism in fact identifies with those sins. That he thinks some of them, at least, were unavoidable....

...

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.

 

[earth_as_one]

Benny Morris continued:

At the same time, it turns out that there was a series of orders issued by the Arab Higher Committee and by the Palestinian intermediate levels to remove children, women and the elderly from the villages. So that on the one hand, the book reinforces the accusation against the Zionist side, but on the other hand it also proves that many of those who left the villages did so with the encouragement of the Palestinian leadership itself.

...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...


...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....

the entire interview here:


http://www.logosjournal.com/morris.htm

Benny Morris is an Israeli Historian who gets his imformation from Israeli military archives.

Here is a link to survivor stories and documented evidence:

http://www.alnakba.org/

The expulsion of Jews in other Arab muslim countries came as a result of Israeli crimes against humanity. The Palestinians did not benefit from those atrocities. The ended up in refugee camps. The Jews which fled to Israel were given Palestinian property such as entire homes complete with beds and Palestinian family portraits, since the former owners fled with only what they could carry.

Also some Muslim Arab countries protected their jewish citizens from the anti-Israel backlash:

Jews in Iran Describe a Life of Freedom Despite Anti-Israel Actions by Tehran
Michael Theodoulou, Special to The Christian Science Monitor TEHRAN, IRAN—

http://www.csmonitor.com/durable/1998/02/03/intl/intl.3.html

 

[Colpy]

Earth As One, you are SO full of it!

No there are a few Arabs still left in Israel. Some were protected from the Nakba by their Palestinian Jew neighbors, others were able to hide. Most were forcibly evicted. Many of those that stayed had to endure injustices.

There are a little less than 6.3 million people living in Israel as of the 2003 census. Over 1.3 million of those persons were Arab.........more than 20% of the population........NOT a few that managed to hide..........that is called a FACT, and you can't argue it, even if it doesn't fit into your fantasy world.

As for Benny Morris, I don't doubt his figures and facts for a moment. The 1948 war was a nasty, bloody affair, the culmination of decades of sniping, murder, and injustice. The Israelis were cornered, and some commited atrocities intended to drive out Arabs.

BTW, the same sort of things happened to Jewish refugees from Arab countries........it is just that any historian that tried to document THAT would be crucufied upside-down.......if he were lucky.

As well, Arabs in Israel are treated somewhat as second-class citizens. Their towns are not apt to get infrastructure, they are stopped inceasently by police, they are not allowed to carry weapons (as do most Israeli men), and some have been put off land they held for generations..................they are not allowed (except for the Bedou) to serve in the Israeli Army.............there is some level of injustice at work here.

BUT they are STILL much better off than they would be in the majority of ARAB countries, and they know it.

IF there were PEACE, the Arabs could move toward full civil rights, much as the blacks did in the USA in the sixties. As long as Israel remains beseiged by Arabs around them, their Arab population will be seen as possible fifth columnists, and the current situation will continue.......

Earth as ONe, idealism is a wonderful thing, but sooner or later one has to deal with reality..........

 

[CDNBear]

earth,

I have never condoned all of Israel's actions, but i will defend them because they hold the moral and ethical high ground. they have time and time again held out the preverbial olive branch to the Palestinians and surrounding Muslims. Only to have it torched. If I were in their shoes, it would have happend once, then the next time you attacked me, you would feel the full weight of my might. I would ignore the differences between civilian and military personnel, and drive every living thing in to the ocean and wait there until the bubbles stopped rising. I can only tolerate my people dying and their blood being spilt for so long, before righteous retrobution became my battle cry.

I hate to say those words, but unfortunetly, the people Israel face, hear nothing and wish for nothing more, then the complete and utter destruction of Israel. That is the goal, extreme. So extreme measures should be taken to prevent it. Damn the world view, most of you cry for a purely defence Army, that is the IDF. The region surrounding Israel is lucky i am niether Jewish nor the leader of Israel. The ME, would take on a whole new look under my Command. I would have peace, the cost would be high, but the region would be stablized perminently.

 

[earth_as_one]

Here are the numbers:

According to the 2005 Israeli census, Israel's population of 6,990,700 is broken down into the following ethnic groups: Jewish - 5,313,800, Arab - 1,377,100, the remainder were small groups. Ethnicity broken down by religion: Jewish - 5,313,800, Muslim - 1,140,600, Christian - 146,000, Druze - 115,200, Unclassified by choice - 272, 200.

Here are the numbers of Palestinian refugees by country:

• Jordan 1,827,877 refugees
• Gaza 986,034 refugees
• West Bank 699,817 refugees
• Syria 432,048 refugees
• Lebanon 404,170 refugees
• Saudi Arabia 240,000 refugees
• Egypt 70,245 refugees

total about 4 million Palestinian refugees. Looks to me like MOST Palestinians were ethnically cleansed off the land. Maybe instead of say a few, I should have said a minority remained behind.

Also before Jews started immigrating to Palestine about 100 years ago, Palestine was only 2% Jewish. If all 4 million Palestinian refugees were allowed to return home, Israel would be 50% Jewish.

The numbers of Palestinians driven off the land during the 1948 war range from a low of 400,000 claimed by the Israeli government, to over 950,000 according to some Arab sources and human rights organizations [3]. The official UN estimate is 711,000. [3] By 1950, according to United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA), the number of registered refugees was 914,000.[4].

Even the low figure provided by Israel is still a huge number of people.

Its a complete fabrication that these people left willingly. That's about as true as saying that the Jews rounded up by Nazi Germany for extermination went willingly. Israeli historian Benny Morris has documented proof from Israeli sources that these people were forcefully removed by the Israeli military. You read the above. The choice most non-Jews faced was stay and risk getting raped and murdered or leave. That's ethnic cleansing by any definition.

Sure a minority remained behind. Most of them still find life under Jewish rule initially unpleasant. They are second class citizens. They have special identification which identifies them as non-Jews. If some non-Jews leave, they won't be allowed back in. If non-Jews marries a non-Israeli citizen, their spouses can't come to Israel. Some non-Jewish villages are not recognized by the Israeli government. That means they get no electricity, running water or roads. Some non-Jews risk loosing their homes if they ever leave Israel or even if they just leave the house unoccupied:

http://www.fmep.org/analysis/articles/impose_absentee_property_law.html

Israel's new Minister of Strategic Affairs is a fine example of Israeli tolerance:

A brutal taste of the future
[FONT=arial,helvetica,sans-serif]The assault on Beit Hanoun is a terrifying example of what lies in store for Palestinians[/FONT]
[FONT=Geneva,Arial,sans-serif]Wednesday November 8, 2006
The Guardian

[/FONT]The initiation of Avigdor Lieberman - widely regarded as an outright racist - into Ehud Olmert's Israeli government seems to have already brought a taste of things to come. For the past week, the Gaza Strip city of Beit Hanoun has been made a ground zero by the Israeli army. By yesterday, more than 260 Palestinians lay dead and injured, with 53 fatalities - women, children and ambulance drivers among them...

...Lieberman's party, Yisrael Beiteinu ("Israel is Our Home"), envisages expelling Palestinians or subjecting them to such misery that they are forced to leave. The party's spin doctors state it more mildly, saying that it proposes to relocate Palestinians to areas under the Palestinian Authority's control. The Beit Hanoun offensive offers an example of what lies in store for them...

http://www.guardian.co.uk/israel/comment/0,,1941838,00.html

Lieberman wants to create a racial pure state and move non-Jewish citizens to Gaza where they can be bombed.

Israel itself is responsible for Hezbollah's existance. Hezbollah formed as a result of Israel's invasion of Lebanon during the 1980's. Hezbollah's leaders are fiercely anti-Jewish. Many of its leaders and their family members have been assassinated by Israel. If it wasn't for Hezbollah, the people of southern Lebanon would be in the same situation as 4 million Palestinians living in refugee camps. Like the Palestinians, they would have lost their property, been rounded up and forced into concentration camps.


Most Arab/Muslim countries view Hezbollah as a legitimate resistance group. Only a six countries have classified Hezbollah as a terrorist organization. Canada is one of them. To me, that's taking sides in this dispute. Canada should remain neutral and ban any Canadian from contributing to either side in this dispute. That means Hamas, Islamic Jihad, Hezbollah and Israel. All sides in this war have committed acts of terrorism.

I am appalled that people today would support ethnic cleansing and the creation of a racially pure state.

 

[Sassylassie]

Hamas has repeatedly stated in public they don't want peace so what is Israel to do? When I watched the news reports of Hamas calling on women to come shelter the men who were firing missiles into Israel I was stunned. Dozens of women streaming into the streets to become human shields so these cowardly males could crawl up their skirts to safety. I wonder what Allah would have to say about this new method of great Warriorism, It goes beyond cowardly. They call themselves great warriors, yea right they use children as weapons they hide behind and up women's skirts. Cowards. What is Hamas next battle stratagy going to be: Ask the females to bring the babies and their strollers to act as human shields the next time Palestinian Men get caught lobbing missiles into Israel? Israel is far from blameless but the level of cruelty by Hamas is mind numbing.

 

[CDNBear]

Here are the numbers:

According to the 2005 Israeli census, Israel's population of 6,990,700 is broken down into the following ethnic groups: Jewish - 5,313,800, Arab - 1,377,100, the remainder were small groups. Ethnicity broken down by religion: Jewish - 5,313,800, Muslim - 1,140,600, Christian - 146,000, Druze - 115,200, Unclassified by choice - 272, 200.

Here are the numbers of Palestinian refugees by country:

• Jordan 1,827,877 refugees
• Gaza 986,034 refugees
• West Bank 699,817 refugees
• Syria 432,048 refugees
• Lebanon 404,170 refugees
• Saudi Arabia 240,000 refugees
• Egypt 70,245 refugees

total about 4 million Palestinian refugees. Looks to me like MOST Palestinians were ethnically cleansed off the land. Maybe instead of say a few, I should have said a minority remained behind.

Also before Jews started immigrating to Palestine about 100 years ago, Palestine was only 2% Jewish. If all 4 million Palestinian refugees were allowed to return home, Israel would be 50% Jewish.

The numbers of Palestinians driven off the land during the 1948 war range from a low of 400,000 claimed by the Israeli government, to over 950,000 according to some Arab sources and human rights organizations [3]. The official UN estimate is 711,000. [3] By 1950, according to United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA), the number of registered refugees was 914,000.[4].

Even the low figure provided by Israel is still a huge number of people.

Its a complete fabrication that these people left willingly. That's about as true as saying that the Jews rounded up by Nazi Germany for extermination went willingly. Israeli historian Benny Morris has documented proof from Israeli sources that these people were forcefully removed by the Israeli military. You read the above. The choice most non-Jews faced was stay and risk getting raped and murdered or leave. That's ethnic cleansing by any definition.

Sure a minority remained behind. Most of them still find life under Jewish rule initially unpleasant. They are second class citizens. They have special identification which identifies them as non-Jews. If some non-Jews leave, they won't be allowed back in. If non-Jews marries a non-Israeli citizen, their spouses can't come to Israel. Some non-Jewish villages are not recognized by the Israeli government. That means they get no electricity, running water or roads. Some non-Jews risk loosing their homes if they ever leave Israel or even if they just leave the house unoccupied:

http://www.fmep.org/analysis/articles/impose_absentee_property_law.html

Israel's new Minister of Strategic Affairs is a fine example of Israeli tolerance:



Lieberman wants to create a racial pure state and move non-Jewish citizens to Gaza where they can be bombed.

Israel itself is responsible for Hezbollah's existance. Hezbollah formed as a result of Israel's invasion of Lebanon during the 1980's. Hezbollah's leaders are fiercely anti-Jewish. Many of its leaders and their family members have been assassinated by Israel. If it wasn't for Hezbollah, the people of southern Lebanon would be in the same situation as 4 million Palestinians living in refugee camps. Like the Palestinians, they would have lost their property, been rounded up and forced into concentration camps.


Most Arab/Muslim countries view Hezbollah as a legitimate resistance group. Only a six countries have classified Hezbollah as a terrorist organization. Canada is one of them. To me, that's taking sides in this dispute. Canada should remain neutral and ban any Canadian from contributing to either side in this dispute. That means Hamas, Islamic Jihad, Hezbollah and Israel. All sides in this war have committed acts of terrorism.

I am appalled that people today would support ethnic cleansing and the creation of a racially pure state.

Yet you defend the Hezbolla and the Hamas?

That is interesting, your disgust is sellective then?

 

[earth_as_one]

earth,

I have never condoned all of Israel's actions, but i will defend them because they hold the moral and ethical high ground.

Israel holds the moral high and ethical high ground? I challenge that assumption. I think you only see this conflict from an Israeli viewpoint. Do you have an open mind? If you did you would be able to see both sides. I ask that you try to see Israel from the viewpoint of people who lived in Palestine before Israel existed.

Below is a summary of a letter written by King Hussein, (grandfather of Jordanian King Abdullah) from 1947, six months before the 1948 war. It could have been written yesterday:

Summary: This fascinating essay, written by King Hussein's grandfather King Abdullah, appeared in the United States six months before the 1948 Arab-Israeli War. In the article, titled "As the Arabs See the Jews", King Abdullah disputes the mistaken view that Arab opposition to Zionism (and later the state of Israel) is because of longstanding religious or ethnic hatred. He notes that Jews and Muslims enjoyed a long history of peaceful coexistence in the Middle East, and that Jews have historically suffered far more at the hands of Christian Europe.

Pointing to the tragedy of the holocaust that Jews suffered during World War II, the monarch asks why America and Europe are refusing to accept more than a handful of Jewish immigrants and refugees. It is unfair, he argues, to make Palestine, which is innocent of anti-Semitism, pay for the crimes of Europe. King Abdullah also asks how Jews can claim a historic right to Palestine, when Arabs have been the overwhelming majority there for nearly 1300 uninterrupted years?]

the full letter here:
http://www.albalagh.net/current_affairs/king_abdullah_palestine.shtml

A little long winded but a sincere attempt to find a fair and just solution to the problems created by Zionsim. I don't sense any hatred of Jews in this man's letter. That's how most Palestinians felt about Zionism at the time.

Read Israeli historian Benny Morris's interview above. One of Israel's first acts as a nation after winning the 1948 war to use rape and murder to ethnically cleanse itself of most non-Jews. Those are historical facts documented by Israeli military archives. I imagine most Palestinians changed their opinions about their new Jewish neighbors during that period.

The fact is, Israel confiscated most of Palestine by force. For nearly 60 years, Israel has subjected Palestinians to a grinding annexation of their land. The way it works is a tank shows up at your front door and you are warned the tank is about to start firing. A few minutes later shells are fired through your window regardless of whether you and your family have evacuated or not. After your house has been flattened and razed by armoured bulldozers, your home is declared abandonned and confiscated by the state. Put up a section of wall, move to next house. That's been going on for over 50 years now.

Take a moment to watch this short slide show by Human Rights Watch:

Patterns in the Rubble: Home Demolitions in Gaza
http://www.hrw.org/campaigns/gaza/photos/slideshow_as2/slideshow_as2.html

For nearly 60 years, the natives have been squeezed into ever shrinking enclaves as Israel's rolling annexation of Palestine grinds on. Gaza, is now one of the world's most densely populated places. Gaza is a concentration camp.

The same thing goes on in the West Bank. Israel agreed to reserve the West Bank for a Palestinian state. Yet each year they take more and more of it. Here is a map of what's left of it today:

Does bulldosing homes and forcing people into concentration camps sound moral or ethical?

If you lost your home this way and found yourself homeless inside a crowded concentration camp, without clean water, sewers, electricity, watching your children slowing dying from easily treated diseases and malnutrition would you be angry?

I think you are confused about which side is defending itself from annihilation. With each year that passes, Israel gets a little bigger and the land supposedly reserved for a Palestinian state gets smaller. Israel doesn't even refer to Palestine anymore. They call it the "Occupied Territories". The only right Palestinians have is the right to rot in a concentration camp. Is that moral or ethical?

How about Israel's recent killing of 1187 innocent civilians, wounding of 3600 more, displacing over a million people and filling the countryside with millions of unexploded munitions in Lebanon, in response to a minor border skirmish which killed 3 Israeli soldiers and captured 2 others? Does that sound moral or ethical?

Look at these photos and tell me if this was your city, would you have described Israel's response as "measured"?


Photos of the Israeli Attacks
(caution for sensitive viewers)
http://www.lebanonembassyus.org/Photos.html

Are you a strong person CDNBear? Are you strong enough to look Israel's victims in the face and say Israel has the moral and ethical high ground?
WARNING GRAPHIC IMAGES OF ISRAEL'S WAR CRIMES
http://www.thewe.cc/contents/more/archive/atrocities.htm

If these people were Israeli's, their suffering have been newsworthy. But they are Palestinians and so our news ignores their suffering. Why is that?

Atrocities have been committed by all sides in this dispute. Neither side can claim moral or ethical superiority, certainly not Israel. Our news just portray this dispute that way, but that doesn't make it any more true than other lies like Iraq's WMDs and links to al Qaeda. If you have an open mind you would be able to see both sides in this dispute and you would know that one side does face annihilation and it isn't Israel.

 

[CDNBear]

I do not believe in Iraq's WMD, I did not believe in the AQ connection, anytime someones says "axis" and then adds evil to it, I stop believing.

I have read Morris. You use the term "concentration camps", but that is not factual. That is hyper sensatioal crap, they are refugee camps in Palestine, full of people that will not go home because their "elected" leaders are trying to skew the facts and keep old wounds open.

If the up provoked attacks would cease, the IDF, would pull back. The attacks won't so niether will the IDF.

I am trying to see both sides, I have asked for the other sides view. I have read all of the posted material and links, with an open mind.

My opinion is that Israel has gone to the peace table several times, only to have peace shattered because of militant groups like the Hezbollah. That only wish to see one outcome, the demise of Israel and the entire Jewish race.

THEY HAVE STATED THAT MANY MANY TIMES.

I do not know, for the life of me, why anyone would back a group that openly calls for the extermination of an entire race and religion.

The Hezbollah has not cried for just the removal of the security area( which is in place on occupied land, because Israel wants a buffer zone). They want Israel and all Jews dead.

It does not get any simpler then that.

I will not back, agree, support, forgive or accept them.

When they lay down their arms, as the UN has mandated, and come to terms with the existance of Israel. Thereby accepting peace. I will give them a second thought, but until then, they are an illegal criminal organization. That needs to be exponged off the face of the earth. Not all Palestinians, just the Hezbollah and to some extent the Hamas. But if the Palestinians continue to lie for or support the Hezbollah, they will continue to be the brunt of Israel's might.

You said...
If these people were Israeli's, their suffering have been newsworthy. But they are Palestinians and so our news ignores their suffering. Why is that?
That is a joke. It makes more money and gets better ratings to show how bad Israel is. I do not know what TV you watch, but in Canada, it is all Israel bad, poor Palestinians good. Hence my threads on bias media. The bais is against Israel, not for them.