Daoud Kuttab is a Palestinian journalist. He was born in Jerusalem in 1955. Presently he is a visiting professor at Princeton University in the United States. Mr. Kuttab is the former director of the Institute of Modern Media at Al Quds University in Ramallah, Palestine and the founder of AmmanNet, the Arab world's first internet radio station. His personal web page is www.daoudkuttab.com
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Daoud Kuttab
Princeton, NJ
Daoud Kuttab is a Palestinian journalist. He was born in Jerusalem in 1955. Presently he is a visiting professor at Princeton University in the United States.
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WITH RESPECT TO THE ASSASSINATION OF BENAZIR BHUTTO
This is a glimpse of the world’s future if the Zionist so called “State of Israel” and its number one ally the USA don’t wise up and vacate the Middle East.
That’s right Victoria, they can’t blame this one on the general Muslim population.
We may find out, however, that the culprit is the Islamist fundamentalists (Al Qaeda and the Taliban) who are enabled by the foolish greed of the colonial USA and Israel.
Certainly Musharraf is one of those with the most to gain. He can now postpone elections indefinitely and hold onto his power, although he may have quite a revolt on his hands if he does so.
On the other hand, Bhutto was a strong ally of the US and an outspoken opponent of the Islamic fundamentalists. That is the kiss of death in this region of the world.
“In October, Ms. Bhutto survived another deadly suicide attack in the southern city of Karachi on the day she returned from years of self-imposed exile abroad to contest the parliamentary elections. Ms. Bhutto blamed extremist Islamic groups who she said wanted to take over the country for that attack, which narrowly missed her but killed 134 people. But she also complained that the government had taken insufficient steps to safeguard her parade…
She was openly critical of Mr. Musharraf’s ineffectiveness at dealing with Islamic militants and welcomed American involvement…
The assassination comes just days after Mr. Musharraf lifted a state of emergency in the country, which he had used to suspend the Constitution and arrest thousands of political opponents, and which he said he had imposed in part because of terrorist threats by extremists in Pakistan…”
So this is how my crystal ball has it. We just took another step along the path to WW III. The Islamist fundamentalists (Al Qaeda and the Taliban) hold all the cards. Musharraf may or may not be making a serious effort to rein them in. He may be playing live and let live as they build their strength in NW Pakistan and continue to weaken Afghanistan.
The Zionist invader in Palestine keeps the entire Middle East inflamed at both them and the USA for supporting them. Of course our preemptive attack on Iraq and continued occupation of Afghanistan just adds fuel to the flames.
China, India and Pakistan’s thirst for Middle East oil makes them natural allies of Iran, Iraq, Saudi Arabia and the other Arabian Gulf oil states. They will be eager to supply whatever these countries need in the way of precision guided land Attack Cruise Missiles (LACM) like the US Tomahawk. These are precision, Global Position System (GPS) satellite guided, low flying cruise missiles that hug the earth and can be programmed to attack Israel from multiple directions. Israel will never know what hit them. These will not be like the thousands of ballistic Katyusha rockets fired from Southern Lebanon, which mostly land in the olive orchards and sage brush fields. These missiles will each have a high rise building or other high value target and street number programmed in them like our Tomahawk attacks on Baghdad in 1991 and 2003.
Our thirst for oil and 10 Trillion dollar national debt, with much of it owed to China, puts us in a very weak strategic position. China could bankrupt us at will by flooding the market with our worthless paper IOUs. That’s why the US dollar has lost ~33% of its value relative to the Euro, which is on its way to becoming the world standard currency. The US dollar will soon be known as the US Peso.
Israel only produces ~1% of its required oil from its own oil wells, and must import 99%, 90% from Russia. Russia is anything but a reliable ally and is known to have used its natural gas supplied to Eastern Europe as a political tool in the past.
So standby for action the so called Zionist “State of Israel” and its number one ally the USA. We live in interesting times.
PRO-ISRAEL FORCES WANT TO RE-OPEN A PIPELINE FROM IRAQ TO HAIFA, ISRAEL
The fact that American-Israelis in our government are endeavoring to use the war on Iraq as a way for Israel to gain control over oil in the Middle East is rarely reported in the mainstream pro-Israel US media with your average American readership, however it has been reported in Jewish newspapers with Jewish readership and in Israeli papers.
A case in point is the fact that American-Israelis in our government want to "re-open" or re-instate, the pipeline that used to exist between Iraq and Palestine, which is now specifically Haifa, Israel. When Israel was created in 1948, that pipeline was re-directed by Iraq to Syria. Now pro-Israel forces are actively seeking to cut off the pipeline to Syria and re-direct it to Haifa, Israel. For more information on this, please do a Google-search using such keywords such as "Iraq oil pipeline to Haifa, Israel" and see what you come up with.
Just as Israel's connection to the war on Iraq has been kept out of the US mainstream media (as you may have noticed, Israel has not even been mentioned as one of our "allies" in the war on Iraq), this choice nugget of information with regards to Israel's ambition to get a basically free supply of Iraqi oil is also kept out of view for vast American public consumption.
Coal in your stocky this morning, for you young Ricky.
Santa thinks you have been a bad boy.
You and your buddies have started three wars to eliminate Israel, and you have lost each time (and I am not even including two, how do you Arabs call them, "intifadahs").
Now to complain about the results of starting those wars is really poor sportsmanship, young Rick.
If you had chosen building a country instead of trying to destroy one in 1948 and again in 2000 you wouldn't be in this predicament on Christmas day 2007, now would you.
Santa doesn't like whiney sore losers.
No he doesn't like them at all.
No, no, no, they turn the insides of his jolly jelly belly, really they do.
Santa can not abide poor sportsmanship, at all!
He's putting you on his naughty short list, and putting coal in your stocking.
“The water resources in the Occupied Territories were integrated into the legal and bureaucratic system of Israel, severely limiting the ability of Palestinians to develop those resources…
Article 55 of the Hague Regulations limits the right of occupying states to utilize the water sources of occupied territory. The use is limited to military needs and may not exceed past use. Use of groundwater of the Occupied Territories in the settlements does not meet these criteria and therefore breaches article 55…
Article 27 of the Fourth Geneva Convention of 1949 prohibits an occupying state from discriminating between residents of occupied territory. The quantity of water supplied to the settlements is vastly larger than that which is supplied to the Palestinians. Similarly, the regularity of supply is much greater in the settlements. This discrimination is especially blatant during the summer months when the supply to Palestinians in some areas of the West Bank is reduced in order to meet the increased demand for water in the settlements receiving their water from the same pipelines…
Under international law, the main principle for division of shared water between states is the principle of equitable and reasonable use. This principle is based on the limited-sovereignty doctrine, which provides that, because all parts of the drainage basins of watercourses are hydrologically interdependent, states are not allowed to utilize water located in their territory as they wish, but must take into account the other states that share the resource.
This principle does not state a precise formula quantifying the rights of each state sharing an international watercourse. Rather, it lists the factors to be considered in negotiations between the states to determine the division. Article 6 of the UN Convention on the Law of the Non-Navigational Uses of International Watercourses enumerates seven of these factors:
1. The natural features of the shared watercourse (geographic, climatic, hydrologic, and the like);
2. The social and economic needs of the watercourse states;
3. The population dependent on the watercourse in each watercourse state;
4. The effects of the use of the watercourses in one watercourse state on other watercourse states;
5. Existing and potential uses of the watercourse;
Conservation, protection, and development of the water resources of the watercourse and the costs of measures taken to that effect;
The availability of alternatives to a particular planned or existing use.
Taking into account the components of the principle of equitable and reasonable use, examination of the current division of water between Israel and the Palestinians leads to the conclusion that this division violates Palestinian rights and contravenes international water law.
CNN - THIS WEEK AT WAR WILL DOBSON FOREIGN POLICY MAGAZINE-
transcript of show
It seems that even the young American Jews have are fed up with Israel.
"FOREMAN: A very controversial idea is your next headline here. American Jews turn away from Israel. What do you mean?
DOBSON: Well, as we know, the U.S. foreign policy is made up by many different lobbies and one of them that's often credited that's being particularly powerful is the Israel lobby. Well, right now in America, a new study that really was just completely overlooked, it appears that though Americans, young American Jews, are beginning to feel less of an attachment to Israel. In a survey that was done, young American Jews, 48% under 35 said they would not consider it a personal tragedy if Israel was destroyed. That's compared to 77% of those 65 and older. Likewise, 54% of young American Jews said that they felt no - they were even uncomfortable with the notion of a Jewish state compared again to 81% of those 65 or older. So what's clearly there is a shift, a generational shift going on in the Jewish community in America today.
FOREMAN: Well, that must cause enormous angst among the older Jewish community. So many of whom have memories of World War II and who feel like Israel was so hard-won to the young people saying you must understand your heritage.
DOBSON: That's exactly right. I mean, clearly what we're seeing and the authors of the report said one, this is a by-product of intermarriage between faiths. People are feeling less of an attachment to the homeland. And it's also a little bit of distance from history. They don't remember the holocaust as being the personal experience that their grandparents do. And so clearly, it's causing a weakening among Jews in America of seeing their jewishness as a collective identity."
That is very interesting indeed, eh bro’. There will be very little weeping in the world when the racist, terrorist, war criminal, so called “State of Israel” expires, and hopefully her demise is not far away.
Here is an article from B’Tselem, the Israeli human rights organization:
“Israel's policy regarding water supply in the West Bank is illegal and discriminates on racial grounds. It flagrantly breaches international law which requires Israel to ensure proper living conditions for the local population and to respect the Palestinians' human rights, including the right to receive a sufficient quantity of water to meet their basic needs.”
Even Israel’s own human rights organization considers them to be racist, illegal and “discriminates on racial grounds”. Israel hogs 80% of the regions water supply to keep their swimming pools full and lawns green, while leaving the Palestinians less than half the amount considered necessary for minimum health requirements by the WHO and USAID organizations.
Here is an open letter to my friend Alan from another site:
Alan,
Concerning your ridiculous claim that the Jews “may have” purchased 95% of the land of the so called “State of Israel” legally, here is an interesting article from Middle East Quarterly that claims that the true number is 16.4%. So I stand corrected, all Israeli Jews may not be land thieves; only 83.6% of them are:
What do you think about them as a source? I’m sure that they are not as unbiased as The Jewish Virtual Library, but they claim to be an honest source of information. Here is what they say about themselves:
“Since its founding in 1994, the Middle East Quarterly has become America's most authoritative journal of Middle Eastern affairs. Policymakers, opinion-makers, academics, and journalists turn first to the Quarterly, for in-depth analysis of the rapidly-changing landscape of the world's most volatile region. The Quarterly publishes groundbreaking studies, exclusive interviews, insightful commentary, and hard-hitting reviews that tackle the entire range of contemporary concerns – from politics to economics to culture, across a region that stretches from Morocco to Afghanistan. The Quarterly, founded by Daniel Pipes and edited by Michael Rubin, appears in a print edition, and is available in full-text (except the current issue) on this website.
The Quarterly welcomes submissions of original articles, and will consider pre-publication of chapters from forthcoming books. The Quarterly specializes in timely and expeditious publication of articles that impact on today's critical issues.”
[I would say that they are about as unreliable as The Jewish Virtual Library given the pro-Israeli slant on the article that follows; nevertheless it will prove useful for our purposes. It will show that in 1901, 8.7% of the current land area of the “State of Israel” had been purchased by the Jewish National Fund (JNF). More than 70% of the remainder was public land vested in the British Mandatory Authority (Meaning that it was owned by the people, and the vast majority of the people were Palestinians).
With the establishment of the “State of Israel” in 1948, the new government inherited the state-owned lands formerly in the possession of British Mandatory authority as well as property abandoned by Arab refugees. The situation today is that 80.4% of the land is owned by the government, 13.1% is owned by the JNF (These lands were never sold, either to Jews or Arabs, but instead were leased on a long—term basis for kibbutzim and other forms of Jewish settlement), and only 6.5% is evenly divided between Arab and Jewish owners. So the 13.1% of land owned by the JNF plus 3.25% privately owned by Jews amounts to a total of 16.4% of the land of the current “State of Israel” that was actually purchased by the Jews; a far sight from your 95% number.]
Churchill's Other Alliance
Why the British leader bucked the anti-Semitism of his time.
Reviewed by Glenn Frankel
Sunday, December 16, 2007; BW04
CHURCHILL AND THE JEWS
A Lifelong Friendship
By Martin Gilbert
Henry Holt. 352 pp. $30
"Even Winston had a fault," Gen. Edward Louis Spears, a dear friend of Winston Churchill, once told historian Martin Gilbert. "He was too fond of Jews."...
Churchill's profound admiration for the Jews, which was not shared by many of his closest political colleagues, was all the more amazing because it survived the rise of Bolshevism, which Churchill abhorred and which he believed was dominated, intellectually and politically, by men and women of Jewish origin. It even survived the turbulent years during and after World War II when Zionist extremists conducted a campaign of political murder against British officials, policemen and soldiers. That campaign reached its nadir with the 1944 assassination in Cairo of Lord Moyne, Britain's top colonial administrator in the region and one of Churchill's closest friends, and the 1946 bombing of British administration offices at the King David Hotel in Jerusalem, in which 91 people died...
Why did the great man shower his affection on a people that could be, by his own reckoning, so cantankerous and problematic? It was, Gilbert writes, partly because Churchill saw Jewish ethics as the foundation stone for Western moral teachings... [Codswallop!]
It's also the case that Churchill had little use for Muslims... [A true anti-Semite]
Churchill was often accused by political opponents and anti-Semites of being in the pocket of wealthy Jews...
Lord Alfred Douglas, the poet and former lover of playwright Oscar Wilde, alleged that Churchill accepted bribes from Jewish financiers during World War I to manipulate wartime information for their financial advantage while he was secretary of the Royal Navy. Douglas was convicted of criminal libel and sentenced to six months in prison. [Let that be a lesson to you, it never pays to speak truth to power.]
Scanning the newspapers this morning I see that Paris conferees have pledged $7.4 Billion in aid to the Palestinian Authority, saying that an infusion of cash would help the peace process begun by the United States last month in Annapolis, Md.
“But some delegates said that pumping money into the West Bank and Gaza Strip would not lead to long-term economic growth or political moderation as long as Israel continued expanding Jewish settlements and imposing a regime of checkpoints and closures that was strangling the Palestinian economy...
"Economic development is the best guarantee of lasting peace and long-term security for Israel," said French President Nicolas Sarkozy, the conference host...
But it was unclear how much of the $7.4 billion pledged Monday would go to Gaza, which is controlled by Hamas, a radical Islamic group whose forces expelled the Palestinian Authority from the strip in June.
Events that followed the Nov. 27 Annapolis conference contributed to Palestinian resentment here and in the territories leading up to the Paris meeting. A week after both sides pledged to adhere to the U.S.-backed "road map" for peace -- a plan launched in 2003 that calls for Israel to stop settlement activities and for Palestinians to disarm militant groups and boost security -- Israel announced the construction of more than 300 homes on occupied land on the outskirts of Jerusalem.
"I'll be eager to implement all our commitments under the road map, and I expect the Israeli side to do the same, comprehensively, and without excuses from our side or theirs," Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas told the delegates. "I expect them to stop all settlement activities, without exceptions."
There is a fat chance that the Zionists will let up on their expansionist settlements and strangle hold on the Palestinian economy. They will prefer to keep their West Bank settlements, hog 80% of the water supply to keep their lawns green and swimming pools full, while denying the Palestinian natives the right to drill wells; even though both the UN and USA agree that the Palestinians are being deprived the minimum amount of water to maintain health.
Some people cannot be lived with; they must be expelled once again from the Middle East.
Here’s a good example of how AIPAC is not the only source of Israeli influence that misled us into the disastrous preemptive invasion of Iraq and continues to stoke our world wide War on Islam:
“The man crowned by Tommy Franks as “the dumbest [expletive] guy on the planet” just made the dumbest [expletive] speech on the planet.
Doug Feith, the former Rummy gofer who drove the neocon plan to get us into Iraq, and then dawdled without a plan as Iraq crashed into chaos, was the headliner at a reunion meeting of the wooly-headed hawks Monday night at the American Enterprise Institute.
The room was packed as the former No. 3 at the Pentagon, previewing his upcoming book, “War and Decision,” conceded that the case could be made that “mistakes were made.” His former boss, Paul Wolfowitz, and the former Pentagon adviser Richard Perle sat supportively in the front row.”...
“In “Fiasco,” Tom Ricks wrote that Feith’s Pentagon office was dubbed the “black hole” of policy by generals watching him drop the ball...
Jay Garner, America’s first viceroy in Iraq, deemed him “incredibly dangerous” and said his “electrons aren’t connected.”
Feith’s disdain for diplomacy and his credo that weakness invites aggression were shaped, Ricks reported, by personal history: “Like Wolfowitz, Feith came from a family devastated by the Holocaust. His father lost both parents, three brothers, and four sisters to the Nazis.”...
What’s the answer to bin Laden? According to Feith, it was an attack on an unrelated dictator. He oversaw the Policy Counterterrorism Evaluation Group, whose mission was to amp up links between Saddam and Al Qaeda...
It defies reason, but there are still some who think the chuckleheads who orchestrated the Iraq misadventure have wisdom to impart.
The Pentagon neocons dumped Condi Rice out of the loop. Yet, according to Newsweek’s Mike Isikoff, Condi has now offered Wolfie a job. It wasn’t enough that he trashed Iraq and the World Bank. (He’s still larking around town with Shaha, the sweetheart he gave the sweetheart deal to.)
Condi wants Wolfie to advise her on nuclear proliferation and W.M.D. as part of a State Department panel that has access to highly classified intelligence.
Once you’ve helped distort W.M.D. intelligence to trick the country into war, shouldn’t you be banned for life from ever having another top-level government post concerning W.M.D.?”
Here is an article that shows what we are up against. It shows how Barack Obama executed his abrupt flip flop on Palestinian support when he began his campaign for a US Senate seat from Illinois:
Ali Abunimah, The Electronic Intifada, 4 March 2007
...“In 2000, when Obama unsuccessfully ran for Congress I heard him speak at a campaign fundraiser hosted by a University of Chicago professor. On that occasion and others Obama was forthright in his criticism of US policy and his call for an even-handed approach to the Palestinian-Israeli conflict.”…
…“But Obama's gradual shift into the AIPAC camp had begun as early as 2002 as he planned his move from small time Illinois politics to the national scene. In 2003, Forward reported on how he had "been courting the pro-Israel constituency." He co-sponsored an amendment to the Illinois Pension Code allowing the state of Illinois to lend money to the Israeli government. Among his early backers was Penny Pritzker -- now his national campaign finance chair -- scion of the liberal but staunchly Zionist family that owns the Hyatt hotel chain. (The Hyatt Regency hotel on Mount Scopus was built on land forcibly expropriated from Palestinian owners after Israel occupied East Jerusalem in 1967). He has also appointed several prominent pro-Israel advisors.”…
…“If disappointing, given his historically close relations to Palestinian-Americans, Obama's about-face is not surprising. He is merely doing what he thinks is necessary to get elected and he will continue doing it as long as it keeps him in power.”…
“Only if enough people know what Obama and his competitors stand for, and organize to compel them to pay attention to their concerns can there be any hope of altering the disastrous course of US policy in the Middle East. It is at best a very long-term project that cannot substitute for support for the growing campaign of boycott, divestment and sanctions needed to hold Israel accountable for its escalating violence and solidifying apartheid.”
It is clear to me that our only hope for an honest government is campaign finance reform with total taxpayer financing of political campaigns. All lobbying must be totally banned.
Here is a fascinating link. I find it very interesting indeed. When are we going to figure out how to give the American people as much pull with the Congress as AIPAC has?
BILL MOYERS: But in this country the right wing, the radicals, if you will, you call them radicals, they are radicals. They're organized. They have the money. They have this alliance with the Republican Party. And AIPAC and others make it impossible for Democrats to have the kind of conversation that you're having here. I mean, you don't hear this debate in the Democratic debates, do you?
M.J. ROSENBERG: You don't. And that's-- it's so amazing that no one asks the candidates about Israel and Palestine in debates, ever.
BILL MOYERS: Why?
M.J. ROSENBERG: I think the reason they don't ask is that they know what the candidates are going to say is, "I love Israel. I stand with Israel. Israel is great." End of the discussion.
BILL MOYERS: Why?
M.J. ROSENBERG: Because they are intimidated...
BILL MOYERS: By?
M.J. ROSENBERG: By the lobby which basically does not want a debate on this issue. But, you know, I don't blame the lobby. I blame the politicians. They're not going to lose their seats in Congress. They're not going to lose the presidency because they endorsed a two-state solution. The-- it is not losing that they're afraid of. They're afraid of getting any static from a couple of right wing donors...
BILL MOYERS: --I mean, you have seen the candidates for Congress lose because of opposition from supporters of Israel.
M.J. ROSENBERG: You know what? I think that the only people say that candidates for Congress have lost because of that opposition is, one, the lobby itself to tout its own power. And those candidates who lost for other reasons and want someone to blame. No, I can go over those case by case--
BILL MOYERS: Yeah, but-- but in your newsletter you keep talking about the power of the lobby to intimidate the discussion among Democrats in particular...
BILL MOYERS: --talk about Barney Frank, who's a good liberal Democrat but never discusses this. You talk about Nancy Pelosi writes a letter to Bush before the Annapolis conference and says the only solution can be one that deals primarily with what Palestinians are doing and has no reciprocity from Israel.
M.J. ROSENBERG: Oh, absolutely. The-- they have a real chilling effect on debate...
BILL MOYERS: More so than CUFI, don't they?
M.J. ROSENBERG: Oh, much more. CUFI doesn't really-- I don't see them as really counting on this issue. No, they have a much more-- I go up to the Hill all the time, talk to members of Congress. And what they always are say is, "I'm with you 100 percent. I'm for the two-state solution. I know it's the best thing for America and it's the best thing for Israel. But you really don't want me to go out and say that in public." So they say, like, in my heart I agree with you. But that's not good enough.
RON SIDER: I think that MJ's basically right on that. And I'm sorry about that. I wish they did. I wish they had the political courage to-- in fact, say what they think. Because I mean, it's really momentous in terms of the U.S. and the history of the world and our foreign policy. Because 1.3 billion Muslims in the world tend to judge the U.S. and see it through the lens of Israel-Palestine. And all those Muslims perceive the U.S. as very one-sided. If we would solve the Israeli-Palestinian problem, that would remove one major problem in the huge dangerous relationship between the U.S. with its large Christian majority and the Muslim world.
M.J. ROSENBERG: And, you know, on top of it, you have in the Jewish community some 70 percent of our community supports the two-state solution, supports the peace process, supports what Bush tried to do this week in Annapolis. But under our current system, it isn't majorities that matter, it's special interest groups based in Washington. It's a problem with our system right now and how it works.
This is the tragic story of the Zionists’ greatest hero. The first article mentions in passing what an incredible simpleton Herzl was. It never occurred to him that the Palestinians would not readily give up their land and welcome the invading Zionists with open arms.
"Historians and others still sift through Herzl's writings and see many legacies. They note that he envisioned a Jewish state where people spoke not Hebrew, but German; that he and other early Zionists failed to understand Arab nationalism; and that in a utopian novel Herzl wrote, he describes a binational, egalitarian state."
From the 2nd article:
“Sixty years after jumping off a bridge to his death, the last descendant of Theodor Herzl, the founder of modern Zionism, was buried Wednesday in a Jerusalem cemetery bearing his grandfather's name _ bringing an end to a torturous family saga and finally fulfilling Herzl's century-old will.
Herzl's son also committed suicide. He had a daughter who was mentally ill and another who was killed in the Holocaust. In the past year, three of the founder's four descendants have been buried in Israel_ no easy task because of rabbinical injunctions against Jewish burials for those who have killed themselves or converted to other religions.”...
"His vision was realized, and now there is an exemplary nation," said Liora Herzl, the great-granddaughter of Herzl's cousin. But she noted that Zionism's founder left behind a broken, cash-strapped family. "He was completely consumed with his commitment to the Zionist idea, and his family ultimately paid the price for that."
“Norman was the lone family member committed to Herzl's Zionist cause. He read about his grandfather's work and was active in his movement.”
So here we have the idealist Zionist simpleton who is the principal founder responsible for the incredible mess we have in the Middle East today. The question for us to unravel is: what are we going to do about it?
Clearly, the rightful owners of the land of Palestine are in no mood to welcome the Zionist invaders with open arms and they continue to demand the return of their land. The USA is stuck with the consequences of its incredibly poor judgment in siding with the Zionists on this issue.
We are stuck with only two very unattractive options that I can see:
1. Continue with the present approach of funding (with my tax dollars) the slow genocide of the Palestinian people through the denial of their basic human rights and dignity. This is a fate worse than death as evidenced of the tasteless joke of the occasional exploding Muslim. The Israelis confiscates most of the West Bank water, to the point that Palestinians do not even have what the UN and the US government both regard as the minimum necessary to sustain human life, while Jewish settlers - accustomed to living in their native Europe or America - water grass lawns and fill swimming pools with water taken from under the feet of the Palestinians, while the Palestinians are rarely allowed to drill wells.
2. Admit what horrendous mistakes were made by the League of Nations in the 20th century with the Balfour Declaration of 1917 and the UN Partition of Palestine in 1947 and correct them. How do we correct them? Restore the original pre-1947 boundary of the map of Palestine, go back to the single state solution, recognize the Palestinian Refugee right of return, form a UN mandate to control the allocation of water and enforce the peace. The Israeli planes, tanks, ships and nuclear weapons and all Palestinian arms would be destroyed.
To my mind the 2nd option is the clear choice. What are the odds of this happening? I would say not so good; it is very difficult to admit when one has made a mistake.
"So Israel confiscates most of the West Bank water, to the point that Palestinians there do not even have what the UN and the US government both regard as the minimum necessary to sustain human life, while Jewish settlers - accustomed to living in their native Europe or America - water grass lawns and fill swimming pools with water taken from under the feet of the Palestinians, while the Palestinians are rarely allowed to drill wells.
Well, I bet if the Palestinians had chosen to build a country in 1948 or even in 2000 rather than to pursue a futile war to eliminate the Jews they to would have a better water supply.
Probably the Palestinians would have lawns and some swimming pools too, who knows.
Now all they have is chaos, suicide bombing, and less water.
See now, that's the problem when you choose war and lose.
The winner generally ends up calling the shots.
I'd say the Palestinians ought to think about settling for the best deal they can get, as soon as possible.
That way they can start thinking about building swimming pools, if that's what they want, rather than building bombs.
…“According to recommended standards of the World Health Organization (WHO) and the U.S Agency for International Development (USAID), a minimum of 100 liters a day per capita are needed for balanced and healthy domestic consumption in rural households. In contrast, BâeTselem, the Israeli human rights organization, documents that Israeli per capita consumption of water already reaches 350 l/day, about five-times Palestinian consumption. Per capita consumption of water in Israeli settlements, most of which are strategically located directly above main water extraction sources, can reach even higher levels, estimated at seven-fold the Palestinian consumption rate. In contrast, Palestinian consumption rates per capita vary between 35-80 l/d, well below WHO and USAID recommendations, and in some communities, water consumption can dip to as low as 7 l/d under certain conditions…”
So Israel confiscates most of the West Bank water, to the point that Palestinians there do not even have what the UN and the US government both regard as the minimum necessary to sustain human life, while Jewish settlers - accustomed to living in their native Europe or America - water grass lawns and fill swimming pools with water taken from under the feet of the Palestinians, while the Palestinians are rarely allowed to drill wells.
So you folks go ahead and live well at the expense of your oppressed neighbors on your stolen land. My government will guarantee the continuation of your illegal existence and fund your atrocious behavior with billions of my tax dollars. Live long and prosper, until the world wakes up and puts a stop to your despicable treatment of the rightful owners of your stolen land.
By David Ignatius
Wednesday, December 5, 2007; A29
…“All these strands converged in the bombshell National Intelligence Estimate on Iran that was released Monday. That document was as close to a U-turn as one sees in the intelligence world. The community dropped its 2005 judgment that Iran was "determined to develop nuclear weapons" and instead said, "We judge with high confidence that in fall 2003, Tehran halted its nuclear weapons program" because of international pressure…
The most important finding of the NIE isn't the details about the scope of nuclear research; there remains some disagreement about that. Rather, it's the insight into the greatest mystery of all about the Islamic republic, which is the degree of rationality and predictability of its decisions…
The debate about what the NIE should mean for U.S. policy toward Iran is just beginning. But for the intelligence community, this rebuttal of conventional wisdom will restore some integrity after the Iraq WMD debacle. In challenging the previous certitudes about Iran and the Bomb, the NIE recalls the admonition many decades ago by the godfather of CIA analysts, Sherman Kent: "When the evidence seems to force a single and immediate conclusion, then that is the time to worry about one's bigotry, and to do a little conscientious introspection."
There are two intelligence analyses that are relevant to the balance of power between the U.S. and Iran — one is the latest U.S. assessment of Iran, which certainly gave a much more complex view of what is happening there. The other is the Iranian National Intelligence Estimate of America, which — my guess — would read something like this:
To: President Ahmadinejad
From: The Iranian Ministry of Intelligence
Subject: America
As you’ll recall, in the wake of 9/11, we were extremely concerned that the U.S. would develop a covert program to end its addiction to oil, which would be the greatest threat to Iranian [and Israeli] national security. In fact, after Bush’s 2006 State of the Union, in which he decried America’s oil addiction, we had “high confidence” that a comprehensive U.S. clean energy policy would emerge. We were wrong.
Our fears that the U.S. was engaged in a covert “Manhattan Project” to achieve energy independence have been “assuaged.” America’s Manhattan Project turns out to be largely confined to the production of corn ethanol in Iowa, which, our analysts have confirmed from cell phone intercepts between lobbyists and Congressmen, is nothing more than a multibillion-dollar payoff to big Iowa farmers and agro-businesses…
You missed the point of your genetic citation entirely, but why am I not surprised.
Your study confirms that both the existing Jews and Arabs are Semitic people, that is they are both originally from the Middle East.
That shows that in fact the Jews are indigenous to the Middle East and not Europe.
It does not, however, show that they are part of the same ethno/cultural group as the Arabs.
The Jews were an ethnic group with a separate language and religion from the Arab, and are indigenous to Judea in the Levant.
The Arabs were indigenous to Arabia with a separate language and religion (in fact when the Jews were in Judea, the Arabs were still pagans).
The Semitic Jews got kicked out of the Levant by the Romans, and were dispersed into Europe and other parts of the Middle East.
The Arabs swept out of Arabia to conquer the Levant, other parts of the Middle East, and Europe.
That's what your citation really shows, bro'.
It shows that the Jews are not Europeans, but have merely returned to the region they were exiled from on a tiny tiny portion of land in the Middle East (around 0.2% to be exact).
"Yup, as cruel as it sounds, that is the only solution. Either finish them off, or give them back their land."
You are all heart, Mr. Jones. Have you asked the Palestinians If that's their choice too, before taking it upon yourself to speak on their behalf?
You have just admitted that the Israelis have been a lot more humane in their treatment of the Palestinians than the Americans in their treatment of the Indians. Someone else in your place would have drawn the right conclusion and stop sermonizing to the Israelis about imaginary "atrocities", "ethnic cleansing" and the rest of that crap.
Contrary to the myths fed to you daily by the Arab propaganda machine, the Palestinians are not defenseless, are not being slaughtered and are not suffering "a fate worse than death" (are you sure you're being quite melodramatic enough?). They have the option to end this conflict any time they want, just as they did at any time since the start of this conflict. As long as they don't do this, they have no business complaining about their situation.
"You will need them, and then world opinion will really be against you. You think that we don’t like you now? You aint seen nothing yet."
Ooooh, scary stuff. So now you're talking not only on behalf of the Palestinians but on behalf of the whole world. A true leader type. And what would the whole world do to the Israelis if it didn't like them, pray tell? Hunt them down like animals? Lock them up in ghettos and starve them? Put them on trains and ship them to gas chambers and kill half of them and uproot and expel the rest across the sea?
Wait a minute, this sounds familiar, I'm sure I've heard about something like that before. Isn't that what the world did to the Jews before there was a Middle East conflict or even a State of Israel? So what was the reason back then, could you remind me?
Remember what I told you before about a concept you cannot be expected to comprehend? This was exactly it. No matter what you threaten them with, no matter how dire the situation is for them, there's nothing they have not already been through. The only difference is that before they were completely helpless. Now they are not. Just as I thought, you did not grasp the meaning of that before, and I don't think you ever will. Be well.
...“These signatures were significantly different from non-Jewish men outside of the Middle East. This means Jews and Arabs have more in common with each other, genetically speaking, than they do with any of the wider communities in which they might live.”...
So much for the theory that the Palestinians swept into the region with the Arabs several millennia after the Jews...
Joseph:
"You dope, "Omar." Palestine/Israel was also conquered many times, including once about three thousand years ago by the armies of the Israelites. And yet it is insisted by many that this conquest, of all of the conquests, is the only valid conquest in perpetuity.
Strange concept, indeed."
Not at all.
The British Mandate in Palestine has been shared between the Arabs and the Jews.
The Arabs got Jordan which was the greater part of Mandate Palestine, and were offered the greater habitable share of the remaining Palestine Mandate in 1947. Those lands were in fact part of the ancient Judea that you refer to, and the Jews accepted the tiny portion they were offered most of which was the Negev Desert. The West Bank of the Jordan River was also a major part of ancient Judea, and the Jews have already agreed to give that to the Arabs.
But that's really not enough for the Arabs, because they claim EVERYTHING, and they want the Jews to have NOTHING.
That is because in the Arab imagination any land ever conquered by Arabs for Islam is WAQF!
"Such is history, except of course in the Arab imagination, where the Arab conquest is the only valid conquest in perpetuity.
Strange concept, no?"
You dope, "Omar." Palestine/Israel was also conquered many times, including once about three thousand years ago by the armies of the Israelites. And yet it is insisted by many that this conquest, of all of the conquests, is the only valid conquest in perpetuity.
Native Americans and Meso Americans are true indigenous people, native to the Americas since prehistoric times.
Palestinians are the descendants of Arabian Islamic invaders who are native to Arabia, and who colonized the Middle East as recently as the 7th century of the Common Era.
They are not indigenous to the Levant in the same way Native Americans are indigenous to the Americas.
The Levant has been conquered and changed hands many times in history.
Those Arabian invaders lost control of the territory they conquered, including the Levant, eventually to the Ottoman Turks and then to the British.
Such is history, except of course in the Arab imagination, where the Arab conquest is the only valid conquest in perpetuity.
Yup, as cruel as it sounds, that is the only solution. Either finish them off, or give them back their land. They give you no choice. Your current policy of slow ethnic cleansing, through degradation of quality of life, is a fate worse than death. This has long ago caused world opinion to side squarely with the Palestinians. Either finish them off, or come join your brethren in America. The world is fed up and will tolerate these atrocities no longer.
Of course, when you slaughter the defenseless Palestinians, you may still have a fight on your hands. We will have to research the number of Palestinians in the West Bank, Gaza, Israel, Lebanon, Syria and Jordan. Then you must consider what the response of the rest of the Middle East will be. You may have to wipe out all the Arabs as well.
While you are at it, just to be safe, you had better kill all the Persians too. That I’m a Dinner Jacket guy is a pain in the butt anyway.
Then the entire Muslim world will probably be upset, so you will have to take care of them. I wonder how many of them are in the world. The answer is 1.84 billion in 2007.
How many nukes do you have anyway, 200 or so? You will need them, and then world opinion will really be against you. You think that we don’t like you now? You aint seen nothing yet.
What kind of an argument is that? Are you giving the Americans a free pass because they were more brutal with the local population? In that case, no problem, the Israelis could follow your moral dictates, wipe out the Palestinians, and then everything is OK, right?
Or are you suggesting the native Americans were not as brave as the Palestinians, or did not love their homes and land as much, because they "gave up the fight"? Why don't you try going to some Indian Reservations and air your views there, see what kind of response you get.
Good point! OK, how about this? The Native Americans seem to be reconciled to their fate as it is today. At least they are no longer fighting us. For one thing, we darned near wiped them of the face of the earth; there are not that many left.
This is not the case in Palestine. The Palestinians are still fighting the illegal invaders/occupiers with everything they’ve got. They prefer to die rather than give up their homes and land; and they still equal the invaders in number.
Therefore we should be siding with the people who are trying to defend their land; not the invaders.
"I think the point is that there is nothing that I can do about what my country did 200 years ago, or even 60 years ago; but I can speak out against what it continues to do today."
If there's nothing you can do about what your country did 60 years ago, then why do you keep going on about the UN resolution and Harry Truman and the British mandate?
But that's an aside. The main point is, we are talking about what your country is doing today, not 200 years ago. It continues to occupy Indian lands today, by your definition, and the injustice has never been rectified. You seem to believe that history can be reversed. So either be honest and start screaming that all non-Indian Americans should go back where they came from, or be honest and stop screaming that the Israelis should go back where they came from. But what you're doing now is dishonest. The standards you apply to Israel are different from those You apply to your own country and to the rest of the world.
"For one thing, the article shows what a simpleton Herzl was. It never occurred to him that the Palestinians would not readily give up their land and welcome the Jews with open arms."
As much a simpleton as Washington, Jefferson and Ben Franklin were.
For one thing, the article shows what a simpleton Herzl was. It never occurred to him that the Palestinians would not readily give up their land and welcome the Jews with open arms.
"Historians and others still sift through Herzl's writings and see many legacies. They note that he envisioned a Jewish state where people spoke not Hebrew, but German; that he and other early Zionists failed to understand Arab nationalism; and that in a utopian novel Herzl wrote, he describes a binational, egalitarian state."
I think the point is that there is nothing that I can do about what my country did 200 years ago, or even 60 years ago; but I can speak out against what it continues to do today. That is what I am doing. We are backing the wrong side in the Israeli/Palestinian conflict and behaving nothing like an honest broker.
No point in the Herzl grandson story. I just stumbled across it and thought that people who visit this blog would be interested in it.
Everything. You said the reason for the sharp increase in Jewish immigration in the 20's and the 30's as opposed to previous years was the result of the British "giving" the country to the Jews. I showed you the real reason for the increase.
BTW, what's with that story about Herzl's grandson - Is there a point there somewhere?
"But as I have often explained, without the Balfour Declaration, the rioting Arabs protesting the illegal Zionist immigration would not have been the law breakers."
And as I have explained to you twice before, if they rioted they would have been the lawbreakers no matter what's the cause. The various Jewish undergrounds were fighting the British at the same time, and were subject to raids and arrests just like the Arabs, and if you went to Israel today you could visit the British era prisons where Jewish and Arab insurgents were awaiting their execution side by side in the same cell blocks. So what's your beef?
"The British, the League of Nations, the UN, the USA, we all gave it to them."
How many times can different entities give the same object? Once you give something to someone it's theirs. What part of that simple concept are you having difficulties with?
Let me try to approach it from a different perspective. Why did the Arab nations attack Israel on May 15, 1948 and not on Nov. 29, 1947? Because unlike you, they understood that the UN resolution was worthless, beyond its symbolic meaning, and did not really result in the Jews having a state of their own. The Israel declaration of independence, did have that result. Are you beginning to see the light yet?
The UN resolution of 11/29/1947 (which, BTW, "gave" a state to the Palestinians too) did not stop the Arab invasion, and did not stop a single Arab bullet. So in what respect did it "give" the land to the Jews? Had the Arabs won, they would have divvied up the land between Egypt, Jordan, and perhaps Syria, and the UN would have given them its blessing. So don't give me that crap about the UN "giving" the country to the Jews.
"Just because we were the world’s greatest land thieves during the 19th century, doesn’t justify our continuation of this flawed character trait during the 20th and 21st centuries."
GOOD. So what are you doing about it? Why are you so preoccupied with demanding that some small nation 8,000 miles away give up its land while you yourself are not giving up yours? Why are you not going back to wherever you or your ancestors came from? What's really so mind-boggling here is not only the extent of your hypocrisy, but the fact that you're PROUD of it!
And trotting out Joseph's argument is not going to improve your position either. Both of you fail to understand the simple concept of discrimination. The fact that everyone else does something wrong does not make it right. But deciding that only one nation should be punished and everyone else (including, conveniently, your own nation) is exempt, that's discrimination and it voids your entire argument.
“That is a good parallel between how we treated the Indians (and Mexicans) stealing the western US from Mexico and the Indians, and the eastern US from the Indians. One difference is that we have only occupied this land for about 200 years, while the Palestinians had occupied Palestine for about 2 millennia after the Israelis were kicked out by the Romans plus who knows how many millennia before that”...
Your arguments are ridiculous, but fun to play with any way.
Native North Americans and Meso Americans (Mexicans) were indigenous people to the Americas.
There was NO one in North America when they came
in PRE-historic times.
They took their land from no one, unlike the Arabs, who invaded the Middle East out of
Arabia and tried to conquer Europe as far as Vienna.
The Arabs are invaders and conquerors in the lands of the Middle East, having swept out of Arabia in the seventh century AD. They stole the land from the original inhabitants, and have no more historical claim to anything, then any other invader and conqueror.
The whole history of nations is replete with migrations of people, displacements of people, wars of independence, and the establishment of new nations.
The only two thing that are unique about the founding of Israel are the following:
1. It is the only nation created in the modern world with the blessing of the world community at the U.N. in 1947.
2. Israel was founded in a region of Islamic Arabs, in whose vivid Medieval imagination rules the notion that any land ever conquered by Arabs for Islam is forever, in perpetuity ARAB/ISLAMIC land.
Well, the sad fact is that the Arab imagination has created a fantasy which may have had a place in the Medieval world, but has no place in the modern world.
The main reason the modern world attempts to placate this Arab imagination is the following:
Saudi Arabia sits on the world's largest proven reserves of crude oil, and Saudi Arabia is mightily offended by the presence of a militarily strong and independent Jewish state on the edge of Islam. Their continual military losses to the Jews humiliates and rankles them.
That combined with the residual resentment the Jews engender in Europeans, allows the Arabs to continue to use the Palestinians in their political games against the West.
…“The bigger waves of immigration starting in the mid-20's and continuing through the outbreak of WW2 coincided with the rise of fascism in Europe, the passage of race laws in Germany, Hungary, Italy and other countries, and all sorts of official and unofficial persecution which made the life of the Jews in Europe unbearable.”…
So what? What has that to do with Palestine? As I have explained to you many times, the Palestinians were not responsible for the mistreatment of the European Jews. If not for the Balfour Declaration and British Mandate from the League of Nations, they would have been no more welcome in Palestine than anywhere else. I will patiently stand by waiting for you to ask this question again.
…“As far as the British were concerned, they were maintaining law and order in a colony under their rule”…
But as I have often explained, without the Balfour Declaration, the rioting Arabs protesting the illegal Zionist immigration would not have been the law breakers. The illegal Zionist immigrants would have been the law breakers, killed by the thousands and chased from the land as they should have been. I will patiently stand by waiting for you to make this silly argument once again.
…“If the British "gave" it to them, that means the country was theirs, so how could the UN "give" it to them again 30 yeas later”…
The British, the League of Nations, the UN, the USA, we all gave it to them. As I have explained to you before, it was just one gigantic conspiracy of thieves. What part of this simple concept do you find so difficult to understand. Harry Truman new better, but alas it was an election year; and he lacked the courage of his convictions. So much for the buck stops here. I will patiently stand by waiting for you to ask this question again.
…“what gives you the right to moralize to other people about giving or taking land when you live comfortably on a land that was taken from another people by force”…
Good question. The answer is still the same as when I last answered it @ November 28, 2007 3:49 PM:
…“That is a good parallel between how we treated the Indians (and Mexicans) stealing the western US from Mexico and the Indians, and the eastern US from the Indians. One difference is that we have only occupied this land for about 200 years, while the Palestinians had occupied Palestine for about 2 millennia after the Israelis were kicked out by the Romans plus who knows how many millennia before that”...
And again @ November 30, 2007 10:55 AM:
…“But who says that anybody should “give” them a state. They deserve a state at our expense much less than do the Native Americans.”…
Since I know you will still find it difficult to grasp this simple concept, I will explain it yet one more time. This means that we have treated our own Native Americans atrociously, as well as the Mexicans, in taking their land by force. If a powerful alien were to come along, decide to take North America away from us and return to the Native Americans and Mexicans; they would have much more justification for doing this than we have for giving Palestine to the Zionists.
Just because we were the world’s greatest land thieves during the 19th century, doesn’t justify our continuation of this flawed character trait during the 20th and 21st centuries.
As another poster put it @ November 29, 2007 9:51 PM:
Joseph:
“Please abandon the "everyone does it" arguments about ethnic cleansing. They would, in the first place, be more accurately, "everyone DID it," and if we open ourselves up to that sort of justification, slavery ought to be okay, too.
Slavery was considered by most "civilized" people to be okay in the mid-19th century; this does not make Hitler's nor Stalin's slavery in the middle of the 20th century acceptable. Nor does the fact that most "civilized" people in the mid-19th century considered ethnic cleansing to be okay make Israel's ethnic cleansing in the middle of the 20th century - nor their current policy of slow ethnic cleansing through degradation of quality of life for the West Bank Palestinians - acceptable.”
Since I know that you find these concepts difficult, I will patiently stand by waiting for you to ask these questions yet again.
A Family Reunion for Grandson of Zionism's Founder
Rockville History Buff Lobbied to Have Man's Remains Sent to Israel
By Michelle Boorstein
Washington Post Staff Writer
Friday, November 30, 2007; B01
Sixty-one years after he was buried at a windy hilltop cemetery in Southeast Washington, Stephen Theodore Norman, the only grandchild of Zionism's founder, was exhumed yesterday after a five-year campaign to have him buried near his family in Israel.
As morticians in plastic jumpsuits sifted with their gloved hands through mud and water in the five-foot grave crater, Jerry Klinger stood alongside. Klinger, a passionate Jewish history buff from Rockville, was watching the realization of years of intense -- and often ignored -- lobbying for what he sees as a battle for the legacy of Theodor Herzl and the Zionist movement Herzl founded more than a century ago in Europe…
Herzl, who died 44 years before Israel's establishment, envisioned a utopian, egalitarian society and peaceful relations between Arabs and Jews. But by 1975, the U.N. General Assembly passed a resolution calling Zionism a form of racism. The resolution was rescinded in 1991, but advocates of Israel worry that the stigma will never disappear.
Herzl's name has also been attached to great tragedy in his family. The Hungarian-born journalist died at 44. His elder daughter suffered from mental illness and apparently died of a drug overdose. Her brother, who had converted to Christianity, committed suicide when he learned of her death. Herzl's younger daughter, who was in and out of mental institutions, was the only one to have a child -- Stephen Norman, who became a captain in the British Army and was posted to the embassy in Washington in 1946.
Several months before, he visited Palestine, the only member of his family to go there. Norman wrote in his journal from the trip that he "believed in the idea and the aims of Zionism, and in the moral, ethical, economic, and social need for it that had been made even more urgent and important by world events and the tremendous problems created by the new scientific anti-Semitism of the last decades."…
Soon after arriving in Washington, Norman learned that his parents had been killed in a Nazi concentration camp. At 28, he plunged to his death off a Massachusetts Avenue NW bridge…
Jewish law also forbids suicide and the burying of people who commit suicide in Jewish cemeteries…
All Comments (117)
WITH RESPECT TO THE ASSASSINATION OF BENAZIR BHUTTO
This is a glimpse of the world’s future if the Zionist so called “State of Israel” and its number one ally the USA don’t wise up and vacate the Middle East.
That’s right Victoria, they can’t blame this one on the general Muslim population.
http://newsweek.washingtonpost.com/postglobal/yossi_melman/2007/12/bhutto_conspiracy_theories_wil/all_comments.html
We may find out, however, that the culprit is the Islamist fundamentalists (Al Qaeda and the Taliban) who are enabled by the foolish greed of the colonial USA and Israel.
Certainly Musharraf is one of those with the most to gain. He can now postpone elections indefinitely and hold onto his power, although he may have quite a revolt on his hands if he does so.
On the other hand, Bhutto was a strong ally of the US and an outspoken opponent of the Islamic fundamentalists. That is the kiss of death in this region of the world.
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/12/28/world/asia/28pakistan.html?hp=&pagewanted=print
“In October, Ms. Bhutto survived another deadly suicide attack in the southern city of Karachi on the day she returned from years of self-imposed exile abroad to contest the parliamentary elections. Ms. Bhutto blamed extremist Islamic groups who she said wanted to take over the country for that attack, which narrowly missed her but killed 134 people. But she also complained that the government had taken insufficient steps to safeguard her parade…
She was openly critical of Mr. Musharraf’s ineffectiveness at dealing with Islamic militants and welcomed American involvement…
The assassination comes just days after Mr. Musharraf lifted a state of emergency in the country, which he had used to suspend the Constitution and arrest thousands of political opponents, and which he said he had imposed in part because of terrorist threats by extremists in Pakistan…”
So this is how my crystal ball has it. We just took another step along the path to WW III. The Islamist fundamentalists (Al Qaeda and the Taliban) hold all the cards. Musharraf may or may not be making a serious effort to rein them in. He may be playing live and let live as they build their strength in NW Pakistan and continue to weaken Afghanistan.
The Zionist invader in Palestine keeps the entire Middle East inflamed at both them and the USA for supporting them. Of course our preemptive attack on Iraq and continued occupation of Afghanistan just adds fuel to the flames.
China, India and Pakistan’s thirst for Middle East oil makes them natural allies of Iran, Iraq, Saudi Arabia and the other Arabian Gulf oil states. They will be eager to supply whatever these countries need in the way of precision guided land Attack Cruise Missiles (LACM) like the US Tomahawk. These are precision, Global Position System (GPS) satellite guided, low flying cruise missiles that hug the earth and can be programmed to attack Israel from multiple directions. Israel will never know what hit them. These will not be like the thousands of ballistic Katyusha rockets fired from Southern Lebanon, which mostly land in the olive orchards and sage brush fields. These missiles will each have a high rise building or other high value target and street number programmed in them like our Tomahawk attacks on Baghdad in 1991 and 2003.
Our thirst for oil and 10 Trillion dollar national debt, with much of it owed to China, puts us in a very weak strategic position. China could bankrupt us at will by flooding the market with our worthless paper IOUs. That’s why the US dollar has lost ~33% of its value relative to the Euro, which is on its way to becoming the world standard currency. The US dollar will soon be known as the US Peso.
Israel only produces ~1% of its required oil from its own oil wells, and must import 99%, 90% from Russia. Russia is anything but a reliable ally and is known to have used its natural gas supplied to Eastern Europe as a political tool in the past.
So standby for action the so called Zionist “State of Israel” and its number one ally the USA. We live in interesting times.
December 27, 2007 8:35 PM | Report Offensive Comments
Posted on December 27, 2007 20:35
PRO-ISRAEL FORCES WANT TO RE-OPEN A PIPELINE FROM IRAQ TO HAIFA, ISRAEL
The fact that American-Israelis in our government are endeavoring to use the war on Iraq as a way for Israel to gain control over oil in the Middle East is rarely reported in the mainstream pro-Israel US media with your average American readership, however it has been reported in Jewish newspapers with Jewish readership and in Israeli papers.
A case in point is the fact that American-Israelis in our government want to "re-open" or re-instate, the pipeline that used to exist between Iraq and Palestine, which is now specifically Haifa, Israel. When Israel was created in 1948, that pipeline was re-directed by Iraq to Syria. Now pro-Israel forces are actively seeking to cut off the pipeline to Syria and re-direct it to Haifa, Israel. For more information on this, please do a Google-search using such keywords such as "Iraq oil pipeline to Haifa, Israel" and see what you come up with.
Just as Israel's connection to the war on Iraq has been kept out of the US mainstream media (as you may have noticed, Israel has not even been mentioned as one of our "allies" in the war on Iraq), this choice nugget of information with regards to Israel's ambition to get a basically free supply of Iraqi oil is also kept out of view for vast American public consumption.
December 26, 2007 10:12 AM | Report Offensive Comments
Posted on December 26, 2007 10:12
Rick Jones:
Ho, ho,ho, young Rick....
Coal in your stocky this morning, for you young Ricky.
Santa thinks you have been a bad boy.
You and your buddies have started three wars to eliminate Israel, and you have lost each time (and I am not even including two, how do you Arabs call them, "intifadahs").
Now to complain about the results of starting those wars is really poor sportsmanship, young Rick.
If you had chosen building a country instead of trying to destroy one in 1948 and again in 2000 you wouldn't be in this predicament on Christmas day 2007, now would you.
Santa doesn't like whiney sore losers.
No he doesn't like them at all.
No, no, no, they turn the insides of his jolly jelly belly, really they do.
Santa can not abide poor sportsmanship, at all!
He's putting you on his naughty short list, and putting coal in your stocking.
Ho, ho, ho, and Merry Christmas habibi!
There's always next year...
December 25, 2007 10:06 AM | Report Offensive Comments
Posted on December 25, 2007 10:06
More from B’Tselem on International Law relative to water rights:
http://www.btselem.org/english/Water/International_Law.asp
International law on water
“The water resources in the Occupied Territories were integrated into the legal and bureaucratic system of Israel, severely limiting the ability of Palestinians to develop those resources…
Article 55 of the Hague Regulations limits the right of occupying states to utilize the water sources of occupied territory. The use is limited to military needs and may not exceed past use. Use of groundwater of the Occupied Territories in the settlements does not meet these criteria and therefore breaches article 55…
Article 27 of the Fourth Geneva Convention of 1949 prohibits an occupying state from discriminating between residents of occupied territory. The quantity of water supplied to the settlements is vastly larger than that which is supplied to the Palestinians. Similarly, the regularity of supply is much greater in the settlements. This discrimination is especially blatant during the summer months when the supply to Palestinians in some areas of the West Bank is reduced in order to meet the increased demand for water in the settlements receiving their water from the same pipelines…
Under international law, the main principle for division of shared water between states is the principle of equitable and reasonable use. This principle is based on the limited-sovereignty doctrine, which provides that, because all parts of the drainage basins of watercourses are hydrologically interdependent, states are not allowed to utilize water located in their territory as they wish, but must take into account the other states that share the resource.
This principle does not state a precise formula quantifying the rights of each state sharing an international watercourse. Rather, it lists the factors to be considered in negotiations between the states to determine the division. Article 6 of the UN Convention on the Law of the Non-Navigational Uses of International Watercourses enumerates seven of these factors:
1. The natural features of the shared watercourse (geographic, climatic, hydrologic, and the like);
2. The social and economic needs of the watercourse states;
3. The population dependent on the watercourse in each watercourse state;
4. The effects of the use of the watercourses in one watercourse state on other watercourse states;
5. Existing and potential uses of the watercourse;
Conservation, protection, and development of the water resources of the watercourse and the costs of measures taken to that effect;
The availability of alternatives to a particular planned or existing use.
Taking into account the components of the principle of equitable and reasonable use, examination of the current division of water between Israel and the Palestinians leads to the conclusion that this division violates Palestinian rights and contravenes international water law.
December 24, 2007 8:32 AM | Report Offensive Comments
Posted on December 24, 2007 08:32
Omar of Arabia,
Hey Bro’, long time no see. How have you been? I’ve missed you.
Here’s a new link for you to check out:
http://transcripts.cnn.com/TRANSCRIPTS/0712/22/tww.01.html
CNN - THIS WEEK AT WAR WILL DOBSON FOREIGN POLICY MAGAZINE-
transcript of show
It seems that even the young American Jews have are fed up with Israel.
"FOREMAN: A very controversial idea is your next headline here. American Jews turn away from Israel. What do you mean?
DOBSON: Well, as we know, the U.S. foreign policy is made up by many different lobbies and one of them that's often credited that's being particularly powerful is the Israel lobby. Well, right now in America, a new study that really was just completely overlooked, it appears that though Americans, young American Jews, are beginning to feel less of an attachment to Israel. In a survey that was done, young American Jews, 48% under 35 said they would not consider it a personal tragedy if Israel was destroyed. That's compared to 77% of those 65 and older. Likewise, 54% of young American Jews said that they felt no - they were even uncomfortable with the notion of a Jewish state compared again to 81% of those 65 or older. So what's clearly there is a shift, a generational shift going on in the Jewish community in America today.
FOREMAN: Well, that must cause enormous angst among the older Jewish community. So many of whom have memories of World War II and who feel like Israel was so hard-won to the young people saying you must understand your heritage.
DOBSON: That's exactly right. I mean, clearly what we're seeing and the authors of the report said one, this is a by-product of intermarriage between faiths. People are feeling less of an attachment to the homeland. And it's also a little bit of distance from history. They don't remember the holocaust as being the personal experience that their grandparents do. And so clearly, it's causing a weakening among Jews in America of seeing their jewishness as a collective identity."
That is very interesting indeed, eh bro’. There will be very little weeping in the world when the racist, terrorist, war criminal, so called “State of Israel” expires, and hopefully her demise is not far away.
Here is an article from B’Tselem, the Israeli human rights organization:
http://www.btselem.org/english/Water/Without_Running_Water.asp
“Israel's policy regarding water supply in the West Bank is illegal and discriminates on racial grounds. It flagrantly breaches international law which requires Israel to ensure proper living conditions for the local population and to respect the Palestinians' human rights, including the right to receive a sufficient quantity of water to meet their basic needs.”
Even Israel’s own human rights organization considers them to be racist, illegal and “discriminates on racial grounds”. Israel hogs 80% of the regions water supply to keep their swimming pools full and lawns green, while leaving the Palestinians less than half the amount considered necessary for minimum health requirements by the WHO and USAID organizations.
December 24, 2007 8:25 AM | Report Offensive Comments
Posted on December 24, 2007 08:25
Rick Jones:
Churchill bucked the anti-Semitism of his time, and old Rick aids and abets the new anti-Semitism of his.
Too bad.
The old resentments never die; they just get transmogrified.
I'm not anti Semitic. I'm just anti Zionist.
I'm not anti Israeli. I'm just critical of its policies, as if the two can not be distinguished.
Oh, and by the way don't even mention anti Semitism.
You're not allowed to discuss that, because it is only a ploy to squelch discussion.
There's none of that old poison around.
It's just paranoia.
I'm calling a spade, a spade, bro'!
December 22, 2007 9:48 PM | Report Offensive Comments
Posted on December 22, 2007 21:48
Here is an open letter to my friend Alan from another site:
Alan,
Concerning your ridiculous claim that the Jews “may have” purchased 95% of the land of the so called “State of Israel” legally, here is an interesting article from Middle East Quarterly that claims that the true number is 16.4%. So I stand corrected, all Israeli Jews may not be land thieves; only 83.6% of them are:
http://www.meforum.org/article/370
What do you think about them as a source? I’m sure that they are not as unbiased as The Jewish Virtual Library, but they claim to be an honest source of information. Here is what they say about themselves:
“Since its founding in 1994, the Middle East Quarterly has become America's most authoritative journal of Middle Eastern affairs. Policymakers, opinion-makers, academics, and journalists turn first to the Quarterly, for in-depth analysis of the rapidly-changing landscape of the world's most volatile region. The Quarterly publishes groundbreaking studies, exclusive interviews, insightful commentary, and hard-hitting reviews that tackle the entire range of contemporary concerns – from politics to economics to culture, across a region that stretches from Morocco to Afghanistan. The Quarterly, founded by Daniel Pipes and edited by Michael Rubin, appears in a print edition, and is available in full-text (except the current issue) on this website.
The Quarterly welcomes submissions of original articles, and will consider pre-publication of chapters from forthcoming books. The Quarterly specializes in timely and expeditious publication of articles that impact on today's critical issues.”
[I would say that they are about as unreliable as The Jewish Virtual Library given the pro-Israeli slant on the article that follows; nevertheless it will prove useful for our purposes. It will show that in 1901, 8.7% of the current land area of the “State of Israel” had been purchased by the Jewish National Fund (JNF). More than 70% of the remainder was public land vested in the British Mandatory Authority (Meaning that it was owned by the people, and the vast majority of the people were Palestinians).
With the establishment of the “State of Israel” in 1948, the new government inherited the state-owned lands formerly in the possession of British Mandatory authority as well as property abandoned by Arab refugees. The situation today is that 80.4% of the land is owned by the government, 13.1% is owned by the JNF (These lands were never sold, either to Jews or Arabs, but instead were leased on a long—term basis for kibbutzim and other forms of Jewish settlement), and only 6.5% is evenly divided between Arab and Jewish owners. So the 13.1% of land owned by the JNF plus 3.25% privately owned by Jews amounts to a total of 16.4% of the land of the current “State of Israel” that was actually purchased by the Jews; a far sight from your 95% number.]
December 19, 2007 11:12 AM | Report Offensive Comments
Posted on December 19, 2007 11:12
An interesting article in today’s WP:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/12/13/AR2007121301470_pf.html
Churchill's Other Alliance
Why the British leader bucked the anti-Semitism of his time.
Reviewed by Glenn Frankel
Sunday, December 16, 2007; BW04
CHURCHILL AND THE JEWS
A Lifelong Friendship
By Martin Gilbert
Henry Holt. 352 pp. $30
"Even Winston had a fault," Gen. Edward Louis Spears, a dear friend of Winston Churchill, once told historian Martin Gilbert. "He was too fond of Jews."...
Churchill's profound admiration for the Jews, which was not shared by many of his closest political colleagues, was all the more amazing because it survived the rise of Bolshevism, which Churchill abhorred and which he believed was dominated, intellectually and politically, by men and women of Jewish origin. It even survived the turbulent years during and after World War II when Zionist extremists conducted a campaign of political murder against British officials, policemen and soldiers. That campaign reached its nadir with the 1944 assassination in Cairo of Lord Moyne, Britain's top colonial administrator in the region and one of Churchill's closest friends, and the 1946 bombing of British administration offices at the King David Hotel in Jerusalem, in which 91 people died...
Why did the great man shower his affection on a people that could be, by his own reckoning, so cantankerous and problematic? It was, Gilbert writes, partly because Churchill saw Jewish ethics as the foundation stone for Western moral teachings... [Codswallop!]
It's also the case that Churchill had little use for Muslims... [A true anti-Semite]
Churchill was often accused by political opponents and anti-Semites of being in the pocket of wealthy Jews...
Lord Alfred Douglas, the poet and former lover of playwright Oscar Wilde, alleged that Churchill accepted bribes from Jewish financiers during World War I to manipulate wartime information for their financial advantage while he was secretary of the Royal Navy. Douglas was convicted of criminal libel and sentenced to six months in prison. [Let that be a lesson to you, it never pays to speak truth to power.]
December 19, 2007 10:32 AM | Report Offensive Comments
Posted on December 19, 2007 10:32
Scanning the newspapers this morning I see that Paris conferees have pledged $7.4 Billion in aid to the Palestinian Authority, saying that an infusion of cash would help the peace process begun by the United States last month in Annapolis, Md.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/12/17/AR2007121700210.html
“But some delegates said that pumping money into the West Bank and Gaza Strip would not lead to long-term economic growth or political moderation as long as Israel continued expanding Jewish settlements and imposing a regime of checkpoints and closures that was strangling the Palestinian economy...
"Economic development is the best guarantee of lasting peace and long-term security for Israel," said French President Nicolas Sarkozy, the conference host...
But it was unclear how much of the $7.4 billion pledged Monday would go to Gaza, which is controlled by Hamas, a radical Islamic group whose forces expelled the Palestinian Authority from the strip in June.
Events that followed the Nov. 27 Annapolis conference contributed to Palestinian resentment here and in the territories leading up to the Paris meeting. A week after both sides pledged to adhere to the U.S.-backed "road map" for peace -- a plan launched in 2003 that calls for Israel to stop settlement activities and for Palestinians to disarm militant groups and boost security -- Israel announced the construction of more than 300 homes on occupied land on the outskirts of Jerusalem.
"I'll be eager to implement all our commitments under the road map, and I expect the Israeli side to do the same, comprehensively, and without excuses from our side or theirs," Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas told the delegates. "I expect them to stop all settlement activities, without exceptions."
There is a fat chance that the Zionists will let up on their expansionist settlements and strangle hold on the Palestinian economy. They will prefer to keep their West Bank settlements, hog 80% of the water supply to keep their lawns green and swimming pools full, while denying the Palestinian natives the right to drill wells; even though both the UN and USA agree that the Palestinians are being deprived the minimum amount of water to maintain health.
Some people cannot be lived with; they must be expelled once again from the Middle East.
December 18, 2007 11:26 AM | Report Offensive Comments
Posted on December 18, 2007 11:26
Here’s a good example of how AIPAC is not the only source of Israeli influence that misled us into the disastrous preemptive invasion of Iraq and continues to stoke our world wide War on Islam:
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/12/12/opinion/12dowd.html?_r=1&hp=&oref=slogin&pagewanted=print
December 12, 2007
Op-Ed Columnist
The Dream Is Dead
By MAUREEN DOWD
WASHINGTON
“The man crowned by Tommy Franks as “the dumbest [expletive] guy on the planet” just made the dumbest [expletive] speech on the planet.
Doug Feith, the former Rummy gofer who drove the neocon plan to get us into Iraq, and then dawdled without a plan as Iraq crashed into chaos, was the headliner at a reunion meeting of the wooly-headed hawks Monday night at the American Enterprise Institute.
The room was packed as the former No. 3 at the Pentagon, previewing his upcoming book, “War and Decision,” conceded that the case could be made that “mistakes were made.” His former boss, Paul Wolfowitz, and the former Pentagon adviser Richard Perle sat supportively in the front row.”...
“In “Fiasco,” Tom Ricks wrote that Feith’s Pentagon office was dubbed the “black hole” of policy by generals watching him drop the ball...
Jay Garner, America’s first viceroy in Iraq, deemed him “incredibly dangerous” and said his “electrons aren’t connected.”
Feith’s disdain for diplomacy and his credo that weakness invites aggression were shaped, Ricks reported, by personal history: “Like Wolfowitz, Feith came from a family devastated by the Holocaust. His father lost both parents, three brothers, and four sisters to the Nazis.”...
What’s the answer to bin Laden? According to Feith, it was an attack on an unrelated dictator. He oversaw the Policy Counterterrorism Evaluation Group, whose mission was to amp up links between Saddam and Al Qaeda...
It defies reason, but there are still some who think the chuckleheads who orchestrated the Iraq misadventure have wisdom to impart.
The Pentagon neocons dumped Condi Rice out of the loop. Yet, according to Newsweek’s Mike Isikoff, Condi has now offered Wolfie a job. It wasn’t enough that he trashed Iraq and the World Bank. (He’s still larking around town with Shaha, the sweetheart he gave the sweetheart deal to.)
Condi wants Wolfie to advise her on nuclear proliferation and W.M.D. as part of a State Department panel that has access to highly classified intelligence.
Once you’ve helped distort W.M.D. intelligence to trick the country into war, shouldn’t you be banned for life from ever having another top-level government post concerning W.M.D.?”
December 12, 2007 8:53 AM | Report Offensive Comments
Posted on December 12, 2007 08:53
Here is an article that shows what we are up against. It shows how Barack Obama executed his abrupt flip flop on Palestinian support when he began his campaign for a US Senate seat from Illinois:
http://electronicintifada.net/v2/article6619.shtml
How Barack Obama learned to love Israel
Ali Abunimah, The Electronic Intifada, 4 March 2007
...“In 2000, when Obama unsuccessfully ran for Congress I heard him speak at a campaign fundraiser hosted by a University of Chicago professor. On that occasion and others Obama was forthright in his criticism of US policy and his call for an even-handed approach to the Palestinian-Israeli conflict.”…
…“But Obama's gradual shift into the AIPAC camp had begun as early as 2002 as he planned his move from small time Illinois politics to the national scene. In 2003, Forward reported on how he had "been courting the pro-Israel constituency." He co-sponsored an amendment to the Illinois Pension Code allowing the state of Illinois to lend money to the Israeli government. Among his early backers was Penny Pritzker -- now his national campaign finance chair -- scion of the liberal but staunchly Zionist family that owns the Hyatt hotel chain. (The Hyatt Regency hotel on Mount Scopus was built on land forcibly expropriated from Palestinian owners after Israel occupied East Jerusalem in 1967). He has also appointed several prominent pro-Israel advisors.”…
…“If disappointing, given his historically close relations to Palestinian-Americans, Obama's about-face is not surprising. He is merely doing what he thinks is necessary to get elected and he will continue doing it as long as it keeps him in power.”…
“Only if enough people know what Obama and his competitors stand for, and organize to compel them to pay attention to their concerns can there be any hope of altering the disastrous course of US policy in the Middle East. It is at best a very long-term project that cannot substitute for support for the growing campaign of boycott, divestment and sanctions needed to hold Israel accountable for its escalating violence and solidifying apartheid.”
It is clear to me that our only hope for an honest government is campaign finance reform with total taxpayer financing of political campaigns. All lobbying must be totally banned.
December 11, 2007 7:36 PM | Report Offensive Comments
Posted on December 11, 2007 19:36
Here is a fascinating link. I find it very interesting indeed. When are we going to figure out how to give the American people as much pull with the Congress as AIPAC has?
http://www.pbs.org/moyers/journal/11302007/transcript2.html
Here is the part I like best:
BILL MOYERS: But in this country the right wing, the radicals, if you will, you call them radicals, they are radicals. They're organized. They have the money. They have this alliance with the Republican Party. And AIPAC and others make it impossible for Democrats to have the kind of conversation that you're having here. I mean, you don't hear this debate in the Democratic debates, do you?
M.J. ROSENBERG: You don't. And that's-- it's so amazing that no one asks the candidates about Israel and Palestine in debates, ever.
BILL MOYERS: Why?
M.J. ROSENBERG: I think the reason they don't ask is that they know what the candidates are going to say is, "I love Israel. I stand with Israel. Israel is great." End of the discussion.
BILL MOYERS: Why?
M.J. ROSENBERG: Because they are intimidated...
BILL MOYERS: By?
M.J. ROSENBERG: By the lobby which basically does not want a debate on this issue. But, you know, I don't blame the lobby. I blame the politicians. They're not going to lose their seats in Congress. They're not going to lose the presidency because they endorsed a two-state solution. The-- it is not losing that they're afraid of. They're afraid of getting any static from a couple of right wing donors...
BILL MOYERS: --I mean, you have seen the candidates for Congress lose because of opposition from supporters of Israel.
M.J. ROSENBERG: You know what? I think that the only people say that candidates for Congress have lost because of that opposition is, one, the lobby itself to tout its own power. And those candidates who lost for other reasons and want someone to blame. No, I can go over those case by case--
BILL MOYERS: Yeah, but-- but in your newsletter you keep talking about the power of the lobby to intimidate the discussion among Democrats in particular...
BILL MOYERS: --talk about Barney Frank, who's a good liberal Democrat but never discusses this. You talk about Nancy Pelosi writes a letter to Bush before the Annapolis conference and says the only solution can be one that deals primarily with what Palestinians are doing and has no reciprocity from Israel.
M.J. ROSENBERG: Oh, absolutely. The-- they have a real chilling effect on debate...
BILL MOYERS: More so than CUFI, don't they?
M.J. ROSENBERG: Oh, much more. CUFI doesn't really-- I don't see them as really counting on this issue. No, they have a much more-- I go up to the Hill all the time, talk to members of Congress. And what they always are say is, "I'm with you 100 percent. I'm for the two-state solution. I know it's the best thing for America and it's the best thing for Israel. But you really don't want me to go out and say that in public." So they say, like, in my heart I agree with you. But that's not good enough.
RON SIDER: I think that MJ's basically right on that. And I'm sorry about that. I wish they did. I wish they had the political courage to-- in fact, say what they think. Because I mean, it's really momentous in terms of the U.S. and the history of the world and our foreign policy. Because 1.3 billion Muslims in the world tend to judge the U.S. and see it through the lens of Israel-Palestine. And all those Muslims perceive the U.S. as very one-sided. If we would solve the Israeli-Palestinian problem, that would remove one major problem in the huge dangerous relationship between the U.S. with its large Christian majority and the Muslim world.
M.J. ROSENBERG: And, you know, on top of it, you have in the Jewish community some 70 percent of our community supports the two-state solution, supports the peace process, supports what Bush tried to do this week in Annapolis. But under our current system, it isn't majorities that matter, it's special interest groups based in Washington. It's a problem with our system right now and how it works.
December 11, 2007 1:04 PM | Report Offensive Comments
Posted on December 11, 2007 13:04
Here is the 2nd of two articles in the WP this week about the exhumation in Washington D.C. and reburial in Israel of Theodore Herzl’s grandson.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/12/05/AR2007120502025_pf.html
Here is the link to the 1st.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/11/29/AR2007112902368_pf.html
This is the tragic story of the Zionists’ greatest hero. The first article mentions in passing what an incredible simpleton Herzl was. It never occurred to him that the Palestinians would not readily give up their land and welcome the invading Zionists with open arms.
"Historians and others still sift through Herzl's writings and see many legacies. They note that he envisioned a Jewish state where people spoke not Hebrew, but German; that he and other early Zionists failed to understand Arab nationalism; and that in a utopian novel Herzl wrote, he describes a binational, egalitarian state."
From the 2nd article:
“Sixty years after jumping off a bridge to his death, the last descendant of Theodor Herzl, the founder of modern Zionism, was buried Wednesday in a Jerusalem cemetery bearing his grandfather's name _ bringing an end to a torturous family saga and finally fulfilling Herzl's century-old will.
Herzl's son also committed suicide. He had a daughter who was mentally ill and another who was killed in the Holocaust. In the past year, three of the founder's four descendants have been buried in Israel_ no easy task because of rabbinical injunctions against Jewish burials for those who have killed themselves or converted to other religions.”...
"His vision was realized, and now there is an exemplary nation," said Liora Herzl, the great-granddaughter of Herzl's cousin. But she noted that Zionism's founder left behind a broken, cash-strapped family. "He was completely consumed with his commitment to the Zionist idea, and his family ultimately paid the price for that."
“Norman was the lone family member committed to Herzl's Zionist cause. He read about his grandfather's work and was active in his movement.”
So here we have the idealist Zionist simpleton who is the principal founder responsible for the incredible mess we have in the Middle East today. The question for us to unravel is: what are we going to do about it?
Clearly, the rightful owners of the land of Palestine are in no mood to welcome the Zionist invaders with open arms and they continue to demand the return of their land. The USA is stuck with the consequences of its incredibly poor judgment in siding with the Zionists on this issue.
We are stuck with only two very unattractive options that I can see:
1. Continue with the present approach of funding (with my tax dollars) the slow genocide of the Palestinian people through the denial of their basic human rights and dignity. This is a fate worse than death as evidenced of the tasteless joke of the occasional exploding Muslim. The Israelis confiscates most of the West Bank water, to the point that Palestinians do not even have what the UN and the US government both regard as the minimum necessary to sustain human life, while Jewish settlers - accustomed to living in their native Europe or America - water grass lawns and fill swimming pools with water taken from under the feet of the Palestinians, while the Palestinians are rarely allowed to drill wells.
2. Admit what horrendous mistakes were made by the League of Nations in the 20th century with the Balfour Declaration of 1917 and the UN Partition of Palestine in 1947 and correct them. How do we correct them? Restore the original pre-1947 boundary of the map of Palestine, go back to the single state solution, recognize the Palestinian Refugee right of return, form a UN mandate to control the allocation of water and enforce the peace. The Israeli planes, tanks, ships and nuclear weapons and all Palestinian arms would be destroyed.
To my mind the 2nd option is the clear choice. What are the odds of this happening? I would say not so good; it is very difficult to admit when one has made a mistake.
December 6, 2007 9:24 AM | Report Offensive Comments
Posted on December 6, 2007 09:24
If that is a threat, then I have no recourse but to paraphrase the great Union General William Tecumseh Sherman to you:
"If the Palestinians want war (which apparently you do in their stead), the IDF will show them what war is!"
Thus far, war has not worked well for the Palestinian cause.
In fact, war has brought them only death, suffering, less land and drought, by your own posting.
A thoughtful observer wonders why you and they would think war that will work well for them in the future.
Unless you and they prefer to cut off your noses to spite your faces, and those of your children.
I prefer that the Palestinians seek peace, lawns, and swimming pools, but if they choose cruise missiles then what can I say.
They are in for an even drier future.
December 5, 2007 3:14 PM | Report Offensive Comments
Posted on December 5, 2007 15:14
Omar of Arabia,
You know what they say; he who lives by the sword dies by the sword.
Do you hear the Cruise Missiles coming yet? Just be patient, they are on the way.
December 5, 2007 2:51 PM | Report Offensive Comments
Posted on December 5, 2007 14:51
"So Israel confiscates most of the West Bank water, to the point that Palestinians there do not even have what the UN and the US government both regard as the minimum necessary to sustain human life, while Jewish settlers - accustomed to living in their native Europe or America - water grass lawns and fill swimming pools with water taken from under the feet of the Palestinians, while the Palestinians are rarely allowed to drill wells.
Well, I bet if the Palestinians had chosen to build a country in 1948 or even in 2000 rather than to pursue a futile war to eliminate the Jews they to would have a better water supply.
Probably the Palestinians would have lawns and some swimming pools too, who knows.
Now all they have is chaos, suicide bombing, and less water.
See now, that's the problem when you choose war and lose.
The winner generally ends up calling the shots.
I'd say the Palestinians ought to think about settling for the best deal they can get, as soon as possible.
That way they can start thinking about building swimming pools, if that's what they want, rather than building bombs.
December 5, 2007 2:22 PM | Report Offensive Comments
Posted on December 5, 2007 14:22
Here is another interesting site on the Israeli technological marvel.
http://newsweek.washingtonpost.com/postglobal/america/2007/12/israel_silicon_valley_entrepreneur.html
Yup, Israel is a technological marvel. That’s why the Israelis need to hog 80% of the Palestinian’s water supply.
http://www.fmep.org/analysis/articles/water_policy_maher.html
…“According to recommended standards of the World Health Organization (WHO) and the U.S Agency for International Development (USAID), a minimum of 100 liters a day per capita are needed for balanced and healthy domestic consumption in rural households. In contrast, BâeTselem, the Israeli human rights organization, documents that Israeli per capita consumption of water already reaches 350 l/day, about five-times Palestinian consumption. Per capita consumption of water in Israeli settlements, most of which are strategically located directly above main water extraction sources, can reach even higher levels, estimated at seven-fold the Palestinian consumption rate. In contrast, Palestinian consumption rates per capita vary between 35-80 l/d, well below WHO and USAID recommendations, and in some communities, water consumption can dip to as low as 7 l/d under certain conditions…”
So Israel confiscates most of the West Bank water, to the point that Palestinians there do not even have what the UN and the US government both regard as the minimum necessary to sustain human life, while Jewish settlers - accustomed to living in their native Europe or America - water grass lawns and fill swimming pools with water taken from under the feet of the Palestinians, while the Palestinians are rarely allowed to drill wells.
So you folks go ahead and live well at the expense of your oppressed neighbors on your stolen land. My government will guarantee the continuation of your illegal existence and fund your atrocious behavior with billions of my tax dollars. Live long and prosper, until the world wakes up and puts a stop to your despicable treatment of the rightful owners of your stolen land.
December 5, 2007 11:00 AM | Report Offensive Comments
Posted on December 5, 2007 11:00
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/12/04/AR2007120401669_pf.html
The Myth of the Mad Mullahs
By David Ignatius
Wednesday, December 5, 2007; A29
…“All these strands converged in the bombshell National Intelligence Estimate on Iran that was released Monday. That document was as close to a U-turn as one sees in the intelligence world. The community dropped its 2005 judgment that Iran was "determined to develop nuclear weapons" and instead said, "We judge with high confidence that in fall 2003, Tehran halted its nuclear weapons program" because of international pressure…
The most important finding of the NIE isn't the details about the scope of nuclear research; there remains some disagreement about that. Rather, it's the insight into the greatest mystery of all about the Islamic republic, which is the degree of rationality and predictability of its decisions…
The debate about what the NIE should mean for U.S. policy toward Iran is just beginning. But for the intelligence community, this rebuttal of conventional wisdom will restore some integrity after the Iraq WMD debacle. In challenging the previous certitudes about Iran and the Bomb, the NIE recalls the admonition many decades ago by the godfather of CIA analysts, Sherman Kent: "When the evidence seems to force a single and immediate conclusion, then that is the time to worry about one's bigotry, and to do a little conscientious introspection."
December 5, 2007 8:39 AM | Report Offensive Comments
Posted on December 5, 2007 08:39
The Iranians and Israelis can relax. We have no plan to end our dependence on Middle East oil any time soon.
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/12/05/opinion/05friedman.html?_r=1&hp=&oref=slogin&pagewanted=print
December 5, 2007
Op-Ed Columnist
Intercepting Iran’s Take on America
By THOMAS L. FRIEDMAN
There are two intelligence analyses that are relevant to the balance of power between the U.S. and Iran — one is the latest U.S. assessment of Iran, which certainly gave a much more complex view of what is happening there. The other is the Iranian National Intelligence Estimate of America, which — my guess — would read something like this:
To: President Ahmadinejad
From: The Iranian Ministry of Intelligence
Subject: America
As you’ll recall, in the wake of 9/11, we were extremely concerned that the U.S. would develop a covert program to end its addiction to oil, which would be the greatest threat to Iranian [and Israeli] national security. In fact, after Bush’s 2006 State of the Union, in which he decried America’s oil addiction, we had “high confidence” that a comprehensive U.S. clean energy policy would emerge. We were wrong.
Our fears that the U.S. was engaged in a covert “Manhattan Project” to achieve energy independence have been “assuaged.” America’s Manhattan Project turns out to be largely confined to the production of corn ethanol in Iowa, which, our analysts have confirmed from cell phone intercepts between lobbyists and Congressmen, is nothing more than a multibillion-dollar payoff to big Iowa farmers and agro-businesses…
December 5, 2007 6:56 AM | Report Offensive Comments
Posted on December 5, 2007 06:56
Rick Jones:
You missed the point of your genetic citation entirely, but why am I not surprised.
Your study confirms that both the existing Jews and Arabs are Semitic people, that is they are both originally from the Middle East.
That shows that in fact the Jews are indigenous to the Middle East and not Europe.
It does not, however, show that they are part of the same ethno/cultural group as the Arabs.
The Jews were an ethnic group with a separate language and religion from the Arab, and are indigenous to Judea in the Levant.
The Arabs were indigenous to Arabia with a separate language and religion (in fact when the Jews were in Judea, the Arabs were still pagans).
The Semitic Jews got kicked out of the Levant by the Romans, and were dispersed into Europe and other parts of the Middle East.
The Arabs swept out of Arabia to conquer the Levant, other parts of the Middle East, and Europe.
That's what your citation really shows, bro'.
It shows that the Jews are not Europeans, but have merely returned to the region they were exiled from on a tiny tiny portion of land in the Middle East (around 0.2% to be exact).
December 4, 2007 4:44 PM | Report Offensive Comments
Posted on December 4, 2007 16:44
Jones:
"Yup, as cruel as it sounds, that is the only solution. Either finish them off, or give them back their land."
You are all heart, Mr. Jones. Have you asked the Palestinians If that's their choice too, before taking it upon yourself to speak on their behalf?
You have just admitted that the Israelis have been a lot more humane in their treatment of the Palestinians than the Americans in their treatment of the Indians. Someone else in your place would have drawn the right conclusion and stop sermonizing to the Israelis about imaginary "atrocities", "ethnic cleansing" and the rest of that crap.
Contrary to the myths fed to you daily by the Arab propaganda machine, the Palestinians are not defenseless, are not being slaughtered and are not suffering "a fate worse than death" (are you sure you're being quite melodramatic enough?). They have the option to end this conflict any time they want, just as they did at any time since the start of this conflict. As long as they don't do this, they have no business complaining about their situation.
"You will need them, and then world opinion will really be against you. You think that we don’t like you now? You aint seen nothing yet."
Ooooh, scary stuff. So now you're talking not only on behalf of the Palestinians but on behalf of the whole world. A true leader type. And what would the whole world do to the Israelis if it didn't like them, pray tell? Hunt them down like animals? Lock them up in ghettos and starve them? Put them on trains and ship them to gas chambers and kill half of them and uproot and expel the rest across the sea?
Wait a minute, this sounds familiar, I'm sure I've heard about something like that before. Isn't that what the world did to the Jews before there was a Middle East conflict or even a State of Israel? So what was the reason back then, could you remind me?
Remember what I told you before about a concept you cannot be expected to comprehend? This was exactly it. No matter what you threaten them with, no matter how dire the situation is for them, there's nothing they have not already been through. The only difference is that before they were completely helpless. Now they are not. Just as I thought, you did not grasp the meaning of that before, and I don't think you ever will. Be well.
December 4, 2007 3:38 PM | Report Offensive Comments
Posted on December 4, 2007 15:38
Here’s a study that finds (not surprisingly) that Jews and Palestinians are genetic brothers.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/742430.stm
...“These signatures were significantly different from non-Jewish men outside of the Middle East. This means Jews and Arabs have more in common with each other, genetically speaking, than they do with any of the wider communities in which they might live.”...
So much for the theory that the Palestinians swept into the region with the Arabs several millennia after the Jews...
December 4, 2007 3:30 PM | Report Offensive Comments
Posted on December 4, 2007 15:30
Why don't you give me part of your net worth, "Omar?" You're not some sort of greedy bastard who claims EVERYTHING you own, are you? Idiot.
December 4, 2007 12:37 PM | Report Offensive Comments
Posted on December 4, 2007 12:37
Joseph:
"You dope, "Omar." Palestine/Israel was also conquered many times, including once about three thousand years ago by the armies of the Israelites. And yet it is insisted by many that this conquest, of all of the conquests, is the only valid conquest in perpetuity.
Strange concept, indeed."
Not at all.
The British Mandate in Palestine has been shared between the Arabs and the Jews.
The Arabs got Jordan which was the greater part of Mandate Palestine, and were offered the greater habitable share of the remaining Palestine Mandate in 1947. Those lands were in fact part of the ancient Judea that you refer to, and the Jews accepted the tiny portion they were offered most of which was the Negev Desert. The West Bank of the Jordan River was also a major part of ancient Judea, and the Jews have already agreed to give that to the Arabs.
But that's really not enough for the Arabs, because they claim EVERYTHING, and they want the Jews to have NOTHING.
That is because in the Arab imagination any land ever conquered by Arabs for Islam is WAQF!
Isn't that right, habibi????
December 4, 2007 9:53 AM | Report Offensive Comments
Posted on December 4, 2007 09:53
"Such is history, except of course in the Arab imagination, where the Arab conquest is the only valid conquest in perpetuity.
Strange concept, no?"
You dope, "Omar." Palestine/Israel was also conquered many times, including once about three thousand years ago by the armies of the Israelites. And yet it is insisted by many that this conquest, of all of the conquests, is the only valid conquest in perpetuity.
Strange concept, indeed.
December 4, 2007 1:29 AM | Report Offensive Comments
Posted on December 4, 2007 01:29
Native Americans and Meso Americans are true indigenous people, native to the Americas since prehistoric times.
Palestinians are the descendants of Arabian Islamic invaders who are native to Arabia, and who colonized the Middle East as recently as the 7th century of the Common Era.
They are not indigenous to the Levant in the same way Native Americans are indigenous to the Americas.
The Levant has been conquered and changed hands many times in history.
Those Arabian invaders lost control of the territory they conquered, including the Levant, eventually to the Ottoman Turks and then to the British.
Such is history, except of course in the Arab imagination, where the Arab conquest is the only valid conquest in perpetuity.
Strange concept, no?
December 3, 2007 10:23 PM | Report Offensive Comments
Posted on December 3, 2007 22:23
Yup, as cruel as it sounds, that is the only solution. Either finish them off, or give them back their land. They give you no choice. Your current policy of slow ethnic cleansing, through degradation of quality of life, is a fate worse than death. This has long ago caused world opinion to side squarely with the Palestinians. Either finish them off, or come join your brethren in America. The world is fed up and will tolerate these atrocities no longer.
Of course, when you slaughter the defenseless Palestinians, you may still have a fight on your hands. We will have to research the number of Palestinians in the West Bank, Gaza, Israel, Lebanon, Syria and Jordan. Then you must consider what the response of the rest of the Middle East will be. You may have to wipe out all the Arabs as well.
While you are at it, just to be safe, you had better kill all the Persians too. That I’m a Dinner Jacket guy is a pain in the butt anyway.
Then the entire Muslim world will probably be upset, so you will have to take care of them. I wonder how many of them are in the world. The answer is 1.84 billion in 2007.
http://www.islamicpopulation.com/
How many nukes do you have anyway, 200 or so? You will need them, and then world opinion will really be against you. You think that we don’t like you now? You aint seen nothing yet.
December 3, 2007 9:52 PM | Report Offensive Comments
Posted on December 3, 2007 21:52
Jones:
What kind of an argument is that? Are you giving the Americans a free pass because they were more brutal with the local population? In that case, no problem, the Israelis could follow your moral dictates, wipe out the Palestinians, and then everything is OK, right?
Or are you suggesting the native Americans were not as brave as the Palestinians, or did not love their homes and land as much, because they "gave up the fight"? Why don't you try going to some Indian Reservations and air your views there, see what kind of response you get.
December 3, 2007 8:49 PM | Report Offensive Comments
Posted on December 3, 2007 20:49
Michael O,
Good point! OK, how about this? The Native Americans seem to be reconciled to their fate as it is today. At least they are no longer fighting us. For one thing, we darned near wiped them of the face of the earth; there are not that many left.
This is not the case in Palestine. The Palestinians are still fighting the illegal invaders/occupiers with everything they’ve got. They prefer to die rather than give up their homes and land; and they still equal the invaders in number.
Therefore we should be siding with the people who are trying to defend their land; not the invaders.
December 3, 2007 7:40 PM | Report Offensive Comments
Posted on December 3, 2007 19:40
Jones:
"I think the point is that there is nothing that I can do about what my country did 200 years ago, or even 60 years ago; but I can speak out against what it continues to do today."
If there's nothing you can do about what your country did 60 years ago, then why do you keep going on about the UN resolution and Harry Truman and the British mandate?
But that's an aside. The main point is, we are talking about what your country is doing today, not 200 years ago. It continues to occupy Indian lands today, by your definition, and the injustice has never been rectified. You seem to believe that history can be reversed. So either be honest and start screaming that all non-Indian Americans should go back where they came from, or be honest and stop screaming that the Israelis should go back where they came from. But what you're doing now is dishonest. The standards you apply to Israel are different from those You apply to your own country and to the rest of the world.
"For one thing, the article shows what a simpleton Herzl was. It never occurred to him that the Palestinians would not readily give up their land and welcome the Jews with open arms."
As much a simpleton as Washington, Jefferson and Ben Franklin were.
December 3, 2007 7:20 PM | Report Offensive Comments
Posted on December 3, 2007 19:20
For one thing, the article shows what a simpleton Herzl was. It never occurred to him that the Palestinians would not readily give up their land and welcome the Jews with open arms.
"Historians and others still sift through Herzl's writings and see many legacies. They note that he envisioned a Jewish state where people spoke not Hebrew, but German; that he and other early Zionists failed to understand Arab nationalism; and that in a utopian novel Herzl wrote, he describes a binational, egalitarian state."
December 3, 2007 7:02 PM | Report Offensive Comments
Posted on December 3, 2007 19:02
Michael O,
I think the point is that there is nothing that I can do about what my country did 200 years ago, or even 60 years ago; but I can speak out against what it continues to do today. That is what I am doing. We are backing the wrong side in the Israeli/Palestinian conflict and behaving nothing like an honest broker.
No point in the Herzl grandson story. I just stumbled across it and thought that people who visit this blog would be interested in it.
December 3, 2007 6:28 PM | Report Offensive Comments
Posted on December 3, 2007 18:28
"So what? What has that to do with Palestine?"
Everything. You said the reason for the sharp increase in Jewish immigration in the 20's and the 30's as opposed to previous years was the result of the British "giving" the country to the Jews. I showed you the real reason for the increase.
BTW, what's with that story about Herzl's grandson - Is there a point there somewhere?
"But as I have often explained, without the Balfour Declaration, the rioting Arabs protesting the illegal Zionist immigration would not have been the law breakers."
And as I have explained to you twice before, if they rioted they would have been the lawbreakers no matter what's the cause. The various Jewish undergrounds were fighting the British at the same time, and were subject to raids and arrests just like the Arabs, and if you went to Israel today you could visit the British era prisons where Jewish and Arab insurgents were awaiting their execution side by side in the same cell blocks. So what's your beef?
"The British, the League of Nations, the UN, the USA, we all gave it to them."
How many times can different entities give the same object? Once you give something to someone it's theirs. What part of that simple concept are you having difficulties with?
Let me try to approach it from a different perspective. Why did the Arab nations attack Israel on May 15, 1948 and not on Nov. 29, 1947? Because unlike you, they understood that the UN resolution was worthless, beyond its symbolic meaning, and did not really result in the Jews having a state of their own. The Israel declaration of independence, did have that result. Are you beginning to see the light yet?
The UN resolution of 11/29/1947 (which, BTW, "gave" a state to the Palestinians too) did not stop the Arab invasion, and did not stop a single Arab bullet. So in what respect did it "give" the land to the Jews? Had the Arabs won, they would have divvied up the land between Egypt, Jordan, and perhaps Syria, and the UN would have given them its blessing. So don't give me that crap about the UN "giving" the country to the Jews.
"Just because we were the world’s greatest land thieves during the 19th century, doesn’t justify our continuation of this flawed character trait during the 20th and 21st centuries."
GOOD. So what are you doing about it? Why are you so preoccupied with demanding that some small nation 8,000 miles away give up its land while you yourself are not giving up yours? Why are you not going back to wherever you or your ancestors came from? What's really so mind-boggling here is not only the extent of your hypocrisy, but the fact that you're PROUD of it!
And trotting out Joseph's argument is not going to improve your position either. Both of you fail to understand the simple concept of discrimination. The fact that everyone else does something wrong does not make it right. But deciding that only one nation should be punished and everyone else (including, conveniently, your own nation) is exempt, that's discrimination and it voids your entire argument.
December 3, 2007 12:27 PM | Report Offensive Comments
Posted on December 3, 2007 12:27
Ricky Jones:…
“That is a good parallel between how we treated the Indians (and Mexicans) stealing the western US from Mexico and the Indians, and the eastern US from the Indians. One difference is that we have only occupied this land for about 200 years, while the Palestinians had occupied Palestine for about 2 millennia after the Israelis were kicked out by the Romans plus who knows how many millennia before that”...
Your arguments are ridiculous, but fun to play with any way.
Native North Americans and Meso Americans (Mexicans) were indigenous people to the Americas.
There was NO one in North America when they came
in PRE-historic times.
They took their land from no one, unlike the Arabs, who invaded the Middle East out of
Arabia and tried to conquer Europe as far as Vienna.
The Arabs are invaders and conquerors in the lands of the Middle East, having swept out of Arabia in the seventh century AD. They stole the land from the original inhabitants, and have no more historical claim to anything, then any other invader and conqueror.
The whole history of nations is replete with migrations of people, displacements of people, wars of independence, and the establishment of new nations.
The only two thing that are unique about the founding of Israel are the following:
1. It is the only nation created in the modern world with the blessing of the world community at the U.N. in 1947.
2. Israel was founded in a region of Islamic Arabs, in whose vivid Medieval imagination rules the notion that any land ever conquered by Arabs for Islam is forever, in perpetuity ARAB/ISLAMIC land.
Well, the sad fact is that the Arab imagination has created a fantasy which may have had a place in the Medieval world, but has no place in the modern world.
The main reason the modern world attempts to placate this Arab imagination is the following:
Saudi Arabia sits on the world's largest proven reserves of crude oil, and Saudi Arabia is mightily offended by the presence of a militarily strong and independent Jewish state on the edge of Islam. Their continual military losses to the Jews humiliates and rankles them.
That combined with the residual resentment the Jews engender in Europeans, allows the Arabs to continue to use the Palestinians in their political games against the West.
December 3, 2007 10:03 AM | Report Offensive Comments
Posted on December 3, 2007 10:03
Michael O,
…“The bigger waves of immigration starting in the mid-20's and continuing through the outbreak of WW2 coincided with the rise of fascism in Europe, the passage of race laws in Germany, Hungary, Italy and other countries, and all sorts of official and unofficial persecution which made the life of the Jews in Europe unbearable.”…
So what? What has that to do with Palestine? As I have explained to you many times, the Palestinians were not responsible for the mistreatment of the European Jews. If not for the Balfour Declaration and British Mandate from the League of Nations, they would have been no more welcome in Palestine than anywhere else. I will patiently stand by waiting for you to ask this question again.
…“As far as the British were concerned, they were maintaining law and order in a colony under their rule”…
But as I have often explained, without the Balfour Declaration, the rioting Arabs protesting the illegal Zionist immigration would not have been the law breakers. The illegal Zionist immigrants would have been the law breakers, killed by the thousands and chased from the land as they should have been. I will patiently stand by waiting for you to make this silly argument once again.
…“If the British "gave" it to them, that means the country was theirs, so how could the UN "give" it to them again 30 yeas later”…
The British, the League of Nations, the UN, the USA, we all gave it to them. As I have explained to you before, it was just one gigantic conspiracy of thieves. What part of this simple concept do you find so difficult to understand. Harry Truman new better, but alas it was an election year; and he lacked the courage of his convictions. So much for the buck stops here. I will patiently stand by waiting for you to ask this question again.
…“what gives you the right to moralize to other people about giving or taking land when you live comfortably on a land that was taken from another people by force”…
Good question. The answer is still the same as when I last answered it @ November 28, 2007 3:49 PM:
…“That is a good parallel between how we treated the Indians (and Mexicans) stealing the western US from Mexico and the Indians, and the eastern US from the Indians. One difference is that we have only occupied this land for about 200 years, while the Palestinians had occupied Palestine for about 2 millennia after the Israelis were kicked out by the Romans plus who knows how many millennia before that”...
And again @ November 30, 2007 10:55 AM:
…“But who says that anybody should “give” them a state. They deserve a state at our expense much less than do the Native Americans.”…
Since I know you will still find it difficult to grasp this simple concept, I will explain it yet one more time. This means that we have treated our own Native Americans atrociously, as well as the Mexicans, in taking their land by force. If a powerful alien were to come along, decide to take North America away from us and return to the Native Americans and Mexicans; they would have much more justification for doing this than we have for giving Palestine to the Zionists.
Just because we were the world’s greatest land thieves during the 19th century, doesn’t justify our continuation of this flawed character trait during the 20th and 21st centuries.
As another poster put it @ November 29, 2007 9:51 PM:
Joseph:
“Please abandon the "everyone does it" arguments about ethnic cleansing. They would, in the first place, be more accurately, "everyone DID it," and if we open ourselves up to that sort of justification, slavery ought to be okay, too.
Slavery was considered by most "civilized" people to be okay in the mid-19th century; this does not make Hitler's nor Stalin's slavery in the middle of the 20th century acceptable. Nor does the fact that most "civilized" people in the mid-19th century considered ethnic cleansing to be okay make Israel's ethnic cleansing in the middle of the 20th century - nor their current policy of slow ethnic cleansing through degradation of quality of life for the West Bank Palestinians - acceptable.”
Since I know that you find these concepts difficult, I will patiently stand by waiting for you to ask these questions yet again.
December 2, 2007 9:20 PM | Report Offensive Comments
Posted on December 2, 2007 21:20
Here is something that you may find of interest:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/11/29/AR2007112902368_pf.html
A Family Reunion for Grandson of Zionism's Founder
Rockville History Buff Lobbied to Have Man's Remains Sent to Israel
By Michelle Boorstein
Washington Post Staff Writer
Friday, November 30, 2007; B01
Sixty-one years after he was buried at a windy hilltop cemetery in Southeast Washington, Stephen Theodore Norman, the only grandchild of Zionism's founder, was exhumed yesterday after a five-year campaign to have him buried near his family in Israel.
As morticians in plastic jumpsuits sifted with their gloved hands through mud and water in the five-foot grave crater, Jerry Klinger stood alongside. Klinger, a passionate Jewish history buff from Rockville, was watching the realization of years of intense -- and often ignored -- lobbying for what he sees as a battle for the legacy of Theodor Herzl and the Zionist movement Herzl founded more than a century ago in Europe…
Herzl, who died 44 years before Israel's establishment, envisioned a utopian, egalitarian society and peaceful relations between Arabs and Jews. But by 1975, the U.N. General Assembly passed a resolution calling Zionism a form of racism. The resolution was rescinded in 1991, but advocates of Israel worry that the stigma will never disappear.
Herzl's name has also been attached to great tragedy in his family. The Hungarian-born journalist died at 44. His elder daughter suffered from mental illness and apparently died of a drug overdose. Her brother, who had converted to Christianity, committed suicide when he learned of her death. Herzl's younger daughter, who was in and out of mental institutions, was the only one to have a child -- Stephen Norman, who became a captain in the British Army and was posted to the embassy in Washington in 1946.
Several months before, he visited Palestine, the only member of his family to go there. Norman wrote in his journal from the trip that he "believed in the idea and the aims of Zionism, and in the moral, ethical, economic, and social need for it that had been made even more urgent and important by world events and the tremendous problems created by the new scientific anti-Semitism of the last decades."…
Soon after arriving in Washington, Norman learned that his parents had been killed in a Nazi concentration camp. At 28, he plunged to his death off a Massachusetts Avenue NW bridge…
Jewish law also forbids suicide and the burying of people who commit suicide in Jewish cemeteries…
December 2, 2007 8:01 PM | Report Offensive Comments
Posted on December 2, 2007 20:01
Joseph:
Glad to see you ran out of all substantive arguments. Be well.
December 2, 2007 6:27 PM | Report Offensive Comments
Posted on December 2, 2007 18:27