wow, evenkat. that website is obvious propaganda... the fact that you actually consider it a legitimate source is ridiculous. Just take a look and reread these quotes. They show a clear misconception of reality:
Wow, obviously you took those quotes out of context. Is that how you get your information?
Everyone is pointing fingers here. It's either the Israelis started it and are to blame or the Palestinians started it and are to blame. However the Israelis and Palestinians are both the victims here.
Jews and Palestinians can both trace their ancestry to the Middle East and there were several conflicts between them well before 1948 when the State of Israel was established.
THIS CONFLICT did not start in 1967, it started after WWII when the UN divided up the then British controlled Palestine giving portions of the land to the Jews so the European Jews had a place to go. Egypt and Jordan were also given portions of Palestine to rule (Gaza, Judea and Samaria). The European Jews after surviving the Holocaust were still unwanted in Europe, which created a huge problem. At first they stayed in the concentration camps and were then shipped around. While some European countries accepted some as well as the US there were many without a place to go. European Jews felt Europeans were not treating them well after the war had ended. They felt the Jews in Palestine were being treated better by the Palestinians so the European Jews wanted to go to their "homeland" in Palestine. Then the UN agreed to the division of Palestine noted above.
Although the division of Palestine and the land that was given to the Jews was approved by the UN, the Palestinians did not agree to it as well as the Arab countries in the Middle East. As a result Palestinians were forcefully driven from their homes in the areas given to the Jews. This caused resentment and anger towards the Jews by the Palestinians and Arab countries in the Middle East. Arab countries such as Egypt, Jordan, Syria and Iran & etc, refused to recognized Israel and wanted the land returned to the Palestinians and war broke out in 1948 when Israel was attacked by several Arab countries. However the Israelis defeated them.
The resentment and anger towards the Israelis remained. There was consent back and forth fighting as well as consent threats made to Israel leading up to the 1967 war. When Egypt blocked the Straits of Tiran to Israel blocking shipments into Israel, the Israelis felt this was an act of war.
Now that being all said the lands taken by the Israelis during the 1967 war is unjustified as well as their continued control and inhumane treatment of the Palestinians. They really should know how it feels to be treated like that and have sympathy towards the Palestinians. As the Jews were forced out of their Europeans homes, they should have sympathy towards the Palestinians who were first forced out of the homes in the areas given to the Jews after WWII and then again after the 1967 war. The fact that they keep building settlements on the land that was not theirs pre-1967 borders just adds to the resentment and anger towards them. However the problem is the Jews believe they were forced off of their land in the Middle East many many years ago well before this conflict even began.
Both sides need to stop the violence before any peace agreement can or will be reached.
"...believe in lies...to get by...it's divine...whoa...oh, you know what its like..."
Everyone is pointing fingers here. It's either the Israelis started it and are to blame or the Palestinians started it and are to blame.
Actually, hardly anyone is doing that at all. When you read the substance and overall theme of almost everyone's posts; they clearly are expressing and focusing on equal responsibility and equal accountability.
In an attempt to disolve that whole one side is to blame and the other side are victims, crap.
This is not about choosing one side (Palestine) or the other side (Israel/Jews). It's about realizing both sides are equally guilty and both sides have a lot of innocent civilians (victims) who have been and continue to be caught in the middle of this horrific conflict. This is about equality for Palestinians as well as Israelis.
Actually, hardly anyone is doing that at all. When you read the substance and overall theme of almost everyone's posts; they clearly are expressing and focusing on equal responsibility and equal accountability.
In an attempt to disolve that whole one side is to blame and the other side are victims, crap.
This is not about choosing one side (Palestine) or the other side (Israel/Jews). It's about realizing both sides are equally guilty and both sides have a lot of innocent civilians (victims) who have been and continue to be caught in the middle of this horrific conflict. This is about equality for Palestinians as well as Israelis.
I don't think both sides are equally guilty at all. The Palestinians never asked for their land to be stolen by a bunch of Jewish fanatics - Zionists - who were intent on establishing a 'Jewish State' in Palestine to the detriment of those who already inhabited the place. The Zionists have been carrying out a race war ever since and have been committing a crime against humanity for the past 60 years. The Zionist enterprise in the Middle East was illegitimate to begin with. Israel is currently in breach of over 60 U.N resolutions. The Palestinians are in breach of none.
Israel could end the violence, and begin abiding by international law, tomorrow, by withdrawing to the 1967 borders. Maybe Jlew/Lazymoon/Coloursblending9 would like to explain to us all why Israel insists on breaching international law and why it continues building more and more illegal settlements?
All this talk of who started the 1967 war, and of Biblical hocus pocus is completely irrelevant. But then this has been the tactic of supporters of the Zionist race war for a long time now - they tend to follow the same pattern; I.e, try to muddy the water by focusing on irrelevancies and try to make the subject seem complicated, which it isn't.
while supposedly "murdering Palestinian children" or being "ruthless aggressors in war"
There's no 'supposedly' about it. It's a fact that Israel has mudered Palestinian children and has deliberately targeted civilians.
I've already provided plenty of evidence on this thread which proves this. Obviously you read only what you want to read. No doubt you'll ignore the following yet again...
Amnesty International has accused Israel of committing war crimes in the occupied West Bank and Gaza Strip.
The rights group's report for 2004 says Israeli forces have killed some 700 Palestinians - including 150 children - mostly in unlawful circumstances. http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/4580139.stm
'The Israeli occupation army and paramilitary Jewish settlers have killed 545 Palestinian children and minors since the outbreak of the al-Aqsa Intifada in September 2000.
Among these victims, 266 children were 14 or younger while the ages of the remaining 279 ranged from 15 to 18. Moreover, as many as 20,000 Palestinian children were injured, with nearly 1500 sustaining life-long disabilities.' http://www.ifamericansknew.org/stats/child_41304.html
Byrnzie, I'm glad you brought up those articles showing cases where Palestinian children or teenagers have been killed by IDF attacks. As much as I disagree with your views of the situation, you have highlighted the real victims.
That being said, I still think IDF attacks are different than for example a suicide bomber going into Israel and deliberately killing innocent people.
shows that IDF went out to kill Hamas Militants and gunmen. IDF troops raided an area, they killed 4 Hamas militants and a stone thrower was also killed. Obviously the headline said IDF kills a teenager, but the headline easily could have said IDF kills 4 Hamas militants who were organizing a terror attack.
I think a huge problem is that the Hamas militants operate way too close to innocent Palestinian civilians. Whether you agree or not, its understandable that IDF targets Hamas militants. The terrible part about it, is that there are too many people caught in the crossfire.
Also, Hamas has to stop sending in missiles into Israel. Haven't they learned Israel is going to retaliate and target those they believe are responsible?
I mean country/nation A literally fires missiles into country B. Country B will always retaliate.
It obviously looks like Israel is the aggressor because their retaliations and military ambushes on Hamas militants are a lot more successful (from a military Point of view) than missiles being fired into Israel.
For the safety of their own people, Hamas needs to stop firing missiles into Israel!
How can a country sit back and do nothing when missiles are fired into their country??
At the very least, Israel's attacks are very defined and targeted. They go after specific targets, specific Hamas militants. Now, unfortunately, as Byrnzie correctly points out, innocent Palestinians are killed in the crossfires.
That being said, I still think IDF attacks are different than for example a suicide bomber going into Israel and deliberately killing innocent people.
the only difference is that the IDF's killings are justified by most of the world, unfortunately.
Also, Hamas has to stop sending in missiles into Israel. Haven't they learned Israel is going to retaliate and target those they believe are responsible?
it's like you read what we write, but then forget it a second later. the entire point of this is that israel has NOT ALWAYS RETALIATED. many, if not most, ceasefires have been broken by Israel...
I mean country/nation A literally fires missiles into country B. Country B will always retaliate.
I have a scenario too. "literally", country A is occupying country B's land, demolishing country B's residents' houses, and killing innocent people. Country B will always retaliate.
Now, unfortunately, as Byrnzie correctly points out, innocent Palestinians are killed in the crossfires.
actually, byrnzie points out that it's deliberate.
You know, I can't possibly say anything more that I haven't already said; to Colorsblending9.
He/she continues to operate from the same extremely biased and discriminatory point, as he did four pages ago. His excuses for Israel are all the same. As is his obvious bias, discrimination and marginalization of the Palestinians
So I'll just repeat most of what I said earlier with a few extra sentences thrown in.
Oddly enough, your logic is completely biased and one-sided as you request everyone show empathy for Israel, it's plight and it's people. Yet in your arguments you show no empathy for the Palestine people and use the very same logic that you find disgusting; to justify and excuse all things Israel.
You mean, like the consequences of Israel invading, occupying and expanding further into Palestine territory?
Or is it that in your mind, the Jews have some kind of entitlement to do these things and not expect consequences?
It was you who made the initial comment, earlier, remember?
You excuse and justify Israel for having the money and resources to amass a huge military. But you demonize and condemn the Palestinians for NOT having the money and resources to amass a huge military.
Furthermore, you insinuate the Palestinians have no right to defend themselves, in whatever manner at their disposal; against what is essentially an illegal occupation of Palestinian land and expansion of their (Israeli territory).
You make all the excuses in the world for Israel, but deny the Palestinians the same and equal rights and considerations.
Clearly the distinction here is this.........
I am debating from a position that both sides are equally at fault and guilty of the same kind of attrocities. And neither should be painted as innocent or victims. The true innocent and victims are the civilians from both sides who have nothing to do with this conflict; but are routinely killed because they are caught in the crossfire.
You are arguing exclusively in defense of Israel and have an extremely biased and discriminatory point of view; in that defense.
I don't think both sides are equally guilty at all. The Palestinians never asked for their land to be stolen by a bunch of Jewish fanatics - Zionists - who were intent on establishing a 'Jewish State' in Palestine to the detriment of those who already inhabited the place. The Zionists have been carrying out a race war ever since and have been committing a crime against humanity for the past 60 years. The Zionist enterprise in the Middle East was illegitimate to begin with. Israel is currently in breach of over 60 U.N resolutions. The Palestinians are in breach of none.
Israel could end the violence, and begin abiding by international law, tomorrow, by withdrawing to the 1967 borders. Maybe Jlew/Lazymoon/Coloursblending9 would like to explain to us all why Israel insists on breaching international law and why it continues building more and more illegal settlements?
All this talk of who started the 1967 war, and of Biblical hocus pocus is completely irrelevant. But then this has been the tactic of supporters of the Zionist race war for a long time now - they tend to follow the same pattern; I.e, try to muddy the water by focusing on irrelevancies and try to make the subject seem complicated, which it isn't.
Make no mistake, Byrnzie. I agree completely with everything you have said. Always have. Never doubt that.
I'm just approaching this from a "Can we just get past the chicken or the egg argument and have both sides finally come to their senses " point of view.
You know, I can't possibly say anything more that I haven't already said; to Colorsblending9.
He/she continues to operate from the same extremely biased and discriminatory point, as he did four pages ago. His excuses for Israel are all the same. As is his obvious bias, discrimination and marginalization of the Palestinians
So I'll just repeat most of what I said earlier with a few extra sentences thrown in.
Oddly enough, your logic is completely biased and one-sided as you request everyone show empathy for Israel, it's plight and it's people. Yet in your arguments you show no empathy for the Palestine people and use the very same logic that you find disgusting; to justify and excuse all things Israel.
You mean, like the consequences of Israel invading, occupying and expanding further into Palestine territory?
Or is it that in your mind, the Jews have some kind of entitlement to do these things and not expect consequences?
It was you who made the initial comment, earlier, remember?
You excuse and justify Israel for having the money and resources to amass a huge military. But you demonize and condemn the Palestinians for NOT having the money and resources to amass a huge military.
Furthermore, you insinuate the Palestinians have no right to defend themselves, in whatever manner at their disposal; against what is essentially an illegal occupation of Palestinian land and expansion of their (Israeli territory).
You make all the excuses in the world for Israel, but deny the Palestinians the same and equal rights and considerations.
Clearly the distinction here is this.........
I am debating from a position that both sides are equally at fault and guilty of the same kind of attrocities. And neither should be painted as innocent or victims. The true innocent and victims are the civilians from both sides who have nothing to do with this conflict; but are routinely killed because they are caught in the crossfire.
You are arguing exclusively in defense of Israel and have an extremely biased and discriminatory point of view; in that defense.
Yes, clearly I support Israel. I don't believe in any of that Jewish entitlement BS. But I do believe Israel has the right to defend themselves. As they did in 48, 67, 73, etc. NO, not everything Israel has done has been in self-defense. If I have said that before, then I was wrong before, or I just didn't explain myself properly
My biggest fault on this board, and I admit to it, is being too one-sided. I just felt the need to do so, when I kept reading a huge majority of anti-Israel (call it what you want) posts. I am no more one-sided than the posters who write only against Israel by exclusively quoting blatant anti-Israel writers/opinions such as chomsky. I am a supporter of Israel, but I've said it numerous times on this board and off it, that the biggest victims of this mess are the innocent Palestinians just wanting peace.
I do sympathize with Palestinians. I think its terrible they live in harsh conditions. I think its wrong that IDF kills innocent Palestinians, no matter how much some (not all) try to avoid doing so.
I believe Israel has the right to exist, and I believe there should be an independent Palestinian state.
However, I am totally against Hamas, and their government. I am totally against what was the PLO and Arafat's gov't. Hamas might be all for their people, but they are extremists and radicals. I think the same of Hezbollah.
I think Byrnzie and others should at least condemn Hamas sending rockets into Israel, sponsoring terrorists/militants and stating in their charter they are devoted to the destruction of Israel.
So, if you don't blame Hamas for firing rockets, dont blame the IDF for targetting and killing Hamas militants.
And don't blame Israel entirely for the poor living conditions in Gaza. Start by blaming Arafat who took approx 1 billion dollars that should have went towards the Palestinian people, but instead was pocketed by Arafat for his personal and political gain.
Yeah, Olmert is prob corrupt too, but not like that. Not 1 billion dollars of public money. And Israel police and media are all over Olmert.
NMytree, you make a good point though. I will try and be less one-sided in the future, I just feel that there should be a voice defending Israel.
Has this board ever discussed that Fatah-Hamas fighting/civil war or even the recent conflict within Lebanon? Im saying, its not just Israel who is against Hamas and Hezbollah...
Also...http://www.fair.org/index.php?page=1086. Since the information most people get about the issue is biased, naturally there is a bias towards ISrael when it comes to this conflict.
During the six-month period studied, NPR reported the deaths of 62 Israelis and 51 Palestinians. While on the surface that may not appear to be hugely lopsided, during the same time period 77 Israelis and 148 Palestinians were killed in the conflict. That means there was an 81 percent likelihood that an Israeli death would be reported on NPR, but only a 34 percent likelihood that a Palestinian death would be.
-
And that's from NPR. The major news networks are even more 1-sided, NBC, ABC, FOX, all report on Israeli casualties more often than Palestinian, creating a sense that the Palestinian people are much more violent, when reality is in fact the opposite.
shows that IDF went out to kill Hamas Militants and gunmen. IDF troops raided an area, they killed 4 Hamas militants and a stone thrower was also killed. Obviously the headline said IDF kills a teenager, but the headline easily could have said IDF kills 4 Hamas militants who were organizing a terror attack.
I think a huge problem is that the Hamas militants operate way too close to innocent Palestinian civilians. Whether you agree or not, its understandable that IDF targets Hamas militants. The terrible part about it, is that there are too many people caught in the crossfire.
I notice that you ignored the other links I provided. One of which was this...
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2003/jul/28/israel
'Haneen, who was eight years old, had been shot twice in the head by an Israeli soldier as she walked down the street in Khan Yunis refugee camp with her mother, Lila Abu Selmi.
"Almost every day here the Israelis shoot at random, so when you hear it you get inside as quickly as possible," says Mrs Selmi. "Haneen went to the grocery store to buy some crisps. When the shooting started, I came out to find her. She was coming down the street and ran to me and hugged me, crying, 'Mother, mother'. Two bullets hit her in the head, one straight after the other. She was still in my arms and she died."
...Weeks passed and another Israeli bullet shattered the life of another young Palestinian girl. Huda Darwish was sitting at her school desk when a cluster of shots ripped through the top of a tree outside her classroom and buried themselves in the wall. But one ricocheted off the window frame, smashed through the glass and lodged in the 12-year-old girl's brain. Huda's teacher, Said Sinwar, was standing in front of the blackboard. "It was a normal lesson when suddenly there was this shooting without any warning. The children were terrified and trying to run. I was shouting at them to get under their desks. Suddenly the bullet hit the little girl and she slumped to the floor with a sigh, not even screaming," he says.
Rahman was in another class at the same school. The next day, lessons were cancelled and the boy defied his mother to tag along at the funeral of a slain Palestinian fighter. The burial evolved into the ritual protest of children marching to the security fence that separates Gaza's dense and beggared Khan Yunis refugee camp from the spacious religious exclusivity of the neighbouring Jewish settlement. As Rahman hung a Palestinian flag on the fence, a bullet caught him under his left eye. He died on the spot. "It looks as if the soldiers saw him put the flag on the fence and they shot him," says Rahman's brother, 19-year-old Ijaram. "There were many kids next to him, next to the fence. But he was the only one carrying the flag. Why else would they have shot him?"
It would certainly be convenient for you to be able to simply wrtite these deaths off as mere accidents. Unfortunately that's not the case.
Amnesty International asserts that Israel targets civilians http://www.ngo-monitor.org/article.php?id=1134
In a July 13 press release Amnesty International (AI) said "Israel must put an immediate end to attacks against civilians", and provocatively asserts that Israel deliberately targets civilians.
Does Israel have a policy of killing Palestinian civilians?
Nigel Parry, The Electronic Intifada, 13 June 2006 http://electronicintifada.net/v2/article4802.shtml
'Of the several Palestinians who I saw shot dead at these 30 clashes, not a single one of them was killed within any range that they could have hit an Israeli soldier with a stone. In the single clash where I witnessed an Israeli soldier grazed by a stone, the killing that took place happened much later. At no time was there any life-threatening situation that required these soldiers to behave any differently than riot police would behave in a more civilized country.
Out of nowhere, when the energy of the clashes seemed to be dissipating, a soldier would suddenly shoot a child or teenager, 100 meters away from them or more and in front of you. Next time you find yourself in an open space with no people around, see how far you can throw a stone. You�ll find it to be considerably less than 100 meters...
Fourteen Palestinians, mostly women and children, were killed when an Israeli F-16 dropped a 1,000-kilogram bomb on an apartment building in the al-Daraj neighborhood of Gaza City, to assassinate Salah Shehadeh, then leader of Hamas' military wing.
Massive civilian casualties were inevitable given the size of the bomb used and the crowded area on which it was dropped. A Ha�aretz journalist subsequently asked Maj. Gen. Dan Halutz, a key figure behind Israel�s assassination policy, whether he felt any remorse about the incident. After making a hollow statement of regret for the children killed and defending the policy, he stated:
"If you insist on wanting to know what I feel when I release a bomb, I will tell you. I feel a slight bump to the plane as a result of bomb's release. A second later it passes, and that's all. That is what I feel."
Israeli occupation forces have killed over 3,000 Palestinian civilians since the Intifada began. Israel�s contempt for Palestinian life stretches from the privates in its occupying army to its prime minister. Israel kills Palestinian civilians not only intentionally but also routinely, and this has been true for decades. The patterns speak for themselves.'
http://www.wsws.org/articles/2002/dec2002/isra-d12.shtml
'Israeli armed forces opened fire on Palestinians near the Zionist settlement of Rafiah Yam, killing a 40-year-old woman, Nahla Aqel, and injuring her four-year-old son and fourteen-year-old daughter, both of whom are believed to be in a very critical condition. Her seven-year-old son was also wounded. A second woman was shot in the head. Eyewitnesses said they were walking in the middle of the street...
Israel justified the carnage with the claim that five of the dead were members of the militant group Hamas. “We encountered a lot of resistance and the forces fired at armed gunmen,” said Brigadier Yisrael Ziv, commander of security forces in Gaza.
Palestinian sources flatly contradicted the Brigadier’s claim, saying that at least seven of the nine killed were civilians. The United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) said that the victims included two of its own personnel—a teacher and school attendant. The school teacher, 32-year-old Ahlam Riziq Kandil, was killed in her home. Osama Hassan Tahrawi, the 31-year-old school attendant, was killed along with six friends and relatives when a rocket fired from a helicopter hit him as he stood in his backyard.
This brings to five the number of UN staff killed this year and three in as many weeks. On November 22, an Israeli soldier shot 54-year-old Iain Hook in the back from a rooftop some 25 metres away, using a telescopic sight. Hook, a British UN official, was leading a UN project to rebuild the Jenin refugee camp, parts of which were destroyed last April by the Israeli army. Security forces then prevented an ambulance reaching the compound for 25 minutes. As a result, Hook bled to death before the ambulance reached the hospital.'
Also, I suppose you beleive that Rachel Corrie's murder can be wrtitten off as 'collataral damage, along with the muder of Tom Hurndall?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tom_Hurndall
'Thomas "Tom" Hurndall (November 29, 1981 – January 13, 2004) was a British photography student, a volunteer for the International Solidarity Movement (ISM), and an activist against the Israeli occupation of the Palestinian territories. On April 11, 2003, he was shot in the head in the Gaza Strip by an Israel Defense Forces (IDF) sniper, Taysir Hayb. According to witnesses, this occurred while he was acting “as a human shield, escorting children away from gunfire.”[1] Hurndall was left in a coma and died nine months later.
Hayb was convicted of manslaughter and obstruction of justice by an Israeli military court in April 2005 and sentenced to eight years in prison.[1] On April 10, 2006, a British inquest found that Hurndall had been "intentionally killed", i.e. an official verdict of unlawful killing'.
Death on the beach: seven Palestinians killed as Israeli shells hit family picnic http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2006/jun/10/israel
'A barrage of Israeli artillery shells rained down on a busy Gaza beach yesterday, killing seven Palestinians, three of them children. The attack put further strain on the 16-month truce between Israel and the governing Hamas movement.
Witnesses described several explosions that also injured dozens of other people who lay on the beach, screaming and pleading for help. Some ran into the sea for fear of more shells hitting the sands at Beit Lahia, in the north of the Gaza strip.
Among the dead were three children, aged one, three, and 10. Their sister was swimming and survived.
The beach was packed with picnicking families enjoying the Muslim day of rest, and the explosions landed among them, scattering body parts along the dunes. Television footage showed a woman and a child laying dead on the sand, and another child screaming in agony while a lifeless man was carried away by an ambulance crew...'
I think Byrnzie and others should at least condemn Hamas sending rockets into Israel, sponsoring terrorists/militants and stating in their charter they are devoted to the destruction of Israel.
I will be the first one on this board to condemn any attacks by the Palestinians if and when Israel pulls back to the internationally recognized 67 borders.
Has this board ever discussed that Fatah-Hamas fighting/civil war or even the recent conflict within Lebanon? Im saying, its not just Israel who is against Hamas and Hezbollah...
I think everyone here understands perfectly well who it is that benefits from Palestinian in-fighting. Some things just don't need pointing out.
I don't think both sides are equally guilty at all. The Palestinians never asked for their land to be stolen by a bunch of Jewish fanatics - Zionists - who were intent on establishing a 'Jewish State' in Palestine to the detriment of those who already inhabited the place. The Zionists have been carrying out a race war ever since and have been committing a crime against humanity for the past 60 years. The Zionist enterprise in the Middle East was illegitimate to begin with. Israel is currently in breach of over 60 U.N resolutions. The Palestinians are in breach of none.
Israel could end the violence, and begin abiding by international law, tomorrow, by withdrawing to the 1967 borders. Maybe Jlew/Lazymoon/Coloursblending9 would like to explain to us all why Israel insists on breaching international law and why it continues building more and more illegal settlements?
All this talk of who started the 1967 war, and of Biblical hocus pocus is completely irrelevant. But then this has been the tactic of supporters of the Zionist race war for a long time now - they tend to follow the same pattern; I.e, try to muddy the water by focusing on irrelevancies and try to make the subject seem complicated, which it isn't.
What is irrelevant to you is not irrelevant to others especially to the parties in question.
If it's not complicated and since you previously said the Palestinians and Arab countries do not have to recognize Israel to have peace, can you guarantee peace in the Middle East if the Israelis go back to the pre-1967 borders? Ok lets says the Palestinians and remaining Arab countries do not recognize Israel, will they stop trying to get take back all of the land pre-WW-II? Can you guarantee peace without treaties and respect to ALL parties involved? Will the violence truly end? Will you support the Israelis if the Palestinians and Arab countries continue violence against the Israelis?
Where do the Jews belong?
"...believe in lies...to get by...it's divine...whoa...oh, you know what its like..."
What is irrelevant to you is not irrelevant to others especially to the parties in question.
If it's not complicated and since you previously said the Palestinians and Arab countries do not have to recognize Israel to have peace, can you guarantee peace in the Middle East if the Israelis go back to the pre-1967 borders? Ok lets says the Palestinians and remaining Arab countries do not recognize Israel, will they stop trying to get take back all of the land pre-WW-II? Can you guarantee peace without treaties and respect to ALL parties involved? Will the violence truly end?
Why ask me? I'm not Nostradamus.
What does International law - as defined by the United Nations - have to say about what Israel should do?
As for what the Arab countries may or may not do, if and when Israel begins abiding by international law, I 'm not sure that it's relevant.
You have the opinion this is not a difficult issue to solve. As you said the international community excluding the US just wants Israel to go back to the pre-1967 borders and the problem will be solved. However without peace agreements between the Palestinians and Arab countries with the Israelis the entire problem is not solved.
What does International law - as defined by the United Nations - have to say about what Israel should do?
I would say international law created this monster of a conflict. They thought it was a great idea giving away portions of the Palestinians' land to the Jews with their agreement in the first place.
Where do Christians belong? Where do Budhists belong? Where do blacks belong?
It's a nationality not just a religion. But I'll rephrase the question. Do you dispute that Jewish ancestry is traced straight to the Middle East going back thousands of years, especially in the old Palestine such as Jerusalem and Judea?
Support how? I wouldn't say I 'support' England now. I wouldn't say I 'support' Amrica now. I'm not sure I understand the question.
As you support the Palestinians right now. If the tables turn someday and if the Jews are in the same boat as the Palestinians are right now, will you support their cause with the same degree you support the Palestinians? Ya know as you said take off your boxing gloves
"...believe in lies...to get by...it's divine...whoa...oh, you know what its like..."
You have the opinion this is not a difficult issue to solve. As you said the international community excluding the US just wants Israel to go back to the pre-1967 borders and the problem will be solved. However without peace agreements between the Palestinians and Arab countries with the Israelis the entire problem is not solved.
That's irrelevant. Once Israel even considers going back to the 67 borders, then they can have talks with the Palestinians to create peace agreements.
It's a nationality not just a religion.
what
But I'll rephrase the question. Do you dispute that Jewish ancestry is traced straight to the Middle East going back thousands of years, especially in the old Palestine such as Jerusalem and Judea?
Again, irrelevant.
As you support the Palestinians right now. If the tables turn someday and if the Jews are in the same boat as the Palestinians are right now, will you support their cause with the same degree you support the Palestinians? Ya know as you said take off your boxing gloves
I can't speak for Byrnzie myself, and this is also irrelevant, but I'm pretty sure everyone would support whoever is the one being oppressed and occupied. Right now, it's the Palestinians.
Michael Neumann:
'When Zionism got started, the Jews did not have a common language - modern Hebrew did not exist. They still have no common language, since millions of Jews speak not a word of Hebrew. Jews did not have a common culture: Moroccan, Russian, and English Jews lived in worlds apart [And still do]. They did not have a common history: for some, persecution was a bitter reality and for others, full citizens of their countries, a distant memory. They not only lacked a national state, but the desire for such a state: that was the project of a few European upper-middle-class activists. Many Jews were fervent nationalists or patriots for the countries they inhabited; others were fervent internationalists; most were not interested in such matters. And, of course, they did not live in one geographical area.'
But I'll rephrase the question. Do you dispute that Jewish ancestry is traced straight to the Middle East going back thousands of years, especially in the old Palestine such as Jerusalem and Judea?
I think the question is largely irrelevant. Do you dispute that the Celts can trace their ancestry back to most of Europe and therefore should be entitled to a form of ethnic soveriegnty over all other races in Europe today? Do you dispute that the Native Americans should have ethnic soveriegnty over all other Americans in the U.S? And the Australian Aboriginals should be allowed to establish a soveriegn ethnic state in Australia to the exclusion of it's new inhabitants?
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.'
I have a hard time sympathizing with people who hang posters of suicide bombers on their streets. It's difficult for me to sympathize with people who consider all Jews as swine. I have a hard time feeling compassion for people who teach their kids from the earliest of ages that all non-muslims are not worthy of life, and to martyr yourself while killing innocents is an honorable goal.
Israel isn't ethnically cleaning anyone, there is no genocide, there is no massmurder.
No, of course there isn't.
Meanwhile...
Tutu enters Gaza to start investigation into deaths
The Guardian, Wednesday May 28 2008 http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2008/may/28/israelandthepalestinians.southafrica
'Desmond Tutu, the South African archbishop, met the former Palestinian prime minister and Hamas leader, Ismail Haniyeh, in Gaza at the start of a much-delayed UN investigation into the shelling by the Israeli military of a Palestinian house which killed 18 members of a single family in Beit Hanoun.'
Tutu was sent by the UN human rights council to lead the inquiry only days after the incident in November 2006. However, the Israeli government did not give him a visa and complained that the council was politicised in its criticism of Israel.
Yesterday, after several months of delay, Tutu crossed into Gaza from Egypt at the Rafah crossing point, which is usually closed and almost never used for UN or diplomatic visits, but where he did not require any Israeli travel permit.
Tutu met Karen Abu Zayd, the head of the UN relief and works agency, which supports Palestinian refugees, and then met Haniyeh, one of the leading Hamas figures in Gaza who was sacked as prime minister last year.
Tutu was to tell Haniyeh that he strongly condemned militants firing rockets from Gaza into southern Israel and the killing of Israeli civilians, but he was also to speak of his criticism of the Israeli occupation of the Palestinian territories, according to a source travelling with him.
Today Tutu will travel to Beit Hanoun to talk to survivors of the Israeli artillery strike. All the dead were from the Athamna extended family, among them 14 women and children. They were asleep in the house when the shells struck early in the morning.
As they poured out of the house they were hit by more shells - a wave of six or seven in total. It came only a day after the Israeli military had ended a six-day incursion into Beit Hanoun, which had left 50 Palestinians dead.
After the shelling incident, the Israeli military said it had fired "preventative artillery at launch sites" from which militants had fired rockets a day earlier towards Israel, but there had been a "technical failure" with the artillery gun.
Although Tutu was not given a visa to travel to Gaza, Louise Arbour, the UN high commissioner for human rights, did travel to Beit Hanoun at the time, and to the Israeli towns around Gaza, and said there had been a "massive" violation of human rights in Gaza.
The UN human rights council then sent Tutu on a fact-finding mission to "assess the situation of victims, address the needs of survivors and make recommendations on ways and means to protect Palestinian civilians against further Israeli assaults".
But it is an ethnicity and guess what it is a nationality too since there is a country now called Israel! We can trace them to Middle East going back thousands of years. The bottom line they were chased out of the Middle East and have traveled across borders like millions of the other peoples have over the thousands of years. However just like in the Middle East they were chased out of Europe by being treated inhumanely.
I think the question is largely irrelevant. Do you dispute that the Celts can trace their ancestry back to most of Europe and therefore should be entitled to a form of ethnic soveriegnty over all other races in Europe today? Do you dispute that the Native Americans should have ethnic soveriegnty over all other Americans in the U.S? And the Australian Aboriginals should be allowed to establish a soveriegn ethnic state in Australia to the exclusion of it's new inhabitants?
But doesn't your statement support the Israelis too? If you're argument is the land belongs to the Palestinians, however over the past 40-60 years the Israelis have control over that land. So should the Palestinians get over it just like the Native Americans, Celts and Australian Aboriginals?
My birth home is an old Dutch settlement which was originally a Native American settlement called Penpotawotnot.
"...believe in lies...to get by...it's divine...whoa...oh, you know what its like..."
But it is an ethnicity and guess what it is a nationality too since there is a country now called Israel! We can trace them to Middle East going back thousands of years. The bottom line they were chased out of the Middle East and have traveled across borders like millions of the other peoples have over the thousands of years. However just like in the Middle East they were chased out of Europe by being treated inhumanely.
None of this gives them any right of soveriegnty over the land in Palestine.
But doesn't your statement support the Israelis too? If you're argument is the land belongs to the Palestinians, however over the past 40-60 years the Israelis have control over that land. So should the Palestinians get over it just like the Native Americans, Celts and Australian Aboriginals?
My birth home is an old Dutch settlement which was originally a Native American settlement called Penpotawotnot.
There's a difference between some spurious claim relating to Ancient history and 60 years. Did you actually read my post above?
None of this gives them any right of soveriegnty over the land in Palestine.
There's a difference between some spurious claim relating to Ancient history and 60 years. Did you actually read my post above?
But it's hypocritical to say it's wrong for the Israelis to conquer and take over lands when Europeans have been doing it for thousands of years . Actually is there any group of people that hasn't done this?
Did you forget there were Jews in Palestine prior to 1948 when it was under British control? Yes I read it and I think it's wrong! Ok so lets say Neumann is right that the Jews don't come from the Middle East, well the fact is a large portion of the Israelis came from Europe after WWII as they were still being treated like shit and unwanted in Europe which is the reason that the UN gave the Jews portions of Palestine. So why did the Jews have to leave their homes in Europe? Lets give them back their homes in Europe then. Oh that's right it's ok to treat Jews like shit and it's ok for Europeans (governments) and others to take lands away from people and treat them like shit but it's not ok for the Jews/Israelis to do so? But many Europeans would argue the Jews don't originally come from Europe (or do they?)... but hmmm where did they come from then?....hmmmm Middle East...Palestine?
If Jewish is just a religion and not an ethnicity or nationality wouldn't the Jews in Palestine prior to WWII and the establishment of the State of Israel be Palestinian then? Wouldn't it be their land too? . This would also apply to the Europeans Jews that were kicked out of Europe; they too would have been Polish, French, British, German and etc. So wouldn't they have rights to land in Europe the just like the Palestinians. This is the same 60 year time frame!
Again there are always two sides. Hate to tell you this but your argument supports the Israelis not the Palestinians. If only short terms apply well again that supports the Israelis because they have been in control of the land for the past 60 years What if the Israelis are still in control over the lands a thousand years from now?
The bottom line it's not just one sided as you believe. In order for true peace both sides need to compromise and respect one another existence.
"...believe in lies...to get by...it's divine...whoa...oh, you know what its like..."
But it is an ethnicity and guess what it is a nationality too since there is a country now called Israel! We can trace them to Middle East going back thousands of years.
And no ethnic state has any legitimate claim over a piece of land. The Zionist enterprise of establishing an ethnic Jewish state in Palestine was illegitimate from the beginning. What we're talking about here is a race war. One ethnicity claiming sovereignty over territory belonging to, and inhabited by, people that didn't fit that particular mould.
Your talk about Biblical history is just pure nonsense.
We're discussing the present situation in the Middle East. I.e, the illegal occupation and Intrnational law. Still, keep moving the goal posts. I mean, this is purely verbal jousting here right? And it's not a serious issue. It's not as if hundreds of thousands of people are presently living in conditions of extreme poverty and danger.
It's a level playing field between two equal parties, right? Both parties are in the wrong and need to make concessions, right? The Palestinians need to renounce violence and need to recognize Israel, despite the fact that Israel in it's present state is in breach of international law on over 60 resolutions, and despite the fact that Israel has refused to declare it's own borders, thereby making Israel an open-ended concept. And what concessions does Israel need to make? Oh yeah, they need to cease their illegal settlement building. Nevermind the 1967 borders. That's just international law. And why should any American or Israeli care about that, right?
But it's hypocritical to say it's wrong for the Israelis to conquer and take over lands when Europeans have been doing it for thousands of years . Actually is there any group of people that hasn't done this?.
So your suggesting that every present day act of large scale aggression and every breach of Interntional law should be not only ignored, but justified by the crimes of history?
Did you forget there were Jews in Palestine prior to 1948 when it was under British control? Yes I read it and I think it's wrong! Ok so lets say Neumann is right that the Jews don't come from the Middle East?.
I didn't forget that Jews lived in Palestine prior to 1848. How is this relevant? I suspect that in your attempts to muddy the water, and catch me out, you may have forgotten what your talking about.
Neumann didn't say that Jews didn't come from the Middle East. He pointed out that their historical claim to the land is, at best, dubious.
well the fact is a large part of the Israelis came from Europe after WWII so why did they have to leave their homes in Europe? Lets give them back their homes in Europe then. Oh that's right it's ok to treat Jews like shit and it's ok for Europeans (governments) and others to take lands away from people and treat them like shit but it's not ok for the Jews/Israelis to do so? But Europeans could argue they originally don't come from Europe (or do they?)... but hmmm where did they come from then?....hmmmm Middle East...Palestine?
How was any of this the Palestinians problem? And what does it have to do with the illegal occupation? Nothing.
Also if Jewish is just a religion and not an ethnicity or nationality wouldn't the Jews in Palestine prior to WWII and the establishment of the State of Israel be Palestinian then? Wouldn't it be their land too?
You'll need to elaborate here as the above makes no sense to me.
Again there are always two sides. Hate to tell you this but your argument supports the Israelis not the Palestinians. If only short terms apply well again that supports the Israelis because they have been in control of the land for the past 60 years What if the Israelis are still in control over the lands a thousand years from now?
Israel has been in breach of International law for the past 60 years. It therefore doesn't control the land. That's the equivalent of saying that the thief who broke into your house and is now holding your t.v set has rightful ownership of it simply because he's holding it.
the fact is a large portion of the Israelis came from Europe after WWII as they were still being treated like shit and unwanted in Europe which is the reason that the UN gave the Jews portions of Palestine. So why did the Jews have to leave their homes in Europe? Lets give them back their homes in Europe then. Oh that's right it's ok to treat Jews like shit and it's ok for Europeans (governments) and others to take lands away from people and treat them like shit but it's not ok for the Jews/Israelis to do so? But many Europeans would argue the Jews don't originally come from Europe (or do they?)... but hmmm where did they come from then?....hmmmm Middle East...Palestine?
It's doubtful that any of the Jews who settled in Palestine after WW2 had ever set foot there before. So how could they claim it as their home?
Michael Neumann:
'The Zionists and their camp followers did not come simply to "find a homeland," certainly not in the sense that Flanders is the homeland of the Flemish, or Lappland of the Lapps. They did not come simply to "make a life in Palestine." They did not come to "redeem a people". All this could have been done elsewhere, as was pointed out at the time, and much of it was being done elsewhere by individual Jewish immigrants to America and other countries. The Zionists, and therefore all who settled under their auspices, came to found a soveriegn Jewish state.'
'Zionism was from the start an ill-considered and menacing experiment in ethnic nationalism. Neither history nor religion could justify it. The Jews had no claim to Palestine and no right to build a state there. Their growing need for refuge may have provided some limited, inadequate, short-term moral sustenance for the Zionist project, but it could not render that project legitimate. The mere fact of later suffering cannot retroactively convert a wrong into a right: my attempt to usurp your land does not become legitimate simply because I am wrongly beaten by someone else, far away, when my project is near completion. Nor did the well founded desperation of the Jews during the Nazi era provide any justification for Zionism; at most it provided an excuse. If someone is murdering my family in Germany, that does not entitle me to your house in Boston, or my "people" to your country. All Jews fleeing Hitler were indeed entitled to some refuge. One might even suppose that it was the obligation of the whole world, including the Palestinians, to do what they could to provide such refuge. But this is not the whole story.
For one thing, those with ample means to provide refuge, and those who are responsible for the need, have by far the greater share of responsibility. The Palestinians fell into neither category. Even more important, there is an enormous difference between providing refuge and providing a sovereign state. No amount of danger or suffering requires this, and indeed it may conflict with the demand for refuge. Simply to control one's own affairs isn't always the safest alternative. Arguably, for instance, the Jews were safer in the United States, where they are not sovereign, than they ever were in Israel. This is not only a fact but was always a reasonable expectation, so the need for refuge is also no basis for Zionism...
If there are any great lessons to be learned from the Nazi era , they are to watch out for fascism, racism, and ethnic nationalism. Supporting Israel hardly embodies these lessons.'
And no ethnic state has any legitimate claim over a piece of land. The Zionist enterprise of establishing an ethnic Jewish state in Palestine was illegitimate from the beginning. What we're talking about here is a race war. One ethnicity claiming sovereignty over territory belonging to, and inhabited by, people that didn't fit that particular mould.
Your talk about Biblical history is just pure nonsense.
We're discussing the present situation in the Middle East. I.e, the illegal occupation and Intrnational law. Still, keep moving the goal posts. I mean, this is purely verbal jousting here right? And it's not a serious issue. It's not as if hundreds of thousands of people are presently living in conditions of extreme poverty and danger.
It's a level playing field between two equal parties, right? Both parties are in the wrong and need to make concessions, right? The Palestinians need to renounce violence and need to recognize Israel, despite the fact that Israel in it's present state is in breach of international law on over 60 resolutions, and despite the fact that Israel has refused to declare it's own borders, thereby making Israel an open-ended concept. And what concessions does Israel need to make? Oh yeah, they need to cease their illegal settlement building. Nevermind the 1967 borders. That's just international law. And why should any American or Israeli care about that, right?
Well you start with a very American view . However we both know there are many countries in world that are not open to the same views. However that being said of course the best-case scenario is Israelis and Palestinians living side by side in peace with equal rights and opportunities. But I'm not sure if the Palestinians or Israelis are willing to give equal rights and opportunities to one another. It basically appears both sides want their own ethnic state. Again two sided.
When discussing 'present problem' you need to view the past to see what brought you to that problem and look into similar situations.
This statement of yours 'Your talk about Biblical history is just pure nonsense.' made me laugh. You're barking up the wrong tree with this. I know very little about the bible.
Yes the Israelis need to stop building on the settlements as I stated somewhere in this thread. They need to go back to the pre-1967 borders and give the Palestinians back their land. They need to immediately stop the control and inhumane treatment of the Palestinians NOW. They need to let the Palestinians live in peace.
The Palestinians need to agree with the pre-1967 borders which means they too must accept and finally agree to give land to the Israelis. They too must stop the violence and let the Israelis live in peace.
I was just trying to make you see there are two sides to the story as well as two victims. I feel you do have a compassion and sympathy for the Palestinians, which is understandable. I may disagree with some of your views but I respect it.
Oh and if only the US could listen to international law...
"...believe in lies...to get by...it's divine...whoa...oh, you know what its like..."
It basically appears both sides want their own ethnic state. Again two sided.
When you say that 'It [] appears both sides want their own ethnic state', I assume you came to this conclusion after looking at some evidence for it? Therefore, can you please provide some evidence that the Palestinians are looking for their own ethnic state. You may have forgotten that Arabs and Jews lived happily side-by-side in Palestine for hundreds of years before the Zionist enterprise led to the present day bloodshed.
The Palestinians need to agree with the pre-1967 borders which means they too must accept and finally agree to give land to the Israelis. They too must stop the violence and let the Israelis live in peace.
The Palestinians have already agreed with the 1967 borders. The violence will stop if and when Israel withdraws to the borders in accordance with the International consensus - excluding the U.S - which is in favour of a two-state solution along those same borders.
Comments
Wow, obviously you took those quotes out of context. Is that how you get your information?
Everyone is pointing fingers here. It's either the Israelis started it and are to blame or the Palestinians started it and are to blame. However the Israelis and Palestinians are both the victims here.
Jews and Palestinians can both trace their ancestry to the Middle East and there were several conflicts between them well before 1948 when the State of Israel was established.
THIS CONFLICT did not start in 1967, it started after WWII when the UN divided up the then British controlled Palestine giving portions of the land to the Jews so the European Jews had a place to go. Egypt and Jordan were also given portions of Palestine to rule (Gaza, Judea and Samaria). The European Jews after surviving the Holocaust were still unwanted in Europe, which created a huge problem. At first they stayed in the concentration camps and were then shipped around. While some European countries accepted some as well as the US there were many without a place to go. European Jews felt Europeans were not treating them well after the war had ended. They felt the Jews in Palestine were being treated better by the Palestinians so the European Jews wanted to go to their "homeland" in Palestine. Then the UN agreed to the division of Palestine noted above.
Although the division of Palestine and the land that was given to the Jews was approved by the UN, the Palestinians did not agree to it as well as the Arab countries in the Middle East. As a result Palestinians were forcefully driven from their homes in the areas given to the Jews. This caused resentment and anger towards the Jews by the Palestinians and Arab countries in the Middle East. Arab countries such as Egypt, Jordan, Syria and Iran & etc, refused to recognized Israel and wanted the land returned to the Palestinians and war broke out in 1948 when Israel was attacked by several Arab countries. However the Israelis defeated them.
The resentment and anger towards the Israelis remained. There was consent back and forth fighting as well as consent threats made to Israel leading up to the 1967 war. When Egypt blocked the Straits of Tiran to Israel blocking shipments into Israel, the Israelis felt this was an act of war.
Now that being all said the lands taken by the Israelis during the 1967 war is unjustified as well as their continued control and inhumane treatment of the Palestinians. They really should know how it feels to be treated like that and have sympathy towards the Palestinians. As the Jews were forced out of their Europeans homes, they should have sympathy towards the Palestinians who were first forced out of the homes in the areas given to the Jews after WWII and then again after the 1967 war. The fact that they keep building settlements on the land that was not theirs pre-1967 borders just adds to the resentment and anger towards them. However the problem is the Jews believe they were forced off of their land in the Middle East many many years ago well before this conflict even began.
Both sides need to stop the violence before any peace agreement can or will be reached.
Actually, hardly anyone is doing that at all. When you read the substance and overall theme of almost everyone's posts; they clearly are expressing and focusing on equal responsibility and equal accountability.
In an attempt to disolve that whole one side is to blame and the other side are victims, crap.
This is not about choosing one side (Palestine) or the other side (Israel/Jews). It's about realizing both sides are equally guilty and both sides have a lot of innocent civilians (victims) who have been and continue to be caught in the middle of this horrific conflict. This is about equality for Palestinians as well as Israelis.
I don't think both sides are equally guilty at all. The Palestinians never asked for their land to be stolen by a bunch of Jewish fanatics - Zionists - who were intent on establishing a 'Jewish State' in Palestine to the detriment of those who already inhabited the place. The Zionists have been carrying out a race war ever since and have been committing a crime against humanity for the past 60 years. The Zionist enterprise in the Middle East was illegitimate to begin with. Israel is currently in breach of over 60 U.N resolutions. The Palestinians are in breach of none.
Israel could end the violence, and begin abiding by international law, tomorrow, by withdrawing to the 1967 borders. Maybe Jlew/Lazymoon/Coloursblending9 would like to explain to us all why Israel insists on breaching international law and why it continues building more and more illegal settlements?
All this talk of who started the 1967 war, and of Biblical hocus pocus is completely irrelevant. But then this has been the tactic of supporters of the Zionist race war for a long time now - they tend to follow the same pattern; I.e, try to muddy the water by focusing on irrelevancies and try to make the subject seem complicated, which it isn't.
There's no 'supposedly' about it. It's a fact that Israel has mudered Palestinian children and has deliberately targeted civilians.
I've already provided plenty of evidence on this thread which proves this. Obviously you read only what you want to read. No doubt you'll ignore the following yet again...
Amnesty International has accused Israel of committing war crimes in the occupied West Bank and Gaza Strip.
The rights group's report for 2004 says Israeli forces have killed some 700 Palestinians - including 150 children - mostly in unlawful circumstances.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/4580139.stm
Israel says it doesn’t mean to kill Palestinian children, yet they keep on dying
http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-3539098,00.html
Israeli Army Kills Palestinian Children
http://www.mediamonitors.net/sarah2.html
Four Palestinian children and their mother were killed in an Israeli attack on the northern Gaza Strip today, officials said.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2008/apr/28/israelandthepalestinians
'The Israeli occupation army and paramilitary Jewish settlers have killed 545 Palestinian children and minors since the outbreak of the al-Aqsa Intifada in September 2000.
Among these victims, 266 children were 14 or younger while the ages of the remaining 279 ranged from 15 to 18. Moreover, as many as 20,000 Palestinian children were injured, with nearly 1500 sustaining life-long disabilities.'
http://www.ifamericansknew.org/stats/child_41304.html
Israel kills some more children
http://electronicintifada.net/v2/article9356.shtml
IDF troops kill stone-throwing teenager near Hebron
http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/948220.html
IDF troops kill 16-year-old stone-thrower in Nablus
http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/795734.html
Israeli police kill Palestinian stone throwers
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/middle-east/israeli-police-kill-palestinian-stone-throwers-699679.html
Damn Jews ...
That being said, I still think IDF attacks are different than for example a suicide bomber going into Israel and deliberately killing innocent people.
This example
http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/948220.html
shows that IDF went out to kill Hamas Militants and gunmen. IDF troops raided an area, they killed 4 Hamas militants and a stone thrower was also killed. Obviously the headline said IDF kills a teenager, but the headline easily could have said IDF kills 4 Hamas militants who were organizing a terror attack.
I think a huge problem is that the Hamas militants operate way too close to innocent Palestinian civilians. Whether you agree or not, its understandable that IDF targets Hamas militants. The terrible part about it, is that there are too many people caught in the crossfire.
Also, Hamas has to stop sending in missiles into Israel. Haven't they learned Israel is going to retaliate and target those they believe are responsible?
I mean country/nation A literally fires missiles into country B. Country B will always retaliate.
It obviously looks like Israel is the aggressor because their retaliations and military ambushes on Hamas militants are a lot more successful (from a military Point of view) than missiles being fired into Israel.
For the safety of their own people, Hamas needs to stop firing missiles into Israel!
How can a country sit back and do nothing when missiles are fired into their country??
At the very least, Israel's attacks are very defined and targeted. They go after specific targets, specific Hamas militants. Now, unfortunately, as Byrnzie correctly points out, innocent Palestinians are killed in the crossfires.
the only difference is that the IDF's killings are justified by most of the world, unfortunately.
it's like you read what we write, but then forget it a second later. the entire point of this is that israel has NOT ALWAYS RETALIATED. many, if not most, ceasefires have been broken by Israel...
I have a scenario too. "literally", country A is occupying country B's land, demolishing country B's residents' houses, and killing innocent people. Country B will always retaliate.
actually, byrnzie points out that it's deliberate.
He/she continues to operate from the same extremely biased and discriminatory point, as he did four pages ago. His excuses for Israel are all the same. As is his obvious bias, discrimination and marginalization of the Palestinians
So I'll just repeat most of what I said earlier with a few extra sentences thrown in.
Oddly enough, your logic is completely biased and one-sided as you request everyone show empathy for Israel, it's plight and it's people. Yet in your arguments you show no empathy for the Palestine people and use the very same logic that you find disgusting; to justify and excuse all things Israel.
You mean, like the consequences of Israel invading, occupying and expanding further into Palestine territory?
Or is it that in your mind, the Jews have some kind of entitlement to do these things and not expect consequences?
It was you who made the initial comment, earlier, remember?
You excuse and justify Israel for having the money and resources to amass a huge military. But you demonize and condemn the Palestinians for NOT having the money and resources to amass a huge military.
Furthermore, you insinuate the Palestinians have no right to defend themselves, in whatever manner at their disposal; against what is essentially an illegal occupation of Palestinian land and expansion of their (Israeli territory).
You make all the excuses in the world for Israel, but deny the Palestinians the same and equal rights and considerations.
Clearly the distinction here is this.........
I am debating from a position that both sides are equally at fault and guilty of the same kind of attrocities. And neither should be painted as innocent or victims. The true innocent and victims are the civilians from both sides who have nothing to do with this conflict; but are routinely killed because they are caught in the crossfire.
You are arguing exclusively in defense of Israel and have an extremely biased and discriminatory point of view; in that defense.
Make no mistake, Byrnzie. I agree completely with everything you have said. Always have. Never doubt that.
I'm just approaching this from a "Can we just get past the chicken or the egg argument and have both sides finally come to their senses " point of view.
Yes, clearly I support Israel. I don't believe in any of that Jewish entitlement BS. But I do believe Israel has the right to defend themselves. As they did in 48, 67, 73, etc. NO, not everything Israel has done has been in self-defense. If I have said that before, then I was wrong before, or I just didn't explain myself properly
My biggest fault on this board, and I admit to it, is being too one-sided. I just felt the need to do so, when I kept reading a huge majority of anti-Israel (call it what you want) posts. I am no more one-sided than the posters who write only against Israel by exclusively quoting blatant anti-Israel writers/opinions such as chomsky. I am a supporter of Israel, but I've said it numerous times on this board and off it, that the biggest victims of this mess are the innocent Palestinians just wanting peace.
I do sympathize with Palestinians. I think its terrible they live in harsh conditions. I think its wrong that IDF kills innocent Palestinians, no matter how much some (not all) try to avoid doing so.
I believe Israel has the right to exist, and I believe there should be an independent Palestinian state.
However, I am totally against Hamas, and their government. I am totally against what was the PLO and Arafat's gov't. Hamas might be all for their people, but they are extremists and radicals. I think the same of Hezbollah.
I think Byrnzie and others should at least condemn Hamas sending rockets into Israel, sponsoring terrorists/militants and stating in their charter they are devoted to the destruction of Israel.
So, if you don't blame Hamas for firing rockets, dont blame the IDF for targetting and killing Hamas militants.
And don't blame Israel entirely for the poor living conditions in Gaza. Start by blaming Arafat who took approx 1 billion dollars that should have went towards the Palestinian people, but instead was pocketed by Arafat for his personal and political gain.
Yeah, Olmert is prob corrupt too, but not like that. Not 1 billion dollars of public money. And Israel police and media are all over Olmert.
NMytree, you make a good point though. I will try and be less one-sided in the future, I just feel that there should be a voice defending Israel.
Has this board ever discussed that Fatah-Hamas fighting/civil war or even the recent conflict within Lebanon? Im saying, its not just Israel who is against Hamas and Hezbollah...
http://forums.pearljam.com/showthread.php?t=286224
Seems to illuminate the issue a little bit.
Also...http://www.fair.org/index.php?page=1086. Since the information most people get about the issue is biased, naturally there is a bias towards ISrael when it comes to this conflict.
During the six-month period studied, NPR reported the deaths of 62 Israelis and 51 Palestinians. While on the surface that may not appear to be hugely lopsided, during the same time period 77 Israelis and 148 Palestinians were killed in the conflict. That means there was an 81 percent likelihood that an Israeli death would be reported on NPR, but only a 34 percent likelihood that a Palestinian death would be.
-
And that's from NPR. The major news networks are even more 1-sided, NBC, ABC, FOX, all report on Israeli casualties more often than Palestinian, creating a sense that the Palestinian people are much more violent, when reality is in fact the opposite.
Called propaganda from any outisde source.
I notice that you ignored the other links I provided. One of which was this...
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2003/jul/28/israel
'Haneen, who was eight years old, had been shot twice in the head by an Israeli soldier as she walked down the street in Khan Yunis refugee camp with her mother, Lila Abu Selmi.
"Almost every day here the Israelis shoot at random, so when you hear it you get inside as quickly as possible," says Mrs Selmi. "Haneen went to the grocery store to buy some crisps. When the shooting started, I came out to find her. She was coming down the street and ran to me and hugged me, crying, 'Mother, mother'. Two bullets hit her in the head, one straight after the other. She was still in my arms and she died."
...Weeks passed and another Israeli bullet shattered the life of another young Palestinian girl. Huda Darwish was sitting at her school desk when a cluster of shots ripped through the top of a tree outside her classroom and buried themselves in the wall. But one ricocheted off the window frame, smashed through the glass and lodged in the 12-year-old girl's brain. Huda's teacher, Said Sinwar, was standing in front of the blackboard. "It was a normal lesson when suddenly there was this shooting without any warning. The children were terrified and trying to run. I was shouting at them to get under their desks. Suddenly the bullet hit the little girl and she slumped to the floor with a sigh, not even screaming," he says.
Rahman was in another class at the same school. The next day, lessons were cancelled and the boy defied his mother to tag along at the funeral of a slain Palestinian fighter. The burial evolved into the ritual protest of children marching to the security fence that separates Gaza's dense and beggared Khan Yunis refugee camp from the spacious religious exclusivity of the neighbouring Jewish settlement. As Rahman hung a Palestinian flag on the fence, a bullet caught him under his left eye. He died on the spot. "It looks as if the soldiers saw him put the flag on the fence and they shot him," says Rahman's brother, 19-year-old Ijaram. "There were many kids next to him, next to the fence. But he was the only one carrying the flag. Why else would they have shot him?"
It would certainly be convenient for you to be able to simply wrtite these deaths off as mere accidents. Unfortunately that's not the case.
Amnesty International asserts that Israel targets civilians
http://www.ngo-monitor.org/article.php?id=1134
In a July 13 press release Amnesty International (AI) said "Israel must put an immediate end to attacks against civilians", and provocatively asserts that Israel deliberately targets civilians.
Does Israel have a policy of killing Palestinian civilians?
Nigel Parry, The Electronic Intifada, 13 June 2006
http://electronicintifada.net/v2/article4802.shtml
'Of the several Palestinians who I saw shot dead at these 30 clashes, not a single one of them was killed within any range that they could have hit an Israeli soldier with a stone. In the single clash where I witnessed an Israeli soldier grazed by a stone, the killing that took place happened much later. At no time was there any life-threatening situation that required these soldiers to behave any differently than riot police would behave in a more civilized country.
Out of nowhere, when the energy of the clashes seemed to be dissipating, a soldier would suddenly shoot a child or teenager, 100 meters away from them or more and in front of you. Next time you find yourself in an open space with no people around, see how far you can throw a stone. You�ll find it to be considerably less than 100 meters...
Fourteen Palestinians, mostly women and children, were killed when an Israeli F-16 dropped a 1,000-kilogram bomb on an apartment building in the al-Daraj neighborhood of Gaza City, to assassinate Salah Shehadeh, then leader of Hamas' military wing.
Massive civilian casualties were inevitable given the size of the bomb used and the crowded area on which it was dropped. A Ha�aretz journalist subsequently asked Maj. Gen. Dan Halutz, a key figure behind Israel�s assassination policy, whether he felt any remorse about the incident. After making a hollow statement of regret for the children killed and defending the policy, he stated:
"If you insist on wanting to know what I feel when I release a bomb, I will tell you. I feel a slight bump to the plane as a result of bomb's release. A second later it passes, and that's all. That is what I feel."
Israeli occupation forces have killed over 3,000 Palestinian civilians since the Intifada began. Israel�s contempt for Palestinian life stretches from the privates in its occupying army to its prime minister. Israel kills Palestinian civilians not only intentionally but also routinely, and this has been true for decades. The patterns speak for themselves.'
http://www.wsws.org/articles/2002/dec2002/isra-d12.shtml
'Israeli armed forces opened fire on Palestinians near the Zionist settlement of Rafiah Yam, killing a 40-year-old woman, Nahla Aqel, and injuring her four-year-old son and fourteen-year-old daughter, both of whom are believed to be in a very critical condition. Her seven-year-old son was also wounded. A second woman was shot in the head. Eyewitnesses said they were walking in the middle of the street...
Israel justified the carnage with the claim that five of the dead were members of the militant group Hamas. “We encountered a lot of resistance and the forces fired at armed gunmen,” said Brigadier Yisrael Ziv, commander of security forces in Gaza.
Palestinian sources flatly contradicted the Brigadier’s claim, saying that at least seven of the nine killed were civilians. The United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) said that the victims included two of its own personnel—a teacher and school attendant. The school teacher, 32-year-old Ahlam Riziq Kandil, was killed in her home. Osama Hassan Tahrawi, the 31-year-old school attendant, was killed along with six friends and relatives when a rocket fired from a helicopter hit him as he stood in his backyard.
This brings to five the number of UN staff killed this year and three in as many weeks. On November 22, an Israeli soldier shot 54-year-old Iain Hook in the back from a rooftop some 25 metres away, using a telescopic sight. Hook, a British UN official, was leading a UN project to rebuild the Jenin refugee camp, parts of which were destroyed last April by the Israeli army. Security forces then prevented an ambulance reaching the compound for 25 minutes. As a result, Hook bled to death before the ambulance reached the hospital.'
Also, I suppose you beleive that Rachel Corrie's murder can be wrtitten off as 'collataral damage, along with the muder of Tom Hurndall?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tom_Hurndall
'Thomas "Tom" Hurndall (November 29, 1981 – January 13, 2004) was a British photography student, a volunteer for the International Solidarity Movement (ISM), and an activist against the Israeli occupation of the Palestinian territories. On April 11, 2003, he was shot in the head in the Gaza Strip by an Israel Defense Forces (IDF) sniper, Taysir Hayb. According to witnesses, this occurred while he was acting “as a human shield, escorting children away from gunfire.”[1] Hurndall was left in a coma and died nine months later.
Hayb was convicted of manslaughter and obstruction of justice by an Israeli military court in April 2005 and sentenced to eight years in prison.[1] On April 10, 2006, a British inquest found that Hurndall had been "intentionally killed", i.e. an official verdict of unlawful killing'.
Death on the beach: seven Palestinians killed as Israeli shells hit family picnic
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2006/jun/10/israel
'A barrage of Israeli artillery shells rained down on a busy Gaza beach yesterday, killing seven Palestinians, three of them children. The attack put further strain on the 16-month truce between Israel and the governing Hamas movement.
Witnesses described several explosions that also injured dozens of other people who lay on the beach, screaming and pleading for help. Some ran into the sea for fear of more shells hitting the sands at Beit Lahia, in the north of the Gaza strip.
Among the dead were three children, aged one, three, and 10. Their sister was swimming and survived.
The beach was packed with picnicking families enjoying the Muslim day of rest, and the explosions landed among them, scattering body parts along the dunes. Television footage showed a woman and a child laying dead on the sand, and another child screaming in agony while a lifeless man was carried away by an ambulance crew...'
So do I. Although Israel needs to withdraw to the 1967 borders.
I will be the first one on this board to condemn any attacks by the Palestinians if and when Israel pulls back to the internationally recognized 67 borders.
I think everyone here understands perfectly well who it is that benefits from Palestinian in-fighting. Some things just don't need pointing out.
What is irrelevant to you is not irrelevant to others especially to the parties in question.
If it's not complicated and since you previously said the Palestinians and Arab countries do not have to recognize Israel to have peace, can you guarantee peace in the Middle East if the Israelis go back to the pre-1967 borders? Ok lets says the Palestinians and remaining Arab countries do not recognize Israel, will they stop trying to get take back all of the land pre-WW-II? Can you guarantee peace without treaties and respect to ALL parties involved? Will the violence truly end? Will you support the Israelis if the Palestinians and Arab countries continue violence against the Israelis?
Where do the Jews belong?
Why ask me? I'm not Nostradamus.
What does International law - as defined by the United Nations - have to say about what Israel should do?
As for what the Arab countries may or may not do, if and when Israel begins abiding by international law, I 'm not sure that it's relevant.
Where do Christians belong? Where do Budhists belong? Where do blacks belong?
Support how? I wouldn't say I 'support' England now. I wouldn't say I 'support' Amrica now. I'm not sure I understand the question.
You have the opinion this is not a difficult issue to solve. As you said the international community excluding the US just wants Israel to go back to the pre-1967 borders and the problem will be solved. However without peace agreements between the Palestinians and Arab countries with the Israelis the entire problem is not solved.
I would say international law created this monster of a conflict. They thought it was a great idea giving away portions of the Palestinians' land to the Jews with their agreement in the first place.
It's a nationality not just a religion. But I'll rephrase the question. Do you dispute that Jewish ancestry is traced straight to the Middle East going back thousands of years, especially in the old Palestine such as Jerusalem and Judea?
As you support the Palestinians right now. If the tables turn someday and if the Jews are in the same boat as the Palestinians are right now, will you support their cause with the same degree you support the Palestinians? Ya know as you said take off your boxing gloves
what
Again, irrelevant.
I can't speak for Byrnzie myself, and this is also irrelevant, but I'm pretty sure everyone would support whoever is the one being oppressed and occupied. Right now, it's the Palestinians.
Neither Judaism or Zionism are nationalities.
Michael Neumann:
'When Zionism got started, the Jews did not have a common language - modern Hebrew did not exist. They still have no common language, since millions of Jews speak not a word of Hebrew. Jews did not have a common culture: Moroccan, Russian, and English Jews lived in worlds apart [And still do]. They did not have a common history: for some, persecution was a bitter reality and for others, full citizens of their countries, a distant memory. They not only lacked a national state, but the desire for such a state: that was the project of a few European upper-middle-class activists. Many Jews were fervent nationalists or patriots for the countries they inhabited; others were fervent internationalists; most were not interested in such matters. And, of course, they did not live in one geographical area.'
I think the question is largely irrelevant. Do you dispute that the Celts can trace their ancestry back to most of Europe and therefore should be entitled to a form of ethnic soveriegnty over all other races in Europe today? Do you dispute that the Native Americans should have ethnic soveriegnty over all other Americans in the U.S? And the Australian Aboriginals should be allowed to establish a soveriegn ethnic state in Australia to the exclusion of it's new inhabitants?
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.'
Yeehaw!!!!
http://electronicintifada.net/artman2/uploads/1/expelthearabenemy483.jpg
No, of course there isn't.
Meanwhile...
Tutu enters Gaza to start investigation into deaths
The Guardian, Wednesday May 28 2008
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2008/may/28/israelandthepalestinians.southafrica
'Desmond Tutu, the South African archbishop, met the former Palestinian prime minister and Hamas leader, Ismail Haniyeh, in Gaza at the start of a much-delayed UN investigation into the shelling by the Israeli military of a Palestinian house which killed 18 members of a single family in Beit Hanoun.'
Tutu was sent by the UN human rights council to lead the inquiry only days after the incident in November 2006. However, the Israeli government did not give him a visa and complained that the council was politicised in its criticism of Israel.
Yesterday, after several months of delay, Tutu crossed into Gaza from Egypt at the Rafah crossing point, which is usually closed and almost never used for UN or diplomatic visits, but where he did not require any Israeli travel permit.
Tutu met Karen Abu Zayd, the head of the UN relief and works agency, which supports Palestinian refugees, and then met Haniyeh, one of the leading Hamas figures in Gaza who was sacked as prime minister last year.
Tutu was to tell Haniyeh that he strongly condemned militants firing rockets from Gaza into southern Israel and the killing of Israeli civilians, but he was also to speak of his criticism of the Israeli occupation of the Palestinian territories, according to a source travelling with him.
Today Tutu will travel to Beit Hanoun to talk to survivors of the Israeli artillery strike. All the dead were from the Athamna extended family, among them 14 women and children. They were asleep in the house when the shells struck early in the morning.
As they poured out of the house they were hit by more shells - a wave of six or seven in total. It came only a day after the Israeli military had ended a six-day incursion into Beit Hanoun, which had left 50 Palestinians dead.
After the shelling incident, the Israeli military said it had fired "preventative artillery at launch sites" from which militants had fired rockets a day earlier towards Israel, but there had been a "technical failure" with the artillery gun.
Although Tutu was not given a visa to travel to Gaza, Louise Arbour, the UN high commissioner for human rights, did travel to Beit Hanoun at the time, and to the Israeli towns around Gaza, and said there had been a "massive" violation of human rights in Gaza.
The UN human rights council then sent Tutu on a fact-finding mission to "assess the situation of victims, address the needs of survivors and make recommendations on ways and means to protect Palestinian civilians against further Israeli assaults".
But it is an ethnicity and guess what it is a nationality too since there is a country now called Israel! We can trace them to Middle East going back thousands of years. The bottom line they were chased out of the Middle East and have traveled across borders like millions of the other peoples have over the thousands of years. However just like in the Middle East they were chased out of Europe by being treated inhumanely.
But doesn't your statement support the Israelis too? If you're argument is the land belongs to the Palestinians, however over the past 40-60 years the Israelis have control over that land. So should the Palestinians get over it just like the Native Americans, Celts and Australian Aboriginals?
My birth home is an old Dutch settlement which was originally a Native American settlement called Penpotawotnot.
None of this gives them any right of soveriegnty over the land in Palestine.
There's a difference between some spurious claim relating to Ancient history and 60 years. Did you actually read my post above?
But it's hypocritical to say it's wrong for the Israelis to conquer and take over lands when Europeans have been doing it for thousands of years
Did you forget there were Jews in Palestine prior to 1948 when it was under British control? Yes I read it and I think it's wrong! Ok so lets say Neumann is right that the Jews don't come from the Middle East, well the fact is a large portion of the Israelis came from Europe after WWII as they were still being treated like shit and unwanted in Europe which is the reason that the UN gave the Jews portions of Palestine. So why did the Jews have to leave their homes in Europe? Lets give them back their homes in Europe then. Oh that's right it's ok to treat Jews like shit and it's ok for Europeans (governments) and others to take lands away from people and treat them like shit but it's not ok for the Jews/Israelis to do so? But many Europeans would argue the Jews don't originally come from Europe (or do they?)... but hmmm where did they come from then?....hmmmm Middle East...Palestine?
If Jewish is just a religion and not an ethnicity or nationality wouldn't the Jews in Palestine prior to WWII and the establishment of the State of Israel be Palestinian then? Wouldn't it be their land too? . This would also apply to the Europeans Jews that were kicked out of Europe; they too would have been Polish, French, British, German and etc. So wouldn't they have rights to land in Europe the just like the Palestinians. This is the same 60 year time frame!
Again there are always two sides. Hate to tell you this but your argument supports the Israelis not the Palestinians. If only short terms apply well again that supports the Israelis because they have been in control of the land for the past 60 years
The bottom line it's not just one sided as you believe. In order for true peace both sides need to compromise and respect one another existence.
And no ethnic state has any legitimate claim over a piece of land. The Zionist enterprise of establishing an ethnic Jewish state in Palestine was illegitimate from the beginning. What we're talking about here is a race war. One ethnicity claiming sovereignty over territory belonging to, and inhabited by, people that didn't fit that particular mould.
Your talk about Biblical history is just pure nonsense.
We're discussing the present situation in the Middle East. I.e, the illegal occupation and Intrnational law. Still, keep moving the goal posts. I mean, this is purely verbal jousting here right? And it's not a serious issue. It's not as if hundreds of thousands of people are presently living in conditions of extreme poverty and danger.
It's a level playing field between two equal parties, right? Both parties are in the wrong and need to make concessions, right? The Palestinians need to renounce violence and need to recognize Israel, despite the fact that Israel in it's present state is in breach of international law on over 60 resolutions, and despite the fact that Israel has refused to declare it's own borders, thereby making Israel an open-ended concept. And what concessions does Israel need to make? Oh yeah, they need to cease their illegal settlement building. Nevermind the 1967 borders. That's just international law. And why should any American or Israeli care about that, right?
So your suggesting that every present day act of large scale aggression and every breach of Interntional law should be not only ignored, but justified by the crimes of history?
I didn't forget that Jews lived in Palestine prior to 1848. How is this relevant? I suspect that in your attempts to muddy the water, and catch me out, you may have forgotten what your talking about.
Neumann didn't say that Jews didn't come from the Middle East. He pointed out that their historical claim to the land is, at best, dubious.
How was any of this the Palestinians problem? And what does it have to do with the illegal occupation? Nothing.
You'll need to elaborate here as the above makes no sense to me.
Israel has been in breach of International law for the past 60 years. It therefore doesn't control the land. That's the equivalent of saying that the thief who broke into your house and is now holding your t.v set has rightful ownership of it simply because he's holding it.
The bottom line is that Israel needs to abide by international law and withdraw to the 1967 borders. That's the only compromise that needs to be made.
It's doubtful that any of the Jews who settled in Palestine after WW2 had ever set foot there before. So how could they claim it as their home?
Michael Neumann:
'The Zionists and their camp followers did not come simply to "find a homeland," certainly not in the sense that Flanders is the homeland of the Flemish, or Lappland of the Lapps. They did not come simply to "make a life in Palestine." They did not come to "redeem a people". All this could have been done elsewhere, as was pointed out at the time, and much of it was being done elsewhere by individual Jewish immigrants to America and other countries. The Zionists, and therefore all who settled under their auspices, came to found a soveriegn Jewish state.'
'Zionism was from the start an ill-considered and menacing experiment in ethnic nationalism. Neither history nor religion could justify it. The Jews had no claim to Palestine and no right to build a state there. Their growing need for refuge may have provided some limited, inadequate, short-term moral sustenance for the Zionist project, but it could not render that project legitimate. The mere fact of later suffering cannot retroactively convert a wrong into a right: my attempt to usurp your land does not become legitimate simply because I am wrongly beaten by someone else, far away, when my project is near completion. Nor did the well founded desperation of the Jews during the Nazi era provide any justification for Zionism; at most it provided an excuse. If someone is murdering my family in Germany, that does not entitle me to your house in Boston, or my "people" to your country. All Jews fleeing Hitler were indeed entitled to some refuge. One might even suppose that it was the obligation of the whole world, including the Palestinians, to do what they could to provide such refuge. But this is not the whole story.
For one thing, those with ample means to provide refuge, and those who are responsible for the need, have by far the greater share of responsibility. The Palestinians fell into neither category. Even more important, there is an enormous difference between providing refuge and providing a sovereign state. No amount of danger or suffering requires this, and indeed it may conflict with the demand for refuge. Simply to control one's own affairs isn't always the safest alternative. Arguably, for instance, the Jews were safer in the United States, where they are not sovereign, than they ever were in Israel. This is not only a fact but was always a reasonable expectation, so the need for refuge is also no basis for Zionism...
If there are any great lessons to be learned from the Nazi era , they are to watch out for fascism, racism, and ethnic nationalism. Supporting Israel hardly embodies these lessons.'
Well you start with a very American view
When discussing 'present problem' you need to view the past to see what brought you to that problem and look into similar situations.
This statement of yours 'Your talk about Biblical history is just pure nonsense.' made me laugh. You're barking up the wrong tree with this. I know very little about the bible.
Yes the Israelis need to stop building on the settlements as I stated somewhere in this thread. They need to go back to the pre-1967 borders and give the Palestinians back their land. They need to immediately stop the control and inhumane treatment of the Palestinians NOW. They need to let the Palestinians live in peace.
The Palestinians need to agree with the pre-1967 borders which means they too must accept and finally agree to give land to the Israelis. They too must stop the violence and let the Israelis live in peace.
I was just trying to make you see there are two sides to the story as well as two victims. I feel you do have a compassion and sympathy for the Palestinians, which is understandable. I may disagree with some of your views but I respect it.
Oh and if only the US could listen to international law...
When you say that 'It [] appears both sides want their own ethnic state', I assume you came to this conclusion after looking at some evidence for it? Therefore, can you please provide some evidence that the Palestinians are looking for their own ethnic state. You may have forgotten that Arabs and Jews lived happily side-by-side in Palestine for hundreds of years before the Zionist enterprise led to the present day bloodshed.
The Palestinians have already agreed with the 1967 borders. The violence will stop if and when Israel withdraws to the borders in accordance with the International consensus - excluding the U.S - which is in favour of a two-state solution along those same borders.