Israel & Palestine

[pjdude1219]

Its statements like that which make you come across as 'naive', wise men don't talk about warfare as if it were a line from a Die Hard movie.

not a big fan of the bard are you.

Have you ever thought of going to Gaza and joining the resistance movement?

Do you really think I can't see through something that shallow? yeah and than have you decry me as a terrorist. though I have thought of going to palestine to help.

Or maybe the US military?

so what i can be sent to ride around with the IDF as they abuse the palestinians?

 

[Mrs.Lucysnow]

Post 119 wasn't understood so could you please read post # 120 as I need you to re-phrase.

You say that to join an active resistance is hollow but you advocate full blown war? Why would 'I' de-cry you? You seem to have me mistaken for someone else.

You are so filled with righteous indignation that it clouds you. You don't even realize that I am pro-palestinian, always have been, but in a discussion about Israel and the Palestinians it is better to put emotion aside and deal with facts or it just clouds the issue.

 

[pjdude1219]

The post didn't make any sense to me, particularly this part 'The US military aid isn't Israel most important'. Could you please re-phrase?

what didn't make sense?

You will need to show more for your case that there is a 'swing' that is indeed new and not merely a meaningless 'gesture'.

what you decry as meaningless gestures are the first signs of the swing. I call reducing military aid from a country that has put boots on the ground in Israeli wars more than a meaningless gesture.

 

[pjdude1219]

Post 119 wasn't understood.

You say that to join an active resistance is hollow but you advocate full blown war?

I understood your post clearly. It was an obvious attempt to try and get me into saying something you could use to paint me as pro terrorism.

 

[Mrs.Lucysnow]

I understood your post clearly. It was an obvious attempt to try and get me into saying something you could use to paint me as pro terrorism.

I wasn't trying to paint you as anything, again you are being paranoid. I am simply saying that I find it strange that one who advocates warfare would find it fruitless to join a resistance movement. I am not a pacifist. I do believe that there are times to fight, also I know a lot of men who have been fighting in real warfare for a long time and continue to do so, but they are not as cavalier as to suggest war as a solution, I guess it has something to do with experience.

So how about re-phrasing post 119 as it wasn't understood?

 

[Mrs.Lucysnow]

what didn't make sense? what you decry as meaningless gestures are the first signs of the swing. I call reducing military aid from a country that has put boots on the ground in Israeli wars more than a meaningless gesture.

Well its meaningless like taking candy away a chocolate bar from a child who lives in a candy store. What you call a 'swing' is not a swing at all but a public gesture that can be easily overturned. A 'swing' is something significant where the majority of forces turns away from or against something and this has not happened. I mean I hope you realize that the UK helped Israel get their nuclear arsenals and continues to offer other types of military aid.

 

[pjdude1219]

I wasn't trying to paint you as anything, again you are being paranoid.

which is why you limited it to where terrorism is for the most part the resitance?

I am simply saying that I find it strange that one who advocates warfare would find it fruitless to join a resistance movement.

I don't advocate warfare. I believe in using peaceful solutions. but having looked at the Israeli/palestine conflict i think its hopelessly naive to think that their is going to be a peaceful diplomatic solution to it given the history.

I am not a pacifist. I do believe that there are times to fight, also I know a lot of men who have been fighting in real warfare for a long time but they are not as cavalier as to suggest war as a solution, I guess it has something to do with experience.

If you think i am being cavalier about war your not understanding my view. I suggest your read my posts. I'm not saying use war because its the best answer but because every other method has been tried and failed. if the political battleground changes in Israel and their willing to have real negoitations I say full on diplomacy blitz but as it stands it will require war to have peace in the area. Don't mistake my belief that war is going to happen and the only option left to try as me wanting war.

So how about re-phrasing post 119 as it wasn't understood?

I understood it your just to cowardly to admit what you trying to do. Their was no reason to limit to gaza but you specificlly choose to limit it where restiance means terrorismm

 

[pjdude1219]

Well its meaningless like taking candy away a chocolate bar from a child who lives in a candy store. What you call a 'swing' is not a swing at all but a public gesture that can be easily overturned. A 'swing' is something significant where the majority of forces turns away from or against something and this has not happened. I mean I hope you realize that the UK helped Israel get their nuclear arsenals and continues to offer other types of military aid.

If you remember what I said it was starting to swing not that it was swinging. Its still in the begining and could be reversed hence why I believe so strongly in keeping it going that direction.

 

[S.A.M.]

Europe is begining to actually put political pressure on Israel. The UK(one of those responsible for the palestinians plight) has begun to cut back on their pro Israel positions and reduce aid.

I think the most important political shift re: the Palestinian issue is that it has sharply divided the developing world from the developed and is fast becoming the issue by which western power will be challenged on all fronts. It will also become the issue over which the diaspora will split with Israel and the Lobby will break down in the US.

One of the interesting shifts I have been noticing is how united the Arab street is getting over the issue and how intimately the issue of treatment of the Palestinians has become a surrogate for the American effort to "conciliate" with the Arab world. In an era where the Arabs are better informed about current global politics than the Americans [thanks to al Jazeera in no small part] and there is a growing consensus in the developing world on the issue of hostility to American intervention, it will become an issue of strategy for Americans, for whom Arab oil and money is more economically relevant, than the haemorrhage of global credibility that is Israel.

Hence now you see Iran, Venezuela and China cooperating with each other, organisations like the Shanghai Cooperative, the Latin Americans coming together with SATO, the Turks questioning whether being in the EU is really necessary [they just banned Israel from an air show this week, that special relationship is also fraying], Jordan has made a stand on Jerusalem, the Arab League has warned Israel that they don't have unlimited time to get their act together. Libya has used its rotating presidency on the UN General Assembly to bring in the 15 member council to keep the focus on the Goldstone report and waylay US attempts to get rid of it.

And you have Avigdor Leiberman and Benjamin Netanyahu, undermining Obama, while Israelis perform on youtube, showing off what they are really made of.

We live in interesting times.

 

[Mrs.Lucysnow]

No I asked you why you didn't join a palestinian resistance group or the US military. Most of us already know the difference between a terrorist organization and a resistance movement.


There may be a peaceful solution to Israel but we don't as yet know what the future will be. A peaceful solution is possible as there are more and more Israeli's who believe that they cannot survive without a solution or settlement to the issue. This situation is not in the interest in Israel's security and more and more Israeli's understand this and as usual the best solutions to any problem is an internal one.

I'm not interested in your paranoid angst so let's just keep it out of the discussion. I mean you are trying to enlighten people right? In any case its boring to discuss how something is being discussed and we have been doing that for far too long on these boards, lets just try and deal with discussion and you can paint yourself out of it if you like. On a personal note I am not interested in you, I am not dealing with 'you'. I am dealing with the subject at hand and carrying ideas to their most logical conclusion or the exploration of those ideas. If I ask you to explain something its only because I am trying to better understand where you are coming from on the issue.

 

[Mrs.Lucysnow]

If you remember what I said it was starting to swing not that it was swinging. Its still in the begining and could be reversed hence why I believe so strongly in keeping it going that direction.

I also hope there is a shift in the right direction but it has to be a strong one not a 'show' or 'finger wagging'.

Anyway I have got to go. By the way Sam is right that a unifying of certain alienated developing countries working together is an interesting development, more so than say some token gesture on the part of the UK

 

[S.A.M.]

If you remember what I said it was starting to swing not that it was swinging. Its still in the begining and could be reversed hence why I believe so strongly in keeping it going that direction.

There is a great deal of difference between perception and reality. The perception is often a mask. The notion that Americans overwhelmingly support Israel is created by the media. Its the 9 out of 10 Zionists who debate every US issue in Congress that do it and like everywhere else represent the lobbies that purchase them. Its a mistake to think that the American people are very different from the rest of the world. Or that American policy represents the opinion of the American people.

A new WorldPublicOpinion.org poll of 18 countries finds that in 14 of them people mostly say their government should not take sides in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Just three countries favor taking the Palestinian side (Egypt, Iran, and Turkey) and one is divided (India). No country favors taking Israel's side, including the United States, where 71 percent favor taking neither side.

Yet not only is the view of "even-handedness" completely unrepresented among mainstream political figures in the U.S., it's deemed political death to go anywhere near expressing that view. Back in 2003, then-presidential-candidate Howard Dean expressed the exact position favored by an overwhelming majority of Americans, yet triggered an intense and even ugly controversy by doing so:

Dean's Israel troubles began at a Sept. 3 campaign event in Santa Fe, N.M. When it comes to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, he said that day, "It's not our place to take sides." Then, on Sept. 9, he told the Washington Post that America should be "evenhanded" in its approach to the region.

That's all Dean said. It's a view held by more than 70% of Americans. It ought to be completely uncontroversial -- if anything, it ought to be that view that is deemed a political piety. But what happened? This, according to an excellent account of that "controversy" in Salon by Michelle Goldberg:

The media and the Democratic establishment reacted as if Dean had called Yasser Arafat a man of peace. On Sept. 10, 34 Democratic members of Congress, including House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, wrote Dean an open letter. "American foreign policy has been -- and must continue to be -- based on unequivocal support for Israel's right to exist and to be free from terror . . ." they wrote. "It is unacceptable for the U.S. to be 'evenhanded' on these fundamental issues . . . This is not a time to be sending mixed messages; on the contrary, in these difficult times we must reaffirm our unyielding commitment to Israel's survival and raise our voices against all forms of terrorism and incitement."

The Israeli newspaper Ha'aretz reported that Dean had badly damaged his own campaign. "Sources in the Jewish community say that Dean has wrecked his chances of getting significant contributions from Jews . . ." the paper wrote. "Many believe Dean's statement will drive more Jews toward Lieberman and Kerry, enabling Kerry to take the lead again."

http://www.salon.com/opinion/greenwald/2008/07/20/israel/index.html

While there is an issue with how Palestinians are represented in the US, remember that too is a media issue and those Americans who travel to the West Bank or Gaza are quickly divested of their illusions.

 

[pjdude1219]

No I asked you why you didn't join a palestinian resistance group or the US military. Most of us already know the difference between a terrorist organization and a resistance movement.

and most of us understand what limiting to an area where terrorism is the norm implies.

There may be a peaceful solution to Israel but we don't as yet know what the future will be. A peaceful solution is possible as there are more and more Israeli's who believe that they cannot survive without a solution or settlement to the issue. This situation is not in the interest in Israel's security and more and more Israeli's understand this and as usual the best solutions to any problem is an internal one.

Which is why the Israeli governments have been getting more radical.

I'm not interested in your paranoid angst so let's just keep it out of the discussion.

God your whiny. if you don't like people going after your asserations about them don't make them. and there is nothing paranoid about my reaction. just because you don't want to take responsibility for what your saying don't lash out at me.

 

[S.A.M.]

Stepping back in history

A NYT article from 1919:

"Protest To Wilson Against Zionist State - Representative Jews Ask Him To Present It To The Peace Conference"

​

"as a future form of government for Palestine will undoubtedly be considered by the approaching peace conference, we, the undersigned citizens of the United States, unite in this statement, setting forth our objection to the organization of a Jewish state in Palestine as proposed by the Zionist societies in this country and Europe and to the segregation of the Jews as a nationalistic unit in any country.

At the outset, we wish to indicate our entire sympathy with the efforts of Zionists which aim to secure for Jews at present living in lands of oppression a refuge in Palestine or elsewhere, where they may freely develop their capabilities and carry on their activities as free citizens.

But we raise our voices in warning and protest against the demand of the Zionists for the reorganization of the Jews as a national unit, to whom, now or in the future, territorial sovereignty in Palestine shall be committed. This demand not only misinterprets the trend in the history of the Jews, who ceased to be a nation 2000 years ago, but involves the limitation and possible annulment of the larger claims of Jews for full citizenship and human rights in all lands in which those rights are not yet secure. For the very reason that the new era upon which the world is entering aims to establish government everywhere on principles of true democracy, we reject the Zionistic project of a "national home for the Jewish people in Palestine."

Zionism arose as a result of intolerable conditions...in Russia and Romania. But it is evident that for the Jewish population of these countries...Palestine can become no homeland...it's limited area can offer no solution. The Jewish question...can be settled only within those countries by the grant of full rights of citizenship to Jews

We are all the more opposed to the Zionists, because they, themselves, distinctly repudiate the solely ameliorative program. They demand and hail with delight the "Balfour declaration" to establish...i.e, a home not merely for Jews living in countries in which they are oppressed, but for Jews universally. No Jew, wherever he may live, can consider himself free from the implication of such a grant. The willingness of Jews interested in the welfare of their [religious] brethren...is no acceptance of the Zionist project to segregate Jews as a political unit and to re-institute a section of such a political unit in Palestine or elsewhere.

At the present juncture in the world's affairs...we rejoice in the avowed proposal of the peace congress to put into practical application the fundamental principles of democracy. That principle which asserts equal rights for all citizens of a state, irrespective of creed or ethnic descent, should be applied in such a manner as to exclude segregation of any kind, be it nationalistic or other.

Such segregation musts inevitably create differences among the sections of the population of a country. Any such plan of segregation is necessarily reactionary in its tendency, undemocratic in spirit and totally contrary to the practices of free government, especially as they are exemplified in our
Own country. We therefore strongly urge the abandonment of such a basis for the reorganization of any state.

We object to the political segregation also of those who might succeed in establishing themselves in Palestine. The proposition involves dangers which, it is manifest, have not had the serious consideration of those who are so zealous in its advocacy... To subject the Jews to the possible recurrence of such bitter and sanguinary conflicts which would be inevitable, would be a crime against the triumphs of their whole past history and against the lofty and world-embracing visions of their great prophets and leaders.

Though these grave difficulties be met, still we protest against the political segregation of the Jews, and the re-establishment in Palestine of a distinctly Jewish state as utterly opposed to the principles of democracy which it is the avowed purpose of the world's peace conference to establish.

Whether the Jews be regarded as a "race" or as a "religion" it is contrary to the democratic principles for which the world war was waged to found a nation on either or both of these bases. The glory (of the most advanced democracies in the world) lies in the freedom of conscience and worship, in the liberty of thought and custom which binds the followers of many faiths and varied civilizations in the common bonds of political union. A Jewish state involves fundamental limitations as to race and religion, else the term "Jewish" means nothing. To unite church and state, in any form, as under the old Jewish hierarchy, would be a leap backward of two thousand years.


"the rights of other creeds and races will be respected under Jewish dominance," is the assurance of Zionism. But the keynotes of democracy are neither condescension nor tolerance but justice and equality. All this applies with special force to a country like Palestine. That land is filled with associations sacred to the followers of three great religions and as a result of migrating movements of many centuries contains an extraordinary number of different ethnic groups far out of proportion to the small extent of the country itself. Such a condition points clearly to a reorganization of Palestine on the broadest possible basis.

We object to the political segregation of the Jews because it is an error to assume that the bond uniting them is of a national character. They are bound by two factors: first, the bond of common religious beliefs...and secondly, the bond of common traditions, customs and experiences, largely, alas of common trials and sufferings. [but] nothing suggests they form in any real sense a separate nationalistic unit.
​

Eerily prescient.

 

[CheskiChips]

i differentiate between willfull and unwillfull ignorance

So I don't have to pitty you anymore? Or the Palestinians, since they have media coverage now?

 

[S.A.M.]

What does your conscience tell you?

Lucky pasta! When an American senator discovered Israel bans importing pasta into the Gaza Strip, a storm broke out. And ever since, senior Israeli defense officials have included noodles on their list of permitted products. And calves, how did we forget them? That was approved by the highest levels of the Defense Ministry. After all, the bureaucrat-officers would never have dared violate the siege directives.

But notebooks, textbooks, pens and pencils - whose lack is felt by Gaza's children due to the Israeli ban on letting "luxuries" into the Strip - have no well-fed public relations agents like pasta and calves did. Do Gaza's children need to draw or do their homework?
Advertisement

All right, forget about the pens. But what about the Gazan father whose Israeli son is being barred from visiting him by Israeli generals, after not seeing each other for seven years? What about the son being barred by those who carry out the orders from bidding his dying mother farewell in Jordan, or the engaged woman being barred from going to the West Bank to marry? Clearly, the wedding is a Palestinian plot to alter the demographic balance.

http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/1120642.html

Do you support this?

 

[S.A.M.]

A rare window into what happens to the "Gandhis" in Palestine:

On September 22, Mohammad Othman was arrested and detained by Israeli soldiers on the Allenby Bridge Crossing, the border from Jordan to Palestine. He was returning from a trip to Norway, where he was advocating for Palestinian human rights.

You can follow his case here: http://freemohammadothman.wordpress.com/

A petition to free him here: http://salsa.democracyinaction.org/o/301/t/9047/campaign.jsp?campaign_KEY=27938

Some background on this young man:

Mohammad is involved with Stop the Wall, the grassroots anti-Apartheid Wall campaign and War on Want partner organisation, and has dedicated the last 10 years of his life to the defence of Palestinian human rights. His village, Jayyous, in the occupied West Bank, has lost most of its fertile agricultural land to Israel’s illegal Wall and settlements.

It is believed that Othman is the first Palestinian to be imprisoned by Israel in response to BDS advocacy activity.

Mohammad’s ability to talk passionately about the effects of Israel’s illegal Occupation, combined with his warmth and good humour, has made him a popular activist in Palestine and with internationals alike.

"I learned more from spending a day driving around the West Bank with Othman, following the land-grabbing path of the Wall, than I have from reading dozens of books. His passion for knowledge and his love of the land are astounding and contagious." Naomi Klein 25/9/2009

http://www.waronwant.org/campaigns/...action/16671-act-now-to-free-mohammad-othman-

And here he is:

He is one of approximately 10,000 Palestinians being held prisoner by Israel.

 

[CheskiChips]

What does your conscience tell you?



http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/1120642.html

Do you support this?

Yes.

A rare window into what happens to the "Gandhis" in Palestine:



You can follow his case here: http://freemohammadothman.wordpress.com/

A petition to free him here: http://salsa.democracyinaction.org/o/301/t/9047/campaign.jsp?campaign_KEY=27938

Some background on this young man:



http://www.waronwant.org/campaigns/...action/16671-act-now-to-free-mohammad-othman-

And here he is:

He is one of approximately 10,000 Palestinians being held prisoner by Israel.

Ghandi? Really? Don't you think you might be pushing it?

 

[S.A.M.]

Yes.

Then you have only to blame yourself for the inevitable consequences of what you support.

Ghandi? Really? Don't you think you might be pushing it?

Thats exactly what Gandhi did, thats exactly what happened to him. In fact, at least the British had the excuse of policemen being killed. The Israelis have none at all

Mohandas K. Gandhi emerged as the leader of India’s resistance to British colonial rule shortly after World War I. He wore the white loincloth of a Hindu holy man, led an ascetic existence, and espoused a doctrine of peaceful “non-cooperation” against the British Raj, according to The New York Times.

Gandhi was convicted in 1922 of conspiring to overthrow the government after leading a civil disobedience campaign aimed at ending British rule through such voluntary “non-cooperation” with British institutions.

His conviction came after an unruly crowd at a demonstration killed about 20 Indian policemen in the small market town of Chauri Chaura, India.

 

[CheskiChips]

Then you have only to blame yourself for the inevitable consequences of what you support.



Thats exactly what Gandhi did, thats exactly what happened to him. In fact, at least the British had the excuse of policemen being killed. The Israelis have none at all

If by support you mean "Mentally agree with" and by consequences you mean "Being granted citizenship to the only 1st world country in the Middle East" and by inevitable you mean "nothing will ever happen, and if it does and Islam was right...then I am screwed anyway for being Jewish."....Then you're right.