Not today Sir, Probably not tomorrow.............................................. bayfront arena st. pete '94
you're finally here and I'm a mess................................................... nationwide arena columbus '10
memories like fingerprints are slowly raising.................................... first niagara center buffalo '13
another man ..... moved by sleight of hand...................................... joe louis arena detroit '14
This is hilarious. You guys really believe that the dozens of tunnels into Israel that were discovered and destroyed last summer were meant for....what? Fighting soldiers?? And I'm an apologist??????
In other words....you can't find a shred of evidence to support the 'terror tunnel' claim. Since there are no civilians involved, this isn't terrorism. If targeting combatants is terrorism, the entire Israeli self defence narrative falls apart....you would then have to call every act by the idf within the OPT an act of terror. So bibi's tweet was just an exaggeration...it wasn't actually kindergartens....it was a military camp. Oops! no harm no foul, right? Wrong. It was the main justification for the massacre last summer. And it is pure propaganda.
This Toronto born civilian just died yesterday after being in a coma for a year
He was killed with a meat cleaver along with 5 others. Did his attackers come from a tunnel? Who knows and who the hell cares. Intent is all that matters. Intent is why this conflict drags on. He was a civilian. Harm. Foul.
so you don't know or care what you're arguing about? I guess that means the terror tunnel conversation is over?
who cares? ...the innocent civilians (numbers) who will suffer collective punishment for this and every other act of violence by Palestinians. Is that justice? self defence?
I have laid out bloodlust, tunnels, and attacks on civilians. It is the nexus of all three that any rational person and/or government must defend against.
What? You started out defending a terror tunnel claim and used 3 separate items to twist your defense into an overarching rant in favour of collective punishment as self defence. Piecing things together till the suit fits, right? Buffalo Bill style? Keep digging BS. 60 Palestinians killed in the last month. 15 of them under 18.
I started out refuting your "bloodlust is bullshit" point.
It is real...
Today's top song among Palestinians is "stab, stab"
I'm not sure about collective punishment as you describe it but there is no peace process right now. Oslo has been declared dead by Abbas. Another intifada has been chosen and therefore the number of Palestinian casualties will unfortunately rise. By all means you and Halifax should encourage the resistance from your comfortable homes but don't expect this to reduce the number of lives lost.
No, you obviously don't know about collective punishment. Collective punishment has nothing to do with Oslo. It's a violation of the Geneva convention, and it has been ongoing against Palestinians for decades, in many forms, as identified by virtually every human rights org in the world. But of course you 'wouldn't know about that'. The peace process is dead. Israel and her citizens refuse to to stop building settlements, extrajudicial assassinations, stealing water, kidnapping people in night raids, protecting Israelis who attack and kill palestinians, stealing their resources, burning their crops, building walls, grounding fishermen, restricting freedom of movement, antagonizing at al aqsa, etc etc...therefore the number of Israeli casualties will unfortunately continue to rise. So keep promoting collective punishment and military occupation from your comfortable home. See how that works? Meanwhile, even conservative rags like the Washington post are publishing editorials in favour of bds, written by influential and 'important' american jews. Their most read articles on the days they were published. There is a sea change underway in public opinion on the occupation...as noted in the first article, even the staunchest of lifelong zionists have begun to realize that a change of tactics (from blindly supporting israel, to supporting bds) is needed if Israel is to avoid diplomatic isolation and survive. https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/a-zionist-case-for-boycotting-israel/2015/10/23/ac4dab80-735c-11e5-9cbb-790369643cf9_story.html
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mickeyrat
up my ass, like Chadwick was up his Posts: 35,751
This is hilarious. You guys really believe that the dozens of tunnels into Israel that were discovered and destroyed last summer were meant for....what? Fighting soldiers?? And I'm an apologist??????
I believe its reasonable to ask if there has been independent verification and analysis.
Not today Sir, Probably not tomorrow.............................................. bayfront arena st. pete '94
you're finally here and I'm a mess................................................... nationwide arena columbus '10
memories like fingerprints are slowly raising.................................... first niagara center buffalo '13
another man ..... moved by sleight of hand...................................... joe louis arena detroit '14
In other words....you can't find a shred of evidence to support the 'terror tunnel' claim. Since there are no civilians involved, this isn't terrorism. If targeting combatants is terrorism, the entire Israeli self defence narrative falls apart....you would then have to call every act by the idf within the OPT an act of terror. So bibi's tweet was just an exaggeration...it wasn't actually kindergartens....it was a military camp. Oops! no harm no foul, right? Wrong. It was the main justification for the massacre last summer. And it is pure propaganda.
This Toronto born civilian just died yesterday after being in a coma for a year
He was killed with a meat cleaver along with 5 others. Did his attackers come from a tunnel? Who knows and who the hell cares. Intent is all that matters. Intent is why this conflict drags on. He was a civilian. Harm. Foul.
so you don't know or care what you're arguing about? I guess that means the terror tunnel conversation is over?
who cares? ...the innocent civilians (numbers) who will suffer collective punishment for this and every other act of violence by Palestinians. Is that justice? self defence?
I have laid out bloodlust, tunnels, and attacks on civilians. It is the nexus of all three that any rational person and/or government must defend against.
What? You started out defending a terror tunnel claim and used 3 separate items to twist your defense into an overarching rant in favour of collective punishment as self defence. Piecing things together till the suit fits, right? Buffalo Bill style? Keep digging BS. 60 Palestinians killed in the last month. 15 of them under 18.
I started out refuting your "bloodlust is bullshit" point.
It is real...
Today's top song among Palestinians is "stab, stab"
I'm not sure about collective punishment as you describe it but there is no peace process right now. Oslo has been declared dead by Abbas. Another intifada has been chosen and therefore the number of Palestinian casualties will unfortunately rise. By all means you and Halifax should encourage the resistance from your comfortable homes but don't expect this to reduce the number of lives lost.
No, you obviously don't know about collective punishment. Collective punishment has nothing to do with Oslo. It's a violation of the Geneva convention, and it has been ongoing against Palestinians for decades, in many forms, as identified by virtually every human rights org in the world. But of course you 'wouldn't know about that'. The peace process is dead. Israel and her citizens refuse to to stop building settlements, extrajudicial assassinations, stealing water, kidnapping people in night raids, protecting Israelis who attack and kill palestinians, stealing their resources, burning their crops, building walls, grounding fishermen, restricting freedom of movement, antagonizing at al aqsa, etc etc...therefore the number of Israeli casualties will unfortunately continue to rise. So keep promoting collective punishment and military occupation from your comfortable home. See how that works? Meanwhile, even conservative rags like the Washington post are publishing editorials in favour of bds, written by influential and 'important' american jews. Their most read articles on the days they were published. There is a sea change underway in public opinion on the occupation...as noted in the first article, even the staunchest of lifelong zionists have begun to realize that a change of tactics (from blindly supporting israel, to supporting bds) is needed if Israel is to avoid diplomatic isolation and survive. https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/a-zionist-case-for-boycotting-israel/2015/10/23/ac4dab80-735c-11e5-9cbb-790369643cf9_story.html
Not today Sir, Probably not tomorrow.............................................. bayfront arena st. pete '94
you're finally here and I'm a mess................................................... nationwide arena columbus '10
memories like fingerprints are slowly raising.................................... first niagara center buffalo '13
another man ..... moved by sleight of hand...................................... joe louis arena detroit '14
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mickeyrat
up my ass, like Chadwick was up his Posts: 35,751
Need to look and see if there are nazi ss costumes for kids too. Maybe a stalin mask? Pol Pot pajamas?
Not today Sir, Probably not tomorrow.............................................. bayfront arena st. pete '94
you're finally here and I'm a mess................................................... nationwide arena columbus '10
memories like fingerprints are slowly raising.................................... first niagara center buffalo '13
another man ..... moved by sleight of hand...................................... joe louis arena detroit '14
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Options
mickeyrat
up my ass, like Chadwick was up his Posts: 35,751
Not today Sir, Probably not tomorrow.............................................. bayfront arena st. pete '94
you're finally here and I'm a mess................................................... nationwide arena columbus '10
memories like fingerprints are slowly raising.................................... first niagara center buffalo '13
another man ..... moved by sleight of hand...................................... joe louis arena detroit '14
Not today Sir, Probably not tomorrow.............................................. bayfront arena st. pete '94
you're finally here and I'm a mess................................................... nationwide arena columbus '10
memories like fingerprints are slowly raising.................................... first niagara center buffalo '13
another man ..... moved by sleight of hand...................................... joe louis arena detroit '14
Imagine, if you will, Richard Nixon without the vision which informed his better moments. The residue is insular, divisive, self-serving, rhetorically dishonest and politically amoral: an ersatz Churchill who exploits the dangers facing his country to assure his grip on power. In short, Benjamin Netanyahu.
His latest distortion of truth -- asserting that the Holocaust originated not with Hitler, but a Palestinian -- captures his essence. For 20 years, Netanyahu has thrown verbal matches on geopolitical tinder boxes, feeding his myopic tactical solipsism at whatever cost to the homeland whose savior he purports to be. Grant him that he deeply believes the indubitable: that the tragic history of the Jewish people is an indelible lesson for Israel's present. Grant further that the Palestinian leadership has been a roadblock to peace -- inept, recalcitrant, deficient in statesmanship or stature, and reluctant to denounce violence or tell its people hard truths. But it is everyone's misfortune that Israel's Prime Minister is morally and characterologically unfit for the Sisyphean task of making peace.
Those who have dealt with him limn an unnervingly Nixonian persona: A man who is disingenuous, disloyal, isolated, calculating, ungenerous, uncomfortable with others and pathologically suspicious. A parochial politician who substitutes marketing for leadership, deploying inflammatory language without regard for consequence, yet fearful of taking any action which might imperil his own survival. And -- a fatal divergence from Nixon -- a tactical bean counter bereft of strategy or vision.
These traits are imprinted on his history -- and Israel's. One starts with Yitzhak Rabin, a hard man for hard times, who, in life and death, casts a pitiless light on Netanyahu's smallness. In the early 1990s, Rabin grasped that Israel's occupation of the West Bank, home to several million Palestinians, posed an existential conundrum. Incorporating the Palestinians as citizens would doom Israel as a Jewish state; incorporating the land while oppressing its people would metastasize into violence and despair. So this cold-eyed realist put aside his loathing for Yasir Arafat, and resolved to make a secure peace with a demilitarized Palestinian state.
Enter Netanyahu. Determined to become prime minister by currying favor with extremists who believe that God granted the West Bank to the Jewish people, he did not stop at opposing Rabin's plans. Instead he labeled this war hero a traitor: comparing Rabin's negotiations to Neville Chamberlain's efforts to appease Adolf Hitler, he accused him of giving away "parts of our homeland" and precipitating "the destruction of the Jewish state."
Shortly before Rabin's assassination 20 years ago this month, Netanyahu appeared before a seething rally of right-wing zealots. Many carried placards showing the Prime Minister dressed in SS garb and shouted" death to Rabin" so loudly that at times it drowned out speakers. Warned by a colleague in the starkest terms -- "You'd better restrain your people. Otherwise it will end in murder " -- Netanyahu demurred. In a harsh attack he denounced Rabin and his plan as "not Jewish" -- a particularly toxic choice of words.
Within days, a young extremist murdered Rabin. It would be irresponsible to blame Netanyahu for this act; irresponsible, as well, to ignore what became his pattern -- a dangerous penchant for stoking crises for his own narrow ends.
There is nothing noble in being superior to your fellow man; true nobility is being superior to your former self.- Hemingway
Netanyahu's accession as Prime Minister is also instructive. Rabin's successor was Shimon Peres, a principal architect of the peace negotiations. Well ahead of Netanyahu in the polls, Peres called a snap election. Promptly Hamas launched -- and took credit for -- a wave of suicide bombings plainly calculated to damage Peres' electoral chances. 59 Israelis died. Pouncing, Netanyahu accused Peres of placing the fate of Jewish children in Arafat's hands and leading Israel "to the brink of disaster." Netanyahu squeaked out a narrow victory, his leadership dependent on a right-wing coalition opposed to peace. Whatever its alchemy, this perverse dynamic has intermittently recurred, each wave of violence fortifying Netanyahu's power while devastating the peace process Hamas deplores.
The two decades of failure stemming from Rabin's murder has too many causes to rationally apportion blame. But Netanyahu is surely a principal author. His tenures as Prime Minister (1996-99; 2009-present) are diplomatic dead zones which bear his imprimatur. He talks of a two-state solution only when pressured, lip service without a meaningful follow-through. He has mastered the art of the lethal precondition, offering to negotiate if the Palestinians would first agree to terms which, while sounding superficially reasonable, are crafted to be poison pills. Thus his demand that the Palestinian leadership recognize Israel not just as a state -- which they have -- but as an explicitly Jewish state; thus, too, his periodic ultimatum that they renounce the right of Palestinian refugees to return to their former home in Israel.
These, of course, are agreements which must result from a peace process, not precede it. More fundamental, Netanyahu knows that the Palestinians will relinquish the right of return in exchange for their own country, but not before, and that labeling Israel a Jewish state ignores that 20 percent of its citizens are Arab. But when the Palestinians refuse his preconditions, as they must, he erupts in outrage at their intransigence. All this serves as cover for real impediments to peace -- such as Netanyahu's aggressive settlement policy, and his systematic efforts to hem in the Palestinian neighborhoods of Jerusalem.
And so Israel falls ever deeper into the dangerous abyss between his refusal to risk his right-wing power base, and his readiness to say anything to retain it. During his 2015 campaign for reelection, he used the world as a soundstage for his own self-serving electoral theatrics. After the Charlie Hebdo massacre, France organized a massive march against terror. So as not to cloud their message of pluralism and national unity, the French implored Netanyahu and Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas to stay away. Netanyahu not only came, but maneuvered his way to the front rows of the march, calling on "all French Jews to move to Israel" -- later bragging to Israeli voters that "the world saw the Prime Minister of Israel marching with all the world leaders in a united effort against terror."
The apotheosis of his extraterritorial self-aggrandizement was his Republican-sponsored denunciation of President Obama's Iran negotiations to a joint session of Congress. The result was not simply defeat, but lasting damage to Israel: Netanyahu alienated an American president and his political party; turned our previously bi-partisan support of Israel into a bitterly divisive wedge issue; and alienated a large portion of America's Jewish community. But Netanyahu assured Israelis that he had stood up to Obama on behalf of "all the Jewish people."
In the final days, polls foreshadowing defeat stripped his character bare. In a disturbing echo of his rhetoric against Rabin, he attacked his opponents as "anti-Zionist." On the eve of the election, desperate for right-wing votes, he renounced the peace process itself, repudiating any Palestinian state as long as he held office. Election day marked his descent into outright racism -- claiming that, Arab voters " are turning out in droves," he implored voters to "save right-wing rule" by saving him. And so he squeezed out a Pyrrhic victory, selling the remnants of his political soul to a coalition of fundamentalists, settlers and other adamant opponents of a Palestinian state. As long as this government survives, there will be no peace agreement.
Little wonder, then, that Western leaders despise him. The question is why Israelis returned to power a figure most neither admire nor trust. A partial answer is his talent for appealing to deeply rooted existential fears; another is his readiness, as ever, to rally hardline opponents of peace. But what makes these tactics work is Israel's Balkanized multiparty system, which allows the winner of a narrow plurality -- in Netanyahu's case, less than a quarter of Parliament -- to bargain for power by meeting the demands of splinter groups. And so the character of his campaign is mirrored in his Faustian bargain of a government.
The quicksand of despair ever deepens. Polling now shows that half of all Israelis no longer believe that a two-state solution is possible. A soluble political divide has become a religious one, far less soluble, in which extremists on both sides touch the levers of power. The despicable violence in the West Bank and Jerusalem is less an intifada than a Hobbesian state of nature, bred by a comprehensive failure of leadership which murders hope day by day and death by death. In this terrible picture one can foresee a future even worse: the collapse of the Palestinian Authority ; a tide of murderous encounters between settlers and Palestinians; a reintroduction of further Israeli troops; and a populace radicalized by despair for the future.
And what does Netanyahu bring to this new crisis? Little but his reflex to disclaim responsibility by blaming others. Sometimes his targets are near at hand -- Abbas, he claims, has "joined with ISIS and Hamas." More creative was his shameful assertion that the Palestinian Grand Mufti of Jerusalem -- a vicious anti-Semite now 40 years dead -- had persuaded Adolf Hitler to abandon his supposed plan to expel Jews in favor of mass extermination.
For Netanyahu, at last, there is no historic falsehood too grotesque, no tragedy -- not even the Holocaust -- beyond his exploitation. It is Israel's tragedy, and the world's, that its leader has so thoroughly squandered his moral authority to speak for "all the Jewish people," either the living or the dead.
There is nothing noble in being superior to your fellow man; true nobility is being superior to your former self.- Hemingway
"Well, you tell him that I don't talk to suckas."
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mickeyrat
up my ass, like Chadwick was up his Posts: 35,751
I wonder...... are Israeli children treated the same way?
Not today Sir, Probably not tomorrow.............................................. bayfront arena st. pete '94
you're finally here and I'm a mess................................................... nationwide arena columbus '10
memories like fingerprints are slowly raising.................................... first niagara center buffalo '13
another man ..... moved by sleight of hand...................................... joe louis arena detroit '14
No, you obviously don't know about collective punishment. Collective punishment has nothing to do with Oslo. It's a violation of the Geneva convention, and it has been ongoing against Palestinians for decades, in many forms, as identified by virtually every human rights org in the world. But of course you 'wouldn't know about that'. The peace process is dead. Israel and her citizens refuse to to stop building settlements, extrajudicial assassinations, stealing water, kidnapping people in night raids, protecting Israelis who attack and kill palestinians, stealing their resources, burning their crops, building walls, grounding fishermen, restricting freedom of movement, antagonizing at al aqsa, etc etc...therefore the number of Israeli casualties will unfortunately continue to rise. So keep promoting collective punishment and military occupation from your comfortable home. See how that works? Meanwhile, even conservative rags like the Washington post are publishing editorials in favour of bds, written by influential and 'important' american jews. Their most read articles on the days they were published. There is a sea change underway in public opinion on the occupation...as noted in the first article, even the staunchest of lifelong zionists have begun to realize that a change of tactics (from blindly supporting israel, to supporting bds) is needed if Israel is to avoid diplomatic isolation and survive. https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/a-zionist-case-for-boycotting-israel/2015/10/23/ac4dab80-735c-11e5-9cbb-790369643cf9_story.html
You hit the crucial point in your last words, if Israel is to survive. Let me give you a little bit of history since people here seem to know precious little about the larger picture of this conflict. I HIGHLY doubt you'll even read all of it, but for those interested, here goes.
The State of Israel represents the first Jewish commonwealth in over 1,800, and it represents the Jewish national home, in the ancestral homeland of the Jewish people. There are 22 nations in the Arab League, and 56 countries in the Organization of Islamic States, but there is only one Jewish state. It is tiny, about the size of New Jersey, half the country is desert, and it has precious little oil and water.
Israel is facing many dangers today. Hamas controls Gaza and has thousands of rockets, Hizbullah to the north has amassed close to 100,000 rockets, Iran has stated its desire to see Israel wiped off the face of the map. But you focus on the Palestinian Arabs, so let’s examine their past conduct, and then let’s address the current situation.
You say the problem is occupation? There has never been a nation called Palestine. Ever. The Ottoman Turks ruled this area for approximately 400 years, until World War I. After World War I, after the San Remo conference of 1920, the League of Nations was formed, and it wrote the League of Nations Mandate for Palestine in July 1922, giving Great Britain control over the mandate. I recommend you read this document. It recognizes the historic connection of the Jewish people with the land of Palestine, which is a crucial point that Palestinian Arab leaders emphatically deny. The Mandate called for the re-establishment of the Jewish national home in Palestine. But Article 25 of the League of Nations Mandate gave Britain discretion what to do with the land of Palestine EAST of the Jordan River. In 1922, Britain chopped that land away, over 75% of Palestine, and created the country of Transjordan, putting Arabs in charge (Abdullah, son of the Sherif of Mecca). Palestinian Arabs are a majority of the population of this country, known today as Jordan.
But Palestinian Arabs and other Arab countries refused to consent to establishment of any Jewish state in Western Palestine, that is, the land of Palestine west of the Jordan River.
Palestinian Arabs perpetrated massacres of Jews on the pretext that the Jews were trying to take over the Temple Mount—in 1929. Palestinian Arabs conducted a campaign of terror between 1936 and 1939, and the British acquiesced by severely restricting Jews from entering Palestine shortly before Hitler proceeded with the Final Solution.
The British Peel Commission proposed in 1937 dividing the land between Jews and Arabs, and the Arabs rejected that offer. After World War II, the United Nations was created. Please read Article 80, which left intact the pre-existing British Mandate from the League of Nations. In 1947, the British referred the question of the future of the land to the United Nations, which voted on Nov. 29, 1947 to partition the land into a Jewish state and an Arab state. The Jewish leadership in Palestine accepted the proposal, but the Palestinian Arabs rejected it, and began attacking Jews throughout Palestine. On the day the British left Palestine, Egypt, Lebanon, Syria, Transjordan and Saudi Arabia attacked the nascent Jewish state, and killed over 6,000 Jews, but the Jews persevered and won their independence. Transjordan seized Judea and Samaria, what you may call the “West Bank” and Egypt took Gaza. During the next 19 years, there was no call for establishment of a Palestinian state in those territories. But the PLO was formed in 1964 and its charter called for the destruction of Israel.
In May 1967, Muslims across the Arab world demonstrated calling for the destruction of Israel. Egypt and Jordan formed a united military command, and the King of Saudi Arabia declared that the liquidation of Israel was at hand. Nasser closed the Straits of Tiran to Israel, an act of war b any definition. King Hussein of Jordan (which changed its name in 1949), shelled Jewish neighborhoods of Jerusalem despite pleas from Golda Meir that he stay out of the war. To the world’s shock, thank Heaven, Israel won the war.
The land Israel captured in 1967 is at the heart of Jewish history. Hebron is where the founders of the Jewish religion are buried. Jerusalem is where the Temple built by King Solomon stood for 410 years, and the Second Temple stood for 420 years. Before that, the center of the Jewish religion was in Shiloh, which is in Samaria, for 369 years.
Israel allows Arabs to build homes inside pre-1967 Israel. It is nothing short of racist to argue that Jews are not allowed to live in Judea and Samaria, and that this land must be empty of all Jews—Judenrein. No one is arguing that all Arabs living in Israel must leave the country, so too, Jews have a right to live in Judea.
So when you say that the problem is the occupation, the answer is that no one has a stronger claim to the ancestral homeland of the Jewish people than the Jewish people. Whether by virtue of capturing the land in a war of self-defense in 1967, or legal claims based on the League of Nations Mandate, which permitted Jews to live in all of Palestine, or simply because Jews have been living in this land for thousands of years, despite invaders. For example, there are census figures showing that there were more Jews in Jerusalem than either Muslims or Christians going back continuously to the 1880s. One does not occupy one’s own homeland. One lives in one’s homeland.
Now claims say that the peace process is dead. Israeli leaders have made numerous proposals to the Palestinian Arab leadership. Ehud Barak made a proposal at Camp David in 2000. He increased his offer in talks in Taba in January 2001. Where was Arafat’s counterproposal? He didn’t provide any. Instead, Israel got a war of terror in which over 1,000 Israelis were killed. In case you missed it, his wife Suha Arafat recently admitted that this intifada was pre-planned by Arafat.
Ehud Olmert made a proposal to Abbas (the man whose doctoral thesis written at Moscow University is that the Holocaust was exaggerated) in September 2008, but again, no counteroffer from Abbas.
You overlook the freedoms that Palestinian Arabs have enjoyed under Israeli sovereignty. They have freedom of the press, freedom to practice their religion, freedom to control their own educational system, uncontrolled access to the internet, and the ability to run their own television and radio stations. Over 95% of the Palestinian Arabs live on streets patrolled by Palestinian Arab policemen, with weapons that Israel(!) supplied free of charge.
What have the Palestinian Arabs done? Did they create institutions to support the establishment of a state? Of course not.
They have pour money into building terror tunnels and amassing weapons. They preach hatred of Jews on children’s television shows, their imams praise suicide bombers, and they name streets and public squares after such mass murdering “heroes.” In 2007, they had a civil war with Hamas throwing Fatah men off the tops of buildings. Israel does not kidnap innocent Arabs in night raids. Based on pinpoint intelligence, Israel arrests terrorists and seizes weapons. Did you notice that Arab terrorists actually bring lawsuits in Israel’s courts seeking where they can prove their innocence? Why would their lawyers waste so much time and energy if these were kangaroo courts as you see in Iran?
Now to address your BS:
Extra-judicial assassinations? Israel kills terrorists. Obama uses Predator drones to kill Taliban and the world doesn’t say a word. Israel finds armed mass murderers who send out “martyrs” with suicide belts and has the temerity to shoot them if they don’t surrender. Mr. Abbas is indeed happy that Israel arrests or kills Hamas and Islamic Jihad men, because if Israel withdrew its forces from Judea and Samaria, Hamas would takeover just as it did in Gaza in 2007.
Building walls? Take a look at the drop in Jewish victims of terror after Israel built its security barrier during the post Camp David terror war (also called the Second Intifada). Most of this barrier is fence not wall, and Arabs successfully petitioned Israel’s Supreme Court to modify its path. Could you imagine a Jew getting justice in say a Saudi Arabian or Syrian court?
Diplomatic isolation? Golda Meir said it best. Israel prefers the world’s condemnation than its eloquent eulogy for the Jewish state.
Antagonizing at Al-Aksa? This is the Temple Mount. The holiest place on earth for Jews. Jews pray toward this site. A Muslin praying on the Temple Mount in the Al-Aksa Mosque faces Mecca, and his backside faces the center of the Temple Mount.
Jews were not allowed near the Temple Mount after Jordan captured the eastern part of Jerusalem in 1948 and expelled all Jews. But Israel allows ONLY Muslim prayer on the Temple Mount. It is forbidden for a Jew to pray on the Temple Mount. Now just who is being discriminated against??
This week, Israel agreed that cameras can be installed on the Temple Mount. But those Arabs who stockpiled firebombs and rocks on the Temple Mount don’t want it. Nor do they want cameras filming Muslim women who routinely, of late, shout at Jews who visit the Temple Mount.
BDS? There are numerous countries that violate human rights on a grand scale, such as Iran, China, Syria, and Cuba. Lebanon restricts where Palestinian Arabs may live and excludes them from certain professions, but no one wants to boycott them. Turkey is occupying Northern Cyprus, but there are no calls to divest from Turkey, which denies the Armenian genocide and which refuses to grant independence to the Kurds. Indeed, Turkey won’t allow Kurds to teach their own children in their own language. Saudi Arabia discriminates against women (who cannot drive) and gays (homosexuality is illegal in Saudi Arabia).
Israel has had a woman Prime Minister, and woman Chief Justice of its Supreme Court. Palestinian Arabs perpetrate “honor killings” of their own women, but no, let’s boycott Israel, the only country in the Middle East that has freedom of the press and an independent judiciary.
Wrong side of history? The Palestinian Arabs supported the Nazis during World War II, they sided with the Soviet Union during the Cold War, the supported Saddam Hussein during the First Gulf War, and they celebrated in the streets of Ramallah and Gaza on September 11, 2001.
Please ask yourself one question: What would happen if Palestinian Arabs would say – the Jews have a historic connection to this land, Israel has a right to exist as the permanent national Jewish homeland, the murder of Jewish men, women and children in random knife attacks or suicide bombings is repugnant, and Arabs should strive to live at peace with their Jewish neighbors. Imagine if an Arab leader actually said that to his people. Just imagine . . .
why is he a sellout? can an artist not choose to take the non-political route and just play a show for people who don't get many?
and maybe it's not even that.
nope.
it is not about who gets shows or how many shows the people there get to see.
you can't play israel and not make a political statement.
by playing there, and taking their money, you support the status quo.
Well I guess you should stop paying to see Cornell lest you be accused of making a political statement. You should probably also steer clear of any PJ show where he might appear. I'm sure he also gets a cut of that Sonic Evolution album so you probably shouldn't buy that either. Fuck this BDS shit gets complicated...
How many units in how many settlements have been built since Oslo was agreed to?
BS , I was hoping you would reply. My question to you after your statement that Abbas abandoned the Oslo Accords.
Care to answer honestly without sarcasm or a troll response? Seriously.
Honestly and without sarcasm I don't know. I also think it is no longer relevant. You still live in a mythical land where it is just a matter of settlements and rights. That ship sailed many years ago. Israel is dealing with people who do not want it to exist. Period. Gaza was abandoned in total and look what it became. I know, i know...it's Israel's fault. Israel is for the most part alone. It knows it is alone. It will act alone. And it will survive.
why is he a sellout? can an artist not choose to take the non-political route and just play a show for people who don't get many?
and maybe it's not even that.
nope.
it is not about who gets shows or how many shows the people there get to see.
you can't play israel and not make a political statement.
by playing there, and taking their money, you support the status quo.
Well I guess you should stop paying to see Cornell lest you be accused of making a political statement. You should probably also steer clear of any PJ show where he might appear. I'm sure he also gets a cut of that Sonic Evolution album so you probably shouldn't buy that either. Fuck this BDS shit gets complicated...
well considering the only thing i have purposely spent money on related to cornell was a used temple of the dog cassette, i do not think it will be too difficult. i find him overrated.
refresh my memory....how awesome was that pearl jam tour of israel again?????
There is nothing noble in being superior to your fellow man; true nobility is being superior to your former self.- Hemingway
"Well, you tell him that I don't talk to suckas."
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mickeyrat
up my ass, like Chadwick was up his Posts: 35,751
How many units in how many settlements have been built since Oslo was agreed to?
BS , I was hoping you would reply. My question to you after your statement that Abbas abandoned the Oslo Accords.
Care to answer honestly without sarcasm or a troll response? Seriously.
Honestly and without sarcasm I don't know. I also think it is no longer relevant. You still live in a mythical land where it is just a matter of settlements and rights. That ship sailed many years ago. Israel is dealing with people who do not want it to exist. Period. Gaza was abandoned in total and look what it became. I know, i know...it's Israel's fault. Israel is for the most part alone. It knows it is alone. It will act alone. And it will survive.
Not today Sir, Probably not tomorrow.............................................. bayfront arena st. pete '94
you're finally here and I'm a mess................................................... nationwide arena columbus '10
memories like fingerprints are slowly raising.................................... first niagara center buffalo '13
another man ..... moved by sleight of hand...................................... joe louis arena detroit '14
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mickeyrat
up my ass, like Chadwick was up his Posts: 35,751
edited October 2015
So at what point does an Israeli official take it upon themselves to rectify this by designating officially where these Israeli citizens can build?
Not today Sir, Probably not tomorrow.............................................. bayfront arena st. pete '94
you're finally here and I'm a mess................................................... nationwide arena columbus '10
memories like fingerprints are slowly raising.................................... first niagara center buffalo '13
another man ..... moved by sleight of hand...................................... joe louis arena detroit '14
At what point do any of you form a substantive thought and actually respond to my post from yesterday rather than continuing to cut and paste Arab propaganda?
How many units in how many settlements have been built since Oslo was agreed to?
BS , I was hoping you would reply. My question to you after your statement that Abbas abandoned the Oslo Accords.
Care to answer honestly without sarcasm or a troll response? Seriously.
Honestly and without sarcasm I don't know. I also think it is no longer relevant. You still live in a mythical land where it is just a matter of settlements and rights. That ship sailed many years ago. Israel is dealing with people who do not want it to exist. Period. Gaza was abandoned in total and look what it became. I know, i know...it's Israel's fault. Israel is for the most part alone. It knows it is alone. It will act alone. And it will survive.
How many units in how many settlements have been built since Oslo was agreed to?
BS , I was hoping you would reply. My question to you after your statement that Abbas abandoned the Oslo Accords.
Care to answer honestly without sarcasm or a troll response? Seriously.
Honestly and without sarcasm I don't know. I also think it is no longer relevant. You still live in a mythical land where it is just a matter of settlements and rights. That ship sailed many years ago. Israel is dealing with people who do not want it to exist. Period. Gaza was abandoned in total and look what it became. I know, i know...it's Israel's fault. Israel is for the most part alone. It knows it is alone. It will act alone. And it will survive.
How many units in how many settlements have been built since Oslo was agreed to?
BS , I was hoping you would reply. My question to you after your statement that Abbas abandoned the Oslo Accords.
Care to answer honestly without sarcasm or a troll response? Seriously.
Honestly and without sarcasm I don't know. I also think it is no longer relevant. You still live in a mythical land where it is just a matter of settlements and rights. That ship sailed many years ago. Israel is dealing with people who do not want it to exist. Period. Gaza was abandoned in total and look what it became. I know, i know...it's Israel's fault. Israel is for the most part alone. It knows it is alone. It will act alone. And it will survive.
Not today Sir, Probably not tomorrow.............................................. bayfront arena st. pete '94
you're finally here and I'm a mess................................................... nationwide arena columbus '10
memories like fingerprints are slowly raising.................................... first niagara center buffalo '13
another man ..... moved by sleight of hand...................................... joe louis arena detroit '14
At what point do any of you form a substantive thought and actually respond to my post from yesterday rather than continuing to cut and paste Arab propaganda?
Got a source for your cut and paste or are you claiming the work as your own? I'd like to know before I set off on a "fact finding" inquiry or would you like to admit it's Israeli apologist propaganda? What happened in 1948 when the Zionist terrorized the British and got them to leave? What did the Zionists do to the Palestinians on the land and in the houses that the Zionists wanted? What happened? Were they justly compensated or did they have their throats slit and their olive groves bulldozed? I think you know Johnny, I think you know but I don't think you'll admit to it. Also, why was the USS Liberty attacked and what was occurring that prompted the attack? Again, I think you know but your heartless soul will never admit to it, will it Johnny?
At what point do any of you form a substantive thought and actually respond to my post from yesterday rather than continuing to cut and paste Arab propaganda?
Got a source for your cut and paste or are you claiming the work as your own? I'd like to know before I set off on a "fact finding" inquiry or would you like to admit it's Israeli apologist propaganda? What happened in 1948 when the Zionist terrorized the British and got them to leave? What did the Zionists do to the Palestinians on the land and in the houses that the Zionists wanted? What happened? Were they justly compensated or did they have their throats slit and their olive groves bulldozed? I think you know Johnny, I think you know but I don't think you'll admit to it. Also, why was the USS Liberty attacked and what was occurring that prompted the attack? Again, I think you know but your heartless soul will never admit to it, will it Johnny?
The source is my head buddy. I'm sure you've already tried fact finding. As to the rest of your allegations, I will answer them all over the weekend.
Comments
Not today Sir, Probably not tomorrow.............................................. bayfront arena st. pete '94
you're finally here and I'm a mess................................................... nationwide arena columbus '10
memories like fingerprints are slowly raising.................................... first niagara center buffalo '13
another man ..... moved by sleight of hand...................................... joe louis arena detroit '14
Meanwhile, even conservative rags like the Washington post are publishing editorials in favour of bds, written by influential and 'important' american jews. Their most read articles on the days they were published. There is a sea change underway in public opinion on the occupation...as noted in the first article, even the staunchest of lifelong zionists have begun to realize that a change of tactics (from blindly supporting israel, to supporting bds) is needed if Israel is to avoid diplomatic isolation and survive.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/a-zionist-case-for-boycotting-israel/2015/10/23/ac4dab80-735c-11e5-9cbb-790369643cf9_story.html
Has there been?
Not today Sir, Probably not tomorrow.............................................. bayfront arena st. pete '94
you're finally here and I'm a mess................................................... nationwide arena columbus '10
memories like fingerprints are slowly raising.................................... first niagara center buffalo '13
another man ..... moved by sleight of hand...................................... joe louis arena detroit '14
Not today Sir, Probably not tomorrow.............................................. bayfront arena st. pete '94
you're finally here and I'm a mess................................................... nationwide arena columbus '10
memories like fingerprints are slowly raising.................................... first niagara center buffalo '13
another man ..... moved by sleight of hand...................................... joe louis arena detroit '14
Not today Sir, Probably not tomorrow.............................................. bayfront arena st. pete '94
you're finally here and I'm a mess................................................... nationwide arena columbus '10
memories like fingerprints are slowly raising.................................... first niagara center buffalo '13
another man ..... moved by sleight of hand...................................... joe louis arena detroit '14
http://www.aljazeera.com/news/2015/10/teacher-films-israeli-raid-west-bank-primary-school-151027184226595.html
elementary school children. sow the seeds of hatred young to perpetuate the conflict
Not today Sir, Probably not tomorrow.............................................. bayfront arena st. pete '94
you're finally here and I'm a mess................................................... nationwide arena columbus '10
memories like fingerprints are slowly raising.................................... first niagara center buffalo '13
another man ..... moved by sleight of hand...................................... joe louis arena detroit '14
http://www.nbcnews.com/news/world/american-richard-lakin-dies-after-jerusalem-bus-attack-n452036
it is not about who gets shows or how many shows the people there get to see.
you can't play israel and not make a political statement.
by playing there, and taking their money, you support the status quo.
"Well, you tell him that I don't talk to suckas."
hasbara gonna deny that one too?
"Well, you tell him that I don't talk to suckas."
Care to answer honestly without sarcasm or a troll response? Seriously.
Not today Sir, Probably not tomorrow.............................................. bayfront arena st. pete '94
you're finally here and I'm a mess................................................... nationwide arena columbus '10
memories like fingerprints are slowly raising.................................... first niagara center buffalo '13
another man ..... moved by sleight of hand...................................... joe louis arena detroit '14
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/richard-north-patterson/israels-richard-nixon_b_8383628.html
Imagine, if you will, Richard Nixon without the vision which informed his better moments. The residue is insular, divisive, self-serving, rhetorically dishonest and politically amoral: an ersatz Churchill who exploits the dangers facing his country to assure his grip on power. In short, Benjamin Netanyahu.
His latest distortion of truth -- asserting that the Holocaust originated not with Hitler, but a Palestinian -- captures his essence. For 20 years, Netanyahu has thrown verbal matches on geopolitical tinder boxes, feeding his myopic tactical solipsism at whatever cost to the homeland whose savior he purports to be. Grant him that he deeply believes the indubitable: that the tragic history of the Jewish people is an indelible lesson for Israel's present. Grant further that the Palestinian leadership has been a roadblock to peace -- inept, recalcitrant, deficient in statesmanship or stature, and reluctant to denounce violence or tell its people hard truths. But it is everyone's misfortune that Israel's Prime Minister is morally and characterologically unfit for the Sisyphean task of making peace.
Those who have dealt with him limn an unnervingly Nixonian persona: A man who is disingenuous, disloyal, isolated, calculating, ungenerous, uncomfortable with others and pathologically suspicious. A parochial politician who substitutes marketing for leadership, deploying inflammatory language without regard for consequence, yet fearful of taking any action which might imperil his own survival. And -- a fatal divergence from Nixon -- a tactical bean counter bereft of strategy or vision.
These traits are imprinted on his history -- and Israel's. One starts with Yitzhak Rabin, a hard man for hard times, who, in life and death, casts a pitiless light on Netanyahu's smallness. In the early 1990s, Rabin grasped that Israel's occupation of the West Bank, home to several million Palestinians, posed an existential conundrum. Incorporating the Palestinians as citizens would doom Israel as a Jewish state; incorporating the land while oppressing its people would metastasize into violence and despair. So this cold-eyed realist put aside his loathing for Yasir Arafat, and resolved to make a secure peace with a demilitarized Palestinian state.
Enter Netanyahu. Determined to become prime minister by currying favor with extremists who believe that God granted the West Bank to the Jewish people, he did not stop at opposing Rabin's plans. Instead he labeled this war hero a traitor: comparing Rabin's negotiations to Neville Chamberlain's efforts to appease Adolf Hitler, he accused him of giving away "parts of our homeland" and precipitating "the destruction of the Jewish state."
Shortly before Rabin's assassination 20 years ago this month, Netanyahu appeared before a seething rally of right-wing zealots. Many carried placards showing the Prime Minister dressed in SS garb and shouted" death to Rabin" so loudly that at times it drowned out speakers. Warned by a colleague in the starkest terms -- "You'd better restrain your people. Otherwise it will end in murder " -- Netanyahu demurred. In a harsh attack he denounced Rabin and his plan as "not Jewish" -- a particularly toxic choice of words.
Within days, a young extremist murdered Rabin. It would be irresponsible to blame Netanyahu for this act; irresponsible, as well, to ignore what became his pattern -- a dangerous penchant for stoking crises for his own narrow ends.
"Well, you tell him that I don't talk to suckas."
Netanyahu's accession as Prime Minister is also instructive. Rabin's successor was Shimon Peres, a principal architect of the peace negotiations. Well ahead of Netanyahu in the polls, Peres called a snap election. Promptly Hamas launched -- and took credit for -- a wave of suicide bombings plainly calculated to damage Peres' electoral chances. 59 Israelis died. Pouncing, Netanyahu accused Peres of placing the fate of Jewish children in Arafat's hands and leading Israel "to the brink of disaster." Netanyahu squeaked out a narrow victory, his leadership dependent on a right-wing coalition opposed to peace. Whatever its alchemy, this perverse dynamic has intermittently recurred, each wave of violence fortifying Netanyahu's power while devastating the peace process Hamas deplores.
The two decades of failure stemming from Rabin's murder has too many causes to rationally apportion blame. But Netanyahu is surely a principal author. His tenures as Prime Minister (1996-99; 2009-present) are diplomatic dead zones which bear his imprimatur. He talks of a two-state solution only when pressured, lip service without a meaningful follow-through. He has mastered the art of the lethal precondition, offering to negotiate if the Palestinians would first agree to terms which, while sounding superficially reasonable, are crafted to be poison pills. Thus his demand that the Palestinian leadership recognize Israel not just as a state -- which they have -- but as an explicitly Jewish state; thus, too, his periodic ultimatum that they renounce the right of Palestinian refugees to return to their former home in Israel.
These, of course, are agreements which must result from a peace process, not precede it. More fundamental, Netanyahu knows that the Palestinians will relinquish the right of return in exchange for their own country, but not before, and that labeling Israel a Jewish state ignores that 20 percent of its citizens are Arab. But when the Palestinians refuse his preconditions, as they must, he erupts in outrage at their intransigence. All this serves as cover for real impediments to peace -- such as Netanyahu's aggressive settlement policy, and his systematic efforts to hem in the Palestinian neighborhoods of Jerusalem.
And so Israel falls ever deeper into the dangerous abyss between his refusal to risk his right-wing power base, and his readiness to say anything to retain it. During his 2015 campaign for reelection, he used the world as a soundstage for his own self-serving electoral theatrics. After the Charlie Hebdo massacre, France organized a massive march against terror. So as not to cloud their message of pluralism and national unity, the French implored Netanyahu and Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas to stay away. Netanyahu not only came, but maneuvered his way to the front rows of the march, calling on "all French Jews to move to Israel" -- later bragging to Israeli voters that "the world saw the Prime Minister of Israel marching with all the world leaders in a united effort against terror."
The apotheosis of his extraterritorial self-aggrandizement was his Republican-sponsored denunciation of President Obama's Iran negotiations to a joint session of Congress. The result was not simply defeat, but lasting damage to Israel: Netanyahu alienated an American president and his political party; turned our previously bi-partisan support of Israel into a bitterly divisive wedge issue; and alienated a large portion of America's Jewish community. But Netanyahu assured Israelis that he had stood up to Obama on behalf of "all the Jewish people."
In the final days, polls foreshadowing defeat stripped his character bare. In a disturbing echo of his rhetoric against Rabin, he attacked his opponents as "anti-Zionist." On the eve of the election, desperate for right-wing votes, he renounced the peace process itself, repudiating any Palestinian state as long as he held office. Election day marked his descent into outright racism -- claiming that, Arab voters " are turning out in droves," he implored voters to "save right-wing rule" by saving him. And so he squeezed out a Pyrrhic victory, selling the remnants of his political soul to a coalition of fundamentalists, settlers and other adamant opponents of a Palestinian state. As long as this government survives, there will be no peace agreement.
Little wonder, then, that Western leaders despise him. The question is why Israelis returned to power a figure most neither admire nor trust. A partial answer is his talent for appealing to deeply rooted existential fears; another is his readiness, as ever, to rally hardline opponents of peace. But what makes these tactics work is Israel's Balkanized multiparty system, which allows the winner of a narrow plurality -- in Netanyahu's case, less than a quarter of Parliament -- to bargain for power by meeting the demands of splinter groups. And so the character of his campaign is mirrored in his Faustian bargain of a government.
The quicksand of despair ever deepens. Polling now shows that half of all Israelis no longer believe that a two-state solution is possible. A soluble political divide has become a religious one, far less soluble, in which extremists on both sides touch the levers of power. The despicable violence in the West Bank and Jerusalem is less an intifada than a Hobbesian state of nature, bred by a comprehensive failure of leadership which murders hope day by day and death by death. In this terrible picture one can foresee a future even worse: the collapse of the Palestinian Authority ; a tide of murderous encounters between settlers and Palestinians; a reintroduction of further Israeli troops; and a populace radicalized by despair for the future.
And what does Netanyahu bring to this new crisis? Little but his reflex to disclaim responsibility by blaming others. Sometimes his targets are near at hand -- Abbas, he claims, has "joined with ISIS and Hamas." More creative was his shameful assertion that the Palestinian Grand Mufti of Jerusalem -- a vicious anti-Semite now 40 years dead -- had persuaded Adolf Hitler to abandon his supposed plan to expel Jews in favor of mass extermination.
For Netanyahu, at last, there is no historic falsehood too grotesque, no tragedy -- not even the Holocaust -- beyond his exploitation. It is Israel's tragedy, and the world's, that its leader has so thoroughly squandered his moral authority to speak for "all the Jewish people," either the living or the dead.
"Well, you tell him that I don't talk to suckas."
http://www.aljazeera.com/news/2015/10/oz-israel-prison-palestinian-children-151027102958151.html
Not today Sir, Probably not tomorrow.............................................. bayfront arena st. pete '94
you're finally here and I'm a mess................................................... nationwide arena columbus '10
memories like fingerprints are slowly raising.................................... first niagara center buffalo '13
another man ..... moved by sleight of hand...................................... joe louis arena detroit '14
The State of Israel represents the first Jewish commonwealth in over 1,800, and it represents the Jewish national home, in the ancestral homeland of the Jewish people. There are 22 nations in the Arab League, and 56 countries in the Organization of Islamic States, but there is only one Jewish state. It is tiny, about the size of New Jersey, half the country is desert, and it has precious little oil and water.
Israel is facing many dangers today. Hamas controls Gaza and has thousands of rockets, Hizbullah to the north has amassed close to 100,000 rockets, Iran has stated its desire to see Israel wiped off the face of the map. But you focus on the Palestinian Arabs, so let’s examine their past conduct, and then let’s address the current situation.
You say the problem is occupation? There has never been a nation called Palestine. Ever. The Ottoman Turks ruled this area for approximately 400 years, until World War I. After World War I, after the San Remo conference of 1920, the League of Nations was formed, and it wrote the League of Nations Mandate for Palestine in July 1922, giving Great Britain control over the mandate. I recommend you read this document. It recognizes the historic connection of the Jewish people with the land of Palestine, which is a crucial point that Palestinian Arab leaders emphatically deny. The Mandate called for the re-establishment of the Jewish national home in Palestine. But Article 25 of the League of Nations Mandate gave Britain discretion what to do with the land of Palestine EAST of the Jordan River. In 1922, Britain chopped that land away, over 75% of Palestine, and created the country of Transjordan, putting Arabs in charge (Abdullah, son of the Sherif of Mecca). Palestinian Arabs are a majority of the population of this country, known today as Jordan.
But Palestinian Arabs and other Arab countries refused to consent to establishment of any Jewish state in Western Palestine, that is, the land of Palestine west of the Jordan River.
Palestinian Arabs perpetrated massacres of Jews on the pretext that the Jews were trying to take over the Temple Mount—in 1929. Palestinian Arabs conducted a campaign of terror between 1936 and 1939, and the British acquiesced by severely restricting Jews from entering Palestine shortly before Hitler proceeded with the Final Solution.
The British Peel Commission proposed in 1937 dividing the land between Jews and Arabs, and the Arabs rejected that offer. After World War II, the United Nations was created. Please read Article 80, which left intact the pre-existing British Mandate from the League of Nations. In 1947, the British referred the question of the future of the land to the United Nations, which voted on Nov. 29, 1947 to partition the land into a Jewish state and an Arab state. The Jewish leadership in Palestine accepted the proposal, but the Palestinian Arabs rejected it, and began attacking Jews throughout Palestine. On the day the British left Palestine, Egypt, Lebanon, Syria, Transjordan and Saudi Arabia attacked the nascent Jewish state, and killed over 6,000 Jews, but the Jews persevered and won their independence. Transjordan seized Judea and Samaria, what you may call the “West Bank” and Egypt took Gaza. During the next 19 years, there was no call for establishment of a Palestinian state in those territories. But the PLO was formed in 1964 and its charter called for the destruction of Israel.
In May 1967, Muslims across the Arab world demonstrated calling for the destruction of Israel. Egypt and Jordan formed a united military command, and the King of Saudi Arabia declared that the liquidation of Israel was at hand. Nasser closed the Straits of Tiran to Israel, an act of war b any definition. King Hussein of Jordan (which changed its name in 1949), shelled Jewish neighborhoods of Jerusalem despite pleas from Golda Meir that he stay out of the war. To the world’s shock, thank Heaven, Israel won the war.
The land Israel captured in 1967 is at the heart of Jewish history. Hebron is where the founders of the Jewish religion are buried. Jerusalem is where the Temple built by King Solomon stood for 410 years, and the Second Temple stood for 420 years. Before that, the center of the Jewish religion was in Shiloh, which is in Samaria, for 369 years.
Israel allows Arabs to build homes inside pre-1967 Israel. It is nothing short of racist to argue that Jews are not allowed to live in Judea and Samaria, and that this land must be empty of all Jews—Judenrein. No one is arguing that all Arabs living in Israel must leave the country, so too, Jews have a right to live in Judea.
So when you say that the problem is the occupation, the answer is that no one has a stronger claim to the ancestral homeland of the Jewish people than the Jewish people. Whether by virtue of capturing the land in a war of self-defense in 1967, or legal claims based on the League of Nations Mandate, which permitted Jews to live in all of Palestine, or simply because Jews have been living in this land for thousands of years, despite invaders. For example, there are census figures showing that there were more Jews in Jerusalem than either Muslims or Christians going back continuously to the 1880s. One does not occupy one’s own homeland. One lives in one’s homeland.
Continued...
Ehud Olmert made a proposal to Abbas (the man whose doctoral thesis written at Moscow University is that the Holocaust was exaggerated) in September 2008, but again, no counteroffer from Abbas.
You overlook the freedoms that Palestinian Arabs have enjoyed under Israeli sovereignty. They have freedom of the press, freedom to practice their religion, freedom to control their own educational system, uncontrolled access to the internet, and the ability to run their own television and radio stations. Over 95% of the Palestinian Arabs live on streets patrolled by Palestinian Arab policemen, with weapons that Israel(!) supplied free of charge.
What have the Palestinian Arabs done? Did they create institutions to support the establishment of a state? Of course not.
They have pour money into building terror tunnels and amassing weapons. They preach hatred of Jews on children’s television shows, their imams praise suicide bombers, and they name streets and public squares after such mass murdering “heroes.” In 2007, they had a civil war with Hamas throwing Fatah men off the tops of buildings. Israel does not kidnap innocent Arabs in night raids. Based on pinpoint intelligence, Israel arrests terrorists and seizes weapons. Did you notice that Arab terrorists actually bring lawsuits in Israel’s courts seeking where they can prove their innocence? Why would their lawyers waste so much time and energy if these were kangaroo courts as you see in Iran?
Now to address your BS:
Extra-judicial assassinations? Israel kills terrorists. Obama uses Predator drones to kill Taliban and the world doesn’t say a word. Israel finds armed mass murderers who send out “martyrs” with suicide belts and has the temerity to shoot them if they don’t surrender. Mr. Abbas is indeed happy that Israel arrests or kills Hamas and Islamic Jihad men, because if Israel withdrew its forces from Judea and Samaria, Hamas would takeover just as it did in Gaza in 2007.
Building walls? Take a look at the drop in Jewish victims of terror after Israel built its security barrier during the post Camp David terror war (also called the Second Intifada). Most of this barrier is fence not wall, and Arabs successfully petitioned Israel’s Supreme Court to modify its path. Could you imagine a Jew getting justice in say a Saudi Arabian or Syrian court?
Diplomatic isolation? Golda Meir said it best. Israel prefers the world’s condemnation than its eloquent eulogy for the Jewish state.
Antagonizing at Al-Aksa? This is the Temple Mount. The holiest place on earth for Jews. Jews pray toward this site. A Muslin praying on the Temple Mount in the Al-Aksa Mosque faces Mecca, and his backside faces the center of the Temple Mount.
Jews were not allowed near the Temple Mount after Jordan captured the eastern part of Jerusalem in 1948 and expelled all Jews. But Israel allows ONLY Muslim prayer on the Temple Mount. It is forbidden for a Jew to pray on the Temple Mount. Now just who is being discriminated against??
This week, Israel agreed that cameras can be installed on the Temple Mount. But those Arabs who stockpiled firebombs and rocks on the Temple Mount don’t want it. Nor do they want cameras filming Muslim women who routinely, of late, shout at Jews who visit the Temple Mount.
BDS? There are numerous countries that violate human rights on a grand scale, such as Iran, China, Syria, and Cuba. Lebanon restricts where Palestinian Arabs may live and excludes them from certain professions, but no one wants to boycott them. Turkey is occupying Northern Cyprus, but there are no calls to divest from Turkey, which denies the Armenian genocide and which refuses to grant independence to the Kurds. Indeed, Turkey won’t allow Kurds to teach their own children in their own language. Saudi Arabia discriminates against women (who cannot drive) and gays (homosexuality is illegal in Saudi Arabia).
Israel has had a woman Prime Minister, and woman Chief Justice of its Supreme Court. Palestinian Arabs perpetrate “honor killings” of their own women, but no, let’s boycott Israel, the only country in the Middle East that has freedom of the press and an independent judiciary.
Wrong side of history? The Palestinian Arabs supported the Nazis during World War II, they sided with the Soviet Union during the Cold War, the supported Saddam Hussein during the First Gulf War, and they celebrated in the streets of Ramallah and Gaza on September 11, 2001.
Please ask yourself one question: What would happen if Palestinian Arabs would say – the Jews have a historic connection to this land, Israel has a right to exist as the permanent national Jewish homeland, the murder of Jewish men, women and children in random knife attacks or suicide bombings is repugnant, and Arabs should strive to live at peace with their Jewish neighbors. Imagine if an Arab leader actually said that to his people. Just imagine . . .
refresh my memory....how awesome was that pearl jam tour of israel again?????
"Well, you tell him that I don't talk to suckas."
Not today Sir, Probably not tomorrow.............................................. bayfront arena st. pete '94
you're finally here and I'm a mess................................................... nationwide arena columbus '10
memories like fingerprints are slowly raising.................................... first niagara center buffalo '13
another man ..... moved by sleight of hand...................................... joe louis arena detroit '14
http://www.aljazeera.com/news/2015/10/israel-razes-palestinian-village-negev-90th-time-151028121644298.html
Not today Sir, Probably not tomorrow.............................................. bayfront arena st. pete '94
you're finally here and I'm a mess................................................... nationwide arena columbus '10
memories like fingerprints are slowly raising.................................... first niagara center buffalo '13
another man ..... moved by sleight of hand...................................... joe louis arena detroit '14
http://www.globes.co.il/en/article-indian-holding-company-reliance-no-limit-to-our-investment-in-israel-1001076749
Countries that want to be successful know who to do business with.
Not today Sir, Probably not tomorrow.............................................. bayfront arena st. pete '94
you're finally here and I'm a mess................................................... nationwide arena columbus '10
memories like fingerprints are slowly raising.................................... first niagara center buffalo '13
another man ..... moved by sleight of hand...................................... joe louis arena detroit '14
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