On New Year’s Eve in a very foggy Central Park in Davis, nearly 100 residents gathered for a peace vigil. The precipitating event was the recent bombing and killing of civilians in Gaza but members of the community deplored the violence and killing of innocent life on both sides of the tragic Middle East struggle.
As we once again begin a new year, it is helpful to use this moment to reflect on the struggle for peace across the world. Once again, I am reminded of the U2 song, “New Year’s Day.” “All is quiet on New Year’s Day… A world in white gets underway… I want to be with you, be with you night and day… Nothing changes on New Year’s Day… Under a blood-red sky… A crowd has gathered in black and white… Arms entwined, the chosen few… The newspaper says, says… Say it’s true, it’s true…”The war continues on New Year’s Day, and the dawning of the new day and the new year does not change the reality.
It has been over 18 years since I visited Israel as a high school student. One of the events I remember most clearly was several of my friends and classmates who had gone to a beach in Tel Aviv and a pipe bomb had gone off and killed a high school student from Canada that some of them had actually gone to meet. I remember the devastating look on the faces of my classmates, but what I remember most was reading the description of it in the newspaper the next day. When the bomb went off all of the Arabs on the beach grabbed their children and ran for their own safety. Several Jewish youths took off after them, caught up with some of them, and beat them. These were innocent people, the perpetrators were long since gone, but it mattered none. These people were just as much victims as the Israeli targets.
In the ensuing years we have had false promises of peace followed by false promises of peace, but nothing has really changed over that time. The Israelis have superior weaponry and have used that weaponry to rain down on the people of Gaza, many of them just as innocent as the people on the beach that day. They just happen to be there.
The result of these events is inevitably to slow the violence for a brief time as the inhabitants of Gaza lick their wounds. But it also helps to breed the next generation of hate and the next generation of terrorists who remember the bombs raining down on their cities and refugee camps, but do not remember or even care about the precipitating events. The cycle repeats. Violence begets violence. It is a never ending cycle unless we choose to break out of it.
Last night people made references to politics. I want to make a few political comments as well. The Clinton administration took a very hands on approach to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. The result was that the peace process was pushed forward probably past the point where the two sides actually were. The result were treaties that lacked popular support.
The Bush Administration came in and like they with many Clinton policies, they tried to gain separation and over-corrected what they saw as a failed policy. They have taken a completely hands off approach. The result is that we have seen several major escalations in the conflict. Israel a few summers ago embarked on a very damaging but ultimately unsuccessful war against Hezbollah in Southern Lebanon. And now this. The Bush administration has continued with tacit approval for Israeli conduct, but has rarely tried to involve itself.
The last eight years we have not seen progress toward a real solution. Obama needs to take a much more proactive role than Bush did. But he needs to do it in real ways that do not push the diplomatic process ahead of where the populace of both nations are.
It is a tricky issue and one that will likely not be resolved anytime soon.
As a Jew, I am a strong supporter of the State of Israel as the reclaimed homeland of the Jewish people where we can be safe and always have a place to go. In so doing, we must recognize however, that a nation of people inhabited that land for generations following Jewish flight out of the region during the Roman Empire. They have just as legitimate a claim to the land of the Jewish people and they have been prisoners and refugees for decades since the State of Israel was founded.
I deplore violence particularly that against civilians. Both sides have been guilty of that. And both sides must work together in the coming year toward a realistic and lasting peaceful reconciliation.
Israeli Prime Minister Golda Meir said during the peace process in 1978 with Anwar Sadat of Egypt: “We can forgive you for killing our sons. But we will never forgive you for making us kill yours.”
Both sides must come together in forgiveness this New Year and recognize that the killing by both sides must stop.
—David M. Greenwald reporting
Where was this so-called peace vigil when Hamas was firing rockets into Israeli towns? That went on for weeks before Israel responded. Only when Israel defended itself from this organization which is dedicated to the murder of all Jews in Israel was a …peace vigil… held. I am not buying the lie that this group believes in peace. They believe in hating Israel. They are committed anti-Zionists and thus committed anti-Semites. If you think, no, they only reacted when the escalation of violence occurred, only when hundreds of people were being killed, then ask why they were not holding a …peace vigil… for Congo, where tens of thousands are being killed? The answer is they don't care about peace. They hate Israel and cover their hatred with fake …peace… activities. At the very best, they pretend that this war is equal at fault both with Hamas and Israel despite the fact that Israel agreed to a two-state plan proposed by Clinton. The fake peace lovers never fault the mission of Hamas: to destroy Israel. Hamas is popular among Palestinians. They were elected into office. The Palestinians declared in that election they want to destroy Israel. So this war is not equal. It can never end until Hamas is unpopular among the Palestinians and the Palestinians decide they no longer want to destroy Israel. The choice is entirely on the Arab side. If they want peace, they have to reject Hamas.
…Economics are not going to force this because unlike in South Africa it is fear and insecurity that is driving the politics rather than greed and power….Actually, it is much the same. The Israeli …Settlement Enterprise… in the occupied West Bank has been the engine of economic and political power in Israel for the past 40 years. The …fear and insecurity… mantra is used(Iraq,war on terrorism) to justify aggression and occupation; the occupying power then calls for peace and the cessation of active resistance to their occupation. Negotiations with the occupied but,of course,with those the occupier chooses and on the occupier's terms .
…Where was this so-called peace vigil when Hamas was firing rockets into Israeli towns? …Probably the same place that most peace vigils are when killing occurs in small numbers rather than by the hundreds or thousands.
…The Israeli …Settlement Enterprise… in the occupied West Bank has been the engine of economic and political power in Israel for the past 40 years….That's not true in the least. The West Bank is a drain on Israel's otherwise vibrant economy. This is what the World Factbook reports:Israel has a technologically advanced market economy with substantial, though diminishing, government participation. It depends on imports of crude oil, grains, raw materials, and military equipment. Despite limited natural resources, Israel has intensively developed its agricultural and industrial sectors over the past 20 years. Israel imports substantial quantities of grain but is largely self-sufficient in other agricultural products. Cut diamonds, high-technology equipment, and agricultural products (fruits and vegetables) are the leading exports. Israel usually posts sizable trade deficits, which are covered by large transfer payments from abroad and by foreign loans. Roughly half of the government's external debt is owed to the US, its major source of economic and military aid. Israel's GDP, after contracting slightly in 2001 and 2002 due to the Palestinian conflict and troubles in the high-technology sector, has grown by about 5% per year since 2003. The economy grew an estimated 5.4% in 2007, the fastest pace since 2000. The government's prudent fiscal policy and structural reforms over the past few years have helped to induce strong foreign investment, tax revenues, and private consumption, setting the economy on a solid growth path.
Why does the United States have to do anything in this conflict or the entire Palestinian / Israeli mess. We have made untold attempts to broker some kind of deal in that area with only minimal success. Usually we come out of the whole thing with a bloody nose and US flags being burned and violent marches in the streets. The UN does nothing but sit around and wring its hands while this and other disgusting things happen around the world in the Congo, Darfur, Myanmar, and others.We may be considered the only Super Power in the world now (I don
…The Israeli …Settlement Enterprise… in the occupied West Bank has been the engine of economic and political power in Israel for the past 40 years….That's not true in the least….I will certainly accept the minor correction, AN engine of economic power instead of THE engine. As to being a critical engine of political power during the past 40 years, there can be no question. As to the economic value of the West Bank occupation, note that Israelis are alloted 10X the yearly amount of West Bank water when compared to the amount of water that Palestinian are allowed.In this part of the world, water is like gold.
For close to 60 years, the state of israel has struggled fruitlessly to gain legitimacy among its Arab neighbors.
……israel can have no
Boy, you picked a polarizing topic today!Thanks for offering a thoughtful perspective, David.
israel, by definition, is an illegitimate state, for its very foundation demands one group of people forfeit their right to exist in order for israel to realize its so-called
The better point I think is that there are diversity of viewpoints within the peace movement as exemplified by this thread. Interesting that you seized on exactly one viewpoint.
DPD's commentary is far too even-handed by failing to link to a founding fact of the Arab-Israeli conflict since 1947. The UN/UK/US collectively created/accepted a partition plan for the de-colonializing area. The Israeli state accepted the compromise. Arab residents of the area and arab states nearby rejected the UN plan; the rejectionist states tried to impose a military alternative to the UN compromise. THEY LOST THE WAR and didn't admit it, and didn't sign any treaty. Same results pertained in 1967, with the same Arab unwillingness to accept real-world outcomes. The Arab populations live in a fantasy land alternative-reality universe. What is needed is a compromise land-sharing treaty accepted by Arab states and Arab populations. My own personal preference and prediction is that there will be a …two Arab state… solution: Jordan federates/unites with the West Bank and Egypt federates/unites with Gaza. Who else fails to accept the reality that they …lost…? California legislature Republicans are the palestinian rejectionists of our state. The US Senate Republicans are in the same mode. Theirs is a policy of NO COMPROMISE, and continued denial that the other party is a majority and has won the right to enact taxation and spending programs that reflect majority will. If you win the just war or you win the election, you get to implement your programs. Or so it seems to Dennis
What is …Hamas…? Is it an acronym? What does it stand for. Seems like it should be Hamas Provisional Government or something. Just saying …Hamas… sounds too casual and familiar.
Make that …What does it stand for?…
Hamas (
…Hamas' charter calls for the destruction of the State of Israel and its replacement with a Palestinian Islamic state……The Hamas …charter… not withstanding, the Hamas leadership both in the Gaza Strip and without has officially offered Israel an indefinite cessation of all forms of attack within the 1967 territorial borders of Israel on condition that Israel withdraw to its 1967 borders, cease attacks on Gaza, the West Bank and its Palestinian inhabitants, jointly share Jerusalem and …address… the right of return of Palestinian refugees. Israel has chosen to reject this offer and instead has instituted a program of relentless economic strangulation on the Gaza Strip in the hope that Gazans will reject their democratically elected Hamas government. Much to Israel's frustration,like carbon under extreme heat and pressure, …putting Gazans on a diet…, as Isreali politicians cynically refer to this strangulation plan has, resulted in a diamond-hard Palestinian resistance to their occupation.
Anonymous 6:03 pm:I assume you're referring to the Arab Peace Plan. It has been endorsed by some prominent Israelis, including Shimon Peres and Foreign Minister Livni. When it was first proposed Israeli leadership was lukewarm but didn't reject it out of hand.I don't know if the Hamas leadership in Gaza has explicitly endorsed it, but Abbas of the PA has. Informal advisers to Obama, including Zbigniew Brzezinski and Brent Scowcroft, have urged him to pursue the principles of the Arab Peace Plan as a priority. The sticking points seem to be the return of Palestinian refugees, and Israeli objections to returning some settlements. Israeli public opinion is mixed but a near majority at least supports the principles. Likud, however, is adamantly against any …land for peace… plan, so if they prevail in the February elections there will be no progress. Nevertheless, the fact the significant leaders in Israel and the PA, and throughout the Arab world, are converging on a plan that is also implicitly supported by the incoming US president is somewhat promising.
the Hamas leadership both in the Gaza Strip and without has officially offered Israel an indefinite cessation of all forms of attack within the 1967 territorial borders of Israel on condition that Israel withdraw to its 1967 borders.That is way too late and now irrelevant and unworkable. 1967 was 42 years ago!!! and too much has changed to make that feasible. 90% of Palestinians are under 35. Your pro-Hamas plan is like Mexico saying in 1898, …Okay, we will stop sending our terrorists into Texas and California to murder your innocents if you will agree to go back to the 1846 borders, which we think were fine, even though we lost the war….The only peace agreement which will work will be one where the Palestinian people agree to live in peace with Israel in a two-state solution in which Israel stays a Jewish homeland and controls all of the non-Muslim parts of Jerusalem. Nothing else works. That was the Clinton Plan. Israel agreed. The Palestinians rejected it.Terrorism is a failure. They have been trying terrorism for 61 years, all the while the Jews have built a nice country with a high tech economy and a vibrant democracy.The Palestinians can have all of Gaza and all of the West Bank except those parts which are right near the green line and are majority Jewish. The Jewish settlers in the inner-West Bank have to leave, same as all the settlers in Gaza left. If that is still too little land for the Palestinians, then Egypt and Jordan will have to cede some territory for them. As far as resettlement goes, that's up to the Arabs. If they want to move back to the Palestinian controlled lands, then they should. But it makes no sense for Arabs who left Israel 3-4 generations ago to move to a country which they have been tryiing to destroy for 62 years and where they are therefore not welcome.
Israel has chosen to reject this offer and instead has instituted a program of relentless economic strangulation on the Gaza Strip in the hope that Gazans will reject their democratically elected Hamas government.Your argument does not hold water. Hamas was elected a year after Israel left the Gaza Strip. During that period, Israel had no …strangulation… on Gaza. Goods were flowing the whole time. Egypt had an open border with the Palestinian Authority during that period, too. Israel got nothing good in reward for handing over Gaza to complete Palestinian rule. The Palestinians then voted into power Hamas with the intent of destroying the Jews in Israel. No wonder, then, that Israel (and Egypt) responded by cutting off aid to the Hamas Islamic state, where women have been gang-raped by …police officers… of the religous force if they don't have their faces covered in public. Great people, your good friends, Hamas.
Incidentally, if you would like to know what nice guys these Hamas terrorists are, read this blog by Muslim writers about how Hamas and other like-minded groups treat Muslim women. It's shocking to see what the …peace groups… in Europe and the U.S. support for the Palestinian women.
Great people, your good friends, Hamas. Or are they just powerless people filled with anger and distrust?
Here is more discussion on the Tikkun website :http://www.religiondispatches.org/archive/rdpulpit/919/rdpulpit:_israel_in_gaza:_right_but_not_smart/
From Reuters News today:Israel pressed on relentlessly with more than 30 air strikes, one of which killed three Palestinian children aged between eight and 12 as they played on a street near the town of Khan Yunis in the south of the Strip. One was decapitated….These injuries are not survivable injuries,… said Madth Gilbert, a Norwegian doctor at Gaza's Shifa hospital who could not save another boy who had both feet blown off. …This is a murder. This is a child,… he said.
…one of which killed three Palestinian children….That's the line from the …peace vigil… crowd — the Jews are out to kill civilians. Intent doesn't matter. Here's a common sense reply from Victor Davis Hansen:Every Hamas unguided rocket is launched in hopes of hitting an Israeli home and killing men, women and children. Every guided Israeli air-launched missile is targeted at Hamas operatives, who deliberately work in the closest vicinity to women and children. Killing Palestinian civilians is incidental to Israeli military operations and proves counterproductive to its objectives. Blowing up Israeli non-combatants is the aim of Hamas' barrages: the more children, aged and women who die, the more it expects political concessions from Tel Aviv. By this logic, the 1999 American bombing of Belgrade — aimed at stopping the genocide of Slobodan Milosevic — was, because of collateral damage, the moral equivalent of the carefully planned Serbian massacres of Muslim civilians at Srebrenica in 1995.
You conspiracy theory whackos aren't doing your job. I haven't seen any postings that Israel is shooting rockets into their own territory as an excuse to bomb innocent woman and children. You can do better.
This conflict will not be resolved within my lifetime – maybe 500 years, but no where near 50 years. Each action by one side leads to a overreaction by the other side. This is a worldwide issue and Davis should focus on what it can do at a local level. Several years ago a Davis resident (graduated from DHS and was in his first year at UCD) thought it would be macho to steal the Israeli flag and leave a note denouncing Israel. The student happened to be of Palestinian ancestry (I think) and the event happened immediately after the UCD Middle East advocacy center was suddenly shut down because it was too pro Arab. The University felt that the center was too one sided. However, closing the facility resulted in anger by some students and I assume the flag theft had something to do with that.The Davis Police labeled the incident a hate crime and then the Davis mayor and the UCD Chancellor overreacted in openly denouncing the incident before the facts could be gathered. The court threw out the bias charge, but the promotion of the incident led to a Davis person (a hateful person in my opinion) to turn the student's name over to Homeland Security. The kid paid for stealing the flag (which was returned), but thanks to the overreaction by the …leaders… of Davis the kid was EXPELLED from the country. His family lives in Davis but he can not.Did the Davis reaction to the flag theft contribute toward better understanding and perhaps peace in the Middle East? The answer is no – it just bred more resentment. Davis should be ashamed of itself – at least that is my view. If Davis can not figure out how to react to a flag theft then how does anyone expect the people in the Middle East to resolve their much larger issues?
I agree with most of what you said, but asking the President-elect to do this is not the solution. The problem has to be raised and resolved by people living in Israel, Lebanon, Iraq, Egypt, and the surrounding area. The problem is that there are religious groups on all sides that do not want peace. Obama cannot do anything to solve this crisis without local, popular support and there aren’t enough people there who want peace. I don’t want US troops sent to separate the different ethnic groups. This leaves voluntary separation or continued war?
Certainly was not a call for US military involvement. However, I do think the US has to play a much stronger role diplomatically.
…I deplore violence particularly that against civilians. Both sides have been guilty of that. And both sides must work together in the coming year toward a realistic and lasting peaceful reconciliation….I think that Israel has concluded that the leadership of Hamas will not renounce violence or control the actions of the militants in Gaza. So they are taking out the leadership and security apparatus of Hamas. Usually Israel’s military actions have very specific short-term goals. My guess is they will have achieved their aims and be out of Gaze by the time Obama is inaugurated.Israel can work with the Palestine Authority….It has been over 18 years…but nothing has really changed over that time….Actually, there have been huge changes in the relations between Israel and Palestinians in that time. A structure is in place and Palestinian self-determination is possible. But Israel will not tolerate continued bombardment of their population from within the borders of the Palestinian territories.
This Israeli attack on Gaza, one month before Israeli general elections, was launched by the current Kadima/Labor government because Israeli public opinion polls suggested that the far-right Likud party was favored to win. The main reason why there has been no progress in resolving this conflict is because the majority of the Israeli electorate DOES NOT support leaving the West Bank and DOES support crushing Palestinian resistance to occupation with brutal force. The solution is to impose international sanctions, boycotts and divestment on Israel. When the Israeli electorate, much like the racist South African government electorate of the past, feel the economic and cultural pain of being international pariahs, only then will the political climate in Israel change.SUPPORT ECONOMIC SANCTIONS, CULTURAL AND ECONOMIC BOYCOTTS AND DIVESTMENT.
I don’t agree anonymous. You’ve oversimplified the situation. One reason that the majority feels that way is that they have been victims of frequent terror attacks and there is no responsible leadership in Gaza or the West Bank to reign in the terror forces that target civilians. Economics are not going to force this because unlike in South Africa it is fear and insecurity that is driving the politics rather than greed and power.
DPD: The failure of Clinton’s attempt to broker a deal with then- Isaeli PM Barak and Arafat was because Barak had been politically abandoned when he agreed to come to Washington to negotiate with Arafat. The Knesset had politically disowned him upon his departure,declaring that any agreement that he made was not binding; no other Israeli politician would accompany him and the polling of the Israeli electorate showed that Barak along with his government would be kicked out in the upcoming Israeli elections. This political climate in Israel has continued unabated now for 40 years.
Anonymous 11:25: …You conspiracy theory whackos aren’t doing your job. I haven’t seen any postings that Israel is shooting rockets into their own territory as an excuse to bomb innocent woman and children. You can do better….LOL. Good point!Here is a conspiracy theory: Hamas wants to kill as many Israeli civilians as possible, while also causing Israel to kill as many Palestinian civilians as possible. The reason: Historically, Liberal Jewish sympathizers that control the global media use the death-propaganda (stories, pictures and video) to help shame conservative Jews while also making big money from their sale. Islamic terrorists previoulsy got a stage for their blood-thirsty ways, liberal Jews got rich selling death-propoganda while also continually shaming their political opposition. A win-win partnership!Now we have the Internet and the liberal Jewish media establishment finds its profit model in disarray. Lucky for the Palestinians, the American liberal establishment has taken up the mantel to shame conservative Jews as a byproduct resulting from their need to shame Bush
From the British newspaper, Independent, today:…More than 400 Gazans have been killed and some 1,700 have been wounded in the Israeli campaign, Gaza health officials said. The number of combatants and civilians killed is unclear, but Hamas has said around half of the dead are members of its security forces and the UN has said more than 60 are civilians, 34 of them children. …The UN count of 60 civilians, 34 of them children is acknowledged by the UN to be the absolute minimum as it is a count of only women and children dead.
http://www.democracynow.org/2008/12/30/harold_pinter_1930_2008_on_arthttp://www.democracynow.org/2008/12/31/harold_pinter_1930_2008_part_2Harold Pinter, upon his recently receiving the Nobel Prize, spoke from a wheelchair(he died after a long struggle with esophgeal cancer in Dec. 2008). His observations are pertinent to this discussion.
…Liberal Jewish sympathizers that control the global media…This is copied right out of Hitler’s propaganda sheet.
Henry Ford, the industrial genius who perfected the mass production of motorcars before World War I and thereby revolutionized the way we live, was a reclusive man who brooked no opposition or criticism. Ford
Anon 2:37 PM…Ford passed a copy of the Protocols to Cameron and the Independent turned its attention to bringing this …blueprint… for world destruction to the public….Perhaps you googled Independent and came up with the Dearborn Independent which has nothing to do with the British daily, The Independent.
…This is copied right out of Hitler’s propaganda sheet….Not quite, and nobody this side of this conspiracy theory is bent on extermination of the Jews. That is fully in the court of Hamas and other Muslim extremists.I think the Hitler association, in general, is overused. It is a tired, old and emotive
Godwin’s Law has been around for a while.
Iran’s president has been quoted as wanting to …wipe Israel off the map…,repeated ad nauseum by the Western media for years now. It was known from its first utterance that the correct translation of his Farsi was not to kill all Israeli Jews but rather that history would eventually remove the Zionist Israeli regime. Similarly, Hamas is in conflict with Israeli policies that spring from expansionist exlusionist(racist?)Zionist ideology;I can recall no official Hamas declaration calling for the death of all Israeli Jews.A post-Zionist Israeli narrative is imperative if Israel is to survive and prosper as a small Middle Eastern nation. What this post-Zionist national narrative will be is the underlying psychological and political struggle in Israel, not unlike the white South African national narrative that had to be abandoned with the fall of Apartheid.
…A post-Zionist Israeli narrative is imperative if Israel is to survive and prosper as a small Middle Eastern nation….There is no Israel without Zionism. Therefore, there can be no …post-Zionist Israel…. If you wipe out Israel, you destroy the heart of the Jewish people and imperil their survival.It’s strange that the comparison is made with Apartheid South Africa. Here is the reality. Israel is a multi-racial and multi-ethnic predominantly Jewish state. It is a full democracy in which all citizens vote in open elections. Arabs hold about 20% of the seats in the Knesset and make up about 20% of the Israeli population.In South Africa, whites made up 17% of the population at the end of the Apartheid era. (Whites were about 40% before the end of WWII.) While South Africa is also multi-racial and multi-ethnic, the vast majority was excluded from voting and from parliamentary representation.While Israel is an integrated society, where Arabs are not excluded from any social institutions, schools, beaches, hospitals and so on, every social institution and public accommodation which the white minority used in South Africa was restricted or prohibited for blacks and people of mixed race.In Israel, Arabs have complete civil rights, voting rights, free speech rights, worship rights, rights to assembly, rights to legal representation in court, rights to sit on juries, and rights to testify in court. In South Africa, blacks had none of these rights. By national law, Israel spends the same per capita on Arab students’ education as it spends on Jewish students’ educations, including paying for the religious education of Muslims in Muslim schools.Interestingly, if you consider the Arab majority countries, you will notice that most of them have laws which are quite similar to Apartheid, where certain minorities or even majorities are legally discriminated against and the people lack basic civil rights. Yet the anti-Zionists …peace activists… never compare Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Syria, Libya, Jordan and so on to Apartheid South Africa. Do you wonder why they don’t? I do.Take Jordan, one of the few Arab countries which has made peace with Israel. Jordan is considered a …nice country… when compared with Libya or Algeria or Syria. In Jordan, self-described …Palestinians… make up 75% of the population. They have no free speech rights. Many, including the majority born in that country, are not permitted to vote in parliamentary elections (they have elections, but the unelected King has all the power). Most Palestinians cannot serve on juries in Jordan and cannot sue in Jordanian civil courts for redress. Have you ever heard the Peace Vigil folks compare Jordan to South Africa?Keep in mind: Jordan is about the nicest place in the Arab world. Lebanon has forced Palestinians for 62 years to live in tightly regimented refugee camps. 97% of Palestinians in Lebanon were born there, yet none have any of the rights of citizens. Apartheid?Or take Saudi Arabia, Syria, Libya and Algeria: Do you think Arabs in those countries have civil rights? You think it would be better to be an Israeli Arab who has freedom? Or a Syrian Arab, a Sunni Muslim majority country ruled by a small unpopular minority group which has historically murdered Sunni religious leaders and others on the basis of their religion?No one intelligent would ever compare Israel to Apartheid. The only people who make this claim are anti-Semites, motivated by their hatred of Jews.
…There is no Israel without Zionism. Therefore, there can be no …post-Zionist Israel…. If you wipe out Israel, you destroy the heart of the Jewish people and imperil their survival.You do not have to read any further than the above quote from anon. 6:49 PM’s post to recognize the intractability and intellectual rigidity of Zionist ideology.
…The only people who make this claim are anti-Semites, motivated by their hatred of Jews….Nobel laureate Rev. Desmond Tutu, our own President Jimmy Carter(probably the most ethically moral person to be US president in our lifetime, many adult Israelis who oppose the Occupation and a growing current Israeli High School student anti-war movement, refusing to join the IDF aggression/occupation and suffering imprisonment… all are obviously …anti-Semites motivated by hatred of Jews….
…Israeli High School student anti-war movement…These folks are not anti-Zionists. You are. And therefore you are an anti-Semite.If you would feel so strongly about denyinig the Finn’s aspirations to have a national homeland in Finnland, then I might change my mind about your bias. But you don’t care about Finnland. Your hatred of one people’s national aspiration to a homeland is limited to your hatred of the Jewish people.That’s your right, Adolf. Go on hating all you want.
Anon 10:31The Zionism of the first half of the 20th century called for a homeland in what was then Palestine(not necessarily a Jewish State that guarantees Jewish domination and control). POLITICAL Zionism which is territorially expansionist and institutionally structured to hold the indigenous population in 2nd class status is the Zionism of the latter half of the 20th century.
The Zionism of the first half of the 20th century called for a homeland in what was then Palestine(not necessarily a Jewish State that guarantees Jewish domination and control).Israel has Jewish domination in the same way Spain has Catholic domination. Most people in Israel are Jews. Non-Jews in Israel have full civil rights and rights to worship as they see fit (not true of course in Spain historically).The United Nations mandate for Israel gave the Jews, who were a majority in 1948 in Israel, only a small portion of British Palestine.The Arabs roundly rejected the UN’s two-state solution in ’48, as they always have. But if they had agreed in 1948, there would have always been a Jewish state and an Arab state with a Muslim majority.Arab rejectionism has always been the problem. When they stop rejecting Israel, there will be two states living in peace.POLITICAL Zionism which is territorially expansionist and institutionally structured to hold the indigenous population in 2nd class status is the Zionism of the latter half of the 20th century.Indigenous? The Arabs invaded Israel thousands of years after the Jews were there.The only expansion of Israeli territory came in the wake of the Arabs attacking the Jews in 1967.Since 1967, the Israelis have given back the Sinai, which they won from Egypt after Egypt invaded. Israel vacated all of Gaza, only to be constantly bombed from that place ever since. Israel has also given back control of almost all of the West Bank, which is run by the Palestinian Authority. Prior to the Six Day War, the West Bank was controlled by Jordan. Under Jordan, Palestinians had no autonomy and no civil rights.Israel continues to control the Golan Heights, won from Syria in 1967. But Israel has said they will give back Golan in exchange for peace. Syria has never wanted peace. As soon as the Palestinians want peace, they can have a country of their own in Gaza and most of the West Bank plus East Jerusalem, which is the Clinton Plan.Good night, Adolf.
…The United Nations mandate for Israel gave the Jews, who were a majority in 1948 in Israel, only a small portion of British Palestine….This is IN FACT historically NOT TRUE. Jews were a numerical minority in British mandate Palestine in 1948. In the past few decades, a handful of courageous imppecably qualified ISRAELI academic scholars have documented that the leadership, headed by Ben-Gurion, instituted a plan to dramatically reduce the Arab population to further the political Zionist agenda of a Greater Israel, politically and demographically dominated by the Jews .. hence El Nakba. (translation-the catastrophe)The first step in understanding the history of this complex tragic conflict is to seek sound historical information rather than relying on the narrative presented to us in the movie …Exodus….
More of Dennnis’s view on the blog’s Arab/Israeli topic:Anonymous 8:59am urges us to have some historical knowledge and perspective. One of my essential tropes is to remember what was the common practice of ethnic cleansing around 1948 when …the catastrophe… happened as Arabs moved out of the territory bounded by the UN to be Israel’s share of the shared Palestine Mandate.Now, 60+ years after the great population movements of 1940 to 1948, how many would argue that the following ethnic cleansings of that era could/should be reversed? Can 10m+ South Asian Hindus move back to their homelands in Pakistan and Bangladesh? Can 3m+ Germans move back to their ancestral lands in now-Slavic Eastern Europe? Can 1m+ Jews move back to Arab/Islalmic countries? The Arab villagers who fled when it looked like Israel would win (the 1948 war to retain the lands awarded them by the UN) knew what the world’s accepted standards were for ethnic cleansing during that day. Arab villagers and Arab urbanites alike in the territories of 1948 Israel had a well-known 30+ year record of terrorizing and oppressing the Jewish settlers who had legally purchased land in …Palestine… from mostly-Islamic or Christian Arab) land owners. The Palestinians who fled were correct to be thinking that …pay-back time… had arrived and that the world expected and accepted ethnic cleansing of this kind …where justified by historical context. You reap what you sow, and the fleeing Palestinians knew well of their past deeds.
Robert Fisk: Why do they hate the West so much, we will askThe Independent, Wednesday, 7 January 2009So once again, Israel has opened the gates of hell to the Palestinians. Forty civilian refugees dead in a United Nations school, three more in another. Not bad for a night’s work in Gaza by the army that believes in …purity of arms…. But why should we be surprised?Have we forgotten the 17,500 dead
I don’t care why Arabs hate us. If all the muslim and islamic nuts could get hold of a nuclear bomb they would, without hesitation, drop it on us, without regard for women and children. The islamic and muslim nuts are evil people. They set up their own people for death and injury without hesitation. They should all be dealt with accordingly.