The State of "Palestine" Quiz

Byrnzie

Evaluation of the Use of Force in Israel, Gaza and the West Bank Medical and Forensic Investigation
A Report by Physicians for Human Rights
November 3, 2000

ATTACKS ON AMBULANCES AND HEALTH PERSONNEL

Human rights groups have repeatedly reported violations of medical neutrality during the conflict. Medical neutrality is a normative construct that draws on international humanitarian law, human rights law, and medical ethics. Medical neutrality seeks to protect and limit the injury and death to civilians and combatants and provide standards for health professionals with respect to their rights and duties in war and peace.

According to the Palestine Red Crescent Society (PRCS), 33 ambulances were hit by gunfire and 17 were destroyed from 64 separate attacks. The PHR team studied two damaged ambulances in Gaza. One had received a direct hit to the front window and the other was struck at least five times on the left side by 50 caliber armor piercing ammunition that went completely through to the other side and damaged the stretcher inside the vehicle. It was also hit by a rubber bullet on the same side. According to the driver, the ambulance had sustained damage on the right side from a previous attack.

Colleagues at Physicians for Human Rights Israel (PHR-Israel) have reported numerous instances in which the IDF have violated medical neutrality including: the blocking of the Augusta Victoria and the Makassed Hospitals in Jerusalem and preventing injured patients from receiving care. PHR-Israel has also reported shooting at medical personnel, some of whom were wearing vests clearly identifying them as medical personnel, while they were providing care to the injured. They also reported delays in medical treatment to detainees (two Israelis and one Palestinian) who were arrested during the current crisis.

Between October 1 and October 23, PHR-Israel reported that 17 Palestinian ambulances were "utterly destroyed" by the IDF. During the week from October 19 to October 23 alone, PHR-Israel reported that an additional 26 ambulances were damaged by gun fire.

PRCS personnel and vehicles have been attacked by Israeli settlers in Israeli controlled areas and Magen David Adom ambulances have been attacked by Palestinian civilians in areas under Israeli security controlled areas, according to Human Rights Watch.

In other instances of violations of medical neutrality, the Union of Palestinian Medical Relief Committees (UPMRC) has reported that 12 UPMRC medical personnel have been injured by Israeli forces while providing medical care.

The Israeli army claims that the ambulances are not being used properly, but the PHR team received no documentation of an ambulance being used for purposes other than transporting the wounded. When PHR interviewed IDF officials, they admitted that early in the conflict there had been incidents of violations of medical neutrality but that orders had been re-issued from headquarters to officers in the field to respect the neutrality of ambulances in the field and medical personnel.

The PHR team also personally interviewed a hospital van driver at Shifa Hospital who was taking five cancer patients to Israel for outpatient radiotherapy and chemotherapy. Despite the fact that all of the patients had valid permits to enter Israel, they were turned back at the Eretz checkpoint between Israel and Gaza, and refused entry into Israel.

Byrnzie

IDF Violations in Nablus and Jenin

Blocking medical and humanitarian relief

Medical relief services were denied access to Jenin refugee camp for nearly 11 days, from 12 noon on 4 April until 15 April 2002. In addition the IDF shot at ambulances(10) or fired warning shots around them. Ambulance drivers were harassed or arrested.
Meanwhile the dead in Jenin refugee camp remained in the street or in houses for days. The wounded lay for hours untended or were treated at home. In several cases people are reported to have died in circumstances where lack of access medical care may have caused or hastened their death. Many testimonies show families desperately telephoning for help in vain and compelled to stay alone with dying or dead relatives. Many cases of Palestinians killed by the IDF show the difficulty or impossibility of obtaining medical care or an ambulance to remove the dead; three such cases – of 'Atiya Abu Irmaila, Nayef Qasem 'Abd al-Jaber and 'Amid 'Azmi Abu Hassan Fayed – are described below. In two cases investigated by Amnesty International the delay in obtaining medical treatment will have long term medical consequences for patients.
Medical personnel said that for the first 30 hours of the incursion, from early morning on 3 April until noon on 4 April 2002, ambulances were able to move. During this time ambulances brought five dead bodies and about 45 wounded to Jenin City Hospital.
Among the first Palestinians killed was a 27-year-old nurse, Fadwa Fathi Abdallah Jamal, wearing her uniform, shot by the IDF as she walked early in the morning of 3 April with her sister, also a nurse, to go to a medical centre in the refugee camp.
From 12 noon on 4 April 2002 the IDF imposed a medical blockade and prevented ambulances from entering the camp. Jenin City Hospital was surrounded by tanks and the building opposite the hospital was used as an IDF base. All those in the hospital at noon on 4 April were confined there: the visitors, the staff and the sick - about 300 people: 100 medical personnel, 105 patients, and their relatives. For some days they lived largely on
biscuits, chocolate and water. On 4 April the ICRC was prevented from delivering oxygen to the hospital, which was running out of supplies, but the deliveries were allowed the following day. The ICRC also delivered drugs, blood and food. By 5 April the hospital had received six dead bodies (increasing to seven when one wounded man died the next day in hospital), its morgue large enough for only one body. IDF authorization was sought to bury the bodies in the small patch of garden behind the hospital, and this was granted on 6 April.
On 6 April ambulances were still denied access to Jenin refugee camp. On 7 April ICRC landcruisers carrying supplies to the Jenin City Hospital were blocked; however supplies were transferred to local ambulances and taken to the hospital. On 8 April continuing negotiations between the ICRC, the DCO and the army appeared to have brought about an agreement. The PRCS tried to send three teams with the ICRC to the refugee camp to collect the wounded. The ambulances were lengthily checked and the ambulance drivers forced to lie on the ground. Around 5pm the IDF said that three people could be brought in; the hospital should examine them but not ask them questions. The wounded men were brought to hospital blindfolded. After examining them, Dr Abu Ghali, the hospital director said that all needed urgent hospital treatment. The IDF, however, allowed only
one patient to enter the hospital.
"This whole operation and the negotiations with the IDF and the ICRC took from 8am until 11pm and - at the end of the day - only one wounded man was admitted into the hospital" said Dr Abu Ghali.
Between 9 and 14 April there was a standoff, day after day, outside Jenin refugee camp, with up to five ICRC ambulances and doctors and about six PRCS ambulances waiting in vain to be allowed by the IDF to enter the camp to evacuate dead and wounded.
On the evening of 11 April an ICRC delegate and Dr Abu Ghali, the hospital director, were sitting in Dr Abu Ghalis office on the top floor of the hospital when two sniper bullets came through the window and hit the ceiling. They telephoned the IDF commander who reportedly apologized saying an IDF sniper had made a mistake.
On 14 April, three days after fighting had ended, Jenin refugee camp remained cut off from the outside world. It had been nine days since the last dead body had been brought out of the refugee camp. Only those wounded in the camp who could struggle out themselves were in hospital.
Meanwhile a number of petitions had been brought to the Israeli High Court of Justice.
On 8 April the court, commenting on a petition which challenged the Israeli army's "prevention of access to medical treatment for the sick and wounded in Jenin and Nablus; restriction of access of medical personnel and transport to the areas; and obstruction of the right to bury the dead in a respectful manner", had stated:
"Although it is not possible to address the specific incidents in the petition that on their face look harsh, we have to stress that our fighting forces are obliged to apply humanitarian rules which refer to treating the injured, in the hospitals and the bodies of the dead. Wrongful use of medical teams and of hospitals and ambulances obliges the IDF to act in order to prevent such activity; however, this by itself does not allow a sweeping violation of humanitarian rules. In fact, this is also the declared position of the State.
This attitude is not only required by international law, on which the petitioners are relying, but also by the values of the State of Israel as a Jewish and democratic state."(11)
On 14 April three petitions were heard by the High Court of Justice including a request that the ICRC and PRCS enter the camp to remove dead bodies. They had been brought by Knesset members Muhammad Barakeh and Ahmad Tibi, and by the human rights organizations Adalah and LAW. The representative of the Attorney General initially stated that the Israeli army could not permit humanitarian organizations to enter the area because some of the bodies might be booby-trapped with bombs; it then agreed to allow entry. The court dismissed the petitions but ordered that the ICRC be allowed to accompany and assist the Israeli army in locating bodies and that the PRCS also be permitted to join them.
After the High Court judgment, for the first time for 11 days, ICRC and PRCS ambulances were allowed into the camp. They left at 6.30am on 15 April but were delayed by the routine IDF searches. One team was told to remain with their IDF escort; apparently the army limited their access and they found no bodies. Dr Abu Ghali
accompanied the other ambulance and described the scene:
"I went in with my small video camera and I first saw one body. Then I saw a second body. The third body I saw was a woman of 59, lying two metres from a door, hit in the chest and head, her body was decomposed.
So the IDF said: 'That is all you have. In the centre of the camp you have no survivors'. I went on. In a room of a house I found a man of 85, alone, with no water, dehydrated. I said, 'I must go further to see.' The IDF said:
'This is the only region cleared by the Israeli army, if you go further we don't guarantee you.' I walked 35 metres into the region not cleared and found 10 bodies. Five were in one house; we could not collect them, the
ICRC told the IDF to bring them. I saw a lot of people looking from the windows and doors of their houses, afraid, I said 'I will bring you food.
Have you anything to eat?' They said, 'Nothing'. I asked to be allowed to bring food and medication for the survivors, the IDF said: 'You have two hours in the camp'."
During the two hours the IDF allowed them in the camp on 15 April Palestinian and international medical and humanitarian teams were able to distribute some food, water and milk into the camp. On 16 April the IDF allowed ICRC and UNRWA personnel to enter the camp; the ICRC reported, in its daily summary: "Part of the camp looks as if it had been hit by an earthquake ... Civilians in the camp are under shock and report urgent
need for medicine, water and food."
On 16 April Jenin City Hospital contained 15 bodies - with one more brought during the day. The High Court statement had ordered the ICRC and Israeli army to identify the bodies in accordance with the requirements of international humanitarian law. However, the entrance to the hospital was still blocked by an IDF checkpoint with tanks. Dr Abu Ghali asked the IDF to allow Professor Derrick Pounder, delegated by Amnesty
International, access to the hospital to perform autopsies, but an IDF doctor who was stationed at the checkpoint told Professor Pounder: "If you were a doctor treating people we would allow you in, but we are not interested in a forensic doctor".
On 16 April Professor Pounder telephoned Amnesty International's headquarters in London:
"There is no forensic expertise in Jenin and no one in the hospital with any forensic training. Under international humanitarian law there is a requirement to examine decomposed bodies in order to obtain evidence as to the cause of death. This is in order to elucidate the circumstances of death and also to help in identification of the body. The identification is necessary so that the family may know and bury the body and for documentation. The longer a body deteriorates the more the evidence deteriorates and the fewer hard facts there are in order to get the evidence."
But it was only on the following day, after the Israeli Attorney General Elyakim Rubinstein agreed that Professor Pounder should be given access, that he was able to enter Jenin City Hospital where he carried out two autopsies and three examinations. Examinations were performed on three of the five bodies found in a single house and brought in that day by the IDF; they all appeared to be combatants. The findings of the
autopsies, according to Professor Pounder "gave rise to suspicion"; they were on bodies later identified as those of 'Ali Na'el Salim Muqasqas and Wadah Fathi Shalabi (see above).
Amnesty International delegates discussed the failure to allow access to medical aid in Jenin, Nablus and elsewhere on many occasions with members of the IDF. The Head of Plans and Policy Directorate, Major-General Giora Eiland, denied that ambulances had been prevented from entry to Jenin for more than two days, and this was only because the PRCS refused to allow their ambulances to be checked. He mentioned a number of incidents when ambulances were said to have been misused in order to carry healthy men, bodies to increase the number of alleged dead in the refugee camp, or a suicide belt.(12) He accepted there were difficulties in coordinating medical assistance with ICRC and UNRWA. "Some problems were caused by our mistakes, some difficulties were not necessary. But we gave Palestinians food, water and medication in Jenin, and even electricity. We tried to evacuate injured Palestinians."
Notwithstanding the remarks of Major-General Giora Eiland, the evidence of the blocking of medical and humanitarian aid to Jenin refugee camp for over 10 days is overwhelming.(13)

Byrnzie

B’Tselem: Operation Defensive Shield March 29th-April 21st 2002.

Impeding Medical Treatment

Around 5:00 P.M. on April 4, 2002, an IDF helicopter fired a missile that struck the house of Jihad Hassan, a resident of the Jenin refugee camp. Hassan was on his way upstairs to his brother’s apartment to get a carton of baby formula for his infant son. He was wounded in the leg by the missile blast. His son, Muhammad, summoned an ambulance from the Red Crescent, which came to evacuate Hassan, but Israeli soldiers stopped it about 50 meters from the house and refused to let the medical team proceed to Hassan’s house. Hassan called a physician friend, who told him over the phone how to treat the wound. The next day, the soldiers broke into Hassan’s house. He asked them to let him to go to the hospital, but they refused. Before leaving, the soldiers cut the phone lines in his apartment and that of his brother. A week went by before Hassan was able to get to the hospital. An x-ray showed his leg was broken in four places. His house is 200 meters from the hospital.
The IDF almost completely blocked the movement of ambulances in the West Bank during Operation Defensive Shield. Wounded people who could not reach hospitals bled to death. Patients could not obtain medical treatment.
Hospitals had trouble functioning because they were shelled and the roads leading to them were blocked. Tanks damaged basic hospital infrastructure, such as water and electricity and soldiers fi red at ambulances that tried to evacuate the wounded.
During the operation, the IDF spokesperson claimed that the army was allowing ambulances to move freely and evacuate the wounded. He also maintained that the sick, especially chronically ill patients such as those requiring regular dialysis, were taken to hospitals throughout the Occupied Territories.
His claim is inaccurate. Dialysis patients who managed to get to a hospital did so only after great effort to coordinate their passage with the army. In some cases, the patients died before they were able to obtain the necessary approval.

Ensuring protection of the sick and wounded is a fundamental principle of international law. Medical personnel are entitled to protection while performing their duties. The IDF grossly violated this principle during Operation Defensive Shield.

Wounded people who were unable to reach hospitals bled to death.
Patients could not obtain medical treatment.
Soldiers fired at ambulances.
Water and electricity were cut off.

The special protections provided to the sick and wounded, and to medical personnel were violated.

On Friday, April 5, 2002, Tahani ‘Ali ‘Asad Fatouh, a pharmacist from Al Msakan Ash Sha’abiya in the Nablus District began having labor pains.
Her husband, Dr. Ghassan ‘Ali Nashat Sha’ar, called an ambulance to take his seven months pregnant wife to hospital. Due to the curfew imposed on the area, the ambulance could not reach the house and Dr. Sha’ar had to deliver the baby with the help of his neighbor, Dr. Sulfeh.
The delivery went smoothly. During the delivery, the ambulance crew tried to reach the couple’s home, as the newborn would have to be placed in an incubator. All attempts failed. Some 30 minutes after the birth, the baby’s health began to deteriorate. Dr. Sha’ar managed to resuscitate his son twice. On the third attempt, the baby died. Tahani Fatouh had become pregnant after four years of fertility treatments.
The hospital is only two kilometers away from the couple’s home.

Daily Briefing April 16, 2002


A soldier’s testimony:

There was an inspection point for ambulances at the exit from the Jenin hospital. The ambulances were only allowed to travel to the city, not to the refugee camp. We were told that this was because of the fighting in the camp.
If someone was injured in the middle of the camp, he would not be treated.
Palestinians in the camp were not allowed to move about and ambulances were not allowed to enter. IDF evacuation of the wounded only began about a week later. We were ordered to fire heavy machine guns at ambulances that ignored the inspection point. The orders came from the deputy battalion commander. The ambulances were generally taking dialysis patients and women in labor to the hospital. We had to check that there were no wanted persons in the ambulances. We would get everyone out of the ambulance.
We had to make sure that the dead were really dead and other unpleasant things like that. The inspection point was muddy and full of garbage. In one case, the deputy battalion commander yelled, “Everybody out,” and the driver had to carry an elderly man who couldn’t stand on his own and set him down in the mud.
On April 10, three Palestinians who had been wounded by gunfire came to us. The medic treated them, and hooked them up to IVs. The battalion doctor came and looked at them, and said, “There’s nothing for me to do,” and left. I don’t think he even checked their pulses. We checked with the brigade [officials] to figure out what to do with them. We called them repeatedly.
They said they were checking with the General Security Service to find out if they were wanted. We were not allowed to evacuate them to the hospital, not even in Israel. So we called a Palestinian doctor from the nearby hospital. He said that two of them had moderate wounds, and the other was severely injured and had to be operated on. The brigade rejected all our requests to evacuate him. We suggested walking with them to the Palestinian hospital. The brigade did not permit it. The wounded men sat there for about six or seven hours until we finally received approval to take them to the Salem checkpoint. I have no idea what happened to them after that.
During the meeting we had at the end of reserve duty, the battalion commander was asked about the story regarding the doctor. I couldn’t believe how he tried to whitewash it. He said that he wasn’t in the field and didn’t know what really happened. Soldiers told him that they knew exactly what happened. He did not give a serious reply.

Firing at Ambulances

Testimony of Saher Ahmad, aged 25, Ambulance driver for ‘Aliyah Hospital, Ramallah:

On Sunday [April 21], at around 10:00 A.M., I drove towards the Allenby Bridge with a woman who receives cancer treatments in Jordan. Before we left, we coordinated our trip with the Israeli Ministry of Health. The woman was sitting in the back of the ambulance. At around 10:40 A.M., we got to the Qalandiya checkpoint. I stopped the ambulance about two hundred meters from the checkpoint and waited for the soldiers to wave me on, as was the usual practice. After about a minute, three soldiers who were standing behind the concrete blocks near the checkpoint began firing at the ambulance. They gave us no prior warning.
Nothing had happened to warrant the gunfire. I was startled and didn’t know what to do. The shots were fired from automatic weapons. I don’t know how many bullets were fired at me, but they hit the windows and the engine of the ambulance.
I heard the glass shatter and the fragments flew in all directions. I eased my foot off the brake and at the same moment a shard of glass flew into my left eye. It didn’t bleed. I asked the patient how she was. She said that she had not been hit but was dazed and shaken. She added that a number of shards of glass had wounded her slightly.

Byrnzie

And it goes on, and on. But Yosi expects us to believe the IDF instead - who have a long documented history of lying - even if the IDF's statements happen to be reported in the New York Times, Haaretz, and The Associated Press.

yosi

You can choose to believe (or incuriously dismiss out of hand) whatever you like. I've provided information. You'll make of it what you will. I just don't like it when you claim to be responding to me, but then never actually address the issues I've raised and instead just try to change the topic.

Byrnzie

yosi wrote:

You can choose to believe (or incuriously dismiss out of hand) whatever you like. I've provided information. You'll make of it what you will. I just don't like it when you claim to be responding to me, but then never actually address the issues I've raised and instead just try to change the topic.

I have addressed the issues you've raised. You've tried to claim that the IDF has been right in attacking ambulances and other medical staff, and practically every one of your sources supporting this claim is either directly or indirectly an IDF source.
I then posted ample evidence of the IDF systematically breaching the fourth Geneva Convention, which prohibits any impediment of, or assault upon, medical personnel.

So how did I change the topic?

yosi

I haven't tried to claim that the IDF is right in attacking ambulances. That is your much simplified, black and white, "either people agree with me 100% that Israel is the national home of satan worshipping puppy murderers or they must be defending everything Israel does" version of what I said.

You are perfectly right that medical personnel are supposed to be neutral in conflict zones and therefore off-limits as military targets. My point is not that Israel is not targeting medical personnel, and not that they are justified in doing so as a categorical matter, but that the situation is made much more complicated then your presentation of it would suggest because the Palestinians themselves have tried to take advantage of this presumed neutrality to further violent aims. In a perfect world the neutrality of medical personnel would always be respected. But please, explain to me, what is the IDF supposed to do, given that they have to defend the lives of Israelis, when Palestinian terrorists are trying to use ambulances to smuggle suicide bombers into Israeli cities? If you have a simple answer to this unbelievably difficult ethical/strategic/tactical question I'd love to hear it.

If you google "Palestinian terror ambulances" the first hit is video footage from Reuters of Palestinian gunman carrying assault rifles piling into the back of a clearly marked UN ambulance after an attack on Israeli soldiers and using it as a get-away vehicle. I've pasted the link below.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sRmYYSp0-B8

Byrnzie

yosi wrote:

But please, explain to me, what is the IDF supposed to do, given that they have to defend the lives of Israelis, when Palestinian terrorists are trying to use ambulances to smuggle suicide bombers into Israeli cities? If you have a simple answer to this unbelievably difficult ethical/strategic/tactical question I'd love to hear it.

I'll tell you what the IDF and other Israeli's are 'supposed to do' in order to defend the lives of the general population of Israel: they can end the occupation and stop terrorizing the Palestinians on a daily basis, and then making every conceivable excuse known to man in trying to excuse and justify it.

Byrnzie

yosi wrote:

If you google "Palestinian terror ambulances" the first hit is video footage from Reuters of Palestinian gunman carrying assault rifles piling into the back of a clearly marked UN ambulance after an attack on Israeli soldiers and using it as a get-away vehicle. I've pasted the link below.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sRmYYSp0-B8

I'm not in the habit of Googling "Palestinian terror ambulances", but whatever floats your boat.


Anyway, I can see no attack on Israeli soldiers in this Youtube clip you've posted. All I can see are what appear to be Palestinians coming under fire from the top of the road, and running towards the camera, in the direction of the ambulance, before some of the men jump in the back for cover.

yosi

The context for what appears in the clip is from the associated media reports on the incident. Whether you choose to believe those reports is up to you, but there is no legitimate reason why a UN ambulance should be transporting armed men.

VivaPalestina

yosi wrote:

Regarding use of ambulances by Palestinian terrorists:

http://www.standwithus.com/pdfs/flyers/UNAmbulance.pdf
http://image.thelancet.com/extras/02art8008web.pdf

I would especially recomment reading the lancet article..

Thanks for the standwithus link and copying of the flyer into your response, you must of broken a finger nail, which is what anti-free speech groups like standwithus wouldn't want to happen, they offer all the bullshit hyprocitcrical propaganda at zionist fingertips. For a liberal zionist I guess it isn't beyond you citing a right wing zionist propanganda group that writes Nakba in quotes (a blatant denial of Palestinian history) and who recruit their members to sit in on any person, group, organzation that's critical of israel in any way. At one of Makdisi's last talks, and they try to do with this on all campuses, they distributed a list of questions:

Makdisi's twitter entry: Standwithus, the crudest US Zionist group, has distributed a list of questions they want their hooligans to ask me at a talk next week.

And have also been proven to be fabricators by another jewish group:

http://mondoweiss.net/2011/12/right-win ... srael.html

Their laughable twitter entries go something like Are settlements an obstacles to peace? and have made staments oh their website like "there is no humanatarian crisis in Gaza."

In their flyer, which I am sure was ciruculated among the most discerning of groups, tremendously editorializes, provides mostly idf sources and a nytimes source, which I searched for in the archives section given the date and keywords, and I came up with nothing, and that is more than enough attention i can give this delusional comic group that criticizes israeli "moderates" like you claim to be.

On the lancet article, first of all, I question the "viewpoint," (the name of this section of lancet) of the idf doctor, Sami Viskin, who from the opening paragraph seems too proud of his post in the occupying army, as someone stated in a letter to the lancet:

"Viskin's article is in stark contrast to your April 26 Editorial (p 1399),4 which addresses the legal and humanitarian responsibilities of occupying powers, in particular in Iraq. The same rules hold for the Israeli occupying forces in the West Bank and Gaza; collective punishment is expressly prohibited. Yet how else can the mass destruction of homes in the West Bank and Gaza by the Israeli occupation forces be explained?2 How else can the destruction of 17·5 km2 of arable land in Gaza be accounted for?... I believe Viskin is naive to think that his integrity as a cardiologist remains untarnished when he wears his military uniform. Perhaps he should spend less time defending the politically self-righteous and more time caring for the poor, oppressed, and dispossessed."
http://www.thelancet.com/journals/lance ... 40-6736(03)13828-7/fulltext

After he pats himself on the back for helping a Palestinian woman, he goes onto say that he had countless encounters with Palestinian ambulances, BUT then also claims that these abmulances have been "repeatedly" used to transport combatants and weapons. Wouldn't Dr.idf have come across a combatant or weapon himself on one of these encounters if they "repeatedly" have been used to transfer militants and weapons?

From Viskin in his viewpoint in the lancet:
I would later read in disbelief what the press classified as the indiscriminate firing at Palestinian ambulances by Israeli soldiers.That is not what I saw. The guidelines of the IDF are straightforward: Palestinian ambulances must be allowed freedom of passage to zones of conflict unless there is evidence that they are being used to transport military equipment. These guidelines are orders from the General Command of the IDF (as testified by the Command Secretary in an official response to an inquiry by the Israel Medical Association).3 In fact, these are the same orders I heard when working in the field.Unfortunately, Palestinian ambulances were repeatedly used to transport combatants and weapons, prompting the IDF to send an official protest to the International RedCross on May 2, 2002.4 The communication included reports of terrorists who were disguised as being wounded and transported in ambulances of the Palestinian Red Crescent Society (the local form of the International RedCross) in attempts to evade the IDF. Also, flagrant abuse of medical accreditation by Palestinian terrorists was reported on January 27, 2002, after a terrorist bombing indowntown Jerusalem. Both the female suicide terrorist (Wafa Idris), and the attack coordinators (Mohammed Hababa and Munzar Noor) worked for the Palestinian Red Crescent Society.

No, he has to reference the idf forces who before this March "discovery" have been admonished by human rights organizations to stop attacking amublances, shortly before March 27 2002, when the vest was "discovered"

Human Rights Watch, March 9, 2002:

"Human Rights Watch today called on the Israeli government to instruct soldiers to immediately refrain from attacking medical personnel in the West Bank and Gaza. During the past week, at least three ambulances have been fired upon, three ambulance staff have died, and nine other medical personnel have been injured.

http://www.hrw.org/news/2002/03/08/isra ... -personnel


Btselem stated that before March 27, that it has become almost routine for idf to shoot at ambulances:

Firing at Ambulances and Medical Staff

Since the beginning of the al-Aqsa intifada, B’Tselem has documented cases in which IDF soldiers fired at ambulances and medical staff on their way to evacuate the wounded.[1] Since 28 February 2002, there has been a significant increase in the number of such cases, and they have become almost routine. The gunfire has killed and wounded medical team members, and damaged ambulances. The gunfire has also made it impossible for the medical teams to evacuate the wounded to hospital, and some of the injured have bled to death.

The IDF also fires at ambulances and medical teams where passage of the ambulances has been coordinated with IDF officials, For example, Dr. Waal Qadan, director of the red Crescent Society in the Occupied territories, informed B’Tselem that, during the IDF’s incursion into Ramallah, agreement was reached with the army that Red Crescent ambulances would be allowed to move about when accompanied by a Red Cross vehicle. Despite this, on 12 March 2002, at about 6:30 P.M., IDF soldiers fired at a Red Cross vehicle that was accompanying an ambulance, striking it twice. As a result, the medical teams halted their work until the following afternoon, when the movement of ambulances was once again coordinated with the army. During that time, the Red Crescent received forty-two calls to evacuate wounded to which they could not respond.
http://www.btselem.org/download/200203_ ... nt_eng.doc

A mere coincidence that the idf finds a vest just as human right organizations begin to take notice and condemn the idf for attacking and targeting amulances? I have searched for info on the International Red Cross web site and for any independent source that there were two International Red Cross members at the this finding as the captions state.

Also how could Viskin pass on Wafa Idris working for the Red Crescent, how in the world does that justify firing ambulances and sick people? I am missing the connection, she didn't pose as a Red Crescent worker, she wasn't driving an ambulance at the time, it was her occupation. Trying to make a twisted connection to justify killing innocent people is just that, twisted.

As for the guidelines which idf ignore, seriously violate and that go unpunished are there to fill up space in this article, seem to be there for Viskin to further his self congratulation, that he is working with a truly democratic occupying force who would NEVER target ambulances. The joke is exactly on who? Because some of the accounts of ambulances being fired upon and delayed and sick patients being denied medical services, and who die at checkpoints are sickening and would shake any with a conscience.

What you have in the lancet article is a doctor from the occupying force justifying the collective punishment on ambulances. There is no justifciation for killing innocent people. The opening paragraph of this Haaretz article:

"Rules of Engagement: Open fire also upon rescue," was handwritten in Hebrew on a sheet of paper found in one of the Palestinian homes the Israel Defense Forces took over during Operation Cast Lead. A reservist officer who did not take part in the Gaza offensive believes that the note is part of orders a low-level commander wrote before giving his soldiers their daily briefing. "

http://www.haaretz.com/print-edition/fe ... s-1.272628

What you are proclaiming or trying to prove that the idf/the occupying forces are accroding to "Ariel Sharon and Ehud Olmert, among others, 'is the most moral army in the world' This description of Israeli behavior is yet another myth, another element in what Maron Benvenisti, the former deputy mayor of Jerusalem, calls Israel's sacred narrative.... Indeed, terrorism was one of the key tactics that the Zionists used when they were in a similiarly weak position and trying to obtain their own state. It was Jewish terrorists from the infamous Irgun, a militant Zionist group, who in late 1937 introduced into Palestine the now-familiar practice of placing bombs in buses and large crowds. Benny Morris speculates "the Arabs may well have learned the value of terrorist bombings from the Jews." Between 1944 and 1947, several Zionist organizations used terrorist attacks to drive the British from Palestine and took the lives of many innocent civilians along the way. Israeli terrorists also murdered the U.N. mediator Count Folke Bernadotte in 1948 because they opposed his proposal to internationalize Jerusalem. The perpetrators of these acts were not isolated extremists: the leaders of the murder plot were eventually granted amnesty by the Israeli government and one of them was later elected to the Knesset. Another terrorist leader, who approved of Bernadotte's murder but was not tried, was future Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir. He openly argued that "neither Jewish ethics nor Jewish tradition can disqualify terrorism as a means of combat." Rather, terrorism had "a great part to play...in our war against the occupier (Britain)." Nor did Shamir express regrets about his terrorist past, telling an interviewer in 1998 that "had I not acted as I did, it is doubtful that we would have been able to create an independent Jewish state of our own."Of course, Menachem Begin, who headed the Irgun and later became prime minister, was one of the most prominent Jewish terrorists in the years before Israeli independence. When speaking of Begin, Prime Minister Levi Eshkol often referred to him simply as "the terrorist." p. 102 The Israel Lobby and US Foreign Policy, John J. Mearsheimer and Stephen M. Walt

If you want to use the old testament as a real estate document, then why not using it to explain your claimed misuse of ambulances as you reap what you sow: they that plow iniquity, and sow wickedness, reap the same. (Job 4:8)

yosi wrote:

I'm not requesting that you turn a blind eye towards anything. I'm asking that if you want to criticize Jews that you do so without comparing us to the people that butchered our parents and grandparents in their millions. I'd think that for any reasonably empathetic person it would be plainly obvious why such a comparison is wildly offensive.
This isn't about my feelings getting hurt. I can deal with hurt feelings. This is about you. How you express yourself. How you treat the people you interact with. I'm asking you to conduct yourself in a way that is respectful of others. I'm not telling you not to express your opinions, I'm just asking you not to be a dick when you do so.

I will repeat that I am not the first to compare israel to nazis, again Norman Finkelstien, whose parents survived two of the worst concentration camps has pointed out the parallels, his article on Jewish Nazis, http://www.normanfinkelstein.com/jewish ... ork-again/, Finkelstein has indeed studied the Holocaust in depth, he had his very own first hand account from his parents on the Holocaust, I ask why you discount his legitmate standing on the subject, he wrote his Princeton doctoral dissertation on the subject of Israel Paletine, do you think you know something he doesn't or felt something he hasn't when he calls Israel nazis? One of the main points that you are sadly missing when he makes this comparison is... "The Nazi holocaust, however horrific and even if forever a part of Germany’s present, is–except for the handful of survivors–fundamentally a historical question. The persecution of the Palestinians is, by contrast, an on-going horror, and it is, after all, the crimes of the Third Reich that are used to justify this persecution. In the first instance, moral action by Germans is no longer possible; in the second, it plainly is." Finkelstein http://www.counterpunch.org/2002/11/25/ ... n-germany/ You come on here defending murderous people who want to justify taking another people's land and lives, humiliating them and making their lives a living hell on a daily basis, hindering their movement, lining them up at checkpoints and with a wave of the hand deciding on the fate of millions of people. What gives you the right to say that they there aren't parallels, when you haven't lived it, or refuse to see the great injustification that this racist apartheid state is committing. Your beliefs alone fall in line with a TRANSFER of a people out of their homeland, how else would the two state solution that you support come to be? As you noted that the Palestinians are growing in number, and perhaps soon will outnumber the jewish population, so a state for just for the jews plainly means TRANSFER, and as Jabotinksy, again, states that "Hitler as odious as he was to us....gave it a good name in the world." How in the world can a Jew refer to Hitler on transfer but its off limits to the people that are a witness to and victim to the horrendous acts of ethnic cleansing? But you want to claim that I am the dick? That's fine, given your views, a compliment from you would make me question my moral integrity, so I think I am doing okay. Here's a news flash, creating a jewish homeland is not the answer to anti-semitism, saying Yes, that we are a foreign body that doesn't belong in Germany or Russia, or wherever these jewish immigrants were from, the true land of their forefathers, (read Shlomo Sand's The Invention of the Jewish People) and we need to be separate from a "master" race and have a homeland of our own based on these anti-semitic views that we don't belong, SOLVES NOTHING.

VivaPalestina

gimmesometruth27 wrote:

VivaPalestina wrote:

gimmesometruth27 wrote:

wow, great read.

thanks for posting VP. you make some pretty compelling points with your posts.

Thanks, as do you! I have been wanting to write the same about your posts, but you beat me to it

thanks to you too. i have always had incredible timing lol..


i am not as up on the conflict as i was at one time, so it is always nice to get to read posts from people from all perspectives that know a lot more about it than i do.

I feel the same, there is so much out there, your posts help inform me. I always look forward to what you have to write.

gimmesometruth27

from yesterday....

is this ever going to end?

UN says Israel destroyed Palestinian Bedouin homes


http://www.dnaindia.com/world/report_un ... es_1679458

UN agencies in the occupied West Bank said today that Israel last week destroyed 21 homes of Palestinian Bedouin refugees, making 54 people including 35 children homeless.

A joint statement from the refugee agency UNRWA and the Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs condemned the April 18 demolition of the structures at Khalayleh north of Jerusalem, along with the removal the same day of refugees from two houses in annexed east Jerusalem.

"The forced eviction of Palestine refugees and the demolition of Palestinian homes and other civilian structures in the occupied West Bank, including East Jerusalem, is contrary to international law," UNRWA's West Bank director, Felipe Sanchez, said in the statement.

"We urge the Israeli authorities to find an immediate solution to enable the Palestinian population of the occupied West Bank, to lead a normal life, in full realisation of their rights", he added.

Israeli officials could not immediately confirm or deny the Khalayleh demolitions.

The European Union yesterday condemned the east Jerusalem eviction, in which 14 Palestinians were removed from two houses in the Beit Hanina neighbourhood ahead of Jewish settlers moving in.

The EU's diplomatic missions in Jerusalem and Ramallah said in a statement that they were "deeply concerned by the plans to build a new settlement in the midst of this traditional Palestinian neighbourhood."

gimmesometruth27

VivaPalestina wrote:

I feel the same, there is so much out there, your posts help inform me. I always look forward to what you have to write.

there is too much out there. but such a complicated issue is going to have a lot written about it. some of it is contradictory so one has to be aware of what they are reading and from where. it all depends on who writes it and what their agenda is. you seem like you have been studying this for a long time. i have moments where i try really hard to read and get engrossed in it, and i come to realize that the longer i spend on it the more sad or angry i become, and anger is not what is called for in this situation. i do not have the cool head it requires to have things be worked out diplomatically. when i reach that point i take some time away from reading about it, and then i come back and read the new news it is still all the same shit on a different day. personally this topic makes me lose a good deal of faith in humanity. i mean, they are all human beings, and to know that the cruelty between people not only exists, but is unabated a lot of the time. it wears me out emotionally, knowing that no matter what the international community says nothing is going to change right now, today. it may in the future, but i mean for fucks sakes, israel will not even halt construction of the settlements long enough to come to the negotiating table and then it blames the palestinians for wanting to have that single precondition before agreeing to negotiations.... jeez.... everyone involved, especially the hardline israeli government, needs to remember that when you point your finger and blame other people you have 3 fingers pointing right back at you.

your posts have been very informative, and it is good to see someone else joining in the discussion aside from the 5-10 of us that are regulars in all of these israel/palestine threads. i don't contribute a lot to further the discussion because i don't know or don't remember exact particulars on some of the history, but i see how things are now and hope that by talking about it something good comes out of it.

Byrnzie

VivaPalestina wrote:

If you want to use the old testament as a real estate document, then why not use it to explain your claimed misuse of ambulances as you reap what you sow: they that plow iniquity, and sow wickedness, reap the same. (Job 4:8)

yosi

Viva, I'm busy so I'll make this brief.

Re. StandWithUs: I'm not a supporter. I don't like their organization. I posted the link simply because it provided a useful roundup of information from other newssources. I'll note that guilt by association is a neat rhetorical tool to use in an argument, but it doesn't actually carry any logical weight.

As I said to B, I'm not trying to categorically justify anything. Unlike you, it would seem, I don't view this conflict as an entirely one-sided affair. Lives have been lost on both sides, and neither side's hands are clean. I'm just pointing out that that as is often the case the situation is not as simple as your one-sided presentation would make it seem. I'm sure that very often actions taken against medical personnel are not justified; sometimes they are though, and the reason for that is the manner in which Palestinians have themselves violated the neutrality of medical personnel.

Speaking of justifications, however, your entire paragraph about pre-state Jewish terror groups would seem to be an attempt to justify Palestinian terror. The Irgun was not justified in its actions and the Palestinian terrorists aren't either. There is no justification for the deliberate targeting of innocent civilians.

I don't rely on the bible. I haven't brought the bible up at all.

The fact that Norman Finkelstein says something doesn't make it ok. I, and as far as I can tell most other Jews who are informed about his views, think he's a terrible person who has traded on the suffering of his parents to make his career. I mean, how much of a hypocrite do you have to be to base your career on a sensationalist book that argues that Jews exploit the holocaust for their own gain?! THAT IS EXACTLY WHAT YOU ARE FUCKING DOING WITH YOUR OWN FUCKING BOOK!!!!! (Sorry for the ouburst, this shit just really makes me angry).

Finally, I love how you manage in a single paragraph to attack me for supporting transfer (WHICH I HAVE MADE CLEAR I DON'T SUPPORT, but whatever) and then go on to basically imply that 6 million Israelis, most of whom, at this point, have probably been born in Israel, should go back to Germany, Russia, etc.

Byrnzie

yosi wrote:

The fact that Norman Finkelstein says something doesn't make it ok. I, and as far as I can tell most other Jews who are informed about his views, think he's a terrible person who has traded on the suffering of his parents to make his career.

Being forced out of his job at De Paul University as a result of standing by his principles and being an outspoken critic of Israel, is a strange way to 'make his career'.

yosi wrote:

I mean, how much of a hypocrite do you have to be to base your career on a sensationalist book that argues that Jews exploit the holocaust for their own gain?!

Are you claiming that the assertions made in 'The Holocaust Industry' are false? If so, would you please point out to us what these falsehoods are?

In the meantime, here's what Raul Hilberg had to say about Norman Finkelstein's book:


http://www.democracynow.org/2007/5/9/it ... _amount_of


Raul Hilberg. One of the best-known and most distinguished of Holocaust historians. He is author of the seminal three-volume work "The Destruction of the European Jews" and is considered the founder of Holocaust studies. He joins us on the line from his home in Vermont.

RAUL HILBERG: And I was struck by the fact, even as I, myself, was researching the same territory that Professor Finkelstein was covering, that the Swiss did not owe that money, that the $1,250,000,000 that were agreed as a settlement to be paid to the claimants was something that in very plain language was extorted from the Swiss. I had, in fact, relied upon the same sources that Professor Finkelstein used, perhaps in addition some Swiss items. I was in Switzerland at the height of the crisis, and I heard from so-called forensic accountants about how totally surprised the Swiss were by this outburst. There is no other word for it.

Now, Finkelstein was the first to publish what was happening in his book The Holocaust Industry. And when I was asked to endorse the book, I did so with specific reference to these claims. I felt that within the Jewish community over the centuries, nothing like it had ever happened. And even though these days a couple of billion dollars are sometimes referred to as an accounting error and not worthy of discussion, there is a psychological dimension here which not must be underestimated.

I was also struck by the fact that Finkelstein was being attacked over and over. And granted, his style is a little different from mine, but I was saying the same thing, and I had published my results in that three-volume work, published in 2003 by Yale University Press, and I did not hear from anybody a critical word about what I said, even though it was the same substantive conclusion that Finkelstein had offered. So that’s the gist of the matter right then and there.

...However, leaving aside the question of style — and here, I agree that it’s not my style either — the substance of the matter is most important here, particularly because Finkelstein, when he published this book, was alone. It takes an enormous amount of academic courage to speak the truth when no one else is out there to support him. And so, I think that given this acuity of vision and analytical power, demonstrating that the Swiss banks did not owe the money, that even though survivors were beneficiaries of the funds that were distributed, they came, when all is said and done, from places that were not obligated to pay that money. That takes a great amount of courage in and of itself. So I would say that his place in the whole history of writing history is assured, and that those who in the end are proven right triumph, and he will be among those who will have triumphed, albeit, it so seems, at great cost.

yosi

Look, my point is that Finkelstein is a dick (just about anyone that's ever heard him speak knows that) and the fact that he makes a certain comparison in no way means that comparison is not offensive.

yosi

Here, this review makes the case much better than I can. This is from the NY Times Book Review. The author of the review is a professor of European History and German Studies at Brown University.


A Tale of Two Holocausts
The first one had victims, Norman G. Finkelstein says; the second has opportunists.
By OMER BARTOV


Norman G. Finkelstein first gained a national reputation with his essay, ''Daniel Jonah Goldhagen's 'Crazy' Thesis,'' included in the book he wrote with Ruth Bettina Birn, ''A Nation on Trial.'' Much of the essay was a brilliant dissection of Goldhagen's book, ''Hitler's Willing Executioners.'' Its last section, however, revealed Finkelstein undergoing a bizarre metamorphosis, in which he employed the same dubious rhetoric and faulty logic he had identified in Goldhagen's work in order to propound his own, even ''crazier,'' thesis on the dark forces lurking, to his mind, behind his adversary's success.

Now Finkelstein is back, with a vengeance, a lone ranger with a holy mission -- to unmask an evil Judeo-Zionist conspiracy. The main argument in ''The Holocaust Industry'' is based on a simple distinction between two phenomena: the Nazi Holocaust and ''The Holocaust,'' which he defines as ''an ideological representation of the Nazi holocaust.'' The author has little interest in the former, though he readily acknowledges that it happened, since both his parents survived its horrors and since some of the few historians he respects, notably Raul Hilberg, have written on it.

But in one of those strange inversions that characterize his book, Finkelstein speaks of the historical event with the same kind of awe, and demands the same sort of silent incomprehension, that he ascribes to his main foe, Elie Wiesel. In order ''to truly learn from the Nazi holocaust,'' he asserts, ''its physical dimension must be reduced and its moral dimension expanded.'' Whatever that might mean, it comes as no surprise that his views about the origins, nature and implications of the genocide of the Jews are but a series of vague, undocumented and contradictory assertions. Thus, for instance, in one place he writes that the ''historical evidence for a murderous gentile impulse is nil,'' and rejects the notion that there might have been an ''abandonment of the Jews'' by the United States government. But in another place he charges that the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum ''mutes the Christian background to European anti-Semitism'' and ''downplays the discriminatory U.S. immigration quotas before the war,'' and then goes on to cite approvingly David S. Wyman's book, ''The Abandonment of the Jews.''

But what really interests Finkelstein is ''The Holocaust.'' The gist of his argument is simple: Had the Jews and the Zionists not had the Holocaust already, they would have had to invent it. Indeed, for all intents and purposes, this is precisely what they have done, in the form of ''The Holocaust,'' despite the distracting fact that, once upon a time, such an event actually took place. And why was ''The Holocaust'' fabricated? Because it legitimizes ''one of the world's most formidable military powers,'' Israel, allowing it to ''cast itself as a 'victim' state,'' and because it provides ''the most successful ethnic group in the United States,'' the Jews, with ''immunity to criticism,'' leading to ''the moral corruptions that typically attend'' such immunity.

Finkelstein views himself as innocent of any desire to exploit ''The Holocaust'' for his own ends, unlike his apparently countless enemies. The fact that his sensational ''revelations'' and outrageous accusations draw a great deal of public and media attention is no fault of his own. Nor is his vehement anti-Zionism and seething hatred of what he perceives as a corrupt Jewish leadership in the United States anything but a reflection of a reality that only he can perceive through the clouds of mystification and demagogy that have deceived thousands of lay persons, scholars, and intellectuals. From his Mount Sinai, everything is clear and obvious. It's just that his voice is too faint to be heard in the valley.

The main culprit, in the world according to Finkelstein, is ''the Holocaust industry,'' made up of Israeli officials and fat lawyers, Jewish agents well placed in American political circles and ruthless Zionists determined to subjugate the Palestinians. Here he combines an old-hat 1960's view of Israel as the outpost of American imperialism with a novel variation on the anti-Semitic forgery, ''The Protocols of the Elders of Zion,'' which warned of a Jewish conspiracy to take over the world. Now, however, the Jewish conspiracy is intended to ''shake down'' (his favorite phrase) such innocent entities as Swiss banks, German corporations and East European owners of looted Jewish property, all in order to consolidate Jewish power and influence without giving the real survivors of the genocide anything but empty rhetoric.

Nowhere does Finkelstein mention that the main beneficiaries of compensation for forced labor will be elderly gentile men and women living their last days in poverty in Eastern Europe, or that German scholars like Ulrich Herbert, hardly an employee of ''Jewish interests,'' have been at the forefront of the struggle to gain compensation from corporations that for decades refused to admit their enormous gains from slave and forced labor. From the author's perspective, this is simply a case of organized American Jewry ''lording it over those least able to defend themselves,'' such as, presumably, the Swiss banks it was ''plotting'' to boycott, and ''the United States and its allies'' from whom it ''finagled another $70 million.''

Thus have the great powers of the world capitulated to what The Times of London called the ''Holocash'' campaign in the United States, according to Finkelstein. He reserves special contempt for the Claims Conference, an umbrella of Jewish organizations that distributes reparations funds to survivors, and quotes approvingly the right-wing Israeli Parliament member Michael Kleiner, who called the conference ''a Judenrat, carrying on the Nazis' work in different ways.'' Indeed, as Finkelstein says in another context, les extrmes se touchent: in denouncing the ''shakedown'' of German corporations, this left-wing anti-Zionist uses precisely the kind of rhetoric that Menachem Begin employed when he spoke out against taking ''blood money'' during the right-wing riots against the restitution agreement with West Germany in the early 1950's, which almost toppled the Israeli government.

There is something sad in this warping of intelligence, and in this perversion of moral indignation. There is also something indecent about it, something juvenile, self-righteous, arrogant and stupid. As was shown in Peter Novick's far more balanced (though not entirely satisfactory) book, ''The Holocaust in American Life,'' the changing perception of the Nazi genocide of the Jews has also opened the way for a variety of exploiters and small-time opportunists. Yet to make this into an international Jewish conspiracy verges on paranoia and would serve anti-Semites around the world much better than any lawyer's exorbitant fees for ''shaking down'' a German industrialist.

Finkelstein speaks of the ''Holocaust industry'' as ''cloaking itself in the sanctimonious mantle of 'needy Holocaust victims.' ''Yet he cloaks himself in that very same mantle, while at the same time showing little sympathy for the feelings of the survivors and enormous zeal in exposing the ''reckless and ruthless abandon'' of the ''Holocaust industry,'' which he calls ''the main fomenter of anti-Semitism in Europe.'' By its ''blackmailing of Swiss bankers and German industrialists,'' as well as of ''starving Polish peasants,'' the ''Holocaust industry'' seeks endlessly to augment that pile of gold, or ''Holocaust booty,'' on which Jewish and Zionist leaders are now allegedly sitting. ''The Holocaust,'' Finkelstein concludes, is possibly ''the greatest robbery in the history of mankind.''

What I find so striking about ''The Holocaust Industry'' is that it is almost an exact copy of the arguments it seeks to expose. It is filled with precisely the kind of shrill hyperbole that Finkelstein rightly deplores in much of the current media hype over the Holocaust; it is brimming with the same indifference to historical facts, inner contradictions, strident politics and dubious contextualizations; and it oozes with the same smug sense of moral and intellectual superiority.

This book is, in a word, an ideological fanatic's view of other people's opportunism, by a writer so reckless and ruthless in his attacks that he is prepared to defend his own enemies, the bastions of Western capitalism, and to warn that ''The Holocaust'' will stir up an anti-Semitism whose significance he otherwise discounts. Like any conspiracy theory, it contains several grains of truth; and like any such theory, it is both irrational and insidious. Finkelstein can now be said to have founded a Holocaust industry of his own.

Byrnzie

yosi wrote:

Look, my point is that Finkelstein is a dick (just about anyone that's ever heard him speak knows that).

Bullshit.

He's a great public speaker and he backs up everything he says with the factual record. Though I can see how that can be a problem for you, which is why you resort to calling him a dick, and why slippery weasels like Alan Dershowitz call him a self-hating Jew, among other things. Maybe because they're incapable of actually addressing the points he makes.