Have you ever thought about reading a bokk that challenges your point of view rather than just looking for something you already agree with?
I find many people read and "research" only what will make them feel better about their opinions...not the other way around. Myself included many times.
Have you ever thought about reading a bokk that challenges your point of view rather than just looking for something you already agree with?
I find many people read and "research" only what will make them feel better about their opinions...not the other way around. Myself included many times.
I've read the documentary record re:the occupation, the two-state settlement, the right of return, Israel's human rights abuses. It's no mystery. It's as clear as light.
Why, what 'challenging' book, or books, did you have in mind?
Have you ever thought about reading a bokk that challenges your point of view rather than just looking for something you already agree with?
I find many people read and "research" only what will make them feel better about their opinions...not the other way around. Myself included many times.
The book I'm reading is by a prominent professor at Columbia University who sites all his information.
By the way, Outlaw, I'd be careful. If you call people out for being liars, and for indulging in their own personal fantasies re: Israel/Palestine and which have no relation to the facts, then you run the risk of being banned by the moderators.
By the way, Outlaw, I'd be careful. If you call people out for being liars, and for indulging in their own personal fantasies re: Israel/Palestine and which have no relation to the facts, then you run the risk of being banned by the moderators.
Haha, thanks for the warning. I try not to be disrespectful to the person who I'm debating with.
I've read the documentary record re:the occupation, the two-state settlement, the right of return, Israel's human rights abuses. It's no mystery. It's as clear as light.
Why, what 'challenging' book, or books, did you have in mind?
Actually, no book on this matter. I was really just wondering after I saw what other book you were reading.
Death in Gaza is a terrific documentary though. I think it does a pretty good job showing both sides...it's very sad to see though. Hate is learned...and the children there are soaking it all up.
Each side can do make a long list of adjustments to better the situation for their own people and the opposition side.
As for your comment about being a fairy tale - in South Africa, after decades and decades of apartheid, they stopped it and began to try and adjust their society to become more integrated. They also setup "Truth and Reconsiliation trials" in which victims from atrocities could tell their stories in order to get them out in the open and create an atmosphere of understanding and healing. This is a real world example of how you could resolve this situation once a peace is made. Another real world example would be the Ireland/IRA problem which has been extemely successful. Simply offering critizism of one side or the other at this moment in time doesn't offer anything but bias of your own beliefs and your take on history. It's also unproductive to a solution.
Also, each side should do more to facilitate a solution - not sit back and hope other nations either pro-actively try to help or disband any type of progress. Trying to convince the world your either the victim or perpitrator of a crime (depending on how you view the situation) doesn't fix the problem or offer a solution.
Neither side is justified in their actions? The Palestinian struggle, while you can't technically JUSTIFY them killing civilians, after having seen what they've been through, it's understandable to say the least. The Palestinians have been subjected to significant losses, and just pure humiliation and racism.
what's your solution? To simply say "what's done is done" and "put the past behind us and work for a better future"? This isn't a fairy tale. This kind of destruction still takes place until today where the Israelis have stripped all Palestinians of their rights. It's time you guys see the reality of the situation. This isn't a case where both sides are hurting eachother in the same way. This is an occupation by one side over the other.
CONservative governMENt
Our government is the potent, the omnipresent teacher. For good or for ill, it teaches the whole people by its example. Crime is contagious. If the government becomes a law-breaker, it breeds contempt for law; it invites every man to become a law unto himself; it invites anarchy. - Louis Brandeis
Each side can do make a long list of adjustments to better the situation for their own people and the opposition side.
As for your comment about being a fairy tale - in South Africa, after decades and decades of apartheid, they stopped it and began to try and adjust their society to become more integrated. They also setup "Truth and Reconsiliation trials" in which victims from atrocities could tell their stories in order to get them out in the open and create an atmosphere of understanding and healing. This is a real world example of how you could resolve this situation once a peace is made. Another real world example would be the Ireland/IRA problem which has been extemely successful. Simply offering critizism of one side or the other at this moment in time doesn't offer anything but bias of your own beliefs and your take on history. It's also unproductive to a solution.
Also, each side should do more to facilitate a solution - not sit back and hope other nations either pro-actively try to help or disband any type of progress. Trying to convince the world your either the victim or perpitrator of a crime (depending on how you view the situation) doesn't fix the problem or offer a solution.
Both sides need to make changes and concessions to reach a common and fair deal which is equally beneficial to both sides. Creating the solution isn't necessary the problem (anyone can make a list of adjustments for each side) - the real problem is getting both sides to agree and stick with it so there is a long term peace.
But one thing that is very obvious, just saying one side is wrong or more wrong than the other doesn't help and will never fix anything.
Our government is the potent, the omnipresent teacher. For good or for ill, it teaches the whole people by its example. Crime is contagious. If the government becomes a law-breaker, it breeds contempt for law; it invites every man to become a law unto himself; it invites anarchy. - Louis Brandeis
Both sides need to make changes and concessions to reach a common and fair deal which is equally beneficial to both sides. Creating the solution isn't necessary the problem (anyone can make a list of adjustments for each side) - the real problem is getting both sides to agree and stick with it so there is a long term peace.
But one thing that is very obvious, just saying one side is wrong or more wrong than the other doesn't help and will never fix anything.
The only viable solution has already been presented and agreed upon by the international community - excluding the U.S. This is that a two-state settlement needs to be implemented. Unfortunately the U.S has continually used it's power of automatic veto to block such a settlement:
Beyond Chutzpah - Norman Finkelstein': 'For the past quarter Century, the international community has held to a consensus on how, basically, to resolve the Israel-Palestine conflict: a two-state settlement based on full Israeli withdrawal from the West Bank and Gaza and full recognition of Israel within it's pre-June 1967 borders...
...A 1989 General Assembly resolution, question of Palestine, effectively calling for a two-state settlement and "the withdrawal of Israel from the Palestinian territory occupied since 1967" passed 151 to 3, the only dissenting vote apart from those of the United States and Israel being cast by the island state of Dominica. Fifteen years later and notwithstanding sweeping geopolitical changes - an entire social system disapeared in the interim while many new states were born - the consensus continued to hold. A 2004 General Assembly resolution, peaceful settlement of the question of Palestine, that stresses "the necesity for a commitment to the vision of the two-state solution" and "the withdrawal of Israel from the Palestinian territory occupied since 1967" passed 160 to 6, the dissenting votes apart from the United States and Israel's being cast by Micronesia, the Marshall Islands, Palau, and Uganda.'
Each side can do make a long list of adjustments to better the situation for their own people and the opposition side.
As for your comment about being a fairy tale - in South Africa, after decades and decades of apartheid, they stopped it and began to try and adjust their society to become more integrated. They also setup "Truth and Reconsiliation trials" in which victims from atrocities could tell their stories in order to get them out in the open and create an atmosphere of understanding and healing. This is a real world example of how you could resolve this situation once a peace is made. Another real world example would be the Ireland/IRA problem which has been extemely successful. Simply offering critizism of one side or the other at this moment in time doesn't offer anything but bias of your own beliefs and your take on history. It's also unproductive to a solution.
Also, each side should do more to facilitate a solution - not sit back and hope other nations either pro-actively try to help or disband any type of progress. Trying to convince the world your either the victim or perpitrator of a crime (depending on how you view the situation) doesn't fix the problem or offer a solution.
Firstly this has nothing to do with 'how you view the situation. The Israeli's are engaged in an ongoing, brutal, daily military occupation of Palsetinian land. This occupation doesn't cut two ways. It cuts one way. Have you ever considered what it must be like to live under a military occupation day in day out, where you are subject to check-points, random beatings, humiliation, targeted assassinations, house demolitions, evictions, sniper attacks, rocket attacks, limited, or no access to fuel, water, medicine, e.t.c?
There is only one solution to this conflict. Just as there was only one viable solution to the Algerian occupation by the French, or to the Apartheid regime in South Africa.
Michael Neumann: 'It is sometimes alleged that complete withdrawal from the occupied territories is "impracticable" because the facts on the ground are too deeply entrenched: Israeli settlements are just too extensive and important to uproot. One can hardly take this seriously. If it was "practicable" for hundreds of thousands of stateless Palestinians to leave their homes, why is this impracticable for half as many Israeli citizens in far more comfortable and peaceful circumstances? Throughout modern history, from the waves of U.S immigration to the peaceful post-World War II population transfers, there have been far greater shifts than this movement of a few miles. In many cases, if the settlers prefer, they can simply return to their homes in the United States. "It's impraticable" seems here a stand-in for "Aw, gee, these towns are too nice to let the Arabs have them".
The significance of the withdrawal alternative is not that it represents a just solution. Arguably, justice would require much more than that - not only the abolition of Jewish sovereignty in Israel, but a full right of return, with compensation, for the Palestinians, and the eviction of Jewish inhabitants occupying Palestinian property. But the existence of the withdrawal alternative effectively completes the case against Israel. It's willful and pointless rejection of that alternative places Israel decisively in the wrong. In the first place, Israel has a right of self defence, but it does not apply in the Occupied Territories. If the U.S invaded Jamaica and dotted it with settlements, neither the settlers nor the armed forces could invoke any right to defend themselves against the Jamaicans, any more than a robber who invaded your house. So it is with the Israeli's in the Occupied Territories. Their right of self-defense is their right to the least violent defensive alternative. Since withdrawal (perhaps followed by fortifying their own 1948 border) is by far their best and least violent defense, that is all they have a right to do.'
Anyway, let's not talk about Israel-Palestine. There are more important matters to discuss, like Obama and McCain.
I mean, it's only $15million a day of American taxpayers money that is being used to support Israel's brutal and criminal race war, and ethnic cleansing in the Middle East.
'On April 9, 1948, members of the underground Jewish terrorist group, the Irgun, or IZL, led by Menachem Begin, who was to become the Israeli prime minister in 1977, entered the peaceful Arab village of Deir Yassin, massacred 250 men, women, children and the elderly, and stuffed many of the bodies down wells. There were also reports of rapes and mutilations. The Irgun was joined by the Jewish terrorist group, the Stern Gang, led by Yitzhak Shamir, who subsequently succeeded Begin as prime minister of Israel in the early '80s, and also by the Haganah, the militia under the control of David Ben Gurian. The Irgun, the Stern Gang and the Haganah later joined to form the Israeli Defense Force. Their tactics have not changed.
The massacre at Deir Yassin was widely publicized by the terrorists and the numerous heaped corpses displayed to the media. In Jaffe, which was at the time 98 percent Arab, as well as in other Arab communities, speaker trucks drove through the streets warning the population to flee and threatening another Deir Yassin. Begin said at the time, "We created terror among the Arabs and all the villages around. In one blow, we changed the strategic situation."
From about 1938 on to the founding of Israel, Begin was the leader of the Irgun. That group regularly assassinated English soldiers in Palestine and frequently hung their booby-trapped bodies in public places. Under Begin, the Irgun blew up the King David Hotel in Jerusalem in 1946, killing 97 British civil servants. The Stern Gang, under Shamir, also assassinated the U.N. representative to Palestine, Count Bernadotte, in 1948.
But Deir Yassin was not the only massacre by the Israeli Defense Force. That army, under Moshe Dayan, took the unarmed and undefended village of al-Dawazyma, located in the Hebron hills, massacred 80 to 100 of its residents, and threw their bodies into pits. "The children were killed by breaking their heads with sticks ... The remaining Arabs were then sealed in houses, as the village was systematically razed ..." (Nur Masalha, The Historical Roots of the Palestinian Refugee Question).
We read further. According to Yitzhak Rabin's biography:
We walked outside, Ben-Gurion accompanying us. Alon repeated his question: "What is to be done with the population?" BG waved his hand in a gesture, which said: Drive them out! ... I agreed that it was essential to drive the inhabitants out.
Continuing the narrative, Ben-Gurion University historian Benny Morris writes in "Operation Dani and the Palestinian Exodus from Lydda and Ramle in 1948", Middle East Journal, 40
At 13.30 hours on 12 July [1948]... Lieutenant-Colonel Yitzhak Rabin, operation Dani head Operation, issued the following order: '1. The inhabitants of Lydda must be expelled quickly without attention to age. They should be directed to Beit Nabala,... Implement Immediately.' A similar order was issued at the same time to the Kiryati Brigade concerning the inhabitants of the neighboring town of Ramle, occupied by Kiryati troops that morning... On 12 and 13 July, the Yaftah brigades carried out their orders, expelling the 50-60,000 remaining inhabitants of and refugees camped in and around the two towns....
About noon on 13 July, Operation Dani HQ informed IDF General Staff/Operations: 'Lydda police fort has been captured. [The troops] are busy expelling the inhabitants.... Lydda's inhabitants were forced to walk eastward to the Arab legion lines; many of Ramle's inhabitants were ferried in trucks or buses. Clogging the roads... the tens of thousands of refugees marched, gradually shedding their worldly goods along the way. It was a hot summer day. The Arab chroniclers, such as Sheikh Muhammed Nimr al Khatib, claimed that hundreds of children died in the march, from dehydration and disease. One Israeli witness described the spoor: the refugee column 'to begin with [jettisoned] utensils and furniture and, in the end, bodies of men, women, and children.
There were many other such villages with Arabic names that have almost been expunged from memory--but not quite. These facts have always been known to some historians, however they have been consistently denied by the official Israeli histories, as, indeed, Israel has never taken any responsibility for the exodus of Palestinians from the land of the present state of Israel.
Within the last 10 to 20 years, however, there has been an exponential increase in historical studies of the origins of the state of Israel which have coincided with the release by Israel of many, but not all, of the historical and military archives. Ben-Gurion University historian Benny Morris, as well as others, have systematically mined these documents and found numerous instances of massacres, and, by the way, not one shred of evidence for the frequently repeated official Israeli lie that the Palestinians fled Palestine because the surrounding Arab states told them to.
In fact, according to UN estimates, which some say are conservative, 750,000 Palestinians fled the site of the present Jewish state in 1948. Those refugees and their descendents now number about 4.5 million and constitute the largest and longest standing refugee population in the world. Many live in squalid refugee camps distributed in the surrounding Arab states or in the West Bank or Gaza, many retain the titles to their land, recognized by the British before 1948 or the Ottomans before that , and many retain the keys to their front doors of their former homes in what is now Israel, whether or not those doors still exists.
The '67 War generated a second wave of about 300,000 refugees from the West Bank and Gaza who were either expelled through direct or psychological methods or fled the Israel aerial attacks on the territories which included the extensive use of napalm.
The reader is invited to read the Hagana's Plan D , which has been available in English since the 1960s and was a military strategy of 1948 that entailed the evacuation of the Palestinian population from the areas of a future Jewish state.
Those who invoke the suicide bombings against mostly Israeli civilians to infer the righteousness of the Israeli cause live in a twilight of psychic denial of an otherwise unambiguous historical record: the state of Israel was founded on terrorism and ethnic cleansing.
The suicide bombings inside Israel, the first of which only occurred in 1994, after 25 years of occupation, is only a side show. That is a symptom and long way from the heart of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
There will never be a solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict until Israel takes responsibility, under U.N. Resolution 194, calling for reparation of the Palestinian refugees, and recognizes the immense suffering it caused at that time. We need also to recognize the US is giving unqualified moral support to a state that is based on racial purity and one that is intrinsically expansionist.'
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deir_Yassin_massacre 'In 1969, the Israeli Foreign Ministry published a pamphlet “Background Notes on Current Themes: Deir Yassin” in English denying that there had been a massacre at Deir Yassin, and calling the story "part of a package of fairy tales, for export and home consumption". The pamphlet led to a series of derivative articles giving the same message, especially in America. Menachem Begin's Herut party disseminated a Hebrew translation in Israel, causing a widespread but largely non-public debate within the Israeli establishment. Several former leaders of the Hagannah demanded that the pamphlet be withdrawn on account of its inaccuracy, but the Foreign Ministry explained that "While our intention and desire is to maintain accuracy in our information, we sometimes are forced to deviate from this principle when we have no choice or alternative means to rebuff a propaganda assault or Arab psychological warfare." Yitzhak Levi, the 1948 leader of Hagannah Intelligence, wrote to Begin: "On behalf of the truth and the purity of arms of the Jewish soldier in the War of Independence, I see it as my duty to warn you against continuing to spread this untrue version about what happened in Deir Yassin to the Israeli public. Otherwise there will be no avoiding raising the matter publicly and you will be responsible." Eventually, the Foreign Ministry agreed to stop distributing the pamphlet, but it remains the source of many popular accounts.'
Byrnzie, it is very obvious which side of the fence you sit on. I'm trying not to take sides. Just as you claim innocent Palestians have all these issues to deal with, you can make the same claim of Israeli citizens who have rockets shot into their neighborhood when they have nothing to do with the anything. Like I said before, at this point in time, it has become tit-for-tat. One side does something, the other reacts and it becomes an umbreakable cycle. You keep saying that US interference has stopped a peace plan (which I tend to agree with), but even with that stated, it is up to each particular group to facilitate this peace process if they truly want to create such results. As I stated before, each side has done a lot of wrong-doing over the past 50+ yrs and can do a ton of things to control things on their own end now as well as making adjustments to help meet the other half in the middle. To say otherwise is merely distorted history or the reality of the situation.
Also, I'm very familar with all the articles you're posted and I don't need them referenced as if I don't know the facts of the situation or the vary opinions of commentators. If I began posted pro-Israeli commentary - we'd be just like the two entrenched parties waring with one another... and it really doesn't solve a thing.
CONservative governMENt
Our government is the potent, the omnipresent teacher. For good or for ill, it teaches the whole people by its example. Crime is contagious. If the government becomes a law-breaker, it breeds contempt for law; it invites every man to become a law unto himself; it invites anarchy. - Louis Brandeis
Byrnzie, it is very obvious which side of the fence you sit on. I'm trying not to take sides. Just as you claim innocent Palestians have all these issues to deal with, you can make the same claim of Israeli citizens who have rockets shot into their neighborhood when they have nothing to do with the anything. Like I said before, at this point in time, it has become tit-for-tat. One side does something, the other reacts and it becomes an umbreakable cycle. You keep saying that US interference has stopped a peace plan (which I tend to agree with), but even with that stated, it is up to each particular group to facilitate this peace process if they truly want to create such results. As I stated before, each side has done a lot of wrong-doing over the past 50+ yrs and can do a ton of things to control things on their own end now as well as making adjustments to help meet the other half in the middle. To say otherwise is merely distorted history or the reality of the situation.
Also, I'm very familar with all the articles you're posted and I don't need them referenced as if I don't know the facts of the situation or the vary opinions of commentators. If I began posted pro-Israeli commentary - we'd be just like the two entrenched parties waring with one another... and it really doesn't solve a thing.
I wish you would post some pro-occupation commentary. I'd like to see how they justify it.
And if Israeli's don't like rockets being fired into their neighbourhoods - almost an irrelevance compared with what Palestinians are subjected to on a daily basis - then they should pressure their government into ending the occupation.
You mention that each particular group needs to facilitate a peace process. Well, this has already happened. The Palestinians support the international consensus calling for a two-state settlement, but this is rejected by Israel and the U.S. You see where we may have a problem?
This isn't just a 'tit for tat' situation, where 'both sides are equally at fault'. Anyone who says so is simply an apologist for the occupation and blind to the facts.
Did you think that the conflict in South Africa during the Apartheid era was merely a case of 'tit for tat' where 'both sides were equally at fault'? This is just a convenient way to wash your hands of the issue.
Byrnzie, it is very obvious which side of the fence you sit on. I'm trying not to take sides. Just as you claim innocent Palestians have all these issues to deal with, you can make the same claim of Israeli citizens who have rockets shot into their neighborhood when they have nothing to do with the anything. Like I said before, at this point in time, it has become tit-for-tat. One side does something, the other reacts and it becomes an umbreakable cycle. You keep saying that US interference has stopped a peace plan (which I tend to agree with), but even with that stated, it is up to each particular group to facilitate this peace process if they truly want to create such results. As I stated before, each side has done a lot of wrong-doing over the past 50+ yrs and can do a ton of things to control things on their own end now as well as making adjustments to help meet the other half in the middle. To say otherwise is merely distorted history or the reality of the situation.
Also, I'm very familar with all the articles you're posted and I don't need them referenced as if I don't know the facts of the situation or the vary opinions of commentators. If I began posted pro-Israeli commentary - we'd be just like the two entrenched parties waring with one another... and it really doesn't solve a thing.
Still, you do live in America, so I can understand how you can be led to believe that this is a tit for tat situation where no easy outcome can be envisaged. I doubt that any mention has ever been made in your media of the documentary record, including America's continued veto of any chance at a two-state settlement.
People are lead to believe that this issue is so complex and that hostilities between Arabs and Jews are so ingrained, and enveloped in so much religious, historical, and ethnic tension that we really should just forget about it. This of course is bullshit. The issue is as clear as day, as the documentary record shows.
Take a look at the U.S veto's of U.N resolutions here: http://www.krysstal.com/democracy_whyusa03.html
Funny coincidence that most of the apologists for Israel and the occupation happen to live in America; the same country that supported the Apartheid regime in South Africa right up to the end.
Byrnzie, it is very obvious which side of the fence you sit on. I'm trying not to take sides. Just as you claim innocent Palestians have all these issues to deal with, you can make the same claim of Israeli citizens who have rockets shot into their neighborhood when they have nothing to do with the anything. Like I said before, at this point in time, it has become tit-for-tat. One side does something, the other reacts and it becomes an umbreakable cycle. You keep saying that US interference has stopped a peace plan (which I tend to agree with), but even with that stated, it is up to each particular group to facilitate this peace process if they truly want to create such results. As I stated before, each side has done a lot of wrong-doing over the past 50+ yrs and can do a ton of things to control things on their own end now as well as making adjustments to help meet the other half in the middle. To say otherwise is merely distorted history or the reality of the situation.
Also, I'm very familar with all the articles you're posted and I don't need them referenced as if I don't know the facts of the situation or the vary opinions of commentators. If I began posted pro-Israeli commentary - we'd be just like the two entrenched parties waring with one another... and it really doesn't solve a thing.
Just in case you missed the article I posted above; I think this last section sums up the situation quite accurately:
http://www.counterpunch.org/martin05132004.html '..Those who invoke the suicide bombings against mostly Israeli civilians to infer the righteousness of the Israeli cause live in a twilight of psychic denial of an otherwise unambiguous historical record: the state of Israel was founded on terrorism and ethnic cleansing.
The suicide bombings inside Israel, the first of which only occurred in 1994, after 25 years of occupation, is only a side show. That is a symptom and long way from the heart of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
There will never be a solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict until Israel takes responsibility, under U.N. Resolution 194, calling for reparation of the Palestinian refugees, and recognizes the immense suffering it caused at that time. We need also to recognize the US is giving unqualified moral support to a state that is based on racial purity and one that is intrinsically expansionist.'
If you honestly believe there will be some sort of "reparations" in any manner, then perhaps you shouldn't be telling others about living in a fairy tale. Nothing I stated above is biased and aimed at either side. I offered real world examples of how we've seen similar types of conflicts resolved. All you've posted is biased articles and unrealistic expectations from one side of the discussion, yet you expect others to explain how to get results. How about you offer up some realistic solutions?
Just in case you missed the article I posted above; I think this last section sums up the situation quite accurately:
http://www.counterpunch.org/martin05132004.html '..Those who invoke the suicide bombings against mostly Israeli civilians to infer the righteousness of the Israeli cause live in a twilight of psychic denial of an otherwise unambiguous historical record: the state of Israel was founded on terrorism and ethnic cleansing.
The suicide bombings inside Israel, the first of which only occurred in 1994, after 25 years of occupation, is only a side show. That is a symptom and long way from the heart of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
There will never be a solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict until Israel takes responsibility, under U.N. Resolution 194, calling for reparation of the Palestinian refugees, and recognizes the immense suffering it caused at that time. We need also to recognize the US is giving unqualified moral support to a state that is based on racial purity and one that is intrinsically expansionist.'
CONservative governMENt
Our government is the potent, the omnipresent teacher. For good or for ill, it teaches the whole people by its example. Crime is contagious. If the government becomes a law-breaker, it breeds contempt for law; it invites every man to become a law unto himself; it invites anarchy. - Louis Brandeis
If you honestly believe there will be some sort of "reparations" in any manner, then perhaps you shouldn't be telling others about living in a fairy tale. Nothing I stated above is biased and aimed at either side. I offered real world examples of how we've seen similar types of conflicts resolved. All you've posted is biased articles and unrealistic expectations from one side of the discussion, yet you expect others to explain how to get results. How about you offer up some realistic solutions?
not realistic? why is it not realistic? because Israel will reject it even though they know it's illegal, as the majority of the world has agreed?
how can Israel, a country that signed the Geneva Convention, dispute this argument?
If you honestly believe there will be some sort of "reparations" in any manner, then perhaps you shouldn't be telling others about living in a fairy tale. Nothing I stated above is biased and aimed at either side. I offered real world examples of how we've seen similar types of conflicts resolved. All you've posted is biased articles and unrealistic expectations from one side of the discussion, yet you expect others to explain how to get results. How about you offer up some realistic solutions?
So you think that for Israel to make reparations to the hundreds of thousands of people it displaced during it's ethnic cleansing campaigns equates with living in a fairy tale. O.k, I think now I understand where you're coming from.
You say I've posted biased articles and unrealistic expectations? Please elaborate. If anything in any of the articles I posted is innacurate, then feel free to correct them.
And I've offered a realistic solution. I provided details of the only viable solution to the conflict, and the one endorsed by the international community, excluding the U.S. This is the solution called for by the U.N Security Council, calling for a two-state settlement along the internationally recognised 1967 borders.
Byrnzie, in regards to reparations, please list an example in the real world where such an occurence has taken place. On paper such ideas may sound valid if considered justified, but in the real world, it simply doesn't occur. So yes, it is not realistic whatsoever.
As for a generic agreement... as I stated before, anyone can make a list of demands for things both sides need or should do, but the main point is having each side stick to it. Each side in the dispute has issues that prolong and progress the conflict... the Palestian leaders and government can't stop the terrorists and even when there is a "truce", many aren't willing to meet the other half in the middle. Israel on the other hand, greatly over-reacts to such terrorist attempts in stopping the violence, but causes unnessary destruction and death in retaliation. Either way you spin it, it's like two kids, one hits the other, the other hits back.. and both state, 'the other party started and their right". At some point in the ordeal, you have to step aside and say it's enough and tackle the problem from a different light. Something neither side has seriously done other than what was close to being done in the Oslo accords.
CONservative governMENt
Our government is the potent, the omnipresent teacher. For good or for ill, it teaches the whole people by its example. Crime is contagious. If the government becomes a law-breaker, it breeds contempt for law; it invites every man to become a law unto himself; it invites anarchy. - Louis Brandeis
Byrnzie, in regards to reparations, please list an example in the real world where such an occurence has taken place. On paper such ideas may sound valid if considered justified, but in the real world, it simply doesn't occur. So yes, it is not realistic whatsoever.
War reparations:
History
Pre-World War I
Rome imposed large indemnities on Carthage after the First and Second Punic Wars.
The 'unequal treaties' signed by the Qing dynasty in China, Japan, Korea, Siam, Persia, Ottoman Empire, Afghanistan and other countries in the nineteenth century included payments of indemnities to the victorious Western powers, mainly United Kingdom, France and Russia, and later Japan.
After the Franco-Prussian War, according to conditions of Treaty of Frankfurt (May 10, 1871), France was obliged to pay a war indemnity of 5 billion gold francs in 5 years. German troops remained in parts of France until the last installment of the indemnity was paid in September 1873, before the obliged date.
World War I reparations
Russia agreed to pay reparations to the Central Powers when Russia exited the war in the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk (which was repudiated by the Bolshevik government eight months later). Germany agreed to pay reparations of 132 billion gold marks to the Triple Entente in the Treaty of Versailles. Bulgaria paid reparations of 2.25 billion gold francs (90 million pounds) to the Entente, according to Treaty of Neuilly.
World War II
Europe
After World War II, according to the Potsdam conference held between July 17 and August 2, 1945, Germany was to pay the Allies US$20 billion mainly in machinery, manufacturing plants. Reparations to the Soviet Union stopped in 1953. In addition, in accordance with the agreed upon policy of de-industrialisation and pastoralization of Germany, large numbers of civilian factories were dismantled for transport to France and the UK, or simply destroyed. Dismantling in the west stopped in 1950.
In the end, war victims in many countries were compensated by the property of Germans that were expelled after World War II. Beginning immediately after the German surrender and continuing for the next two years, the United States pursued a vigorous program to harvest all technological and scientific know-how as well as all patents in Germany. Historian John Gimbel, in his book Science Technology and Reparations: Exploitation and Plunder in Postwar Germany, states that the "intellectual reparations" taken by the U.S. and the UK amounted to close to $10 billion dollars. [1] German reparations were partly to be in the form of forced labor. By 1947, approximately 4,000,000 German POW's and civilians were used as forced labor (under various headings, such as "reparations labor" or "enforced labor") in the Soviet Union, France, the UK, Belgium and in Germany in U.S run "Military Labor Service Units".
According to the Paris Peace Treaties, 1947, Italy agreed to pay reparations of about US$125 million to Yugoslavia, US$105 million to Greece, US$100 million to the Soviet Union, US$25 million to Ethiopia, and US$5 million to Albania. Finland agreed to pay reparations of US$300 million to the Soviet Union. Hungary agreed to pay reparations of US$200 million to the Soviet Union, US$100 million to Czechoslovakia and Yugoslavia. Romania agreed to pay reparations of US$300 million to the Soviet Union. Bulgaria agreed to pay reparations of $50 million to Greece and $25 million to Yugoslavia. According to the articles of these treaties, the value of US$ was prescribed as 35 US dollars to one troy ounce of pure gold.
Japan
According to the Treaty of Peace with Japan and the bilateral agreements, Japan agreed to pay around 1 trillion and 30 billion yen. For countries that renounced any reparations from Japan, it agreed to pay indemnity and/or grants in accordance with bilateral agreements.
The government of the United States officially apologized for the Japanese American internment during World War II in the 1980s and paid reparations.
Recent war reparations
After the Gulf War, Iraq accepted United Nations Security Council resolution 687, which declared Iraq's financial liability for damage caused in its invasion of Kuwait. The United Nations Compensation Commission ("UNCC") was established, and US$350 billion in claims were filed by governments, corporations, and individuals. Funds for these payments were to come from a 30% share of Iraq's oil revenues from the oil for food program. It was not anticipated that US$350 billion would become available for total payment of all reparations claims, so several schedules of prioritization were created over the years. The UNCC says that its prioritization of claims by natural people, ahead of claims by governments and legal people, "marked a significant step in the evolution of international claims practice."
Payments under this reparations program continue; as of July 2004, the UNCC stated that it had actually distributed US$18.4 billion to claimants.
There have been attempts to codify reparations both in the Statutes of the International Criminal Court and the UN Basic Principles on the Right to a Remedy and Reparation for Victims.
As for a generic agreement... as I stated before, anyone can make a list of demands for things both sides need or should do, but the main point is having each side stick to it. Each side in the dispute has issues that prolong and progress the conflict... the Palestian leaders and government can't stop the terrorists and even when there is a "truce", many aren't willing to meet the other half in the middle. Israel on the other hand, greatly over-reacts to such terrorist attempts in stopping the violence, but causes unnessary destruction and death in retaliation. Either way you spin it, it's like two kids, one hits the other, the other hits back.. and both state, 'the other party started and their right". At some point in the ordeal, you have to step aside and say it's enough and tackle the problem from a different light. Something neither side has seriously done other than what was close to being done in the Oslo accords.
There hasn't been any chance of either side 'sticking' to an Israeli withdrawal and ceasefire, because no such withdrawal and ceasefire has taken place.
You say that the 'Palestinian leaders can't stop the terrorists'. Why is Israeli terrorism not mentioned in your post? You simply label it 'retaliation'. Either way, none of this has got anything whatsoever to do with why Israel refuses to end the occupation and why it's continuing to build more illegal settlements as we speak.
And the Oslo accords were a joke, as anyone who looks at what was on offer to the Palestinians can clearly see.
Byrnzie, you mentioned 1 instance where reparations were discussed which is recent, the rest are from WW2 or prior. Also, we can see they were "awarded", but were they actually paid out? Please post that, because that is the key factor.
Also, I did mention something derogatory on each side of the discussion. I mentioned about Israel's retaliations being excessive and unnecessary. Please stop trying to paint my comments are biased to a particular side. I honestly feel that both sides are well past the point of being justified in their action/reaction to the situation. Both sides are responsible for furthering this big mess and continue to make a long lasting peace settlement look more inconceivable than realistic.
CONservative governMENt
Our government is the potent, the omnipresent teacher. For good or for ill, it teaches the whole people by its example. Crime is contagious. If the government becomes a law-breaker, it breeds contempt for law; it invites every man to become a law unto himself; it invites anarchy. - Louis Brandeis
Byrnzie, you mentioned 1 instance where reparations were discussed which is recent, the rest are from WW2 or prior. Also, we can see they were "awarded", but were they actually paid out? Please post that, because that is the key factor.
You obviously didn't read the article properly. I suggest you read it again, carefully.
I honestly feel that both sides are well past the point of being justified in their action/reaction to the situation. Both sides are responsible for furthering this big mess and continue to make a long lasting peace settlement look more inconceivable than realistic.
So you think that the Palestinians are furthering the occupation and the continued settlement expansion? How so?
Byrnzie, you mentioned 1 instance where reparations were discussed which is recent, the rest are from WW2 or prior. Also, we can see they were "awarded", but were they actually paid out? Please post that, because that is the key factor.
in canada - we made reparations to chinese immigrants who were forced to pay a head tax ...
Comments
http://www.amazon.com/Ethnic-Cleansing-Palestine-Ilan-Pappe/dp/1851685553/ref=pd_bbs_sr_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1216339598&sr=8-1
I find many people read and "research" only what will make them feel better about their opinions...not the other way around. Myself included many times.
I've read the documentary record re:the occupation, the two-state settlement, the right of return, Israel's human rights abuses. It's no mystery. It's as clear as light.
Why, what 'challenging' book, or books, did you have in mind?
Actually, no book on this matter. I was really just wondering after I saw what other book you were reading.
Death in Gaza is a terrific documentary though. I think it does a pretty good job showing both sides...it's very sad to see though. Hate is learned...and the children there are soaking it all up.
As for your comment about being a fairy tale - in South Africa, after decades and decades of apartheid, they stopped it and began to try and adjust their society to become more integrated. They also setup "Truth and Reconsiliation trials" in which victims from atrocities could tell their stories in order to get them out in the open and create an atmosphere of understanding and healing. This is a real world example of how you could resolve this situation once a peace is made. Another real world example would be the Ireland/IRA problem which has been extemely successful. Simply offering critizism of one side or the other at this moment in time doesn't offer anything but bias of your own beliefs and your take on history. It's also unproductive to a solution.
Also, each side should do more to facilitate a solution - not sit back and hope other nations either pro-actively try to help or disband any type of progress. Trying to convince the world your either the victim or perpitrator of a crime (depending on how you view the situation) doesn't fix the problem or offer a solution.
Our government is the potent, the omnipresent teacher. For good or for ill, it teaches the whole people by its example. Crime is contagious. If the government becomes a law-breaker, it breeds contempt for law; it invites every man to become a law unto himself; it invites anarchy. - Louis Brandeis
http://www.myspace.com/brain_of_c
so what's your solution?
But one thing that is very obvious, just saying one side is wrong or more wrong than the other doesn't help and will never fix anything.
Our government is the potent, the omnipresent teacher. For good or for ill, it teaches the whole people by its example. Crime is contagious. If the government becomes a law-breaker, it breeds contempt for law; it invites every man to become a law unto himself; it invites anarchy. - Louis Brandeis
The only viable solution has already been presented and agreed upon by the international community - excluding the U.S. This is that a two-state settlement needs to be implemented. Unfortunately the U.S has continually used it's power of automatic veto to block such a settlement:
Beyond Chutzpah - Norman Finkelstein':
'For the past quarter Century, the international community has held to a consensus on how, basically, to resolve the Israel-Palestine conflict: a two-state settlement based on full Israeli withdrawal from the West Bank and Gaza and full recognition of Israel within it's pre-June 1967 borders...
...A 1989 General Assembly resolution, question of Palestine, effectively calling for a two-state settlement and "the withdrawal of Israel from the Palestinian territory occupied since 1967" passed 151 to 3, the only dissenting vote apart from those of the United States and Israel being cast by the island state of Dominica. Fifteen years later and notwithstanding sweeping geopolitical changes - an entire social system disapeared in the interim while many new states were born - the consensus continued to hold. A 2004 General Assembly resolution, peaceful settlement of the question of Palestine, that stresses "the necesity for a commitment to the vision of the two-state solution" and "the withdrawal of Israel from the Palestinian territory occupied since 1967" passed 160 to 6, the dissenting votes apart from the United States and Israel's being cast by Micronesia, the Marshall Islands, Palau, and Uganda.'
Firstly this has nothing to do with 'how you view the situation. The Israeli's are engaged in an ongoing, brutal, daily military occupation of Palsetinian land. This occupation doesn't cut two ways. It cuts one way. Have you ever considered what it must be like to live under a military occupation day in day out, where you are subject to check-points, random beatings, humiliation, targeted assassinations, house demolitions, evictions, sniper attacks, rocket attacks, limited, or no access to fuel, water, medicine, e.t.c?
There is only one solution to this conflict. Just as there was only one viable solution to the Algerian occupation by the French, or to the Apartheid regime in South Africa.
Michael Neumann:
'It is sometimes alleged that complete withdrawal from the occupied territories is "impracticable" because the facts on the ground are too deeply entrenched: Israeli settlements are just too extensive and important to uproot. One can hardly take this seriously. If it was "practicable" for hundreds of thousands of stateless Palestinians to leave their homes, why is this impracticable for half as many Israeli citizens in far more comfortable and peaceful circumstances? Throughout modern history, from the waves of U.S immigration to the peaceful post-World War II population transfers, there have been far greater shifts than this movement of a few miles. In many cases, if the settlers prefer, they can simply return to their homes in the United States. "It's impraticable" seems here a stand-in for "Aw, gee, these towns are too nice to let the Arabs have them".
The significance of the withdrawal alternative is not that it represents a just solution. Arguably, justice would require much more than that - not only the abolition of Jewish sovereignty in Israel, but a full right of return, with compensation, for the Palestinians, and the eviction of Jewish inhabitants occupying Palestinian property. But the existence of the withdrawal alternative effectively completes the case against Israel. It's willful and pointless rejection of that alternative places Israel decisively in the wrong. In the first place, Israel has a right of self defence, but it does not apply in the Occupied Territories. If the U.S invaded Jamaica and dotted it with settlements, neither the settlers nor the armed forces could invoke any right to defend themselves against the Jamaicans, any more than a robber who invaded your house. So it is with the Israeli's in the Occupied Territories. Their right of self-defense is their right to the least violent defensive alternative. Since withdrawal (perhaps followed by fortifying their own 1948 border) is by far their best and least violent defense, that is all they have a right to do.'
I mean, it's only $15million a day of American taxpayers money that is being used to support Israel's brutal and criminal race war, and ethnic cleansing in the Middle East.
Also, whilst we're on the subject of the ethnic cleansing of 1948 and of 'fairy tales'...
http://www.counterpunch.org/martin05132004.html
May 13, 2004
"We Created Terror Among the Arabs"
The Deir Yassin Massacre
By WILLIAM MARTIN
'On April 9, 1948, members of the underground Jewish terrorist group, the Irgun, or IZL, led by Menachem Begin, who was to become the Israeli prime minister in 1977, entered the peaceful Arab village of Deir Yassin, massacred 250 men, women, children and the elderly, and stuffed many of the bodies down wells. There were also reports of rapes and mutilations. The Irgun was joined by the Jewish terrorist group, the Stern Gang, led by Yitzhak Shamir, who subsequently succeeded Begin as prime minister of Israel in the early '80s, and also by the Haganah, the militia under the control of David Ben Gurian. The Irgun, the Stern Gang and the Haganah later joined to form the Israeli Defense Force. Their tactics have not changed.
The massacre at Deir Yassin was widely publicized by the terrorists and the numerous heaped corpses displayed to the media. In Jaffe, which was at the time 98 percent Arab, as well as in other Arab communities, speaker trucks drove through the streets warning the population to flee and threatening another Deir Yassin. Begin said at the time, "We created terror among the Arabs and all the villages around. In one blow, we changed the strategic situation."
From about 1938 on to the founding of Israel, Begin was the leader of the Irgun. That group regularly assassinated English soldiers in Palestine and frequently hung their booby-trapped bodies in public places. Under Begin, the Irgun blew up the King David Hotel in Jerusalem in 1946, killing 97 British civil servants. The Stern Gang, under Shamir, also assassinated the U.N. representative to Palestine, Count Bernadotte, in 1948.
But Deir Yassin was not the only massacre by the Israeli Defense Force. That army, under Moshe Dayan, took the unarmed and undefended village of al-Dawazyma, located in the Hebron hills, massacred 80 to 100 of its residents, and threw their bodies into pits. "The children were killed by breaking their heads with sticks ... The remaining Arabs were then sealed in houses, as the village was systematically razed ..." (Nur Masalha, The Historical Roots of the Palestinian Refugee Question).
We read further. According to Yitzhak Rabin's biography:
We walked outside, Ben-Gurion accompanying us. Alon repeated his question: "What is to be done with the population?" BG waved his hand in a gesture, which said: Drive them out! ... I agreed that it was essential to drive the inhabitants out.
Continuing the narrative, Ben-Gurion University historian Benny Morris writes in "Operation Dani and the Palestinian Exodus from Lydda and Ramle in 1948", Middle East Journal, 40
At 13.30 hours on 12 July [1948]... Lieutenant-Colonel Yitzhak Rabin, operation Dani head Operation, issued the following order: '1. The inhabitants of Lydda must be expelled quickly without attention to age. They should be directed to Beit Nabala,... Implement Immediately.' A similar order was issued at the same time to the Kiryati Brigade concerning the inhabitants of the neighboring town of Ramle, occupied by Kiryati troops that morning... On 12 and 13 July, the Yaftah brigades carried out their orders, expelling the 50-60,000 remaining inhabitants of and refugees camped in and around the two towns....
About noon on 13 July, Operation Dani HQ informed IDF General Staff/Operations: 'Lydda police fort has been captured. [The troops] are busy expelling the inhabitants.... Lydda's inhabitants were forced to walk eastward to the Arab legion lines; many of Ramle's inhabitants were ferried in trucks or buses. Clogging the roads... the tens of thousands of refugees marched, gradually shedding their worldly goods along the way. It was a hot summer day. The Arab chroniclers, such as Sheikh Muhammed Nimr al Khatib, claimed that hundreds of children died in the march, from dehydration and disease. One Israeli witness described the spoor: the refugee column 'to begin with [jettisoned] utensils and furniture and, in the end, bodies of men, women, and children.
There were many other such villages with Arabic names that have almost been expunged from memory--but not quite. These facts have always been known to some historians, however they have been consistently denied by the official Israeli histories, as, indeed, Israel has never taken any responsibility for the exodus of Palestinians from the land of the present state of Israel.
Within the last 10 to 20 years, however, there has been an exponential increase in historical studies of the origins of the state of Israel which have coincided with the release by Israel of many, but not all, of the historical and military archives. Ben-Gurion University historian Benny Morris, as well as others, have systematically mined these documents and found numerous instances of massacres, and, by the way, not one shred of evidence for the frequently repeated official Israeli lie that the Palestinians fled Palestine because the surrounding Arab states told them to.
In fact, according to UN estimates, which some say are conservative, 750,000 Palestinians fled the site of the present Jewish state in 1948. Those refugees and their descendents now number about 4.5 million and constitute the largest and longest standing refugee population in the world. Many live in squalid refugee camps distributed in the surrounding Arab states or in the West Bank or Gaza, many retain the titles to their land, recognized by the British before 1948 or the Ottomans before that , and many retain the keys to their front doors of their former homes in what is now Israel, whether or not those doors still exists.
The '67 War generated a second wave of about 300,000 refugees from the West Bank and Gaza who were either expelled through direct or psychological methods or fled the Israel aerial attacks on the territories which included the extensive use of napalm.
The reader is invited to read the Hagana's Plan D , which has been available in English since the 1960s and was a military strategy of 1948 that entailed the evacuation of the Palestinian population from the areas of a future Jewish state.
Those who invoke the suicide bombings against mostly Israeli civilians to infer the righteousness of the Israeli cause live in a twilight of psychic denial of an otherwise unambiguous historical record: the state of Israel was founded on terrorism and ethnic cleansing.
The suicide bombings inside Israel, the first of which only occurred in 1994, after 25 years of occupation, is only a side show. That is a symptom and long way from the heart of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
There will never be a solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict until Israel takes responsibility, under U.N. Resolution 194, calling for reparation of the Palestinian refugees, and recognizes the immense suffering it caused at that time. We need also to recognize the US is giving unqualified moral support to a state that is based on racial purity and one that is intrinsically expansionist.'
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deir_Yassin_massacre
'In 1969, the Israeli Foreign Ministry published a pamphlet “Background Notes on Current Themes: Deir Yassin” in English denying that there had been a massacre at Deir Yassin, and calling the story "part of a package of fairy tales, for export and home consumption". The pamphlet led to a series of derivative articles giving the same message, especially in America. Menachem Begin's Herut party disseminated a Hebrew translation in Israel, causing a widespread but largely non-public debate within the Israeli establishment. Several former leaders of the Hagannah demanded that the pamphlet be withdrawn on account of its inaccuracy, but the Foreign Ministry explained that "While our intention and desire is to maintain accuracy in our information, we sometimes are forced to deviate from this principle when we have no choice or alternative means to rebuff a propaganda assault or Arab psychological warfare." Yitzhak Levi, the 1948 leader of Hagannah Intelligence, wrote to Begin: "On behalf of the truth and the purity of arms of the Jewish soldier in the War of Independence, I see it as my duty to warn you against continuing to spread this untrue version about what happened in Deir Yassin to the Israeli public. Otherwise there will be no avoiding raising the matter publicly and you will be responsible." Eventually, the Foreign Ministry agreed to stop distributing the pamphlet, but it remains the source of many popular accounts.'
Also, I'm very familar with all the articles you're posted and I don't need them referenced as if I don't know the facts of the situation or the vary opinions of commentators. If I began posted pro-Israeli commentary - we'd be just like the two entrenched parties waring with one another... and it really doesn't solve a thing.
Our government is the potent, the omnipresent teacher. For good or for ill, it teaches the whole people by its example. Crime is contagious. If the government becomes a law-breaker, it breeds contempt for law; it invites every man to become a law unto himself; it invites anarchy. - Louis Brandeis
I wish you would post some pro-occupation commentary. I'd like to see how they justify it.
And if Israeli's don't like rockets being fired into their neighbourhoods - almost an irrelevance compared with what Palestinians are subjected to on a daily basis - then they should pressure their government into ending the occupation.
You mention that each particular group needs to facilitate a peace process. Well, this has already happened. The Palestinians support the international consensus calling for a two-state settlement, but this is rejected by Israel and the U.S. You see where we may have a problem?
This isn't just a 'tit for tat' situation, where 'both sides are equally at fault'. Anyone who says so is simply an apologist for the occupation and blind to the facts.
Did you think that the conflict in South Africa during the Apartheid era was merely a case of 'tit for tat' where 'both sides were equally at fault'? This is just a convenient way to wash your hands of the issue.
Still, you do live in America, so I can understand how you can be led to believe that this is a tit for tat situation where no easy outcome can be envisaged. I doubt that any mention has ever been made in your media of the documentary record, including America's continued veto of any chance at a two-state settlement.
People are lead to believe that this issue is so complex and that hostilities between Arabs and Jews are so ingrained, and enveloped in so much religious, historical, and ethnic tension that we really should just forget about it. This of course is bullshit. The issue is as clear as day, as the documentary record shows.
Take a look at the U.S veto's of U.N resolutions here: http://www.krysstal.com/democracy_whyusa03.html
Funny coincidence that most of the apologists for Israel and the occupation happen to live in America; the same country that supported the Apartheid regime in South Africa right up to the end.
If a peace process were to occur, Israel has to move back to the pre-67 borders.
Just in case you missed the article I posted above; I think this last section sums up the situation quite accurately:
http://www.counterpunch.org/martin05132004.html
'..Those who invoke the suicide bombings against mostly Israeli civilians to infer the righteousness of the Israeli cause live in a twilight of psychic denial of an otherwise unambiguous historical record: the state of Israel was founded on terrorism and ethnic cleansing.
The suicide bombings inside Israel, the first of which only occurred in 1994, after 25 years of occupation, is only a side show. That is a symptom and long way from the heart of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
There will never be a solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict until Israel takes responsibility, under U.N. Resolution 194, calling for reparation of the Palestinian refugees, and recognizes the immense suffering it caused at that time. We need also to recognize the US is giving unqualified moral support to a state that is based on racial purity and one that is intrinsically expansionist.'
Our government is the potent, the omnipresent teacher. For good or for ill, it teaches the whole people by its example. Crime is contagious. If the government becomes a law-breaker, it breeds contempt for law; it invites every man to become a law unto himself; it invites anarchy. - Louis Brandeis
how can Israel, a country that signed the Geneva Convention, dispute this argument?
The Palestinians have already given up enough.
So you think that for Israel to make reparations to the hundreds of thousands of people it displaced during it's ethnic cleansing campaigns equates with living in a fairy tale. O.k, I think now I understand where you're coming from.
You say I've posted biased articles and unrealistic expectations? Please elaborate. If anything in any of the articles I posted is innacurate, then feel free to correct them.
And I've offered a realistic solution. I provided details of the only viable solution to the conflict, and the one endorsed by the international community, excluding the U.S. This is the solution called for by the U.N Security Council, calling for a two-state settlement along the internationally recognised 1967 borders.
Why do you consider this to be unrealistic?
As for a generic agreement... as I stated before, anyone can make a list of demands for things both sides need or should do, but the main point is having each side stick to it. Each side in the dispute has issues that prolong and progress the conflict... the Palestian leaders and government can't stop the terrorists and even when there is a "truce", many aren't willing to meet the other half in the middle. Israel on the other hand, greatly over-reacts to such terrorist attempts in stopping the violence, but causes unnessary destruction and death in retaliation. Either way you spin it, it's like two kids, one hits the other, the other hits back.. and both state, 'the other party started and their right". At some point in the ordeal, you have to step aside and say it's enough and tackle the problem from a different light. Something neither side has seriously done other than what was close to being done in the Oslo accords.
Our government is the potent, the omnipresent teacher. For good or for ill, it teaches the whole people by its example. Crime is contagious. If the government becomes a law-breaker, it breeds contempt for law; it invites every man to become a law unto himself; it invites anarchy. - Louis Brandeis
War reparations:
History
Pre-World War I
Rome imposed large indemnities on Carthage after the First and Second Punic Wars.
The 'unequal treaties' signed by the Qing dynasty in China, Japan, Korea, Siam, Persia, Ottoman Empire, Afghanistan and other countries in the nineteenth century included payments of indemnities to the victorious Western powers, mainly United Kingdom, France and Russia, and later Japan.
After the Franco-Prussian War, according to conditions of Treaty of Frankfurt (May 10, 1871), France was obliged to pay a war indemnity of 5 billion gold francs in 5 years. German troops remained in parts of France until the last installment of the indemnity was paid in September 1873, before the obliged date.
World War I reparations
Russia agreed to pay reparations to the Central Powers when Russia exited the war in the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk (which was repudiated by the Bolshevik government eight months later). Germany agreed to pay reparations of 132 billion gold marks to the Triple Entente in the Treaty of Versailles. Bulgaria paid reparations of 2.25 billion gold francs (90 million pounds) to the Entente, according to Treaty of Neuilly.
World War II
Europe
After World War II, according to the Potsdam conference held between July 17 and August 2, 1945, Germany was to pay the Allies US$20 billion mainly in machinery, manufacturing plants. Reparations to the Soviet Union stopped in 1953. In addition, in accordance with the agreed upon policy of de-industrialisation and pastoralization of Germany, large numbers of civilian factories were dismantled for transport to France and the UK, or simply destroyed. Dismantling in the west stopped in 1950.
In the end, war victims in many countries were compensated by the property of Germans that were expelled after World War II. Beginning immediately after the German surrender and continuing for the next two years, the United States pursued a vigorous program to harvest all technological and scientific know-how as well as all patents in Germany. Historian John Gimbel, in his book Science Technology and Reparations: Exploitation and Plunder in Postwar Germany, states that the "intellectual reparations" taken by the U.S. and the UK amounted to close to $10 billion dollars. [1] German reparations were partly to be in the form of forced labor. By 1947, approximately 4,000,000 German POW's and civilians were used as forced labor (under various headings, such as "reparations labor" or "enforced labor") in the Soviet Union, France, the UK, Belgium and in Germany in U.S run "Military Labor Service Units".
According to the Paris Peace Treaties, 1947, Italy agreed to pay reparations of about US$125 million to Yugoslavia, US$105 million to Greece, US$100 million to the Soviet Union, US$25 million to Ethiopia, and US$5 million to Albania. Finland agreed to pay reparations of US$300 million to the Soviet Union. Hungary agreed to pay reparations of US$200 million to the Soviet Union, US$100 million to Czechoslovakia and Yugoslavia. Romania agreed to pay reparations of US$300 million to the Soviet Union. Bulgaria agreed to pay reparations of $50 million to Greece and $25 million to Yugoslavia. According to the articles of these treaties, the value of US$ was prescribed as 35 US dollars to one troy ounce of pure gold.
Japan
According to the Treaty of Peace with Japan and the bilateral agreements, Japan agreed to pay around 1 trillion and 30 billion yen. For countries that renounced any reparations from Japan, it agreed to pay indemnity and/or grants in accordance with bilateral agreements.
The government of the United States officially apologized for the Japanese American internment during World War II in the 1980s and paid reparations.
Recent war reparations
After the Gulf War, Iraq accepted United Nations Security Council resolution 687, which declared Iraq's financial liability for damage caused in its invasion of Kuwait. The United Nations Compensation Commission ("UNCC") was established, and US$350 billion in claims were filed by governments, corporations, and individuals. Funds for these payments were to come from a 30% share of Iraq's oil revenues from the oil for food program. It was not anticipated that US$350 billion would become available for total payment of all reparations claims, so several schedules of prioritization were created over the years. The UNCC says that its prioritization of claims by natural people, ahead of claims by governments and legal people, "marked a significant step in the evolution of international claims practice."
Payments under this reparations program continue; as of July 2004, the UNCC stated that it had actually distributed US$18.4 billion to claimants.
There have been attempts to codify reparations both in the Statutes of the International Criminal Court and the UN Basic Principles on the Right to a Remedy and Reparation for Victims.
Reparations For Palestinian Refugees
http://www.fmreview.org/FMRpdfs/FMR26/FMR2624.pdf
Reparations for the Palestinians - Edward Said (Audio File download)
http://ia351416.us.archive.org/1/items/dn1999-1221/dn1999-1221-1_64kb.mp3
There hasn't been any chance of either side 'sticking' to an Israeli withdrawal and ceasefire, because no such withdrawal and ceasefire has taken place.
You say that the 'Palestinian leaders can't stop the terrorists'. Why is Israeli terrorism not mentioned in your post? You simply label it 'retaliation'. Either way, none of this has got anything whatsoever to do with why Israel refuses to end the occupation and why it's continuing to build more illegal settlements as we speak.
And the Oslo accords were a joke, as anyone who looks at what was on offer to the Palestinians can clearly see.
Also, I did mention something derogatory on each side of the discussion. I mentioned about Israel's retaliations being excessive and unnecessary. Please stop trying to paint my comments are biased to a particular side. I honestly feel that both sides are well past the point of being justified in their action/reaction to the situation. Both sides are responsible for furthering this big mess and continue to make a long lasting peace settlement look more inconceivable than realistic.
Our government is the potent, the omnipresent teacher. For good or for ill, it teaches the whole people by its example. Crime is contagious. If the government becomes a law-breaker, it breeds contempt for law; it invites every man to become a law unto himself; it invites anarchy. - Louis Brandeis
You obviously didn't read the article properly. I suggest you read it again, carefully.
So you think that the Palestinians are furthering the occupation and the continued settlement expansion? How so?
in canada - we made reparations to chinese immigrants who were forced to pay a head tax ...