clocker bob wrote: If the US gov't bombed a home in Tijuana and killed 19 people because a cheap rocket landed in a San Diego backyard, killing nobody, I would condemn our response, too.

We're not talking one cheap rocket here. So if you want to have an adequate example, how about this: Hunderts of rockets rain down on your home town every months, which let's say is San Diego. Most of those rockets don't do much, or only minor damage to infrastructure. But two of your neighbors where not so lucky and have already died because of a rocket hit. A relative of you has been hit by a schrapnel and lost a limb. Overall, a dozen people have died, two dozens injured.

The people who fire the rockets not only hit civilians by mistake or as a collateral damage, like your government does, but deliberately go after civilians. They want to kill you, no matter if you support your government or not, no matter if you're a soldier or a little boy playing outside on a sunny day.

The only compromise that they'd agree on to stop shooting the rockets is to have you removed from the place where you are living and have been born, and have you go "back" to Europe, Africa, Asia or whatever country your ancestors lived in.

Now in this situation, your government decides that it needs to protect it's citizans by firing back on the people who shot all those rockets. They don't deliberately target civilians and try to reduce civilian casualties whenever possible.

How about that? What would your reaction be then?

Grenouille wrote:

rayj wrote:Actually, I did read your excerpts here. Including the parts that aren't bold. It sounds like typical fighting language, politicized, and reactionary...probably as a result of understandable frustration with our alleged 'peace process' (an obvious euphemism for "do exactly what we want"). It also reads...ahem...somewhat translated.

Nice apologetic stance. Israel is using euphemisms when it speaks of peacee, while Hamas is just using a typical fighting language which in the end is the result of Israel's policy. No matter what the Palestinian side does or says, it's always just an reaction on Israel. It's never the Palestinian's responsibility.

Hey, why not use the same logic when it comes to Nazis? Wasn't the NSDAP's party program, which basicly says the same as the Hamas one, also just a politicized, reactionary result of the understandable frustration of the german people after the Treaty of Versailles, the then "euphemism for peace"? (big difference being, that the Kana peace offer was quite the opposite of that peace treaty)

Please go back and read the last paragraph of my last post.

Grenouille wrote:
Now in this situation, your government decides that it needs to protect it's citizans by firing back on the people who shot all those rockets. They don't deliberately target civilians and try to reduce civilian casualties whenever possible.

How about that? What would your reaction be then?

You're asking me to answer a hypothetical question, but the scope of the discussion is too narrow for me to give you one, because my history of Gaza didn't begin last month. I accept the Qassams as a legitimate reaction to 60 years of mistreatment by Israel, and I accept them as a legitimate reaction to the recent aggressions that began with the beach shelling .

I can't answer the question, "How would you want your government to respond?" if I was in southern Israel today, because I can guarantee you that I would be long gone, having long since determined that Israel was an occupying criminal state. If I was an Israeli, I would have renounced my citizenship by this point, or I would have left the region near Gaza for central Israel and channeled my energies into war resistance, peace talks, and reparations for stolen lands and resources ( if I thought there was a chance that Israel could redeem itself from within, which I probably don't believe ).

Short answer: I would not accept the 'protection' offered by the IDF, because I would not see it as protection- I would see it as aggression. You will likely always see it as protection.

60 years of "mistreatment" that started with the UN partition plan that was accepted by the Jews but not the Arabs? How about 70 years of mistreatment of Jews living in Palestine, starting with the Arab Revolt in 1936?

The foundation of the state of Israel was more a reaction than the fight against it. A reaction to a growingly hostile environment, an environment which began after palestinian leadership allied itself to the axis powers prior to WW2.

Leaving Sderot and re-settle to central Israel won't change anything. To the folks firing the rockets, that's just as bad as living in southern Israel. All the jews have to leave.

I'm all for peace talks, reparations etc. I supported the offer that was made at Camp David and Kana in 2000, when 97% of Westbank + Gaza + East Jerusalem as capital and compensation for refugees was offered. But Arafat denounced it, proving that the whole conflict is not about the territories occupied in 1967, but about the existance of the State of Israel in it's whole. It's no wonder though, since PLO formed 1965, almost 2 years before the 6 days war, when there was no Israeli occupation of Gaza and Westbank.

But just answer me a few quick questions:
Why is it that it's not possible for jews to live in Gaza and Westbank? If Israel is the evil state while the Palestinians are fighting a just war against their oppressors, how come no Jews are allowed to live in their lands, while there is an arab muslim minority with basicly the same rights like everyone else in Israel? I can already imagine the answer: It's the Israeli's fault. They have been so cruel to the Palestinians that they now hate all jews.

And where should all the jews that lived in arab countries prior to 1948 go back? Should they go back to Teheran and live under rule of the Islamic Republic? Go back to Egypt, which would surely welcome them? Or move to Europe and the USA? But why should jews that have been living in the middle east, and whose ancestors have never lived in Europe and the USA move there? Why is it not possible to have one single jewish state among all the muslim states of the middle east?

Do you think a draw back from Westbank would be helpful? I used to think so, and I was happy when the Gaza draw back was done in 2005. But recent history has shown that giving back land doesn't help to get peace. Israel withdraws from Gaza, kidnapping and rocket attacks happen. Israel withdraws from Southern Lebanon, kidnapping and rocket attacks. Israel withdrawing from Westbank will only lead to more rocket attacks at this point. And from there, central Israel will be hit.

Grenouille wrote:60 years of "mistreatment" that started with the UN partition plan that was accepted by the Jews but not the Arabs? How about 70 years of mistreatment of Jews living in Palestine, starting with the Arab Revolt in 1936?

The foundation of the state of Israel was more a reaction than the fight against it. A reaction to a growingly hostile environment, an environment which began after palestinian leadership allied itself to the axis powers prior to WW2.

So did Italy. Why not carve out a piece of the Italian coastline and give it to the Zionists?

I think I've probably made over 100 posts to this thread by now. I'll try and condense my position regarding Israel:

I don't consider Israel a legitimate state.

I place no value on a Biblical covenant as a foundation for a deed to land, and I don't consider Ashkenazi converts to be rightful recipients of that covenant, were the covenant to have meaning for me.

I don't know why the Palestinians had to lose land because of the actions of the Third Reich, and the sympathies of the Palestinian leadership during WWII don't make them any more obliged to host a Zionist state.

I do know why I *think* the Palestinians had to lose land to host a Zionist state, and it has nothing to do with providing the Jews with a homeland ( since the Middle East would be the last place to make a safe homeland for Jews ).

My brief history of the birth of Israel:

Zionism came into being about the same time that oil became the most valued commodity on Earth.

Zionism is a cult promoted by the wealthiest banking powers in the world.

These bankers bankrolled the British and French in WWI, with the intent to defeat the German, Austrian and Ottoman Empires and carve up the oil-rich Middle East after the war.

By 1916, the war had gone very badly for the British and French. Because the European bankers had successfully taken over the US banking system in 1913, they were able to pressure Wilson into committing the US to WWI, partially through sacrificing the Lustiania to incite anti-German anger in the US.

Because the US turned the tide of the War, the European Bankers/Zionists were rewarded with the Balfour Declaration, and later with more financial control over the defeated nations with the Treaty of Versailles, a time bomb of a truce that pretty much made WWII inevitable.

Throughout the 20's and '30's, the bankers consolidated power over all the future combatants of WWII: the US, the Nazis, the Russians- all of them, all backed by the same financial powers, like roosters bred for a cockfight.

1939, Nazis begin WWII, bankers get richer as the world's perpetual war economies eveolve and the yoke of endless debt is clamped around the necks of the industrialized world.

1948, the history of Israel that's in everybody else's history books begins.

Israel is a product of financial extortion, an imposter of a homeland that is a Trojan Horse full of schemes that have nothing to do with benefiting common Jews, and everything to do with the resurrection of feudalism.

For me, assessing Israel's conduct towards the Palestinians post-1948 is like being forced to comment on the driving ability of a car thief. If the Zionists aren't the rightful owner of that car ( in my eyes ), I'm never going to feel all that sorry for them when their windshield gets smashed or their tires get slashed. They knew what they were in for when they took that assignment in hostile territory. Who is naive enough to think that the ruling elites of the world would just give the Israelis a homeland out of the goodness of their hearts, with no strings attached? Their job is to keep the Arab world divided and riled up and to help keep the oil markets under control, and angry Arabs taking pot shots at them from over the fence is part of the bargain.

I can't argue the situation in the Middle East from outside Conspiracy Theory World. Simple as that. For me, the bankers have their grip on all of us, and Israel is a big part of their plans, and while I usually argue the conflict with a more narrow focus in this thread, I'm always mindful of the overarching theories that govern my view of history.

Although I wouldn't argue that the big bankers manipulate events for their own ends I think you take that as the principle motion of events in recent history which i wouldn't.
Politically people will behave in stupid bigoted ways and those big banks will do their best to exploit that (and manipulate it as well).
I think you are saying that you think the bankers are in principle control of all the events which I wouldn't go along with. (I wouldn't rule it out mind you)

clocker bob wrote:Who is naive enough to think that the ruling elites of the world would just give the Israelis a homeland out of the goodness of their hearts, with no strings attached?

Here I think you underestimate the ignorance of a lot of people who end up in positions of massive power. A lot of Zionists had been led to believe that Palestine was a land without a people and this falsehood was passed on to those they sought to influence. In '48 the holocaust was fresh in people's minds and i wouldn't undervalue that when looking at motivations for elites decisions and behaviour then.

If those elites had chosen to ally/manipulate Muslim states in the Middle East they could have done it (and did do it) easily enough. Arguably they would have had a much easier time of it without Israel there.

Grenouille wrote:60 years of "mistreatment" that started with the UN partition plan that was accepted by the Jews but not the Arabs? How about 70 years of mistreatment of Jews living in Palestine, starting with the Arab Revolt in 1936?

The foundation of the state of Israel was more a reaction than the fight against it. A reaction to a growingly hostile environment, an environment which began after palestinian leadership allied itself to the axis powers prior to WW2.

Leaving Sderot and re-settle to central Israel won't change anything. To the folks firing the rockets, that's just as bad as living in southern Israel. All the jews have to leave.

I'm all for peace talks, reparations etc. I supported the offer that was made at Camp David and Kana in 2000, when 97% of Westbank + Gaza + East Jerusalem as capital and compensation for refugees was offered. But Arafat denounced it, proving that the whole conflict is not about the territories occupied in 1967, but about the existance of the State of Israel in it's whole. It's no wonder though, since PLO formed 1965, almost 2 years before the 6 days war, when there was no Israeli occupation of Gaza and Westbank.

I'll repeat this again: the Camp David agreement refused to acknowledge the Right to Return. You cannot offer a reasonable opinion on this if you are not even aware that it is an issue. You are correct that this is not just about the 1967 redrawing of borders. Here you go:

George Bisharat wrote:Today, many assume that to achieve Middle East peace, we Palestinians must surrender our right to return to our homes and homeland. Millions of Palestinians--with memories and photographs of our stolen properties, keys to our front doors, and an abiding sense of injustice--are expected to swallow our losses in order to facilitate a "two-state solution."

But it's not that simple. Although Israel has claimed that Palestinians willingly abandoned Palestine after being urged to leave in radio broadcasts by Arab leaders, a review of broadcast transcripts by Irish diplomat Erskine Childers in 1961 revealed that Palestinians were exhorted by Arab leaders to stay, not leave their homes. In fact, Yigal Allon, commander of Palmach, the elite Zionist troops, and later Israeli foreign minister, launched a whispering campaign to terrorize Palestinians into flight.

Nor were we simply unintended victims of a war launched by the Arab states against Israel. As far back as the late 19th century, leaders of Political Zionism (the movement to create a Jewish state in Palestine) advocated "transfer" of the Palestinians, by force if necessary. In 1948, Jews owned only 11% of the land allocated by the United Nations to the Jewish state--not enough for a viable economy. As David Ben-Gurion said in February 1948 before he became prime minister of Israel: "The war will give us the land. The concepts of 'ours' and 'not ours' are peace concepts only, and in war they lose their whole meaning."

Zionist leaders knew that an Arab minority of 40% would challenge the Jewish demographic dominance they sought. Hence, nearly half of the Palestinian refugees ultimately expelled were forced out before the Arab states attacked Israel in May 1948. Israeli historian Benny Morris documented 24 massacres of Palestinian civilians, some claiming hundreds of unarmed men, women and children, during subsequent fighting. Thousands more Palestinians were, like the residents of Majdal (now Ashkelon)--a southern coastal city 15 miles north of the Gaza Strip--chased across the border into Gaza after the armistice of 1949.

Palestine had to be "cleansed" of its native population to establish Israel as a Jewish state. Ironically, those who today protest that the return of the refugees would destroy Israel unwittingly confirm this viewpoint, for the refugees are simply the Palestinians and their offspring who would have become Israeli citizens had they not been exiled.

Israel's denial of responsibility for the refugees and rejection of their repatriation (intransigence that was condemned early on by a U.S. official as "morally reprehensible") is nearly as offensive as the original expulsion itself. Israel welcomed immigrant Jews from all over the world but shot Palestinians who tried to return to recover movable property, harvest the fruit of their orchards or reclaim their homes. Oxford professor Avi Shlaim concluded in his book "The Iron Wall" that "between 2,700 and 5,000 [Palestinian] infiltrators were killed in the period 1949-56, the great majority of them unarmed."

These are not the words of your racist Jew-hating stereotype, but a Western-settled and educated academic.

My impression is Grenouille, you are happy to label an entire swathe of people racist in order to justify their slow torture. Nice.

My own take is that at this stage the Right to Return itself is not practical, not at this juncture. It would create conflict and wreck a now prosperous economy and cause unjustified ruction to the people in that ecomony (the Israelis). Which brings us back to negotiation, reparation and the end to economic, political, violent and psychological repression of those kept under effective Apartheid.

Grenouille wrote:But just answer me a few quick questions:
Why is it that it's not possible for jews to live in Gaza and Westbank? If Israel is the evil state while the Palestinians are fighting a just war against their oppressors, how come no Jews are allowed to live in their lands, while there is an arab muslim minority with basicly the same rights like everyone else in Israel? I can already imagine the answer: It's the Israeli's fault. They have been so cruel to the Palestinians that they now hate all jews.

You have a sarcastic implication here of an inherent racism within the Palestinian antipathy towards those whose military have consistently stolen their land, shot them, humiliated through constant military harrassment, prevented from going to work, destroyed their homes, blown up their ambulances, and then shot them some more. Following on from this, you imply that a civilian population is deserving of this treatment. This is callous in the supreme.

Grenouille wrote:And where should all the jews that lived in arab countries prior to 1948 go back? Should they go back to Teheran and live under rule of the Islamic Republic? Go back to Egypt, which would surely welcome them? Or move to Europe and the USA? But why should jews that have been living in the middle east, and whose ancestors have never lived in Europe and the USA move there? Why is it not possible to have one single jewish state among all the muslim states of the middle east?

Why is it necessary for there to be a uni-religion state of any kind at all? No-one here has put forward the implied ethnic cleansing of Israelis forward as a solution or an ideal. Again, you are trying to present the current situation as an insane binary choice, either:

a.) Israeli is destroyed; or
b.) Israel must continue to defend herself as before (read: oppress the displaced minority, and steal more land by sending nutty religious maniacs into Palestinian property, particularly in Jerusalem).

It does not need to work this way. Politicians on both sides have shown a remarkable lack of patience, but unfortunately only one side has any real power in the area, thus preventing the progression of meaningful talks. Because any meaningful talks might lead to a meaningful solution, and a meaningful solution will almost certainly be hard to accept for both parties. But reparation (money and land) will be involved, as well as assurances of disarmanent of militant parties. Again, I would prefer a single, secular, multi-religious state in Israel, rather than two dysfunctional and paranoid entities next door to each other.

Do you think a draw back from Westbank would be helpful? I used to think so, and I was happy when the Gaza draw back was done in 2005. But recent history has shown that giving back land doesn't help to get peace. Israel withdraws from Gaza, kidnapping and rocket attacks happen. Israel withdraws from Southern Lebanon, kidnapping and rocket attacks. Israel withdrawing from Westbank will only lead to more rocket attacks at this point. And from there, central Israel will be hit.

Blah blah. Read above, again. Plenty of fantastic pissing contests above over death statistics and respective moral trangressions by both sides in the run up to the Lebanon slaughter for you to fume over.

I'll leave you with the final part of the article linked above:

George Bisharat wrote:Isn't it time to explore a way for Jews to co-inhabit Israel/Palestine without excluding, dominating and oppressing Palestinians? The past cannot be undone--but the future can be. We, Israelis and Palestinians together, should be seeking to form a society founded on tolerance and mutual respect for each other's humanity, a country that would truly be the "light unto nations" that Israel always aspired to be. When title to our home is restored--and the rights of its current occupants have been fully respected--I hope one day to stand in front of it with my family and welcome neighbors and visitors of all faiths and backgrounds, as my grandparents did before 1948.

Earwicker wrote:Although I wouldn't argue that the big bankers manipulate events for their own ends I think you take that as the principle motion of events in recent history which i wouldn't.

I look at it almost as an inevitability that bankers land on the profitable side of world events because they instigated them, not merely exploited them. They are reaping *and* sowing, but they would reap less could they not sow so well. It's all connected to the two main ingredients for war:

The arms.

The debt.

The bankers provide the needed credit to the arms manufacturers.

The bankers provide the credit needed by the militarized economies to fund wars.

The bankers' only product is debt. Nothing surpasses wars and defense spending for creating demand for the bankers' product.

Once the bankers are integrated into the monetary systems and the military-industrial complexes of the respective economies, symbiosis takes over- politicians conform to the fear/defense war dialectic, so does the corporate media, so do the people of Oceania. All the players become bankers' puppets on the stage of war, like a giant board game.

For a government to turn against a war economy, a government must oppose the source of the lifeblood for their debt-ridden nation, the bankers and their IV bags of perpetual debt. Once politicians are lured into the Devil's bargain offered by the bankers of near-term prosperity ( easy credit to stimulate the economy ), the continued access to that debt hinges upon the politicians' abilities to mobilize their armies and their citizens for war- pure blackmail.

clocker bob wrote:Who is naive enough to think that the ruling elites of the world would just give the Israelis a homeland out of the goodness of their hearts, with no strings attached?

earwicker wrote:Here I think you underestimate the ignorance of a lot of people who end up in positions of massive power. A lot of Zionists had been led to believe that Palestine was a land without a people and this falsehood was passed on to those they sought to influence. In '48 the holocaust was fresh in people's minds and i wouldn't undervalue that when looking at motivations for elites decisions and behaviour then.

Agreed, the Holocaust was a public relations windfall for the Zionist movement, but it was only a late tail wind that pushed a plan that had been in motion for 60 years across the finish line. You could see the Holocaust as part of a family of catalytic events that also includes Pearl Harbor and the PNAC answered dream for a new Pearl Harbor, 9/11.

earwicker wrote:If those elites had chosen to ally/manipulate Muslim states in the Middle East they could have done it (and did do it) easily enough. Arguably they would have had a much easier time of it without Israel there.

The easier part, I don't know. I think Israel has been a wrench in the gears of what the West fears the most: a harmonious Arab world that behaves like nation states, able to organize into a unified cartel and take control over their oil reserves. Israel has helped defuse that potential nightmare scenario by rallying fundamentalist wackos into focusing their anger on the Jews, rather on where their anger should be focused- on BP and Shell and Exxon and Aramco ( and the bankers, of course ).

That annoying United Nations is at it again. These reminders are nice, but they're about as problematic for Israel as someone ringing their doorbell and then running away.

german press agency wrote:UN demands an immediate halt to Israeli settlements

Published: Saturday December 16, 2006

New York- The United Nations has demanded that Israel immediately halt its controversial settlement policy, it was reported Saturday. "Settlements in the occupied Palestinian Territories, including East Jerusalem, and in the occupied Syrian Golan Heights (are) illegal and an obstacle to peace as well as economic and social development," a resolution passed by the UN General Assembly with 162 votes in favour late Friday in New York said.

Eight countries, including Israel and the United States, voted against the resolution, while 10 abstained.

The UN also called on Israel to guarantee the security of aid organizations working in the Palestinian Territories.

AP, 12/26/06 wrote:JERUSALEM -
Israel has approved a new settlement in the
West Bank to house former Jewish settlers from the
Gaza Strip, officials said Tuesday, breaking a promise to the U.S. to halt home construction in the Palestinian territories.

Dear US Media,

Please stop referring to the West Bank as a Palestinian territory. It makes stories like these unnecessarily confusing. 'Territory' implies ownership.