Imagine waking up tomorrow and learning that the United Nations has decreed that everyone living west of the Mississippi River had to move to the east of it. No one except American Indians could hold title to land in the western two thirds of the country. The farm that has been in your family since homesteading days no longer belongs to you. You have a short time to go to your new country. No one will compensate you for the property you must leave behind, so in addition to becoming landless, you have become very poor.
Now imagine that you are not one of the disenfranchised. The population of your city east of the Mississippi River has just doubled. People are everywhere, and there are not enough jobs. In fact, there is not enough of anything-not housing, not utilities, not even food. And the new people in town are pissed. They hate the people who made them move here, they do not want to be here, and you are in their way. It sounds like a bad situation, doesn't it?
You have just imagined living through the 1948 partition of Palestine. Israel has been more or less at war continuously since its creation in 1948. The United States traditionally sides with Israel in every dispute. We arm it in its struggle for survival. Generally, Americans do not hear much about the people whose land the United Nations used to create Israel. American leaders promise to support Israel. Doing so may even be a condition for election.
Israeli forces pummeled Gaza this weekend. The bombings came in retaliation for Hamas rocket attacks on Israeli towns. Those who speak on behalf of the United States support the Israeli actions. Leaders of Hezbollah and Iran side with Hamas. The only certainty is that there will be more bloodshed.
The Palestinians and the Israelis consume more international diplomatic energy than nearly any other part of the world. Their conflict has spawned terrorism all over the world, including the 9/11 attacks on the World Trade Center. Clearly, an action that has caused so much loss of life over 60 years merits reexamination.
There must be a solution that will result in peace, but it should not come from the outside world. The Israelis and Palestinians themselves need to come to the table and decide what will work. The solution they reach should supply everyone with what they need and a little of what they want. There should be no "losers" or "winners."
The world can help solve the problem by refusing to arm the combatants and forcibly disarming them. Perhaps if we reduce them to throwing rocks at each other, they will discover that there are human beings on the other side of the conflict.
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Comments: 94
I agree with you on this issue, Ann, especially this: "There must be a solution that will result in peace, but it should not come from the outside world. The Israelis and Palestinians themselves need to come to the table and decide what will work."
Let there be peace on earth.
Featured in the Triple Name Club.
Indeed, I acknowledge the probability that there are outside instigators, thus my call for isolating the parties and demanding they reach a solution that works for them.
I don't believe the USA will ever take steps to suggest disarming Israel--never mind do it forcibly...and never mind stop arming them period, for that matter. Among other reasons, that's our price for maintaining a steadfast ally in the region. Israel can kill all the innocent civilians they want, and we merely look the other way.
Partitioning rarely works when it is done by third parties. India was partitioned at around the same time as Palestine, and that hasn't been all that successful either.
I concur that the ideal solution is for the Israelis and Palestinians to genuinely agree that peace is of utmost importance, and to work this out between themselves. But first, they must establish open lines of communication between their leaders. If they continue to be unwilling to do so, international diplomatic energy to get them to the table should not be discontinued.
The whole conflict is built of the hate of the Arab nations against the Isralies. All lies. It goes back to the time of Abraham long ago. They have been fighting each other for about 3,000 years. I don't think they will stop soon regardless of what the majority of both peoples want.
The Gaza strip was given to the palestinians to create a state of their own, so what do they do, they burn down the greenhouses, destroy beautiful homes, destroy places of worship. These terror groups are teaching their children to be martyrs at an early age. like their children tv shows tell them to be a martyr when they grow up and then they will go to heaven. IS THIS NORMAL? you tell me....
FREE PALESTINE
see video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VKQqItZu4Is&feature=related
We should forcibly disarm everyone over there, and force them to come to a table and talk.
They should not leave until a resolution is made.
This war is just ridiculous. Compromise is always the best solution.
I am Jewish and fundimentaly believe in the riights of my people to have a home. The world has not yet proved we can assimilate without bigotry and hatred.
That aside, I also believe that the world could offer better solutions. Perhaps some of the adjoining Arab nations might contribute to this by giving up a piece of their lands and then help the refugees to recover. I am sure an agreement could be reached with Israel giving as well as the Arabs. If only the other countries did not have their own agendas.
Unfortuantely, there are those who use both countries to spread their particualr kinds of hatred.
Thank you for broaching this painful topic of this relentless back and forth death and destruction. The fighting in that region of the world goes back to the early days of the bible, so it is not just because of misplaced Palestinians. But imagine being an Israeli or an Arab whose loved one - child, sibling, parent, neighbor, relative - was murdered in one of these wars. How easy would it be for you to just be able to forgive? That requires a higher state of consciousness.
I remember a few years ago when (I believe it was a young schoolgirl) was murdered in Amish country in Pennsylvania. The Amish people invited the family of the murderer and offered their forgiveness. That is not easy to accomplish with the Arabic code of honorable behavior and their belief that they are doing it to praise Allah!, and the Israeli sense of pride and justice and perhaps self-righteousness.
Rick, that is not only completely untrue, it would be completely impossible for any country to allow "every Arab in the world" to live and work there. It is possible for non-citizens, especially of the highly educated kind, to get work permits in Israel, but that's true for most countries. That's hardly "every Arab in the world", but also not what I'm talking about. I'm talking about the Palestinians (since we have to call the something) in the occupied territories, who have no right to live in Israel even if their spouse is an Israeli citizen.
None of that means that Israel isn't fighting for its existence in a situation in which a majority of Palestinians continue to refuse recognize its right to exist. It's just that simplifications and a denial of the wrongs done to the Palestinian people is not helpful if a solution is to be found.
The current situation has escalated so far beyond the initial establishment of an Israelli homeland, that it is hard to remember what is at state anymore, or who the legitimate stakeholders are. Outside influences provide fighters, diplomats, arms, and money in ways that perpetuate much in this crisis.
Rick, what is the name of Israeli law that allows Jewish people from anywhere in the world to move to Israel and become citizens? :-)
If this is at the heart of things, then also include the forced migrations of Jews who lived in the Muslims countries or Iran, Iraq, Palestine, Syria, Egypt, Libia, Morrocco, Tunisia, and other who were frightened into leaving these countries by having their leading citizens taken and hung in public places while their house and property were confiscated.
What do you think would have happened if the Jews had lived in refugee camps outside Iran for 60 years firing rockets at Iranians ... do you think they would even exist still?
One interesting quote I have heard recently is - why are the Jews the only people in the world who have to live up to the Christian ideal? That is, turn the other cheek forever, and to such corrupt and unjust societies as the Muslims.
You do not have to pay much attenttion to find contradictions and absurdities in the stories supporting Arab atrocities, or claims of victimhood.
This is so ridiculous, I do not understand who would stand up for what goes on in the Islamic countries unless they are just our and out jew hating nazis??
Why wouldn't Israel allow Jews from anywhere in the world to take refuge, such as it is, there? Are you suggesting that is somehow wrong?
What about the neighboring Muslims states who keep the Palestinians, hungry, ignorant, armed and miserable and aim them at Israel?
What about the law of humanity and the law of common sense?
The current attack is in retaliation for HUNDREDS of rockets flying into Israel in the last week or so. And this doesn't even discount the hundreds of rockets sent prior.
I've been in a loose discussion with an ignorant palestinian youth, who just loves to call the jews a VIRUS that needs to be destroyed. That is a mentality all over the middle east.
Where the heck have half of you been? And the Arabs only controlled that area after the takeover by the Ottoman Empire.
If you are interested, here's a link to my conversation with this young "gentleman"... and I use that term very loosely.
http://forum.esnips.com/posts/list/3453.page
I'd be redundant to repeat myself or copy and paste my thoughts to this young man, who holds nothing but HATE in his heart.
Ann... I'm really surprised at you. You appear to be more on the Palestinians side of things. I thought differently of you, from your writings here. If I'm mistaken, I offer my apology here.
Rick. You've well stated your case.
I, too, have done much reading on this subject and tried to decide who is right or wrong. I have to stand with the one above, who asks why aren't the rest of the Arab countries doing something for their own "brethren".
Bottom line... if I were living in Israel, I'd be looking to wipe palestine off the map. I am not Jewish, but the website I link to above, is Jewish owned. And there, they allow their enemy to post hate on their profile pages. Check out the profile page of the young man I was in discussion with.
Not only he is there, posting his Nazi-like bullshit, there are many others. And remember... the Muslims joined Hitler during WW2, to aid in ridding the world of Jews. All you have to do is a little searching and you will find the truth.
Refusing to help provide arms to Israel
means there won't be any Israel to provide arms to............
The reason this is going nowhere is because that is where the countries in the area want it to go, for whatever reasons. What do they care, the can generate sympathetic pictures of blown up kids, because there are kids blown up. To ignorant Americans and biased Muslims the image of a kid blown up is much more emotional and sympathetic than the reason Israelis are harming civilians. We rarely see images of rockets flying over Israel or the damage these rockets do to Israelis, who are randomly targeted civilians. Israel would not be hurting anyone but Hamas if only they could. Why doesn't Hamas give them the opportunity, why doesn't Hamas share some blame here?
Why is it necessary for the government of the Palestininians to take the position that they must destroy Israel, and never recognize them as a country, or stop fighting them? Is such a government really ready for statehood. Giving the Palestinians a separate state is not working and will not work.
The whiners complain that Israel cuts off their water or their electricty, or does not educate them ... there are several of the most fabulously rich countries right next door to the Palestinians who have done nothing to solve any of these problems. The Saudis who have so much cash that they are building fish and flower farms in the middle of the desert cannot help the Palestinians, but they spend millions on producing TV shows for the Muslim hordes blaming the Jews in High Definition color.
It has been common to blame the British and the Americans for trying to bring about orders that are negative to the Muslims. The fact is that this all starts about 1929 when the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem to be started the first pogram against the Jews and has continued ever since, that is terrorism, the kind of terrorism that is the norm in the area, the kind of terrorism that is the norm in these countries that want to call themselves Islamic.
Ever since the elected Haj Amin Al Hussayni as the Grand Mufti, a man who was born into a family of political assassins and who never earned the right to call himself a Muslim cleric because he never finished his studies, but took up terrorism and assassination with his place in his family, and spent his life trying to bring Nazism to the Middle East, the trajectory of the Islamic Middle East has been set and predictable.
It will continue like this until some outside force break it apart, as happened to Nazism in Germnay and Emperor worship in Japan. I am not saying this to be hateful or bloodthirsty, I am merely stating what is the obvious truth of the matter of a very rich, powerful and resource rich area that the rest of the world is dependent on and that is so expertly totalitarian and terroristic that left on its own it would and could continue forever, and might well expand to Europe and the US. The system itself is brilliant, in the sense of any successful organism that can sustain and reproduce itself.
These people in the main part are ignorant and manipulated, but they have the money to buy and learn the highest forms of knowledge and technology on the planet today.
The world has so much great stuff, and so many ways people can work together constructively, the problems are the leaders of all of our countries are so entrenched in the corruption that exists in the world they have lost sight of anything else.
I'd like to take all the people that work in all the governments of the world and dump them in the middle of the Palestinians so we can see how great they all are at solving problems and generating ideas ... meanwhile maybe the rest of the world could take a few steps in the future.
Sorry to rant.
There is no smirk involved, Bruce. You jumped from this:
You do not have to pay much attenttion to find contradictions and absurdities in the stories supporting Arab atrocities, or claims of victimhood.
To this:
This is so ridiculous, I do not understand who would stand up for what goes on in the Islamic countries unless they are just our and out jew hating nazis??
I meant to ask how you got from someone mentioning injustices done to Palestinians (even if you don't think they're real) to the same person supporting the many injustices that occur in Muslim countries (and then straight to the Nazi charge). I'd tell you that I'm hardly an apologist for any religious state, let alone the kind where women are second-class citizens and where apostasy is punishable by death, and that I have said so before on this site. But it's probably pointless, since in your mind, if I have an ounce of sympathy for the Palestinians, I must think the Muslims are all right and the Jews are all wrong. No, I'm not smirking at all. I don't think it's funny--I think it's quite sad, actually.
Why wouldn't Israel allow Jews from anywhere in the world to take refuge, such as it is, there? Are you suggesting that is somehow wrong?
No, I'm not suggesting it's wrong. It's what makes Israel Israel. My point, which should be obvious from the quote it's responding to, is that this law is called the Law of Return. Rick, in a comment he has since removed, suggested that talking about the Palestinian "Right of Return" is ridiculous, since Israel didn't exist when those Palestinians left their villages now in the territory of Israel. Do I need to specifically point out the irony?
What about the neighboring Muslims states who keep the Palestinians, hungry, ignorant, armed and miserable and aim them at Israel?
Sorry about the cliché, but as you no doubt know, two wrongs don't make a right. And if, as you stated, Muslim countries are all messed up, it's somewhat disingenuous to then pretend you expect them to solve the situation.
What about the law of humanity and the law of common sense?
That's a bit vague and could probably just as easily be appealed to by the other side.
All I meant to say here is that if there's going to be a solution, it will come from both sides admitting the concerns and grievances of the other. If you think Palestinians will just go away, absorbed into Arab countries, it should be obvious by now that this is not going to happen. It should be just as obvious to Palestinians that Israel is not going anywhere. Denying that people on both sides have suffered enormously, pretending that one side is committing all the atrocities and the other does all the suffering is--sorry about the cliché again--part of the problem, not the solution.
Seems to me that working to strengthen the United Nations and getting everyone to the table to hammer out solutions that are fair and equitable for everyone is the ONLY way thru this.
Since we're in such a giving mood...what say we all cram into the Island of Manhattan and give the rest of America back to the Native Americans?
"How easy it is to snap off the history of the Palestinians, to delete the narrative of their tragedy, to avoid a grotesque irony about Gaza which – in any other conflict – journalists would be writing about in their first reports: that the original, legal owners of the Israeli land on which Hamas rockets are detonating live in Gaza.
That is why Gaza exists: because the Palestinians who lived in Ashkelon and the fields around it – Askalaan in Arabic – were dispossessed from their lands in 1948 when Israel was created and ended up on the beaches of Gaza. They – or their children and grandchildren and great-grandchildren – are among the one and a half million Palestinian refugees crammed into the cesspool of Gaza, 80 per cent of whose families once lived in what is now Israel. This, historically, is the real story: most of the people of Gaza don't come from Gaza.
But watching the news shows, you'd think that history began yesterday, that a bunch of bearded anti-Semitic Islamist lunatics suddenly popped up in the slums of Gaza – a rubbish dump of destitute people of no origin – and began firing missiles into peace-loving, democratic Israel, only to meet with the righteous vengeance of the Israeli air force. The fact that the five sisters killed in Jabalya camp had grandparents who came from the very land whose more recent owners have now bombed them to death simply does not appear in the story.
Both Yitzhak Rabin and Shimon Peres said back in the 1990s that they wished Gaza would just go away, drop into the sea, and you can see why. The existence of Gaza is a permanent reminder of those hundreds of thousands of Palestinians who lost their homes to Israel, who fled or were driven out through fear or Israeli ethnic cleansing 60 years ago, when tidal waves of refugees had washed over Europe in the aftermath of the Second World War and when a bunch of Arabs kicked out of their property didn't worry the world.
Well, the world should worry now. Crammed into the most overpopulated few square miles in the whole world are a dispossessed people who have been living in refuse and sewage and, for the past six months, in hunger and darkness, and who have been sanctioned by us, the West. Gaza was always an insurrectionary place. It took two years for Ariel Sharon's bloody "pacification", starting in 1971, to be completed, and Gaza is not going to be tamed now."
http://www.independent.co.uk/opinion/commentators/fisk/robert-fisk-why-bombing-ashkelon-is-the-most-tragic-irony-1216228.html
I would be happy to read anyone's suggestion for how to achieve that without changing the nature of our money. You might visit the border between India and Pakistan or Northern Ireland for some clues.
I don't buy it.
Israel kids signing bombs
That picture makes it all look like a hate tit for a tat between the two sides. It isn't playing out like that at all. Will we even know the real story behind that picture? Or will it all play into ABC CBS type quick journalism that favors the Muslims because the pictures always make one look more pathetic than the other.
I would hope that the first step is disarmament of both sides, but I doubt that will happen. If I put myself in the Palentinians' place, I would probably be brought to armed revolt as well. They are starving, have over 75% unemployment, and have gone through a democratic election. Who are WE to tell them that we don't like who they elected?
I am so tired of the false hubris of Israel-lovers. It has nothing to do with being anti-semite. It has everything to do with calling an invader an invader and murderer.
This makes me sick. We were just discussing this very topic this morning while watching the news.
The neighbor isn't EVER going away no matter how many rockets are fired, so all they're doing is making things worse for themselves with that neighbor, again (they used to go over and blow up a lot of stuff in person until that was stopped - and they're still crying now about not being able to do that).
When a Palestinians spends any time with a Westerner they are informed on, told on to whatever their local government structure is. If they say anything that is critical of the Palestinian government or positive about the Israelis they can be accused of collaboration. If this happens they put their life their family's life at risk and many have been publicly tortured and murdered for it.
The nature of a totalitarian state is that innocents are ground up into the machine so that they are used militarily to the greatest extent they can be.
The ugly way out of this is to do what needs to be done, whatever the immediate damage,and then make sure that such a system is obliterated and never has the opportunity to enslave their people again.
Clinton said that Arafat "just wasted his time" (time he would have rather put into North Korea, at that time). It seemed Arafat was just game playing.
Hamas now just seems to be blowing things up as if that's supposed to make anything better. What kind of government is that "for the people"? It uses its own people as shields, just so it can cry that Israel is "murdering" them when Israel finally retaliates, knowing the counter attacks can never be perfectly targeted. They know they can always put Israel in that lose/lose position (it seems to always work).
Good luck Hillary.
Israel provides a lot of welfare for Palestine (even now with the war going on Israel sends aid), and Israel is a huge source of jobs. How does firing lots of rockets at Israel help that at all?
ps.,Hamas was a democratically elected group...so they have every right toexsist..unlike Isreal.
Israel as a state does have a right to exist, but it didn't and doesn't have the right to roll over Palesinian lands or people to do so. It's like me walking up to the door of the house I grew up in and saying "My dad built this house; it belongs to me! Get out!" , and expecting the current occupants not to protest.
Regardless of US sympathy for and support of Israel, the Palestinians have just as much right to peacefully exist. Israel is not totally innocent in their relationship with their neighbors. Palestine would do well to muzzle and extinguish Hamas, both for Israel's peace of mind and for their own good. But I'm skeptical that it will happen.
CITIZEN M., Even though you also called them all a new Hitler I think it was YOUR comment that was Nazi sounding (Jews = sick animals).
This is the type of thing that turns people against Israel, no matter what their claim of 'self-defense' is. Everyone in this apartment building was killed, all because there was one family living there that Israel suspected of cooperating with terrorists. Is this what civilized western nations do? Just like Bush...in retaliation for 9/11, we demolish an entire country...hundreds of thousands dead, maimed, turned into refugees, without electricity, clean water, work. How far is too far when it comes to retaliation? When does the retaliator become worse than the original perpetrator? Is this what people call 'justice'?
And if one of those Hamas bombs had hit a school and killed Israeli children (how did they know it wouldn't) would you be anti-Hamas ???
Give Hamas enough of their bombs shooting off like they are and they're bound to hit something, sometime.
Posted on Dec 15, 2008
By Chris Hedges
"Israel’s siege of Gaza, largely unseen by the outside world because of Jerusalem’s refusal to allow humanitarian aid workers, reporters and photographers access to Gaza, rivals the most egregious crimes carried out at the height of apartheid by the South African regime. It comes close to the horrors visited on Sarajevo by the Bosnian Serbs. It has disturbing echoes of the Nazi ghettos of Lodz and Warsaw.
“This is a stain on what is left of Israeli morality,” I was told by Richard N. Veits, the former U.S. ambassador to Jordan who led a delegation from the U.S. Council for the National Interest Foundation to Gaza to meet Hamas leaders this past summer. “I am almost breathless discussing this subject. It is so myopic. Washington, of course, is a handmaiden to all this. The Israeli manipulation of a population in this manner is comparable to some of the crimes that took place against civilian populations fifty years ago.”
The U.N. special rapporteur for human rights in the occupied Palestinian territory, former Princeton University law professor Richard Falk, calls what Israel is doing to the 1.5 million Palestinians in Gaza “a crime against humanity.” Falk, who is Jewish, has condemned the collective punishment of the Palestinians in Gaza as “a flagrant and massive violation of international humanitarian law as laid down in Article 33 of the Fourth Geneva Convention.” He has asked for “the International Criminal Court to investigate the situation, and determine whether the Israeli civilian leaders and military commanders responsible for the Gaza siege should be indicted and prosecuted for violations of international criminal law.”
Falk, while condemning the rocket attacks by the militant group Hamas, which he points out are also criminal violations of international law, goes on to say that “such Palestinian behavior does not legalize Israel’s imposition of a collective punishment of a life- and health-threatening character on the people of Gaza, and should not distract the U.N. or international society from discharging their fundamental moral and legal duty to render protection to the Palestinian people.”
“It is an unfolding humanitarian catastrophe that each day poses the entire 1.5 million Gazans to an unspeakable ordeal, to a struggle to survive in terms of their health,” Falk said when I reached him by phone in California shortly before he left for Israel. “This is an increasingly precarious condition. A recent study reports that 46 percent of all Gazan children suffer from acute anemia. There are reports that the sonic booms associated with Israeli overflights have caused widespread deafness, especially among children. Gazan children need thousands of hearing aids. Malnutrition is extremely high in a number of different dimensions and affects 75 percent of Gazans. There are widespread mental disorders, especially among young people without the will to live. Over 50 percent of Gazan children under the age of 12 have been found to have no will to live.”
Gaza now spends 12 hours a day without power, which can be a death sentence to the severely ill in hospitals. There are few drugs and little medicine, including no cancer or cystic fibrosis medication. Hospitals have generators but often lack fuel. Medical equipment, including one of Gaza’s three CT scanners, has been destroyed by power surges and fluctuations. Medical staff cannot control the temperature of incubators for newborns. And Israel has revoked most exit visas, meaning some of those who need specialized care, including cancer patients and those in need of kidney dialysis, have died. Of the 230 Gazans estimated to have died last year because they were denied proper medical care, several spent their final hours at Israeli crossing points where they were refused entry into Israel. The statistics gathered on children—half of Gaza’s population is under the age of 17—are increasingly grim. About 45 percent of children in Gaza have iron deficiency from a lack of fruit and vegetables, and 18 percent have stunted growth.
“It is macabre,” Falk said. “I don’t know of anything that exactly fits this situation. People have been referring to the Warsaw ghetto as the nearest analog in modern times.”
“There is no structure of an occupation that endured for decades and involved this kind of oppressive circumstances,” the rapporteur added. “The magnitude, the deliberateness, the violations of international humanitarian law, the impact on the health, lives and survival and the overall conditions warrant the characterization of a crime against humanity. This occupation is the direct intention by the Israeli military and civilian authorities. They are responsible and should be held accountable.”
The point of this Israeli siege, ostensibly, is to break Hamas, the radical Islamic group that was elected to power in 2007. But Hamas has repeatedly proposed long-term truces with Israel and offered to negotiate a permanent truce. During the last cease-fire, established through Egyptian intermediaries in July, Hamas upheld the truce although Israel refused to ease the blockade. It was Israel that, on Nov. 4, initiated an armed attack that violated the truce and killed six Palestinians. It was only then that Hamas resumed firing rockets at Israel. Palestinians have launched more than 200 rockets on Israel since the latest round of violence began. There have been no Israeli casualties.
“This is a crime of survival,” Falk said of the rocket attacks. “Israel has put the Gazans in a set of circumstances where they either have to accept whatever is imposed on them or resist in any way available to them. That is a horrible dilemma to impose upon a people. This does not alleviate the Palestinians, and Gazans in particular, for accountability for doing these acts involving rocket fire, but it also imposes some responsibility on Israel for creating these circumstances.”
Israel seeks to break the will of the Palestinians to resist. The Israeli government has demonstrated little interest in diplomacy or a peaceful solution. The rapid expansion of Jewish settlements on the West Bank is an effort to thwart the possibility of a two-state solution by gobbling up vast tracts of Palestinian real estate."
http://files.tikkun.org/current/article.php/20081217020456284
I totally blame Hamas for any Palestinian deaths this war.
Hamas has certainly made things horribly worse, now, for its own people. How can it expect otherwise? How can you shoot all those bombs off for all that time to a country armed to the teeth like Israel and not expect something bad to happen in return ??? !!!
"The SS Dignity, the chartered ship the Free Gaza Movement has repeatedly used to deliver humanitarian aid to the Gaza Strip is no stranger to Israeli threats. Still, despite being condemned as “provocateurs” by an Israeli government that has threatened the use of force against the ship, the Dignity has always managed to find its way to the strip safely and without incident. Until today.
The latest voyage, laden with three and a half tons of medical aid at a time when Gaza hospitals are running dangerously short on them, ran afoul of an Israeli naval patrol boat in international waters. One of the ships passengers, 2008 US Presidential candidate Cynthia McKinney, reports the ship was rammed three times by the Israelis. Others report shots were fired at the Dignity, though this has not been confirmed.
After the attack, the Dignity’s captain was radioed by the Israelis, who accused the ship of “being involved in terrorist activity.” The ship began to take on water; passengers were ordered to put on life vests and the lifeboats were readied, but the ship managed to reach the Lebanese port city of Tyre safely."
http://news.antiwar.com/2008/12/30/israeli-navy-attacks-gaza-bound-aid-ship/
The Gaza progrom continues to the cheers of the bloodthirsty.
You just can't start wars and have a nice life. They don't go together.
(I bet her husband will have a lot of good advice)
"THE murderous military campaign which has been unleashed by Israel has provoked people across the world to demonstrate, rally and protest in their hundreds of thousands.
Soon the movement will turn into millions as more ordinary, decent citizens of the world show their disgust at the barbarism of Israel ... and the cowardly silence of our own leaders.
This is no longer a political issue, or a Middle East issue. It is a case of what is right and what is wrong, and what is decent and what is inhumane.
And ordinary people are now taking the initiative because they can no longer rely on their political leaders to show any of the human qualities demanded of them including strength, integrity or compassion.
British people, normally reserved and controlled, brought anarchy to the streets of upscale Kensington yesterday as they stormed barracades and pushed past police to head towards the Israeli Embassy in London.
There was more anarchy in Scotland as our friends over the Border vented their spleen over the war crimes and massacre carried out by Israel.
And unless British Prime Minister Gordon Brown gets some lead in his pencil, the anarchy will continue."
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article21569.htm
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article15693.htm
Something that really tells a story is what one of the first things the Palestinians did on response to the attack on Hamas. They went to the local jails where their police where holding anyone that they thought might be a collaborator or spy for Israel and shot them dead, publically and without trial.
I have been totally SICKENED reading all the anti Jewish propaganda here. Goes to prove that the longer one tells a lie, the more they believe it to be true.
Bottom line, from what I've read above.
1. The Jewish people are from MARS. They never held land anywhere on THIS planet.
2. Many of you agree with the "so-called" palestinians...... Jews are a VIRUS.
So... let's end it all by saying that yup...duh... Isrealites are a Virus so we need to spray it all down with some huge can of insecticide and make the land available to a bunch of chickenshit terrorists, who hide among their own people, KNOWING that their hatred and destruction, will bring retaliation in the only way possible. KNOWING that they can suck up on the weak emotions of people, who discount the fact that the Jews even belong on Earth!
I'm done with this thread. The stupidity, the ignorance and the hatred for a people I love, is just too much for anyone with a lick of sense in their head, to have to continue reading.
This whole topic has turned into nothing but a deceitful propaganda page, for anti Jewish people. Anything of truth, considering what the terrorist groups PLO and Hamas have done, is completely ignored and twisted to make it sound like they are purely innocent victims of a VIRUS that needs destroyed.
I can't even feel sorry for many of you, who wish to dwell with nothing but hate for the Jews. You are as evil as Hitler was. I can fully understand why Rick removed his posts. This is just sick.
Have a nice life, dwelling in your cesspool of hate and ignorance. Gleefully go forward with your hate and hasten the Bible's prophesy. When the Isreal falls, we all fall.
G'nite.
I just wanted to say I am finally going through what is now under 7,400 pieces of gather new mail that is in my inbox on here. So with that in mind I have finally come to a piece of mail that was addressed to me in regards this article submission you have created to share with the gather community. Thank you for taking the time and sharing your piece with us here at gather. :o)
And as well Merry Christmas... and Happy Holidays... :o)
"A four-month ceasefire between Israel and Palestinian militants in Gaza was in jeopardy today after Israeli troops killed six Hamas gunmen in a raid into the territory.
Hamas responded by firing a wave of rockets into southern Israel, although no one was injured. The violence represented the most serious break in a ceasefire agreed in mid-June, yet both sides suggested they wanted to return to atmosphere of calm.
Israeli troops crossed into the Gaza Strip late last night near the town of Deir al-Balah."
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2008/nov/05/israelandthepalestinians
As usual, you are wrong, again.
Oh...I believe there are 4 Israeli dead in all of 2008.
"... instead of offering unquestioning support of Israel's latest military venture in the decades-long conflict, four major Jewish organizations are calling for an immediate end to the bombings, and for humanitarian aid in the Gaza Strip.
One of the groups, Americans for Peace Now, the sister organization of the Israel-based Peace Now, called for "the government of Israel to end its military operation in the Gaza Strip and to act toward achieving a cease-fire."
And Brit Tzedek v'Shalom, the Jewish Alliance for Justice and Peace, called on the outgoing Bush administration "to initiate an international effort aimed at negotiating an immediate cease-fire."
These strong statements, along with ones from J Street (the political arm of the pro-Israel, pro-peace movement) and the Israel Policy Forum (IPF), are in sharp contrast to many of the more hawkish traditional pro-Israel groups, who make no mention of a cessation of armed hostilities. The confident assertions from the four groups are a relatively new sort of campaign.
"You see a voice that is increasingly clear and has a significant resonance in the American Jewish community, and beyond the Jewish community, that takes a position, stakes it grounds, and won't be intimidated," said Daniel Levy, a former Israeli negotiator and the director of New America Foundation's Middle East Task Force, one of the four groups.
"This is an important position to be taking," he told IPS. "It's moving the ball forward on redefining the parameters of the debate on what it means to be responsibly and thoughtfully – rather than reflexively – pro-Israel."
The move by the groups is in many ways the culmination of a public relations effort of its own that seeks to establish a strong pro-peace, pro-Israeli voice that is not afraid to depart from the line of the Israeli government.
The groups are expressing a position that they, too, appreciate and support Israel and believe in its right to defend itself, just like their counterparts in the traditional, more powerful, so-called pro-Israel groups.
But Jeremy Ben-Ami, the executive director of J Street, says that the issue does not lie in a right to self-defense – a given – but whether an operation like the attacks on Gaza will even work.
"While … air strikes by Israeli Defense Forces in Gaza can be understood and even justified in the wake of recent rocket attacks," according to Ben-Ami, "we believe that real friends of Israel recognize that escalating the conflict will prove counterproductive, igniting further anger in the region and damaging long-term prospects for peace and stability."
J Street echoed its director's statement with a press release declaring that the recent massive escalation was "pushing the long-running Israeli-Palestinian conflict further down a path of never-ending violence."
Therein lays the crux of these groups' assertions. While many of the other Jewish groups have been at best lukewarm on the peace process and the two-state solution, the peace groups see them as essential to the continued existence of the Jewish state.
By encouraging steps that they see as contributing to peace between Israel and her Arab neighbors, including the Palestinians, they contend they are helping Israel in the long run.
Levy said that the groups are essentially saying "We love Israel too, but it doesn't do us or Israel any good to be the mouthpiece for the talking points of the Israeli foreign ministry."
Levy also pointed to the peace groups' statements as an indication of a U.S. Jewish perspective, rather than a strictly Israeli one."
http://www.antiwar.com/ips/gharib.php?articleid=13980
Those who feel called need to begin asking for healing dreams and visions, and to meditate on the results and act where action is called for: do ceremony, hold talking circles, make giveaway items filled with love, etc. Everyone can help. Grow peace gardens filled with prayers which can emanate healing energy and affect the whole planet for the better.
Indeed, since 1948 Jews took the Palestinian houses which where located within the border of the new State but never offered any compensation for them to the contrary of what was expected. The then Hagana organization took this as its duty and the Hagana, nowadays would be normally classified among terrorist organizations,
Chris ~ I really must find a way to use the line you have in your comment - "Throw two scorpions in a bottle and ask them to have a nice day." ~ Chris
How original a response to something that can never be resolved. I take it that is your stance.
Going back up to read more . . .
I never tried to say that there were any innocent parties in this situation. Indeed, there are none. The fact is that the Palestinians ended up with half as much or less land than shown in the partition map with this post. Few Americans consider the question from the side of the dispossessed, because we are so used to hearing about how Israel is fighting for its survival.
I see only three ways for this to play out: (1) maintain the status quo, with outside parties supplying arms and possibly being sucked into World War III (if we haven't done that already); (2) back off, and allow the Israelis and Palestinians to duke it out without outside interference, after they have exhausted their supply of weapons, which include nukes; or (3) forcibly disarm them and leave them to sort this out for themselves. I don't see another way. Anyone who does, please enlighten the rest of us.
Pax vobiscum (which means peace be with you)
Ann