BS: Arafat: Terrorize your enemy.

Subject: BS: Arafat: Terrorize your enemy.
From: GUEST,C-Watch
Date: 15 May 04 - 01:15 PM

Yasser Arafat went on Palestinian television today and told Palestinians to "find what strength you have to terrorize your enemy and the enemy of God."

I guess that means we can expect another round of homicidal suicide bombers acting on God's authority and with Arafat's now explicit encouragement.

Subject: RE: BS: Arafat: Terrorize your enemy.
From: S O P
Date: 15 May 04 - 01:50 PM

Arafat is a nasty piece of work as well as being corrupt. I think the Israelis are worried that if they tried to truly replace him somebody just as nasty but more effective would take over.

Subject: RE: BS: Arafat: Terrorize your enemy.
From: McGrath of Harlow
Date: 15 May 04 - 02:05 PM

somebody just as nasty but more effective Like Sharon?

Subject: RE: BS: Arafat: Terrorize your enemy.
From: akenaton
Date: 15 May 04 - 02:13 PM

Yes McGrath ..Were lucky to have you ,to keep your eye on the nasties and make sure there is fair balance in these threads...Ake

Subject: RE: BS: Arafat: Terrorize your enemy.
From: GUEST,C-Watch
Date: 15 May 04 - 02:22 PM

Yes, it's very important that the subject be changed lest Arafat's own words reveal the terrorist that he is.

Subject: RE: BS: Arafat: Terrorize your enemy.
From: CarolC
Date: 15 May 04 - 02:23 PM

lol McGrath. Just as nasty and far more effective.

In a speech broadcast live on Palestinian television, Arafat repeatedly called on his people to be steadfast in their struggle against Israeli occupation.

He ended the speech with a quote from the Koran. "Find what strength you have to terrorise your enemy and the enemy of God," he said.

The phrase in the Koran refers to Muslims' wars against pagans.

It is followed by a phrase saying: "If they want peace, then let's have peace."

http://news.scotsman.com/latest.cfm?id=2929878

Subject: RE: BS: Arafat: Terrorize your enemy.
From: Peace
Date: 15 May 04 - 02:26 PM

Arafat's a horse's ass
There isn't much to tell 'im,
That couldn't be encapsuled in
A tiny parabellum.

Subject: RE: BS: Arafat: Terrorize your enemy.
From: Peace
Date: 15 May 04 - 02:35 PM

It seems he loves to quote Koran
And turn it to his uses,
No doubt he'll kill some children now
And blame them for abuses.

Subject: RE: BS: Arafat: Terrorize your enemy.
From: Peace
Date: 15 May 04 - 02:37 PM

There are three hundred million things
His followers should question,
But innocents will pay the price
Of moral indigestion.

Subject: RE: BS: Arafat: Terrorize your enemy.
From: GUEST
Date: 15 May 04 - 02:39 PM

You're talking about Bush now, right?

Subject: RE: BS: Arafat: Terrorize your enemy.
From: Peace
Date: 15 May 04 - 02:41 PM

And idiots will heed his talk
And listen to their bosses,
And Arafat will live his life
While others count the losses.

Subject: RE: BS: Arafat: Terrorize your enemy.
From: Peace
Date: 15 May 04 - 02:43 PM

In truth I see no differece GUEST,
Between the folks you mention,
The Devil pulls the strings my friend
And killers pay attention.

Subject: RE: BS: Arafat: Terrorize your enemy.
From: dianavan
Date: 15 May 04 - 02:44 PM

...and Bush is after the non-Christians in his 'Crusade'

Everyone thinks they are good and God is on their side. I guess there is more than one God after all.

Only the Goddess can protect us from the evil Gods of Islam, Christianity and Judaism.

Subject: RE: BS: Arafat: Terrorize your enemy.
From: Peace
Date: 15 May 04 - 02:50 PM

I know the mouths will have their say
But after they have said it,
I don't think God would be pleased, see,
He doesn't need the credit.

Subject: RE: BS: Arafat: Terrorize your enemy.
From: Little Hawk
Date: 15 May 04 - 02:50 PM

One of the objectives of all wars is to terrorize the "enemy" (whoever that may be) into surrendering or coming to terms (whatever those may be).

It's the least intelligent way possible of dealing with other human beings, but it provides the arms industry with a living and the military with a reason to exist.

Arafat is temporary. The issues which spawned Arafat are more lasting and will most probably outlive him. I could say the same of Bush and Sharon.

Subject: RE: BS: Arafat: Terrorize your enemy.
From: Peace
Date: 15 May 04 - 02:56 PM

And Little Hawk has spoken well,
As always I would say;
Please let me know when peace breaks out,
That's it from me today.

Subject: RE: BS: Arafat: Terrorize your enemy.
From: pdq
Date: 15 May 04 - 03:00 PM

Sorry, Little Hawk, but Yasir Arafat was actually there BEFORE the issues he now espouses. A leader needs a cause as much as a cause needs a leader.

Subject: RE: BS: Arafat: Terrorize your enemy.
From: McGrath of Harlow
Date: 15 May 04 - 03:07 PM

Yasir Arafat was actually there BEFORE the issues he now espouses.

You mean when he was born in what is now Israel, there weren't any Palestinian refugees? True enough.

Subject: RE: BS: Arafat: Terrorize your enemy.
From: Little Hawk
Date: 15 May 04 - 03:11 PM

Interesting point, pdq. I think you're quite right about that. A leader does need a cause.

Subject: RE: BS: Arafat: Terrorize your enemy.
From: GUEST,C-Watch
Date: 15 May 04 - 03:25 PM

You mean when he was born in what is now Israel, there weren't any Palestinian refugees? True enough.

As his birth certificate shows, Arafat was born in Cairo, Egypt. Only revisionist anti-Israel propagandists now give any shrift to his revisionist claim of being born in Jerusalem.

He also attended Cairo University from 1952-1956 and then served in the Egyptian Army during the Suez conflict.

It was only well after the founding of Fatah, circa 1960, when he already into his 30s, that Arafat began claiming to have been born in Jerusalem.

Encyclopedia bio of Arafat.

Subject: RE: BS: Arafat: Terrorize your enemy.
From: beardedbruce
Date: 15 May 04 - 03:33 PM

Hey, GUEST C-Watch, STOP that!!! The facts have no place in any discussion of this sort!

Subject: RE: BS: Arafat: Terrorize your enemy.
From: CarolC
Date: 15 May 04 - 03:40 PM

Here's a better source for the quote. It's short, so I'm including the whole thing:

"RAMALLAH, West Bank - Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat today called on his people to ``terrorize your enemy'' as he bitterly marked the 56-year anniversary of Israel's establishment, but also signaled that he is ready for peace.

In a speech broadcast live on Palestinian television, Arafat repeatedly called on his people to be steadfast in their struggle against Israeli occupation.

He ended the speech with a quote from the Quran.

``Find what strength you have to terrorize your enemy and the enemy of God,'' he said. ``And if they want peace, then let's have peace.'' (emphasis mine)

Arafat, whom Israel accuses of supporting militant groups, did not appear to be calling for new attacks on Israel. The passage in the Quran refers to the early Muslims' wars against pagans and is frequently invoked by Islamic leaders today to encourage strength in times of conflict.

Arafat spoke as Palestinians marked what they refer to as the ``catastrophe'' of Israel's independence on May 15, 1948."

http://www.startribune.com/stories/484/4778123.html

Subject: RE: BS: Arafat: Terrorize your enemy.
From: CarolC
Date: 15 May 04 - 03:45 PM

Facts indeed beardedbruce. Interesting how GUEST, C-watch left out the other important part of the quote (the part where he says "And if they want peace, then let's have peace."). Selective use of facts is a very effective way to foment hatred.

Subject: RE: BS: Arafat: Terrorize your enemy.
From: GUEST,C-Watch
Date: 15 May 04 - 04:01 PM

Perhaps it's because Arfart's "if they want peace, then let's have peace," are empty words in comparison to "find what strength you have to terrorize your enemy and the enemy of God."

If Arafat wanted peace, if he gave a shit about his people, he would have stopped the terrorism long ago. Instead, he has his PA administration provide financial rewards to the families of homicidal suicide bombers while his own family is safe in Paris living in the lap of luxury on the $300 million (at last count) that he has stolen from his people.

In another thread today, CarolC, wrote: Muslims don't believe that Christians and Jews are infidels. They call Christians and Jews "People of the Book" and consider them to be their spiritual brethren.

Clearly, Arafat is calling Israelis, in other words, Jews, "enemies of God." I guess Arafat was absent from CarolC's Mudcat class on Islamic belief systems.

Subject: RE: BS: Arafat: Terrorize your enemy.
From: beardedbruce
Date: 15 May 04 - 04:04 PM

I would like to place the following statements in the thread. To the best of my knowledge, they are true facts. If anyone has actual evidence that any are inaccurate, PLEASE let me know, with appropriate references.

1.There was a moderate sized Jewish community in the Middle East prior to the turn of the last century, under the Ottoman Empire.

2. During the period of the British Mandate (1921? To 1948) Jews, Muslims, and Christians lived in the area.

3. At the time of the formation of the state of Israel, the area was partitioned into Israel and Transjordan.

4. The Israeli government invited the non-Jewish population to stay and participate in the state of Israel.

5. The Grand Mufti of Jerusalem Ordered the Muslim population to flee, temporarily, while the Arab League armies destroyed the Jews. They were then promised the lands they held before, plus the lands of the Jews.

6. Approximately 640,000 Muslims fled the area that was in conflict, by their own choice. A number did not, and they and their families still reside in Israel, as citizens.

7. Approximately 820,000 Jews throughout the Arab world were forced out of their homes, having possessions and property confiscated. No significant number of Jews was allowed to remain in any of the Arab countries.

8. At the end of the 1948 conflict, the Arab League gave the West Bank area of Palestine to Jordan, and procceded to remove or eliminate all Jewish inhabitants of that region.

9. No Arab nation allowed the "Palestinian" refugees to settle as citizens: The state of Israel welcomed all of the displaced Jews, and did not remove any non-Jew from the region.

10. During the period that Jordan had control of the West Bank, there was NO effort to settle any of the Muslim refugees there, or anywhere else.

As an aside, I grew up near a family of Palestinian Christians. They had fled (from the AL armies) from the town of Ramullah, a mainly Christian town. They talked about their Jewish neighbors, but did not remember any large number of Muslims living there.

Subject: RE: BS: Arafat: Terrorize your enemy.
From: GUEST,C-Watch
Date: 15 May 04 - 04:13 PM

beardedbruce,

The historucal facts you present are essentially true.

Subject: RE: BS: Arafat: Terrorize your enemy.
From: beardedbruce
Date: 15 May 04 - 04:15 PM

CarolC:

I am sure that you can help us celebrate "Peace in our Time"


Unfortunately, I would like for it to be one agreed to by BOTH sides, not one where the side more willing to kill innocent civilians claims victory over the dead bodies of their enemies.

There is a major difference between what the English version of Arafat's speeches and the Arabic ones.

And regardless of his "statements" to the contrary, I SAW on tv the demonstrations of joy and approval in the Palestinian areas on Sept 11. These people are not our friends.

Subject: RE: BS: Arafat: Terrorize your enemy.
From: CarolC
Date: 15 May 04 - 04:43 PM

beardedbruce, your "facts" are pretty much all over the map with regard to their accuracy. Some are accurate, and many are propaganda that has been proven false over the years, mostly as a result of the declassification of a lot of historical documents that had been held by the government of Israel up until a few years ago. The Palestinians are not our enemies. They just want the occupation to end. Re: what your neighbor said. Prior to the establishment of the state of Israel, a Palestinian was anyone who was from the place called Palestine. There were Christian, Jewish, and Muslim Palestinians, many of whose ancestors had been living there for more than a thousand years. Now there are mostly just Christian and Muslim Palestinians (many of whose ancestors have been living there for more than a thousand years).

GUEST, C-watch, Arafat did stop terrorism coming from his own organization, the PLO, for two years after the signing of the Oslo accords, and before the government of Israel instigated the second intifada when Israeli forces fired their guns upon demonstrators armed only with stones and shoes, killing several and wounding many.

Arafat is calling the occupiers of the Palestinian Occupied Territories enemies of God, but I don't see him anywhere calling Jews enemies of God. The fact that the occupiers are Jewish does not in any way indicate that Arafat would generalize his statement to include all Jews. That's pure speculation on your part.

Subject: RE: BS: Arafat: Terrorize your enemy.
From: CarolC
Date: 15 May 04 - 04:47 PM

BTW, beardedbruce, the fact that there have been many times more Palestinian non-combatants killed (including children), by an order of about three to one, than Israeli Jewish non-combatants, would indicate one of two things... either the Israelis are targeting Palestinian non-combatants, or they're terrible shots. So either they need to stop targeting Palestinian non-combatants, or they need to get some target practice.

Subject: RE: BS: Arafat: Terrorize your enemy.
From: beardedbruce
Date: 15 May 04 - 05:04 PM

CarolC:

"your "facts" are pretty much all over the map with regard to their accuracy. Some are accurate, and many are propaganda that has been proven false over the years, mostly as a result of the declassification of a lot of historical documents that had been held by the government of Israel up until a few years ago. "

PLEASE GIVE SOME SPECIFUIC INFORMATION THAT CAN BE VERIFIED!

"The Palestinians are not our enemies. They just want the occupation to end. "

ANYONE THAT CELEBRATES THE KILLING OF CIVILIANS JUST BECAUSE THEY ARE IN A GIVEN LOCATION , BECAUSE THAT LOCATION IS IN MY COUNTRY, IS MY ENEMY!

"Re: what your neighbor said. Prior to the establishment of the state of Israel, a Palestinian was anyone who was from the place called Palestine. There were Christian, Jewish, and Muslim Palestinians, many of whose ancestors had been living there for more than a thousand years. Now there are mostly just Christian and Muslim Palestinians (many of whose ancestors have been living there for more than a thousand years)."

AND WHY IS THAT???????????????????? See #7 of my list.


"the fact that there have been many times more Palestinian non-combatants killed (including children), by an order of about three to one, than Israeli Jewish non-combatants, would indicate one of two things... "

You have ignored the fact that there are other reasons. The Palestinians place military targets (HQ, Bomb factories, etc) in the midst of civilian areas, effectively using civilians as human shields. The reason that the number of Israeli civilian casualties is so low is the extreme value that the Israelis place on human life, as opposed to the blatent disregard that the Palestinians place on both their own and other's lives. There are not a whole lot of Israelis that strap on bombs, and go off to find parties and schools to blow up. A soldier who blows up a bomb-making plant, and accidentily kills a child who was brought there by the bomb-maker IS NOT the moral equivalent of the person who seeks out children and civilians exclusively to blow up.

Subject: RE: BS: Arafat: Terrorize your enemy.
From: CarolC
Date: 15 May 04 - 05:15 PM

Oh, beardedbruce, I have been giving facts here in the Mudcat for about the last two years. Why don't you click on my name in the heading above this post, and just read all of the threads I've posted to since about this time in 2002 that are about the Middle East, and see all of the probably hundreds of pieces of documentation I've provided in them.

The reason most of the Jews who used to be Palestinians are now Israelis is because they wanted to be a part of the new Jewish State. There are some Jews living happily in Palestinian villages in the Occupied Territories, and they are welcomed there by the Christian and Muslim Palestinians.

By the way, there is a book out, by an Iraqi Jew (who became an Israeli), who relates his experiences during the time that the Jews were being forced to leave Iraq. He says that the Zionists (of which he was one at the time) purposely caused the stirring up of hatreds between people who prior to that time had not been enemies, so that the Jews would be forced out of Iraq. He said the Zionists wanted them in Israel so they could provide cheap labor. Remember, this is an Iraqi Jew I'm talking about.

There is a Synagogue in Iraq that has been very carefully and lovingly cared for and tended by Iraqi Muslims since its Jewish congregants left, in the hope that some day the Jewish community will return to it and it will be ready for them if they do.

Subject: RE: BS: Arafat: Terrorize your enemy.
From: CarolC
Date: 15 May 04 - 05:17 PM

You have ignored the fact that there are other reasons. The Palestinians place military targets (HQ, Bomb factories, etc) in the midst of civilian areas, effectively using civilians as human shields.

And just WHY are the Israelis in that place and bombing those things? If they would get out of the Occupied Territories, there would be no reason to bomb anything.

Subject: RE: BS: Arafat: Terrorize your enemy.
From: Little Hawk
Date: 15 May 04 - 05:18 PM

I could join this hate-fest and seek to prove the unlikely proposition that one side is totally evil and corrupt and wrong, while the other side is totally good and noble and is only defending itself...but naw...

"swt-swt-swt" (that's me whistling as I walk away)

Subject: RE: BS: Arafat: Terrorize your enemy.
From: beardedbruce
Date: 15 May 04 - 05:20 PM

"There are some Jews living happily in Palestinian villages in the Occupied Territories, and they are welcomed there by the Christian and Muslim Palestinians."


1. Can you give me any information about them?

2. There are Muslims living happily in Israeli vilages in the state of Issrael, and they are welcomed there by the Christian and Jewish Israelis.
THEREFORE, by your reasoning, there was no attempt to remove the Muslims from the area, and there is no problem to deal with. I am glad we agree on the foolishness of the "right of return" that the Palestinians demand unilaterally.

Subject: RE: BS: Arafat: Terrorize your enemy.
From: beardedbruce
Date: 15 May 04 - 05:23 PM

"And just WHY are the Israelis in that place and bombing those things?"

Because the Palestinians keep trying to kill them, and rather than exterminate the Palestinians, like the Palestinians have stated repeatedly that they want to do to the Israelis, the Israelis are trying to remove the weapons rather than the people.

Subject: RE: BS: Arafat: Terrorize your enemy.
From: CarolC
Date: 15 May 04 - 05:37 PM

1. Can you give me any information about them?

I'll see what I can find for you. I'll probably post it tomorrow.

2. There are Muslims living happily in Israeli vilages in the state of Issrael, and they are welcomed there by the Christian and Jewish Israelis.

Actually, not so happily. They are discriminated against in all kinds of ways that would not be tolerated here in the US. And they are getting concerned that an expulsion is a real possibility for them. There is a defacto expulsion already taking place with the regular practice of house demolitions that the government of Israel is practicing in Arab-Israeli villages.

Because the Palestinians keep trying to kill them, and rather than exterminate the Palestinians, like the Palestinians have stated repeatedly that they want to do to the Israelis, the Israelis are trying to remove the weapons rather than the people.

Not quite. The Israeli government has been bombing the civil infrastructure in the Occupied Territories in order to make it impossible for there to ever be a viable independent Palestinian state.

Subject: RE: BS: Arafat: Terrorize your enemy.
From: beardedbruce
Date: 15 May 04 - 05:42 PM

And the Palestinians have been blowing up birthday parties and religuos celebrations because they want to bring the joy of death and maiming to the Israelis.....


I am so glad that you are so intimate with the purposes of the Israeli government.

The Palestinians turned down an independent state, since "why settle for some when we can have all?" THEN they restarted the bombings of civilians.

Subject: RE: BS: Arafat: Terrorize your enemy.
From: CarolC
Date: 15 May 04 - 06:02 PM

They did not turn down an independent state. They turned down an apartheid state that would be broken up into little bantustans surrounded by Israeli controled land, with Jewish only settlements and roads guarded by the Israeli military separating one village from the next, and with most of the water in their aquafers being taken from them for use in Israel.

Palestinians don't want to bring death and maiming to the Israelis. They want the Israelis to get the hell out of the Palestinian Occupied Territories. They want to have their own independent country with their own independent government, and they want to live in peace and prosperiety with their neighbors.

Subject: RE: BS: Arafat: Terrorize your enemy.
From: beardedbruce
Date: 15 May 04 - 06:27 PM

"they want to live in peace and prosperiety with their neighbors"

As long as the neighbors do not include any Jews. You seem quite willing to beleive the statements that you choose, but I hear a lot more from them that does not indicate any willingness to tolerate the existance of a Jewish state in any form. The Term "Palestinian Occupied Territories" has ALWAYS been a codeword for the state of Israel. They were offered chances for a peaceful settlement, and decided to continue armed conflict. I have more compassion for the children being killed than they do.

"There can be no peace with the Palestinians until they love their children more than they hate us."

Please address facts 5, 7, 8, 9, and 10.
You keep making blanket statements about what the Palestinians want, but WHAT HAVE THEY SAID to the rest of the Arab world, on Arabic language stations? Not a bit about the right of ANY Jews to esist in any place: Just that they will drive them into the sea. Look at the levels of casualties in simalar conflicts throughout the world- The Israelis have a MUCH LOWER fatality rate ( for Palestinians) than anywhere else- Far East, Africa, Western Asia. Yes, any innocent civilians killed are too many- BUT it happens to be a war crime to put bomb factories in refugee camps. Israel had the right to just blow away the entire camp- they CHOSE to go in, and in hand-to-hand combat take much higher casualties than needed to accomplish their goals. WHen I hear 1/10 the noise about the targetting of innocent civilians in Israel as I do about those civilians killed by accident in raids on military targets, I might be willing to listen to som discussion of what the Palestinians want.

As I said, when people celebrate civilians being killed just because they are in a specific country, those people are enimies of mine, and I would hope of all humane people.

Subject: RE: BS: Arafat: Terrorize your enemy.
From: beardedbruce
Date: 15 May 04 - 06:30 PM

please pardon the spelling- I never said I could type.

Subject: RE: BS: Arafat: Terrorize your enemy.
From: Peace
Date: 15 May 04 - 06:34 PM

Why is a statemnt from Arafat about terrorism suddenly about the right of Israelis to exist?

Subject: RE: BS: Arafat: Terrorize your enemy.
From: beardedbruce
Date: 15 May 04 - 06:38 PM

When was any statement from Arafat NOT about the lack of that right?

Subject: RE: BS: Arafat: Terrorize your enemy.
From: Peace
Date: 15 May 04 - 06:40 PM

True.

Subject: RE: BS: Arafat: Terrorize your enemy.
From: CarolC
Date: 15 May 04 - 07:09 PM

Here is an excerpt of an article written by the Iraqi Jew who wrote that book I mentioned earlier. I think those of you who are so sure about who is guilty of what ought to read the whole article.

THE JEWS OF IRAQ - TESTIMONY OF A FORMER ZIONIST

--by Naeim Giladi, Iraqi Jew and former Zionist who is the author of "Ben Gurion's Scandals: How the Haganah & the Mossad Eliminated Jews".

Naeim Giladi: "I write this article for the same reason I wrote my book: to tell the American people, and especially American Jews, that Jews from Islamic lands did not emigrate willingly to Israel; that, to force them to leave, Jews killed Jews; and that, to buy time to confiscate ever more Arab lands, Jews on numerous occasions rejected genuine peace initiatives from their Arab neighbors. I write about what the first Prime Minister of Israel called 'cruel Zionism'. I write about it because I was part of it."

"...Nasser was not the only Arab leader who wanted to make peace with Israel. There were many others. Brigadier General Abdel Karim Qasem, before he seized power in Iraq in July, 1958, headed an underground organization that sent a delegation to Israel to make a secret agreement. Ben Gurion refused even to see him. I learned about this when I was a journalist in Israel. But whenever I tried to publish even a small part of it, the censor would stamp it "Not Allowed." Now, in Netanyahu, we are witnessing another attempt by an Israeli prime minister to fake an interest in making peace. Netanyahu and the Likud are setting Arafat up by demanding that he institute more and more repressive measures in the interest of Israeli "security." Sooner or later I suspect the Palestinians will have had enough of Arafat's strong-arm methods as Israel's quisling-and he'll be killed. Then the Israeli government will say, "See, we were ready to give him everything. You can't trust those Arabs-they kill each other. Now there's no one to even talk to about peace."

Conclusion

Alexis de Tocqueville once observed that it is easier for the world to accept a simple lie than a complex truth. Certainly it has been easier for the world to accept the Zionist lie that Jews were evicted from Muslim lands because of anti-Semitism, and that Israelis, never the Arabs, were the pursuers of peace. The truth is far more discerning: bigger players on the world stage were pulling the strings.

These players, I believe, should be held accountable for their crimes, particularly when they willfully terrorized, dispossessed and killed innocent people on the altar of some ideological imperative.

I believe, too, that the descendants of these leaders have a moral responsibility to compensate the victims and their descendants, and to do so not just with reparations, but by setting the historical record straight.

That is why I established a panel of inquiry in Israel to seek reparations for Iraqi Jews who had been forced to leave behind their property and possessions in Iraq. That is why I joined the Black Panthers in confronting the Israeli government with the grievances of the Jews in Israel who came from Islamic lands. And that is why I have written my book and this article: to set the historical record straight.

We Jews from Islamic lands did not leave our ancestral homes because of any natural enmity between Jews and Muslims. And we Arabs-I say Arab because that is the language my wife and I still speak at home-we Arabs on numerous occasions have sought peace with the State of the Jews. And finally, as a U.S. citizen and taxpayer, let me say that we Americans need to stop supporting racial discrimination in Israel and the cruel expropriation of lands in the West Bank, Gaza, South Lebanon and the Golan Heights."

Subject: RE: BS: Arafat: Terrorize your enemy.
From: CarolC
Date: 15 May 04 - 07:18 PM

Here's what he has to say about his and his family's experience of being a part of the Jewish minority in Iraq. Ironically, the prison he mentions is the Abu-Greib prison. He was there for being a part of terrorist activities as a member of the Zionist underground:

"The original Jews found Babylon, with its nourishing Tigris and Euphrates rivers, to be truly a land of milk, honey, abundance-and opportunity. Although Jews, like other minorities in what became Iraq, experienced periods of oppression and discrimination depending on the rulers of the period, their general trajectory over two and one-half millennia was upward. Under the late Ottoman rule, for example, Jewish social and religious institutions, schools, and medical facilities flourished without outside interference, and Jews were prominent in government and business.

As I sat there in my cell, unaware that a death sentence soon would be handed down against me, I could not have recounted any personal grievances that my family members would have lodged against the government or the Muslim majority. Our family had been treated well and had prospered, first as farmers with some 50,000 acres devoted to rice, dates and Arab horses.

Then, with the Ottomans, we bought and purified gold that was shipped to Istanbul and turned into coinage. The Turks were responsible in fact for changing our name to reflect our occupation-we became Khalaschi, meaning "Makers of Pure."

I did not volunteer the information to my father that I had joined the Zionist underground. He found out several months before I was arrested when he saw me writing Hebrew and using words and expressions unfamiliar to him. He was even more surprised to learn that, yes, I had decided I would soon move to Israel myself. He was scornful. "You'll come back with your tail between your legs," he predicted.

About 125,000 Jews left Iraq for Israel in the late 1940s and into 1952, most because they had been lied to and put into a panic by what I came to learn were Zionist bombs. But my mother and father were among the 6,000 who did not go to Israel. Although physically I never did return to Iraq-that bridge had been burned in any event-my heart has made the journey there many, many times. My father had it right."

Subject: RE: BS: Arafat: Terrorize your enemy.
From: beardedbruce
Date: 15 May 04 - 07:20 PM

... and I have a copy of the Protocols Of Zion, if you want to read them.

There MAY be some items of truth- I am not in a position to judge.

I do know, however, that the Palestinians are causing, and celebrating the murder of innocent civilians. The Israelis investigate the deaths of civilian bystanders, and have prosecuted memebers of their own military. The Palestinians give murderers sainthood and their families cash rewards.

Subject: RE: BS: Arafat: Terrorize your enemy.
From: CarolC
Date: 15 May 04 - 07:27 PM

The Protocols were written by anti-Semites. Naeim Giladi is a Jew.

Subject: RE: BS: Arafat: Terrorize your enemy.
From: CarolC
Date: 15 May 04 - 07:32 PM

Israeli settlers have murdered many Palestnians in cold blood and the government of Israel has not prosecuted any of them for it. The IDF has committed many war crimes, including well documented cases of using Palestinians as human shields, and they've not been disciplined for it. You've been given a pack of lies all of your life so that you, too, would hate the Palestinians, and you believe those lies. You are being used just as Naeim Giladi was used, by people who don't give a shit about you, but who are using hatred against Muslims and against Palestinians as a way of promoting an agenda that has nothing whatever to do with your best interests, Jewish best interests, US best interests, or even Israeli best interests.

Subject: RE: BS: Arafat: Terrorize your enemy.
From: beardedbruce
Date: 15 May 04 - 07:54 PM

I do know, however, that the Palestinians are causing, and celebrating the murder of innocent civilians. The Israelis investigate the deaths of civilian bystanders, and have prosecuted memebers of their own military. The Palestinians give murderers sainthood and their families cash rewards.


You have made a statement of your opinion, which I have to respect. I chose not to agree with it, as is my right.

But when people try to kill me, I do not thank them for it.

Subject: RE: BS: Arafat: Terrorize your enemy.
From: CarolC
Date: 15 May 04 - 08:00 PM

Re: your request, beardedbruce, for some examples of Jews living in the Palestinian Occupied Territories (which mean the West Bank, Gaza, and East Jerusalem, even for the majority of Palestinians), here is one- an article about Adam Shapiro who has lived in the Occupied territories at various times with his wife, who is Palestinian:

A Peaceful Perspective of Palestine

I'll see what else I can find for you.

Subject: RE: BS: Arafat: Terrorize your enemy.
From: CarolC
Date: 15 May 04 - 08:12 PM

I do know, however, that the Palestinians are causing, and celebrating the murder of innocent civilians.

And how do you know that they celebrate it? And whom do you mean when you say "they"? Certainly not all Palestinians have killed innocent civilians. In fact, the vast majority of them have not. Would you hold all Israelis (or all Jews) responsible for the murders committed by Jewish settlers? I doubt it. That would be anti-Semitic, wouldn't it? Or at least very bigoted.

The Israelis investigate the deaths of civilian bystanders, and have prosecuted memebers of their own military.

No they don't. Only a token number of them just so they can say that they do. Most don't get investigated, or if they are investigated by human rights organizations, the government of Israel sweeps the investigation under the carpet. Do you think it was the government of Israel who proved that the IDF uses Palestinian non-combatants as human shields? Think again. It was not. They try to deny that they do this, but the evidence proves that they do.

Subject: RE: BS: Arafat: Terrorize your enemy.
From: beardedbruce
Date: 16 May 04 - 09:35 AM

1. There are video clips of such celebrations, and pronouncements from the Palestinians. I do realize that not all are guilty- UNLIKE the Palestinians themselves, who target any Isaraeli, Jew, or supposed supporter . I have not heard of any IDF forces boarding cruise ships and dumping old men in wheelchairs into the ocean because they were Muslim.

2. I hold those who commit the crime to be responsible.- Why don't you??????

3. There may be cases where the investigation is not as detailed as I would like- HOWEVER, the Palestinians have not prosecuted any of their people for acts of murder and destruction. When the Palestinians attempt to do a fraction of what the Israelis have already done, you can use that argument.


"here is one- an article about Adam Shapiro who has lived in the Occupied territories at various times with his wife, who is Palestinian:"

OK, so if I give you one article about a Muslim who married a Jew and lived in Israel, you would concede that your post of 15 May 05:37PM is false???

"Israeli settlers have murdered many Palestnians in cold blood and the government of Israel has not prosecuted any of them for it."

This is a false statement- I agree that some have not been prosecuted, but I do not know the details of those cases. Not every murder accusation in the US results in a trial, either. There have been cases where the settlers have been brought to trial, and I beleive some prison term given out. WHERE are the equivilent Palestinian cases?????

"The IDF has committed many war crimes, including well documented cases of using Palestinians as human shields, and they've not been disciplined for it. "

Well Documented? Please provide your source, and further details. The cases I have heard of involve trials, punishment and such, by the IDF- WHERE are the equivilent Palestinian cases????

"You've been given a pack of lies all of your life so that you, too, would hate the Palestinians, and you believe those lies."

Yes, I have listened to what the Palestinians have stated, repeatedly. Are you saying that they are all lies?

"You are being used just as Naeim Giladi was used, by people who don't give a shit about you, but who are using hatred against Muslims and against Palestinians as a way of promoting an agenda that has nothing whatever to do with your best interests, Jewish best interests, US best interests, or even Israeli best interests."

Perhaps I AM being used, but by whom? And are you so certain that you are not being used? You seem to support the right of the Palestinians to murder innocent people, and deny the right of the Israelis to attack military targets in self defense.

Subject: RE: BS: Arafat: Terrorize your enemy.
From: beardedbruce
Date: 16 May 04 - 09:56 AM

"Shapiro says the way he sees the conflict is that the majority of the Israelis and Palestinians want to live in peace, free from oppression, free from occupation, free to live in security without fear and violence, to raise their children so that they can experience life without fear and violence."

I can agree with this, entirely.

So, when the Israelis unilaterally withdrawn, there will be no more bombings, and if there are, you will support an all-out total war by Israel against the Palestinian State?

Subject: RE: BS: Arafat: Terrorize your enemy.
From: GUEST,Smarty Jones Chomsky
Date: 16 May 04 - 10:26 AM

McGrath of Harlow,

Early in this thread, you tried to change the subject away from Arafat by demonizing Sharon. Interesting that you did that on the day that the left-wing Israeli peace movement rallied massively in support of Sharon and his plan to withdraw Israeli settlements and soldiers from (the formerly Egyptian territory, that Egypt didn't want back, of) Gaza. A plan that was rejected by Likud, the right-wing party that Sharon leads. A party whose membership encompasses less than 1% of Israel's population.

Then, you reenter the fray with a comment whose only basis is in Arafat's personal, and thoroughly discredited, propaganda about his own mythology. When your comment was shown up for the falsehood that it was, you disappeared.

CarolC,

The beliefs of the Iraqi Jew that you extensively quote have little currency among the overwhelming members of the Israeli and diaspora communities of Jews who have been forced out of Iraq in the past 56 years.

In any community there are iconoclasts. There are also examples of Palestinians who acknowledge that Israel is right and that the PLO and Hamas are wrong in the current struggle. That doesn't mean that such Palestinians represent the "truth" as their community knows it.
And we all know, for example, that you, yourself, are often out of step with the mainstream of political thought among trailer park communities in the American South.

Brucie,

Love your verses. Very clever stuff.

C-Watch and beardedbruce,

Give it up. You'll never be able to compete in debate with CarolC in this forum. She's completely relentless and she'll wear you down like she's worn down many who've come before you. Ask Irwin, Musicmic, Wolfgang, etc.

Subject: RE: BS: Arafat: Terrorize your enemy.
From: S O P
Date: 16 May 04 - 10:35 AM

I haven't read the testimony of a single Iraqi Jew who claims that Zionists forced Iraqi Jews to relocate. It may be similar to the claim propunded right after 9/11 that Jews had to behind the World Trade Center Bombing. Just because the guy claims to be Jewish does not mean he she or his stuff is any more believable than the above mentioned Protocols, which are pretty obviously false to me because people never write about themselves the way Protocols is written. People write about other people writing about themselves in that fashion.

Getting back to the topic, Arafat is well known for saying one thing for international consumption, and something with very different intent for domestic consumption. He has spent a great deal of money that was meant for Palestinian economic development instead on weaponry, private luxuries, and private bank accounts. He is responsible for the rise of Hamas more than any other factor, because they can project terrorist agenda without being under his guidance and he has deniability, but also because Hamas unlike the Palestinian Authority governemtn is hardly corrupt.

As for Palestinian state, it is not demonstrably workable. Palestinians can find places to live without having an independent government.

Subject: RE: BS: Arafat: Terrorize your enemy.
From: beardedbruce
Date: 16 May 04 - 10:42 AM

GUEST,Smarty Jones Chomsky:

"CarolC,

And we all know, for example, that you, yourself, are often out of step with the mainstream of political thought among trailer park communities in the American South."

Regardless of my opinions as to her political/religious bent, this is an uncalled for attack. She may be out of step with the mainstream of America, but that is her priviledge.

Thank you for the warning. I have found that the only ones that can provide a view from the other side are those who argue for it: I would like to understand that viewpoint, in order to defend myself from it.

Subject: RE: BS: Arafat: Terrorize your enemy.
From: CarolC
Date: 16 May 04 - 12:11 PM

1. There are video clips of such celebrations, and pronouncements from the Palestinians.

Please provide some documentation to support this assertion.

I do realize that not all are guilty- UNLIKE the Palestinians themselves, who target any Isaraeli, Jew, or supposed supporter.   I have not heard of any IDF forces boarding cruise ships and dumping old men in wheelchairs into the ocean because they were Muslim.

You realize that not all of whom are guilty? In the first half of your sentence you say you realize that not all are guilty, and then you say that "UNLIKE the Palestinians", etc. etc. So it looks like you hold all Palestinians responsible for the acts of some Palestinians.

"The Palestinians" do no such thing. There are some Palestinians who do these things (although precious few), just as there are some Israeli Jews who do these things.

Dr. Baruch Goldstein, for instance, who gunned down, in cold blood, at least 29 Muslims while they were at prayer in the Ibrahimi mosque.

"He has become a hero among some of Israel's right-wing extremists. His tombstone in Kiryat Arba reads "Here lies the saint, Dr. Baruch Kappel Goldstein, blessed be the memory of the righteous and holy man, may the Lord avenge his blood, who devoted his soul to the Jews, Jewish religion and Jewish land. His hands are innocent and his heart is pure. He was killed as a martyr of God on the 14th of Adar, Purim, in the year 5754.""

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baruch_Goldstein

And Menachem Begin. We know how Israel punished him for his role in the cold blooded massacre at Deir Yassin. They made him a prime minister:

"Early in the morning of April 9, 1948, commandos of the Irgun (headed by Menachem Begin) and the Stern Gang attacked Deir Yassin, a village with about 750 Palestinian residents. The village lay outside of the area to be assigned by the United Nations to the Jewish State; it had a peaceful reputation. But it was located on high ground in the corridor between Tel Aviv and Jerusalem. Deir Yassin was slated for occupation under Plan Dalet and the mainstream Jewish defense force, the Haganah, authorized the irregular terrorist forces of the Irgun and the Stern Gang to perform the takeover.

In all over 100 men, women, and children were systematically murdered. Fifty-three orphaned children were literally dumped along the wall of the Old City, where they were found by Miss Hind Husseini and brought behind the American Colony Hotel to her home, which was to become the Dar El-Tifl El-Arabi orphanage."

http://www.deiryassin.org/index1.html

http://www.deiryassin.org/purpose.html

And of course, Ariel Sharon, whom they punished for his war crimes of being in charge of the massacre at Qibya by making him the Defense Minister, and then the Prime Minister:

"A United Nations report suggests an even more grisly sequence: "Bullet-riddled bodies near the doorways and multiple bullet hits on the doors of the demolished houses," the document says, "indicated that the inhabitants had been forced to remain inside until their homes were blown up over them."[4]

Commander E.H. Hutchison, a U.S. naval officer serving on the U.N. armistice monitoring commission, investigated the slaughter. "Here and there from between the rocks," he wrote, "you could see a tiny hand or foot protruding.""

Benziman, the biographer, describes Sharon's consistently sadistic behavior toward Arabs: His men "witnessed him laughing as a junior officer tormented an old Arab and then shot him at close range; they noted his composure as he planned operations designed to kill as many civilians as possible; they carried out his intricate plan to trap a peaceful Bedouin boy shepherding his flock.""

http://www.commondreams.org/views02/0712-03.htm

2. I hold those who commit the crime to be responsible.- Why don't you??????

That's exactly what I do. You, on the other hand, appear to ignore the crimes of Israelis, and to blame all Palestinians for the crimes of some Palestinians.

3. There may be cases where the investigation is not as detailed as I would like- HOWEVER, the Palestinians have not prosecuted any of their people for acts of murder and destruction. When the Palestinians attempt to do a fraction of what the Israelis have already done, you can use that argument.

Maybe you'd better re-examine this statement now.

OK, so if I give you one article about a Muslim who married a Jew and lived in Israel, you would concede that your post of 15 May 05:37PM is false???

Hardly. I'll have some more for you in a little while.

I'll respond to more of your post a bit later.

Subject: RE: BS: Arafat: Terrorize your enemy.
From: beardedbruce
Date: 16 May 04 - 12:35 PM

3. There may be cases where the investigation is not as detailed as I would like- HOWEVER, the Palestinians have not prosecuted any of their people for acts of murder and destruction. When the Palestinians attempt to do a fraction of what the Israelis have already done, you can use that argument.

"Maybe you'd better re-examine this statement now."

The present Palestinian Authority, representing the Palestinian people, has taken no action to control the elements that are performing terrorist acts. The Israeli government, however imperfectly, has done so, repeatedly.

In the schools that the Palestinian Authority has established, the ENTIRE area is marked as Palestine: The students are taught that the Jews have no right to live, and that the killing of civilians is "Blessed By Allah"

You still do not address the failure of the Palestinian Authority to address the brutal murder of civilians.

Subject: RE: BS: Arafat: Terrorize your enemy.
From: beardedbruce
Date: 16 May 04 - 12:42 PM

My apologies to all that CarolC and I are taking over this thread. PLEASE feel free to jump in, on eiither side, with comments, questions, or observations.

As may be obvious, some of us have rather strong feelings on the issues under discussion.

Subject: RE: BS: Arafat: Terrorize your enemy.
From: CarolC
Date: 16 May 04 - 12:50 PM

I'd like to finish answering your previous posts before I respond to any new ones, beardedbruce, although perhaps you can explain to me how the PA can possibly take any action to "control the elements that are performing terrorist acts" when all of the infrastructure they would need in order to do this (police forces, security units, roads, etc.) have been destroyed by the government of Israel, Arrafat is being held virtual prisoner in his compound and can't leave, and any movement between towns and villages by Palestinian police and security forces (if there were any left) would be impossible because of the closures and road blocks separating towns and villages from each other by the IDF.

Now I'll get back to answering your previous posts.

Subject: RE: BS: Arafat: Terrorize your enemy.
From: CarolC
Date: 16 May 04 - 01:14 PM

Here is another Israeli Jew who has spent time living in the Palestinian Occupied Territories:

Neta Golan The website is Jewish Voice for Peace

"This report is written by Neta Golan, the Israeli peace activist and co-founder of the International Solidarity Movement, who has lived in Palestinian villages for the past year and a half. Neta has been one of those actively resisting the Occupation, by tearing down roadblocks, taking Hebron children who are subject to 24 curfew outside to play, and physically placing herself in front of Palestinians, to deter the Israeli army from shooting at them. By happenstance, she recently came across the soldier who had killed her Palestinian friend Muhammad Duad several months ago, and who was boasting of his achievements. Neta writes about their conversation.-AG]"

"I know the two children and the young father who where murdered in Hares in the last fifteen months by Israeli soldiers so I asked him when it happened, On what day? By his answered I realized the soldier in front of me was the murderer of my friend Muhammad Daud. -

" Let me tell you who you killed" I said. -

I don't care. -

"I know you don't but I want you to know who you killed. His name was Muhammad Daud he was fifteen years old he was retarded and I loved him very much..." I told him every thing I could think of about Mohammed and about his family. He didn't want to hear it. "I know where he was standing" I said "I saw his blood on the ground. There is know way he could have thrown a stone at you from so far away, let alone a boulder.""


And here is an example of Israelis and Palestinians working together in cooperation to promote peace, using peaceful means:

http://www.mediamonitors.net/gilasvirsky1.html

"Al-Khader is a small Palestinian village near Bethlehem, which has the bad fortune to be located near the Israeli settlement of Efrat. For years, Efrat settlers have coveted the land belonging to al-Khader, and, in recent months, settlers set down 3 mobile homes on a hilltop to "establish ownership". The Palestinian villagers decided to stage a nonviolent protest march today, and invited Israelis and internationals to join them..."

The rest is in the article in the link.

I'll respond to more in a little while.

Subject: RE: BS: Arafat: Terrorize your enemy.
From: CarolC
Date: 16 May 04 - 01:22 PM

By the way, beardedbruce, I have not seen you produce one single piece of documentation to support any of your allegations. All you've done is make allegations.

I'm tired. I'll get back to you later today or maybe tomorrow.

Subject: RE: BS: Arafat: Terrorize your enemy.
From: beardedbruce
Date: 16 May 04 - 02:09 PM

http://www.cnn.com/2003/WORLD/meast/06/11/mideast/
http://www.foxnews.com/story/0%2C2933%2C95150%2C00.html
http://www.foxnews.com/story/0%2C2933%2C59534%2C00.html
http://abcnews.go.com/sections/world/DailyNews/mideast020507.html
http://www.twincities.com/mld/twincities/5891882.htm?1c
http://www.jewishrichmond.org/content_display.html?ArticleID=62973
http://www.honestreporting.com/articles/critiques/Two-Faced_Response_to_Gaza_Bombing.asp
http://www.israelinsider.com/channels/security/articles/sec_0049.htm
http://www.kentucky.com/mld/kentucky/3495977.htm
http://www.kentucky.com/mld/kentucky/5891882.htm
http://www.dfw.com/mld/dfw/news/7570805.htm?1c
http://search.csmonitor.com/durable/1998/11/09/fp6s2-csm.shtml
http://www.belleville.com/mld/belleville/4101679.htm
http://www.militaryconnections.com/news_story.cfm?textnewsid=506
http://www.vnis.com/story.cfm?textnewsid=570
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/12/27/international/middleeast/27MIDE.html?ex=1387861200&en=9d122f762f0fd475&ei=5007&partner=USERLAND
http://web.israelinsider.com/bin/en.jsp?enPage=ArticlePage&enDisplay=view&enDispWhat=object&enDispWho=Article^l1083&enZone=Politics&enVersion=0&
http://web.israelinsider.com/bin/en.jsp?enPage=ArticlePage&enDisplay=view&enDispWhat=object&enDispWho=Article^l2243&enZone=Diplomacy&enVersion=0&
http://www.hrw.org/press/2002/11/isrl-pa1101.htm
http://www.leftofthemiddle.net/mt/archives/000022.html
http://www.israelinsider.com/views/articles/views_0046.htm
http://www.adl.org/Israel/israel_attacks.asp
http://www.ledger-enquirer.com/mld/ledgerenquirer/5315270.htm
http://www.tallahassee.com/mld/tallahassee/3798507.htm
http://www.jta.org/page_view_story.asp?intarticleid=13608&intcategoryid=1
http://www.aberdeennews.com/mld/aberdeennews/2568442.htm
http://www.kltv.com/Global/story.asp?S=1577819
http://www.charlotte.com/mld/charlotte/3774245.htm?1c
http://www.metimes.com/2K2/issue2002-47/reg/young_victim_of.htm
http://www.rense.com/general46/deadlyisraelbombing.htm
http://www.israelnationalnews.com/news.php3?id=37640
http://www.ledger-enquirer.com/mld/ledgerenquirer/6932940.htm
http://www.usatoday.com/news/world/2002/06/18/israel-incursion.htm
http://vigilant.tv/article/2358
http://www.biblenews1.com/history2/20020618.htm
http://www.jewishsf.com/bk020315/1a.shtml
http://www.hrw.org/press/2000/11/isrpa1121.htm
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1017057/posts
http://www.nationalreview.com/robbins/robbins051502.asp
http://www.miami.com/mld/miami/4095045.htm?1c
http://www.adl.org/Israel/israel_thwarted_attacks.asp
http://www.jewishsf.com/bk020524/1a.shtml
http://www.aberdeennews.com/mld/aberdeennews/3798469.htm
http://www.news-star.com/stories/080597/wrld2.html
http://edition.cnn.com/2003/WORLD/meast/09/09/mideast.blast/

Subject: RE: BS: Arafat: Terrorize your enemy.
From: beardedbruce
Date: 16 May 04 - 02:25 PM

http://www.fas.org/irp/crs/931014-hamas.htm
http://www.netaxs.com/~iris/whoplo.htm
http://www.focusonjerusalem.com/oslo.html
http://www.jcpa.org/jl/vp486.htm
http://www.fateh.net/e_public/constitution.htm
http://www.mideastweb.org/fateh.htm
http://www.netanyahu.org/unbreakofisn.html
http://www.mideastweb.org/oslofailed.htm
http://www.ciaonet.org/isa/ged01/
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/972664/posts
http://www.alhewar.com/Clovis67-97.htm
http://encarta.msn.com/encnet/refpages/RefArtTextOnly.aspx?refid=761566844&print=6
http://www.hanitzotz.com/challenge/65/talk.html
http://www.freeman.org/m_online/feb00/haetzni2.htm
http://www.passia.org/seminars/96/foreign_policy_plo.htm
http://www.globalsecurity.org/military/library/report/1985/AS1.htm
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hamas
http://www.ccds.charlotte.nc.us/History/MidEast/05/may/
http://www.mafhoum.com/press/52P5.htm
http://www.angelfire.com/biz/Israelwire/promises.html
http://encarta.msn.com/encnet/refpages/RefArticle.aspx?refid=761566844
http://www.aish.com/jewishissues/middleeast/Faisals_Trojan_Horse.asp
http://www.us-israel.org/jsource/Peace/cove1.html
http://www.cdi.org/terrorism/terrorist-groups-pr.cfm
http://www.middleeastinfo.org/article2822.html

Subject: RE: BS: Arafat: Terrorize your enemy.
From: beardedbruce
Date: 16 May 04 - 02:27 PM

Sorry, I can only remember the video clips I have seen on CNN, Fox, ABC, and NBC.

Subject: RE: BS: Arafat: Terrorize your enemy.
From: beardedbruce
Date: 16 May 04 - 02:44 PM

In the provisions on security arrangements of the Interim Agreement, the Palestinian side agreed to take all measures necessary in order to prevent acts of terrorism, crime and hostilities directed against the Israeli side, against individuals falling under the Israeli side's authority and against their property, just as the Israeli side agreed to take all measures necessary in order to prevent acts of terrorism, crime and hostilities directed against the Palestinian side, against individuals falling under the Palestinian side's authority and against their property. The two sides also agreed to take legal measures against offenders within their jurisdiction and to prevent incitement against each other by any organizations, groups or individuals within their jurisdiction.

Both sides recognize that it is in their vital interests to combat terrorism and fight violence in accordance with Annex I of the Interim Agreement and the Note for the Record. They also recognize that the struggle against terror and violence must be comprehensive in that it deals with terrorists, the terror support structure, and the environment conducive to the support of terror. It must be continuous and constant over a long-term, in that there can be no pauses in the work against terrorists and their structure. It must be cooperative in that no effort can be fully effective without Israeli-Palestinian cooperation and the continuous exchange of information, concepts, and actions.

Pursuant to the prior agreements, the Palestinian side's implementation of its responsibilities for security, security cooperation, and other issues will be as detailed below during the time periods specified in the attached time line:

A. Security Actions

1. Outlawing and Combating Terrorist Organizations

(a) The Palestinian side will make known its policy of zero tolerance for terror and violence against both sides.



the above is from the 1999 Wye River Memorandum......
http://www.arabicnews.com/ansub/Daily/Day/981024/1998102453.html

Subject: RE: BS: Arafat: Terrorize your enemy.
From: GUEST
Date: 16 May 04 - 02:58 PM

Carol dislikes Jews. That is clear. She conflates issues to make Palestinians look like angels. She sees nothing wrong with Israelis being killed. Ignore her.

Subject: RE: BS: Arafat: Terrorize your enemy.
From: beardedbruce
Date: 16 May 04 - 02:59 PM

http://www.mfa.gov.il/MFA/Peace+Process/Guide+to+the+Peace+Process/UN+General+Assembly+Resolution+181.htm
http://www.mfa.gov.il/MFA/Peace+Process/Guide+to+the+Peace+Process/The+Palestinian+National+Charter.htm
http://www.mfa.gov.il/MFA/Peace+Process/Guide+to+the+Peace+Process/Agreement+on+Preparatory+Transfer+of+Powers+and+Re.htm

Subject: RE: BS: Arafat: Terrorize your enemy.
From: CarolC
Date: 16 May 04 - 03:21 PM

GUEST, 16 May 04 - 02:58 PM, your comments are pretty formulaic, and any person with any degree of discernment will be able to see right through them.

beardedbruce, I think you need to vet your sources a little more carefully. For instance, your link from Rense.com is describing a bombing attack by the Israeli government against Palestinians and the reponse from Palestinians to that bombing. Incidently, that bombing was conducted during a self imposed cease-fire on the part of the Palesinian organization, Hamas, during which the Israeli government conducted bombings such as the one mentioned in the link you provided.

Here's another article from Rense.com:

EXCLUSIVE Mexican DoD Acknowledges UFOs In Mexico

Subject: RE: BS: Arafat: Terrorize your enemy.
From: beardedbruce
Date: 16 May 04 - 03:52 PM

I try to read sources with information from both sides, to attempt to figure out what actually happened.

Jews and Arabs are of the same genetic branch of the human race- Both are Semetic. I do not hate anyone for their race- I do, hoever, hate individuals (and the groups that support them) for their own actions.

ANY source on the internet is suspect- there is no error-correction in place. The only way to learn anything as a possible truth is to get as many versions, from as many viewpoints as possible. Then, apply William of Occom's razor, and try to figure out what is real.

Subject: RE: BS: Arafat: Terrorize your enemy.
From: CarolC
Date: 16 May 04 - 05:42 PM

It's pretty difficult for me to look into that many links containing stuff that looks pretty random, and not in support of specific points that you have made.

Please provide a small handful (maybe no more than four) of sources to support your contention that the Palestinians have not prosecuted any of their people for acts of murder and destruction.

The sources I'm most likely to trust on the internet on the subject of the Middle East are the Jewish human rights organizations.

Subject: RE: BS: Arafat: Terrorize your enemy.
From: CarolC
Date: 16 May 04 - 05:52 PM

(T)he Israeli side agreed to take all measures necessary in order to prevent acts of terrorism, crime and hostilities directed against the Palestinian side, against individuals falling under the Palestinian side's authority and against their property.

So when the IDF destroyed the PA security infrastructure, this was their way of honoring their part of the agreement?

Subject: RE: BS: Arafat: Terrorize your enemy.
From: GUEST,An honest Gentile
Date: 16 May 04 - 07:25 PM

CarolC; most of your arguments come from this site, and others like it.

http://www.biblebelievers.org.au/

Subject: RE: BS: Arafat: Terrorize your enemy.
From: Peace
Date: 16 May 04 - 10:15 PM

To GUEST, An Honest Gentile: Diogenes is looking for you.

Subject: RE: BS: Arafat: Terrorize your enemy.
From: GUEST
Date: 16 May 04 - 11:41 PM

Sounds more like it might be Antisthenes

Subject: RE: BS: Arafat: Terrorize your enemy.
From: CarolC
Date: 17 May 04 - 12:23 AM

Honest Gentile (?), that's a fabrication and you know it. If you don't know it, it's because you haven't read the contents of the links I've been posting.

The beliefs of the Iraqi Jew that you extensively quote have little currency among the overwhelming members of the Israeli and diaspora communities of Jews who have been forced out of Iraq in the past 56 years.

--Smarty Jones Chomsky

I've been doing a lot of digging around about that. I haven't checked out any of the verifiable assertions in Naeim Giladi's article yet, but I have been checking out what other Mizrahim (Arabic Jews) have to say on the subject. There seems to be a pretty clear consensus among them that they were living in good circumstances in countries like Iraq prior to the influence of Zionism in the region, that Zionism is the cause of the problems that resulted in their having to leave their home countries, and that they are horribly discriminated against by the Ashkenazim in Israel. Here's what some of them have to say about it:


"The Jewish community within Iraq was not Zionist-oriented, as the emissaries soon discovered. As an overwhelmingly bourgeois community, the Iraqi Jews understood the danger that Zionism posed to their political, social and economic status. Those Jews who did leave the country generally settled in Europe, India, Iran and North America - as well as Palestine.

By 1947, however, Iraqi Jews found themselves in an increasingly untenable position. The aggressive activities of the Zionist movement, followed by the birth of Israel, led many Arabs to associate all Jews with Zionism. At the same time, nationalism was on the rise in Iraq, marked by a distinct anti-Zionism."

http://www.dangoor.com/70006.html


"As far as the "pre-Israel" history of Middle Eastern Jews is concerned, Zionists present it as a history of oppression and religious prejudice within the Arab world from time immemorial. After establishing this ludicrous (a)historical fable, Zionists usually move on to stress the (alleged) ideological commitment of Middle Eastern-Jews to Zionism.

Writers with an Arab orientation, on the other hand, tend to present this period somewhat idealistically, as nearly flawless in terms of inter-religious relationships. They therefore conceptualise the (politically engineered) emigration of Middle Eastern Jews as the exclusive end result of Zionist activities and propaganda.

Zionists present this as a component of the "happy ingathering of the exiles." On those rare occasions when they discuss the sharp divisions in Israeli society along ethnic and class lines, their terminology is duplicitous. Thus one finds that Middle Eastern Jews "suffer" from an "inferiority complex" and "culture shock", or that they "came" from "primitive" Arab societies, which thus explains "the gap". In short, Zionists never employ any of the terms needed to account for the Jewish ethnic split, namely: racism, orientalism, oppression, exploitation, internal colonialism and Ashkenazi anti-Semitic tendencies."

http://weekly.ahram.org.eg/1998/1948/399_mzrm.htm

"Arye Deri...explicitly said "Zionism brought about the spiritual and cultural extermination of Mizrahi Jewry.""

www.between-lines.org/archives/2003/feb/Sami_Shalom_Chetrit.htm

Subject: RE: BS: Arafat: Terrorize your enemy.
From: Wolfgang
Date: 17 May 04 - 07:52 AM

I applaud Carol's suggestion to limit the number of links per post in Israel/Palestine (perhaps: all politics?) threads to four. That rule could be improved by another rule that nobody may post a new link in another post after having posted four links, unless another poster has posted new links after the initial four links post.

That may put an end to what I once termed link throwing matc(es).

I only ponder why Carol comes up with this good suggestion at this particular moment in time and not some time earlier?

Wolfgang

Subject: RE: BS: Arafat: Terrorize your enemy.
From: Wolfgang
Date: 17 May 04 - 08:31 AM

Suggestion for an amendment to discussions about Israel/Palestine:

Whenever something bad is said about Arafat, for the sake of balance within two hours something bad has to be added about either Sharon or Bush. McGrath and Carol are in charge of that (look at the Arafat's 300 million thread to see how elegantly Carol has introduced Bush in a thread about Arafat taking international monies for himself). Jack the sailor may stand in for Carol.

There is no equivalent rule when something bad is said about Sharon (see 'Sharon is a crook thread', or 'Sharon says, no I'm not in the mood' thread).

Wolfgang (Thoroughly cynical here)

Subject: RE: BS: Arafat: Terrorize your enemy.
From: GUEST,C-Watch
Date: 17 May 04 - 10:19 AM

Today's email from Honest Reporting clarifies Arafat's "terrorize you enemy" statement and the reporting that was done on it.
*****
On Saturday, May 15, while Israeli security was tackling 43 separate warnings of impending terror attacks, Yassir Arafat delivered this Koran-inspired statement to Palestinians on national TV:

Find what strength you have to terrorize your enemy and the enemy of God. And if they want peace, then let's have peace.

Arafat's executive order for more Palestinian terror (while peace talks are sidetracked) could not have been clearer. The Associated Press news report, however, used heavy-handed editorializing to soften up his words:

Arafat, whom Israel accuses of supporting militant groups, did not appear to be calling for new attacks on Israel. The passage in the Quran refers to the early Muslims' wars against pagans and is frequently invoked by Islamic leaders today to encourage strength in times of conflict.

AP would have readers believe that Arafat's call to 'terrorize' 'infidel Jews' was merely a metaphorical morale-booster, with no relevance whatsoever to the very real Palestinian terror that has claimed 1,000 Israeli lives in the past three and a half years, blocking any progress toward peaceful resolution.

The LA Times provides the actual source of AP's 'creative reading':

Palestinian Authority President Yasser Arafat, in a speech delivered at his battered West Bank headquarters and broadcast on Palestinian television, called on his compatriots to 'terrorize your enemy.' Arafat associates swiftly sought to explain the reference as a traditional Koranic verse that did not necessarily constitute a call to arms.

So let's understand the sequence of events: (1) Yassir Arafat calls for Palestinians to expand the bloody terrorism against innocent Israelis, (2) PA officials, concerned for bad press, scurry over to reporters and proffer a creative, 'alternative' understanding of Arafat's incitement, then (3) the world's largest wire agency, the Associated Press, presents the PA apologists' line as the proper way to understand Arafat, despite the fact that it defies literal meaning.

An objective report would have, at the very least, attributed the 'creative reading' to Arafat's 'associates.'

US Secretary of State Powell, for one, did not buy the Arafat apologists' line, immediately delivering this rebuke: "Mr. Arafat continues to make statements like the one he made yesterday about 'let's terrorize the region'...[this] makes it exceptionally difficult to move forward."

Arafat's speech on Saturday recalls a similar one delivered in a Johannesburg mosque in May 1994, when Arafat announced that, despite the Oslo initiative: "The jihad will continue... You have to come to fight and to start the jihad to liberate Jerusalem," and compared the accord with Israel to an ancient truce among Arabs violated shortly after it was signed. After discovering that a tape of the speech found its way into Western hands, Arafat called a press conference to explain that by jihad he had meant a peaceful crusade.

Subject: RE: BS: Arafat: Terrorize your enemy.
From: beardedbruce
Date: 17 May 04 - 11:57 AM

CarolC:

ALL of my urls are in support of my staatement that the Palestinian terrorists are killing innocent civilians and children. Why have you NEVER responded to this? I would really like to know why you feel that they have the right to kill anyone they like, regardless of the religion they claim, or common humanity? WHY?????????

Subject: RE: BS: Arafat: Terrorize your enemy.
From: CarolC
Date: 17 May 04 - 12:36 PM

ALL of my urls are in support of my staatement that the Palestinian terrorists are killing innocent civilians and children. Why have you NEVER responded to this?

I'm still working on answering the questions and points in your earlier posts. This takes up a lot of my time, and I can't do it all at once.

I would really like to know why you feel that they have the right to kill anyone they like, regardless of the religion they claim, or common humanity? WHY?????????

What makes you think I feel that they have this right? I suggest you read this thread and this thread. You'll need to read them all the way through (or at least all of my posts).

My main problem when people start threads like this one is, A. they only point the finger at Arabs, Muslims, and Palestinians, and they completely ignore the contribution the government of Israel makes to the problems in the region, and B. they seem to have only one agenda... to spread hate towards a religious and/or ethnic group. Hate is hate, no matter who it is directed against. Anti-Semitism (against Jewish Semites) is wrong, and anti-Arabism and anti-Muslimism and anti-Palestinianism are equally wrong, and for the same reasons.

Subject: RE: BS: Arafat: Terrorize your enemy.
From: GUEST,C-Watch
Date: 17 May 04 - 12:52 PM

My main problem when people start threads like this one...they seem to have only one agenda... to spread hate towards a religious and/or ethnic group.

CarolC's statement is an outright, bold faced lie.

I started this thread and it had nothing to do with spreading hate toward any religious or ethnic group. It had to do with pointing out that one particular leader, Yasser Arafat, was inciting terrorism among his followers.

I have never said anything remotely hateful toward any religious or ethnic group and when CarolC falsely points her finger at me in this manner it says nothing about me and much about her.

Subject: RE: BS: Arafat: Terrorize your enemy.
From: CarolC
Date: 17 May 04 - 12:59 PM

Wolfgang, you misread my suggestion about numbers of links. I was referring only to a maximum of four per point that is being made. So with that reckoning, there could be as many links as the poster might like to include, as long as there are no more than four per point, and they group them so that I know which point they are being used in support of. And as long as the reader understands that I will get to them as time allows. And that's only if he or she wants me to respond to them. If they don't care whether or not I respond to them, I really don't care how many they post.

I don't have anything good to say about Arafat either, Wolfgang, except that he is the person the Palestinians want as their spokesperson. And I also don't have anything good to say about Bush, Blair, Clinton, Netanyahu, and any number of other politicians.

Your cynicism is getting in the way of your objectivity.

Subject: RE: BS: Arafat: Terrorize your enemy.
From: CarolC
Date: 17 May 04 - 01:06 PM

GUEST, C-watch, there are plenty of times when the government of Israel does things that are just as damaging to the peace process and just as hateful and just as likely to spread hate towards Arabs, Palestinians, and Muslims, and just as likely to cause an increase in terrorism in the Middle East and around the globe as anything Arafat has said or done. But I have NEVER started a thread about it.

Subject: RE: BS: Arafat: Terrorize your enemy.
From: GUEST
Date: 17 May 04 - 01:08 PM

Guest, C-Watch,

CarolC is just stating the obvious.

If you attack Sharon and/or Israel, you are a defender of human rights.

If you attack Arafat and/or the Palestinian Authority and/or Hamas, you are an anti-Arab and anti-Molem hate monger.

Subject: RE: BS: Arafat: Terrorize your enemy.
From: CarolC
Date: 17 May 04 - 01:23 PM

That's very interesting, Wolfgang. I never even saw the "Sharon says I'm not in the mood thread". And in the "Sharon is a crook" thread, I posted this:

I must say, I find myself wondering if the timing of this announcement has anything to do with Sharon talking about plans to remove some settlements in Gaza and the West Bank...

...which is a way of saying, "I wonder to what extent these allegations (of being a crook) are politically motivated and not based on reality".

Now, what can we learn from this? Firstly, a scientist like yourself should know better than to make assumptions that are not based on empirical evidence. And secondly, you can't even get it right when you do use the available empirical evidence. Time to retire from the world of science, Wolfgang. Or was Little Hawk telling the truth when he said that you were experiencing synaptic difficulties as a result of seeing a UFO?

Subject: RE: BS: Arafat: Terrorize your enemy.
From: CarolC
Date: 17 May 04 - 01:29 PM

Hardly, GUEST, 17 May 04 - 01:08 PM.

Subject: RE: BS: Arafat: Terrorize your enemy.
From: Nerd
Date: 17 May 04 - 01:41 PM

Hey, CarolC, what evidence can you provide about the lovingly tended synagogue in Iraq? This sounds like a load of horseshit to me. I don't even think a Baptist congregation in Philly would lovingly tend a Methodist church if the Methodists all decided to leave.

The idea that the jews in Arab lands were living a bourgeois existence is not evidence of a culture that loves Jews or where Jews are safe. Let's face it, the Jews in Germany and the urban parts of Poland, Lithuania, etc, were living a happy bourgeois existence, both in big cities and in moderate sized Shtetls, until the 1930s. In a country where you are merely tolerated, this can turn on a dime.

There are countries with state religions, such as the UK, where Jews can feel pretty safe. There are others, like Poland, where things have improved (the current Pope has helped), and others where Jews should feel very precarious. Anyone who thinks there is not a degree of bitter feeling between Jews and Muslims in Iraq, Lebanon, Syria, Egypt, etc, is wearing blinders. Anyone who thinks the Jews cannot be scapegoated there is ignoring history.

Notice how the two brutal executions of innocent American civilians that were videoed and made public were both Jews? Notice how they made Danny Pearl say "I am a Jew" before they killed him? Do you think that is a coincidence? Jews are not everyone's favorite people in Iraq, Jordan and the rest of the Arab world.

The fact that they can find one Iraqi Jew to say "Life under Saddam would have been better than life in Israel" is an example of what I call "freakshow politics." George Bush looks for the one middle class Hispanic family who will benfit from his tax cut, then offers them front-row seats at a big Washington event so he can show them off to the world. Big deal. It's still true that most middle class hispanic families have been buggered by his policies.

Let's out it this way: does anyone here really believe that life for a Mizrahi Jew in an admittedly Ashkenazi-dominated Jewish parliamentary democracy is, on average, more repressive than life for a jew under Saddam Hussein? That would have to stretch the credulity of the most fervent Arab apologist...or is it worse than I thought out there?

Subject: RE: BS: Arafat: Terrorize your enemy.
From: CarolC
Date: 17 May 04 - 02:31 PM

I'll see what I can find for you, Nerd, about the synagogue.

You are framing all of your assertions about Jews and Iraq, as well as other parts of the Middle East, from the perspective of a "post-establishment of the State of Israel" world. In order to understand the perspective of the Mizrahim, you need to see the Middle East through their eyes, which is to say, "pre-establishment of the State of Israel" (I believe this is well before the days of Saddam). I think it's a big mistake to underestimate the effect that the Nakba and the activities of Zionists in the countries of the Middle East had on the way Jews are perceived there.

From what I've been reading from Arabic Jews, it appears that many of them think of themselves as being just as much Arabic as Jewish. They are saying that prior to the time when the Zionists showed up in their communities, they had a good life. They were an integral part of the fabric of the society in which they lived, and had been for hundreds of years. They say that these circumstances didn't change until the Zionists showed up and started promoting their agenda among the people of the region.

Now, as far as Europe is concerned, there is no doubt that Jews suffered quite a lot of discrimination there over the centuries. I think that's pretty undisputed. So maybe it's not so surprising that Europeans were so quick to turn on them during the Nazi period. This does not prove a thing about how the Jews of the Middle East were perceived by the other peoples of the region. In order to say that what the Europeans thought about Jews also applies to what Middle Easterners thought about Jews, it is nessary to believe that all people who are not Jewish are the same. This is a fallacy.

And the fact that the Mizrahim feel that the European Jews practice a form of racism against them (Ashkenazi anti-Semitic tendencies is a term used in one of the articles I linked to) suggests that anti-Semitic discrimination is more of a European vs/Arab problem than the world against the Jews problem, or at least it was back in the late 1940s.

Subject: RE: BS: Arafat: Terrorize your enemy.
From: beardedbruce
Date: 17 May 04 - 02:53 PM

CarolC:
"And no violence should be committed against any Jewish people anywhere in the world as a backlash for what Sharon and his government are doing. Period."

But where are your condemnations of Palestinian acts of terror, to match your ones of Israeli acts?

OK, and I will concede that no violence should be committed against ANY people anywhere in the world EXCEPT as backlash to what they, themselves ( as individuals) have done. WHen Israeli troops strap on bombs and blow up birthday parties, with no "target" who has committed a crime, I will condemn it. I will not condemn

I do not claim that either side is faultless. But I have seen NO effort on the part of the Palestinian Authority to make any attempt to even discourage such terrorist actions. At least some of the Israelis are being brought to court, and at least the governemnt is acting as if they disapprove.

Subject: RE: BS: Arafat: Terrorize your enemy.
From: Nerd
Date: 17 May 04 - 02:53 PM

CarolC,

Many of the German Jews thought of themselves as just as much German as Jewish too, for all the good it did them. (Ashkenazi means German in Hebrew).

Even if what you're saying is true, and the Jews were never persecuted in Muslim lands until Zionism (which, by the way, it's not), I still think the Jews were better off having left for Israel BEFORE Saddam took over. In retrospect, the Zionists were right.

There is a good, well-sourced article with references to reputable books here.
It shows that the claims of Jews and Muslims living together in harmony in Arab lands is simply false. It was true in some periods of history, just as German Jews did all right in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. But what CarolC said about Europe is equally true about the Arab world, namely: "there is no doubt that Jews suffered quite a lot of discrimination there over the centuries. I think that's pretty undisputed."

An excerpt:

"It was the Prophet Muhammad himself who attempted to negate the positive titage of the Jew that had been prevalent earlier. According to historian Bernard Lewis, the Prophet Muhammad's original plan had been to induce the Jews to adopt Islam; when Muhammad began his rule at Medina in A.D. 622 he counted few supporters, so he adopted several Jewish practices-including daily prayer facing toward Jerusalem and the fast of Yom Kippur-in the hope of wooing the Jews. But the Jewish community rejected the Prophet Muhammad's religion, preferring to adhere to its own beliefs, whereupon Muhammad subsequently substituted Mecca for Jerusalem, and dropped many of the Jewish practices.

Three years later, Arab hostility against the Jews commenced, when the Meccan army exterminated the Jewish tribe of Quraiza. As a result of the Prophet Muhammad's resentment, the Holy Koran itself contains many of his hostile denunciations of Jews and bitter attacks upon the Jewish tradition, which undoubtedly have colored the beliefs of religious Muslims down to the present.

Omar, the caliph who succeeded Muhammad, delineated in his Charter of Omar the twelve laws under which a dhimmi, or non-Muslim, was allowed to exist as a "nonbeliever" among "believers." The Charter codified the conditions of life for Jews under Islam -- a life which was forfeited if the dhimmi broke this law. Among the restrictions of the Charter: Jews were forbidden to touch the Koran; forced to wear a distinctive (sometimes dark blue or black) habit with sash; compelled to wear a yellow piece of cloth as a badge (blue for Christians); not allowed to perform their religious practices in public; not allowed to own a horse, because horses were deemed noble; not permitted to drink wine in public; and required to bury their dead without letting their grief be heard by the Muslims.

As a grateful payment for being allowed so to live and be "protected," a dhimmi paid a special head tax and a special property tax, the edict for which came directly from the Koran: "Fight against those [Jews and Christians] who believe not in Allah ... until they pay the tribute readily, being brought low."

In addition, Jews faced the danger of incurring the wrath of a Muslim, in which case the Muslim could charge, however falsely, that the Jew had cursed Islam, an accusation against which the Jew could not defend himself Islamic religious law decreed that, although murder of one Muslim by another Muslim was punishable by death, a Muslim who murdered a non-Muslim was given not the death penalty, but only the obligation to pay "blood money" to the family of the slain infidel. Even this punishment was unlikely, however, because the law held the testimony of a Jew or a Christian invalid against a Muslim, and the penalty could only be exacted under improbable conditions-when two Muslims were willing to testify against a brother Muslim for the sake of an infidel."

Subject: RE: BS: Arafat: Terrorize your enemy.
From: GUEST,C-Watch
Date: 17 May 04 - 03:05 PM

From what I've been reading from Arabic Jews, it appears that many of them think of themselves as being just as much Arabic as Jewish. They are saying that prior to the time when the Zionists showed up in their communities, they had a good life. They were an integral part of the fabric of the society in which they lived, and had been for hundreds of years. They say that these circumstances didn't change until the Zionists showed up and started promoting their agenda among the people of the region.

I don't know, or really care, what CarolC has been, or claims to have been, reading (websites, no doubt).

I have been to Israel many times. I know many Israelis -- including any number of Jews from Arab lands -- and I am in daily contact with several.

Like anyone who knows anything about the strains of political thought and the demography of public opinion distribution within Israel, I am well aware that immigrants, and their second and third generation descendants, who came from the various Arab countries, are *generally* among the most right wing and hawkish of all Israelis. Support for a Palestinian state among this community is very weak.
The Likud Party, and several of the religious parties in Sharon's coalition, are overwhelmingly supported by this community. You'd be hard pressed to find significant numbers, if any, from this community who "think of themselves as being just as much Arabic as Jewish."

BTW, support for the Labor Party, and other secular centrist and left wing parties comes primarily from the Ashkenazic (European) community. Support for a Palestinian state among this community is very strong.

Subject: RE: BS: Arafat: Terrorize your enemy.
From: GUEST,Larry K
Date: 17 May 04 - 04:19 PM

Bearded Bruce: RIGHT ON!   Carol C was wrong in the past.   She is wrong in the present.   She will be wrong in the future.   Responding to her is like arguing with a pig.    You can't win the argument and you only annoy the pig.    Anyone who can't see the difference between homicide bombers whose goal is to kill civilians, and targeted raids on terrorists where bystanders acting as shields also get killed is blind and not worthy of discussion.

We are talking about the same Palestinians that were dancing in the street after 9/11.   To quote Groucho Marx "who are you going to believe, me or your own eyes"

To quote Goldie Meir "there will never be peace until Palestinians love their own children more than they hate Israel"   How true.   Arafat is a terrorist that must be killed.   Note that terrorism is way down in the past few months since the Hamas leaders were killed.   Just the opposite of what everyone predicted.   I do think we need to change their hearts and minds.   We need to change them from beating to non beating.

Subject: RE: BS: Arafat: Terrorize your enemy.
From: beardedbruce
Date: 17 May 04 - 04:40 PM

She MAY be wrong in the future- Past performance is the best predictor of human behaviour, but there is always the chance she will realize that her support of terrorists and murderers is causing more suffering to the Palestinian people that the Israelis ever have.

The Palestinian people as a whole have been cruelly mistreated, mostly by their Arab bretheren who kept them in the camps which have breed such a disregard for human life. I have nothing but sympathy for them, but nothing but contempt for those who attack innocent civilians and children, and those who offer them support and encouragement.

Subject: RE: BS: Arafat: Terrorize your enemy.
From: CarolC
Date: 17 May 04 - 06:13 PM

beardedbruce, there are several condemnations from me about the killing of civilians by Palestinians in various threads in the Mudcat. The difference between my condemnations and many of the condemnations of Palestinians by others here in the Mudcat, yourself included, is the use of the term "the Palsetinians" as opposed to my phrasing, which is "some Palestinians". Just as when I speak of Jewish terrorists, I am speaking of "some Jews" rather than "the Jews". There is a big difference between these things.

I have a pretty extensive posting history here in the Mudcat, spanning several years. I don't think it would be productive of me to state all of my positions on every subject in every thread. You are welcome to read my posting history if you like, to see what I have to say on any issue, however, and as I recall, I have invited you to do this already.

Many of the German Jews thought of themselves as just as much German as Jewish too, for all the good it did them. (Ashkenazi means German in Hebrew).

Yes, I know this. It was a no-win situation for the European Jews for sure. Their fellow Europeans saw them as foreigners because of their historical Middle Eastern origins, even though they were as completely European as any other Europeans. The Mizrahi Jews face a similar problem in Israel. They Arabic and because of this, their Jewishness is called into question by the Ashkenazi Jews in Israel. This accounts for the fact that most of the Mizrahim in Israel are so right-wing.

This link: http://www.between-lines.org/archives/2003/feb/Sami_Shalom_Chetrit.htm (Why are Shas and the Mizrahim Supporters of the Right? Interview with Sami Shalom Chetrit) in my 17 May 04 - 12:23 AM post is a discussion of that very issue.

I still think the Jews were better off having left for Israel BEFORE Saddam took over. In retrospect, the Zionists were right.

This may be the case, but it is a separate issue from the issue of why the Mizrahim left their countries of origin.

The website to which you gave a link to support your contention that Jews were discriminated against in the Middle East prior to the 20th century has a very clear political agenda. If you can use a link to a site like that one, then it would be equally reasonable for me to use links to the Electric Intifada website, or to the Palestine Remembered website, which I avoid doing because of questions of political bias. And I suspect that if I did use links to those sites, you would not take them very seriously. But I could be wrong about that.

If we are going to discuss very old history, such as during the time of Muhammad, we also can look at the behavior of Jews in the distant past. There are examples in the old testament and other ancient texts, of Jews committing acts of genocide themselves. Granted, these occurances predate the time of Muhammad by some centuries, but they do indicate that Jews are just as human, and just as prone to all of the behaviors, good and bad, as the rest of humanity.

But the only reason I brought up the issue of the Mizrahim was to answer a question posed by beardedbruce.

I don't know, or really care, what CarolC has been, or claims to have been, reading (websites, no doubt).

I've been reading what I can find of the writings of Mizrahim on this subject on the internet. If they say it on the internet, does it have less validity than if they say it to you? Are you of European descent? Is it possible that they wouldn't say to your face things that some of them might say in writing in an environment like the internet, or to each other?

I am well aware that immigrants, and their second and third generation descendants, who came from the various Arab countries, are *generally* among the most right wing and hawkish of all Israelis. Support for a Palestinian state among this community is very weak.

I refer you to the link I posted earlier in this post. The Mizrahim have some pretty complicated issues to deal with. This is what the person being interviewed in that article, Sami Shalom Chetrit, has to say about it:

"Q: So they never supported the "peace camp" in general and the "Peace Agreement" of Oslo in particular?

A: Let me remind you what such a "Peace Agreement" means: that is, the settled and internationally recognized enslavement of the Palestinians in territorial enclaves with the continuous settlement of Messianic Jewish nationalists who pray to their god of hate and death.

Let's be honest: what will the Mizrahim gain from the Ashkenazi model of "peace" known as Oslo or any other initiative within this framework? Nothing! The Global Ashkenazi economy will flourish; the few industrial enterprises left here will be transferred to the Far East and to Jordan and of course to the '67 Occupied Territories. The Ashkenazi upper tenth will become more and more wealthy, to the point that they will kindly agree to satisfy the basic needs of the Mizrahim and the new comers in the townships and poor neighborhoods, (and even less those of Palestinians) in exchange for social quiet and national loyalty.

Privatization will proceed even faster, education and healthcare will be made conditional to income, and an additional half million slaves [foreign workers] will be imported in order to lower the work conditions of the Mizrahim and Palestinians alike.

Thus, the Mizrahim can only loose from the kind of "peace" which Israel longs for. They will loose not only the faint hope for economic growth in their communities, but mainly they will loose the Palestinian ass which they were so good at kicking, and upon which they constructed their national identity - an identity built upon hating the Palestinians."

Subject: RE: BS: Arafat: Terrorize your enemy.
From: CarolC
Date: 17 May 04 - 06:20 PM

Are ad-hominem attacks the best you can come up with Larry K?

To quote Goldie Meir "there will never be peace until Palestinians love their own children more than they hate Israel"

Or we could rephrase it this way:

"There will never be peace until Israelis love their children more than they covet Palestinian land."

Both sound a little racist though, don't they?

Subject: RE: BS: Arafat: Terrorize your enemy.
From: Peace
Date: 17 May 04 - 06:32 PM

Well, back to the title of this thread: Does that remark make Arafat an asshole or not?

Subject: RE: BS: Arafat: Terrorize your enemy.
From: beardedbruce
Date: 17 May 04 - 06:55 PM

"there are several condemnations from me about the killing of civilians by Palestinians in various threads in the Mudcat. The difference between my condemnations and many of the condemnations of Palestinians by others here in the Mudcat, yourself included, is the use of the term "the Palsetinians" as opposed to my phrasing, which is "some Palestinians". Just as when I speak of Jewish terrorists, I am speaking of "some Jews" rather than "the Jews". There is a big difference between these things."

I have tried to indicate where I meant the Palestinian Authority, as representing the government of the Palestinians. You often state the IDF", where I beleive you mean "some members of the IDF". I agree that neither of us have been rigorous in this.

A question to consider: are the Palestinian people better off now than before the Intifada started? I beleive that neither the Israelis nor the Palestinians have benefited from the conflict- but there are a number of other Arab nations that have. Please consider whether you are making the avaerage Palestinian better or worse off by your comments. I know you have stated that you condemn the terrorist killing- but with each breath you reiterate that they have such good reasons.

I respect your rights to your opinions, and you may choose whatever sources you like to believe. But when you state that you think that the Palestinians are entitled to the POT, when they (the government, the terrorists, and all their schools) have defined that as the ENTIRE MANDATE territory, you are endorsing their extermination of the state of Israel.

If the Israeli governement and people object to this, and react with violent measures, I don't think you can blame them.

A good quote for the Palestinian terrorist organizations to hear might be "If it hurts when you do this, DON'T do this"

Subject: RE: BS: Arafat: Terrorize your enemy.
From: CarolC
Date: 17 May 04 - 07:08 PM

I'd put that remark about on the same level as Bush's "Bring 'em on!" (the terrorists) quote.

beardedbruce, I would suggest spending some time checking out what the Jewish human rights organizations have to say about what's going on in Israel/Palestine. Here's some links to a few of them:

http://www.btselem.org/index.asp
http://www.nimn.org/
http://www.gush-shalom.org/english/index.html
http://www.refusersolidarity.net
http://www.jppi.org
http://www.jewishvoiceforpeace.org
http://www.jatonyc.org
www.batshalom.org/english/batshalom/index.html
http://www.ejjp.org

Subject: RE: BS: Arafat: Terrorize your enemy.
From: beardedbruce
Date: 17 May 04 - 07:19 PM

thank you for the links- I shall look at them, but I cannot be certain I will agree with them.

Please consider my question, seriously.

Subject: RE: BS: Arafat: Terrorize your enemy.
From: CarolC
Date: 17 May 04 - 07:35 PM

beardedbruce, when I say the Palestinian Occupied Territories, I mean the pre-1967 borders. And that is what most Palestinians have indicated they are willing to accept.

I know you have stated that you condemn the terrorist killing- but with each breath you reiterate that they have such good reasons.

I can't help but get the impression from statements like this one that you think the lives of innocent Israelis have more value than the lives of innocent Palestinians.

And my main contention all along has been that the policies and the actions of the Israeli government have created exactly the opposite result from the one they say they want. So I would say that a good quote for the Israeli government to hear might be "If it hurts when you do this, DON'T do this"

Subject: RE: BS: Arafat: Terrorize your enemy.
From: Jim McCallan
Date: 17 May 04 - 07:46 PM

I think Israel is reasonably safe in the long run actually, despite the calls of many Islamic militant groups calling for it's 'extermination'.

One should always keep in mind that a grievant party's initial negotiating position is rarely what they eventually will settle for.

Case in point

Tim Sebastian of the BBC, interviewed Khaled Meshaal, the overall head of Hamas on his Hardtalk programme, recently. The complete transcript is on the other side of this link.
Sebastian is known for not pullimg his punches, irrespective of who is sitting across the table from him.
Here is what he got Meshaal to say:

"I have said what Sheikh Ahmed Yassin has said. You have quoted Sheikh Ahmed Yassin. What he said concerning the withdrawal to the '67 borders. If this happened we might have a truce with Israel. We believe in this in Hamas."

If everybody kept to previous agreements and I mean everybody concerned, one might find that a true peace in the Middle East could actually happen.

Jim

Subject: RE: BS: Arafat: Terrorize your enemy.
From: CarolC
Date: 18 May 04 - 12:02 AM

You often state the IDF", where I beleive you mean "some members of the IDF"

No, I mean the IDF- the organization. I do not believe that all members of the IDF agree with the orders they are given, nor do they all agree with the agendas of their superiors or of their government. In fact I know that some of them don't because I've read what they have to say about it. I also do not think that all members of the IDF have committed attrocities. I've posted these quotes elsewhere in the Mudcat, but I'm putting them here for you:

"IDF Chief of Staff Moshe Ya'alon: "The government's policy is very harmful. There is no reason to punish the Palestinians indiscriminately."

(Ma'ariv, 29 October 2003)

Maj. Gen. (Res.) Ya'akov Or, Coordinator of Government Activities in the Territories from 1997-2001: "The more that the [Palestinians'] distress grows, the more the power of Hamas increases. If the Palestinian public has nothing to lose, we will lose. Rather than go to work, they will prepare explosives and ambushes, and will blow themselves up in Tel-Aviv."

Yediot Aharonot, 13 July 2001

Former Chief of Staff, Lt. Gen. (Res.) Amnon Lipkin-Shahak: "IDF soldiers face hundreds and thousands of people waiting at checkpoints every day… This reality, the intolerable friction between Palestinians and IDF soldiers, creates potential suicide bombers every day."

Ma'ariv, 21 December 2001

IDF report: "Checkpoints in the Occupied Territories do not prevent the entry of terrorists."

Ha'aretz, 2 November 2001

An internal IDF report reveals that the IDF checkpoints in the Occupied Territories do not work from an operational perspective; at the same time, they harm the local population and create unnecessary friction and abuse by the soldiers."

Kol Ha'ir, 2 November 2001

M. L., Staff Sergeant (Res.), Armor Brigade, May 2002: "If a terrorist wants to, he can cross at other points along the road. We do not have enough troops to prevent it. We have implemented a policy that has done nothing to meet security needs and is intended only to make the lives of the civilian population miserable… There were situations in which we stood at the checkpoint for hours and prohibited people from crossing, and then we left, without anybody replacing us. Anybody who wanted to could cross."

Lt. Col. Dov Zadka, head of the Civil Administration, 1998-2002: "I do not like this situation. It encourages large-scale hatred over the long term… Two weeks ago, I saw a father walking with two sacks and carrying a five-year-old boy on his shoulders. Stumbling behind him was the mother with what may have been a newborn infant. It was mid-afternoon and they were walking from the junction to their home. Tell me, how does this help? What good does it do? I can picture my wife walking like that with our daughter, shuffling through the mud. I swear, it gives me the chills."

B'Mahaneh (IDF magazine), 28 December 2001

Lt. Gen. Moshe Ya'alon Chief of Staff: "I fear that even if we win the war, in the end we will not be able to look at ourselves in the mirror. We have a problem. All this fighting is not good for our health, from the perspective of our moral strength. A soldier who is ordered to stand at a checkpoint, where it is easy and tempting to loot does not add to our moral strength."

Yediot Aharonot, 4 July 2003


Here is an interview with Ami Ayalon, who headed the Insraeli Shin Bet (internal security) from 1996 to 2000 during the Prime Ministerships of Benjamin Netanayahu and Ehud Barak.

http://www.ajds.org.au/intifada/ayalon.htm

Here is an excerpt:

"AA: We say the Palestinians behave like "madmen," but it is not madness but a bottomless despair. As long as there was a peace process -- the prospect of an end to the occupation -- Arafat could maneuver, incite or repress violence to better negotiate. When there is no more peace process, the more terrorists one kills the more strength their camp gains.

Yasser Arafat neither prepared nor triggered the Intifada. The explosion was spontaneous, against Israel, as all hope for the end of occupation disappeared, and against the Palestinian authority, its corruption, its impotence. Arafat could not repress it. The peace process is what allowed Arafat to be seen as the head of a national liberation movement rather than a collaborator of Israel. Without it, he can fight neither against the Islamists nor against his own base. The Palestinians would end up hanging him in the public square."


I am not condoning any behavior on the part of any people who kill civilians. I am looking at cause and effect and determining who I think is the most responsible for the ongoing situation, and who is in the best position to end the violence.

Subject: RE: BS: Arafat: Terrorize your enemy.
From: CarolC
Date: 18 May 04 - 12:18 AM

BTW, here's the title of that article with the interview with Ami Ayalon (in case you don't see what's in the link):

"Former Shin Bet chief urges unconditional withdrawal"

Subject: RE: BS: Arafat: Terrorize your enemy.
From: Wolfgang
Date: 18 May 04 - 09:47 AM

King Abdullah II from Jordan has suggested today, Arafat could do a service to his people by stepping down. I agree.

Wolfgang

Subject: RE: BS: Arafat: Terrorize your enemy.
From: GUEST,Larry K
Date: 18 May 04 - 11:14 AM

Carol C.-   When I read your comments about not blaming all the Palestinians for the acts of a the (small, tiny, miniscule, minute, decimal dust) few Palestinan terrorists I saw the light.   Therefore, as a Jew I would like to take this opportunity to apologize for all the Isreali suicide bombers.   Oh- I forgot.   There haven't been any.

Ok- So I would like to apologize for all the Isreali airplane hijackers.   Oh- I forgot.   There haven't been any.

OK- So I would like to apologize for all the Isreali beheadings and rape rooms.   Oh- I forgot.   There haven't been any.

OK- So I would like to apologize for the weapons of mass destruction used by Israel on its own people and and on it's enemies.   Oh- I forgot. Israel has never used a WMD.

I would point out that all of the above have been done by the other countries in the middle east, but you would accuse me of being a racist- so I can't. Oh- I forgot.   You already have.   

So could you please explain how the Goldie Meir quote about loving your own children being more important than hating your enemy makes me a racist.   This may be a first.   A folkie condems me for choosing love and peace over hate and violence.   Congratulations on being a trend setter.

Subject: RE: BS: Arafat: Terrorize your enemy.
From: beardedbruce
Date: 18 May 04 - 12:45 PM

"who is in the best position to end the violence. "

I think that most people can agree that the people in the best postition to end the violence are those who have chosen to be violent. Our disagreement is who that is- I think it is the people blowing up innocent children and civilians. I cannot tell from your posts who you think it is- The Global Ashkenazi economy, I guess.

Subject: RE: BS: Arafat: Terrorize your enemy.
From: CarolC
Date: 18 May 04 - 12:48 PM

Here's the story about the synagogue, Nerd. I first heard about it on NPR. I remembered or heard incorrectly when I got the impression that the synagogue no longer had a Jewish congregation. It appears to have a very small congregation, and there is a Muslim Iraqi who is the caretaker for the synagogue and who also protects the two old men who live in the synagogue's compound.

http://www.npr.org/news/specials/iraq2003/raz_030522.html

Here's an excerpt:

The center of Jewish culture in Baghdad is the Meir Taweig Synagogue -- the last working Jewish prayer house in Iraq, founded in 1942. Ninety-year-old Tawfiq Sofer, one of two elderly Jews who live in the small rooms adjacent to the complex, is the oldest living link to an ancient Baghdad community. He never married, and his brother and sisters left Iraq in the early 1950s to live in Iran, Israel and England.

Muhammed Jassim, caretaker of the synagogue and protector of the two men who live there, is a Muslim -- but his family has been close to the synagogue's leaders for generations. "It is my duty, because I am faithful to my job -- and all that matters to me is (to) look after their safety and their health," he tells Raz.

During the 20 nights of aerial bombing in March, Muhammed never left the synagogue, and after the fall of Saddam's forces he fired several warning shots from his pistol to keep looters at bay."


Here's some information on the IDF's use of Palestinian civilians as human shields. In the case described in the first link, the Palestinian civilian who was being used as a human shield was killed during the procedure. The link contains a photograph of him being used as a human shield:

http://www.btselem.org/English/Press_Releases/2002/020814.asp

http://www.btselem.org/English/Human_Shield/Timeline_of_Events.asp

Subject: RE: BS: Arafat: Terrorize your enemy.
From: Nerd
Date: 18 May 04 - 01:13 PM

CarolC,

First of all, sorry I didn't add links. The Cat was down while I was typing this, so I couldn't blickify. I just put in the URLs.

It's true that that website I linked to above had a political agenda, as do all people who make public comments about the Middle Eastern situation, including you. I know you like to claim there is such a thing as a "human rights agenda" and that the sites YOU link to are not politically motivated, but I've never bought that particularly. Most of the people who take sides in this issue believe that their own perspective leads to a better human rights situation, including the eretz yisraelis.

In any case, the site was based on the work of Princeton historian Bernard Lewis. His works most relevant to this discussion are not on the web, so I can't link to them, but he is an immensely respected figure in the history of the Middle East, with about fifteen books on the subject. He is fair when it comes to citing both the achievements and the flaws of Arab and Muslim cultures. While he maintains, for example, that Islam preserved classical culture from ruin, and thereby contributed mightily to the modern world, he does not shy away from speaking the truth: historically, Muslims frequently oppressed Jews.

You say that I am going "far back" in history to find examples of this oppression. There is a reason for this. Under colonial rule (Lebanon under England, Libya under England and Italy, Tunisia and Morocco under France, etc.) Jews had a relatively stable existence because they were protected by the colonial power. If we cite post-colonial examples, you say "it's the result of Zionism poisoning the Arabs against Jews" and if we cite pre-colonial examples you say "well, if you want to go back that far in history, everyone is a barbarian."

The fact is that you will find far more testimonials from Jews who say they were oppressed. Even the one testimonial you have produced to the contrary is from Iraq, where as I have pointed out, he would have been doomed to life under Saddam had he stayed. Here are a few counter-testimonials:

Here is an article by a Tunisian Jew at Jimena (Jews Indigenous to the Middle East and North Africa.)

[http://www.jimena-justice.org/faq/memmi.htm]. Some excerpts:

As to the pre-colonial period, the collective memory of Tunisian Jewry leaves no doubt. It is enough to cite a few narratives and tales relating to that period: it was a gloomy one. The Jewish communities lived in the shadow of history, under arbitrary rule and the fear of all-powerful monarchs whose decisions could not be rescinded or even questioned. It can be said that everybody was governed by these absolute rulers: the sultans, beys and deys. But the Jews were at the mercy not only of the monarch but also of the man in the street. My grandfather still wore the obligatory and discriminatory Jewish garb, and in his time every Jew might expect to be hit on the head by any Moslem whom he happened to pass. This pleasant ritual even had a name - the chtaka; and with it went a sacramental formula which I have forgotten. A French orientalist once replied to me at a meeting: "In Islamic lands the Christians were no better off!" This is true - so what? This is a double-edged argument: it signifies, in effect, that no member of a minority lived in peace and dignity in countries with an Arab majority! Yet there was a marked difference all the same: the Christians were, as a rule, foreigners and as such protected by their mother-countries. If a Barbary pirate or an emir wanted to enslave a missionary, he had to take into account the government of the missionary's land of origin - perhaps even the Vatican or the Order of the Knights of Malta. But no one came to the rescue of the Jews, because the Jews were natives and therefore victims of the will of "their" rulers. Never, I repeat, never - with the possible exception of two or three very specific intervals such as the Andalusian, and not even then - did the Jews in Arab lands live in other than a humiliated state, vulnerable and periodically mistreated and murdered, so that they should clearly remember their place.

Another site you can visit is the forgotten refugees site [http://www.forgottenrefugees.org/links.htm], which attempts to collect firsthand accounts by Jews expelled from Islamic countries. There's a recent article posted there from an Egyptian Jew, who writes:

But even as child, I understood that Jews were second-class citizens. Signs in the street read: El yahud kalb el arab, "The Jews are the dogs of the Arabs." At school, my best friend Menyawi turned to me and said with a half-smile, "One day, all the Jews will have their throats slit." An older Muslim man advised that if I was threatened in the streets, I should say: Ana Muslum, M'wahed billah, "I am a Muslim and believe in one God."

Despite the hatred in the air, my family was successful. In 1950, as a teenager, I attended a British prep school in Cairo that boasted prominent alumni such as King Hussein of Jordan and Columbia professor Edward Said (who never writes about how his Jewish classmates were expelled from Egypt). But I never got the chance to graduate.

In 1952, Egypt's new nationalist leader, Gamal Abdel Nasser, began arresting Jews on trumped-up charges and confiscating their property. My uncle and cousin were arrested and a warrant was issued for my father. My family happened to be traveling in Europe, and my father said: "We'll never return." My uncle chose to remain, and, following the 1967 war with Israel, was thrown in an Egyptian concentration camp for three years, along with hundreds of other Egyptian Jews.


This Site, [http://sunsite.berkeley.edu/JewsofLibya/] has interviews with Libyan jews. There, every Jewish businessman by law had to have an Arab "partner" who got at least 51% of the profits. Because the Jew was required by law to make less than 49% of the profits, the Arab "partner" didn't have to do anything! The Jew ran the business, and the partner showed up annually to take half his money! It was a government-sponsored mafia operation that systematically milked only Jews. In fairness, the same interviewer says that he had generally friendly relations with many Arabs, but that the when Libyan government was run by Arabs, the Jews had "no rights."

Anything on the synagogue?

Subject: RE: BS: Arafat: Terrorize your enemy.
From: Nerd
Date: 18 May 04 - 01:16 PM

Hi CarolC, I didn't see your post about the synagogue until after mine. I'll have a look !

Subject: RE: BS: Arafat: Terrorize your enemy.
From: Justa Picker
Date: 18 May 04 - 01:21 PM

Larry K,
You're a welcomed breath of fresh air.
Thank you Sir.
(I also really enjoy the pig anaology. Spot on!)

Subject: RE: BS: Arafat: Terrorize your enemy.
From: CarolC
Date: 18 May 04 - 01:21 PM

Larry K, I notice you are being pretty selective with regard to which kinds of human rights abuses you are willing to use as criteria for whom you choose to criticize. I have posted information about quite a few acts of terrorism, crimes against humanity, and war crimes that the government of Israel and those who were fighting for the creation of the State of Israel have committed over the decades, right in this thread. And I can provide plenty more of them if you want, including the use of chemical WMD against Palestinians.

So could you please explain how the Goldie Meir quote about loving your own children being more important than hating your enemy makes me a racist.   This may be a first.   A folkie condems me for choosing love and peace over hate and violence.   Congratulations on being a trend setter.

I'm having a very difficult time seeing how you could possibly be choosing love and peace over hate and violence if you support what the government of Israel is doing to the Palestinians. It's racist to suppose that it is hatred of Israel and not the desire for freedom and the fight for basic human rights that motivates the Palestinians. The people who live in the Occupied Territories (West Bank, Gaza, and East Jerusalem) have no basic human rights. They do not have the status of human being to the government of Israel. This is why they are fighting.

If you only condemn the Palestinian resistance, but you ignore the flagrant violations of human rights by the government of Israel (and the terrorists who brought about its existance), then you must be doing it because you don't see Palestinians as human beings. That's a pretty good definition of racism in my book.

Our disagreement is who that is- I think it is the people blowing up innocent children and civilians. I cannot tell from your posts who you think it is- The Global Ashkenazi economy, I guess.

Very funny, beardedbruce. A line like that one suggests to me that you are not really interested in serious discussion. I think, as do some of the members and former members of the IDF from whom I provided quotes in one of my earlier posts, that if the government of Israel wanted peace, they could have it in an instant. But they don't want peace. What they want is more land. And they'll use any pretext they can find (or invent) to get it, including treating the Palestinians like animals. It serves their interest to keep the Palestinians fighting, because it helps to persuade people like you and Larry K that Palestinians are not human and so therefore don't deserve to be treated like humans.

It would be useful to keep in mind that the practice of killing civilians by Palestinians is a fairly recent phenomenon. The Palestinians suffered terribly under the thumb of the government of Israel for many decades before the first suicide bombing ever took place.

Subject: RE: BS: Arafat: Terrorize your enemy.
From: CarolC
Date: 18 May 04 - 01:27 PM

So, Justa Picker, re: some of your comments on other threads... after you've finished killing all of the Muslims and the Arabs, who will you go after next? Am I and my family on the list?

Subject: RE: BS: Arafat: Terrorize your enemy.
From: beardedbruce
Date: 18 May 04 - 01:31 PM

" The Palestinians suffered terribly under the thumb of the government of Israel for many decades before the first suicide bombing ever took place. "

Yes, in such things as the Munich Olympics, they expected to escape.

The Palestinians have suffered under the repressive Arab policies of not allowing them to settle elsewhere, and keeping them as second ( or lower) class non-citizens.

Subject: RE: BS: Arafat: Terrorize your enemy.
From: Nerd
Date: 18 May 04 - 01:34 PM

Ha! Looking back over the thread, I notice that CarolC missed beardedbruce's point about the Protocols of the Elders of Zion. CarolC's response was "but this account was written by a Jew." Beardedbruce brought up the PEZ precisely because they, too, claim to have been written by Jews. His point, I believe, was "prove it."

But CarolC, to call you on some of your distortions, on the synagogue issue you have dissembled mightily. You originally wrote:

" There is a Synagogue in Iraq that has been very carefully and lovingly cared for and tended by Iraqi Muslims since its Jewish congregants left, in the hope that some day the Jewish community will return to it and it will be ready for them if they do."

In fact, it is tended by one man, (not "Iraqi Muslims"). That man is paid to do so by the remaining Jews, who have not left. No one, least of all the Jews, hopes that the Jewish community will return. The man your article cites as the Jewish Community leader would leave himself, but his father is too old and frail to travel. Your original characterization of this thus story contained three distortions:

1) the congregation has left

2) there is more than one Muslim caring for the synagogue.

3) The Iraqi muslims hope the Jews will return and are keeping the synagogue nice for them.

Your post also strongly suggested that the Muslims were doing this out of charity (after all, if the Jews had left, who was there to pay them?) In fact, the caretaker does it because, in his own words, it's his job.

So big deal, this only proves that a Jew can pay a Muslim to be nice to him, as log as there's no danger of a Jewish community with any real power or protections!

Subject: RE: BS: Arafat: Terrorize your enemy.
From: CarolC
Date: 18 May 04 - 01:37 PM

The fact is that you will find far more testimonials from Jews who say they were oppressed.

And from what I've been reading, the ones who migrated to Israel feel that they are being oppressed now in Israel. Sounds like they can't win for losing.

Subject: RE: BS: Arafat: Terrorize your enemy.
From: Jack the Sailor
Date: 18 May 04 - 01:40 PM

Subject: RE: BS: Arafat: Terrorize your enemy.
From: GUEST,Larry K - PM
Date: 18 May 04 - 11:14 AM

Carol C.-   When I read your comments about not blaming all the Palestinians for the acts of a the (small, tiny, miniscule, minute, decimal dust) few Palestinan terrorists I saw the light.   Therefore, as a Jew I would like to take this opportunity to apologize for all the Isreali suicide bombers.   Oh- I forgot.   There haven't been any.

But there have been lots of homocide bombers flying Helicoptors and fighters jets.

Ok- So I would like to apologize for all the Isreali airplane hijackers.   Oh- I forgot.   There haven't been any.

See above.. Why hijack them when you can aleady use aircraft as weapons and sleep in a warm bed afterwards?

OK- So I would like to apologize for all the Isreali beheadings and rape rooms.   Oh- I forgot.   There haven't been any.

apparantly you have forgotton the exploding cellphones and the bulldozing of homes. Who needs a "room" when you can rape a whole community in full public view.

OK- So I would like to apologize for the weapons of mass destruction used by Israel on its own people and and on it's enemies.   Oh- I forgot. Israel has never used a WMD.

Israel has never used a WMD....yet. Is there anyone on earth who doubts that they would?

I would point out that all of the above have been done by the other countries in the middle east, but you would accuse me of being a racist- so I can't. Oh- I forgot.   You already have.

You are accusing all of the other countries in the middle east. You are a racist.    

So could you please explain how the Goldie Meir quote about loving your own children being more important than hating your enemy makes me a racist.   This may be a first.   A folkie condems me for choosing love and peace over hate and violence.   Congratulations on being a trend setter.

You obviously rank hating your enemy, and his people and his country pretty high in your list of values. You are a racist. Congratulations, admitting it is your first step on the road to recovery

Subject: RE: BS: Arafat: Terrorize your enemy.
From: CarolC
Date: 18 May 04 - 01:45 PM

Nerd, didn't you see the part where I said (re: the synagogue) that I had heard or misremembered? Please read that part again.

I've read the Protocols. My take on them is that they were written by Monarchists who were using the Jews as a "boogy man" to scare the peasantry into not supporting any movements that would give them (the peasantry) democracy. The real agenda (from my perspective), was to control the behavior of the peasants. The Jews in this case were convenient scapegoats, as they have been at various times during much of the last several centuries.

What I see happening now, is that the Muslims and Arabs are the new scapegoats. Todays "powers that be" are using them in the exact same way that the Monarchists who wrote the Protocols were using the Jews.

The piece that I quoted that was written by the Iraqi Jew cannot in any way be equated with the Protocols of the Elders of Zion.

Subject: RE: BS: Arafat: Terrorize your enemy.
From: mg
Date: 18 May 04 - 01:47 PM

It is a complex situation. Starting with the fact that the Palestinians were royally truely screwed. And I until recently did not understand what I now think is their basic wish..not for a Palestinian state, but the gut-level desire for their own family property to be returned. One female Palestinian spokeswoman finally got through to me on this. I do not think most lands can be returned, but I think a token number should be, and there should be at least some historical villages, maybe turned into something like our Williamsburg, inadequate as that is, so they can go and remember and visit. At this point, tokens are maybe all that is possible, along, as I have said before, with massive immigration to relieve the population pressure, much closer supervision by U.N. of what is taught in the schools....many more people-to-people events..like us going to orphanages etc..which I would love to do...massive training of the young people in medical skills and manufacturing of small items, like eyeglasses say, for third world...perhaps drug manufacturing...I don't know. Whenever you take farmers, villagers, and enclose them like they have been, there are going to be troubles. Look at the famine Irish in the tenements...

If you meet Palestinians, I guarantee you will love them. The ones I have met, granted not a random sample, are delightful, but very sad, people. They do remind me of the Irish..similar problems, basically very good-hearted, but can and have go the way of terrorism and violence....I am sitting in an office formerly run by a Palestinian refugee, in a town until recently run by his son....

mg

Subject: RE: BS: Arafat: Terrorize your enemy.
From: Nerd
Date: 18 May 04 - 02:40 PM

Yes, CarolC, I missed that part. Sorry! After my own post, I saw yours, and leapt right to the link.

Still, it shows that you are always willing to believe (and repeat) even obviously false assertions if they cast Muslims in a positive light as regards their relations with Jews.

The book you cite CAN be seen as a parallel to the Protocols of the Elders of Zion, if it can be shown either that the author is not really a Jew, or that he is a Jew but is being paid to support an anti-Jewish agenda. I'm not actually making either of these claims, I'm just saying that the book's purporting to be written by a Jew doesn't mean anything. Personally, I think it's more a question of "freakshow politics," as I said above. The anti-Jewish lobby have found one Jew willing to blame Zionists, and they are promoting him as if he were representative of the community as a whole. He is not.

As to your claim that the Arab jews and Sephardim feel oppressed in Israel, fine. Jews in the US faced discrimination, and we still do, but it is much better than the places we left behind. We may occasionally make disgruntled remarks about the way we have been treated (my dad had a hard time getting into universities, etc), but that doesn't mean we'd be better off anywhere else.

Say what you want about Israel, they ARE dedicated to improving the lot of Jews. They are the country that airlifted starving Ethiopians out of a famine simply because they were Jews. Do you really think they are systematically opressing other Jews worse than Arab countries did? Please!

Any response to the multiple firsthand narratives of oppression in Tunisia, Libya and Egypt?

Subject: RE: BS: Arafat: Terrorize your enemy.
From: Justa Picker
Date: 18 May 04 - 03:01 PM

On behalf of all the Jewish members and guests that frequent this forum Carol, I have only have 2 words for you.


Oink
Oink.


Have a nice day.

Subject: RE: BS: Arafat: Terrorize your enemy.
From: GUEST
Date: 18 May 04 - 03:07 PM

Back to the old days, Michael?

Subject: RE: BS: Arafat: Terrorize your enemy.
From: Wolfgang
Date: 18 May 04 - 03:16 PM

Am I to read the last contribution in the sense that Carol is casting pearls (of wisdom) before swines?

Wolfgang

Subject: RE: BS: Arafat: Terrorize your enemy.
From: Wolfgang
Date: 18 May 04 - 03:23 PM

'before last' it is now.

Carol,

when you did look up the site about human shields you could easily have also found a condemnation of the use of a 11(?) year old boy as a convenient and low danger (though not for him) means of transport for explosives recently. If that is not a variant of the human shields tactic I don't know what that is.

I have seldom objections to your links as such, but why do I get the impression that you only select those stories that have a certain slant?

Wolfgang

Subject: RE: BS: Arafat: Terrorize your enemy.
From: Justa Picker
Date: 18 May 04 - 03:29 PM

No. I'm signing my name GUEST.

Subject: RE: BS: Arafat: Terrorize your enemy.
From: GUEST
Date: 18 May 04 - 03:31 PM

As if that makes a difference

Subject: RE: BS: Arafat: Terrorize your enemy.
From: beardedbruce
Date: 18 May 04 - 03:42 PM

Hey people:

The original comment about pigs was not saying that CarolC was one, just that argueing with her had some similarity to the described arguement. Justa has no need to make this personnal.

I disagree with CarolC on a lot of things, but she is entitled to try to make her points, and to shoot down whatever points she disagrees with- I will fight to give her the same priviledges that I would want for myself.

Subject: RE: BS: Arafat: Terrorize your enemy.
From: GUEST
Date: 18 May 04 - 04:03 PM

..... as I guessed

Subject: RE: BS: Arafat: Terrorize your enemy.
From: GUEST
Date: 18 May 04 - 06:26 PM

One of the things that I most dislike about Palestinian society is the attitude toward women. Unmarried women, even young girls who have been raped, are subject to "honor killing" by their families and Arafat's Palestinian Authority will do nothing to stop it.

Article from World & I Journal.

Subject: RE: BS: Arafat: Terrorize your enemy.
From: GUEST
Date: 18 May 04 - 06:29 PM

Honor killing. What a concept.

Any woman, even a rape victim, who wasn't a virgin on her wedding day should be very thankful they weren't born in Palestine.

Subject: RE: BS: Arafat: Terrorize your enemy.
From: GUEST,politicked out
Date: 18 May 04 - 06:47 PM

Get a room, please

Subject: RE: BS: Arafat: Terrorize your enemy.
From: CarolC
Date: 18 May 04 - 07:34 PM

You're JEWISH Justa Picker!?!

That's incredible! I was absolutely sure that you were a white supremacist.

Subject: RE: BS: Arafat: Terrorize your enemy.
From: CarolC
Date: 18 May 04 - 09:21 PM

Ok. I'm going to try to answer everybody as fast as I can, but don't expect responses right away.

Re: the Olympics. Well, from my perspective, 1972 is fairly recent as compared to say, 1948, the year of the Nakba, but you're right. They were not suicide bombers.

Subject: RE: BS: Arafat: Terrorize your enemy.
From: GUEST,Larry K
Date: 19 May 04 - 09:57 AM

Every terrorist, maniac, serial killer, pedofile, dictator, king, emperor, suicide bomber, and extremest believe what they are doing is correct.   They are enabled by liberals who justify their behavior.   The actions of terrorists are justified (at least understood) because of their suffering at the oprression of the West.    Greenpeace is justfied because we are ruining our environment.    Hitler was certainly justified because everyone knew for a fact that Jews were at fault.    People like Carol C. who support these positions are responsible for millions of people getting killed.

Not in the same way as Al Queda, or Sadaam Hussain.   Closer to Neville Chamberlain where appeasement led to the death of millions in World War II.    We are in World War III against islamic fundamentalists, but most people are too buy watching American Idol to notice.   In the war on terror they expect it to be completed in an hour sitcom or at least by the end of the season.

Terrorists have no rights. You cannot negotiate with a terrorist. All terrorists must be eliminated.   In the middle east there is no free speech or free thought.    People are taught in schools to hate the USA and support the terrorists.    It is no surprise that they do.   Did you read the quote in the paper today "It is the duty of all muslims to support Jihad"    Arafat funds terrorism.   Absolutely proven beyond a shadow of a doubt. The Palestinians were dancing in the street on 9/11.    They have shown no ability to live in peace. Isreal is the only democracy in the middle east and I think the third or 4th longest democracy in the history of the world.   I know that some of you will label this as racist propaganda. Of course, if I said it in any other middle east country I would be beheaded.   And than I would sound like Carol C. or Jack the Sailor.

Jack- that was sarcasm.   I am sorry you didn't get it.   Next time I will try to type much slower so even yooouuu caaaannn uuunnnddderrssstttaaand iiiitttttt.

Subject: RE: BS: Arafat: Terrorize your enemy.
From: CarolC
Date: 19 May 04 - 01:49 PM

Larry K, you are ignoring the undeniable fact that the State of Israel was founded upon acts of terrorism, and that after the establishment of the state, those very same terrorists who brought about its existance then became its government. So if this statement by you, "Terrorists have no rights. You cannot negotiate with a terrorist. All terrorists must be eliminated" is correct, I guess you'll need to get rid of the government of Israel while you're at it.

Subject: RE: BS: Arafat: Terrorize your enemy.
From: GUEST,Teribus
Date: 19 May 04 - 02:07 PM

Chasing your tail again CarolC - keep going, love watch you verbally running round in circles - getting absolutely nowhere.

Sooner Arafat has gone the better off for all concerned - he has been a complete and utter waste of space

Subject: RE: BS: Arafat: Terrorize your enemy.
From: CarolC
Date: 19 May 04 - 02:21 PM

Hitler was certainly justified because everyone knew for a fact that Jews were at fault.    People like Carol C. who support these positions are responsible for millions of people getting killed.

Very insidious, but not too clever. You can't link me with people who support the acts of Hitler by putting those sentences next to each other. We both know that there is no justification for what Hitler did. But I will say that your rhetoric sounds very reminiscent of Hitler's rhetoric in tone and substance. You're taking Hitler's basic premises and substituting the words "islamic fundamentalists" for "Jews". It's that sort of mindset that causes the slaughter of millions of innocent people.

Subject: RE: BS: Arafat: Terrorize your enemy.
From: Wolfgang
Date: 19 May 04 - 02:38 PM

'Guilt by association' is a very bad rhetorical trick.

Wolfgang

Subject: RE: BS: Arafat: Terrorize your enemy.
From: CarolC
Date: 19 May 04 - 02:39 PM

For beardedbruce:

The Palestinians have suffered under the repressive Arab policies of not allowing them to settle elsewhere, and keeping them as second ( or lower) class non-citizens.

There would be no refugee problem if Israel had not chased those who became refugees from their villages (often at gunpoint... see the Nakba link in my 18 May 04 - 09:21 PM post). The refugees are Israel's responsibility and no one else's. Trying to foist responsiblity for the problem on the governments of other countries solves nothing. And it does not in any way address the problem of the Palestinians in the West Bank, Gaza, and East Jerusalem. Those people are being kept by the government of Israel as non-citizens with no status as human beings whatever.

Nerd:

I'll have some more information about Naeim Giladi in a little while, but I wanted to address this one now...

In fact, it is tended by one man, (not "Iraqi Muslims"). That man is paid to do so by the remaining Jews, who have not left.

The man who tends the synagogue is being paid, but the article also says this: "but his family has been close to the synagogue's leaders for generations". It does not specify that those prior generations were being paid. Any speculation that they were would be just that... speculation.

Subject: RE: BS: Arafat: Terrorize your enemy.
From: Nerd
Date: 19 May 04 - 02:44 PM

There is an unfortunate lack of reflection on the part of Americans today when it comes to labeling people as "terrorists" and thus as "inhuman." Indeed, one of the interesting things about today's rhetoric is the way "terrorist" has changed meaning. Back in Bolshevik days, people described themselves frankly as terrorists. It meant that, since they did not have the resources to fight against armies in a conventional way, killing thousands of people on each side, they had to make each killing count for as much as possible. Adding terror to the equation, by killing five people one could have the psychological impact of having killed a whole company of soldiers. The idea was actually to preserve life, among other things. (In a country where the military was overwhelmingly made up of conscripts, the theory was that killing civilians was really not much different than killing soldiers, who were merely conscripted civilians anyway.) For this reason, Ben Gurion and other Jewish leaders DID admit that they had been terrorists; the word had not yet taken its current turn.

Interestingly, depending on your definition, you can argue that everyone from the Minute Men in American History to the Boer Commandos were essentially terrorists. It does not necessarily mean the kinds of depraved acts we are seeing today. Nor is it helpful when the government tries to paint peaceful protestors or those who merely destroy property as "eco-terrorists"; that fits neither the old nor the new definition of terrorism. It's becoming an all-purpose accusation used to strip suspects of their rights and their humanity.

I don't condone what Arafat is saying, by the way...as you can see from the above, I am moderately pro-Zionist. But he did say "terrorize" and not "murder" or even "torture." Remember, all the bible-thumpers out there think we should all be "God-Fearing" people (in other words, "terrorized.") So I think it would be germane to find out what "terrorize" means in a Koranic context, even what the actual Arabic word is, since "terror" has connotations now that it cannot have had when the Koran was written...

Subject: RE: BS: Arafat: Terrorize your enemy.
From: beardedbruce
Date: 19 May 04 - 02:51 PM

"There would be no refugee problem if Israel had not chased those who became refugees from their villages (often at gunpoint... see the Nakba link in my 18 May 04 - 09:21 PM post)."

And there would be no refugee problem if those who became refuges were welcomed by the populations in the area, as the Jewish refugees fromt the Arab countries were welcomed in Israel.

"If the problem did not exist, there would be no problem" ( my quotes) does not offer a solution. History HAS occurred- one can either acknowledge that, or not. If one chooses to act as if there has been no past, one will have no future. Why are you not fighting for the rights of ALL people to live without terrorist threats?


"The refugees are Israel's responsibility and no one else's. Trying to foist responsiblity for the problem on the governments of other countries solves nothing."

I disagree. They are the world's responsibility. But the countries in the region that could help have a vested interest in keeping them miserable and fomenting terrorist acts, and the ( inevitable) Israeli response. Why do you think that the Palestinians were the ONLY group to support Saddam H. in 1991? They were effectively slave labor in Kuwait.

Subject: RE: BS: Arafat: Terrorize your enemy.
From: Nerd
Date: 19 May 04 - 02:57 PM

CarolC, thanks. We keep cross-posting!

I agree that it would be speculation to say whether his previous family members had been paid. Also speculation to imagine what "close to" means in real terms. Or whether those previous generations did anything for the synagogue. etc, etc.

Don't get me wrong; it's nice that Jews and Muslims are sometimes friends, even in Iraq. (Of course, many Jews and Muslims here in the US know this is possible, because many of us have such friends.) But such individual friendships don't eliminate oppression and hatred from others, or institutional discrimination as I pointed out in Libya, so they may not have any large-scale social effects.

Subject: RE: BS: Arafat: Terrorize your enemy.
From: CarolC
Date: 19 May 04 - 04:29 PM

Here is the Amazon page for Naeim Giladi's book, Ben Gurion's Scandals: How the Haganah & the Mossad Eliminated Jews:

http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0964237903/102-3015470-8896144?v=glance

The book you cite CAN be seen as a parallel to the Protocols of the Elders of Zion, if it can be shown either that the author is not really a Jew, or that he is a Jew but is being paid to support an anti-Jewish agenda.

Here is a link, again, to the article. The link is in a Jewish owned website. You may not agree with the agenda of the Jews who own the site, but they are Jews, and they conider their agenda to be pro-Jewish.

http://www.jewsnotzionists.org/jewsofiraq.htm


Here is some background information about the publication that originally conducted the interview with Mr. Giladi:

""The following article, The Jews of Iraq, is the result of an interview conducted by The Link on March 16, 1998. The article was published in the [?] edition of The Link. The interviewee, Naeim Giladi, an Iraqi Jew and a former Zionist is the author of "Ben Gurion's Scandals: How the Haganah & the Mossad Eliminated Jews".

In his book, Ben Gurion's Scandals, Mr. Giladi discusses the crimes committed by Zionists in their frenzy to import raw Jewish labor. Newly-vacated farmlands had to be plowed to provide food for the immigrants and the military ranks had to be filled with conscripts to defend the illegitimately repossesed lands.

Mr. Giladi couldn't get his book published in Israel, and even in the U.S. he discovered that he could do so only by personally funding the project.

The Giladis, now U.S. citizens, live in New York City. By choice, they no longer hold Israeli citizenship. "I am Iraqi," he told The Link, "born in Iraq, my culture still Iraqi Arabic, my religion Jewish, my citizenship American."

The Link, honored in 1998 by the International Writers and Artists Association, is published by Americans for Middle East Understanding (AMEU)."


Here is some of his biographical information:

"The Giladis, now U.S. citizens, live in New York City. By choice, they no longer hold Israeli citizenship. "I am Iraqi," he told The Link, "born in Iraq, my culture still Iraqi Arabic, my religion Jewish, my citizenship American.""

"They asked me where I wanted to go and what I wanted to do. I was the son of a farmer; I knew allthe problems of the farm, so I volunteered to go to Dafnah, a farming kibbutz in the high Galilee. I only lasted a few weeks. The new immigrants were given the worst of everything. The food was the same, but that was the only thing that everyone had in common. For the immigrants, bad cigarettes, even bad toothpaste. Everything. I left.

Then, through the Jewish Agency, I was advised to go to al-Majdal (later renamed Ashkelon), an Arab town about 9 miles from Gaza, very close to the Mediterranean. The Israeli government planned to turn it into a farmers' city, so my farm background would be an asset there."

We mounted the struggle so tenaciously and received so much publicity that the Israeli government tried to discredit our movement by calling us "Israel's Black Panthers." They were thinking in racist terms, really, in assuming the Israeli public would reject an organization whose ideology was being compared to that of radical blacks in the United States. But we saw that what we were doing was no different than what blacks in the United States were fighting against-segregation, discrimination, unequal treatment. Rather than reject the label, we adopted it proudly. I had posters of Martin Luther King, Malcolm X, Nelson Mandela and other civil rights activists plastered all over my office.

"With the Israeli invasion of Lebanon and the Israeli-condoned Sabra and Shatilla massacres, I had had enough of Israel. I became a United States citizen and made certain to revoke my Israeli citizenship. I could never have written and published my book in Israel, not with the censorship they would impose.

Even in America, I had great difficulty finding a publisher because many are subject to pressures of one kind or another from Israel and its friends. I ended up paying $60,000 from my own pocket to publish Ben Gurion's Scandals: How the Haganah & the Mossad Eliminated Jews, virtually the entire proceeds from having sold my house in Israel."

I think that most of these things are verifiable, including his citizenship in Israel on the basis of his being a Jew. And he states (in the interview) that he worked as a Journalist in Israel. That should also be possible to verify.


Here's some of the evidence he gives as a basis for some of his assertions. They are supported by other people besides him:

"Eveland doesn't detail the evidence linking the Zionists to the attacks, but in my book I do. In 1955, for example, I organized in Israel a panel of Jewish attorneys of Iraqi origin to handle claims of Iraqi Jews who still had property in Iraq. One well known attorney, who asked that I not give his name, confided in me that the laboratory tests in Iraq had confirmed that the anti-American leaflets found at the American Cultural Center bombing were typed on the same typewriter and duplicated on the same stenciling machine as the leaflets distributed by the Zionist movement just before the April 8th bombing.

Tests also showed that the type of explosive used in the Beit-Lawi attack matched traces of explosives found in the suitcase of an Iraqi Jew by the name of Yosef Basri. Basri, a lawyer, together with Shalom Salih, a shoemaker, would be put on trial for the attacks in December 1951 and executed the following month. Both men were members of Hashura, the military arm of the Zionist underground. Salih ultimately confessed that he, Basri and a third man, Yosef Habaza, carried out the attacks.

By the time of the executions in January 1952, all but 6,000 of an estimated 125,000 Iraqi Jews had fled to Israel. Moreover, the pro-British, pro-Zionist puppet el-Said saw to it that all of their possessions were frozen, including their cash assets. (There were ways of getting Iraqi dinars out, but when the immigrants went to exchange them in Israel they found that the Israeli government kept 50 percent of the value.) Even those Iraqi Jews who had not registered to emigrate, but who happened to be abroad, faced loss of their nationality if they didn't return within a specified time. An ancient, cultured, prosperous community had been uprooted and its people transplanted to a land dominated by East European Jews, whose culture was not only foreign but entirely hateful to them."

Here is an article by an Israeli Jew whose parents were Iraqi Jews:

http://nswas.com/sfp/articles/shenhav_02.htm

In this article, the author echoes what Mr. Giladi has to say about the experience of Iraqi Mizrahim, and also about the view of some, if not many, Iraqi Mizrahim that the Zionists (with the help of the British) were responsible for creating the circumstances that caused such large numbers of Iraqi Jews to leave Iraq for Israel:

"...Tough gatekeepers stand at the entrance deciding which literature on the Mizrahim can be introduced to the Hebrew reader and which literature will remain outside. Other examples of untranslated work that makes the Mizrahi - Palestinian connection are Na'im Giladi's book Ben Gurion's Scandals, and Shlomo Svirsky's book The Seeds of Inequality.

I began to dig in the archives in order to get a better understanding of the story of the bombs in the Baghdad synagogue. This is a story that many people speak about but no one really knows. In the course of research I came across a fascinating story that ties in to the property of Iraqi Jews. The Zionist movement began to pay attention to Mizrahi Jewry in the years 1941 – '42. It was then that Ben Gurion introduced his "one million plan". Anticipating that many Jews will be annihilated by Nazi persecution causing demographic problems for the Zionist movement, Ben Gurion decided that a plan must be introduced based on Jews from Arab lands.

In 1950 an agreement was reached with Iraq's Prime Minister Nuri Sa'id, as a result of which a law was passed allowing Jews to forfeit their Iraqi citizenship and leave the country without their property. Of the 120,000 Jews in Iraq, approximately 1,500 registered to leave the country.

Around this time, working undercover as representatives of Solel Boneh, Israeli Mossad agents began underground activities in Iraq. All of the sudden there was an explosion in the Mas'uda Shem Tov Synagogue and immediately afterwards 24,000 Jews registered to leave the country. Abbas Shiblak describes in his book how each time there was a fall in registration, another bomb went off followed by another mass exodus. Five of these bombs did the job. In March 1951 the Iraqi parliament decided to expropriate the property of the Iraqi Jews. Shortly thereafter, most of those Jews who had still remained in Iraq left the country in an organized operation and were brought to Tel-Aviv."

Subject: RE: BS: Arafat: Terrorize your enemy.
From: CarolC
Date: 19 May 04 - 04:30 PM

Here's another incidence of Israeli terrorism against Civilians, Larry K, only in this case, they were US civilians:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lavon_Affair

"The aim of the Israeli Operation Suzannah was to bomb United States installations in Egypt, such as cinemas, and blame Arabs, hoping it would harm Egyptian-American ties. It is also known as the Lavon affair or Faulty Business (esek bish), after the Israeli defence minister who was forced to resign because of the incident, then deeply shocked the Israeli political system by asking to review his case.

The operation was carried out by an Israeli military intelligence unit ("Unit 131" [1]) in 1954, but supposedly not backed by civilian Israeli leadership of that time. The operation, which was commenced in an amateurish fashion, led to the almost immediate identification and capture of the Mossad agents before any lives were taken.

Israeli agents working in Egypt planted bombs in several buildings, including a United States diplomatic facility, and left evidence behind implicating Arabs as the culprits. The ruse would have worked, had not one of the bombs detonated prematurely, allowing the Egyptians to capture and identify one of the bombers, which in turn led to the round up of an Israeli spy ring. Some of the spies were from Israel, while others were recruited from the local Jewish population in Egypt.

The capture of the agents caused outrage among Egyptian authorities. However, there was also great concern among the Israeli public and lead to Israel's first major political scandal."

Subject: RE: BS: Arafat: Terrorize your enemy.
From: robomatic
Date: 19 May 04 - 05:20 PM

Hey Carol:

I haven't said this before, and I may not say it again, but I appreciate all the references you dig up whether I agree with 'em or not. I had never heard of the Lavon Affair and on first read, it sounds like it happened.

Robo

Subject: RE: BS: Arafat: Terrorize your enemy.
From: beardedbruce
Date: 19 May 04 - 05:29 PM

"In March 1951 the Iraqi parliament decided to expropriate the property of the Iraqi Jews. Shortly thereafter, most of those Jews who had still remained in Iraq left the country in an organized operation and were brought to Tel-Aviv"

so, where is your demand for the property of those Jews to be returned to them, as you want the supposed property of the Palestinians returned? Or aren't Jews entitled to the same considerations????

Subject: RE: BS: Arafat: Terrorize your enemy.
From: Little Hawk
Date: 19 May 04 - 05:30 PM

Now here is a thread that doesn't have a dog's chance in hell of netting only one post and then falling off the board. No way. Too controversial. Stay away from stuff like this if you want a short, brisk, simple thread.

Subject: RE: BS: Arafat: Terrorize your enemy.
From: beardedbruce
Date: 19 May 04 - 05:36 PM

Hey, I don't know about that. Each side knows what they believe, and does not accept what the other side has to say- Where is the controversy?

Subject: RE: BS: Arafat: Terrorize your enemy.
From: dianavan
Date: 19 May 04 - 10:32 PM

Nerd,

Thank-you for a very good description of terrorism:

"It meant that, since they did not have the
resources to fight against armies in a conventional way, killing thousands of people on each side, they had to make each
killing count for as much as possible. Adding terror to the equation, by killing five people one could have the psychological
impact of having killed a whole company of soldiers. The idea was actually to preserve life, among other things. (In a country
where the military was overwhelmingly made up of conscripts, the theory was that killing civilians was really not much
different than killing soldiers, who were merely conscripted civilians anyway."

Of course, terrorism has evolved as "The New World Order" has been foisted on global citizens with little or no say about it. The very idea that business interests know what is best for 'us' is paternalistic to say the least. How else can people fight against the domination of world power?

Is the little guy just expected to submit to the bully? Since there is no place to run, some people have chosen to fight. Most mudcatters choose to use their words as weapons, some folks march to protest, some strike, some pray, some attempt to negotiate, some use terror. Which is the most effective?

Subject: RE: BS: Arafat: Terrorize your enemy.
From: CarolC
Date: 19 May 04 - 11:42 PM

so, where is your demand for the property of those Jews to be returned to them, as you want the supposed property of the Palestinians returned? Or aren't Jews entitled to the same considerations????

beardedbruce, please show me where I have said I want the "supposed" property of the Palestinians returned.

I notice you have quite a fondness for question marks.

I have already posted two links in this thread that discuss this issue, one of them in some detail. Suffice it to say, at least some Mizrahim (Iraqi Jews) believe that it's the government of Israel who is responsible for their assets having been confiscated. The issue is apparently very complicated, and I don't fully understand it, but these links give some of the answers. The article you quoted (from my quote) touches on it a little bit:

"What does the State of Israel do with the story of the expropriated Jewish property? In March 1951, Moshe Sharet informed the Knesset that the State of Israel now has an account to settle with Iraq since the latter expropriated the property of its Jewish subjects. The government of Israel allows itself to balance the value of the property that the Palestinians left with the value of the property that was taken from Jews in Arab lands.

The connection is made by a political logic, however the basic assumptions behind this interesting linkage are not very clear. What is the connection between Iraqi Jews and Palestinians? How can the State of Israel use the property of Iraqi Jews, which is not even in its hands, to settle the account of another problem that it created?"


This article goes into the subject in much more depth, and I have to admit that I don't understand what the article is saying enough to be able to have an opinion on it:

http://www.dangoor.com/70006.html

Here's the author's main contention as stated in the article:

My study aimed to show how Israel established a connection between these two demands, and then freed itself from both of them.


I have never called for the government of Israel to return expropriated assets to the Palestinians (with the exception of the removal of the settlements and the return of the land they occupy in the West Bank, Gaza, and East Jerusalem (on the Palestinian side of the green line), although I used to be of the opinion that all governments who have expropriated assets from anyone should reimburse them for what they took.

However, from reading the article in the second link in this thread, I find that I don't understand the issue enough to have an informed opinion on it. So I defer to the Iraqi Jews on the issue. I think they should get whatever they think is fair, and is feasable. And the Palestinians should recieve equal consideration.

Subject: RE: BS: Arafat: Terrorize your enemy.
From: CarolC
Date: 19 May 04 - 11:57 PM

Correction. The following... However, from reading the article in the second link in this thread

...should read: However, from reading the article in the second link in this post

Thank you for your comment, robomatic. I'm learning a lot from searching this stuff up, including how to be more effective at doing searches.

I'm not going to be able to devote much, if any, time to looking stuff up or giving any kind of in depth answers to anyone for the next few days. Allan C is coming to visit this weekend, and I have a lot of getting ready to do. Also, I was stung by a dozen or so fire ants earlier this evening, and I am a bit allergic to their sting and I don't feel very well.

Subject: RE: BS: Arafat: Terrorize your enemy.
From: dianavan
Date: 20 May 04 - 12:01 AM

Getting back to the fact that Arafat quoted the Koran =

Lets not forget that the Koran was written when tribal wars were fought throughout the world. One of the best advantages you could have in battle was to terrorize your enemy by your frightening image. Thats why many tribes used war paint. Weren't bagpipes and bugles used in much the same way? How about some of the outlandish headgear and other methods of creating fear.

Is Arafat's comment any different than when Bush called this a crusade?

Of course we're the enemy. What else do you call people who invade your land? Of course he has the right to urge all Arabs to be strong. What do you expect him to say, stand aside and let them rule the country according to Christian principles?

The arrogance of the western world is astounding.

Subject: RE: BS: Arafat: Terrorize your enemy.
From: GUEST,Larry K
Date: 20 May 04 - 11:44 AM

Carol C.- You state that Israel was founded on terrorism.   (I always thought it was by UN declaration- thanks for correcting me)   I would venture to say that the USA was also founded on terrorism.   If you asked the British, we certainly didn't follow conventional battle rules and were labeled as terrorists.

Therefore, I guess we have no right to exist either.    Quite frankly I don't have the time to research this properly and give you 57 links (one for each Heinz variety or Kerry position) but I would venture to say that most countries in the world were founded by war or at least their borders were determined by war or terrorism.

All the links in the world can't help you if you don't know right from wrong.   When you compare jews living in Germany (who fought for Germany in World War I, supported the German government, were a fabric of German society, and never threatened the German goverernment) with islamic extremests (who have declared war on the west and committed multiple acts of murder)you clearly do not a clue.

Unfortunately, you are not alone.    There are many people who cannot differentiate between jay walkers and mass murderers and defend them by saying that none of us are perfect and that both acts are a crime.   Therefore Ted Bundy is no different that Mother Theresa for- we all are human beings. As much as it pains me to say it, those of us on the right, must continue to fight for freedom, to protect your right to say idiotic things.    That is your right in a free society.

PS:   I did enjoy your labeling me as a nazi.    A conservative never feels he has won the battle till a liberal calls you a racist and a nazi.   I now feel complete.

Subject: RE: BS: Arafat: Terrorize your enemy.
From: GUEST,Teribus
Date: 20 May 04 - 01:27 PM

dianavan, 20 May 04 - 12:01 AM

"Getting back to the fact that Arafat quoted the Koran =

Lets not forget that the Koran was written when tribal wars were fought throughout the world."

Then it's high time the interpretation was revised.

For Bush to call something a "crusade" is a figure of speach, that few if any will act on. For someone to quote the Koran, as Arafat did, is incitement, and he fully knows and appreciates that, knowing damn well that it will be acted on.

By the bye dianavan, you never got back to me regarding the negotiating basis with Osama bin Laden, et al, that would be open to all the nice people in America (i.e. non-Republicans and non-supporters of the current administration) under the leadership of John F Kerry, on the basis of the fatwah Osama issued in 1998 when the Clinton Administration was in power. Doubt in fact if you've actually bothered to read the declaration of war that has been made against everyone who doesn't fully agree with OBL - Oh sorry I forgot that small number does include you and Akenaton.

Subject: RE: BS: Arafat: Terrorize your enemy.
From: GUEST
Date: 20 May 04 - 01:39 PM

If Hamas can say that they could under certain conditions recognize the State of Israel (RE. Jim McCallan 17 May 04 - 07:46 PM ), surely it would not be unreasonable to assume that Bin Laden could be talked to, as well.

It always comes back to the Israeli/Palestinian problem.

Subject: RE: BS: Arafat: Terrorize your enemy.
From: CarolC
Date: 20 May 04 - 01:40 PM

Therefore, I guess we have no right to exist either.

Larry K, please show me where I said that Israel does not have a right to exist.

Carol C.- You state that Israel was founded on terrorism.   (I always thought it was by UN declaration- thanks for correcting me)   I would venture to say that the USA was also founded on terrorism.   If you asked the British, we certainly didn't follow conventional battle rules and were labeled as terrorists.

It was terrorims that got them what they wanted from Britain and the UN.


November 25, 1940- Haganah blows up the S.S.Patria, killing more than 250 Jews.

November 6, 1944- Stern Gang Assasinates British Minister Resident in the Middle East, Lord Moyne.

July 22, 1946- Irgun Tsvai Leumi members led by Menachem Begin blow up the King David Hotel, killing 91 people, most of them civilians, including 17 Jews.

September 17, 1948- UN representative Count Bernadote Folke assasinated by Stern Gang:

"Count Folke Bernadotte of Wisborg (January 2, 1895 - September 17, 1948), is noted for his negotiation for the release of prisoners from the German concentration camps in World War II.

He was assassinated, along with UN observer Colonel André Serot, on September 17th in Jerusalem by members of Lehi, a Zionist extremist group also known as the "Stern Gang", after its founder."


Those are just a few examples. And yes, the US could probably be said to have been founded on terrorism.

Subject: RE: BS: Arafat: Terrorize your enemy.
From: CarolC
Date: 20 May 04 - 01:44 PM

It could also be said that the US was founded on genocide, btw.

Subject: RE: BS: Arafat: Terrorize your enemy.
From: beardedbruce
Date: 20 May 04 - 02:20 PM

CarolC:

"Also, I was stung by a dozen or so fire ants earlier this evening, and I am a bit allergic to their sting and I don't feel very well."

I hope you are feeling better, soon.

Subject: RE: BS: Arafat: Terrorize your enemy.
From: CarolC
Date: 20 May 04 - 04:00 PM

Thanks beardedbruce.

Subject: RE: BS: Arafat: Terrorize your enemy.
From: akenaton
Date: 20 May 04 - 05:39 PM

Teribus...Its completely un fair to attribute to me support for any of the actions of Osama BL.
Since I started posting not that long ago I havbe said repeatedly that Islamic fundamentalist tactics are beastial.
In saying that, I also believe that the Western responce to these tactic,the so called "war on terror"is counter productive.
We must find some way to lessen the power of the Islamic clerics ,without destroyingthe Islamic culture and religion, and this means a new mindset for the West.
The days are gone when we could batter opponents into submission or use subversive Capitalism as a tool. The fundamentalists are not susceptible to these tactics,and will go to any lengths to destroy us,before we destroy them.
Unfortunately they have all the aces ,and if we dont change course, i can see a bleak future
I think you are wrong to smear both Carol and myself as supporters of Islamic fundamentalism,without having any evidence to support that allegation.
I dont agree with everything that Carol says ,but her stance in favour of the Palistinians ,written in a very measured and composed manner is admirable.
The amount of personal abuse that she receives is cowardly and disgraceful,and Ihave yet to see her respond in such a manner...Ake

Subject: RE: BS: Arafat: Terrorize your enemy.
From: dianavan
Date: 20 May 04 - 09:20 PM

Teribus - I didn't get back to you on the question of negotiation because your question was answered by others more competent than myself.

As to Bush using the term "crusade", I would definitely say that it has been acted upon and that it was not dismissed lightly by the fundamentalists in America. In fact, thats what most people think this war is about.

I know that it is not true, but like Arafat, Bush sets the tone. One is no better than the other.