I can't be bothered to download and read this pdf file so I'll just take your word for it that Palestinians are grateful for an alleged increase in media coverage of their plight.
O.k. So how does any of this relate to the subject of the occupation and the ongoing crimes against humanity and other breaches of the Geneva convention being committed by Israel?
Or are we going to continue attempting to muddy the water with these irrelevancies?
It won't let me cut and paste it either. It's a study done by the Anti-Defamation League on Europeans attitudes towards Jews, Israel and the Palestinian-Israeli conflict done in 2002. 5 countries are involved France, UK, Denmark, Germany and Belgium. By far Britains have less anti-israel/jew views than the other 4 European countries according to the study. To be honest it doesn't say there is more media coverage in favor of the Palestinians. It just says the majority of Europeans who are more sympatric towards the Palestinians pay more attention to the media so you can take that how you want.
The Israelis are definitely in the wrong too. I believe both sides are right and wrong which is why I find it extremely complicated. They really should know better from what has happened to them in history. However usually abused kids grow up to abuse others. Somehow they need to figure out they are doing harm but that's not going to happen if both sides continue to kill each other. I don't support my country supporting Israel to the extent that it has/does but I would also hate to see them swallowed. I don't want to see the Palestinians swallowed up either. They've been there for thousands of years, who are we to tell them they don't belong there.
"...believe in lies...to get by...it's divine...whoa...oh, you know what its like..."
Progress is not made by everyone joining some new fad,
and reveling in it's loyalty. It's made by forming coalitions
over specific principles, goals, and policies.
Yeah, there's plenty of nonsense to be found on the internet. This is why it helps to stick to the facts. They're not hard to find. Like I said above, people love to try and complicate this issue. But it's not complicated. It'd be interesting to study Western media reporting of South African Apartheid and make some comparisons. I'm sure you'd find some interesting analogies.
Maybe. But that doesn't make them right. But by all means we can all revert back to living like barbarians if that's what you wish?
LMAO I pictured Conan the Barbarian.
Isn't it hypocritical of us to demand they do the right thing when our governments are doing the same thing by occupying other countries all around the world? And I'm not just talking about Iraq. I know the answer is to demand our own countries to do the same but there doesn't appear to be an urgency like Palestine and Iraq.
I hear this a lot 'what if the Native Americans demanded their land back and used the same tactics as the Palestinians?' My question is will Europe be ready for 200+ million people trying to return to their "homeland"? How many people in North and South America can trace their ancestry back to Europe?
"...believe in lies...to get by...it's divine...whoa...oh, you know what its like..."
The Israelis are definitely in the wrong too. I believe both sides are right and wrong which is why I find it extremely complicated.
Can you tell me why you think the Palestinians are in the wrong?
I happen to agree with Michael Neumann, author of 'The Case Against Israel':
http://electronicintifada.net/v2/article4690.shtml 'When he comes to the options available to Palestinians for countering Israel's race-war, Neumann is brutally consistent: there are none, save violence. This part of his argument will be unacceptable to the fainthearted, but it is up to them to refute it. He does not content himself with dismissing passive resistance as an option in the Palestinian context, but denies that it has worked in any context where the powerless faced the unscrupulously powerful. Gandhi "cannot be said to have won independence for India", Martin Luther King's civil rights movement had the backing of the US establishment, indeed "was practically a federal government project", and South Africa's ANC "was never a nonviolent movement but a movement that decided, on occasion, to use nonviolent tactics".
As for "terrorism", which he defines as "random violence against non-combatants", he distinguishes it from "collateral damage" with the assertion that the latter "involves knowingly killing innocent civilians" while "Terrorism involves intentionally killing innocent civilians", concluding that "the moral difference is too academic even for an academic." Why, then, is "terrorism" considered to be particularly morally repugnant, while "collateral damage" tends to be taken in our moral stride?
"Imagine trying to make such a claim. You say: 'To achieve my objectives, I would certainly drop bombs with the knowledge that they would blow the arms off some children. But to achieve those same objectives, I would not plant or set off a bomb on the ground with the knowledge that it would have that same effect. After all, I have planes to do that, I don't need to plant bombs.' As a claim of moral superiority, this needs a little work."
The Palestinians, he repeats, are without options. Israel has all the options, principally that of unilateral withdrawal from the Occupied Territories, but refuses to use them. Hence he refuses "to pronounce judgment on Palestinian terrorism."
So why does Israel still command such support from the US? Neumann deftly dismantles the notions that there are either "shared values" or a "confluence of interests" between the US and Israel, or that Israel is anything but a hindrance in the pursuit of America's nefarious oil politics. The US/Israel alliance is analysed historically as a relic of the cold war perpetuated by inertia: "Stale ideology has enshrined a counter-productive alliance at the heart of American foreign policy." Neumann calls for the US to change sides, and itemises the obvious benefits that would accrue from such a U-turn:
"It would instantly gain the warm friendship of Arab oil producers and obtain far more valuable allies in the war on terror: not only the governments of the entire Muslim world, but a good portion of the Muslim fundamentalist movement! The war on terror, which seems so unwinnable, might well be won at nominal cost, and quickly... Perhaps most important, switching sides would revitalize America's foundering efforts at non-proliferation."
Neumann's final verdict: "Israel is the illegitimate child of ethnic nationalism." While it is not his brief to "formulate specific strategies" leading towards a solution, he advocates "vigorous anti-Israeli action" primarily in the shape of "the most extensive international sanctions possible", undeterred "by the horrors of the Jewish past."
You mean the British are less inclined to criticize, or merely draw attention to, the occupation?
Can you tell me why you think the Palestinians are in the wrong?
I happen to agree with Michael Neumann, author of 'The Case Against Israel':
http://electronicintifada.net/v2/article4690.shtml 'When he comes to the options available to Palestinians for countering Israel's race-war, Neumann is brutally consistent: there are none, save violence. This part of his argument will be unacceptable to the fainthearted, but it is up to them to refute it. He does not content himself with dismissing passive resistance as an option in the Palestinian context, but denies that it has worked in any context where the powerless faced the unscrupulously powerful. Gandhi "cannot be said to have won independence for India", Martin Luther King's civil rights movement had the backing of the US establishment, indeed "was practically a federal government project", and South Africa's ANC "was never a nonviolent movement but a movement that decided, on occasion, to use nonviolent tactics".
As for "terrorism", which he defines as "random violence against non-combatants", he distinguishes it from "collateral damage" with the assertion that the latter "involves knowingly killing innocent civilians" while "Terrorism involves intentionally killing innocent civilians", concluding that "the moral difference is too academic even for an academic." Why, then, is "terrorism" considered to be particularly morally repugnant, while "collateral damage" tends to be taken in our moral stride?
"Imagine trying to make such a claim. You say: 'To achieve my objectives, I would certainly drop bombs with the knowledge that they would blow the arms off some children. But to achieve those same objectives, I would not plant or set off a bomb on the ground with the knowledge that it would have that same effect. After all, I have planes to do that, I don't need to plant bombs.' As a claim of moral superiority, this needs a little work."
The Palestinians, he repeats, are without options. Israel has all the options, principally that of unilateral withdrawal from the Occupied Territories, but refuses to use them. Hence he refuses "to pronounce judgment on Palestinian terrorism."
So why does Israel still command such support from the US? Neumann deftly dismantles the notions that there are either "shared values" or a "confluence of interests" between the US and Israel, or that Israel is anything but a hindrance in the pursuit of America's nefarious oil politics. The US/Israel alliance is analysed historically as a relic of the cold war perpetuated by inertia: "Stale ideology has enshrined a counter-productive alliance at the heart of American foreign policy." Neumann calls for the US to change sides, and itemises the obvious benefits that would accrue from such a U-turn:
"It would instantly gain the warm friendship of Arab oil producers and obtain far more valuable allies in the war on terror: not only the governments of the entire Muslim world, but a good portion of the Muslim fundamentalist movement! The war on terror, which seems so unwinnable, might well be won at nominal cost, and quickly... Perhaps most important, switching sides would revitalize America's foundering efforts at non-proliferation."
Neumann's final verdict: "Israel is the illegitimate child of ethnic nationalism." While it is not his brief to "formulate specific strategies" leading towards a solution, he advocates "vigorous anti-Israeli action" primarily in the shape of "the most extensive international sanctions possible", undeterred "by the horrors of the Jewish past."
Well the Palestinians sort of started the war (Israelis viewed it as an act of war) in the first place at which time the Israelis took control over their land 40 years ago. The Israelis wanted to push their enemies back and far away from them. Why didn't the UN or anyone do anything about it back then? Now we have Jews settled on that land and its more complicated.
I don't agree with the Palestinians violent tactics at all. How can anyone justify killing innocent civilians, women, babies or kids? Both sides are doing this and they are both wrong for doing so. The killing has to stop and the mistreatment also has to end before any peace agreement can be made. It's just fueling the fire and hatred between them.
The Civil Rights movement was not a federal government project. It was a huge ugly struggle that had no support from the federal government until their suffering was made public to the world. The violence came from the local and state officials and the federal government turned a blind eye. MLK and the Civil Rights movement remained peaceful on their part.
If the Palestinians began peaceful marches and etc but the Israelis continued to use violence that is when the tide will change here in the US. Instead Israel is viewed as defending themselves. It's not like the Israelis just took control a couple of weeks ago but something that happened 40 years ago.
As for Israel they need to make huge concessions, bigger than the ones Ehud Barak made which were considered generous by way of comparison to other offers but not enough. They also need to stop the inhumane treatment of the Palestinians.
Why do you think the US oil hungry government continues to support Israel when according to the article if the US switched sides it would basically solve our middle east/oil problems? There's got to be more to it.
"...believe in lies...to get by...it's divine...whoa...oh, you know what its like..."
Well the Palestinians sort of started the war (Israelis viewed it as an act of war) in the first place at which time the Israelis took control over their land 40 years ago.
I don't agree with the Palestinians violent tactics at all. How can anyone justify killing innocent civilians, women, babies or kids? Both sides are doing this and they are both wrong for doing so.
Yeah, both sides are doing this. And Israel is doing a lot more of it - about 10 times more. http://www.ifamericansknew.org/index.html As we speak Israel is currently in breach of over 60 U.N resolutions, while the Palestinians are in breach of none. Israel has been accused by U.N observers, Human rights watch and Amnesty International of comitting war crimes. The Palestinians are merely responding with the only means at their disposal.
If the Palestinians began peaceful marches and etc but the Israelis continued to use violence that is when the tide will change here in the US. Instead Israel is viewed as defending themselves.
This is a very nice idea, but again it just happens to have no basis in reality.
Israel Attack Kills 10 at Gaza Protest
Army Says Shots Were Warning; Children Among Dozens of Wounded
By Glenn Frankel
Washington Post Foreign Service
Thursday, May 20, 2004
'RAFAH, Gaza Strip, May 19 -- An Israeli helicopter gunship and a tank fired rockets and artillery shells at Palestinian protesters Wednesday as they marched toward a heavily populated neighborhood in the southern Gaza Strip. At least 10 Palestinians were killed and dozens wounded, many of them children, as explosives and shrapnel ripped through the crowd.'
Friday, 26 December, 2003, 15:06 GMT
Israel troops fire on peace rally http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/middle_east/3349753.stm
'Israeli soldiers have opened fire on a demonstration in the West Bank, injuring two peace activists.
The incident took place when about 100 protesters demonstrated near the Palestinian village of Mahase against the barrier Israel is constructing.'
'International Solidarity Movement volunteer Tom Hurndall being treated in a Rafah hospital after he was shot in the head by an IDF sniper while trying to shepherd children to safety. Declared brain dead, he remained in a coma until he died Jan. 13, 2004 in a London hospital (AFP photo/Mohammed Abed).
TOM HURNDALL, 22, died in a hospital in England on Jan. 13, 2004. He was mortally wounded the previous April while volunteering in Rafah, in the southern Gaza Strip, as a member of the International Solidarity Movement (ISM), the pro-Palestinian peace group that serves as a buffer between Israeli soldiers and Palestinian civilians. Although he already had been declared brain dead because of his wounds, he died of pneumonia, without, apparently, ever having recovered consciousness.
Just weeks before the British volunteer was shot by an IDF sniper, Hurndall’s American colleague in the ISM, Rachel Corrie, of Olympia, WA, was killed in Rafah, on March 16, 2003. She was trying to prevent an Israel Defense Forces Caterpillar tractor from demolishing the home of a Palestinian. Eyewitnesses vary on the details, but everyone agrees that the soldier driving the bulldozer refused to desist from his mission. The Israeli operator later said he did not know that Corrie was standing in the way as he moved forward. Photographs taken of her murder, however, make that story hard to believe...
On May 2, 2003, a third Westerner, British cameraman James Miller, was killed in Rafah. This time, all of the circumstances of Miller’s death were recorded on film by a colleague from the Associated Press Television News (APTN). Miller had completed filming in Rafah and was ready to leave—but he wanted to be sure he and his crew would not be shot at by the Israeli military unit nearby.'
Why do you think the US oil hungry government continues to support Israel when according to the article if the US switched sides it would basically solve our middle east/oil problems? There's got to be more to it.
I don't know the answer to that. Maybe you should look into it and see what you come up with.
On a more serious note, page 17 pretty much describes the increase in Palestinian sympathy with the increase in media coverage in 5 European countries in this study.
I have to find where I read about the overpopulation problem but that could have been over estimated. My computer keeps locking up :(
No response for blaming Britain though lol. I just put that in there because the US government gets blamed for everything lol.
It said 'of those respondents in Germany, Britain, France and Belguim who say that the media coverage has been biased, a plurality believe the coverage has biased in favor of the Israelis
'By a slim margin, Danish respondents say that the media has been biased in favor of the Palestinians.'
The Astoria??? Orgazmic!
Verona??? it's all surmountable
Dublin 23.08.06 "The beauty of Ireland, right there!"
Wembley? We all believe!
Copenhagen?? your light made us stars
Chicago 07? And love
What a different life
Had I not found this love with you
But they did with the help of Egypt and Syria. You think just by going back to the 1967 boarders will solve everything but the Palestinians and Arabs were not happy with those boarders either.
The 1967 6-Day War - Tension began developing between Israel and Arab countries in the 1960s. Israel began to implement its National Water Carrier plan, which pumps water from the Sea of Galilee to irrigate south and central Israel. The project was in accordance with a plan proposed by US envoy Eric Johnston in 1955, and agreed to by Arab engineers. Arab governments refused to participate however, because of the implied recognition of Israel. In secret meetings, Israel and Jordan agreed to abide by the water quotas set by the plan.
The newly formed Palestinian Fatah movement seized on the Israeli diversion as an "imperialist event" that would catalyze their revolution, and Yasser Arafat began calling for war to eliminate Israel. In the Fatah newspaper, Filastinunah, ("our Palestine") Arafat ridiculed Egyptian President Nasser and other Arab leaders for their impotence, and called for effective action against Israel. Nasser decided to found the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) as a "tame" alternative to the Fatah, and placed Ahmed Shukhairy, an ineffective and bombastic diplomat at its head.
The Syrians, who had broken with Nasser's pan-Arabism, countered by supporting Fatah and attempted to take over the Fatah group. Syrian army intelligence recruited terrorists for actions against Israel, giving credit for the operations to Fatah. The first of these actions was announced on December 31, 1964, an attack on the Israel water carrier at Beit Netopha, but in fact no attack had taken place. A second attempt was made on January 2, 1965, but the explosives charge was disarmed. However, successful attacks soon followed on January 14 and February 28. These minor terrorist activities received great publicity in the Arab world, and were contrasted with the lack of action and bombastic talk of Gamal Nasser, challenging Nasser's leadership. This ferment is considered the catalyst of the events that brought about the 6-day war. It is a moot point whether it is to be attributed to Syrian rivalry with Nasser, or as Yasser Arafat and the Palestinians claim, to the Fatah movement. Faced with the "heroic" deeds of the Palestinians under Syrian tutelage, Nasser was pushed to an increasingly bellicose stance.
In several summit conferences beginning in 1964, Arab leaders ratified the establishment of the PLO, declared their resolve to destroy Israel, and decided to divert the sources of the Jordan river that feed the Sea of Galilee, to prevent Israel from implementing the water carrier plan. The Syrians and Lebanese began to implement the diversions. Israel responded by firing on the tractors and equipment doing the work in Syria, using increasingly accurate and longer range guns as the Syrians moved the equipment from the border. This was followed by Israeli attempts to cultivate the demilitarized zones (DMZ) as provided in the armistice agreements. Israel was within its rights according to the armistice agreements, but Moshe Dayan claimed many years later that 80% of the incidents were deliberately provoked. The Syrians responded by firing in the DMZs. When Israelis responded in force, Syria began shelling Israeli towns in the north, and the conflict escalated into air strikes. The USSR was intent on protecting the new Ba'athist pro-Soviet government of Syria, and represented to the Syrians and Egyptians that Israel was preparing to attack Syria. As tension rose, Syria appealed to Egypt, believing the claim of the USSR that Israel was massing troops on the Syrian border. The claim was false and was denied by the UN.
Against this background, in Mid-May, 1967, Egyptian President Gamal Nasser began making bellicose statements. On May 16, 1967, a Radio Cairo broadcast stated: "The existence of Israel has continued too long. We welcome the Israeli aggression. We welcome the battle we have long awaited. The peak hour has come. The battle has come in which we shall destroy Israel." On the same day, Egypt asked for the withdrawal of the UN Emergency Force (UNEF) from Sinai and the Gaza Strip. UN Secretary General U Thant agreed to remove the troops on May 18. Formally, the troops could only be stationed in Egypt with Egyptian agreement. However, for a long time it was believed that Nasser had really hoped U Thant would not remove the troops, and that he could use the presence of the UN troops as an excuse to do nothing.
On May 23, Nasser closed the straits of Tiran to Israeli shipping. The United States failed to live up to its guarantees of freedom of the waterways to Israel. A torrent of rhetoric issued from Arab capitals and in the UN. At the UN, PLO Chairman Ahmed Shukhairy announced that "if it will be our privilege to strike the first blow" the PLO would expel from Palestine all Zionists who had arrived after 1917 and eliminate the state of Israel. In a speech to Arab Trade Unionists on May 26, 1967, Nasser justified the dismissal of the UNEF, and made it clear that Egypt was prepared to fight Israel for Palestinian rights. He also attacked the Jordanians as tools of the imperialists, stepping up the constant pressure on Jordan's King Hussein.
Despite the bellicose rhetoric, analysts such as Avi Shlaim (The Iron Wall) and others believe that each country was dragged into the conflict by inter-Arab rivalry and did not contemplate a war. Nasser never intended to attack Israel according to Shlaim. He had been dragged into the conflict by Soviet maneuvers and Syrian fears and his need to claim leadership of the Arab world according to them. Be that as it may, according to Michael Oren, recently declassified documents reveal that the Egyptians in fact planned to attack Israel on May 28, 1967. The plan, codenamed operation Dawn, was discovered by Israel. The Israelis told the Americans. US President Johnson told Soviet Premier Kosygin, and Kosygin wrote to Nasser. Nasser understood that he had lost the element of surprise and called off the attack. Nonetheless, on May 29, 1967, Nasser was still speaking of confrontation with Israel. He told members of the Egyptian National Assembly, "God will surely help and urge us to restore the situation to what it was in 1948."
IDF officers began pressuring the civilian establishment to declare war, because it was considered that an Arab attack might be imminent, and because Israel's ability to maintain its army fully mobilized is limited, but Prime Minister Eshkol was reluctant to take action, and Foreign Minister Abba Eban opposed unilateral action, which he believed would be against the wishes of the United States. Ariel Sharon now admits that he and others, including Yitzhak Rabin, had discussed the possibility of a sort of coup, in which government officials were to be locked in a room, while the army started the war, but the idea never got passed the stage of thinking out loud.
On May 30, Jordan signed a defense pact with Egypt, readying itself for war. Nasser stated: "The armies of Egypt, Jordan, Syria and Lebanon are poised on the borders of Israel...to face the challenge, while standing behind us are the armies of Iraq, Algeria, Kuwait, Sudan and the whole Arab nation. This act will astound the world. Today they will know that the Arabs are arranged for battle, the critical hour has arrived. We have reached the stage of serious action and not declarations."
On June 4, Iraq likewise joined a military alliance with Egypt and committed itself to war. On May 31, the Iraqi President Rahman Aref announced, "This is our opportunity to wipe out the ignominy which has been with us since 1948. Our goal is clear--to wipe Israel off the map."
US and Israeli assessments were that Israel would win any war handily, despite the huge superiority in armor, aircraft, and troops favoring the combined forces of the Arab countries. Prior to 1967, Israel had gotten almost no military aid from the United States. Egypt and Syria were equipped with large quantities of the latest Soviet military equipment. Israel's main arms supplier was France. On paper, Israel had almost as many aircraft as the Egyptians, but the Israeli aircraft were mostly old, and even the Super-Mirages were no match for the Mig-21 fighters acquired by Egypt from the USSR. On paper, the IDF had a large number of "tanks" matching or almost matching the arms of the Arab countries. However, while Syrians and Egyptians were equipped with late model Soviet heavy tanks, many of the Israeli "tanks" were in fact tiny French AMX anti-tank vehicles, and the heavy tanks were refurbished WWII Sherman tanks fitted with diesel engines. Israel had also been allowed to purchase about 250 M-48 Patton tanks from Germany in 1965. Most of these tanks were being refitted with Diesel engines in 1967, and the US refused an Israeli request for 100 Pattons to replace the ones that were out of service. The Israeli and Jewish public, and some in the government, believed that there was a mortal threat to Israel. Ten thousand graves were dug in Tel Aviv public parks in anticipation of the heavy casualties.
The Israeli government probably did not want war, and some at least were fearful of war. Ben Gurion berated Chief of Staff Itzhak Rabin for making aggressive statements that had, according to him, escalated the conflict and gotten Israel into trouble. Israeli Prime Minister Levi Eshkol appeared hesitant, and stuttered in a dramatic radio speech to the nation. Under great public pressure from opposition parties, a unity government was formed. Foreign Minister Abba Eban tried in vain to obtain from the US a guarantee that they would reopen the straights of Tiran. At first, President Johnson promised an international flotilla, and warned Israel not to attack on its own. However, the US was unable to initiate any international action, and reversed its position, hinting broadly that Israel would have to handle the problem itself.
Israel could not maintain total mobilization indefinitely. When it became apparent that Egypt would not stand down, Israel attacked the Egyptians beginning on June 5, 1967. In the first hours of the war, Israel destroyed over 400 enemy aircraft to achieve total air superiority. Israeli troops quickly conquered the Sinai Peninsula and Gaza. Jordanian artillery began firing at Jerusalem on the first day of the war, despite a warning by Israeli PM Levi Eshkol to stay out of the war, and then the Jordan Legion advanced and took over the headquarters of the UN (Governor's house - Armon Hanatziv ) in Jerusalem. After warning King Hussein repeatedly to cease fire and withdraw, Israel conquered the West Bank and Jerusalem. During the first days of the war, Syrian artillery based in the Golan Heights pounded civilian targets in northern Israel. After dealing with Egypt, Israel decided to conquer the Golan heights, despite opposition and doubts of some in the government, including Moshe Dayan, who had been appointed defense minister. and despite the fact that the UN had already called for a cease fire. Israel agreed to a cease fire on June 10, 1967 after conquering the Golan Heights. UN Resolution 242 called for negotiations of a permanent peace between the parties, and for Israeli withdrawal from lands occupied in 1967.
The aftermath of the war - The 1967 6-Day war changed the perceived balance of power in the Middle East and created a new reality. Israel had acquired extensive territories - the Sinai desert, the Golan heights and the West Bank, that were several times larger than the 1948 borders. ( Click here to view a map of Israeli borders after the 6 day war). Nasser had been able to attribute the Egyptian defeat in 1956 to British and French support of the Israelis. Though he tried to blame the 1967 defeat on support supposedly given by the US Sixth fleet, this was clearly untrue.
According to analysts such as Fouad Ajami, the disastrous defeat of the Arabs spelled the end of the Pan-Arab approach advocated by Gamal Abdul Nasser and contributed to the rise of Islamic fundamentalism. It should be remembered however, that Nasser and the pan-Arabists always viewed themselves as heads of the Islamic world as well as the Arab world.
While Israel had acquired territories and a military victory, it also marked a new day for Palestinian aspirations. The defeat brought about a million Palestinian Arabs under Israeli rule. After the war, the fate of the Palestinians came to play a large role in the Arab-Israeli struggle. The Fatah organization (The Movement for Liberation of Palestine) was founded about 1957 (though it was formalized much later), and the PLO (Palestine Liberation Organization) was founded in 1964. Both had the declared aim of destroying Israel. After the 6-day war, Ahmad Shukairy, who had headed the PLO, was replaced as chairman by Yasser Arafat who headed the Fatah. Fatah and the PLO now had freedom of action, without the restraints of the discredited Arab regimes. Since all parts of Palestine were now under Israeli control, Fatah actions did not directly threaten Arab governments. In time, the Palestine Liberation Organization became recognized by all the Arab states and eventually by the UN as the representative of the Palestinian people. PLO Chairman Yasser Arafat addressed a session of the UN General Assembly in 1974. Israel strongly opposed the PLO because of its terrorist acts against Jews and because of its charter aims of destroying the state of Israel and expelling Jews who had arrived after 1917.
"...believe in lies...to get by...it's divine...whoa...oh, you know what its like..."
It said 'of those respondents in Germany, Britain, France and Belguim who say that the media coverage has been biased, a plurality believe the coverage has biased in favor of the Israelis
'By a slim margin, Danish respondents say that the media has been biased in favor of the Palestinians.'
Page 17 chickie:
57% Europeans are following the conflict closely.
Media coverage of the conflict is shaping attitudes towards Israel.
Those who say they follow the coverage of the events in Israel the closest are more likely to be sympatric to the Palestinians cause.
Only 15% said they are not following the coverage at all.
The majority surveyed across Europe, 55% believe the media coverage is balanced.
1/3 say the media is biased.
of those respondents Germany, Britain, France & Belgium believe the media coverage is in favor of the Israelis.
By a slim margin the Danish believe the media coverage is in favor of Palestinians.
all 5 countries surveyed, the more closely the respondents say the follow the news coverage of the conflict the more likely they are to sympathize with the Palestinians.
Like I said you can take that how you want but basically, Europeans believe the media is either unbiased or in favor of the Israelis. However the more closely they pay attention to the media the more likely they sympathize with the Palestinians.
Does it make you wonder?
It's like here, the democrats believe the media is in favor of the republicans but the republicans believe the media is in favor the democrats.
"...believe in lies...to get by...it's divine...whoa...oh, you know what its like..."
all 5 countries surveyed, the more closely the respondents say they follow the news coverage of the conflict the more likely they are to sympathize with the Palestinians.
Like I said you can take that how you want but basically, Europeans believe the media is either unbiased or in favor of the Israelis. However the more closely they pay attention to the media the more likely they sympathize with the Palestinians.
'..the respondents say they follow the news coverage of the conflict the more likely they are to sympathize with the Palestinians.'
This statement in no way suggests any bias in the media one way or the other. It simply states that the more people watch the news on this issue the more they tend to sympathize with the Palestinians.
And as for your Zionist webpage history lesson above, I'll respond to that shortly.
'..the respondents say they follow the news coverage of the conflict the more likely they are to sympathize with the Palestinians.'
This statement in no way suggests any bias in the media one way or the other. It simply states that the more people watch the news on this issue the more they tend to sympathize with the Palestinians.
And as for your Zionist webpage history lesson above, I'll respond to that shortly.
I said you can take that how you want.
Listen every link I find basically says the same. The Arabs did not want the State of Israel and were trying to do everything to stop it. Palestinians wanted their land that was taken to establish the State of Israel by the UN. Do you really disagree with this? In 1947 did the Arabs and Palestinians greet the Jews with open arms after WWII and supported the establishment of State of Israel? If you insist on persuading me I suggest you post some links.
I never said Israel is not in the wrong but I believe both sides are wrong. I never said the Palestinians are main problem and that they are doing more harm then the Israelis. I said they both are and it needs to stop.
That fact that you cut out my statement 'As for Israel they need to make huge concessions, bigger than the ones Ehud Barak made which were considered generous by way of comparison to other offers but not enough. They also need to stop the inhumane treatment of the Palestinians' makes me wonder if you choose to only read want you want
"...believe in lies...to get by...it's divine...whoa...oh, you know what its like..."
Listen every link I find basically says the same. The Arabs did not want the State of Israel and were trying to do everything to stop it. Palestinians wanted their land that was taken to establish the State of Israel by the UN. Do you really disagree with this? In 1947 did the Arabs and Palestinians greet the Jews with open arms after WWII and supported the establishment of State of Israel? If you insist on persuading me I suggest you post some links.
I never said Israel is not in the wrong but I believe both sides are wrong. I never said the Palestinians are main problem and that they are doing more harm then the Israelis. I said they both are and it needs to stop.
That fact that you cut out my statement 'As for Israel they need to make huge concessions, bigger than the ones Ehud Barak made which were considered generous by way of comparison to other offers but not enough. They also need to stop the inhumane treatment of the Palestinians' makes me wonder if you choose to only read want you want
Well, I asked you a direct question earlier. I asked you in what way you believe the Palestinians to be in the wrong.
I could have asked you how the ANC were in the wrong during the Apartheid era.
So I'll ask you again, how are the Palestinians in the wrong? And what options do they have?
Well, I asked you a direct question earlier. I asked you in what way you believe the Palestinians to be in the wrong.
I could have asked you how the ANC were in the wrong during the Apartheid era.
So I'll ask you again, how are the Palestinians in the wrong? And what options do they have?
Well the Palestinians sort of started the war (Israelis viewed it as an act of war) in the first place at which time the Israelis took control over their land 40 years ago. The Israelis wanted to push their enemies back and far away from them. Why didn't the UN or anyone do anything about it back then? Now we have Jews settled on that land and its more complicated.
I don't agree with the Palestinians violent tactics at all. How can anyone justify killing innocent civilians, women, babies or kids? Both sides are doing this and they are both wrong for doing so. The killing has to stop and the mistreatment also has to end before any peace agreement can be made. It's just fueling the fire and hatred between them.
The Jews in Europe were facing annihilation during WWII and then European countries didn't want to accept them after the war ended. So they sought safety in Palestine. The UN agreed to establish a state of Israel and the boarders were designed. However the Palestinians and the Arab countries still viewed the land as Palestinian land. So they began measures to retrieve the land back. So what do you expect the Israelis to do if the PLO and Arab countries around them are saying they want to destroy Israel after what they just went through in Europe? They had to take those threats seriously wouldn't you say? Actually Egypt and Syria are mostly at fault for starting the 6 day war however the PLO pushed them into it.
Again the Israelis too are making the situation much worse and they need to stop their aggression and inhumane treatment of the Palestinians!
But if were pointing fingers I still blame Britain, Germany and many other European countries for not making a safe place for the European Jews after WWII in Europe because Palestine today would be Palestine the way it was before WWII if they did so. No?
"...believe in lies...to get by...it's divine...whoa...oh, you know what its like..."
'..the respondents say they follow the news coverage of the conflict the more likely they are to sympathize with the Palestinians.'
This statement in no way suggests any bias in the media one way or the other. It simply states that the more people watch the news on this issue the more they tend to sympathize with the Palestinians.
And as for your Zionist webpage history lesson above, I'll respond to that shortly.
Right but if it was an American study and 55% of Americans believed the media was balanced or 1/3 in favor of the Palestinian view, however, the majority of those who watched the media coverage closely sympathized more with the Israelis, what would you think?
edit:
You're making me late for work and I've to go now lol. BTW I do like to hear your side on issues and I understand what you are saying. There are always two sides to every story and you do have a great way of explaining the Palestinian position that needs to be said.
"...believe in lies...to get by...it's divine...whoa...oh, you know what its like..."
The Jews in Europe were facing annihilation during WWII and then European countries didn't want to except them after the war ended. So they sought safety in Palestine. The UN agreed to establish a state of Israel and the boarders were designed. However the Palestinians and the Arab countries still viewed the land as Palestinian land. So they began measures to retrieve the land back. So what do you expect the Israelis to do if the PLO and Arab countries around them are saying they want to destroy Israel after what they just went through in Europe? They had to take those threats seriously wouldn't you say? Actually Egypt and Syria are mostly at fault for starting the 6 day war however the PLO pushed them into it.
So how does this answer my question as to how the palestinians are in the wrong?
Again the Israelis too are making the situation much worse and they need to stop their aggression and inhumane treatment of the Palestinians!
But if were pointing fingers I still blame Britain, Germany and many other European countries for not making a safe place for the European Jews after WWII in Europe because Palestine today would be Palestine the way it was before WWII if they did so. No?
Sure, these countries all have a share of the burden, but the main instigator of the current situation are the Zionists. Zionism is an intrinsically racist ideology, common to all types of ethnic nationalism, including Nazism.
Actually Egypt and Syria are mostly at fault for starting the 6 day war however the PLO pushed them into it.
Maybe. Maybe not. Again, this is irrelevant with regards to the occupation. I notice that those who support the Zionist race war have a tendency to try to muddy the water and make the situation seem complicated. It's not complicated. Israel simply needs to end the illegal occupation and the crimes against humanity which it's comitting against the Palestinians, with the sole support of the U.S.
"We must be honest with ourselves. We decided to attack him (Nasser) .” -- Former Israeli PM Menahem Begin.
Israel has long claimed that it launched the Six-Day War in 1967 to defend itself. Below are some statements made by Israeli leaders as well as some report excerpts that prove otherwise.
Israel’s former Commander of the Air Force, General Ezer Weitzman, regarded as a hawk, stated that there was “no threat of destruction” but that the attack on Egypt, Jordan and Syria was nevertheless justified so that Israel could “exist according the scale, spirit, and quality she now embodies.” Menahem Begin, the first Likud Prime Minister of Israel, also said: “In June 1967, we again had a choice. The Egyptian Army concentrations in the Sinai approaches do not prove that Nasser was really about to attack us. We must be honest with ourselves. We decided to attack him.” "Noam Chomsky, "The Fateful Triangle."
"I do not think Nasser wanted war. The two divisions he sent to The Sinai would not have been sufficient to launch an offensive war. He knew it and we knew it." Yitzhak Rabin, Israel's Chief of Staff in 1967, in Le Monde on 28 February 1968.
“Deliberately provoked by Israel”
"Moshe Dayan, the celebrated commander who, as Defense Minister in 1967, gave the order to conquer the Golan...[said] many of the firefights with the Syrians were deliberately provoked by Israel, and the kibbutz residents who pressed the Government to take the Golan Heights did so less for security than for the farmland... They didn't even try to hide their greed for the land...We would send a tractor to plow some area where it wasn't possible to do anything, in the demilitarized area, and knew in advance that the Syrians would start to shoot. If they didn't shoot, we would tell the tractor to advance further, until in the end the Syrians would get annoyed and shoot. And then we would use artillery and later the air force also, and that's how it was...The Syrians, on the fourth day of the war, were not a threat to us.'" The New York Times, May 11, 1997.
What happened after the Six-Day War?
"In violation of international law, Israel has confiscated over 52 percent of the land in the West Bank and 30 percent of the Gaza Strip for military use or for settlement by Jewish civilians...From 1967 to 1982, Israel's military government demolished 1,338 Palestinian homes on the West Bank. Over this period, more than 300,000 Palestinians were detained without trial for various periods by Israeli security forces." Lockman and Beinin: "Intifada: The Palestinian Uprising Against Israeli Occupation."
"Under the UN Charter there can lawfully be no territorial gains from war, even by a state acting in self-defense. The response of other states to Israel's occupation shows a virtually unanimous opinion that even if Israel's action was defensive, its retention of the West Bank and Gaza Strip was not...The [UN] General Assembly characterized Israel's occupation of the West Bank and Gaza as a denial of self determination and hence a 'serious and increasing threat to international peace and security.' " John Quigley, "Palestine and Israel: A Challenge to Justice."
All Jewish settlements in territories occupied in the 1967 war are a direct violation of the Geneva Conventions, which Israel has signed.
"The Geneva Convention requires an occupying power to change the existing order as little as possible during its tenure. One aspect of this obligation is that it must leave the territory to the people it finds there. It may not bring its own people to populate the territory. This prohibition is found in the convention's Article 49, which states, 'The occupying Power shall not deport or transfer parts of its own civilian population into the territory it occupies.'" John Quigley, "Palestine and Israel: A Challenge to Justice."
Jerusalem: Eternal, Indivisible Capital of Israel?
"Writing in The Jerusalem Report (Feb. 28, 2000), Leslie Susser points out that the current boundaries were drawn after the Six-Day War. Responsibility for drawing those lines fell to Central Command Chief Rehavan Ze'evi. The line he drew 'took in not only the five square kilometers of Arab East Jerusalem - but also 65 square kilometers of surrounding open country and villages, most of which never had any municipal link to Jerusalem. Overnight they became part of Israel's eternal and indivisible capital.'" Allan Brownfield in The Washington Report On Middle East Affairs, May 2000.
The history of Israeli expansionism "The acceptance of partition does not commit us to renounce Transjordan; one does not demand from anybody to give up his vision. We shall accept a state in the boundaries fixed today. But the boundaries of Zionist aspirations are the concern of the Jewish people and no external factor will be able to limit them." David Ben-Gurion, in 1936, quoted in Noam Chomsky, "The Fateful Triangle."
"The main danger which Israel, as a 'Jewish state', poses to its own people, to other Jews and to its neighbors, is its ideologically motivated pursuit of territorial expansion and the inevitable series of wars resulting from this aim...No Zionist politician has ever repudiated Ben-Gurion's idea that Israeli policies must be based (within the limits of practical considerations) on the restoration of Biblical borders as the borders of the Jewish state." Israeli professor, Israel Shahak, "Jewish History, Jewish Religion: The Weight of 3000 Years."
In Israeli Prime Minister Moshe Sharatt's personal diaries, there is an excerpt from May of 1955 in which he quotes Moshe Dayan as follows: "[Israel] must see the sword as the main, if not the only, instrument with which to keep its morale high and to retain its moral tension. Toward this end it may, no - it must - invent dangers, and to do this it must adopt the method of provocation-and-revenge...And above all - let us hope for a new war with the Arab countries, so that we may finally get rid of our troubles and acquire our space." Quoted in Livia Rokach, "Israel's Sacred Terrorism."
Israel's decades-old rejection of peaceful settlements "Senator [J.William Fulbright] proposed in 1970 that America should guarantee Israel's security in a formal treaty, protecting her with armed forces if necessary. In return, Israel would retire to the borders of 1967. The UN Security Council would guarantee this arrangement, and thereby bring the Soviet Union - then a supplier of arms and political aid to the Arabs - into compliance. As Israeli troops were withdrawn from the Golan Heights, the Gaza Strip and the West Bank they would be replaced by a UN peacekeeping force. Israel would agree to accept a certain number of Palestinians and the rest would be settled in a Palestinian state outside Israel.
"The plan drew favorable editorial support in the United States. The proposal, however, was flatly rejected by Israel. “The whole affair disgusted Fulbright,” writes [his biographer Randall] Woods. “The Israelis were not even willing to act in their own self-interest." Allan Brownfield in "Issues of the American Council for Judaism," Fall 1997.
You're making me late for work and I've to go now lol. BTW I do like to hear your side on issues and I understand what you are saying. There are always two sides to every story and you do have a great way of explaining the Palestinian position that needs to be said.
Fair enough. Although you should probably know by now that when It comes to this issue my gloves are off.
Anne bancroft , ms. robinson from the film the graduate, played golda meir on broadway
man ...
Talk about Kosher!
Progress is not made by everyone joining some new fad,
and reveling in it's loyalty. It's made by forming coalitions
over specific principles, goals, and policies.
So how does this answer my question as to how the palestinians are in the wrong?
Sure, these countries all have a share of the burden, but the main instigator of the current situation are the Zionists. Zionism is an intrinsically racist ideology, common to all types of ethnic nationalism, including Nazism.
Zionism is intrinsically racist? Please tell me exactly when Judaism became a race? Please never compare Zionism with Nazism. Thats plain disgusting. Nazism believed in a direct pecking order of races, with the 'Aryan' race being at the top.
Zionists believe in a homeland for the Jewish people. The person can be native Israeli, ashkenazi (European descent), Sephardic (Spain/Morocco), African, Asian, Iraqi, or any single nationality/ethnicity atround the world. Judaism is not a race and Zionism is not racist.
20 percent of Israeli citizens are non-Jewish arabs. They also hold seats in the Israeli Parliament.
Now, disagreeing with the way Israel has handled the situation in Gaza and the West Bank is one thing, but to blame it on Zionist Racial ideology is just crazy!
Zionism is intrinsically racist? Please tell me exactly when Judaism became a race? Please never compare Zionism with Nazism. Thats plain disgusting. Nazism believed in a direct pecking order of races, with the 'Aryan' race being at the top.
Zionists believe in a homeland for the Jewish people. The person can be native Israeli, ashkenazi (European descent), Sephardic (Spain/Morocco), African, Asian, Iraqi, or any single nationality/ethnicity atround the world. Judaism is not a race and Zionism is not racist.
20 percent of Israeli citizens are non-Jewish arabs. They also hold seats in the Israeli Parliament.
Now, disagreeing with the way Israel has handled the situation in Gaza and the West Bank is one thing, but to blame it on Zionist Racial ideology is just crazy!
In the words of Michael Neumann, author of 'A case against Israel'...
'Zionism has never been a movement for the defence of the Jewish religion.; on the contrary, many of the most religious Jews abhor it. It was never even a movement in defence of some cultural entity; when the Zionist movement began, Jews had no common language and their traditions were in many cases wildly dissimilar or simply abandoned altogether. Zionism was a movement that advocated not so much the defense of an ethnic group, as the formation of such a group in Palestine, where those who were thought to fit a certain semi-racial category were to find refuge. It was a lovely dream where all Jews would live happily together and, with typical Wilsonian obliviousness, no one seemed to notice that those who did not pass ethnic muster had no place in this fantasy. If they were to be tolerated, welcomed, even loved, it was to be at the pleasure of the Jews. Of that there could be no mistake. This is exactly the sort of vulnerable subordination that Jews, quite understandably, were trying to escape. "Trust us, we'll be nice" is not a promise endorsed by the historical record.
Zionists respond with fury when their movement is identified with racism. Many ethnic supremacists do. They protest that they do not advocate their own superiority, but simply want a land or culture of their own. But that is of neccesity a land where one race is guaranteed supremacy: whether or not this is on grounds of intrinsic superiority hardly matters. And that such movements and attitudes gain respectability is not the fault of the Zionists, much less of the Jews, but of an idiotically false tolerance of ethnic nationalism.'
The group said "racist incidents" against Arab citizens rose 26 percent in 2006. It did not have more recent figures. Poverty rates are four times higher among Israeli Arabs in comparison to Israeli Jews, according to Haifa-based advocacy group Mossawa.
Twelve Arab lawmakers including a cabinet member hold seats in Israel's 120-member parliament, but less than 8 percent of the country's civil service workforce is made up of Israeli Palestinians, according to a recent civil service report...
some rights groups, including ACRI, say Israel has also been using the law to cement the state's Jewish character.
Such draft bills, approved by parliament in 2007, include banning Arabs from buying land controlled by the Jewish National Fund, a quasi-governmental group that was founded before the state of Israel to buy and develop land in Palestine and later oversaw land distribution in the Jewish state.
The JNF also controls land owned by Palestinians before they fled or were driven from their homes when Israel was founded.
Another bill makes eligibility for national insurance benefits dependent on completing military service. Few Arabs serve in the army: unlike for Jews, service is not compulsory.
"The Palestinians inside Israel are being discriminated against in all spheres except for one: the right to vote," Mohammad Barakeh, a member of Israeli parliament, said.
Olmert's spokesman Regev said the bills did not reflect racist attitudes against Arabs, rather "legitimate differences of opinions".'
Anti-Arab racism and incitement in Israel
Ali Abunimah, The Electronic Intifada, 30 March 2008 http://electronicintifada.net/v2/article9428.shtml '...one fifth of Israel's population (not including the Palestinian population of occupied East Jerusalem), they are citizens of the state of Israel and can vote in elections for the Knesset. Despite this, most view themselves as second-class citizens. As indigenous non-Jews in a self-described Jewish state, they face a host of systematic social, legal, economic and educational barriers to equality. Israel lacks a constitution and has no other basic law guaranteeing equal rights to all citizens regardless of religion, race, ethnicity or national origin.
One measure of the cumulative impact of these discriminatory policies is socioeconomic: while just 16 percent of Jewish citizens in Israel fall below the official poverty line, the figure for non-Jews is 50 percent, according to the Israeli Democracy Institute's index.
In October 2000, Israeli police used live ammunition against unarmed civilians demonstrating their solidarity with Palestinians in the occupied territories. Thirteen Palestinians, of whom twelve were Israeli citizens, were shot dead. An official commission, headed by Judge Theodor Or, was appointed to look into the events which came to mark a dramatic deterioration in Arab-Jewish relations inside the country. In 2003, the Or Commission confirmed that the police used "excessive" and unjustifiable force, reported that the police viewed the country's Arab citizens as "enemies" and documented a pattern of "prejudice and neglect" towards them by Israel's establishment.
While the Or Commission recommended a number of measures to redress the sharp disparities between Jews and Arabs in the country, families of the victims regarded the report as a whitewash. The Commission failed to examine the forensic evidence in each of the killings, and none of the killers, nor any responsible official, were ever brought to justice. By 2007, according to Elie Rekhess of the Moshe Dayan Center at Tel Aviv University, there remained "yawning" gaps between Jews and Arabs in Israel and "the bottom line" is "that the conclusions and recommendations of the 2003 Or Commission remain conspicuously unimplemented."
Amidst the increasingly precarious situation of Palestinian citizens of Israel, prominent and broadly representative leaders of that community published in 2007 a series of documents setting out visions for Israel as a state of all its citizens with equality for all. [1] The response of the Israeli body politic was overwhelmingly to view these initiatives as an unwelcome threat to the "Jewish character" of the state. Israel's Shin Bet secret police, responsible among other things for many "targeted killings" in the occupied territories, went so far as to warn that it would "disrupt the activities of any groups that seek to change the Jewish or democratic character of Israel, even if they use democratic means," the Israeli daily Haaretz reported in April 2007.'
Israel world's most racist state http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-3248807,00.html
Israeli Arab Knesset members slam results of Israel Democracy Institute's survey showing 62 percent of Israelis want to encourage Arab emigration
Ilan Marciano Published: 05.09.06
'...One person who does see a connection between 'Israel Our Home's success and the survey findings is MK Ahmad Tibi (United Arab List-Ta'al).
"Racism became the main characteristic of Israeli society a long time ago," he said. "Racism and fascism moved from impassioned marketplaces to the Knesset and the government seats. This is mainly expressed in the rise of an Israeli fascist party in the elections."
"There is no doubt that the ongoing occupation, dominating another people, and the confrontation have brought about the rise of racism in Israel. This scary phenomenon must be seriously dealt with by the government through education and with the help of the media," he added.
MK Talab El-Sana (United Arab List-Ta'al) called on Zionism to "conduct a profound self-examination and check where it failed."
He called to appoint an Arab deputy to the president and wondered "how the people that was supposed to serve as a shining example and a light unto the nations turned its country into the most racist state in the universe." '
'The claim that Zionism is racism http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zionism_and_racism
Both the 1922 League of Nations Palestine Mandate and the 1947 UN Partition Plan supported the creation of a Jewish State in Palestine, but in November 1975, the United Nations General Assembly Resolution 3379 declared that "Zionism is a form of racism and racial discrimination."
In December 1991, the General Assembly rescinded this resolution through Resolution 4686. At the time, the Soviet Union, a major sponsor of the "Zionism is racism" doctrine (see Zionology), had completed its rapid collapse. Israel made revocation of resolution 3379 a condition of its participation in the Madrid Peace Conference.
Finkelstein says Zionism uses racist arguments: 'The injustice inflicted on Palestinians by Zionism was manifest and, except on racist grounds, unanswerable: their right to self-determination, and perhaps even to their homeland, was being denied.'[8] Finkelstein says none of the justifications given by Zionists could withstand even cursory scrutiny. For example he says the 'historical right', based on the Jewish presence in Israel two thousand years ago is 'neither historical, nor based on any accepted notion of right', and is 'not a right except in mystical, romantic nationalist ideologies'.[9] He says the argument that Palestine was 'empty' when the Zionists arrived is ironic, because 'it is a back-handed admission that, had Palestine been inhabited, which it plainly was, the Zionist enterprise was morally indefensible.'[10] He says non-Zionist supporters of Zionism could only come up with a racist justification, 'the fate of Jews was simply more important than that of Arabs'.[11]
According to A.F. Kassim: "Racial discrimination has become 'legally' institutionalised in the state of Israel. The Nationality Law, and particularly, the doctrine of return, gives hard evidence of Israel's discriminatory and racist policies. [... This Law is] an integral part of the Zionist policy consistently pursued ever since the Zionist colonisation processes began in Palestine."'
Rather than making stupid, meaningless personal attacks on my character, why don't you try addressing the points I raised above?
To be honest, I'm really not in the mood. I'm getting pretty sick of arguing about what the Jews did to the Arabs, and what the Arabs have done to the Jews. Personally, I'm thinking about going to 9 Pearl Jam shows in June, which should be amazing.
I hope to run into a few Jewish and Arab/Muslim PJ Fans along the way. We could all get a few bacon cheeseburgers, some cold beers, and discuss what songs we think they'll play.
All I ask is that security be extra careful while checking the Muslim fan. Just kidding!
Actually, what's of equal interest here are the counter-claims against Zionism being Racist by defenders of Zionism.
I find it interesting that none of these claims holds any water.
So I repeat; Zionism is a racist ideology.
Defenders of Zionism[who?] disagree with the identification of Zionism with racism on a number of grounds:
1.The charge is too vague, as the views of Zionist groups differ widely from each other.[citation needed]
2. Judaism and Jewish Law hold that any person may choose to become a Jew and enjoy all the benefits and responsibilities of membership. Zionism is therefore, by definition, non-racial.[citation needed]
3. Defenders of Zionism also claim that if Arabs and many other ethnic groups have their own states, the Jews deserve their own state as well.[citation needed]
4. Arabs and Jews are related to each other, and both claim mixed ancestry (see The ancestry of the Palestinians, Jewish ethnic divisions). Israeli Jews are racially mixed (nearly half of Israel's Jewish population consists of Arab Jews, and there are about 100,000 black Jews from Ethiopia) as well as large numbers of Jews from India, Pakistan, Afghanistan, Uzbekistan, Morocco and other countries. Many Jews are Arab Jews.[citation needed]
5. Even if the State of Israel discriminates against Arabs, such discrimination is based on political, cultural and/or religious discrimination, rather than race. Further, such discrimination cannot be connected to the Zionist movement, but rather may occur through political processes and dispersed among individuals and small groups that cannot be proven to be the majority view of Zionism[citation needed].
6. The UN has failed to address antisemitism among Arab states and devotes more time to Palestine then to conflicts in Darfur and Congo where millions have been killed.'
why don't you answer my question in the Israeli thread please and try and do it without resorting to personal attacks or calling me anti semitic or anti american cos that's just lazy... besides I'm neither... it's just a simple question. Gimme a simple answer that makes sense and I'll leave it alone
The Astoria??? Orgazmic!
Verona??? it's all surmountable
Dublin 23.08.06 "The beauty of Ireland, right there!"
Wembley? We all believe!
Copenhagen?? your light made us stars
Chicago 07? And love
What a different life
Had I not found this love with you
Comments
It won't let me cut and paste it either. It's a study done by the Anti-Defamation League on Europeans attitudes towards Jews, Israel and the Palestinian-Israeli conflict done in 2002. 5 countries are involved France, UK, Denmark, Germany and Belgium. By far Britains have less anti-israel/jew views than the other 4 European countries according to the study. To be honest it doesn't say there is more media coverage in favor of the Palestinians. It just says the majority of Europeans who are more sympatric towards the Palestinians pay more attention to the media so you can take that how you want.
The Israelis are definitely in the wrong too. I believe both sides are right and wrong which is why I find it extremely complicated. They really should know better from what has happened to them in history. However usually abused kids grow up to abuse others. Somehow they need to figure out they are doing harm but that's not going to happen if both sides continue to kill each other. I don't support my country supporting Israel to the extent that it has/does but I would also hate to see them swallowed. I don't want to see the Palestinians swallowed up either. They've been there for thousands of years, who are we to tell them they don't belong there.
Seen it twice. Good documentary.
and reveling in it's loyalty. It's made by forming coalitions
over specific principles, goals, and policies.
http://i36.tinypic.com/66j31x.jpg
(\__/)
( o.O)
(")_(")
LMAO I pictured Conan the Barbarian.
Isn't it hypocritical of us to demand they do the right thing when our governments are doing the same thing by occupying other countries all around the world? And I'm not just talking about Iraq. I know the answer is to demand our own countries to do the same but there doesn't appear to be an urgency like Palestine and Iraq.
I hear this a lot 'what if the Native Americans demanded their land back and used the same tactics as the Palestinians?' My question is will Europe be ready for 200+ million people trying to return to their "homeland"? How many people in North and South America can trace their ancestry back to Europe?
You mean the British are less inclined to criticize, or merely draw attention to, the occupation?
Can you tell me why you think the Palestinians are in the wrong?
I happen to agree with Michael Neumann, author of 'The Case Against Israel':
http://electronicintifada.net/v2/article4690.shtml
'When he comes to the options available to Palestinians for countering Israel's race-war, Neumann is brutally consistent: there are none, save violence. This part of his argument will be unacceptable to the fainthearted, but it is up to them to refute it. He does not content himself with dismissing passive resistance as an option in the Palestinian context, but denies that it has worked in any context where the powerless faced the unscrupulously powerful. Gandhi "cannot be said to have won independence for India", Martin Luther King's civil rights movement had the backing of the US establishment, indeed "was practically a federal government project", and South Africa's ANC "was never a nonviolent movement but a movement that decided, on occasion, to use nonviolent tactics".
As for "terrorism", which he defines as "random violence against non-combatants", he distinguishes it from "collateral damage" with the assertion that the latter "involves knowingly killing innocent civilians" while "Terrorism involves intentionally killing innocent civilians", concluding that "the moral difference is too academic even for an academic." Why, then, is "terrorism" considered to be particularly morally repugnant, while "collateral damage" tends to be taken in our moral stride?
"Imagine trying to make such a claim. You say: 'To achieve my objectives, I would certainly drop bombs with the knowledge that they would blow the arms off some children. But to achieve those same objectives, I would not plant or set off a bomb on the ground with the knowledge that it would have that same effect. After all, I have planes to do that, I don't need to plant bombs.' As a claim of moral superiority, this needs a little work."
The Palestinians, he repeats, are without options. Israel has all the options, principally that of unilateral withdrawal from the Occupied Territories, but refuses to use them. Hence he refuses "to pronounce judgment on Palestinian terrorism."
So why does Israel still command such support from the US? Neumann deftly dismantles the notions that there are either "shared values" or a "confluence of interests" between the US and Israel, or that Israel is anything but a hindrance in the pursuit of America's nefarious oil politics. The US/Israel alliance is analysed historically as a relic of the cold war perpetuated by inertia: "Stale ideology has enshrined a counter-productive alliance at the heart of American foreign policy." Neumann calls for the US to change sides, and itemises the obvious benefits that would accrue from such a U-turn:
"It would instantly gain the warm friendship of Arab oil producers and obtain far more valuable allies in the war on terror: not only the governments of the entire Muslim world, but a good portion of the Muslim fundamentalist movement! The war on terror, which seems so unwinnable, might well be won at nominal cost, and quickly... Perhaps most important, switching sides would revitalize America's foundering efforts at non-proliferation."
Neumann's final verdict: "Israel is the illegitimate child of ethnic nationalism." While it is not his brief to "formulate specific strategies" leading towards a solution, he advocates "vigorous anti-Israeli action" primarily in the shape of "the most extensive international sanctions possible", undeterred "by the horrors of the Jewish past."
Well the Palestinians sort of started the war (Israelis viewed it as an act of war) in the first place at which time the Israelis took control over their land 40 years ago. The Israelis wanted to push their enemies back and far away from them. Why didn't the UN or anyone do anything about it back then? Now we have Jews settled on that land and its more complicated.
I don't agree with the Palestinians violent tactics at all. How can anyone justify killing innocent civilians, women, babies or kids? Both sides are doing this and they are both wrong for doing so. The killing has to stop and the mistreatment also has to end before any peace agreement can be made. It's just fueling the fire and hatred between them.
The Civil Rights movement was not a federal government project. It was a huge ugly struggle that had no support from the federal government until their suffering was made public to the world. The violence came from the local and state officials and the federal government turned a blind eye. MLK and the Civil Rights movement remained peaceful on their part.
If the Palestinians began peaceful marches and etc but the Israelis continued to use violence that is when the tide will change here in the US. Instead Israel is viewed as defending themselves. It's not like the Israelis just took control a couple of weeks ago but something that happened 40 years ago.
As for Israel they need to make huge concessions, bigger than the ones Ehud Barak made which were considered generous by way of comparison to other offers but not enough. They also need to stop the inhumane treatment of the Palestinians.
Why do you think the US oil hungry government continues to support Israel when according to the article if the US switched sides it would basically solve our middle east/oil problems? There's got to be more to it.
This would be quite convenient if it were true.
Yeah, both sides are doing this. And Israel is doing a lot more of it - about 10 times more. http://www.ifamericansknew.org/index.html As we speak Israel is currently in breach of over 60 U.N resolutions, while the Palestinians are in breach of none. Israel has been accused by U.N observers, Human rights watch and Amnesty International of comitting war crimes. The Palestinians are merely responding with the only means at their disposal.
This is a very nice idea, but again it just happens to have no basis in reality.
Israel Attack Kills 10 at Gaza Protest
Army Says Shots Were Warning; Children Among Dozens of Wounded
By Glenn Frankel
Washington Post Foreign Service
Thursday, May 20, 2004
'RAFAH, Gaza Strip, May 19 -- An Israeli helicopter gunship and a tank fired rockets and artillery shells at Palestinian protesters Wednesday as they marched toward a heavily populated neighborhood in the southern Gaza Strip. At least 10 Palestinians were killed and dozens wounded, many of them children, as explosives and shrapnel ripped through the crowd.'
VIDEO: Israeli Soldiers "Shoot to Kill" at Israeli Anti-war Demonstrators
Global Research, August 16, 2006
http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=viewArticle&code=20060816&articleId=2982
Israeli forces open fire on Apartheid Wall protestors, wounding five
Report, ISM, 28 July 2003
http://electronicintifada.net/v2/article1759.shtml
Friday, 26 December, 2003, 15:06 GMT
Israel troops fire on peace rally
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/middle_east/3349753.stm
'Israeli soldiers have opened fire on a demonstration in the West Bank, injuring two peace activists.
The incident took place when about 100 protesters demonstrated near the Palestinian village of Mahase against the barrier Israel is constructing.'
Israeli Soldiers Kill Three Internationals, But Shooting of a Jew Shocks the Nation
By Richard H. Curtiss - April 2004
http://www.washington-report.org/archives/April_2004/0404015.html
'International Solidarity Movement volunteer Tom Hurndall being treated in a Rafah hospital after he was shot in the head by an IDF sniper while trying to shepherd children to safety. Declared brain dead, he remained in a coma until he died Jan. 13, 2004 in a London hospital (AFP photo/Mohammed Abed).
TOM HURNDALL, 22, died in a hospital in England on Jan. 13, 2004. He was mortally wounded the previous April while volunteering in Rafah, in the southern Gaza Strip, as a member of the International Solidarity Movement (ISM), the pro-Palestinian peace group that serves as a buffer between Israeli soldiers and Palestinian civilians. Although he already had been declared brain dead because of his wounds, he died of pneumonia, without, apparently, ever having recovered consciousness.
Just weeks before the British volunteer was shot by an IDF sniper, Hurndall’s American colleague in the ISM, Rachel Corrie, of Olympia, WA, was killed in Rafah, on March 16, 2003. She was trying to prevent an Israel Defense Forces Caterpillar tractor from demolishing the home of a Palestinian. Eyewitnesses vary on the details, but everyone agrees that the soldier driving the bulldozer refused to desist from his mission. The Israeli operator later said he did not know that Corrie was standing in the way as he moved forward. Photographs taken of her murder, however, make that story hard to believe...
On May 2, 2003, a third Westerner, British cameraman James Miller, was killed in Rafah. This time, all of the circumstances of Miller’s death were recorded on film by a colleague from the Associated Press Television News (APTN). Miller had completed filming in Rafah and was ready to leave—but he wanted to be sure he and his crew would not be shot at by the Israeli military unit nearby.'
I don't know the answer to that. Maybe you should look into it and see what you come up with.
'By a slim margin, Danish respondents say that the media has been biased in favor of the Palestinians.'
Verona??? it's all surmountable
Dublin 23.08.06 "The beauty of Ireland, right there!"
Wembley? We all believe!
Copenhagen?? your light made us stars
Chicago 07? And love
What a different life
Had I not found this love with you
But they did with the help of Egypt and Syria. You think just by going back to the 1967 boarders will solve everything but the Palestinians and Arabs were not happy with those boarders either.
http://www.mideastweb.org/briefhistory.htm
The 1967 6-Day War - Tension began developing between Israel and Arab countries in the 1960s. Israel began to implement its National Water Carrier plan, which pumps water from the Sea of Galilee to irrigate south and central Israel. The project was in accordance with a plan proposed by US envoy Eric Johnston in 1955, and agreed to by Arab engineers. Arab governments refused to participate however, because of the implied recognition of Israel. In secret meetings, Israel and Jordan agreed to abide by the water quotas set by the plan.
The newly formed Palestinian Fatah movement seized on the Israeli diversion as an "imperialist event" that would catalyze their revolution, and Yasser Arafat began calling for war to eliminate Israel. In the Fatah newspaper, Filastinunah, ("our Palestine") Arafat ridiculed Egyptian President Nasser and other Arab leaders for their impotence, and called for effective action against Israel. Nasser decided to found the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) as a "tame" alternative to the Fatah, and placed Ahmed Shukhairy, an ineffective and bombastic diplomat at its head.
The Syrians, who had broken with Nasser's pan-Arabism, countered by supporting Fatah and attempted to take over the Fatah group. Syrian army intelligence recruited terrorists for actions against Israel, giving credit for the operations to Fatah. The first of these actions was announced on December 31, 1964, an attack on the Israel water carrier at Beit Netopha, but in fact no attack had taken place. A second attempt was made on January 2, 1965, but the explosives charge was disarmed. However, successful attacks soon followed on January 14 and February 28. These minor terrorist activities received great publicity in the Arab world, and were contrasted with the lack of action and bombastic talk of Gamal Nasser, challenging Nasser's leadership. This ferment is considered the catalyst of the events that brought about the 6-day war. It is a moot point whether it is to be attributed to Syrian rivalry with Nasser, or as Yasser Arafat and the Palestinians claim, to the Fatah movement. Faced with the "heroic" deeds of the Palestinians under Syrian tutelage, Nasser was pushed to an increasingly bellicose stance.
In several summit conferences beginning in 1964, Arab leaders ratified the establishment of the PLO, declared their resolve to destroy Israel, and decided to divert the sources of the Jordan river that feed the Sea of Galilee, to prevent Israel from implementing the water carrier plan. The Syrians and Lebanese began to implement the diversions. Israel responded by firing on the tractors and equipment doing the work in Syria, using increasingly accurate and longer range guns as the Syrians moved the equipment from the border. This was followed by Israeli attempts to cultivate the demilitarized zones (DMZ) as provided in the armistice agreements. Israel was within its rights according to the armistice agreements, but Moshe Dayan claimed many years later that 80% of the incidents were deliberately provoked. The Syrians responded by firing in the DMZs. When Israelis responded in force, Syria began shelling Israeli towns in the north, and the conflict escalated into air strikes. The USSR was intent on protecting the new Ba'athist pro-Soviet government of Syria, and represented to the Syrians and Egyptians that Israel was preparing to attack Syria. As tension rose, Syria appealed to Egypt, believing the claim of the USSR that Israel was massing troops on the Syrian border. The claim was false and was denied by the UN.
Against this background, in Mid-May, 1967, Egyptian President Gamal Nasser began making bellicose statements. On May 16, 1967, a Radio Cairo broadcast stated: "The existence of Israel has continued too long. We welcome the Israeli aggression. We welcome the battle we have long awaited. The peak hour has come. The battle has come in which we shall destroy Israel." On the same day, Egypt asked for the withdrawal of the UN Emergency Force (UNEF) from Sinai and the Gaza Strip. UN Secretary General U Thant agreed to remove the troops on May 18. Formally, the troops could only be stationed in Egypt with Egyptian agreement. However, for a long time it was believed that Nasser had really hoped U Thant would not remove the troops, and that he could use the presence of the UN troops as an excuse to do nothing.
On May 23, Nasser closed the straits of Tiran to Israeli shipping. The United States failed to live up to its guarantees of freedom of the waterways to Israel. A torrent of rhetoric issued from Arab capitals and in the UN. At the UN, PLO Chairman Ahmed Shukhairy announced that "if it will be our privilege to strike the first blow" the PLO would expel from Palestine all Zionists who had arrived after 1917 and eliminate the state of Israel. In a speech to Arab Trade Unionists on May 26, 1967, Nasser justified the dismissal of the UNEF, and made it clear that Egypt was prepared to fight Israel for Palestinian rights. He also attacked the Jordanians as tools of the imperialists, stepping up the constant pressure on Jordan's King Hussein.
Despite the bellicose rhetoric, analysts such as Avi Shlaim (The Iron Wall) and others believe that each country was dragged into the conflict by inter-Arab rivalry and did not contemplate a war. Nasser never intended to attack Israel according to Shlaim. He had been dragged into the conflict by Soviet maneuvers and Syrian fears and his need to claim leadership of the Arab world according to them. Be that as it may, according to Michael Oren, recently declassified documents reveal that the Egyptians in fact planned to attack Israel on May 28, 1967. The plan, codenamed operation Dawn, was discovered by Israel. The Israelis told the Americans. US President Johnson told Soviet Premier Kosygin, and Kosygin wrote to Nasser. Nasser understood that he had lost the element of surprise and called off the attack. Nonetheless, on May 29, 1967, Nasser was still speaking of confrontation with Israel. He told members of the Egyptian National Assembly, "God will surely help and urge us to restore the situation to what it was in 1948."
IDF officers began pressuring the civilian establishment to declare war, because it was considered that an Arab attack might be imminent, and because Israel's ability to maintain its army fully mobilized is limited, but Prime Minister Eshkol was reluctant to take action, and Foreign Minister Abba Eban opposed unilateral action, which he believed would be against the wishes of the United States. Ariel Sharon now admits that he and others, including Yitzhak Rabin, had discussed the possibility of a sort of coup, in which government officials were to be locked in a room, while the army started the war, but the idea never got passed the stage of thinking out loud.
On May 30, Jordan signed a defense pact with Egypt, readying itself for war. Nasser stated: "The armies of Egypt, Jordan, Syria and Lebanon are poised on the borders of Israel...to face the challenge, while standing behind us are the armies of Iraq, Algeria, Kuwait, Sudan and the whole Arab nation. This act will astound the world. Today they will know that the Arabs are arranged for battle, the critical hour has arrived. We have reached the stage of serious action and not declarations."
On June 4, Iraq likewise joined a military alliance with Egypt and committed itself to war. On May 31, the Iraqi President Rahman Aref announced, "This is our opportunity to wipe out the ignominy which has been with us since 1948. Our goal is clear--to wipe Israel off the map."
US and Israeli assessments were that Israel would win any war handily, despite the huge superiority in armor, aircraft, and troops favoring the combined forces of the Arab countries. Prior to 1967, Israel had gotten almost no military aid from the United States. Egypt and Syria were equipped with large quantities of the latest Soviet military equipment. Israel's main arms supplier was France. On paper, Israel had almost as many aircraft as the Egyptians, but the Israeli aircraft were mostly old, and even the Super-Mirages were no match for the Mig-21 fighters acquired by Egypt from the USSR. On paper, the IDF had a large number of "tanks" matching or almost matching the arms of the Arab countries. However, while Syrians and Egyptians were equipped with late model Soviet heavy tanks, many of the Israeli "tanks" were in fact tiny French AMX anti-tank vehicles, and the heavy tanks were refurbished WWII Sherman tanks fitted with diesel engines. Israel had also been allowed to purchase about 250 M-48 Patton tanks from Germany in 1965. Most of these tanks were being refitted with Diesel engines in 1967, and the US refused an Israeli request for 100 Pattons to replace the ones that were out of service. The Israeli and Jewish public, and some in the government, believed that there was a mortal threat to Israel. Ten thousand graves were dug in Tel Aviv public parks in anticipation of the heavy casualties.
The Israeli government probably did not want war, and some at least were fearful of war. Ben Gurion berated Chief of Staff Itzhak Rabin for making aggressive statements that had, according to him, escalated the conflict and gotten Israel into trouble. Israeli Prime Minister Levi Eshkol appeared hesitant, and stuttered in a dramatic radio speech to the nation. Under great public pressure from opposition parties, a unity government was formed. Foreign Minister Abba Eban tried in vain to obtain from the US a guarantee that they would reopen the straights of Tiran. At first, President Johnson promised an international flotilla, and warned Israel not to attack on its own. However, the US was unable to initiate any international action, and reversed its position, hinting broadly that Israel would have to handle the problem itself.
Israel could not maintain total mobilization indefinitely. When it became apparent that Egypt would not stand down, Israel attacked the Egyptians beginning on June 5, 1967. In the first hours of the war, Israel destroyed over 400 enemy aircraft to achieve total air superiority. Israeli troops quickly conquered the Sinai Peninsula and Gaza. Jordanian artillery began firing at Jerusalem on the first day of the war, despite a warning by Israeli PM Levi Eshkol to stay out of the war, and then the Jordan Legion advanced and took over the headquarters of the UN (Governor's house - Armon Hanatziv ) in Jerusalem. After warning King Hussein repeatedly to cease fire and withdraw, Israel conquered the West Bank and Jerusalem. During the first days of the war, Syrian artillery based in the Golan Heights pounded civilian targets in northern Israel. After dealing with Egypt, Israel decided to conquer the Golan heights, despite opposition and doubts of some in the government, including Moshe Dayan, who had been appointed defense minister. and despite the fact that the UN had already called for a cease fire. Israel agreed to a cease fire on June 10, 1967 after conquering the Golan Heights. UN Resolution 242 called for negotiations of a permanent peace between the parties, and for Israeli withdrawal from lands occupied in 1967.
The aftermath of the war - The 1967 6-Day war changed the perceived balance of power in the Middle East and created a new reality. Israel had acquired extensive territories - the Sinai desert, the Golan heights and the West Bank, that were several times larger than the 1948 borders. ( Click here to view a map of Israeli borders after the 6 day war). Nasser had been able to attribute the Egyptian defeat in 1956 to British and French support of the Israelis. Though he tried to blame the 1967 defeat on support supposedly given by the US Sixth fleet, this was clearly untrue.
According to analysts such as Fouad Ajami, the disastrous defeat of the Arabs spelled the end of the Pan-Arab approach advocated by Gamal Abdul Nasser and contributed to the rise of Islamic fundamentalism. It should be remembered however, that Nasser and the pan-Arabists always viewed themselves as heads of the Islamic world as well as the Arab world.
While Israel had acquired territories and a military victory, it also marked a new day for Palestinian aspirations. The defeat brought about a million Palestinian Arabs under Israeli rule. After the war, the fate of the Palestinians came to play a large role in the Arab-Israeli struggle. The Fatah organization (The Movement for Liberation of Palestine) was founded about 1957 (though it was formalized much later), and the PLO (Palestine Liberation Organization) was founded in 1964. Both had the declared aim of destroying Israel. After the 6-day war, Ahmad Shukairy, who had headed the PLO, was replaced as chairman by Yasser Arafat who headed the Fatah. Fatah and the PLO now had freedom of action, without the restraints of the discredited Arab regimes. Since all parts of Palestine were now under Israeli control, Fatah actions did not directly threaten Arab governments. In time, the Palestine Liberation Organization became recognized by all the Arab states and eventually by the UN as the representative of the Palestinian people. PLO Chairman Yasser Arafat addressed a session of the UN General Assembly in 1974. Israel strongly opposed the PLO because of its terrorist acts against Jews and because of its charter aims of destroying the state of Israel and expelling Jews who had arrived after 1917.
Page 17 chickie:
57% Europeans are following the conflict closely.
Media coverage of the conflict is shaping attitudes towards Israel.
Those who say they follow the coverage of the events in Israel the closest are more likely to be sympatric to the Palestinians cause.
Only 15% said they are not following the coverage at all.
The majority surveyed across Europe, 55% believe the media coverage is balanced.
1/3 say the media is biased.
of those respondents Germany, Britain, France & Belgium believe the media coverage is in favor of the Israelis.
By a slim margin the Danish believe the media coverage is in favor of Palestinians.
all 5 countries surveyed, the more closely the respondents say the follow the news coverage of the conflict the more likely they are to sympathize with the Palestinians.
Like I said you can take that how you want but basically, Europeans believe the media is either unbiased or in favor of the Israelis. However the more closely they pay attention to the media the more likely they sympathize with the Palestinians.
Does it make you wonder?
It's like here, the democrats believe the media is in favor of the republicans but the republicans believe the media is in favor the democrats.
'..the respondents say they follow the news coverage of the conflict the more likely they are to sympathize with the Palestinians.'
This statement in no way suggests any bias in the media one way or the other. It simply states that the more people watch the news on this issue the more they tend to sympathize with the Palestinians.
And as for your Zionist webpage history lesson above, I'll respond to that shortly.
I said you can take that how you want.
Listen every link I find basically says the same. The Arabs did not want the State of Israel and were trying to do everything to stop it. Palestinians wanted their land that was taken to establish the State of Israel by the UN. Do you really disagree with this? In 1947 did the Arabs and Palestinians greet the Jews with open arms after WWII and supported the establishment of State of Israel? If you insist on persuading me I suggest you post some links.
I never said Israel is not in the wrong but I believe both sides are wrong. I never said the Palestinians are main problem and that they are doing more harm then the Israelis. I said they both are and it needs to stop.
That fact that you cut out my statement 'As for Israel they need to make huge concessions, bigger than the ones Ehud Barak made which were considered generous by way of comparison to other offers but not enough. They also need to stop the inhumane treatment of the Palestinians' makes me wonder if you choose to only read want you want
Well, I asked you a direct question earlier. I asked you in what way you believe the Palestinians to be in the wrong.
I could have asked you how the ANC were in the wrong during the Apartheid era.
So I'll ask you again, how are the Palestinians in the wrong? And what options do they have?
This was my answer:
The Jews in Europe were facing annihilation during WWII and then European countries didn't want to accept them after the war ended. So they sought safety in Palestine. The UN agreed to establish a state of Israel and the boarders were designed. However the Palestinians and the Arab countries still viewed the land as Palestinian land. So they began measures to retrieve the land back. So what do you expect the Israelis to do if the PLO and Arab countries around them are saying they want to destroy Israel after what they just went through in Europe? They had to take those threats seriously wouldn't you say? Actually Egypt and Syria are mostly at fault for starting the 6 day war however the PLO pushed them into it.
Again the Israelis too are making the situation much worse and they need to stop their aggression and inhumane treatment of the Palestinians!
But if were pointing fingers I still blame Britain, Germany and many other European countries for not making a safe place for the European Jews after WWII in Europe because Palestine today would be Palestine the way it was before WWII if they did so. No?
Right but if it was an American study and 55% of Americans believed the media was balanced or 1/3 in favor of the Palestinian view, however, the majority of those who watched the media coverage closely sympathized more with the Israelis, what would you think?
edit:
You're making me late for work and I've to go now lol. BTW I do like to hear your side on issues and I understand what you are saying. There are always two sides to every story and you do have a great way of explaining the Palestinian position that needs to be said.
So how does this answer my question as to how the palestinians are in the wrong?
Sure, these countries all have a share of the burden, but the main instigator of the current situation are the Zionists. Zionism is an intrinsically racist ideology, common to all types of ethnic nationalism, including Nazism.
Maybe. Maybe not. Again, this is irrelevant with regards to the occupation. I notice that those who support the Zionist race war have a tendency to try to muddy the water and make the situation seem complicated. It's not complicated. Israel simply needs to end the illegal occupation and the crimes against humanity which it's comitting against the Palestinians, with the sole support of the U.S.
http://www.aljazeera.com/news/newsfull.php?newid=10259
Who started the 1967 Six-Day War?
"We must be honest with ourselves. We decided to attack him (Nasser) .” -- Former Israeli PM Menahem Begin.
Israel has long claimed that it launched the Six-Day War in 1967 to defend itself. Below are some statements made by Israeli leaders as well as some report excerpts that prove otherwise.
Israel’s former Commander of the Air Force, General Ezer Weitzman, regarded as a hawk, stated that there was “no threat of destruction” but that the attack on Egypt, Jordan and Syria was nevertheless justified so that Israel could “exist according the scale, spirit, and quality she now embodies.” Menahem Begin, the first Likud Prime Minister of Israel, also said: “In June 1967, we again had a choice. The Egyptian Army concentrations in the Sinai approaches do not prove that Nasser was really about to attack us. We must be honest with ourselves. We decided to attack him.” "Noam Chomsky, "The Fateful Triangle."
"I do not think Nasser wanted war. The two divisions he sent to The Sinai would not have been sufficient to launch an offensive war. He knew it and we knew it." Yitzhak Rabin, Israel's Chief of Staff in 1967, in Le Monde on 28 February 1968.
“Deliberately provoked by Israel”
"Moshe Dayan, the celebrated commander who, as Defense Minister in 1967, gave the order to conquer the Golan...[said] many of the firefights with the Syrians were deliberately provoked by Israel, and the kibbutz residents who pressed the Government to take the Golan Heights did so less for security than for the farmland... They didn't even try to hide their greed for the land...We would send a tractor to plow some area where it wasn't possible to do anything, in the demilitarized area, and knew in advance that the Syrians would start to shoot. If they didn't shoot, we would tell the tractor to advance further, until in the end the Syrians would get annoyed and shoot. And then we would use artillery and later the air force also, and that's how it was...The Syrians, on the fourth day of the war, were not a threat to us.'" The New York Times, May 11, 1997.
What happened after the Six-Day War?
"In violation of international law, Israel has confiscated over 52 percent of the land in the West Bank and 30 percent of the Gaza Strip for military use or for settlement by Jewish civilians...From 1967 to 1982, Israel's military government demolished 1,338 Palestinian homes on the West Bank. Over this period, more than 300,000 Palestinians were detained without trial for various periods by Israeli security forces." Lockman and Beinin: "Intifada: The Palestinian Uprising Against Israeli Occupation."
"Under the UN Charter there can lawfully be no territorial gains from war, even by a state acting in self-defense. The response of other states to Israel's occupation shows a virtually unanimous opinion that even if Israel's action was defensive, its retention of the West Bank and Gaza Strip was not...The [UN] General Assembly characterized Israel's occupation of the West Bank and Gaza as a denial of self determination and hence a 'serious and increasing threat to international peace and security.' " John Quigley, "Palestine and Israel: A Challenge to Justice."
All Jewish settlements in territories occupied in the 1967 war are a direct violation of the Geneva Conventions, which Israel has signed.
"The Geneva Convention requires an occupying power to change the existing order as little as possible during its tenure. One aspect of this obligation is that it must leave the territory to the people it finds there. It may not bring its own people to populate the territory. This prohibition is found in the convention's Article 49, which states, 'The occupying Power shall not deport or transfer parts of its own civilian population into the territory it occupies.'" John Quigley, "Palestine and Israel: A Challenge to Justice."
Jerusalem: Eternal, Indivisible Capital of Israel?
"Writing in The Jerusalem Report (Feb. 28, 2000), Leslie Susser points out that the current boundaries were drawn after the Six-Day War. Responsibility for drawing those lines fell to Central Command Chief Rehavan Ze'evi. The line he drew 'took in not only the five square kilometers of Arab East Jerusalem - but also 65 square kilometers of surrounding open country and villages, most of which never had any municipal link to Jerusalem. Overnight they became part of Israel's eternal and indivisible capital.'" Allan Brownfield in The Washington Report On Middle East Affairs, May 2000.
The history of Israeli expansionism
"The acceptance of partition does not commit us to renounce Transjordan; one does not demand from anybody to give up his vision. We shall accept a state in the boundaries fixed today. But the boundaries of Zionist aspirations are the concern of the Jewish people and no external factor will be able to limit them." David Ben-Gurion, in 1936, quoted in Noam Chomsky, "The Fateful Triangle."
"The main danger which Israel, as a 'Jewish state', poses to its own people, to other Jews and to its neighbors, is its ideologically motivated pursuit of territorial expansion and the inevitable series of wars resulting from this aim...No Zionist politician has ever repudiated Ben-Gurion's idea that Israeli policies must be based (within the limits of practical considerations) on the restoration of Biblical borders as the borders of the Jewish state." Israeli professor, Israel Shahak, "Jewish History, Jewish Religion: The Weight of 3000 Years."
In Israeli Prime Minister Moshe Sharatt's personal diaries, there is an excerpt from May of 1955 in which he quotes Moshe Dayan as follows: "[Israel] must see the sword as the main, if not the only, instrument with which to keep its morale high and to retain its moral tension. Toward this end it may, no - it must - invent dangers, and to do this it must adopt the method of provocation-and-revenge...And above all - let us hope for a new war with the Arab countries, so that we may finally get rid of our troubles and acquire our space." Quoted in Livia Rokach, "Israel's Sacred Terrorism."
Israel's decades-old rejection of peaceful settlements
"Senator [J.William Fulbright] proposed in 1970 that America should guarantee Israel's security in a formal treaty, protecting her with armed forces if necessary. In return, Israel would retire to the borders of 1967. The UN Security Council would guarantee this arrangement, and thereby bring the Soviet Union - then a supplier of arms and political aid to the Arabs - into compliance. As Israeli troops were withdrawn from the Golan Heights, the Gaza Strip and the West Bank they would be replaced by a UN peacekeeping force. Israel would agree to accept a certain number of Palestinians and the rest would be settled in a Palestinian state outside Israel.
"The plan drew favorable editorial support in the United States. The proposal, however, was flatly rejected by Israel. “The whole affair disgusted Fulbright,” writes [his biographer Randall] Woods. “The Israelis were not even willing to act in their own self-interest." Allan Brownfield in "Issues of the American Council for Judaism," Fall 1997.
Fair enough. Although you should probably know by now that when It comes to this issue my gloves are off.
you want classic jewish revisionist history...
Anne bancroft , ms. robinson from the film the graduate, played golda meir on broadway
man ...
LOL!
www.wm3.org
Ron Paul 2012
Talk about Kosher!
and reveling in it's loyalty. It's made by forming coalitions
over specific principles, goals, and policies.
http://i36.tinypic.com/66j31x.jpg
(\__/)
( o.O)
(")_(")
Zionism is intrinsically racist? Please tell me exactly when Judaism became a race? Please never compare Zionism with Nazism. Thats plain disgusting. Nazism believed in a direct pecking order of races, with the 'Aryan' race being at the top.
Zionists believe in a homeland for the Jewish people. The person can be native Israeli, ashkenazi (European descent), Sephardic (Spain/Morocco), African, Asian, Iraqi, or any single nationality/ethnicity atround the world. Judaism is not a race and Zionism is not racist.
20 percent of Israeli citizens are non-Jewish arabs. They also hold seats in the Israeli Parliament.
Now, disagreeing with the way Israel has handled the situation in Gaza and the West Bank is one thing, but to blame it on Zionist Racial ideology is just crazy!
In the words of Michael Neumann, author of 'A case against Israel'...
'Zionism has never been a movement for the defence of the Jewish religion.; on the contrary, many of the most religious Jews abhor it. It was never even a movement in defence of some cultural entity; when the Zionist movement began, Jews had no common language and their traditions were in many cases wildly dissimilar or simply abandoned altogether. Zionism was a movement that advocated not so much the defense of an ethnic group, as the formation of such a group in Palestine, where those who were thought to fit a certain semi-racial category were to find refuge. It was a lovely dream where all Jews would live happily together and, with typical Wilsonian obliviousness, no one seemed to notice that those who did not pass ethnic muster had no place in this fantasy. If they were to be tolerated, welcomed, even loved, it was to be at the pleasure of the Jews. Of that there could be no mistake. This is exactly the sort of vulnerable subordination that Jews, quite understandably, were trying to escape. "Trust us, we'll be nice" is not a promise endorsed by the historical record.
Zionists respond with fury when their movement is identified with racism. Many ethnic supremacists do. They protest that they do not advocate their own superiority, but simply want a land or culture of their own. But that is of neccesity a land where one race is guaranteed supremacy: whether or not this is on grounds of intrinsic superiority hardly matters. And that such movements and attitudes gain respectability is not the fault of the Zionists, much less of the Jews, but of an idiotically false tolerance of ethnic nationalism.'
http://www.iht.com/articles/reuters/2008/05/08/africa/OUKWD-UK-ISRAEL-PALESTINIANS-1948-ARABS.php
"Arab citizens ... are related to more as enemies than as citizens with equal rights," the Association for Civil Rights in Israel (ACRI) said in its annual report.
The group said "racist incidents" against Arab citizens rose 26 percent in 2006. It did not have more recent figures. Poverty rates are four times higher among Israeli Arabs in comparison to Israeli Jews, according to Haifa-based advocacy group Mossawa.
Twelve Arab lawmakers including a cabinet member hold seats in Israel's 120-member parliament, but less than 8 percent of the country's civil service workforce is made up of Israeli Palestinians, according to a recent civil service report...
some rights groups, including ACRI, say Israel has also been using the law to cement the state's Jewish character.
Such draft bills, approved by parliament in 2007, include banning Arabs from buying land controlled by the Jewish National Fund, a quasi-governmental group that was founded before the state of Israel to buy and develop land in Palestine and later oversaw land distribution in the Jewish state.
The JNF also controls land owned by Palestinians before they fled or were driven from their homes when Israel was founded.
Another bill makes eligibility for national insurance benefits dependent on completing military service. Few Arabs serve in the army: unlike for Jews, service is not compulsory.
"The Palestinians inside Israel are being discriminated against in all spheres except for one: the right to vote," Mohammad Barakeh, a member of Israeli parliament, said.
Olmert's spokesman Regev said the bills did not reflect racist attitudes against Arabs, rather "legitimate differences of opinions".'
Anti-Arab racism and incitement in Israel
Ali Abunimah, The Electronic Intifada, 30 March 2008
http://electronicintifada.net/v2/article9428.shtml
'...one fifth of Israel's population (not including the Palestinian population of occupied East Jerusalem), they are citizens of the state of Israel and can vote in elections for the Knesset. Despite this, most view themselves as second-class citizens. As indigenous non-Jews in a self-described Jewish state, they face a host of systematic social, legal, economic and educational barriers to equality. Israel lacks a constitution and has no other basic law guaranteeing equal rights to all citizens regardless of religion, race, ethnicity or national origin.
One measure of the cumulative impact of these discriminatory policies is socioeconomic: while just 16 percent of Jewish citizens in Israel fall below the official poverty line, the figure for non-Jews is 50 percent, according to the Israeli Democracy Institute's index.
In October 2000, Israeli police used live ammunition against unarmed civilians demonstrating their solidarity with Palestinians in the occupied territories. Thirteen Palestinians, of whom twelve were Israeli citizens, were shot dead. An official commission, headed by Judge Theodor Or, was appointed to look into the events which came to mark a dramatic deterioration in Arab-Jewish relations inside the country. In 2003, the Or Commission confirmed that the police used "excessive" and unjustifiable force, reported that the police viewed the country's Arab citizens as "enemies" and documented a pattern of "prejudice and neglect" towards them by Israel's establishment.
While the Or Commission recommended a number of measures to redress the sharp disparities between Jews and Arabs in the country, families of the victims regarded the report as a whitewash. The Commission failed to examine the forensic evidence in each of the killings, and none of the killers, nor any responsible official, were ever brought to justice. By 2007, according to Elie Rekhess of the Moshe Dayan Center at Tel Aviv University, there remained "yawning" gaps between Jews and Arabs in Israel and "the bottom line" is "that the conclusions and recommendations of the 2003 Or Commission remain conspicuously unimplemented."
Amidst the increasingly precarious situation of Palestinian citizens of Israel, prominent and broadly representative leaders of that community published in 2007 a series of documents setting out visions for Israel as a state of all its citizens with equality for all. [1] The response of the Israeli body politic was overwhelmingly to view these initiatives as an unwelcome threat to the "Jewish character" of the state. Israel's Shin Bet secret police, responsible among other things for many "targeted killings" in the occupied territories, went so far as to warn that it would "disrupt the activities of any groups that seek to change the Jewish or democratic character of Israel, even if they use democratic means," the Israeli daily Haaretz reported in April 2007.'
Israel world's most racist state
http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-3248807,00.html
Israeli Arab Knesset members slam results of Israel Democracy Institute's survey showing 62 percent of Israelis want to encourage Arab emigration
Ilan Marciano Published: 05.09.06
'...One person who does see a connection between 'Israel Our Home's success and the survey findings is MK Ahmad Tibi (United Arab List-Ta'al).
"Racism became the main characteristic of Israeli society a long time ago," he said. "Racism and fascism moved from impassioned marketplaces to the Knesset and the government seats. This is mainly expressed in the rise of an Israeli fascist party in the elections."
"There is no doubt that the ongoing occupation, dominating another people, and the confrontation have brought about the rise of racism in Israel. This scary phenomenon must be seriously dealt with by the government through education and with the help of the media," he added.
MK Talab El-Sana (United Arab List-Ta'al) called on Zionism to "conduct a profound self-examination and check where it failed."
He called to appoint an Arab deputy to the president and wondered "how the people that was supposed to serve as a shining example and a light unto the nations turned its country into the most racist state in the universe." '
All this hatred must give him terrible heartburn.
www.wm3.org
Ron Paul 2012
Rather than making stupid, meaningless personal attacks on my character, why don't you try addressing the points I raised above?
Edit: Also, since when did all Jews become Zionists? Perhaps you can answer that?
'The claim that Zionism is racism
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zionism_and_racism
Both the 1922 League of Nations Palestine Mandate and the 1947 UN Partition Plan supported the creation of a Jewish State in Palestine, but in November 1975, the United Nations General Assembly Resolution 3379 declared that "Zionism is a form of racism and racial discrimination."
In December 1991, the General Assembly rescinded this resolution through Resolution 4686. At the time, the Soviet Union, a major sponsor of the "Zionism is racism" doctrine (see Zionology), had completed its rapid collapse. Israel made revocation of resolution 3379 a condition of its participation in the Madrid Peace Conference.
Finkelstein says Zionism uses racist arguments: 'The injustice inflicted on Palestinians by Zionism was manifest and, except on racist grounds, unanswerable: their right to self-determination, and perhaps even to their homeland, was being denied.'[8] Finkelstein says none of the justifications given by Zionists could withstand even cursory scrutiny. For example he says the 'historical right', based on the Jewish presence in Israel two thousand years ago is 'neither historical, nor based on any accepted notion of right', and is 'not a right except in mystical, romantic nationalist ideologies'.[9] He says the argument that Palestine was 'empty' when the Zionists arrived is ironic, because 'it is a back-handed admission that, had Palestine been inhabited, which it plainly was, the Zionist enterprise was morally indefensible.'[10] He says non-Zionist supporters of Zionism could only come up with a racist justification, 'the fate of Jews was simply more important than that of Arabs'.[11]
According to A.F. Kassim: "Racial discrimination has become 'legally' institutionalised in the state of Israel. The Nationality Law, and particularly, the doctrine of return, gives hard evidence of Israel's discriminatory and racist policies. [... This Law is] an integral part of the Zionist policy consistently pursued ever since the Zionist colonisation processes began in Palestine."'
To be honest, I'm really not in the mood. I'm getting pretty sick of arguing about what the Jews did to the Arabs, and what the Arabs have done to the Jews. Personally, I'm thinking about going to 9 Pearl Jam shows in June, which should be amazing.
I hope to run into a few Jewish and Arab/Muslim PJ Fans along the way. We could all get a few bacon cheeseburgers, some cold beers, and discuss what songs we think they'll play.
All I ask is that security be extra careful while checking the Muslim fan. Just kidding!
www.wm3.org
Ron Paul 2012
I find it interesting that none of these claims holds any water.
So I repeat; Zionism is a racist ideology.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zionism_and_racism
Arguments of defenders of Zionism
Defenders of Zionism[who?] disagree with the identification of Zionism with racism on a number of grounds:
1.The charge is too vague, as the views of Zionist groups differ widely from each other.[citation needed]
2. Judaism and Jewish Law hold that any person may choose to become a Jew and enjoy all the benefits and responsibilities of membership. Zionism is therefore, by definition, non-racial.[citation needed]
3. Defenders of Zionism also claim that if Arabs and many other ethnic groups have their own states, the Jews deserve their own state as well.[citation needed]
4. Arabs and Jews are related to each other, and both claim mixed ancestry (see The ancestry of the Palestinians, Jewish ethnic divisions). Israeli Jews are racially mixed (nearly half of Israel's Jewish population consists of Arab Jews, and there are about 100,000 black Jews from Ethiopia) as well as large numbers of Jews from India, Pakistan, Afghanistan, Uzbekistan, Morocco and other countries. Many Jews are Arab Jews.[citation needed]
5. Even if the State of Israel discriminates against Arabs, such discrimination is based on political, cultural and/or religious discrimination, rather than race. Further, such discrimination cannot be connected to the Zionist movement, but rather may occur through political processes and dispersed among individuals and small groups that cannot be proven to be the majority view of Zionism[citation needed].
6. The UN has failed to address antisemitism among Arab states and devotes more time to Palestine then to conflicts in Darfur and Congo where millions have been killed.'
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/entertainment/7412088.stm
Verona??? it's all surmountable
Dublin 23.08.06 "The beauty of Ireland, right there!"
Wembley? We all believe!
Copenhagen?? your light made us stars
Chicago 07? And love
What a different life
Had I not found this love with you