If I'm wrong about the reparations portion, then so be it. I just don't think it's a realistic goal in this scenario. This isn't a government's social policy being corrected nor an invading army taking over foreign lands like Iraq was, this is a long lived war between two very opposed groups - neither of which want to give the other any leeway. Which is why I feel reparations aren't realistic.
As for the comment about the Palestians futhering the occupation. Let me ask you this question, even if you believe what Israel has done and is doing is wrong, can you not recognize that the Palestian government and people can't or don't want to control these terror groups from continuing actions vs Israel or it's civillians? This is a fact. Palestian's aren't merely sitting around just being beat into place at Israeli pro-active military measures. As I stated previously, one side does something, the other retaliates... it becomes tit-for-tat and in such an exchange, neither side is justified. If Palestian people can't control these terror groups from ruining their peace or the process of getting peace, when have we seen them reach other to others for help? Or conversely, when has Israel ask or been outspoken about how to deal with this situation without furthering the bloodshed and hatred? Fact of the matter is that both sides are continuing to fuel the fire and don't do nearly enough to fix it - if they are serious about gaining a lasting peace.
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 I'm wrong about the reparations portion, then so be it. I just don't think it's a realistic goal in this scenario. This isn't a government's social policy being corrected nor an invading army taking over foreign lands like Iraq was, this is a long lived war between two very opposed groups - neither of which want to give the other any leeway. Which is why I feel reparations aren't realistic.
Are you serious? Are you saying that Israel didn't ethnically cleanse Palestine - which is something even mainstream Israeli historians now admit to - and steal millions in land and property?
And as far as reparations go, the U.N Security Council has declared that Israel needs to pay compensation to those dispossessed in 1948.
As for the comment about the Palestians futhering the occupation. Let me ask you this question, even if you believe what Israel has done and is doing is wrong, can you not recognize that the Palestian government and people can't or don't want to control these terror groups from continuing actions vs Israel or it's civillians? This is a fact. Palestian's aren't merely sitting around just being beat into place at Israeli pro-active military measures. As I stated previously, one side does something, the other retaliates... it becomes tit-for-tat and in such an exchange, neither side is justified. If Palestian people can't control these terror groups from ruining their peace or the process of getting peace, when have we seen them reach other to others for help? Or conversely, when has Israel ask or been outspoken about how to deal with this situation without furthering the bloodshed and hatred? Fact of the matter is that both sides are continuing to fuel the fire and don't do nearly enough to fix it - if they are serious about gaining a lasting peace.
I think you fail to understand that the Palestinians are living every minute, of every day of their lives under a brutal, repressive military occupation. This goes beyond one side doing something and the other retaliating.
And in answer to the rest of your post, I'll pose another question; how do you think Palestinian retaliation/resistance/terrorism - or whatever you choose to call it - justifies the occupation? In fact, what, if anything, does Palestinian violence have to do with Isfrael's occupation and decision to expand the settlements?
And just as you can sit here and claim "ethnic cleansing" wasn't it the opposite side during this conflict who were trying to whipe Israel off the map and push them to the sea in several wars they began? Each coin has two sides, and you're just calling heads...
As for your below question, I point to the IRA un-arming themselves to create a peace agreement which still exists today. Violence is not the answer. There are other forms of resistance and successful ways to gain international concensus, backing and improvements. It is very obvious, that when terrorists attack or do certain things, Israel responds with violence or similar. Whether you find the two unconnected is irrelevant. For Israel, they feel justified in reacted as such - so therefore, cutting out the violence will help stop Israel from doing such things in return. Once violence is stopped, a clearer and more serious talk can take place which would hopefully lead to a full peace for both sides. This is the basic and generic blueprint everyone has for the process. Anything else is considered distraction, counterproductive and against the grain.
Are you serious? Are you saying that Israel didn't ethnically cleanse Palestine - which is something even mainstream Israeli historians now admit to - and steal millions in land and property?
I think you fail to understand that the Palestinians are living every minute, of every day of their lives under a brutal, repressive military occupation. This goes beyond one side doing something and the other retaliating.
And in answer to the rest of your post, I'll pose another question; how do you think Palestinian retaliation/resistance/terrorism - or whatever you choose to call it - justifies the occupation? In fact, what, if anything, does Palestinian violence have to do with Isfrael's occupation and decision to expand the settlements?
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
As for the comment about the Palestians futhering the occupation. Let me ask you this question, even if you believe what Israel has done and is doing is wrong, can you not recognize that the Palestian government and people can't or don't want to control these terror groups from continuing actions vs Israel or it's civillians? This is a fact. Palestian's aren't merely sitting around just being beat into place at Israeli pro-active military measures. As I stated previously, one side does something, the other retaliates... it becomes tit-for-tat and in such an exchange, neither side is justified. If Palestian people can't control these terror groups from ruining their peace or the process of getting peace, when have we seen them reach other to others for help? Or conversely, when has Israel ask or been outspoken about how to deal with this situation without furthering the bloodshed and hatred? Fact of the matter is that both sides are continuing to fuel the fire and don't do nearly enough to fix it - if they are serious about gaining a lasting peace.
all this thinking shows is that all you need to do is push a people hard enuf so they fight back and you can then justify your actions ...
years of occupation and oppression finally blew over and they decided to fight back (terrorist groups) and now the world sees this as simply two children who need to sit in a corner and make up ...
it's obviously not that simple - and to claim that both sides are equally responsible for this conflict is ignoring key historical occurences ...
And just as you can sit here and claim "ethnic cleansing" wasn't it the opposite side during this conflict who were trying to whipe Israel off the map and push them to the sea in several wars they began? Each coin has two sides, and you're just calling heads...
No, this never happened. The Palestinians have never tried to wipe Israel off the map. They've never had the means to do so.
Although if you're referring to Egypt in 1967 then if you look at the facts you'll see that it was Israel that provoked the build-up to the war, and Israel that began the war.
If you're talking about the Yom Kippur war in 1973 then there was no intention of wiping Israel off the map, but simply an attempt to recapture land stolen by Israel in 1967.
As for your below question, I point to the IRA un-arming themselves to create a peace agreement which still exists today. Violence is not the answer. There are other forms of resistance and successful ways to gain international concensus, backing and improvements. It is very obvious, that when terrorists attack or do certain things, Israel responds with violence or similar. Whether you find the two unconnected is irrelevant. For Israel, they feel justified in reacted as such - so therefore, cutting out the violence will help stop Israel from doing such things in return. Once violence is stopped, a clearer and more serious talk can take place which would hopefully lead to a full peace for both sides. This is the basic and generic blueprint everyone has for the process. Anything else is considered distraction, counterproductive and against the grain.
So you're asking for Palestinians to lay down their arms but you make no such demands of the Israeli's?
And you still haven't answered my question with regards to how any of the violence from Palestinians in any way justifies, or neccesitates the occupation and the settlements.
As regards non-violence:
Michael Neumann: 'It is sometimes supposed that the Palestinians should have adopted nonviolent resistance as their strategy; even that their "failure" to do so is some dark indication of their character. Such opinions are voiced in apparent ignorance of the fact that the Palestinians have always used a mixture of violent and nonviolent responses - petitions, strikes, marches. This means in part that many Palestinians have never resisted by any but nonviolent means. The results have been less than impressive. In addition, the entire first intifada, brutally suppressed, used forms of "violence" - so juvenile and tentative - kids throwing rocks - that they hardly deserve, in the face of the massive professional army thrown against them, that description.
Nonviolence has never "worked" in any politically relevant sense of the word, and there is no reason to suppose it ever will. It has never, largely on it's own strength, achieved the political objectives of those who employed it.
There are supposedly three major examples of successful nonviolence: Gandhi's independence movement, the U.S civil rights movement, and the South African campaigns against Apartheid. None of them performed as advertised.
Gandhi's nonviolence can't have been successful, because there was nothing he would have called a success. Gandhi's priorities may have shifted over time: he said that, if he changed his mind from one week to the next, it was because he had learned something in between. But it seems fair to say that he wanted independence from British rule, a united India, and nonviolence itself, and end to civil or ethnic strife on the Indian subcontinent. What he got was India 1947: partition, and one of the most horrifying outbursts of bloodshed and cruelty in the whole bloody, cruel history of the postwar world. These consequences alone would be sufficient to count his project as a tragic failure.
What of independence itself? Historians might argue about it's causes, but I doubt any of them would attribute it primarily to Gandhi's campaign. The British began contemplating - admittedly with avrying degrees of sincerity - some measure of autonomy for India before Gandhi did anything, as early as 1918. A.J.P Taylor says that after World War I, the British were beginning to find India a liability, because India was once again producing it's own cotton and buying cheap textiles from Japan. Later India's strategic importance, while valued by many, became questioned by some who saw the oil of the Middle East and the Suez canal as far more important. By the end of the second world war, Britain's will to hold onto it's empire had pretty well crumbled, for reasons having little or nothing to do with nonviolence.
But this is the least important of the reasons why Gandhi cannot be said to have won independence for India. It was not his saintliness or the disruption he caused that impressed the British. What impressed them was that the country seemed (and was) about to erupt. The colonial authorities could see no way to stop it. A big factor was the terrorism - and this need not be a term of condemnation - quite regularly employed against the British. It was not enough to do much harm, but more than enough to warn them that India was becoming more trouble than it was worth. All things considered, the well-founded fear of violence had far more effect on British resolve than Gandhi ever did. He may have been a brilliant and creative political thinker, but he was not a victor.
How about the U.S civil rights movement? It would be difficult and ungenerous to argue that it wa unsuccessful, outrageous to claim that it was anything but a long and dangerous struggle. But when that it is conceded, the fact remains that Martin Luther King's civil rights movement was practically a federal government project. It's roots may have run deep, but it's impetus came from the Supreme Court decision of 1954 and from the subsequent attempts to integrate Central High School in Little Rock, Arkansas. The students who braved a hell to accomplish this goal are well remembered. Sometimes forgotten is the U.S government's almost spectacular determination to see that federal law was respected. Eisenhower sent, not the FBI, not a bunch of lawyers, but one of the best and proudest units of the U.S army, the 101st Airborne, to keep order in Little Rock and to see that the "federalized" Arkansas national guard stayed on the right side of the dispute. Though there was never any hint of an impending battle between federal and state military forces, the message couldn't have been clearer: we, the federal government, are prepared to do whatever it takes to enforce our will.
This message is an undercurrent throughout throughout the civil rights struggles of the 1950's and 1960's. Though Martin Luther King still had to overcome vicious, sometimes deadly resistance, he himself remarked that surprisingly few people were killed or seriously injured in the struggle. The surprise diminishes with the recollection that there was real federal muscle behind the nonviolent campaign. For a variety of motives, both virtuous and cynical, the U.S government wanted the South to be integrated and to recognize black civil rights. Nonviolence achieved it's ends largley because the violence of it's opponents was severely constrained. In 1962, Kennedy federalized the National Guard and sent in combat troops to quell segregationist rioting in Oxford, Mississippi. Johnson did the same thing in 1965, after anti-civil rights violence in Alabama. While any political movement has allies and benefits from available circumstances, having the might of the U.S goverment behind you goes far beyond the ordinary advantages accompanying political activity. The nonviolence of the U.S civil rights movement sets an example only for those who have the overwhelming armed force of a government on their side.
As for South Africa, it is a minor miracle of wishful thinking that anyone could suppose nonviolence played a major role in the collapse of Apartheid.
In the first place, the ANC was never a nonviolent movement but a movement that decided, on occasion and for practical reasons, to use nonviolent tactics...
Secondly, violence was used extensively throughout the course of the Anti-Apartheid struggle. It can be argued that the violence was essentially defensive, but that's not the point: nonviolence as a doctrine rejects the use of of violence in self-defense. To say that blacks used violence in self-defense or as resistance to oppression is to say, I think, that they were justified. It is certainly not to say that they were nonviolent.
Third, violence played a major role in causing both the boycott of South Africa and the demise of Apartheid....the boycott only aquired some teeth strating in 1977, after the Soweto riots in 1976, nd again in 1985-1986, after the township riots of 184-1985...
In short, it is a myth that nonviolence brought all the victories it is supposed to have in it's ledger. In fact, it brought about none of them.
How does this bear on the Israel-Palestine conflict? In that situation, success is far less likely than in the cases we have examined. Unlike Martin Luther King, the Palestinians are working against a state, not with one. Their opponents are far more ruthless than the British were in the twilight of the empire. Unlike the Indians and South Africans, they do not vastly outnumber their oppressors. And neither the Boers nor the English ever had anything like the moral authority Israel enjoys in the hearts and minds of Americans, much less it's enormous support network. Nonviolent protest might overcome Israel's prestige in ten or twenty years, but the Palestinians might well suppose they do not have that long.'
all this thinking shows is that all you need to do is push a people hard enuf so they fight back and you can then justify your actions ...
years of occupation and oppression finally blew over and they decided to fight back (terrorist groups) and now the world sees this as simply two children who need to sit in a corner and make up ...
it's obviously not that simple - and to claim that both sides are equally responsible for this conflict is ignoring key historical occurences ...
And just as you can sit here and claim "ethnic cleansing" wasn't it the opposite side during this conflict who were trying to whipe Israel off the map and push them to the sea in several wars they began? Each coin has two sides, and you're just calling heads...
Other than the fact that this still does not justify Israel's illegal occupation of Palestine...
The entire concept of "wipe Israel off the map" and "push them to the sea" is ridiculous and untrue.
When the Israelis began their ethnic cleansing and declared their independence, they were already in a war with Palestine. Violence and riots were already breaking out through the streets, and all those villages I listed on Page 1 were destroyed by the Israelis.
The later wars were not all "started by the Arabs." In fact, most, if not all, were started by the Israelis.
As for your below question, I point to the IRA un-arming themselves to create a peace agreement which still exists today. Violence is not the answer. There are other forms of resistance and successful ways to gain international concensus, backing and improvements. It is very obvious, that when terrorists attack or do certain things, Israel responds with violence or similar. Whether you find the two unconnected is irrelevant. For Israel, they feel justified in reacted as such - so therefore, cutting out the violence will help stop Israel from doing such things in return. Once violence is stopped, a clearer and more serious talk can take place which would hopefully lead to a full peace for both sides. This is the basic and generic blueprint everyone has for the process. Anything else is considered distraction, counterproductive and against the grain.
The Palestinians tried MANY nonviolent tactics before. The only problem is that you never heard about it through the news or anything. The Palestinians for years and years were trying to declare their independence, but the British would not allow them to. The Palestinians would send delegations to the UK, hold congressional meetings, etc, but no one would listen to them. Violence erupted due to Israeli aggression, not Palestinian aggression. After the Palestinians were dispossessed of their own land and forced to live under a brutal occupation, they had to fight back using guerrilla warfare tactics, something used in EVERY war, like the American Revolution, Nazi Occupation of France, French Occupation of Algeria, etc etc.
And by the way: Referring to Israel's violent tactics as "retaliation" is just plain ridiculous. Israel does NOT retaliate to "terrorist" attacks. Israel is and has been the aggressor in this conflict. If anything, these "terror" attacks (which are nothing compared to those of the Israelis) are actual retaliation methods -- that is, the Palestinians retaliated to the occupation.
To call terms and measures accepted by most countries as "unrealistic" is like saying "Nader would be a great president, but it's unrealistic that he would ever be elected" and thus vote for a "lesser of 2 evils" thing. The only reason this is "unrealistic" is because Israel - and the U.S. - have been able to exercise illegal activities without any country saying or doing anything about it. Once international pressure is actually applied to this case, mainly by civilians and citizens of those countries, then maybe we can make these terms "realistic".
If things were as cut and dry or merely "one-sided" as you're claiming them to be, this wouldn't be much of a discussion. It's very obvious you have your mind made up about who's in the right or wrong in this matter, so there's not much sense in rehashing each particular detail. Just as you post articles and commentary regarding each item which back one side, I can find "creditable" sources stating the flip side. Doesn't really solve much in the end though does it. Six in one hand, half-a-dozen in the other... you know? So we'll just have to agree to disagree.
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
Just as you post articles and commentary regarding each item which back one side, I can find "creditable" sources stating the flip side.
Go on then. You mentioned them earlier. I'd love to see these 'creditable' articles.
Bring 'em on!
Edit: I'll respond to any and all 'creditable' apologists for the criminal occupation tomorrow. I hope you include Alan Dershowitz as a creditable source. That would make my day.
Just because you can find articles and commentary that back your opinion, doesn't make your opinion correct. Same goes for anything posting something with a pro-Israeli spin. And to be honest, I don't plan on posting anything from the other side (even though it's very easy to find and do), because all you will do is argue it's validity or creditibility.... something anyone can do on this subject matter. I'm not taking sides in this matter, yet you keep trying to claim I am. I find your commentary more a reflection of revisionist history (pertaining to the wars), then realistic facts about the timeline of occurences in the past 50+ yrs.
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
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
Sorry for my poor spelling - I'm rushing and swamped at work!
haha ... no worries ... i'm not trying to be the spell-check grammar person ... i just found it amusing that there is this "serious" discussion amongst educated people and that word is being butchered!! ...
Yeah I know and I'm used to it, cause I always rush and don't spell check enough. That's one of the few things I'll actually apologize for when debating with people ..haha ;-)
haha ... no worries ... i'm not trying to be the spell-check grammar person ... i just found it amusing that there is this "serious" discussion amongst educated people and that word is being butchered!! ...
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
No, this never happened. The Palestinians have never tried to wipe Israel off the map. They've never had the means to do so.
Although if you're referring to Egypt in 1967 then if you look at the facts you'll see that it was Israel that provoked the build-up to the war, and Israel that began the war.
If you're talking about the Yom Kippur war in 1973 then there was no intention of wiping Israel off the map, but simply an attempt to recapture land stolen by Israel in 1967.
So you're asking for Palestinians to lay down their arms but you make no such demands of the Israeli's?
And you still haven't answered my question with regards to how any of the violence from Palestinians in any way justifies, or neccesitates the occupation and the settlements.
As regards non-violence:
Michael Neumann: 'It is sometimes supposed that the Palestinians should have adopted nonviolent resistance as their strategy; even that their "failure" to do so is some dark indication of their character. Such opinions are voiced in apparent ignorance of the fact that the Palestinians have always used a mixture of violent and nonviolent responses - petitions, strikes, marches. This means in part that many Palestinians have never resisted by any but nonviolent means. The results have been less than impressive. In addition, the entire first intifada, brutally suppressed, used forms of "violence" - so juvenile and tentative - kids throwing rocks - that they hardly deserve, in the face of the massive professional army thrown against them, that description.
Nonviolence has never "worked" in any politically relevant sense of the word, and there is no reason to suppose it ever will. It has never, largely on it's own strength, achieved the political objectives of those who employed it.
There are supposedly three major examples of successful nonviolence: Gandhi's independence movement, the U.S civil rights movement, and the South African campaigns against Apartheid. None of them performed as advertised.
Gandhi's nonviolence can't have been successful, because there was nothing he would have called a success. Gandhi's priorities may have shifted over time: he said that, if he changed his mind from one week to the next, it was because he had learned something in between. But it seems fair to say that he wanted independence from British rule, a united India, and nonviolence itself, and end to civil or ethnic strife on the Indian subcontinent. What he got was India 1947: partition, and one of the most horrifying outbursts of bloodshed and cruelty in the whole bloody, cruel history of the postwar world. These consequences alone would be sufficient to count his project as a tragic failure.
What of independence itself? Historians might argue about it's causes, but I doubt any of them would attribute it primarily to Gandhi's campaign. The British began contemplating - admittedly with avrying degrees of sincerity - some measure of autonomy for India before Gandhi did anything, as early as 1918. A.J.P Taylor says that after World War I, the British were beginning to find India a liability, because India was once again producing it's own cotton and buying cheap textiles from Japan. Later India's strategic importance, while valued by many, became questioned by some who saw the oil of the Middle East and the Suez canal as far more important. By the end of the second world war, Britain's will to hold onto it's empire had pretty well crumbled, for reasons having little or nothing to do with nonviolence.
But this is the least important of the reasons why Gandhi cannot be said to have won independence for India. It was not his saintliness or the disruption he caused that impressed the British. What impressed them was that the country seemed (and was) about to erupt. The colonial authorities could see no way to stop it. A big factor was the terrorism - and this need not be a term of condemnation - quite regularly employed against the British. It was not enough to do much harm, but more than enough to warn them that India was becoming more trouble than it was worth. All things considered, the well-founded fear of violence had far more effect on British resolve than Gandhi ever did. He may have been a brilliant and creative political thinker, but he was not a victor.
How about the U.S civil rights movement? It would be difficult and ungenerous to argue that it wa unsuccessful, outrageous to claim that it was anything but a long and dangerous struggle. But when that it is conceded, the fact remains that Martin Luther King's civil rights movement was practically a federal government project. It's roots may have run deep, but it's impetus came from the Supreme Court decision of 1954 and from the subsequent attempts to integrate Central High School in Little Rock, Arkansas. The students who braved a hell to accomplish this goal are well remembered. Sometimes forgotten is the U.S government's almost spectacular determination to see that federal law was respected. Eisenhower sent, not the FBI, not a bunch of lawyers, but one of the best and proudest units of the U.S army, the 101st Airborne, to keep order in Little Rock and to see that the "federalized" Arkansas national guard stayed on the right side of the dispute. Though there was never any hint of an impending battle between federal and state military forces, the message couldn't have been clearer: we, the federal government, are prepared to do whatever it takes to enforce our will.
This message is an undercurrent throughout throughout the civil rights struggles of the 1950's and 1960's. Though Martin Luther King still had to overcome vicious, sometimes deadly resistance, he himself remarked that surprisingly few people were killed or seriously injured in the struggle. The surprise diminishes with the recollection that there was real federal muscle behind the nonviolent campaign. For a variety of motives, both virtuous and cynical, the U.S government wanted the South to be integrated and to recognize black civil rights. Nonviolence achieved it's ends largley because the violence of it's opponents was severely constrained. In 1962, Kennedy federalized the National Guard and sent in combat troops to quell segregationist rioting in Oxford, Mississippi. Johnson did the same thing in 1965, after anti-civil rights violence in Alabama. While any political movement has allies and benefits from available circumstances, having the might of the U.S goverment behind you goes far beyond the ordinary advantages accompanying political activity. The nonviolence of the U.S civil rights movement sets an example only for those who have the overwhelming armed force of a government on their side.
As for South Africa, it is a minor miracle of wishful thinking that anyone could suppose nonviolence played a major role in the collapse of Apartheid.
In the first place, the ANC was never a nonviolent movement but a movement that decided, on occasion and for practical reasons, to use nonviolent tactics...
Secondly, violence was used extensively throughout the course of the Anti-Apartheid struggle. It can be argued that the violence was essentially defensive, but that's not the point: nonviolence as a doctrine rejects the use of of violence in self-defense. To say that blacks used violence in self-defense or as resistance to oppression is to say, I think, that they were justified. It is certainly not to say that they were nonviolent.
Third, violence played a major role in causing both the boycott of South Africa and the demise of Apartheid....the boycott only aquired some teeth strating in 1977, after the Soweto riots in 1976, nd again in 1985-1986, after the township riots of 184-1985...
In short, it is a myth that nonviolence brought all the victories it is supposed to have in it's ledger. In fact, it brought about none of them.
How does this bear on the Israel-Palestine conflict? In that situation, success is far less likely than in the cases we have examined. Unlike Martin Luther King, the Palestinians are working against a state, not with one. Their opponents are far more ruthless than the British were in the twilight of the empire. Unlike the Indians and South Africans, they do not vastly outnumber their oppressors. And neither the Boers nor the English ever had anything like the moral authority Israel enjoys in the hearts and minds of Americans, much less it's enormous support network. Nonviolent protest might overcome Israel's prestige in ten or twenty years, but the Palestinians might well suppose they do not have that long.'
can you please let me know who this writer is and maybe put some reference to where we can find him on the web.
People demand freedom of speech to make up for the freedom of thought which they avoid."
- Soren Aabye Kierkegaard (1813-1855)
If you haven't got anything nice to say about anybody, come sit next to me."
- Alice Roosevelt Longworth (1884-1980)
heads up, contradictions to a bunch of assumptions made by outlaw and byrnzie in just the first 2/3 pages of this thread:
"In the 1830s Egypt conquered Palestine and made some minor improvements and many Egyptians, in particular soldiers, settled there. It was however during this period that the Jews of Safed were massacred in 1831 by Druzes. Safed was resettled with Kurds and Algerians. This was followed in 1837 by earthquakes in Safed and Tiberias. In 1838 Palestine was given back to the Turks. However, with the advent of early Zionism, just prior to the outbreak of World War I in 1914, the Jews had become a small majority in the central Judea region. Many were not Ottoman citizens and were expelled to Egypt at the time that war was declared."
So as early as 1830 muslims are slaughtering peaceful settled Jews. And rather then provide sanctuary for those that lived there, the empire tosses them all out of there homes in 1914. Seems like most of them just came back 30 years later and wanted what was there's in Judea back.
"The really important thing is not to live, but to live well. And to live well meant, along with more enjoyable things in life, to live according to your principles."
— Socrates
heads up, contradictions to a bunch of assumptions made by outlaw and byrnzie in just the first 2/3 pages of this thread:
"In the 1830s Egypt conquered Palestine and made some minor improvements and many Egyptians, in particular soldiers, settled there. It was however during this period that the Jews of Safed were massacred in 1831 by Druzes. Safed was resettled with Kurds and Algerians. This was followed in 1837 by earthquakes in Safed and Tiberias. In 1838 Palestine was given back to the Turks. However, with the advent of early Zionism, just prior to the outbreak of World War I in 1914, the Jews had become a small majority in the central Judea region. Many were not Ottoman citizens and were expelled to Egypt at the time that war was declared."
So as early as 1830 muslims are slaughtering peaceful settled Jews. And rather then provide sanctuary for those that lived there, the empire tosses them all out of there homes in 1914. Seems like most of them just came back 30 years later and wanted what was there's in Judea back.
Well you've basically proved my point so I thank you.
After reading this you have to see there is no good guy/ bad guy in this issue.
We should be working for a peaceful resolution not who's to blame the violence in Israel.
10/31/2000 (****)
6/7/2003 (***1/2)
7/9/2006 (****1/2)
7/13/2006 (**** )
4/10/2008 EV Solo (****1/2)
6/25/2008 MSG II (*****)
10/1/2009 LA II (****)
10/6/2009 LA III (***** Cornell!!!)
Just because you can find articles and commentary that back your opinion, doesn't make your opinion correct.
Yes it does.
If I provide U.N reports and details of U.N resolutions then they are indisputable.
The same goes with Human rights reports o Israeli Human rights abuses from credible sources such as 'Human Rights Watch' and 'Amnesty International'.
They are correct because they are factual.
if the palestinians put down their weapons, there would be no more war...
if the israelis put down their weapons, there would be no more israel...
Not true.
And I notice that you make no mention of the occupation, as if that isn't the cruz of the matter. But then I suppose sounbites give you the ability to avoid mentioning what is relevant.
heads up, contradictions to a bunch of assumptions made by outlaw and byrnzie in just the first 2/3 pages of this thread:
"In the 1830s Egypt conquered Palestine and made some minor improvements and many Egyptians, in particular soldiers, settled there. It was however during this period that the Jews of Safed were massacred in 1831 by Druzes. Safed was resettled with Kurds and Algerians. This was followed in 1837 by earthquakes in Safed and Tiberias. In 1838 Palestine was given back to the Turks. However, with the advent of early Zionism, just prior to the outbreak of World War I in 1914, the Jews had become a small majority in the central Judea region. Many were not Ottoman citizens and were expelled to Egypt at the time that war was declared."
So as early as 1830 muslims are slaughtering peaceful settled Jews. And rather then provide sanctuary for those that lived there, the empire tosses them all out of there homes in 1914. Seems like most of them just came back 30 years later and wanted what was there's in Judea back.
1. The first part of the paragraph you quoted reads: 'Jewish immigration to Palestine, particularly to the "four sacred cities" (Jerusalem, Safed, Tiberias and Hebron) which already had significant Jewish communities, increased particularly towards the end of Ottoman rule; Jews of European origin lived mostly off donations from off-country, while many Sephardic Jews found themselves a trade. Many Circassians and Bosnian Muslims were settled in the north of Palestine by the Ottomans in the early 19th Century...'
2. The Druze aren't Palestinians.
3. The Druze aren't Muslims.
4. Palestinians lived in peace with Jews for hundreds of years.
5. What sanctuary did Jews need in 1914?
6. No part of the land belonged to Jews. It belonged to the Ottoman Empire 'who ruled the area through local pontentates', having a minimal influence on the daily lives of the Arab inhabitants.
7. What does any of this have to do with the illegal Israeli occupation of the West Bank and Gaza, and even of the illegitimacy of the Zionist enterprise in the early part of the 20th century and the ethnic cleansing that resulted?
And you haven't made any 'contradictions to a bunch of assumptions' by myself or Outlaw because no assumptions were made by either one of us.
Still, nice try.
Well you've basically proved my point so I thank you.
Firstly, can you explain to me what 'point' you had?
And secondly, can you explain how his Wickepedia quote re: 'Ottoman rule in the area of Palestine', proved your 'point'?
I wonder if similar discussions as this took place during the death throes of the Apartheid regime? I mean, I know that the U.S continued to support the Apartheid regime right up to the end, so I wonder if - like the aplogists for Israel here - there were people who used similar arguments and tactics to support Apartheid; i.e, the tendency to try and complicate the issue with references to deepest, darkest history, supposedly ingrained ethnic hostility, and mysterious religious dogma that we can't ever hope to unravel?
I wonder if the apologists for Apartheid also attempted to claim that the whites had a legitimate right to the area and that therefore the crimes of Apartheid were justified?
What about the point that the Jews always had a connections to the land?
Michael Neumann:
'In the case of a Jewish claim to Palestine, the claims are themselves dubious. Here it is not necessary to have decided on a truth, which may elude researchers forever. It is enough to show that there is serious controversy, and that is easily done. One account of recent findings can be found in 'The Bible Unearthed: Archeology's New Vision of Ancient Israel and the origin of It's sacred Texts'. It's authors are Israel Finkelstein, director of an archeological institute at Tel Aviv Uuniversity, and Neil Asher Silberman, director of a Belgian archeological institute and a contributing editor to 'Archeology' magazine. These writers display no political agenda and repeat to the point of saturation their admiration and respect for the Bible. Asher and Silberman introduce their work with the claim that:
"The historical sage contained in the Bible - from Abraham's encounter with God and his journey to Canaan, to Moses's delverance of the children of Israe from bondage, to the rise and fall of the Kingdom of Israel and Judah - was not a miraculous revelation, but a brilliant product of the human imagination."
This is the authors' exceedingly polite way of saying that the Biblical accounts are sometimes nonsense, sometimes deliberate lies, exaggerations, and distortions. The status of the Biblical Kingdom is particularly relevant to the Jewish claims to Palestine. One of Asher and Silberman's more devastating findings is that:
"The Biblical borders of the land of Israel as outlined in the book of Joshua had seemingly assumed a sacred inviolability...the Bible pictures a stormy but basically continuous Israelite occupation of the land of Israel all the way to the Assyrian conquest. But a reexamination of the archelogical evidence...points to a period of a few decades [in which Israel existed], between around 835-800B.C.E..."
In other words, they find that the "Great" Jewish Kingdom existed in something like their fabled extent for a tiny fraction of the period traditionally alleged. Even then, their boundaries nver came close to the "Greater Israel" of contemporary Jewish fundamentalism. The rest of the time. Judah and Israel are thought to have been, for the most part, very primitive entities, devoid of literate culture or substantial administrative structure, extending to only a small, landlocked part of what is now called Palestine. The great structures of the Biblical era are, all of them, attributed to Canaanite cultures. Moreover, the inhabitants of Biblical Israel and Judah seem to have, for most of the time and for the most part, practitioners of Canaanite religions rather than Judaism, or of various syncretic cults. These "Israelites" were not, that is, "Jewish" in one important sense of the term. The authors refer to the Biblical Kingdom at it existed as a "a multi-ethnic society." The idea that such a past could validate a Jewish historical claim to Palestine is simply ludicrous, even if it could be shown - which it cannot - that today's Jews are in some legal sense, heirs to the ancient Israelite Kingdoms.'
Could the same exact be said about the fact of which group is actually entitled to the land of Palestine/Israel? Which is exactly why this entire issue is debated so much.
Lastly, I do not doubt some of the details in HRW or AI reports, but I because a report says a specific fact or detail of an order, does not mean you can automatically make a leap to equate that fact to encompass the entire issue - something you are doing. Anyone can post specific facts, stories or details to back their position or belief, and of course you will then say - look they're reiterating my belief or position in the dicussion. But it is you that take these instances and facts and make it into a larger agenda, story or purpose - not the place you're actually getting the facts from. Doing this is merely spinning reality to fit your mold, compared to just viewing reality as it is.
I wonder if similar discussions as this took place during the death throes of the Apartheid regime? I mean, I know that the U.S continued to support the Apartheid regime right up to the end, so I wonder if - like the aplogists for Israel here - there were people who used similar arguments and tactics to support Apartheid; i.e, the tendency to try and complicate the issue with references to deepest, darkest history, supposedly ingrained ethnic hostility, and mysterious religious dogma that we can't ever hope to unravel?
I wonder if the apologists for Apartheid also attempted to claim that the whites had a legitimate right to the area and that therefore the crimes of Apartheid were justified?
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
Could the same exact be said about the fact of which group is actually entitled to the land of Palestine/Israel? Which is exactly why this entire issue is debated so much.
Lastly, I do not doubt some of the details in HRW or AI reports, but I because a report says a specific fact or detail of an order, does not mean you can automatically make a leap to equate that fact to encompass the entire issue - something you are doing. Anyone can post specific facts, stories or details to back their position or belief, and of course you will then say - look they're reiterating my belief or position in the dicussion. But it is you that take these instances and facts and make it into a larger agenda, story or purpose - not the place you're actually getting the facts from. Doing this is merely spinning reality to fit your mold, compared to just viewing reality as it is.
The international community and the U.N Security has deemed the occupation and the settlements to be illegal under international law. Human Rights Watch, Amnesty and the U.N accuse Israel of war crimes and breaching the Geneva convention.
'The International Laws of Belligerent Occupation'
Francis A. Boyle is a professor of international law at the University of Chicago and a Defence Lawyer at the International Court of Justice. He received his Master’s Degree and PhD in Political Science, as well as his Doctor of Law from Harvard University. He is the author of numerous books including, The Future of International Law and American Foreign Policy, World Politics and International Law, Defending Civil Resistance Under International Law, and Palestine, Palestinians, and International Law.
by Professor Francis Boyle
Professor of International Law, University of Illinois
Belligerent occupation is governed by The Hague Regulations of 1907, as well as by the Fourth Geneva Convention of 1949, and the customary laws of belligerent occupation. Security Council Resolution 1322 (2000), paragraph 3 continued: “Calls upon Israel, the occupying Power, to abide scrupulously by its legal obligations and its responsibilities under the Fourth Geneva Convention relative to the Protection of Civilian Persons in a Time of War of 12 August 1949;...” Again, the Security Council vote was 14 to 0, becoming obligatory international law.
The Fourth Geneva Convention applies to the West Bank, to the Gaza Strip, and to the entire City of Jerusalem, in order to protect the Palestinians living there. The Palestinian People living in this Palestinian Land are “protected persons” within the meaning of the Fourth Geneva Convention. All of their rights are sacred under international law.
There are 149 substantive articles of the Fourth Geneva Convention that protect the rights of every one of these Palestinians living in occupied Palestine. The Israeli Government is currently violating, and has since 1967 been violating, almost each and every one of these sacred rights of the Palestinian People recognized by the Fourth Geneva Convention. Indeed, violations of the Fourth Geneva Convention are war crimes.
So this is not a symmetrical situation. As matters of fact and of law, the gross and repeated violations of Palestinian rights by the Israeli army and Israeli settlers living illegally in occupied Palestine constitute war crimes. Conversely, the Palestinian People are defending themselves and their Land and their Homes against Israeli war crimes and Israeli war criminals, both military and civilian.
The U.N. Human Rights Commission
Indeed, it is far more serious than that. On 19 October 2000 a Special Session of the U.N. Commission on Human Rights adopted a Resolution set forth in U.N. Document E/CN.4/S-5/L.2/Rev. 1, “Condemning the provocative visit to al Aqsa Haram Sharif on 28 September 2000 by Ariel Sharon, the Likud party leader, which triggered the tragic events that followed in occupied East Jerusalem and the other occupied Palestinian territories, resulting in a high number of deaths and injuries among Palestinian civilians.” The U.N. Human Rights Commission then said it was “[g]ravely concerned” about several different types of atrocities inflicted by Israel upon the Palestinian People, which it denominated “war crimes, flagrant violations of international humanitarian law and crimes against humanity.”
In operative paragraph 1 of its 19 October 2000 Resolution, the U.N. Human Rights Commission then: “Strongly condemns the disproportionate and indiscriminate use of force in violation of international humanitarian law by the Israeli occupying Power against innocent and unarmed Palestinian civilians...including many children, in the occupied territories, which constitutes a war crime and a crime against humanity;...” And in paragraph 5 of its 19 October 2000 Resolution, the U.N. Human Rights Commission: “Also affirms that the deliberate and systematic killing of civilians and children by the Israeli occupying authorities constitutes a flagrant and grave violation of the right to life and also constitutes a crime against humanity;...” Article 68 of the United Nations Charter had expressly required the U.N.’s Economic and Social Council to “set up” this Commission “for the promotion of human rights.”
Israel’s War Crimes against Palestinians
We all have a general idea of what a war crime is, so I am not going to elaborate upon that term here. But there are different degrees of heinousness for war crimes. In particular are the more serious war crimes denominated “grave breaches” of the Fourth Geneva Convention. Since the start of the Al Aqsa Intifada, the world has seen those inflicted every day by Israel against the Palestinian People living in occupied Palestine: e.g., wilful killing of Palestinian civilians by the Israeli army and Israel’s illegal paramilitary settlers. These Israeli “grave breaches” of the Fourth Geneva Convention mandate universal prosecution for their perpetrators, whether military or civilian, as well as prosecution for their commanders, whether military or civilian, including Israel’s political leaders.
Israel’s Crimes Against Humanity against Palestinians
But I want to focus for a moment on Israel’s “crime against humanity” against the Palestinian People — as determined by the U.N. Human Rights Commission itself, set up pursuant to the requirements of the United Nations Charter. What is a “crime against humanity”? This concept goes all the way back to the Nuremberg Charter of 1945 for the trial of the major Nazi war criminals. And in the Nuremberg Charter of 1945, drafted by the United States Government, there was created and inserted a new type of international crime specifically intended to deal with the Nazi persecution of the Jewish People.
The paradigmatic example of a “crime against humanity” is what Hitler and the Nazis did to the Jewish People. This is where the concept of crime against humanity came from. And this is what the U.N. Human Rights Commission determined that Israel is currently doing to the Palestinian People: Crimes against humanity. Legally, just like what Hitler and the Nazis did to the Jews.
The Precursor to Genocide
Moreover, a crime against humanity is the direct historical and legal precursor to the international crime of genocide as defined by the 1948 Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide. The theory here was that what Hitler and the Nazis did to the Jewish People required a special international treaty that would codify and universalise the Nuremberg concept of “crime against humanity.” And that treaty ultimately became the 1948 Genocide Convention.
In fairness, you will note that the U.N. Human Rights Commission did not go so far as to condemn Israel for committing genocide against the Palestinian People. But it has condemned Israel for committing crimes against humanity, which is the direct precursor to genocide. And I submit that if something is not done quite soon by the American People and the International Community to stop Israeli war crimes and crimes against humanity against the Palestinian People, it could very well degenerate into genocide, if Israel is not there already. And in this regard, Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon is what international lawyers call a genocidaire—one who has already committed genocide in the past.'
Lastly, I do not doubt some of the details in HRW or AI reports, but I because a report says a specific fact or detail of an order, does not mean you can automatically make a leap to equate that fact to encompass the entire issue - something you are doing. Anyone can post specific facts, stories or details to back their position or belief, and of course you will then say - look they're reiterating my belief or position in the dicussion. But it is you that take these instances and facts and make it into a larger agenda, story or purpose - not the place you're actually getting the facts from. Doing this is merely spinning reality to fit your mold, compared to just viewing reality as it is.
Actually, this post makes no sense to me. All I can gather from it is that you're criticising me for backing my arguments with facts. Seems like a pretty thin case you have there for supporting the occupation.
Comments
As for the comment about the Palestians futhering the occupation. Let me ask you this question, even if you believe what Israel has done and is doing is wrong, can you not recognize that the Palestian government and people can't or don't want to control these terror groups from continuing actions vs Israel or it's civillians? This is a fact. Palestian's aren't merely sitting around just being beat into place at Israeli pro-active military measures. As I stated previously, one side does something, the other retaliates... it becomes tit-for-tat and in such an exchange, neither side is justified. If Palestian people can't control these terror groups from ruining their peace or the process of getting peace, when have we seen them reach other to others for help? Or conversely, when has Israel ask or been outspoken about how to deal with this situation without furthering the bloodshed and hatred? Fact of the matter is that both sides are continuing to fuel the fire and don't do nearly enough to fix it - if they are serious about gaining a lasting peace.
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
Are you serious? Are you saying that Israel didn't ethnically cleanse Palestine - which is something even mainstream Israeli historians now admit to - and steal millions in land and property?
And as far as reparations go, the U.N Security Council has declared that Israel needs to pay compensation to those dispossessed in 1948.
I think you fail to understand that the Palestinians are living every minute, of every day of their lives under a brutal, repressive military occupation. This goes beyond one side doing something and the other retaliating.
And in answer to the rest of your post, I'll pose another question; how do you think Palestinian retaliation/resistance/terrorism - or whatever you choose to call it - justifies the occupation? In fact, what, if anything, does Palestinian violence have to do with Isfrael's occupation and decision to expand the settlements?
As for your below question, I point to the IRA un-arming themselves to create a peace agreement which still exists today. Violence is not the answer. There are other forms of resistance and successful ways to gain international concensus, backing and improvements. It is very obvious, that when terrorists attack or do certain things, Israel responds with violence or similar. Whether you find the two unconnected is irrelevant. For Israel, they feel justified in reacted as such - so therefore, cutting out the violence will help stop Israel from doing such things in return. Once violence is stopped, a clearer and more serious talk can take place which would hopefully lead to a full peace for both sides. This is the basic and generic blueprint everyone has for the process. Anything else is considered distraction, counterproductive and against the grain.
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
all this thinking shows is that all you need to do is push a people hard enuf so they fight back and you can then justify your actions ...
years of occupation and oppression finally blew over and they decided to fight back (terrorist groups) and now the world sees this as simply two children who need to sit in a corner and make up ...
it's obviously not that simple - and to claim that both sides are equally responsible for this conflict is ignoring key historical occurences ...
No, this never happened. The Palestinians have never tried to wipe Israel off the map. They've never had the means to do so.
Although if you're referring to Egypt in 1967 then if you look at the facts you'll see that it was Israel that provoked the build-up to the war, and Israel that began the war.
If you're talking about the Yom Kippur war in 1973 then there was no intention of wiping Israel off the map, but simply an attempt to recapture land stolen by Israel in 1967.
So you're asking for Palestinians to lay down their arms but you make no such demands of the Israeli's?
And you still haven't answered my question with regards to how any of the violence from Palestinians in any way justifies, or neccesitates the occupation and the settlements.
As regards non-violence:
Michael Neumann:
'It is sometimes supposed that the Palestinians should have adopted nonviolent resistance as their strategy; even that their "failure" to do so is some dark indication of their character. Such opinions are voiced in apparent ignorance of the fact that the Palestinians have always used a mixture of violent and nonviolent responses - petitions, strikes, marches. This means in part that many Palestinians have never resisted by any but nonviolent means. The results have been less than impressive. In addition, the entire first intifada, brutally suppressed, used forms of "violence" - so juvenile and tentative - kids throwing rocks - that they hardly deserve, in the face of the massive professional army thrown against them, that description.
Nonviolence has never "worked" in any politically relevant sense of the word, and there is no reason to suppose it ever will. It has never, largely on it's own strength, achieved the political objectives of those who employed it.
There are supposedly three major examples of successful nonviolence: Gandhi's independence movement, the U.S civil rights movement, and the South African campaigns against Apartheid. None of them performed as advertised.
Gandhi's nonviolence can't have been successful, because there was nothing he would have called a success. Gandhi's priorities may have shifted over time: he said that, if he changed his mind from one week to the next, it was because he had learned something in between. But it seems fair to say that he wanted independence from British rule, a united India, and nonviolence itself, and end to civil or ethnic strife on the Indian subcontinent. What he got was India 1947: partition, and one of the most horrifying outbursts of bloodshed and cruelty in the whole bloody, cruel history of the postwar world. These consequences alone would be sufficient to count his project as a tragic failure.
What of independence itself? Historians might argue about it's causes, but I doubt any of them would attribute it primarily to Gandhi's campaign. The British began contemplating - admittedly with avrying degrees of sincerity - some measure of autonomy for India before Gandhi did anything, as early as 1918. A.J.P Taylor says that after World War I, the British were beginning to find India a liability, because India was once again producing it's own cotton and buying cheap textiles from Japan. Later India's strategic importance, while valued by many, became questioned by some who saw the oil of the Middle East and the Suez canal as far more important. By the end of the second world war, Britain's will to hold onto it's empire had pretty well crumbled, for reasons having little or nothing to do with nonviolence.
But this is the least important of the reasons why Gandhi cannot be said to have won independence for India. It was not his saintliness or the disruption he caused that impressed the British. What impressed them was that the country seemed (and was) about to erupt. The colonial authorities could see no way to stop it. A big factor was the terrorism - and this need not be a term of condemnation - quite regularly employed against the British. It was not enough to do much harm, but more than enough to warn them that India was becoming more trouble than it was worth. All things considered, the well-founded fear of violence had far more effect on British resolve than Gandhi ever did. He may have been a brilliant and creative political thinker, but he was not a victor.
How about the U.S civil rights movement? It would be difficult and ungenerous to argue that it wa unsuccessful, outrageous to claim that it was anything but a long and dangerous struggle. But when that it is conceded, the fact remains that Martin Luther King's civil rights movement was practically a federal government project. It's roots may have run deep, but it's impetus came from the Supreme Court decision of 1954 and from the subsequent attempts to integrate Central High School in Little Rock, Arkansas. The students who braved a hell to accomplish this goal are well remembered. Sometimes forgotten is the U.S government's almost spectacular determination to see that federal law was respected. Eisenhower sent, not the FBI, not a bunch of lawyers, but one of the best and proudest units of the U.S army, the 101st Airborne, to keep order in Little Rock and to see that the "federalized" Arkansas national guard stayed on the right side of the dispute. Though there was never any hint of an impending battle between federal and state military forces, the message couldn't have been clearer: we, the federal government, are prepared to do whatever it takes to enforce our will.
This message is an undercurrent throughout throughout the civil rights struggles of the 1950's and 1960's. Though Martin Luther King still had to overcome vicious, sometimes deadly resistance, he himself remarked that surprisingly few people were killed or seriously injured in the struggle. The surprise diminishes with the recollection that there was real federal muscle behind the nonviolent campaign. For a variety of motives, both virtuous and cynical, the U.S government wanted the South to be integrated and to recognize black civil rights. Nonviolence achieved it's ends largley because the violence of it's opponents was severely constrained. In 1962, Kennedy federalized the National Guard and sent in combat troops to quell segregationist rioting in Oxford, Mississippi. Johnson did the same thing in 1965, after anti-civil rights violence in Alabama. While any political movement has allies and benefits from available circumstances, having the might of the U.S goverment behind you goes far beyond the ordinary advantages accompanying political activity. The nonviolence of the U.S civil rights movement sets an example only for those who have the overwhelming armed force of a government on their side.
As for South Africa, it is a minor miracle of wishful thinking that anyone could suppose nonviolence played a major role in the collapse of Apartheid.
In the first place, the ANC was never a nonviolent movement but a movement that decided, on occasion and for practical reasons, to use nonviolent tactics...
Secondly, violence was used extensively throughout the course of the Anti-Apartheid struggle. It can be argued that the violence was essentially defensive, but that's not the point: nonviolence as a doctrine rejects the use of of violence in self-defense. To say that blacks used violence in self-defense or as resistance to oppression is to say, I think, that they were justified. It is certainly not to say that they were nonviolent.
Third, violence played a major role in causing both the boycott of South Africa and the demise of Apartheid....the boycott only aquired some teeth strating in 1977, after the Soweto riots in 1976, nd again in 1985-1986, after the township riots of 184-1985...
In short, it is a myth that nonviolence brought all the victories it is supposed to have in it's ledger. In fact, it brought about none of them.
How does this bear on the Israel-Palestine conflict? In that situation, success is far less likely than in the cases we have examined. Unlike Martin Luther King, the Palestinians are working against a state, not with one. Their opponents are far more ruthless than the British were in the twilight of the empire. Unlike the Indians and South Africans, they do not vastly outnumber their oppressors. And neither the Boers nor the English ever had anything like the moral authority Israel enjoys in the hearts and minds of Americans, much less it's enormous support network. Nonviolent protest might overcome Israel's prestige in ten or twenty years, but the Palestinians might well suppose they do not have that long.'
Well put.
The entire concept of "wipe Israel off the map" and "push them to the sea" is ridiculous and untrue.
When the Israelis began their ethnic cleansing and declared their independence, they were already in a war with Palestine. Violence and riots were already breaking out through the streets, and all those villages I listed on Page 1 were destroyed by the Israelis.
The later wars were not all "started by the Arabs." In fact, most, if not all, were started by the Israelis.
The Palestinians tried MANY nonviolent tactics before. The only problem is that you never heard about it through the news or anything. The Palestinians for years and years were trying to declare their independence, but the British would not allow them to. The Palestinians would send delegations to the UK, hold congressional meetings, etc, but no one would listen to them. Violence erupted due to Israeli aggression, not Palestinian aggression. After the Palestinians were dispossessed of their own land and forced to live under a brutal occupation, they had to fight back using guerrilla warfare tactics, something used in EVERY war, like the American Revolution, Nazi Occupation of France, French Occupation of Algeria, etc etc.
And by the way: Referring to Israel's violent tactics as "retaliation" is just plain ridiculous. Israel does NOT retaliate to "terrorist" attacks. Israel is and has been the aggressor in this conflict. If anything, these "terror" attacks (which are nothing compared to those of the Israelis) are actual retaliation methods -- that is, the Palestinians retaliated to the occupation.
To call terms and measures accepted by most countries as "unrealistic" is like saying "Nader would be a great president, but it's unrealistic that he would ever be elected" and thus vote for a "lesser of 2 evils" thing. The only reason this is "unrealistic" is because Israel - and the U.S. - have been able to exercise illegal activities without any country saying or doing anything about it. Once international pressure is actually applied to this case, mainly by civilians and citizens of those countries, then maybe we can make these terms "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
Go on then. You mentioned them earlier. I'd love to see these 'creditable' articles.
Bring 'em on!
Edit: I'll respond to any and all 'creditable' apologists for the criminal occupation tomorrow. I hope you include Alan Dershowitz as a creditable source. That would make my day.
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
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
haha ... no worries ... i'm not trying to be the spell-check grammar person ... i just found it amusing that there is this "serious" discussion amongst educated people and that word is being butchered!! ...
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 the israelis put down their weapons, there would be no more israel...
06: Pittsburgh
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EV (second row!!!!!!) in DC
09: Philly 2 & 3
10: Newark
can you please let me know who this writer is and maybe put some reference to where we can find him on the web.
- Soren Aabye Kierkegaard (1813-1855)
If you haven't got anything nice to say about anybody, come sit next to me."
- Alice Roosevelt Longworth (1884-1980)
"In the 1830s Egypt conquered Palestine and made some minor improvements and many Egyptians, in particular soldiers, settled there. It was however during this period that the Jews of Safed were massacred in 1831 by Druzes. Safed was resettled with Kurds and Algerians. This was followed in 1837 by earthquakes in Safed and Tiberias. In 1838 Palestine was given back to the Turks. However, with the advent of early Zionism, just prior to the outbreak of World War I in 1914, the Jews had become a small majority in the central Judea region. Many were not Ottoman citizens and were expelled to Egypt at the time that war was declared."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Palestine#Ottoman_Period_1517-1917
(see I can use the wiki too)
So as early as 1830 muslims are slaughtering peaceful settled Jews. And rather then provide sanctuary for those that lived there, the empire tosses them all out of there homes in 1914. Seems like most of them just came back 30 years later and wanted what was there's in Judea back.
— Socrates
Well you've basically proved my point so I thank you.
After reading this you have to see there is no good guy/ bad guy in this issue.
We should be working for a peaceful resolution not who's to blame the violence in Israel.
6/7/2003 (***1/2)
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10/6/2009 LA III (***** Cornell!!!)
Yes it does.
If I provide U.N reports and details of U.N resolutions then they are indisputable.
The same goes with Human rights reports o Israeli Human rights abuses from credible sources such as 'Human Rights Watch' and 'Amnesty International'.
They are correct because they are factual.
I typed the article by hand directly from his book 'The Case Against Israel'.
Not true.
And I notice that you make no mention of the occupation, as if that isn't the cruz of the matter. But then I suppose sounbites give you the ability to avoid mentioning what is relevant.
1. The first part of the paragraph you quoted reads: 'Jewish immigration to Palestine, particularly to the "four sacred cities" (Jerusalem, Safed, Tiberias and Hebron) which already had significant Jewish communities, increased particularly towards the end of Ottoman rule; Jews of European origin lived mostly off donations from off-country, while many Sephardic Jews found themselves a trade. Many Circassians and Bosnian Muslims were settled in the north of Palestine by the Ottomans in the early 19th Century...'
2. The Druze aren't Palestinians.
3. The Druze aren't Muslims.
4. Palestinians lived in peace with Jews for hundreds of years.
5. What sanctuary did Jews need in 1914?
6. No part of the land belonged to Jews. It belonged to the Ottoman Empire 'who ruled the area through local pontentates', having a minimal influence on the daily lives of the Arab inhabitants.
7. What does any of this have to do with the illegal Israeli occupation of the West Bank and Gaza, and even of the illegitimacy of the Zionist enterprise in the early part of the 20th century and the ethnic cleansing that resulted?
And you haven't made any 'contradictions to a bunch of assumptions' by myself or Outlaw because no assumptions were made by either one of us.
Still, nice try.
Firstly, can you explain to me what 'point' you had?
And secondly, can you explain how his Wickepedia quote re: 'Ottoman rule in the area of Palestine', proved your 'point'?
I wonder if the apologists for Apartheid also attempted to claim that the whites had a legitimate right to the area and that therefore the crimes of Apartheid were justified?
Michael Neumann:
'In the case of a Jewish claim to Palestine, the claims are themselves dubious. Here it is not necessary to have decided on a truth, which may elude researchers forever. It is enough to show that there is serious controversy, and that is easily done. One account of recent findings can be found in 'The Bible Unearthed: Archeology's New Vision of Ancient Israel and the origin of It's sacred Texts'. It's authors are Israel Finkelstein, director of an archeological institute at Tel Aviv Uuniversity, and Neil Asher Silberman, director of a Belgian archeological institute and a contributing editor to 'Archeology' magazine. These writers display no political agenda and repeat to the point of saturation their admiration and respect for the Bible. Asher and Silberman introduce their work with the claim that:
"The historical sage contained in the Bible - from Abraham's encounter with God and his journey to Canaan, to Moses's delverance of the children of Israe from bondage, to the rise and fall of the Kingdom of Israel and Judah - was not a miraculous revelation, but a brilliant product of the human imagination."
This is the authors' exceedingly polite way of saying that the Biblical accounts are sometimes nonsense, sometimes deliberate lies, exaggerations, and distortions. The status of the Biblical Kingdom is particularly relevant to the Jewish claims to Palestine. One of Asher and Silberman's more devastating findings is that:
"The Biblical borders of the land of Israel as outlined in the book of Joshua had seemingly assumed a sacred inviolability...the Bible pictures a stormy but basically continuous Israelite occupation of the land of Israel all the way to the Assyrian conquest. But a reexamination of the archelogical evidence...points to a period of a few decades [in which Israel existed], between around 835-800B.C.E..."
In other words, they find that the "Great" Jewish Kingdom existed in something like their fabled extent for a tiny fraction of the period traditionally alleged. Even then, their boundaries nver came close to the "Greater Israel" of contemporary Jewish fundamentalism. The rest of the time. Judah and Israel are thought to have been, for the most part, very primitive entities, devoid of literate culture or substantial administrative structure, extending to only a small, landlocked part of what is now called Palestine. The great structures of the Biblical era are, all of them, attributed to Canaanite cultures. Moreover, the inhabitants of Biblical Israel and Judah seem to have, for most of the time and for the most part, practitioners of Canaanite religions rather than Judaism, or of various syncretic cults. These "Israelites" were not, that is, "Jewish" in one important sense of the term. The authors refer to the Biblical Kingdom at it existed as a "a multi-ethnic society." The idea that such a past could validate a Jewish historical claim to Palestine is simply ludicrous, even if it could be shown - which it cannot - that today's Jews are in some legal sense, heirs to the ancient Israelite Kingdoms.'
Lastly, I do not doubt some of the details in HRW or AI reports, but I because a report says a specific fact or detail of an order, does not mean you can automatically make a leap to equate that fact to encompass the entire issue - something you are doing. Anyone can post specific facts, stories or details to back their position or belief, and of course you will then say - look they're reiterating my belief or position in the dicussion. But it is you that take these instances and facts and make it into a larger agenda, story or purpose - not the place you're actually getting the facts from. Doing this is merely spinning reality to fit your mold, compared to just viewing reality as it is.
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 international community and the U.N Security has deemed the occupation and the settlements to be illegal under international law. Human Rights Watch, Amnesty and the U.N accuse Israel of war crimes and breaching the Geneva convention.
These aren't my opnions, these are facts.
http://www.ifamericansknew.org/cur_sit/boyle.html
'The International Laws of Belligerent Occupation'
Francis A. Boyle is a professor of international law at the University of Chicago and a Defence Lawyer at the International Court of Justice. He received his Master’s Degree and PhD in Political Science, as well as his Doctor of Law from Harvard University. He is the author of numerous books including, The Future of International Law and American Foreign Policy, World Politics and International Law, Defending Civil Resistance Under International Law, and Palestine, Palestinians, and International Law.
by Professor Francis Boyle
Professor of International Law, University of Illinois
Belligerent occupation is governed by The Hague Regulations of 1907, as well as by the Fourth Geneva Convention of 1949, and the customary laws of belligerent occupation. Security Council Resolution 1322 (2000), paragraph 3 continued: “Calls upon Israel, the occupying Power, to abide scrupulously by its legal obligations and its responsibilities under the Fourth Geneva Convention relative to the Protection of Civilian Persons in a Time of War of 12 August 1949;...” Again, the Security Council vote was 14 to 0, becoming obligatory international law.
The Fourth Geneva Convention applies to the West Bank, to the Gaza Strip, and to the entire City of Jerusalem, in order to protect the Palestinians living there. The Palestinian People living in this Palestinian Land are “protected persons” within the meaning of the Fourth Geneva Convention. All of their rights are sacred under international law.
There are 149 substantive articles of the Fourth Geneva Convention that protect the rights of every one of these Palestinians living in occupied Palestine. The Israeli Government is currently violating, and has since 1967 been violating, almost each and every one of these sacred rights of the Palestinian People recognized by the Fourth Geneva Convention. Indeed, violations of the Fourth Geneva Convention are war crimes.
So this is not a symmetrical situation. As matters of fact and of law, the gross and repeated violations of Palestinian rights by the Israeli army and Israeli settlers living illegally in occupied Palestine constitute war crimes. Conversely, the Palestinian People are defending themselves and their Land and their Homes against Israeli war crimes and Israeli war criminals, both military and civilian.
The U.N. Human Rights Commission
Indeed, it is far more serious than that. On 19 October 2000 a Special Session of the U.N. Commission on Human Rights adopted a Resolution set forth in U.N. Document E/CN.4/S-5/L.2/Rev. 1, “Condemning the provocative visit to al Aqsa Haram Sharif on 28 September 2000 by Ariel Sharon, the Likud party leader, which triggered the tragic events that followed in occupied East Jerusalem and the other occupied Palestinian territories, resulting in a high number of deaths and injuries among Palestinian civilians.” The U.N. Human Rights Commission then said it was “[g]ravely concerned” about several different types of atrocities inflicted by Israel upon the Palestinian People, which it denominated “war crimes, flagrant violations of international humanitarian law and crimes against humanity.”
In operative paragraph 1 of its 19 October 2000 Resolution, the U.N. Human Rights Commission then: “Strongly condemns the disproportionate and indiscriminate use of force in violation of international humanitarian law by the Israeli occupying Power against innocent and unarmed Palestinian civilians...including many children, in the occupied territories, which constitutes a war crime and a crime against humanity;...” And in paragraph 5 of its 19 October 2000 Resolution, the U.N. Human Rights Commission: “Also affirms that the deliberate and systematic killing of civilians and children by the Israeli occupying authorities constitutes a flagrant and grave violation of the right to life and also constitutes a crime against humanity;...” Article 68 of the United Nations Charter had expressly required the U.N.’s Economic and Social Council to “set up” this Commission “for the promotion of human rights.”
Israel’s War Crimes against Palestinians
We all have a general idea of what a war crime is, so I am not going to elaborate upon that term here. But there are different degrees of heinousness for war crimes. In particular are the more serious war crimes denominated “grave breaches” of the Fourth Geneva Convention. Since the start of the Al Aqsa Intifada, the world has seen those inflicted every day by Israel against the Palestinian People living in occupied Palestine: e.g., wilful killing of Palestinian civilians by the Israeli army and Israel’s illegal paramilitary settlers. These Israeli “grave breaches” of the Fourth Geneva Convention mandate universal prosecution for their perpetrators, whether military or civilian, as well as prosecution for their commanders, whether military or civilian, including Israel’s political leaders.
Israel’s Crimes Against Humanity against Palestinians
But I want to focus for a moment on Israel’s “crime against humanity” against the Palestinian People — as determined by the U.N. Human Rights Commission itself, set up pursuant to the requirements of the United Nations Charter. What is a “crime against humanity”? This concept goes all the way back to the Nuremberg Charter of 1945 for the trial of the major Nazi war criminals. And in the Nuremberg Charter of 1945, drafted by the United States Government, there was created and inserted a new type of international crime specifically intended to deal with the Nazi persecution of the Jewish People.
The paradigmatic example of a “crime against humanity” is what Hitler and the Nazis did to the Jewish People. This is where the concept of crime against humanity came from. And this is what the U.N. Human Rights Commission determined that Israel is currently doing to the Palestinian People: Crimes against humanity. Legally, just like what Hitler and the Nazis did to the Jews.
The Precursor to Genocide
Moreover, a crime against humanity is the direct historical and legal precursor to the international crime of genocide as defined by the 1948 Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide. The theory here was that what Hitler and the Nazis did to the Jewish People required a special international treaty that would codify and universalise the Nuremberg concept of “crime against humanity.” And that treaty ultimately became the 1948 Genocide Convention.
In fairness, you will note that the U.N. Human Rights Commission did not go so far as to condemn Israel for committing genocide against the Palestinian People. But it has condemned Israel for committing crimes against humanity, which is the direct precursor to genocide. And I submit that if something is not done quite soon by the American People and the International Community to stop Israeli war crimes and crimes against humanity against the Palestinian People, it could very well degenerate into genocide, if Israel is not there already. And in this regard, Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon is what international lawyers call a genocidaire—one who has already committed genocide in the past.'
Actually, this post makes no sense to me. All I can gather from it is that you're criticising me for backing my arguments with facts. Seems like a pretty thin case you have there for supporting the occupation.