BS: Mideast: View From the Eye of the Storm

Subject: BS: Mideast: View From the Eye of the Storm
From: Amos
Date: 18 Jul 04 - 01:25 PM

I have no way indication where this is posted on the web, if it is, so I am taking the liberty of posting it here since it offers a new reasoning on certain assumptions about the whole Middle Eastern region.

Enjoy.

A

---

Professor HAIM HARARI, a theoretical physicist, is the Chair, Davidson
Institute of Science Education, and Former President, from 1988 to
2001, of the Weizmann Institute of Science.

During his years as President of the Institute, it entered numerous
new scientific fields and projects, built 47 new buildings, raised one
Billion Dollars in philanthropic money, hired more than half of its
current tenured Professors and became one of the highest
royalty-earning academic organizations in the world.

Throughout all his adult life, he has made major contributions to
three different fields: Particle Physics Research on the international
scene, Science Education in the Israeli school system and Science
Administration and Policy Making.


A View from the Eye of the Storm Talk delivered by Haim Harari at a
meeting of the International Advisory Board of a large multi-national
corporation, April, 2004

As you know, I usually provide the scientific and technological
"entertainment" in our meetings, but, on this occasion, our Chairman
suggested that I present my own personal view on events in the part of
the world from which I come. I have never been and I will never be a
Government official and I have no privileged information. My
perspective is entirely based on what I see, on what I read and on the
fact that my family has lived in this region for almost 200 years. You
may regard my views as those of the proverbial taxi driver, which you
are supposed to question, when you visit a country.

I could have shared with you some fascinating facts and some personal
thoughts about the Israeli-Arab conflict. However, I will touch upon it
only in passing. I prefer to devote most of my remarks to the broader
picture of the region and its place in world events. I refer to the
entire area between Pakistan and Morocco, which is predominantly Arab,
predominantly Moslem, but includes many non-Arab and also significant
non-Moslem minorities.

Why do I put aside Israel and its own immediate neighborhood? Because
Israel and any problems related to it, in spite of what you might read
or hear in the world media, is not the central issue, and has never
been the central issue in the upheaval in the region. Yes, there is a
100 year-old Israeli-Arab conflict, but it is not where the main show
is. The millions who died in the Iran-Iraq war had nothing to do with
Israel. The mass murder happening right now in Sudan, where the Arab
Moslem regime is massacring its black Christian citizens, has nothing
to do with Israel. The frequent reports from Algeria about the murders
of hundreds of civilian in one village or another by other Algerians
have nothing to do with Israel. Saddam Hussein did not invade Kuwait,
endangered Saudi Arabia and butchered his own people because of Israel.
Egypt did not use poison gas against Yemen in the 60's because of
Israel. Assad the Father did not kill tens of thousands of his own
citizens in one week in El Hamma in Syria because of Israel. The
Taliban control of Afghanistan and the civil war there had nothing to
do with Israel. The Libyan blowing up of the Pan-Am flight had nothing
to do with Israel, and I could go on and on and on.

The root of the trouble is that this entire Moslem region is totally
dysfunctional, by any standard of the word, and would have been so even
if Israel would have joined the Arab league and an independent
Palestine would have existed for 100 years. The 22 member countries of
the Arab league, from Mauritania to the Gulf States, have a total
population of 300 millions, larger than the US and almost as large as
the EU before its expansion. They have a land area larger than either
the US or all of Europe. These 22 countries, with all their oil and
natural resources, have a combined GDP smaller than that of Netherlands
plus Belgium and equal to half of the GDP of California alone. Within
this meager GDP, the gaps between rich and poor are beyond belief and
too many of the rich made their money not by succeeding in business,
but by being corrupt rulers. The social status of women is far below
what it was in the Western World 150 years ago. Human rights are below
any reasonable standard, in spite of the grotesque fact that Libya was
elected Chair of the UN Human Rights commission. According to a report
prepared by a committee of Arab intellectuals and published under the
auspices of the U.N., the number of books translated by the entire Arab
world is much smaller than what little Greece alone translates. The
total number of scientific publications of 300 million Arabs is less
than that of 6 million Israelis. Birth rates in the region are very
high, increasing the poverty, the social gaps and the cultural decline.
And all of this is happening in a region, which only 30 years ago, was
believed to be the next wealthy part of the world, and in a Moslem
area, which developed, at some point in history, one of the most
advanced cultures in the world.

It is fair to say that this creates an unprecedented breeding ground
for cruel dictators, terror networks, fanaticism, incitement, suicide
murders and general decline. It is also a fact that almost everybody in
the region blames this situation on the United States, on Israel, on
Western Civilization, on Judaism and Christianity, on anyone and
anything, except themselves.

Do I say all of this with the satisfaction of someone discussing the
failings of his enemies? On the contrary, I firmly believe that the
world would have been a much better place and my own neighborhood would
have been much more pleasant and peaceful, if things were different.

I should also say a word about the millions of decent, honest, good
people who are either devout Moslems or are not very religious but grew
up in Moslem families. They are double victims of an outside world,
which now develops Islamophobia and of their own environment, which
breaks their heart by being totally dysfunctional. The problem is that
the vast silent majority of these Moslems are not part of the terror
and of the incitement but they also do not stand up against it. They
become accomplices, by omission, and this applies to political leaders,
intellectuals, business people and many others. Many of them can
certainly tell right from wrong, but are afraid to express their views.

The events of the last few years have amplified four issues, which
have always existed, but have never been as rampant as in the present
upheaval in the region. These are the four main pillars of the current
World Conflict, or perhaps we should already refer to it as "the
undeclared World War III". I have no better name for the present
situation. A few more years may pass before everybody acknowledges that
it is a World War, but we are already well into it.

The first element is the suicide murder. Suicide murders are not a new
invention but they have been made popular, if I may use this
expression, only lately. Even after September 11, it seems that most of
the Western World does not yet understand this weapon. It is a very
potent psychological weapon. Its real direct impact is relatively
minor. The total number of casualties from hundreds of suicide murders
within Israel in the last three years is much smaller than those due to
car accidents. September 11 was quantitatively much less lethal than
many earthquakes. More people die from AIDS in one day in Africa than
all the Russians who died in the hands of Chechnya-based Moslem suicide
murderers since that conflict started. Saddam killed every month more
people than all those who died from suicide murders since the Coalition
occupation of Iraq.

So what is all the fuss about suicide killings? It creates headlines.
It is spectacular. It is frightening. It is a very cruel death with
bodies dismembered and horrible severe lifelong injuries to many of the
wounded. It is always shown on television in great detail. One such
murder, with the help of hysterical media coverage, can destroy the
tourism industry of a country for quite a while, as it did in Bali and
in Turkey.

But the real fear comes from the undisputed fact that no defense and
no preventive measures can succeed against a determined suicide
murderer. This has not yet penetrated the thinking of the Western
World. The U.S. and Europe are constantly improving their defense
against the last murder, not the next one. We may arrange for the best
airport security in the world.. But if you want to murder by suicide,
you do not have to board a plane in order to explode yourself and kill
many people. Who could stop a suicide murder in the midst of the
crowded line waiting to be checked by the airport metal detector? How
about the lines to the check-in counters in a busy travel period? Put a
metal detector in front of every train station in Spain and the
terrorists will get the buses. Protect the buses and they will explode
in movie theaters, concert halls, supermarkets, shopping malls, schools
and hospitals. Put guards in front of every concert hall and there will
always be a line of people to be checked by the guards and this line
will be the target, not to speak of killing the guards themselves. You
can somewhat reduce your vulnerability by preventive and defensive
measures and by strict border controls but not eliminate it and
definitely not win the war in a defensive way. And it is a war!

What is behind the suicide murders? Money, power and cold-blooded
murderous incitement, nothing else. It has nothing to do with true
fanatic religious beliefs. No Moslem preacher has ever blown himself
up. No son of an Arab politician or religious leader has ever blown
himself. No relative of anyone influential has done it. Wouldn't you
expect some of the religious leaders to do it themselves, or to talk
their sons into doing it, if this is truly a supreme act of religious
fervor? Aren't they interested in the benefits of going to Heaven?
Instead, they send outcast women, naïve children, retarded people and
young incited hotheads. They promise them the delights, mostly sexual,
of the next world, and pay their families handsomely after the supreme
act is performed and enough innocent people are dead.

Suicide murders also have nothing to do with poverty and despair. The
poorest region in the world, by far, is Africa. It never happens there.
There are numerous desperate people in the world, in different
cultures, countries and continents. Desperation does not provide anyone
with explosives, reconnaissance and transportation. There was certainly
more despair in Saddam's Iraq then in Paul Bremmer's Iraq, and no one
exploded himself. A suicide murder is simply a horrible, vicious weapon
of cruel, inhuman, cynical, well-funded terrorists, with no regard to
human life, including the life of their fellow countrymen, but with
very high regard to their own affluent well-being and their hunger for
power.

The only way to fight this new "popular" weapon is identical to the
only way in which you fight organized crime or pirates on the high
seas: the offensive way. Like in the case of organized crime, it is
crucial that the forces on the offensive be united and it is crucial to
reach the top of the crime pyramid. You cannot eliminate organized
crime by arresting the little drug dealer in the street corner. You
must go after the head of the "Family".

If part of the public supports it, others tolerate it, many are afraid
of it and some try to explain it away by poverty or by a miserable
childhood, organized crime will thrive and so will terrorism. The
United States understands this now, after September 11. Russia is
beginning to understand it. Turkey understands it well. I am very much
afraid that most of Europe still does not understand it. Unfortunately,
it seems that Europe will understand it only after suicide murders will
arrive in Europe in a big way. In my humble opinion, this will
definitely happen. The Spanish trains and the Istanbul bombings are
only the beginning. The unity of the Civilized World in fighting this
horror is absolutely indispensable. Until Europe wakes up, this unity
will not be achieved.

The second ingredient is words, more precisely lies. Words can be
lethal. They kill people. It is often said that politicians, diplomats
and perhaps also lawyers and business people must sometimes lie, as
part of their professional life. But the norms of politics and
diplomacy are childish, in comparison with the level of incitement and
total absolute deliberate fabrications, which have reached new heights
in the region we are talking about. An incredible number of people in
the Arab world believe that September 11 never happened, or was an
American provocation or, even better, a Jewish plot.

You all remember the Iraqi Minister of Information, Mr. Mouhamad Said
al-Sahaf and his press conferences when the US forces were already
inside Baghdad. Disinformation at time of war is an accepted tactic.
But to stand, day after day, and to make such preposterous statements,
known to everybody to be lies, without even being ridiculed in your own
milieu, can only happen in this region. Mr. Sahaf eventually became a
popular icon as a court jester, but this did not stop some allegedly
respectable newspapers from giving him equal time. It also does not
prevent the Western press from giving credence, every day, even now, to
similar liars. After all, if you want to be an antisemite, there are
subtle ways of doing it. You do not have to claim that the holocaust
never happened and that the Jewish temple in Jerusalem never existed.
But millions of Moslems are told by their leaders that this is the
case. When these same leaders make other statements, the Western media
report them as if they could be true.

It is a daily occurrence that the same people, who finance, arm and
dispatch suicide murderers, condemn the act in English in front of
western TV cameras, talking to a world audience, which even partly
believes them. It is a daily routine to hear the same leader making
opposite statements in Arabic to his people and in English to the rest
of the world. Incitement by Arab TV, accompanied by horror pictures of
mutilated bodies, has become a powerful weapon of those who lie,
distort and want to destroy everything. Little children are raised on
deep hatred and on admiration of so-called martyrs, and the Western
World does not notice it because its own TV sets are mostly tuned to
soap operas and game shows. I recommend to you, even though most of you
do not understand Arabic, to watch Al Jazeera, from time to time. You
will not believe your own eyes.

But words also work in other ways, more subtle. A demonstration in
Berlin, carrying banners supporting Saddam's regime and featuring
three-year old babies dressed as suicide murderers, is defined by the
press and by political leaders as a "peace demonstration". You may
support or oppose the Iraq war, but to refer to fans of Saddam, Arafat
or Bin Laden as peace activists is a bit too much. A woman walks into
an Israeli restaurant in mid-day, eats, observes families with old
people and children eating their lunch in the adjacent tables and pays
the bill. She then blows herself up, killing 20 people, including many
children, with heads and arms rolling around in the restaurant. She is
called "martyr" by several Arab leaders and "activist" by the European
press. Dignitaries condemn the act but visit her bereaved family and
the money flows.

There is a new game in town: The actual murderer is called "the
military wing", the one who pays him, equips him and sends him is now
called "the political wing" and the head of the operation is called the
"spiritual leader". There are numerous other examples of such Orwellian
nomenclature, used every day not only by terror chiefs but also by
Western media. These words are much more dangerous than many people
realize. They provide an emotional infrastructure for atrocities. It
was Joseph Goebels who said that if you repeat a lie often enough,
people will believe it. He is now being outperformed by his successors.

The third aspect is money. Huge amounts of money, which could have
solved many social problems in this dysfunctional part of the world,
are channeled into three concentric spheres supporting death and
murder. In the inner circle are the terrorists themselves. The money
funds their travel, explosives, hideouts and permanent search for soft
vulnerable targets. They are surrounded by a second wider circle of
direct supporters, planners, commanders, preachers, all of whom make a
living, usually a very comfortable living, by serving as terror
infrastructure. Finally, we find the third circle of so-called
religious, educational and welfare organizations, which actually do
some good, feed the hungry and provide some schooling, but brainwash a
new generation with hatred, lies and ignorance. This circle operates
mostly through mosques, madrasas and other religious establishments but
also through inciting electronic and printed media. It is this circle
that makes sure that women remain inferior, that democracy is
unthinkable and that exposure to the outside world is minimal. It is
also that circle that leads the way in blaming everybody outside the
Moslem world, for the miseries of the region.

Figuratively speaking, this outer circle is the guardian, which makes
sure that the people look and listen inwards to the inner circle of
terror and incitement, rather than to the world outside. Some parts of
this same outer circle actually operate as a result of fear from, or
blackmail by, the inner circles. The horrifying added factor is the
high birth rate. Half of the population of the Arab world is under the
age of 20, the most receptive age to incitement, guaranteeing two more
generations of blind hatred.

Of the three circles described above, the inner circles are primarily
financed by terrorist states like Iran and Syria, until recently also
by Iraq and Libya and earlier also by some of the Communist regimes.
These states, as well as the Palestinian Authority, are the safe havens
of the wholesale murder vendors. The outer circle is largely financed
by Saudi Arabia, but also by donations from certain Moslem communities
in the United States and Europe and, to a smaller extent, by donations
of European Governments to various NGO's and by certain United Nations
organizations, whose goals may be noble, but they are infested and
exploited by agents of the outer circle. The Saudi regime, of course,
will be the next victim of major terror, when the inner circle will
explode into the outer circle. The Saudis are beginning to understand
it, but they fight the inner circles, while still financing the
infrastructure at the outer circle.?

Some of the leaders of these various circles live very comfortably on
their loot. You meet their children in the best private schools in
Europe, not in the training camps of suicide murderers. The Jihad
"soldiers" join packaged death tours to Iraq and other hotspots, while
some of their leaders ski in Switzerland. Mrs. Arafat, who lives in
Paris with her daughter, receives tens of thousands Dollars per month
from the allegedly bankrupt Palestinian Authority while a typical local
ringleader of the Al-Aksa brigade, reporting to Arafat, receives only a
cash payment of a couple of hundred dollars, for performing murders at
the retail level.?

The fourth element of the current world conflict is the total breaking
of all laws. The civilized world believes in democracy, the rule of
law, including international law, human rights, free speech and free
press, among other liberties. There are naïve old-fashioned habits such
as respecting religious sites and symbols, not using ambulances and
hospitals for acts of war, avoiding the mutilation of dead bodies and
not using children as human shields or human bombs. Never in history,
not even in the Nazi period, was there such total disregard of all of
the above as we observe now. Every student of political science debates
how you prevent an anti-democratic force from winning a democratic
election and abolishing democracy. Other aspects of a civilized society
must also have limitations. Can a policeman open fire on someone trying
to kill him? Can a government listen to phone conversations of
terrorists and drug dealers? Does free speech protects you when you
shout "fire" in a crowded theater? Should there be death penalty, for
deliberate multiple murders? These are the old-fashioned dilemmas. But
now we have an entire new set.

Do you raid a mosque, which serves as a terrorist ammunition storage?
Do you return fire, if you are attacked from a hospital? Do you storm a
church taken over by terrorists who took the priests hostages? Do you
search every ambulance after a few suicide murderers use ambulances to
reach their targets? Do you strip every woman because one pretended to
be pregnant and carried a suicide bomb on her belly? Do you shoot back
at someone trying to kill you, standing deliberately behind a group of
children? Do you raid terrorist headquarters, hidden in a mental
hospital? Do you shoot an arch-murderer who deliberately moves from one
location to another, always surrounded by children? All of these happen
daily in Iraq and in the Palestinian areas. What do you do? Well, you
do not want to face the dilemma. But it cannot be avoided.

Suppose, for the sake of discussion, that someone would openly stay in
a well-known address in Teheran, hosted by the Iranian Government and
financed by it, executing one atrocity after another in Spain or in
France, killing hundreds of innocent people, accepting responsibility
for the crimes, promising in public TV interviews to do more of the
same, while the Government of Iran issues public condemnations of his
acts but continues to host him, invite him to official functions and
treat him as a great dignitary. I leave it to you as homework to figure
out what Spain or France would have done, in such a situation.

The problem is that the civilized world is still having illusions
about the rule of law in a totally lawless environment. It is trying to
play ice hockey by sending a ballerina ice-skater into the rink or to
knock out a heavyweight boxer by a chess player. In the same way that
no country has a law against cannibals eating its prime minister,
because such an act is unthinkable, international law does not address
killers shooting from hospitals, mosques and ambulances, while being
protected by their Government or society. International law does not
know how to handle someone who sends children to throw stones, stands
behind them and shoots with immunity and cannot be arrested because he
is sheltered by a Government. International law does not know how to
deal with a leader of murderers who is royally and comfortably hosted
by a country, which pretends to condemn his acts or just claims to be
too weak to arrest him. The amazing thing is that all of these crooks
demand protection under international law and define all those who
attack them as war criminals, with some Western media repeating the
allegations. The good news is that all of this is temporary, because
the evolution of international law has always adapted itself to
reality. The punishment for suicide murder should be death or arrest
before the murder, not during and not after. After every world war, the
rules of international law have changed and the same will happen after
the present one. But during the twilight zone, a lot of harm can be
done.

The picture I described here is not pretty. What can we do about it?
In the short run, only fight and win. In the long run ? only educate
the next generation and open it to the world. The inner circles can and
must be destroyed by force. The outer circle cannot be eliminated by
force. Here we need financial starvation of the organizing elite, more
power to women, more education, counter propaganda, boycott whenever
feasible and access to Western media, internet and the international
scene. Above all, we need a total absolute unity and determination of
the civilized world against all three circles of evil.

Allow me, for a moment, to depart from my alleged role as a taxi
driver and return to science. When you have a malignant tumor, you may
remove the tumor itself surgically. You may also starve it by
preventing new blood from reaching it from other parts of the body,
thereby preventing new "supplies" from expanding the tumor. If you want
to be sure, it is best to do both.

But before you fight and win, by force or otherwise, you have to
realize that you are in a war, and this may take Europe a few more
years. In order to win, it is necessary to first eliminate the
terrorist regimes, so that no Government in the world will serve as a
safe haven for these people. I do not want to comment here on whether
the American-led attack on Iraq was justified from the point of view of
weapons of mass destruction or any other pre-war argument, but I can
look at the post-war map of Western Asia. Now that Afghanistan, Iraq
and Libya are out, two and a half terrorist states remain: Iran, Syria
and Lebanon, the latter being a Syrian colony. Perhaps Sudan should be
added to the list. As a result of the conquest of Afghanistan and Iraq,
both Iran and Syria are now totally surrounded by territories
unfriendly to them. Iran is encircled by Afghanistan, by the Gulf
States, Iraq and the Moslem republics of the former Soviet Union. Syria
is surrounded by Turkey, Iraq, Jordan and Israel. This is a significant
strategic change and it applies strong pressure on the terrorist
countries. It is not surprising that Iran is so active in trying to
incite a Shiite uprising in Iraq. I do not know if the American plan
was actually to encircle both Iran and Syria, but that is the resulting
situation.???

In my humble opinion, the number one danger to the world today is Iran
and its regime. It definitely has ambitions to rule vast areas and to
expand in all directions. It has an ideology, which claims supremacy
over Western culture. It is ruthless. It has proven that it can execute
elaborate terrorist acts without leaving too many traces, using Iranian
Embassies.. It is clearly trying to develop Nuclear Weapons. Its
so-called moderates and conservatives play their own virtuoso version
of the "good-cop versus bad-cop" game. Iran sponsors Syrian terrorism,
it is certainly behind much of the action in Iraq, it is fully funding
the Hizbulla and, through it, the Palestinian Hamas and Islamic Jihad,
it performed acts of terror at least in Europe and in South America and
probably also in Uzbekhistan and Saudi Arabia and it truly leads a
multi-national terror consortium, which includes, as minor players,
Syria, Lebanon and certain Shiite elements in Iraq. Nevertheless, most
European countries still trade with Iran, try to appease it and refuse
to read the clear signals.

In order to win the war it is also necessary to dry the financial
resources of the terror conglomerate. It is pointless to try to
understand the subtle differences between the Sunni terror of Al Qaida
and Hamas and the Shiite terror of Hizbulla, Sadr and other Iranian
inspired enterprises. When it serves their business needs, all of them
collaborate beautifully.

It is crucial to stop Saudi and other financial support of the outer
circle, which is the fertile breeding ground of terror. It is important
to monitor all donations from the Western World to Islamic
organizations, to monitor the finances of international relief
organizations and to react with forceful economic measures to any small
sign of financial aid to any of the three circles of terrorism. It is
also important to act decisively against the campaign of lies and
fabrications and to monitor those Western media who collaborate with it
out of naivety, financial interests or ignorance.

Above all, never surrender to terror. No one will ever know whether
the recent elections in Spain would have yielded a different result, if
not for the train bombings a few days earlier. But it really does not
matter. What matters is that the terrorists believe that they caused
the result and that they won by driving Spain out of Iraq. The Spanish
story will surely end up being extremely costly to other European
countries, including France, who is now expelling inciting preachers
and forbidding veils and including others who sent troops to Iraq. In
the long run, Spain itself will pay even more.

Is the solution a democratic Arab world? If by democracy we mean free
elections but also free press, free speech, a functioning judicial
system, civil liberties, equality to women, free international travel,
exposure to international media and ideas, laws against racial
incitement and against defamation, and avoidance of lawless behavior
regarding hospitals, places of worship and children, then yes,
democracy is the solution. If democracy is just free elections, it is
likely that the most fanatic regime will be elected, the one whose
incitement and fabrications are the most inflammatory. We have seen it
already in Algeria and, to a certain extent, in Turkey. It will happen
again, if the ground is not prepared very carefully. On the other hand,
a certain transition democracy, as in Jordan, may be a better temporary
solution, paving the way for the real thing, perhaps in the same way
that an immediate sudden democracy did not work in Russia and would not
have worked in China.

I have no doubt that the civilized world will prevail. But the longer
it takes us to understand the new landscape of this war, the more
costly and painful the victory will be. Europe, more than any other
region, is the key. Its understandable recoil from wars, following the
horrors of World War II, may cost thousands of additional innocent
lives, before the tide will turn.

Subject: RE: BS: Mideast: View From the Eye of the Storm
From: SINSULL
Date: 18 Jul 04 - 01:34 PM

http://www.worldthreats.com/middle_east/Haim%20Harari.htm

it appears in numerous links on GOOGLE. Here's one.

Subject: RE: BS: Mideast: View From the Eye of the Storm
From: CarolC
Date: 18 Jul 04 - 04:17 PM

Looks like it'll be Iran in the crosshairs next then. I guess Syria will have to wait until after we take care of Iran.

Subject: RE: BS: Mideast: View From the Eye of the Storm
From: Peace
Date: 18 Jul 04 - 04:34 PM

Maybe it's time the terrorists were in the crosshairs.

Subject: RE: BS: Mideast: View From the Eye of the Storm
From: CarolC
Date: 18 Jul 04 - 04:39 PM

Which ones, the state-sponsored ones, or the non state-sponsored ones?

Subject: RE: BS: Mideast: View From the Eye of the Storm
From: Peace
Date: 18 Jul 04 - 04:48 PM

All of 'em.

Subject: RE: BS: Mideast: View From the Eye of the Storm
From: CarolC
Date: 18 Jul 04 - 04:57 PM

Oh my. Don't let the US government hear you say that or they'll call you a terrorist and put you in Guantanamo.

Subject: RE: BS: Mideast: View From the Eye of the Storm
From: Peace
Date: 18 Jul 04 - 05:03 PM

Would I get to keep the orange suit?

Subject: RE: BS: Mideast: View From the Eye of the Storm
From: CarolC
Date: 18 Jul 04 - 05:05 PM

For the rest or your life probably. Along with your Guantanamo cell number and address.

Subject: RE: BS: Mideast: View From the Eye of the Storm
From: Peace
Date: 18 Jul 04 - 05:19 PM

All that and ambiance, too. Wow!

Subject: RE: BS: Mideast: View From the Eye of the Storm
From: Jack the Sailor
Date: 18 Jul 04 - 07:39 PM

That is a speech is bigoted hate inducing unsupported diatribe. The man claims to know the all the problems of an area from Morrocco to Pakistan because he lives in Israel even though he says Israel is not a cause of the problem. The solution is for the whole world to band together on Israel's side and fight World War three on their behalf?

If you want to get rid of the Suicide Murderers then we need to stop the Bulldozer Terrorists. Why are we sticking our nose in to get bloodied? Its time for us to tell Likud to behave or to tell it to fight its own battles. Israel is the worst bully in a pretty uncivilized part of the world. It is no better than any other radical theocracy in that neighbourhood.

Subject: RE: BS: Mideast: View From the Eye of the Storm
From: Jack the Sailor
Date: 18 Jul 04 - 07:46 PM

Eye of the Storm is a funny title though. I think the view from ground zero would be more accurate.

This is the second such thing I've seen today the other one was "lets" nuke those Muslims and teach them a lesson.

Are the Bushites trying to scare us with more of their scaremongering?

Subject: RE: BS: Mideast: View From the Eye of the Storm
From: Rabbi-Sol
Date: 18 Jul 04 - 07:52 PM

Is Israel to blame for ALL of the world's problems ? If I remember correctly George W. Bush was elected by a 5 to 4 majority of the U.S. Supreme Court; not by the Likud party. SOL ZELLER

Subject: RE: BS: Mideast: View From the Eye of the Storm
From: Bill Hahn//\\
Date: 18 Jul 04 - 08:00 PM

Jack the Sailor: Your second note is surely to the point---the title. That said, I, for one, surely would hate to see our dear W begin conflicts, as he has, for spurious reasons. But, referring to your other note---these were fights for self interest of the U S (In W's eyes---and his oil eyes) surely not to help Israel.
                   Frankly, your other comment---bulldozing terrorists--is quite polemical and biased. Let us ask the chicken and egg question.   My last recollection is that Israel has a duly elected government, has lost lives to suicide bombers, and is defending itself until a solution (which to this point Arafat and Co. have rejected) is found. True, Sharon is not a saint---but he is also not the sinner as your polemic makes out in the term "bulldozer terrorists".
                How many of the "democratic" Arab states have duly elected governments, have welcomed their Palestinian brethren (think Jordan now---the artificial kingdom), and have been willing to negotiate and settle with Israel. Egypt comes to mind-=--but Sadat has been murdered. Enough said.

By the way---Egypt is the largest recipient of U S dollars in aid---when do we finally go broke with all this?

Bill Hahn

Subject: RE: BS: Mideast: View From the Eye of the Storm
From: Jack the Sailor
Date: 18 Jul 04 - 08:22 PM

Bill I disagree. Sharon is a sinner. He used terror as a weapon long before Arrafat did and he still uses it when it is expedient. Israeli hawks and Hamas and their ilk have been partners in a deadly dance for a long time trading atrocities to keep the moderates on both sides from acheiving compromise.

Rabbi-Sol

No Israel is not to blame for all the World's problems, But in the past 60 years Israeli expansionists have been responsable for far more than their share.

Subject: RE: BS: Mideast: View From the Eye of the Storm
From: Jack the Sailor
Date: 18 Jul 04 - 08:31 PM

The premise of that speech is that Israel has done nothing wrong, Its all the Muslims fault and we oughta go kick their asses. I'd prefer that we address the problems one at a time, starting at the worst ones first. The worst problems are the relations between Israel and her neighbors.

Subject: RE: BS: Mideast: View From the Eye of the Storm
From: Rabbi-Sol
Date: 18 Jul 04 - 08:33 PM

Where was the expansion prior to 1967 ? In 1948, all they did was come into existance by UN mandate vote on the partition. Are you implying that simply because they came in to existance, that in of itself constitues expansion ? SOL ZELLER

Subject: RE: BS: Mideast: View From the Eye of the Storm
From: Peace
Date: 18 Jul 04 - 08:35 PM

So, it's Israel again, isn't it.

Subject: RE: BS: Mideast: View From the Eye of the Storm
From: CarolC
Date: 18 Jul 04 - 08:43 PM

Here's a map of Israel according to the UN partition plan, the Arab territories captured by Israel beyond the UN partition borders, and the remaining Arab territories in Palestine, according to this site from Stanford University, apparantly their history department:

http://www.stanford.edu/class/history187b/ismap.htm

Subject: RE: BS: Mideast: View From the Eye of the Storm
From: CarolC
Date: 18 Jul 04 - 08:46 PM

I should mention that it appears that what the map is refering to as "remaining Arab territories in Palestine" is what is now known as the West Bank, and Gaza.

Subject: RE: BS: Mideast: View From the Eye of the Storm
From: Rabbi-Sol
Date: 18 Jul 04 - 08:50 PM

Discounting Gaza & the West Bank, the other territories captured in 1948 were as a result of a war that Israel did not start, but fought to repel the invading Arab armies that were out to push them into the sea. Is that what is being considered expansion ? SOL ZELLER

Subject: RE: BS: Mideast: View From the Eye of the Storm
From: GUEST,C-Watch
Date: 18 Jul 04 - 09:08 PM

The points that Professor Harari makes in his speech are accurate. He does not have the anti-Moslem bigotry of which Jack the Sailor accuses him.

Israel does not claim to be sin-free. Howver, when one looks at the region broadly, as Professor Harari does, it becomes obvious that Israel plays a very minor role. It is also obvious that the attention paid to Israel is much greater than to any of the other countries in the region and that the one Jewish country is being held to a much higher standard than any other in the world. When the one Jewish country is singled out in that manner, the line into anti-Semitism is crossed. Jack the Sailor crosses the line.

Israel has now started the process of extricating itself from Gaza. And what is happening there? A Palestinian civil war seems to be developing. Carol C has demanded that Israel get out of all the occupied terrtitories. Given the events of the past several days in Gaza, if Israel did as CarolC demands, it would appear that a full scale civil war would erupt among the Palestinians.

I know the day will come when Israel and the Palestinians will finally come to peace and the Palestinians will have their state. A decade ago, it looked like that day was at hand. Unfortunately, Arafat was not the Moses or Sadat or Ghandi or Mandela figure that was prepared to lead his people to that conclusion. Despite what CarolC says, rather than continue to work toward peace, Arafat unleashed the Intifada that has brought us to the current situation.

The peace will come after Arafat and Sharon are gone. It will take visionary leaders on both sides. I know that those leaders are waiting in the wings in Israel. I hope they are also there on the Palestinian side.

I have been to Israel many times. Before the Intifada, I spent much time on the West Bank and had many interactions with Palestinians there. The so-called leadership that Arafat has provided to his people is tragic.

On Wednesday, I leave for Israel and will be teaching there for the next year. I doubt that I will have the time to check into this forum very often. These discussions, then, will carry on without me.

To CarolC and Jack the Sailor: I hope that you never have to worry that the person in line behind you at fast food restaurant, or beside you on a bus, is waering a belt of explosives packed tight with thousands of nails. I hope that you never have to go to a funeral of a nine year old daughter of one of your colleagues who was blown up as she ate a piece of pizza. I hope you have a nice life. Shalom and goodbye.

Subject: RE: BS: Mideast: View From the Eye of the Storm
From: Jack the Sailor
Date: 18 Jul 04 - 09:21 PM

Bruce,

The Speaker is saying that Israel has no blame at all. Do you believe that. Does any one who has paid any attention to the conflict believe that?

Rabbi-Sol

The UN created Israel by displacing ordinary people and giving away their land. I think that particular expansionism is in the past and can be kept in the past. The current expansionism, the settlers, the occupation, the fence, the fact that a foreign power can send in gunships, helicopters and bulldozers and terrorize at will those are perpetuating and expanding the current situation. That is not a path to peace.

There are Palestinians who want to push Israel into the sea. There are Israelis who want to displace all of the non Jews in the West Bank and Gaza so that Israel can return to its current borders. Both are committing atrocities, both are committing murder. Both are using terror. Both are well represented in the Israeli and Palestinian governments.

Subject: RE: BS: Mideast: View From the Eye of the Storm
From: CarolC
Date: 18 Jul 04 - 09:33 PM

GUEST,C-watch, as a woman, I know that everywhere I go, there are people who want to rape and/or kill me just because I am a woman. I understand what it feels like to be terrorised by people in my every-day environment. I've been lucky in that I haven't lost anyone to terrorism or even war (except my uncle who died fighting the Nazis, but I never met him).

I do fear for my safety. But this fear comes as much from the right-wing nut jobs who are running the show in Israel and the US as anything else.

Gaza would not be experiencing anywhere near this much trouble right now if Israel hadn't bombed most of the PA's civil infrastructure into oblivion. The Palestinians predicted that this would be the outcome of that, and it appears they were right. There is only one reason for destroying the civil infrastructure of the PA, and that is to make independance for the Palestinians an impossibliity.

Amos, why the hell did you start this thread? I thought you were smarter and a lot less racist than that.

Subject: RE: BS: Mideast: View From the Eye of the Storm
From: GUEST
Date: 18 Jul 04 - 09:39 PM

Carol, if you think you're in danger in America because you're a woman, you should definitely stay away from Palestine and most other places in the Middle east. Were you a virgin, when you got married? If not, your father, or your brother, or your husband would be able to kill you with complete and total impugnity.

Subject: RE: BS: Mideast: View From the Eye of the Storm
From: CarolC
Date: 18 Jul 04 - 09:40 PM

So GUEST, what is your solution? Kill them all?

Subject: RE: BS: Mideast: View From the Eye of the Storm
From: Jack the Sailor
Date: 18 Jul 04 - 09:43 PM

C-Watch, there won't be peace while the Israeli government continues to sponsor the theft of Palestinian land one settlement at a time. I remember when the intafada started the usual Israeli response to an attack was to bomb the police stations then scream that Arrafat could not keep order. I agree with you about Sharon and Arrafat. I admire the fact that you have put them on the same level. I share your hope for a Palestinian state and for a peaceful solution.

C-Watch I admire courage in going over there and subjecting yourself to the threat od those explosives and those thousands of nails. Since HAIM HARARI says that there is more danger in auto accidents and AIDS, let me bless you and your family by saying that I hope none of those things afflict you.

HAIM HARARI has made some good points, but lets not be gullible. Perhaps Israel as the country with the duly elected government should take a leadership role in promoting peace rather that staying in the gutter and trading atrocities with the terrorists. I hope the government I'm living in develops the sense to strike out those who actually attack us and to to respond to terrorism by expanding the conflict. So far George Bush has failed that test, he's responded to terror with an attack on a third party as an excuse to expand and exploit. Will Osama and Bush dance like Sharon and Arrafat until the US has troops standing on every oilfield in the Muslim world. Will this really be World War Three? I hope Mr. Bush won't keep fighting til he brings this fight to my doorstep. I hope Kerry does better.

Subject: RE: BS: Mideast: View From the Eye of the Storm
From: Jack the Sailor
Date: 18 Jul 04 - 09:47 PM

Typos above, corrected version

Subject: RE: BS: Mideast: View From the Eye of the Storm
From: Jack the Sailor - PM
Date: 18 Jul 04 - 09:43 PM

C-Watch, there won't be peace while the Israeli government continues to sponsor the theft of Palestinian land one settlement at a time. I remember when the intafada started the usual Israeli response to an attack was to bomb the police stations then scream that Arrafat could not keep order. I agree with you about Sharon and Arrafat. I admire the fact that you have put them on the same level. I share your hope for a Palestinian state and for a peaceful solution.

C-Watch I admire courage in going over there and subjecting yourself to the threat od those explosives and those thousands of nails. Since HAIM HARARI says that there is more danger in auto accidents and AIDS, let me bless you and your family by saying that I hope none of those things afflict you either.

HAIM HARARI has made some good points, but lets not be gullible. Perhaps Israel as the country with the duly elected government should take a leadership role in promoting peace rather than staying in the gutter and trading atrocities with the terrorists. I hope the government where I'm living develops the sense to strike out those who actually attack us and not to respond to terrorism by expanding the conflict. So far George Bush has failed that test, he, like Sharon, responded to terror with an attack on a third party as an excuse to expand and exploit. Will Osama and Bush dance like Sharon and Arrafat until the US has troops standing on every oilfield in the Muslim world. Will this really be World War Three? I hope Mr. Bush won't keep fighting til he brings this fight to my doorstep. I hope Kerry does better.

Subject: RE: BS: Mideast: View From the Eye of the Storm
From: Little Brother
Date: 18 Jul 04 - 10:16 PM

Jack the Sailor, just tell me one thing. How should the Israelis respond next time 50 of their citizens are blown up by a Palastinian suicide bomber?

Subject: RE: BS: Mideast: View From the Eye of the Storm
From: Jack the Sailor
Date: 18 Jul 04 - 11:20 PM

Should they go and kill a hundred Palestinians who weren't involved with the bombing? That's been a common response. I think they should get rid of Sharon.

What do you think a young Palestinian should do the next time a Bulldozer crushes his sister? Should he blame Arrafat or the man who sent the Bulldozer to his home?

Subject: RE: BS: Mideast: View From the Eye of the Storm
From: Rabbi-Sol
Date: 18 Jul 04 - 11:38 PM

Jack & Carol: Do you agree or disagree with the following statement ?

"The State Of Israel shall have the right to exist within safe and secure borders."

SOL ZELLER

Subject: RE: BS: Mideast: View From the Eye of the Storm
From: Bobert
Date: 18 Jul 04 - 11:42 PM

Well, what a friggin' crock of crap tirade by the good professor Harari of the Weismann Institute of Science, whatever that is...

It is filled will screwy thinking.

Fir instance, he says more people die of AIDS in Africa every day than died on 9/11, 'er whatever he was trying to say. This makes this ol' hillbilly really mad to hear this crap.

(But, Bobert, them Aficans f**k like rabbits. The'll f**k anything that moves. They're just a bunch of bone through the nose savages...)

Well, there's one of the largest lies being told. Make Bush's lies seem like little white lies. Actually, in spite of professor Harari's not-so-extensive research is that not only do most Africans **not** "f**k like rabbits, but that they test positive for AIDS because they are grossly malnourished from the abject poverty, lack of food, clean water and health care... Like does the good professor klnow that medically a malnourished individual can test positive for AIDS? Heck no, he doesn't, because he isn't too informed or enlightened...

Now he says that the Unitede States gets the War on Terrorism? Yeah, right, Doc, and this way to the table to sign up to buy a bridge of yer choice. I mean, the United States does not have a clue. Where I agree with Harari that the so called terrorists should be treated as criminals, I don't see the logic with his support for pre-emptiveness unless yer danged sure that you are in emminent danger...

What can work, however, is bringing those countries that the United States feel harbor criminals (terrorists) closer to us so that we won't be complaining that we had bad intellegence. It's a lot easier to get good intellegence when you are close to your enemy than when you are keeping him at arms length.

Now that leads me to bring up the same old stuff. We don't need to be planning a military assault on Iran; we need to bring them close to us!

We need to call a Middle East Peace Summit...

We need to find ways to redistribute resources in the US and abroad...

We need a Department of Peace to us PR around the world to get folks thinking differently...

We need to rid the US of Bush/Cheney thinking that puts personal profits above the betterment of mankind...

We need to tell Professor Harari that his brand of bigotry is not part of the solution...

We need to tell Sharon in no uncertain terms that as much as Isreal has a right to exist, so do the Palestians that he sees as spendable...

And, lastly, when the right wing neo-cons fill the empty-headed sheep with crap that we take the time to bring up the back of the flock with confrontaion, information and an expectation that these folks are not lost, just lazily misinformed...

Bobert

Subject: RE: BS: Mideast: View From the Eye of the Storm
From: Jack the Sailor
Date: 19 Jul 04 - 12:11 AM

"The State Of Israel shall have the right to exist within safe and secure borders."

How do you like these?

"Israel has no right attacking people beyond its borders."
"Israeli settlers have no right stealing other people's land."

I don't begrudge Israel safe and secure borders. But I think the Palestinians have as much right to safe and secure borders as the Israelis do. The two groups don't seem capable of sharing. Pehaps they need supervision.

You are probably not going to like this, but I'm not in love of the idea of there being a "Jewish" state. It seems to be a formula for turmoil. Especially when so many people, Jews, Christians and Muslims have a claim on that area. Maybe the world would be better off if the US went in there like they have in Iraq and forced the Christians Jews and Palestinians to work out their differences as they are trying to do with the Kurds, Shiites and Sunnis in Iraq.

Maybe the UN should say, Israel, we tried the Jewish State experiment, it hasn't worked. Time to try something else.

Subject: RE: BS: Mideast: View From the Eye of the Storm
From: CarolC
Date: 19 Jul 04 - 12:47 AM

The Jewish Divide on Israel

by Esther Kaplan

For a glimpse of how Israel plays out in an American election year, recall the day in September when then-Democratic presidential frontrunner Howard Dean told reporters he would like to see the United States take an "even-handed" approach to Israeli-Palestinian negotiations. Thirty-four Congressional Democrats responded by sending Dean a harsh letter questioning whether he shared their "unequivocal support for Israel's right to exist," and anonymous e-mails inundated Jewish listservs, accusing him of abandoning Israel. Dean promptly appeared on CNN to defend Israel's assassinations of Palestinian militants.

Or consider the day in February when John Kerry sat down in New York to discuss issues with a group of Jewish leaders hand-selected by the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations. Hannah Rosenthal, executive director of the Jewish Council for Public Affairs and one of the few liberals invited, said she had her hand in the air, ready to ask questions about civil rights, poverty and the erosion of the church/state divide, but she was avoided by the facilitators, and the meeting shaped up as a single-agenda affair. "The central issue, no matter how they came at it, was, 'Are you going to be there for Israel in these difficult times?'" Rosenthal recalls. "It was, 'We're putting you on notice that this is our number-one concern.'" Kerry took his cue. During the meeting, he backed off from earlier statements that he'd send Jimmy Carter (seen by the right as pro-Palestinian) to the region to jump-start negotiations, and six weeks later, when George W. Bush, in an agreement with Ariel Sharon, accepted Jewish settlements as permanent and renounced Palestinian refugees' right of return, Kerry immediately endorsed it.

Or consider May 18, when the hawkish American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) held its annual conference in Washington. House majority leader Tom DeLay showed up to speak, along with two assistant secretaries of state, an assistant secretary of defense and the President himself. Bush's speech was regularly interrupted by cheering and chants of "Four more years!" The meeting of the Jewish community's most prominent voice on Capitol Hill may as well have been a Republican political rally.

These events reveal a stubborn political fact: that AIPAC and the Conference of Presidents, along with their powerful fellow travelers, Christian Zionists, have forged a bipartisan consensus in Washington that Middle East policy must privilege the "special relationship" between the United States and Israel. In practice, this solid consensus means putting Israeli security before peace; supporting even such extreme Israeli measures as the separation wall and assassinations; and delegitimizing the Palestinian leadership. In AIPAC's view, even Bush's unambitious Middle East "road map" conceded too much to the Palestinians. Until the late 1980s, when the PLO publicly affirmed Israel's right to exist, such positions may truly have represented the vast majority of American Jews. But ever since the 1993 Oslo Accord proved that negotiations were possible, surveys have consistently found that 50 to 60 percent of American Jews favor ending the occupation and dismantling settlements in return for peace.

The trouble is, AIPAC and the Conference of Presidents never fully embraced the Oslo thaw, and once peace talks failed in 2000, they snapped back to their hard-line stance. The combination of Palestinian suicide bombings, the election of Sharon, the ultimate hawk, as prime minister and Bush's with-us-or-against-us "war on terror" allowed the AIPAC consensus to harden throughout the Jewish establishment. After 9/11, United Jewish Communities, the joint Jewish charity, decided to direct funds to Jewish settlers for the first time. And 2002 was a banner year: At a pro-Israel rally in Washington that April, busloads of demonstrators from Jewish social-service agencies and Hillels (the network of Jewish campus organizations) booed Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz for speaking about Palestinian suffering, and the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) and other groups published manuals on how to discredit "anti-Israel propaganda" on campuses. "Arafat had a chance to move toward peace and he rejected it," says Rabbi Eric Yoffie, the leader of the 1.5 million-strong Reform Jewish movement, and one of mainstream Jewry's most outspoken voices against settlement expansion. "We rallied to Israel's side out of the sense that it was the right thing to do, and out of real anger toward the Palestinians." The joke used to be two rabbis, three congregations; over the past two or three years it's become 6 million American Jews, one official opinion.
But tens of thousands of American Jews have had a very different response to the failed talks and the new Palestinian uprising. They began to ask heretical questions about whether former Prime Minister Ehud Barak, or Oslo, had really offered Palestinians a viable state, and whether the harsh occupation was to blame for rising Palestinian anger. Most American Jewish peace organizations had closed up shop during the hopeful Oslo years, so these marginalized doves started almost from scratch, launching dozens of local and national organizations dedicated to ending the occupation. "Since the intifada began, the mantra in the American Jewish community was that Israel's existence was being threatened and we had to stand by the government of Israel no matter what it did. This idea, brilliantly manipulated by the Israeli government, became sacrosanct," says Marcia Freedman, a former Knesset member who co-founded one of these new groups, the Chicago-based Brit Tzedek v'Shalom, in 2002. "There just happens to be a very right-wing government in Israel that does not support a two-state solution, so this lockstep solidarity gave that government carte blanche support." The new grassroots efforts are determined to revoke that carte blanche. Brit Tzedek already has chapters in twenty-seven cities; Michael Lerner's Berkeley-based Tikkun Community and the Oakland-based Jewish Voice for Peace, which just went national in May, have joined the few remaining older peace outfits like Americans for Peace Now (APN) and Arthur Waskow's Philadelphia-based Shalom Center to create an incipient counterforce, which exists almost entirely outside official Jewish channels.

Some of the new groups, like Brit Tzedek and Tikkun, consider themselves to be strongly pro-Israel but seek to radically redefine the term. ("So the definition of being pro-Israel is to be pro-Sharon?" asks Tikkun's Deborah Kory. "Well, maybe assassinating a guy in a wheelchair is not the best thing for Israel.") Others, like New York City's Jews Against the Occupation, define themselves as pro-Jewish and pro-Palestinian, and are open to the idea of a single, binational state. Most of the new organizations are explicitly Jewish, but American Jewish activists have also been central players in the founding of multiethnic organizations like the International Solidarity Movement (ISM), which sends international observers, about a fifth of whom are American Jews, into the occupied territories, and the Washington, DC-based US Campaign to End the Israeli Occupation, which advocates divestment from Israel bonds. And they are becoming increasingly visible. In March one older peace group, Rabbis for Human Rights of North America, sent an open letter to Sharon protesting Israel's house-demolition policy, which was signed by 400 rabbis, including leaders of some of the largest congregations in the country; in April Brit Tzedek organized 10,000 US Jews to sign another open letter, this one calling on Israel and the United States to fund the relocation of Jewish settlers from the occupied territories to Israel.

Over the past three years, these organizations have lobbied Congress, picketed Israeli consulates, initiated campus divestment campaigns, set up informational listservs and held hundreds of vigils and teach-ins. Though they lack support from major Jewish donors or Jewish foundations, their numbers are fast approaching AIPAC's 65,000 members (APN has some 25,000 supporters, Brit Tzedek another 17,000 and so on), and polls show that there is tremendous room for growth. When former Israeli and Palestinian officials crafted the Geneva Accord last year as a model peace agreement, an APN survey found that five times more American Jews supported the plan than opposed it. AIPAC, on the other hand, dismissed Geneva as irrelevant and used its political muscle to block a mild Congressional resolution applauding the "courage and vision" of those who fashioned it. It turns out that far from being more unified than ever in support of Israeli policies, American Jews are as polarized on Israel as Americans as a whole are polarized about George W. Bush.

The divide is not only political but existential. AIPAC, the ADL and the Conference of Presidents see Palestinian suicide bombs as part of a global attack on Jews that includes everything from the murder of Daniel Pearl to the spike in anti-Jewish attacks in France; in their view, Palestinian attacks on Israelis are fueled by hatred of Jews. The peace groups believe that Israel, with one of the world's most powerful militaries, can't claim its existence is at risk, and they see in Israel's occupation, separation wall and collective punishment a moral challenge to the Jewish soul. News and commentary circulated by the two camps, even regarding the same events, bear almost no relation to each other. In late May, as the Israeli army's Operation Rainbow crested in Gaza, ISM e-mails included an eyewitness account of Israeli soldiers shooting tear gas at children and a graphic description of tanks firing shells into a peaceful demonstration in Rafah. E-mails from the Conference of Presidents, on the other hand, told of tunnels used by Palestinians to smuggle weapons and a Jewish settler whose wife and four daughters were killed by terrorists. In the eyes of peaceniks, such as Anita Altman, a Jewish communal professional in New York City, mainstream Jewish institutions are concerned so exclusively with Israeli security that "we've lost the capacity to recognize the other and to acknowledge Palestinans' humanity." In the eyes of establishment Jewish leaders, such as Ernest Weiner, director of the American Jewish Committee's San Francisco chapter, the doves, by concerning themselves primarily with the rights of Palestinians under occupation, have become "nothing more than a mouthpiece of the Arabs." One of these camps has positioned itself as the legitimate voice of American Jews, and has the ear of both parties in Washington; the other, the anti-occupation majority, is being quashed.

Charney Bromberg, executive director of the peace and civil rights organization Meretz USA, an affiliate of Israel's left-wing Meretz Party, calls this phenomenon "the Israeli disease," in which a handful of far-right ideologues dictate policy for the moderate masses; he warns that it has now taken root in American Jewish politics. Palestinian suicide bombers and the war on terror, he argues, have increased the right's leverage. "You get this sense in the Jewish community that we're under siege and anyone who challenges the consensus is a traitor who has to be purged," Bromberg says. "The right has the capacity to instantly inflate any expression of civil discourse, doubt or questioning into an act of disloyalty." Historian Michael Staub, author of Torn at the Roots: The Crisis of Jewish Liberalism in Postwar America, says this split in the Jewish community between an institutional mainstream and a liberal/left alternative dates to the early 1970s, when young Jews, who disproportionately populated the New Left, challenged the major Jewish organizations over Vietnam, urban poverty and assimilation. The difference, says Staub, is that then, when dissidents picketed a synagogue or stormed a meeting of the Jewish Federation, the mainstream leadership scrambled to set up meetings. Now, with dissent centered around Israel, mainstream communal leaders attack anti-occupation protesters as self-hating Jews or take steps to shut them out of the debate entirely. "There is a silencing going on at the local level by American Jewish institutions that is very unhealthy," says Brit Tzedek's Freedman.

New to Jewish religious practice and even newer to Israel/Palestine politics, University of Richmond junior Jilian Redford, 20, quickly discovered the Jewish establishment's line in the sand. The elected president of her campus Hillel, she tried to pull together a balanced panel discussion on the conflict, but soon butted heads with her supervisor at the local Jewish Community Center, Lisa Looney. Looney proposed a particular professor as a speaker, and Redford declined, calling the professor "racist" for private comments she'd made that Palestinians, unlike Jews, have an inherent capacity to kill people in cold blood. "Lisa was extremely taken aback by me using such a strong word," Redford recalls. Redford's second strike--there wouldn't be a third--was her angry response in February to several e-mails she had received from the Israeli Embassy: "Could you please stop sending me email after email about radical Zionist propaganda?" she wrote, adding that it was wrong to "encourage us to hate our Palestinian neighbors in Israel." Three weeks later, after a hostile meeting where Looney insisted that Redford apologize to the embassy, Looney dismissed Redford from her post. "I felt that all of my hard work had been completely overlooked because of my political views on Israel," Redford says. "It was like I revealed that I was from some other planet."

Redford's experience follows a familiar pattern. Liz Harr, an activist with Jewish Students for Palestinian Rights at the University of Texas, was denied space at her campus Hillel in spring 2002 when she sought to organize a study group on the history of the conflict. Hillel program directors at UC Santa Cruz and Ithaca College resigned in frustration after being reprimanded for publishing articles supporting Israeli and Palestinian activism against the occupation. "We think the campus is a great place for there to be very open and contentious debate," says Wayne Firestone, director of Hillel International's Center for Israel Affairs. "But that doesn't give people unconditional rights to attack Israel in any manner or any fashion." In fact, Hillel distributes materials that offer "reactive strategies" for responding to "anti-Israel" events, such as a report from GOP pollster Frank Luntz that details how to better market the "pro-Israel" message to Jewish youth.

Hillel is hardly the only enforcer of a narrow "pro-Israel" orthodoxy. After a four-year battle to gain entry, two dovish organizations, Meretz USA and the Reconstructionist Rabbinical Association, were rejected for membership in the Conference of Presidents in December 2002. Some of the conference's most significant organizations, including the Reform movement, supported Meretz's application, but on the Conference of Presidents, it's one organization, one vote, and executive vice president Malcolm Hoenlein (who likes to refer to the West Bank as "Judea and Samaria") had stacked the committee with right-wing groups. When Jewish Voice for Peace applied for a booth at the Bay Area's biggest Jewish community event of the year, Israel in the Ballpark, its application was rejected; the local Jewish Community Relations Council told JVP's program director, Liat Weingart, that JVP didn't sufficiently support Israel. When Drorah Setel, a Seattle rabbi affiliated with the local Jewish organization Pursue the Peace, showed up at a local pro-Israel rally in April 2002 carrying a sign supportive of both Palestinians and Israelis, a representative of the ADL, one of the rally organizers, insisted to police that she was a counterdemonstrator who should be removed; she ended up under arrest. Michael Bernstein, who led the young-adult program at the American Jewish Committee's San Francisco chapter, was dismissed from his voluntary post after he organized a panel discussion on the prospects for peace in Israel/Palestine in which two out of three speakers reflected a left perspective; according to Bernstein, chapter director Ernest Weiner charged up to him at the event and accused him, in profane terms, of bias (Weiner insists that Bernstein left of his own accord).

The consensus is manufactured in more subtle ways as well. For that right-wing pro-Israel rally in Washington, buses at many Jewish federations and Hillels were free, memos about it went out on organizational letterhead and attendance counted as a workday. Employees of such organizations report being strongly discouraged, on the other hand, from sending out notices about peace vigils from work e-mail accounts. "We hear from people constantly, staffers at mainstream Jewish institutions, reporters at Jewish papers and rabbis who say in hushed tones, 'I agree with you, but I can't say anything,'" says Cecilie Surasky, a spokesperson for JVP. "A rabbi will say, 'I totally support you, but my congregation is too conservative'; then a synagogue member will say, 'I can't say anything because my rabbi is too conservative.' There's an incredible amount of fear." Marcia Freedman of Brit Tzedek says that when she speaks to Jewish audiences, the room is typically split between supporters of the Sharon government and supporters of a negotiated peace, "but the pro-Israeli-government half has no idea about the other half."

Rosenthal of the Jewish Council for Public Affairs, the lobbying arm of local Jewish federations across the country, says that "the issue of how big is our tent and how civil is our dissent is the question of our time." At JCPA's annual conference in February, several hundred people packed a forum on dialogue and dissent over Israel. "We heard most poignantly from students, who said, 'I want to be able to ask questions and not be called an anti-Semite,'" Rosenthal recalls. The divide has become so pronounced that both sides have begun to address it as a crisis in its own right. Brit Tzedek has launched a Listening Project, and Jews Against the Occupation held a national Day of Debate on June 6; both entail small group encounters where the full range of views on Israel/Palestine can be heard. "We want to create a space where support for Palestinian rights is not seen as traitorous or self-hating," says JATO's Lorne Lieb, "but rather as something people can think about and talk to each other about." Hillel will roll out a similar campaign timed for the fall holiday of Sukkot, which will feature intimate conversations where, Wayne Firestone says, "students on the right will have to listen respectfully to students on the left and vice versa."

But such tentative efforts to pry open space for Jewish debate is unlikely to tear down the artificial AIPAC consensus anytime soon. When the Tikkun Community brought some 350 activists to Capitol Hill in April to lobby members of Congress to support a return to negotiations, recalls co-chair Michael Lerner, "there was an astonishing openness--behind closed doors." But most members said AIPAC's presence, both on the Hill and in their home districts, was overwhelming, especially in tandem with Israel hawks on the Christian right. "One member of Congress said it even feels dangerous to meet with us, because they have such good radar screens that they find out almost immediately," Lerner says.

His finger to the wind, John Kerry has uncritically endorsed Bush's enthusiasm for Sharon; while he once spoke somewhat critically of the wall Sharon is erecting deep inside the West Bank, Kerry now wholeheartedly endorses it as a necessary security measure. "The unwritten rule," says APN president Debrah DeLee, "is don't let anyone get to the right of you on Israel." The math is simple: Jews on the right will vote on the single issue of Israel, but liberal Jews vote on a range of issues. So for political candidates, tacking to the right is all gain, no pain.

Over and over, activists like Freedman have been told by sympathetic elected officials, "We support your positions, but we need the telephone calls, the faxes, the letters to the editor, the visits to our office in the home districts." Jewish anti-occupation forces are slowly getting the message. In July Brit Tzedek will post an open letter to the next President asking for an aggressive commitment to push for a final-status Israeli-Palestinian agreement; the organization is now collecting signatures from American Jews. The US Campaign to End the Israeli Occupation has just published a first-ever dovish voter guide, in which members of Congress who support the occupation get a negative score; and Tikkun is working on a private letter to Kerry from peace activists across the country.

At the very least, their presence has exposed the lack of unanimous US Jewish support for Sharon, and that may itself have salutary effects. Cecilie Surasky of JVP says her organization's Jewish presence in alliances for Palestinian rights has opened up the space for other dissenters, mentioning that, with JVP's support, Catholic investors in Caterpillar felt emboldened to introduce a shareholder resolution against the military use of its bulldozers in the occupied territories. "For Americans to be persuaded [to support the Palestinian cause]," says Hany Khalil, organizing coordinator for United for Peace and Justice, a national antiwar organization that opposes the Israeli occupation, "we have to build support across all sectors of the United States, and that will never happen without a significant and visible split within the Jewish community."

Subject: RE: BS: Mideast: View From the Eye of the Storm
From: MAG
Date: 19 Jul 04 - 01:09 AM

On this one, Sol, I have to broadly agree with Jack and Carol, and ignore anything posted by any anonymous guest (THEY mostly seem to want to cloud the thinking on this and other threads).

there is yet any hard evidence to link Arafat (note the one R, people) to Hamas. He has consistently opposed them. It is only the likes of the Likud Party who insist he could stop things over which he clearly has NO control. Hamas is a RIVAL for power in the region, and every time Arafat has gotten absolutely nowhere in negotiations his political opposition gains. Isreal has systematically ignored opportunities for progess on the situation based on attacks they know will come, because Hamas knows their attacks will spike the peace process. Which unfortunately they do. Arafat does not want these gullible young Arabs to kill themselves and prolong the suffering.

I have been following this situation for 30 years, and every knowledgeable person I know on the Palestinian question has said, "Arafat is a moderate."

I remember Rabin crying Enough Blood. Enough Blood. It was not the Palestinians who murdered him, and the best chance for peace in my lifetime. It was the people now in power.

I for one am sending money to the refuseniks. I remain firm in supporting those who reach out across the gulf for a way out of this bloodbath.

The rhetoric of the Likud party toward Arabs, freely available in numerous NPR documentaries, can only be likened to -- and I know how strong this is -- to the final solution filth of the Nazional Sozialisten.

Subject: RE: BS: Mideast: View From the Eye of the Storm
From: Jack the Sailor
Date: 19 Jul 04 - 01:34 AM

By the way my previous post calling for the dissolution of Israel was somewhat tongue in cheek. I was just trying to look at the issue from both sides.

Subject: RE: BS: Mideast: View From the Eye of the Storm
From: MAG
Date: 19 Jul 04 - 01:35 AM

Carol and I cross-posted.

Thank you Carol for more worthy Jewish organizations I can support.

I make no pretense of being Jewish. I was raised a WASP, from which I am in recovery.

I can not begin to comprehend the suffering of Jewish Holocaust survivors.

I do not want their finger on the big red button.

Subject: RE: BS: Mideast: View From the Eye of the Storm
From: GUEST
Date: 19 Jul 04 - 05:41 AM

Bobert - I didn't realise there were any of those HIV doesn't cause AIDS people still around...

Subject: RE: BS: Mideast: View From the Eye of the Storm
From: Strollin' Johnny
Date: 19 Jul 04 - 08:44 AM

I'm gobsmacked. Is there a doctor in the Mudcat House who can confirm that hunger and/or dirty water causes AIDS? Not a concept I've ever heard of. Is it true? I've been taught that the HIV virus can only be transmitted via the mixing of certain body-fluids. I'd like to have the definitive answer to this one.

Subject: RE: BS: Mideast: View From the Eye of the Storm
From: GUEST
Date: 19 Jul 04 - 09:07 AM

There are a few lonely scientists out there who dont believe in the HIV AIDS link. They think thatAIDS in haemophiliacs is caused by repeated factor VIII use, in drug users is caused by the drugs, in africa is caused by malnutrition and in homosexuals is caused by the use of poppers (and other drug use) (poppers cause headaches, headaches lead to increased aspirin use which in conjuction with heavy alcohol use can cause some of the illnesses which are used as markers for AIDS - I kid you not, I just read this).

Subject: RE: BS: Mideast: View From the Eye of the Storm
From: CarolC
Date: 19 Jul 04 - 11:07 AM

Jack & Carol: Do you agree or disagree with the following statement ?

"The State Of Israel shall have the right to exist within safe and secure borders."

--Rabbi Sol

I agree that the State of Israel shall have and does have the right to exist within the Green Line. And that the State of Israel has the same exact rights to safe and secure borders as the Palestinians have on their side of the Green Line.

Subject: RE: BS: Mideast: View From the Eye of the Storm
From: Bobert
Date: 19 Jul 04 - 11:26 AM

GUEST and others,

Probably the largest body of reseach that malnourishment, poverty, bad water etc. can lead to false positiive for HIV/AIDS (not to say one necessarily leads to another...) testing has been accumulated and published by:

Dr. Gary Null

(www.garynull.com)

Subject: RE: BS: Mideast: View From the Eye of the Storm
From: CarolC
Date: 19 Jul 04 - 01:32 PM

By the way---Egypt is the largest recipient of U S dollars in aid---when do we finally go broke with all this?

--Bill H

Egypt is not the largest recipient of US dollars in aid, unles by largest you're talking about Egypt's larger physical size as compared to Israel. In terms of dollars, Israel is by far the largest recipient of US dollars in aid:

http://www.jewishvoiceforpeace.org/resources/suspendaid.htm

"More U.S. aid goes to Israel than any other country, even though Israel's per capita income is as high as many European countries. In fiscal year 2003 Israel received a foreign military financing grant of $3.1 billion and a $600 million grant for economic security in addition to $11 billion in commercial loan guarantees. This total aid package of nearly $15 billion makes Israel by far the largest single recipient of U.S. aid. U.S. aid is a function of politics. According to a Time/CNN poll, released April 12, 2002, 60% of Americans favor cutting aid to Israel if Israel does not immediately withdraw its troops from Palestinian areas. Further, U.S. aid to other countries is often tied to various conditions, depending on what the U.S. wants the aid recipient to do. We are asking that aid to Israel be treated in the same manner."

Subject: RE: BS: Mideast: View From the Eye of the Storm
From: Bill Hahn//\\
Date: 19 Jul 04 - 05:35 PM

In answer to the statement "...treated in the same manner (re:aid)" one has to wonder why it is that in the UN (all these years after the organization ordained the state) it (Israel)is not treated "in the same manner".   Sanctions and censure abound. Where are the sanctions and censure for the other side?    Probably with the larger voting bloc of the Arab states.

One of the smarter things the founders came up with was the Security Council Veto---it assured a balance for the founding powers and the rotating members given that the make=-up of the organization is quite different now than at it inception.

I think that part of the problem with this discussion arises from the fact that history is an ongoing thing and you cannot single out this year or this day or this event as the precipitating factor for these things.   You can, however, look back and see that Israel defended itself ---and agreed to the original map. (By the way they had purchased much of the land through the JNF years back--and in --I think 1929---they were violently attacked by the Arabs (Palestinians) That they were attacked--who is to blame for that?   In 1967 once again---who is to blame for that? 1973---and so on. Israel has even negotiated (or is negotiating) for the return of the Golan---and that can surely be a dangerous precedent.

I highly recommend a book by an author I interviewed on my radio program a while back---Michael Oren. Six Days of War and the Making of the Modern Middle East.   The author--an American expatriate living in Jerusalem (and a professor)writes an even handed history. In conversation he told me that his son is in the army (drafted) he is in the reserve(mandatory) and his youngest calls from school each day to say he has arrived safely since his bus route has been bombed many a time. Great way to live.   How DO you respond to that--I mean such attacks?

I doubt his wife has as much fear of rape as Carol does---more of bombing and maiming. Seriously---if you live here (U S) rape is not all that prevalent---unless you watch the schlock news programs or read the Supermarket Tabloids. Sure way of becoming paranoid.


Bill Hahn

Subject: RE: BS: Mideast: View From the Eye of the Storm
From: CarolC
Date: 19 Jul 04 - 06:28 PM

Easy for you to say, Bill H. You're not a woman. I know enough women who have been raped to have a healthy respect for the possibility in my own life. And I've had a couple of pretty close calls myself.

And as we've seen in previous threads, your representation of the "historical facts" of the region bear no resemblance what really happened. You can repeat the same fabrications as often as you want, but that won't make them true.

http://www.spectacle.org/0601/israel.html

80 Theses--Draft for a New Peace Camp

By the Israeli Peace Bloc [e-mail]

The following document was published (in Hebrew) today April 13 as a whole page ad in Ha'aaretz. You may have seen it already but we want to make sure that you don't miss it. It can be downloaded in Hebrew (also English) from the Gush Shalom website http:www.gush-shalom.org

We think time has come to take certain discussions out of the closet, to campaign widely for a revision of the myths of Zionist history and publicly facing the truth about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

"...The Root of the Conflict

12.The Israeli-Palestinian conflict is the continuation of the historical clash between the Zionist Movement and the Palestinian Arab people, a clash that began at the end of the 19th century and has yet to end.

13.The Zionist Movement was, essentially, a Jewish reaction to the emergence of the national movements in Europe, all of which were hostile to Jews. Having been rejected by the European nations, some of the Jews decided to establish themselves as a separate nation and, following the new European model, to set up their own national State where they could be masters of their own fate. The principle of separation, which formed the basis of the Zionist idea, had far- reaching consequences later on. The basic Zionist tenet, that a minority cannot exist in a national-homogenous state according to the European model, let later to the practical exclusion of the national minority in the Zionist state that came into being after 50 years.

14.Traditional and religious motives drew the Zionist Movement to Palestine (Eretz Israel in Hebrew) and the decision was made to establish the Jewish State in this land. The maxim was "a land without a people for a people without a land". This maxim was not only created out of ignorance, but also out of the general arrogance towards non-European peoples that prevailed in Europe at that time.

15.Palestine was not empty--not at the end of the 19th century nor at any other period. At that time, there were half a million people living in Palestine, 90% of them Arabs. This population objected, of course, to the incursion of another nation into their land.

16.The Arab National Movement emerged almost simultaneously with the Zionist Movement, initially to fight the Ottoman Empire and later to fight the colonial regimes created upon its destruction at the end of World War I. A separate Arab-Palestinian national movement developed in the country after the British created a separate State called "Palestine", and in course of the struggle against the Zionist infiltration.

17.Since the end of World War I, there has been an ongoing struggle between two nationalist movements, the Jewish-Zionist and the Palestinian-Arab, both of which aspired to accomplish their goals -- which entirely negate each other -- within the same territory. This situation remains unchanged to this day.

18.As Jewish persecution in Europe intensified, and as the countries of the world closed their gates to the Jews attempting to flee the inferno, so the Zionist Movement gained strength. The Holocaust, which took the lives of six million Jews, gave moral and political power to the Zionist claim that led to the establishment of the State of Israel.

19.The Palestinian People, witnessing the growth of the Jewish population in their land, could not comprehend why they were required to pay the price for crimes committed against the Jews by Europeans. They violently objected to further Jewish immigration and to the acquisition of lands by the Jews.

20.The complete oblivion of each of the two peoples to the national existence of the other inevitably led to false and distorted perceptions that took root deep in the collective consciousness of both. These perceptions affect their attitude towards each other to this day.

21.The Arabs believed that the Jews had been implanted in the country by Western Imperialism, in order to subjugate the Arab world and take control of its treasures. This conviction was strengthened by the fact that the Zionist movement, from the outset, strove for an alliance with at least one Western power (Germany, Great Britain, France, the U.S.A.) to overcome the Arab resistance. The results were a practical cooperation and a community of interests between the Zionist enterprise and imperialist and colonialist forces, directed against the Arab national movement.

22.The Jews, on the other hand, were convinced that the Arab resistance to the Zionist enterprise -- intended to save the Jews from the flames of Europe -- was the consequence of the murderous nature of the Arabs and of Islam. In their eyes, Arab fighters were "gangs", and the uprisings of the time were called "riots". (Actually, in the 1920's, the most extreme Zionist leader, Ze'ev Jabotinsky, was almost alone to recognize that the Arab resistance to the Zionist settlement was an inevitable, natural and from this point of view just reaction of a "native" people defending their country against foreign invaders. Jabotinsky also recognized the fact that the Arabs in the country were a separate national entity and derided attempts made to bribe the leaders of other Arab countries to put an end to the Palestinian Arab resistance. However, Jabotinsky's conclusion was to erect a "wall of steel" against the Arabs and to crush their resistance by force.)

23.This total contradiction in the perception of the facts affects every aspect of the conflict. For example, the Jews interpreted their struggle for "Jewish Labor" as a progressive social effort to transform a nation of merchants and speculators into one of workers and farmers. The Arabs, on the other hand, saw it as a criminal attempt by the Zionists to dispossess them, to evict them from the labor market and to create, on their land, an Arab-free, separatist Jewish economy.

24.The Zionists were proud of their "Redemption of the Land". They had purchased it for full value with money collected from Jews around the world. "Olim" (new immigrants, literally pilgrims) who had been intellectuals and merchants in their former life, now earned their living with the sweat of their brow. They believed that they had achieved all this by peaceful means and without dispossessing a single Arab. For the Arabs this was a cruel narrative of dispossession and expulsion: The Jews acquired lands from rich absentee Arab landowners and then forcibly evicted the fellahin who had, for generations, been living on and earning their living from these lands. To help them in this effort, the Zionists engaged the Turkish and, later, the British police. The Arabs looked on, despairingly, as their land was taken from them.

25.Against the Zionist claim of having successfully "turned the desert into a garden", the Arabs cited the testimonies of European travelers who spoke of a Palestine that, for several centuries, had described Palestine as a populated and flourishing land, the equal of any of its regional neighbors.

Independence and Disaster

26.The contrast between the two national versions peaked in the war of 1948, a war called "the War of Independence" or even "the War of Liberation" by the Jews, and "El Naqba", the disaster, by the Arabs.

27.As the conflict intensified in the region, and with the resounding impact of the Holocaust, the United Nations decided to divide the country into two States, Jewish and Arab. Jerusalem and its environs were supposed to remain a separate unit, under international jurisdiction. The Jews were allotted 55% of the land including the unpopulated Negev.

28.The Zionist Movement accepted the partition plan, convinced that the crucial issue was to establish a firm foundation for Jewish sovereignty. In closed meetings, David Ben-Gurion never concealed his intention to expand, at the first opportunity, the territory given to the Jews. That is why Israel's Declaration of Independence did not define the country's borders and the country has remained without definite borders to this day.

29.The Arab world did not accept the partition plan and regarded it a vile attempt of the United Nations, which essentially was at the time a club of Western and Communist nations, to divide a country that did not belong to it. Handing over most of the country to the Jewish minority, which represented a mere third of the population, made it all the more unforgivable in their eyes.

30.The war initiated by the Arabs after the partition plan was, inescapably, an "ethnic" war; a kind of war in which each side seeks to conquer as much land as possible and evict the population of the other side. Such a campaign (which later came to be called "ethnic cleansing") always involves expulsion and atrocities.

31.The war of 1948 was a direct extension of the Zionist-Arab conflict in which each side sought to fulfill its aims. The Jews wanted to establish a homogenous, national State that would be as large as possible. The Arabs wanted to eradicate the Zionist Jewish entity that had been established in Palestine.

32.Both sides practiced ethnic cleansing as an integral part of the fighting. There were not many Arabs remaining in territories captured by the Jews and no Jews remained in territories captured by the Arabs. However, as the territories captured by the Jews were by far larger than those captured by the Arabs, the result was unbalanced. (The ideas of "population exchange" and "transfer" were raised in Zionist organizations as early as in the 1930's. Effectively this meant the expulsion of the Arab population from the country. On the other side, many among the Arabs believed that the Zionists should go back to wherever they came from.)

33.The myth of "the few against the many" was cultivated by the Jews to describe the stand of the Jewish community of 650,000 against the entire Arab world of over a hundred million. The Jewish community lost 1% of its people in the war. The Arabs painted a completely different picture: A fragmented Arab population with no national leadership to speak of, with no unified command over its meager forces, with poor, few and mostly obsolete weapons, confronting an extremely well organized Jewish community that was highly trained in the use of its weapons. The neighboring Arab countries betrayed the Palestinians and, when they finally did send their armies, they primarily operated in competition with each other, with no coordination and no common plan. From the social and military point of view, the fighting capabilities of the Israeli side were far superior to those of the Arab states, which had hardly emerged from the colonial era.

34.According to the United Nations plan, the Jewish State was supposed to include an Arab population amounting to about 40%. During the war the Jewish State expanded its borders and ended up with 78% of the area of the land. This area was nearly devoid of Arabs. The Arab populations of Nazareth and a few villages in the Galilee remained almost incidentally; the villages in the Triangle had been given to Israel as part of a deal by King Abdullah and, therefore, could not be evacuated.

35.In the war a total of 750,000 Palestinians were uprooted. Some of them fled out of fear of the battle, as civilian populations do in every war. Some were driven away by acts of terror such as the Dir-Yassin Massacre. Others were systematically evicted in the course of the ethnic cleansing.

36.No less important than the expulsion is the fact that the refugees were not allowed to return to their homes when the battles were over, as is the practice after a conventional war. Quite to the contrary, the new Israel saw the removal of the Arabs very much as a blessing and proceeded to totally demolish 450 Arab villages. New Jewish villages were built on the ruins, and new Hebrew names were given to them. The abandoned houses in the cities were repopulated with new immigrants.

"A Jewish State"

37.The signing of the cease-fire agreements at the end of the war of 1948 did not bring an end to the historical conflict. That was, in fact, raised to new and more intensive levels.

38.The new State of Israel dedicated its early years to the consolidation of its homogenous national character as a "Jewish State". Large sections of land were expropriated from the "absentees" (the refugees), from those officially designed as "present absentees" (Arabs who physically remained in Israel but were not allowed to become citizens) and even from the Arab citizens of Israel, most of whose lands were taken over. On these lands a dense network of Jewish communities was created. Jewish "Immigrants" were invited and even coaxed to come in masses. This great effort fortified the State's power several times over in but a few years.

39.At the same time the State vigorously conducted a policy to obliterate the Palestinian entity as a national entity. With Israeli help, the Trans-Jordan monarch, Abdullah, took control over the West Bank and since then there is, in effect, an Israeli military guarantee for the existence of the Kingdom of Jordan.

40.The main rationale of the treaty between Israel and the Hashemite Kingdom, which has been in effect for three generations, was to prevent the establishment of an independent Arab-Palestinian State, which was considered "then and now" as an obstacle to the realization of the Zionist objective.

41.A historical change occurred at the end of the 1950's on the Palestinian side when Yasser Arafat and his associates founded the Fatah Movement designed to free the Palestinian liberation movement from the custody of the Arab governments. It was no accident that this movement emerged after the failure of the great Pan-Arab concept whose most renowned representative was Gamal Abd-el- Nasser. Up to this point many Palestinians had hoped to be absorbed into a united All-Arab Nation. When this hope faded, the separate National Palestinian identity re-emerged.

42.The Palestinian Liberation Organization (PLO) was created by Gamal Abd-el- Nasser to prevent autonomous Palestinian action that might involve him in an undesired war with Israel. The organization was intended to impose Egyptian authority over the Palestinians. However, after the Arab defeat in the June 1967 war, Fatah, led by Yasser Arafat, took control over the PLO and has been the sole representative of the Palestinian people ever since.

"The Six Day War"

43.The June 1967 war is seen in a very different light by the two sides, as has every incident in the last 120 years. According to the Israeli myth, this was a desperate war of defense, which miraculously placed a lot of land in Israel's hands. According to the Palestinian myth, the leaders of Egypt, Syria and Jordan fell into a trap set by Israel in order to capture whatever was left of Palestine.

44.Many Israelis believe that "the Six Day War" was the root of all evil and it was only then that the peace-loving and progressive Israel turned into a conqueror and an occupier. This conviction allows them to maintain the absolute purity of Zionism and the State of Israel up to that point in history and preserve their old myths. There is no truth to this legend.

45.The war of 1967 was yet another phase of the old struggle between the two national movements. It did not change the essence; it only changed the circumstances. The essential objectives of the Zionist Movement-- a Jewish State, expansion, and settlement-- were making great strides. The particular circumstances made extensive ethnic cleansing impossible in this war, but several hundreds of thousands of Palestinians were nevertheless expelled.

46.Israel was allotted 55% of the land (Palestine) by the 1947 partition plan, an additional 23% were captured in the 1948 war and now the remaining 22%, across the "Green Line: (the pre-1967 armistice line), were also captured. In 1967 Israel inadvertently united the Palestinian people (including some of the refugees) under its rule.

47.As soon as the war ended, the Settlement Movement began. Almost every political faction in the country participated in this movement --from the messianic-nationalistic "Gush Emunim" to the "leftist" United Kibbutz Movement. The first settlers received broad support from most politicians, left and right, from Yigal Alon (the Jewish settlement in Hebron) to Shimon Peres (the Kdumim settlement).

48.The fact that all governments of Israel cultivated and advanced the settlements, albeit to differing extents, proves that the settlement aspiration was restricted to no specific ideological camp and extended to the entire Zionist Movement. The impression that has been created of a small minority driving the Settlement Movement is illusionary. Only a consolidated effort on the part of all Government Agencies since 1967 and till today could have produced the legislative, the strategic and the budgetary infrastructure required for such a long-lasting and expensive endeavor.

49.The legislative infrastructure incorporates the misleading assumption that the Occupation Authority is the owner of "government-owned lands", although these are the essential land reserves of the Palestinian population. It is self- evident that the Settlement Movement contravenes International Law.

50.The dispute between the proponents of the "Greater Israel" and those of "Territorial Compromise" is essentially a dispute about the way to achieve the basic Zionist aspiration: a homogenous Jewish State in as large a territory as possible. The proponents of""compromise" emphasize the demographic issue and want to prevent the inclusion of the Palestinian population in the State. The "Greater Israel" adherents place the emphasis on the geographic issue and believe (privately or publicly) that it is possible to expel the non-Jewish population from the country (code name: "Transfer").

51.The General Staff of the Israeli army played an important role in the planning and building of the Settlements. It created the map of the settlements (identified with Ariel Sharon): blocs of settlements and bypass roads, lateral and longitudinal, so that the West Bank and the Gaza Strip are chopped up into pieces and the Palestinians are imprisoned in isolated enclaves, each of which is surrounded by settlements and the occupation forces.

52.The Palestinians employed several methods of resistance, mainly raids across the Jordanian and Lebanese borders and attacks inside Israel and everywhere in the world. These acts are called "terrorist" by the Israelis while the Palestinians see them as the legitimate resistance of an occupied nation. The PLO leadership, headed by Yasser Arafat, had long been considered a terrorist leadership by the Israelis but has gradually come to be internationally recognized as the "sole legitimate representative" of the Palestinian people.

53.When the Palestinians realized that these actions do not put an end to the settlement momentum, which gradually pulled the land from under their feet, at the end of 1987 they launched the Intifadah -- a grassroots uprising of all sectors of the population. In this Intifidah, 1500 Palestinians were killed, among them hundreds of children, several times over the number of Israeli losses.

The Peace Process

54.The October 1973 war, which commenced with the surprise victory of the Egyptian and Syrian forces and culminated with their defeat, convinced Yasser Arafat and his close associates that there is no military way to achieve the national Palestinian objectives. He decided to embark upon a political path to reach agreement with Israel and to allow, at least, a partial achievement of the national goals through negotiation.

55.To prepare the ground for this, Arafat created contact for the first time with Israeli personalities who could make an impact on public opinion and on government policy in Israel. His emissaries (Said Hamami and Issam Sartawi) met with Israeli public figures, the peace pioneers who in 1975 established the "Israeli Council for Israeli-Palestinian Peace".

56.These contacts as well as the growing fatigue felt by the Israelis of the Intifadah, the Jordanian withdrawal from the West Bank, changing international conditions (the collapse of the Communist Bloc, the Gulf War) led to the Madrid Conference and, later, to the Oslo Agreement.

The Oslo Agreement

57.The Oslo Agreement had positive and negative qualities.

58.On the positive side, this agreement brought Israel to its first official recognition of the Palestinian People and its national leadership and brought the National Palestinian Movement to its recognition of the existence of Israel. In this respect the agreement (and the exchange of letters that preceded it) were of paramount historical significance.

59.In effect, the agreement gave the National Palestinian Movement a territorial base on Palestinian land, the structure of a "state in the making" and armed forces-- facts that would play an important role in the ongoing Palestinian struggle. For the Israelis, the agreement opened the gates to the Arab world and put an end to Palestinian attacks --as long as the agreement was effective.

60.The most substantive flaw in the agreement was that both sides hoped to achieve entirely different objectives. The Palestinians saw it as a temporary agreement paving the way to the end of the occupation, the establishment of a Palestinian State in all the occupied territories. On the other hand, the respective Israeli governments regarded it as a way to maintain the occupation in large sections of the West Bank and the Gaza Strip, with the Palestinian self-government filling the role of an auxiliary security agency protecting Israel and the settlements.

61.Therefore, Oslo did not represent the beginning of the process to end the conflict but, rather, another new phase of the conflict.

62.Because the expectations of both sides were so divergent and each remained entirely bound to its own national "narrative", every section of the agreement was interpreted differently. Ultimately, many parts of the agreement were not carried out, mainly by Israel (the third withdrawal, the four safe passages, and others).

63.Throughout the period of the "Oslo Process" Israel continued its vigorous expansion of the settlements, primarily by creating new ones under various guises, expanding existing ones, building an elaborate network of "bypass" roads, expropriating land, demolishing houses and uprooting plantations etc. The Palestinians, on their part, used the time to build their strength, both within the framework of the agreement and without it. In fact, the historical confrontation continued unabated under the guise of negotiations and the "Peace Process", which became a proxy for actual peace.

64.In contradistinction to his image, which became more pronounced after his assassination, Yitzhak Rabin kept the conflict alive "in the field", while simultaneously managing the political process to achieve peace, on Israeli terms. As he was a disciple of the Zionist "narrative" and accepted its mythology, he suffered from cognitive dissonance when his hopes for peace clashed with his conceptual world. It appears that he began to internalize some parts of the Palestinian historical narrative only at the very end of his life.

65.The case of Shimon Peres is much more severe. He created for himself an international image of a peacemaker and even designed his language to reflect this image ("the New Middle East") while remaining essentially a traditional Zionist hawk. This became clear in the short and violent period that he served as Prime Minister after the assassination of Rabin and, again, in his current acceptance of the role of spokesman and apologist for Sharon.

66.The clearest expression of the Israeli dilemma was provided by Ehud Barak who came to power completely convinced of his ability to cut the Gordian knot of the historical conflict in one dramatic stroke, in the fashion of Alexander the Great. Barak approached the issue in total ignorance of the Palestinian narrative and with disrespect to its importance. He presented his proposals as ultimatums and was appalled and enraged by their rejection.

67.In the eyes of himself and the Israeli side at large, Barak "turned every stone" and made the Palestinians "more generous offers than any previous Prime Minister". In exchange, he wanted the Palestinians to sign off on "an end to the conflict". The Palestinians considered this a preposterous pretension since Barak was effectively asking them to relinquish their basic national aspiration, such as the Right of Return and sovereignty in East Jerusalem and the Temple Mount. Moreover, while Barak presented the claims for the annexation of territories as matter of negligible percentages ("Settlement Blocs"), according to Palestinian calculations this amounted to an actual annexation of 20% of the land beyond the Green Line.

68.In the Palestinian view, they had already made the decisive compromise by agreeing to establish their State within the Green Line, in merely 22% of their historical homeland. Therefore, they could only accept minor border changes in the context of territorial swaps. The traditional Israeli position is that the achievements of the war of 1948 are established facts that cannot be disputed and the compromise required must focus on the remaining 22%.

69.As with most terms and concepts, the word "concession" has different meanings for both sides. The Palestinians believe that they have already "conceded" 78% of their land when they agreed to accept 22% of it. The Israelis believe that they are "conceding" when they agree to "give" the Palestinians parts of those same 22% (the West Bank and the Gaza Strip).

70.The Camp David Summit in the summer of 2000, which was imposed on Arafat against his will, was premature and brought things to a climax. Barak's demands, presented at the summit as Clinton's, were that the Palestinians agree to end the conflict by conceding the Right of Return and the Return itself; to accept complicated arrangements for East Jerusalem and the Temple Mount without achieving sovereignty over them; to agree to large territorial annexations in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip and to an Israeli military presence in other large areas and to Israeli control over the borders separating the Palestinian State from the rest of the world. No Palestinian leader would ever sign such an agreement and thus the summit ended in deadlock and the termination of the careers of Clinton and Barak.

The El-Aqsa Intifadah

71.The breakdown of the summit, the elimination of any hope for an agreement between the two sides and the unconditional pro-Israeli stance of the Americans, inevitably led to another round of violent confrontations, which earned the title of the El-Aqsa Intifadah. For the Palestinians, this is a justified national uprising against the protracted occupation, which has no end in sight and allows continual and daily pulling of their land from under their feet. For the Israelis, this is an outburst of murderous terrorism. The performers of these acts appear to the Palestinians as national heroes and to the Israelis as merciless criminals who must be liquidated.

72.The official media in Israel no longer mention settlers but speak of "residents" upon whom any attack is a crime against civilians. The Palestinians consider the settlers the forefront of a dangerous enemy force whose intention is to dispossess them of their land and who must be defeated.

73.A great part of the Israeli "Peace Camp" collapsed during the al-Aqsa Intifadah and it turns out that many of its convictions had feet of clay. Especially after Barak had "turned every stone" and made "more generous offers than any previous Prime Minister", the Palestinian behavior was incomprehensible to this part of the "Peace Camp", since it had never performed a thorough revision of the Zionist "narrative" and did not internalize the fact that there is a Palestinian "narrative" too. The only remaining explanation was that the Palestinians had deceived the Israeli Peace Camp, that they had never intended to make peace and that their true purpose is to throw the Jews into the sea, as the Zionist right has always claimed.

74.As a result, the dividing line between the Zionist "right" and "left" disappeared. The leaders of the Labor Party joined the Sharon Government and became his most effective apologists (Shimon Peres) and even the formal leftist opposition (Yossi Sarid) took part. This again proves that the Zionist narrative is the decisive factor unifying all facets of the political system in Israel, making the distinctions between Rehavam Zeevi and Avraham Burg, Yitzhak Levi and Yossi Sarid insignificant.

75.There is a notable decline in the Palestinian willingness to reopen a dialogue with the Israeli peace forces, a consequence of the utter disappointment from the "leftist government" which had inspired so much hope after the Netanyahu years, as well as a consequence of the fact that apart from the small radical peace groups no Israeli outrage at the brutal reactions of the occupation forces has been heard. The tendency to tighten ranks, typical to any nation in a war of liberation, makes it possible for the extreme nationalistic and religious forces on the Palestinian side to veto any attempt at Israeli-Palestinian cooperation.

Subject: RE: BS: Mideast: View From the Eye of the Storm
From: Bill Hahn//\\
Date: 19 Jul 04 - 07:01 PM

As I said---history is ongoing. Shall we go back some few thousand years now and find who was displaced?

That is why I made the comment we cannot place a single incident and/or movement on what is now happening

Bill Hahn

Subject: RE: BS: Mideast: View From the Eye of the Storm
From: CarolC
Date: 19 Jul 04 - 07:40 PM

If we go far enough back, Bill H, we can find Jews committing genocide upon the people who were already living in the land that according to the Old Testament, was promised to the Jews by G*d.

And this is, I guess, what I am trying to say, and what I have been trying to say all along. None of us (members of the human race) can claim that the history of our ancestors is unstained by atrocities committed against other human beings or groups of human beings. Not my ancestors, and not yours either.

Subject: RE: BS: Mideast: View From the Eye of the Storm
From: Jack the Sailor
Date: 19 Jul 04 - 07:46 PM

Bill I agree with you. Here is another point.

Another thing about history is that it is generally only told from one side and one perspective at a time. I'm sure Prof Oren has good points to make. I find it hard to believe that he is unbiased.

Subject: RE: BS: Mideast: View From the Eye of the Storm
From: CarolC
Date: 19 Jul 04 - 07:49 PM

How DO you respond to that--I mean such attacks?

End the occupation.

Subject: RE: BS: Mideast: View From the Eye of the Storm
From: CarolC
Date: 19 Jul 04 - 07:54 PM

It's interesting that you mentioned Michael Oren's book, Bill H. I was just reading this review about it earlier today along with reviews of a few other books on the subject:

http://www.thenation.com/doc.mhtml?i=20040531&s=beinin

"First there was Michael Oren's Six Days of War: June 1967 and the Making of the Modern Middle East, chronicling the 1967 Arab-Israeli war. Though widely acclaimed by mainstream reviewers as a definitive account of the war, Oren's book was aptly described by the tireless Norman Finkelstein as "Abba Eban with Footnotes"--a reference to Eban's eloquent but factually challenged speech at the UN General Assembly justifying Israel's pre-emptive strike of June 1967. While Oren's book is a serious work of scholarship, it essentially restates the traditional Israeli account of the war as a defensive strike waged against belligerent Arab states seeking to "throw Israel into the sea." Oren does not adequately address three arguments that challenge this view. First, according to interviews with former Defense Minister Moshe Dayan conducted in 1976 and 1977, which were kept secret for many years but published well before Oren's book, Israel had been intentionally provoking Syria since 1948 in order to establish sovereignty over the demilitarized zones on their common border. Second, according to the evaluation of several different intelligence agencies and the Israeli general staff, Israel did not face an existential danger in 1967 and could expect an easy victory. Third, Israel chose war because, as Shimon Peres wrote in the pro- Labor Party daily, Davar, its leaders did not want to negotiate over Israel's borders or the question of Palestinian refugees. The second of these matters remains off the table as far as Israel is concerned."

Subject: RE: BS: Mideast: View From the Eye of the Storm
From: Bill Hahn//\\
Date: 19 Jul 04 - 07:59 PM

Carol C: Agreed---we humans are basically inhuman. We live, however, in the current time and cannot pick the Intefada, for example, as the starting point for a discussion. We could use Balfour, we could use the U N (1948), we could use all the other dates I had mentioned but it brings us back to the need for compromise.   Which, in turn, brings us back to intansigence on both sides---except for Rabin. But, who,I ask rhetorically, fouled the peace plan---forget the assasin now.   Does Arafat ring a bell?   

Someone on this thread mentioned that he is a "moderate"--I believe. Right!!   A moderate carries a pistol into the UN to show his machismo. A moderate tolerates the Olympic terrorism.   So--now, we are back to tit for tat and the chicken and egg question. Though I will say that buildings are less important than human lives---say athletes, say innocents at a bus stop, and so on.

The point I am trying to make is that it would be nice if if the moderates on both sides could win the day. Sadly, however, that does not seem to be happening. It also makes me believe that Israel/Palestine/Middle East situations will not be resolved so easily given that our own government will play the political game that serves the party in power's agenda. SO--let me not get into W and Iraq. Part of the problem. Hardball politics all around--as always--and not any kind of idealistic thought in sight.   I will, finally, add that Sharon (as I said before) is no saint. But, given, what happened to all the peace overtures that Arafat has rejected and renegged on, given all the innocents killed by suicide bombers (trained by and indoctrinated at a young age by Palestinians), and given the hardships placed on the only democracy in that sad area I, sadly, add that perhaps a strong hand is called for.

Bill Hahn

Subject: RE: BS: Mideast: View From the Eye of the Storm
From: CarolC
Date: 19 Jul 04 - 08:35 PM

No, Bill. It wasn't Arafat who fouled the peace plan. Israel was supposed to stop building settlements and to begin removing them. Not only did they not do any of that, they increased the rate at which they increased settlement expansion. There was a two year period during which the Palestinians had some hope that the Oslo process would bring them independence when, according to Yitzhak Rabin, no Israelis were killed by PLO terrorism.

But it eventually became very clear to the Palestinians that Israel had no intention of ending the occupation or even to stop building settlements. Then Isreali soldiers fired with live amunition against Palestinians demonstrators armed only with rocks, killing several of them and wounding many others. And that was the start of the second Intifada.

Here's what Shimon Peres had to say about it on September 24, 2001:

"We have a skeleton, we didn't complete the house. The Oslo agreement has had a rather short occasion to implement itself, and that was between 1993 and 1996. The Oslo agreement was stopped in 1996 when the government in Israel was changed and Mr. Netanyahu became the Prime Minister."

But as the material I posted above shows, from the perspective of the Israelis, even Oslo wasn't ever really intended to result in an independent state for the Palestinians.

As far as the myth of Arafat "walking away from Barak's generous offer" is concerned, the offer was in no way generous, and it was Barak who ended the talks at Taba.

And contrary to what you, and it would appear, many other people seem to think, I have no need to dwell on who is responsible for what. What I am saying is that Israel should stop using a fictional historic narrative in order to justify the further subjugation, and/or expulsion of the Palestinians in the West Bank, Gaza, and East Jerusalem.

Subject: RE: BS: Mideast: View From the Eye of the Storm
From: Bobert
Date: 19 Jul 04 - 08:39 PM

"Harball politics all around--as always-- and not any kind of idealistic thought in sight."

Well said, Bill.

As the world's remaining super power would you agree that the United States is, or was proior to the invasion of Iraq, in a unprecedented position to "make a difference"?

Yet, the United States, who Harari thinks "gets it" has not done much into the way of out-of-the-box thinking here recently to cerry mankind further down the road but has fallen deeper into "hardball politics". I don't think that is "getting it".

Now I am no Bill Clinton lover but, IMHO, he somewhat "got it" about the Middle East. Had the Bush folks not been so intent on doing everything the opposite from the Clinton folks we would be having a different discussion today.

We have had opportunities to box the combatents into their own corner and force them to think out of the box. The Saudi Porposal that the Bush Administration rejected was one such opportunity. We may not get many more such oppotunities to short circuit what I agree with Harari is quickly becoming World War III.

But its still not too late to pull out of this but we're not going to do it with more hardball...

I cannot agree that in a tribalized world where you evn see the bad guys seeing in the streets wearing Niki's that there isn't room for success of an entity such as a cabinet level Department of Peace with enough of an asvertising budget to make a difference. Folks have pointed out that peace is not profitable and inside the box it may not be...

But outside???

Bobert

Subject: RE: BS: Mideast: View From the Eye of the Storm
From: Bill Hahn//\\
Date: 19 Jul 04 - 08:42 PM

Carol:   What can I say? Bombast wins the day.   Let us go back to before 1948. Let us go back to JNF land purchase that is abrogated by terrorist Palestinians. Let us go back to the Romans. Let us go back to the Big Bang and wonder what will happen with our humanity afterwards.

         In truth this discussion is leading nowhere since, unlike the the "peacenicks" no one here seems to want to see the other point of view. I did try in my earlier posts.   By the way---Big Bang---no pun intended. Have to watch one's words here---given sensitivity and paranoia.


Bill Hahn

Subject: RE: BS: Mideast: View From the Eye of the Storm
From: GUEST
Date: 19 Jul 04 - 08:47 PM

Bobert, ol' buddy, don't go praisin' that Bill Clinton feller. I hear tell he's thrown his lot in with them that think AIDS comes from HIV.

Subject: RE: BS: Mideast: View From the Eye of the Storm
From: CarolC
Date: 19 Jul 04 - 08:48 PM

What's your problem with just ending the occupation, Bill H? Is it that you don't want to give up on the idea of "Greater Israel"?

Subject: RE: BS: Mideast: View From the Eye of the Storm
From: GUEST
Date: 19 Jul 04 - 08:49 PM

Heard a report on the news today that Arafat himself was an investor in the Palestinian cement company that was selling cement to Israel to build the wall.

Talk about a corrupt, two faced bastard.

Subject: RE: BS: Mideast: View From the Eye of the Storm
From: GUEST
Date: 19 Jul 04 - 08:49 PM

Another CarolC and the Palestinians. Go there and help them.

Subject: RE: BS: Mideast: View From the Eye of the Storm
From: GUEST
Date: 19 Jul 04 - 08:54 PM

"The Palestinian people accepted the Oslo agreements as a first step and not as a permanent settlement, based on the premise that the war and struggle in the land is more efficient than a struggle from a distant land [i.e. Tunisia, where the PLO was based before Oslo -Ed] ... the Palestinian people will continue the revolution until they achieve the goals of the '65 revolution...".

[P.A. Minister of Supply Abd El Aziz Shahian, Al Ayyam, 30 May 2000]

[The "'65 Revolution" is the founding of the P.L.O. and the publication of the Palestinian charter that calls for the destruction of Israel via an armed struggle.]

Subject: RE: BS: Mideast: View From the Eye of the Storm
From: GUEST
Date: 19 Jul 04 - 08:55 PM

"At this stage we'll prevail in our struggle [toward] the goals of the stages [plan]. The goal of this stage is the establishment of the independent Palestinian State, with its capital in Jerusalem. When we achieve this, it will be a positive [step] and it will advance us to the next stage via other ways and means... 'Every Palestinian must know clearly and unequivocally that the independent Palestinian State, with Jerusalem as its capital is not the end of the road'. The [rise of] the Palestinian State is a stage after which there will be another stage and that is the democratic state in all of Palestine [i.e. in place of Israel]."

[Othman Abu Arbiah, Al-Hayat Al-Jadida, 25 Nov. 1999]

[Othman Abu Arbiah is Arafat's aide for Political Guidance and national affairs, and the Director-General for National Affairs, a senior position in the Palestinian national educational structure]

Subject: RE: BS: Mideast: View From the Eye of the Storm
From: Bobert
Date: 19 Jul 04 - 08:56 PM

Believe me GUEST. Ain't too many things I could find to say nice about Clinton but this one so I figgured I'd say it...

All done saying anything nice about him fir a while...

Bobert

Subject: RE: BS: Mideast: View From the Eye of the Storm
From: GUEST
Date: 19 Jul 04 - 08:57 PM

"The Islamic land of Palestine is one and can not be divided.
There is no difference between Haifa and Nablus, between Lod and Ramallah, between Jerusalem and Nazareth, between Gaza and Ashkelon.
The land of Palestine is Waqf land that belongs to Moslems throughout the world and no one has the right to act freely or the right to make concessions or to abandon her. Whoever does this betrays a [trust] and is nothing more than a loathsome criminal whose abode is in Hell!"

[The Preacher of Al Aqza Mosque, Sheikh Yousuf Abu Sneina, PA TV, 8 September 2000]

Subject: RE: BS: Mideast: View From the Eye of the Storm
From: GUEST
Date: 19 Jul 04 - 09:00 PM

"Whether they return to negotiations or not, and whether they fulfill the agreements or not - the political plan is a temporary agreement, and the conflict remains eternal, will not be locked, and the agreements being talked about are regarding the current balance of power. As to the struggle, it will continue. It may pause at times, but in the final analysis, Palestine is ours from the [Mediterranean] Sea to the [Jordan] River."

[ Abdullah Al-Hourani, Chairman, Palestinian National Council Political Committee, Al Hayat Al Jadida, 14 April 2000]

Subject: RE: BS: Mideast: View From the Eye of the Storm
From: Bill Hahn//\\
Date: 19 Jul 04 - 09:00 PM

Carol: Not at all----who wants to push who into the sea?    Who has proven that is exactly what is intended?   Who has not been able to control his own people?   Let me mull this over---does the name begin with A? Were it not for the late Sadat and the enlightened and self serving Hussein (Jordan) we would be at even more bitter ends.

       Aside from that what about the other nations surrounding Israel. Real friends---right?
         
         Bottom line---it is all about politics and self interest---on all sides. That is, as I said, is history. Sad but true.

          By the way---as an aside--the brilliant idea of settling the Holocaust survivors in Africa was a really "brilliant" idea. Great historic history there---is that really were the Jews were--or the Temple---or Jesus---or Solomon--or---you name them. History has a strange way of rearing its ugly little head and making us remember the past. Would we learn from it.   

          So---on a humorous note----The Inquisition---Tough Love at its best I guess.


Bill Hahn

Subject: RE: BS: Mideast: View From the Eye of the Storm
From: GUEST
Date: 19 Jul 04 - 09:02 PM

"We are discussing the current problems and when we speak about Jerusalem it doesn't mean that we have forgotten about Hebron or about Jaffa or about Acre….we are speaking about the current problems that have priority at a certain time. It doesn't mean that we have given up... We have announced a number of times that from a religious point of view Palestine from the sea to the river is Islamic."

[Sheikh Ikrima Sabri, Palestinian Authority appointed Mufti of Jerusalem & Palestine, PA TV, 11 January 2001.]

Subject: RE: BS: Mideast: View From the Eye of the Storm
From: GUEST
Date: 19 Jul 04 - 09:04 PM

"We the nation of Palestine, our fate from Allah is to be the vanguard in the war against the Jews until the resurrection of the dead, as the Prophet Mohammed said: The resurrection of the dead will not come until you do battle with the Jews and kill them… We the Palestinians, are the vanguard in this issue, in this battle, whether we want to or whether we refuse. All the agreements being made are temporary..."

[Preacher Dr. Ahmed Yousuf Abu Halbiah, PA Religious leader, member of the Palestinian Sharianic (Islamic religious law) Rulings Council, and Rector Advanced Studies, the Islamic University, PA TV, 28 July 2000]

Subject: RE: BS: Mideast: View From the Eye of the Storm
From: Peace
Date: 19 Jul 04 - 09:05 PM

As long as everyone's getting along!

Subject: RE: BS: Mideast: View From the Eye of the Storm
From: Bill Hahn//\\
Date: 19 Jul 04 - 09:09 PM

Are they ever!!!   Nice to hear moderation from the PA folks.

In all fairness we do quote our sides---I hope I have tried to bring some moderation to this forum. I doubt my success.

Bill Hahn

Subject: RE: BS: Mideast: View From the Eye of the Storm
From: CarolC
Date: 19 Jul 04 - 09:11 PM

When Arafat signed the Oslo agreement, he signed over more than 70 percent of the Palestinians' historic homeland. There has been plenty of rhetoric on both sides, including many on the Israeli side calling for all Palestinians to be removed from what is now Israel and the West Bank, Gaza, and East Jerusalem. If such rhetoric is going to be noted on one side, it is equally valid to note similar rhetoric on the other side...

"It goes without saying that the Gush consider any American-sponsored Arab-Israeli peaceful settlement to be a virtual impossibility; but furthermore, any attempt to achieve that impossibility should be actively sabotaged. For them, the Oslo Accords, and the prospect of the "re-division" of the "Land of Israel," was a profound, existential shock. It was, said Rabbi Yair Dreyfus, an "apostasy" which, the day it came into effect, would mark "the end of the Jewish-Zionist era [from 1948 to 1993] in the sacred history of the Land of Israel." The Gush and their allies declared a "Jewish intifada" against it. The grisly climax came when, in the Ramadan of February 1994, a doctor, Baruch Goldstein, Israeli but Brooklyn-born-and-bred, machine-gunned Muslim worshippers in Hebron's Ibrahimi Mosque, killing 29 of them before he was killed himself. This was no mere isolated act of a madman. Goldstein was a follower of New York's Lubavitcher Rebbe. But what he did reflected and exemplified the whole milieu from which he sprang, the religious settlers, and the National Religious Party behind them. There was no more eloquent demonstration of that than the immediate, spontaneous responses to the mass murder; these yielded nothing, in breadth or intensity, to the Palestinians' responses to their fundamentalist suicide bombings, when these first got going in the wake of it. Many were the rabbis who praised this "act," "event" or "occurrence," as they delicately called it. Within two days the walls of Jerusalem's religious neighborhoods were covered with posters extolling Goldstein's virtues and lamenting that the toll of dead Palestinians had not been higher. In fact, the satisfaction extended well beyond the religious camp in general; polls said that 50 percent of the Israeli people, and especially the young, more or less approved of it.

The "Jewish intifada" also turned on other Jews. Yigal Amir, who assassinated Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin in November 1995, was no less a product than Goldstein of the milieu from which the latter sprang. As in other religious traditions, the hatred Jewish fundamentalists nurtured for Jewish "traitors" and "apostates" was perhaps even greater than it was for non-Jews. Rabin, and the "left," were indeed traitors in their eyes; they were "worshippers of the Golden Calf of a delusory peace." And in a clear example of their deep emotional kinship with the fundamentalists, Sharon and several other Likud and far-right secular nationalist leaders joined the hue and cry against Rabin and his government of "criminals," "Nazis" and "Quislings." Declaring that "there are tyrants at the gate," Sharon likened Oslo to the collaboration between France's Marshal Pétain and Hitler and said that Rabin and his foreign minister, Shimon Peres, were both "crazed" in their indifference to the slaughter of Jews.

http://www.thenation.com/doc.mhtml?i=20040216&s=hirst

Subject: RE: BS: Mideast: View From the Eye of the Storm
From: CarolC
Date: 19 Jul 04 - 09:19 PM

Bill H, I don't think Israel with it's third most well equipped militery in the world, needs to worry about the Palestinians, who have virtually no military at all, pushing it into the sea. And I don't see how bellicose rhetoric on one side should give the other side which is equally guilty of bellicose rhetoric as well as action, the right to continue the subjugation and oppression of the weaker of the two entities.

Subject: RE: BS: Mideast: View From the Eye of the Storm
From: Bill Hahn//\\
Date: 19 Jul 04 - 09:19 PM

Context, context, context. At all times. There is no doubt about the obsession by some fanatics. There is also no question that there are moderates.   

The problem is that you, Carol, seem to only want to quote fanatics and those obsessed.   
\
It merely underlines my earlier comment about neither side being able to see the other point of view. Terror breeds more terror. If, your child were, say, murdered, how would you react? To put this on a primal level.

So===we, again, are back to chicken and egg vis a vis Palestine/Israel.   

Another reason why this discussion is leading us into an abyss that will never be resolved before the politicians (self serving as they are) resolve all our postings---or shall I say "droppings"


Bill Hahn

Subject: RE: BS: Mideast: View From the Eye of the Storm
From: CarolC
Date: 19 Jul 04 - 09:24 PM

Bill, the very same thing can be said of the people being quoted on the other side. At least I am not trying to justify the brutal occupation of millions of people as you are. All I am saying is END THE OCCUPATION.

Subject: RE: BS: Mideast: View From the Eye of the Storm
From: Bill Hahn//\\
Date: 19 Jul 04 - 09:27 PM

And then what??   Civil War?? The sea??


You tell us. Gaza is already in the throughs of civis insurection.

Bill Hahn

Subject: RE: BS: Mideast: View From the Eye of the Storm
From: Peace
Date: 19 Jul 04 - 09:27 PM

Round two, comin' up.

Subject: RE: BS: Mideast: View From the Eye of the Storm
From: CarolC
Date: 19 Jul 04 - 09:35 PM

The Palestinians have repeatedly asked for the UN to come in and help them. So first Israel agrees to end the occupation. Then the UN sends people to help the Palestinians get their civil infrastructure back into working order (with financial help from the international community). Then, Israel lets the Palestinians concern themselves with how they are going to go about building their country.

Or, if Israel is feeling responsible for the Palestinians, it can ask them what help they need and let them decide for themselves what help they want.

Subject: RE: BS: Mideast: View From the Eye of the Storm
From: Bill Hahn//\\
Date: 19 Jul 04 - 09:51 PM

Carol:   Is that before or after they carry out their threats? Wold not Utopia be a wonderful thihg?



Bill Hahn (Round 2)

Subject: RE: BS: Mideast: View From the Eye of the Storm
From: Bobert
Date: 19 Jul 04 - 09:51 PM

Hate to keep bringing up the Saudi Proposal (also know as the Mitchell, after Senator Mitchell) that the Bush folks felt was too close to something that Clinton might have endorsed... The elements wer there to make progress...

I have no sides in this conflict in that I have always supported both sides right to exist.

But with that said, the stronger of the two combatents holds most of the cards. This is not an earth shattering observation. Just frank reality. It's that way in all conflicts. It doesn't mean, however, that the stronger wins. Only that the stronger has more options. With that said, it is very much Isreal's move here...

And that, inspite of the way some folks around here are quick to play the anti-Isreali card, is the way it is...

Now, for the unp-teenth time. Both parties have a right to exist!!!!

No rant, just fact.

Bobert

Subject: RE: BS: Mideast: View From the Eye of the Storm
From: Bill Hahn//\\
Date: 19 Jul 04 - 09:54 PM

Damn---I wish there were spell check when I rush of a note---wold is would---and thihg is thing.   So much for sounding intelligent.


Bill H

Subject: RE: BS: Mideast: View From the Eye of the Storm
From: Bill Hahn//\\
Date: 19 Jul 04 - 09:56 PM

And, of course, I compound things. Of is Off

Bill H

Subject: RE: BS: Mideast: View From the Eye of the Storm
From: CarolC
Date: 19 Jul 04 - 10:11 PM

Bill, as I pointed out before, Israel has the world's third most well equipped military and the Palestinians have virtually none. Do you honestly think the Palestinians pose a credible threat to the State of Israel? Come on. Get real.

If the Palestinians are given what they've been asking for for a long, long time, namely independence, I'm quite confident that they will be too busy building their country to spend any time or energy bothering the much bigger, more powerful, and more highly equipped, militarily, State of Israel in any significant way. Besides, all Israel would need to do is to move all of those IDF forces that are now stationed within the West Bank, Gaza, and East Jerusalem, and station them on the Israeli side of the border. I'm sure they are quite capable of protecting Israel from that position.

BTW, re: your assertion that my quotes come only from extremists within Israel- if you look carefully, you'll notice that one of those extremists is none other than Ariel Sharon, the Prime Minister of Israel. And he has the power of life and death over every single man woman and child in the West Bank, Gaza, and East Jerusalem. That's just not right.

Subject: RE: BS: Mideast: View From the Eye of the Storm
From: Amos
Date: 19 Jul 04 - 10:14 PM

Hey, guys --

I am sorry -- I thought there were some interesting angles in the original article, and I had no idea how divisive the issue would get.

I will do better next time.

I think that the history of the region would have gotten off to a MUCH better start if Palestine had been defined at the same time that Israel had been.

Hindsight is so easy, though. It wouldn't have been that simple, I know.


A

Subject: RE: BS: Mideast: View From the Eye of the Storm
From: Little Brother
Date: 19 Jul 04 - 10:30 PM

Hey Carol C., the land you are living in now belonged to the Indians. Why don't you give them their land back. Aren't you an occupier too?

Subject: RE: BS: Mideast: View From the Eye of the Storm
From: Bobert
Date: 19 Jul 04 - 10:34 PM

Well, Amos, there were a lot of good point in the article but it Harari reminds me of Lyndon LaRouche. Now, Lyndon can be going along just fine and yer nodding yer head thinking that he's 'bout half making sense... this time. Then, just as sure as Lucy is going to pull the football out as Charlie Brown attempts to kick it, poor ol' Lyndon just kinda "goes left"... No, not politically speaking. More like what you thought was a good golf shot that decides to go over the trees to the left and fall one an entire different fairway...

Well, that's how Lydon LaRouche effects me and that's purdy much the way Harari effected me... Great observations. Less than great ideas for how to fix stuff...

Bobert

p.s. Sorry fir the golf comparision... I don't really know nuthin' about golf... Really...

Subject: RE: BS: Mideast: View From the Eye of the Storm
From: Rabbi-Sol
Date: 20 Jul 04 - 12:14 AM

Carol, When Boruch Goldstein murdered the Arabs at the Tomb Of The Patriarchs, there was not a single Rabbi who did not publicly condemm the act from the pulpit, as being totally and unequivocally contrary to Jewish Torah law. Our religion holds human life to be sacred, and can only be taken in self defense. I did not hear of a single Muslim Imam who condemmed the acts of 9/11 from the pulpit or chastise their congregations for dancing in the streets in celebration of this tragic event. Muslims were killed in the twin towers along with everyone else. Maybe human life is not as sacred as Arab nationalism. SOL ZELLER

Subject: RE: BS: Mideast: View From the Eye of the Storm
From: Rabbi-Sol
Date: 20 Jul 04 - 12:19 AM

To carry what Little Brother said one step further. Perhaps the USA should give Texas back to Mexico because it was taken in a war of agression, the same way Israel took Gaza and the West Bank. Too bad we couldn't do it before W became governor. SOL ZELLER

Subject: RE: BS: Mideast: View From the Eye of the Storm
From: Peace
Date: 20 Jul 04 - 12:30 AM

Well said, Rebbe.

Subject: RE: BS: Mideast: View From the Eye of the Storm
From: CarolC
Date: 20 Jul 04 - 12:47 AM

I've said this before, and I have no problem saying it again. If the Indians want their land back, I would have no problem whatever in having it be given back to them. In fact, I think I would prefer it. I think they would probably do a damn sight better running this country than the people who are running it now. And since I don't own any land, I just rent a very small plot of land in a trailer park, I don't imagine they would have any problem becoming my new landlords.

Now, on the issue of "giving land back to the Palestinians", I am not now, nor have I ever suggested that Israel should have to give back any land other than to clear the settlements from the West Bank, Gaza, and East Jerusalem, and let the Palestinians have their state on their land in those locations.

Aparantly, in Israel, there was quite a bit of support for the actions of Boruch Goldstein, Rabbi Sol. But I'll do some more fact checking on that for you.

Subject: RE: BS: Mideast: View From the Eye of the Storm
From: CarolC
Date: 20 Jul 04 - 12:59 AM

I should add that I think the people who now live in the settlements maybe ought to have the choice of staying in the West Bank, Gaza, and East Jerusalem if they want. But only if they are to live amongst the Palestinians with no special priveleges, and not in segregated, Jewish only enclaves accessed by Jewish only roads, and guarded by the IDF. And they should live under the laws and the government of Palestine, or whatever the Palestinians would choose to call their country. In other words, they would become Palestinian citizens, Jewish Palestinians, subject to all of the same freedoms and conditions that the Palestinian Christians and Muslims would be subject to.

Subject: RE: BS: Mideast: View From the Eye of the Storm
From: Ellenpoly
Date: 20 Jul 04 - 04:38 AM

This thread is so depressing.

I do believe you tried, Bill H, but if no accord can be reached amongst those of us who are sitting on the side-lines watching, how on earth will it be settled by those in the midst of this on-going tragedy?

The real thing that bonds us all together is the same thing that divides us all over the millenia...humans fighting humans.

If there is indeed a God, be he/she/it Jewish, Muslim, Christian...(people of the Book, Hah!) Boy! I bet he/she/it wishes the brains given humans wasn't too big for their abilities to use it correctly.

..xx..e

Subject: RE: BS: Mideast: View From the Eye of the Storm
From: GUEST,Larry K
Date: 20 Jul 04 - 10:17 AM

Amos:   Thanks you for posting the article.   One of the best I have ever read.

Bobert:   Can you get Aids from reading a Carol C. post?   How about if you are hungry from not eating a good breakfast and it being too early for lunch?

Jack:   Carol C. has outposted you 20 lines for every 1 line you wrote.    Embarrassing.

Carol C:   I want you to be able to sleep better, so please be aware that I am one man who does not want to rape you if ever we meet.   Now you only have to worry about the other 150 million men.

Subject: RE: BS: Mideast: View From the Eye of the Storm
From: Ellenpoly
Date: 20 Jul 04 - 12:16 PM

For those who care, the whole AIDs issue is being discussed on another thread. It might help clear up what what said on this thread.

..xx..e

Subject: RE: BS: Mideast: View From the Eye of the Storm
From: CarolC
Date: 20 Jul 04 - 12:21 PM

I did not hear of a single Muslim Imam who condemmed the acts of 9/11 from the pulpit or chastise their congregations for dancing in the streets in celebration of this tragic event.

Are you telling me that you have knowlege of what is said by every single Imam in every single Muslim Temple in the world, Rabbi Sol? Don't you think this is a bit of hyperbole on your part? There are more than a billion Muslims in the world. That's a lot of Imams for you to have to keep track of.

This is what Baruch Goldstein's tombstone says on it:

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

While extremist Jews in Israel and the US comprise only a small minority of all Jews in the US and Israel, they still comprises a significant enough number of people to be as much of a problem for peace in Israel/Palestine as extremism among Muslims. The reason you don't hear much about it isn't because it doesn't happen. It's because most of the time, the news outlets in the US prefer not to report on it.

http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0684853442/002-9009130-2358433?v=glance&vi=excerpt

Excerpt from BROTHER AGAINST BROTHER : VIOLENCE AND EXTREMISM IN ISRAELI POLITICS FROM ALTALENA TO THE RABIN ASSASSINATION by Ehud Sprinzak

"Chapter seven considers the violent consequences of the 1993 Oslo Accords between Israel and the PLO in the context of Baruch Goldstein's massacre in Hebron. The chapter describes the shock and confusion created within the settler community by the 1992 Labor electoral victory and the signing of the Oslo Accords. It identifies the tension between moderates and extremists over the proper settler responses to the peace process and Palestinian terrorism. The chapter addresses the classic question of what happens to messianic movements when prophesy fails, and explains the Hebron massacre within the framework of the crisis of messianic fundamentalism. Baruch Goldstein, a dedicated Kahane disciple, is shown to have been a killer by proxy, a representative of an articulated culture of violence that was bound to explode in response to the Oslo Accords and the resumption of Islamic terrorism.

Chapter eight traces the countdown to the Rabin assassination, examining the radicalization of the religious right since the Hebron massacre with special attention to the rhetoric of opinion leaders and rabbis. The movement of the radical right from delegitimation of the government as a political collectivity to the depersonalization, character assassination, and dehumanization of its leaders, Yitzhak Rabin and Shimon Peres, is documented in great detail. While distinguishing between the extremist and pragmatic components of the radical right, the chapter follows the extremist's takeover of the antigovernment struggle and the unwillingness of the pragmatists to curb their militant behavior and rhetoric. Attention is also devoted to the personality of Yigal Amir, Rabin's assassin, and the rulings of din rodef and din moser, which convinced the young man that in killing Rabin he was following the Halakha. Also discussed is the doctrine of Jewish zealotry, which made it possible for Amir, an obedient Orthodox Jew, to kill without rabbinical authorization."

http://www.usatoday.com/news/index/nrabin75.htm>http://www.usatoday.com/news/index/nrabin75.htm">http://www.usatoday.com/news/index/nrabin75.htm

Investigation of Jewish extremism reaches into USA (USA Today 02/16/96)

"A second New York angle: Rabbi Abraham Hecht, a prominent 72-year-old Orthodox rabbi in Brooklyn, last June cited a religious law that allows a person to be killed who "willfully, consciously (or) intentionally hands over human bodies or human property to an alien people." Amir said Monday that he was not guilty of a crime because he shot Rabin for handing over land to Palestinians. Hecht was not available for comment. No matter where Israeli agents take their probe, it's not likely to be pretty."

The Kach movement, with Rabbi Meir Kahane as its candidate, won 26,000 votes in the 1984 election, and Rabbi Kahane became a member of the Knesset. His position was that the Kach movement would not support any government that did not advocate the expulsion of the Arabs from Israel. Fortunately, in 1985, the Knesset passed an amendment to the Basic Law stating that incitement to racism would be grounds for barring a party to participate in elections. Still, in a country the size of Israel, 26,000 votes is not a totally insignificant number.

Religious extremism is not confined to just Christianity and Islam. It's a problem in all of the world's major religions, with the possible exception of Buddhism.

Subject: RE: BS: Mideast: View From the Eye of the Storm
From: CarolC
Date: 20 Jul 04 - 12:58 PM

BTW, on the subject of Islam and regard for human life, I'll relate an experience I had a few years back...

A Muslim co-worker heard me saying something in a complaining way about my mother. He said to me, "Don't say bad things about your mother. She gave you life."

Subject: RE: BS: Mideast: View From the Eye of the Storm
From: GUEST
Date: 20 Jul 04 - 01:17 PM

The Kach movement, with Rabbi Meir Kahane as its candidate, won 26,000 votes in the 1984 election, and Rabbi Kahane became a member of the Knesset. His position was that the Kach movement would not support any government that did not advocate the expulsion of the Arabs from Israel. Fortunately, in 1985, the Knesset passed an amendment to the Basic Law stating that incitement to racism would be grounds for barring a party to participate in elections. Still, in a country the size of Israel, 26,000 votes is not a totally insignificant number.

Not only did the Knesset bar racist parties from participating in elections, they made Kach illegal. Period.

26,000 votes, BTW, represents about 1/2 of 1%. 1/2 of 1% in a democracy IS a totally insignificant number.

The BBC reported polling data that, in December 2001, 74% of Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza supported sending terrorist suicide bombers to randomly murder civilian men, women and children in Israel.

74%. Now that is a significant number.

Subject: RE: BS: Mideast: View From the Eye of the Storm
From: Rabbi-Sol
Date: 20 Jul 04 - 01:42 PM

Rabbi Meir Kahane was never accepted by the mainstream Orthodox Jewish rabbinical authorities, and was always considered by them as a troublemaker. I know more about him than many other people do. When I was a teenager, he was my group leader (madrich) in the Borough Park chapter of Bnai Akiva, a religious zionist youth movement. When he first formed the Jewish Defense League (JDL) in New York, its prime purpose was to protect Jews against young hoodlums in NYC who would regularly beat up Jews. His finest hour was during the Ocean Hill Brownsville conflict, when he stood up to the Black militant, James Foreman who was trying extort money out of Jewish synagogues. However, once he went into the international arena, he lost all support of the Rabbinnical authorities. His first international cause was the plight of Soviet Jewry. While many of our leading rabbis were negotiating secret, behind the scenes deals with Soviet leaders to allow more Jews to emigrate, Kahane upset the entire apple cart, with his violent public demonstrations which included beating up Soviet diplomats. His actions only served to slow up the process of emigration. I was personally victimized by him. The JDL chartered 20 buses from me for a Soviet Jewry demonstration in Washington, D.C. The check bounced and I never got paid, because he used the money to post bail for his followers who got arrested that day. When I tried to go after him for my money, he told me that it was my contribution to the cause of Soviet Jewry, as involuntary as it may have been. This was in l970 and as a young man who had just gotten married and started my own business, this nearly bankrupted me. After Soviet Jewry, he started to get involved with Israeli politics, and his goons (Chaya Squad as he called them), started beating up Arab diplomats in NYC. He then formed his famous alliance with the Colombo crime family to terrorize Arab diplomats living in NYC, and was present at the rally when Joe Colombo was assasinated. When he finally moved to Israel to get involved in politics there, both, the US government as well as the American Jewish community were glad to be rid of him. Both, Boruch Goldstein and Yigal Amir were followers of his, and frankly were not in their right mind when committing murder, which is clearly prohibited by Jewish law, and no Rabbi has the authority to change that law. The inscription on Goldstein's tombstone was done by Kahane's followers, and had no official sanction for either the Israeli government or the Rabbinate.
As far as Rabbi Hecht goes, he never made those statements that were atributed to him. I know his entire family personally. His daughter and son in law live in our community, only 2 blocks from me. He is a regular visitor and has on numerous ocassions denounced the actions of both, Goldstein and Amir. It is true that I do not know all of the Imams in the Muslim world, but I am sure the press would have reported if any of them had made statements condemming the 9/11 attacks. SOL ZELLER

Subject: RE: BS: Mideast: View From the Eye of the Storm
From: CarolC
Date: 20 Jul 04 - 01:51 PM

GUEST, if you do some fact checking yourself, you'll see that those numbers have been increasing steadily over the last several years. There used to be only a minority who advocated suicide bombings, but as things get more desperate for the Palestinians, more and more of them embrace that practice. It would be a much more realistic comparison in this case, to compare the numbers of Palestinians who support suicide bombings to the number of Israelis, or even Jews worldwide, who support extra-judicial assasinations, or the bombing of Palestinians villages in retaliation for Palestinian acts of violence. I think in that case, you would find the numbers of Israelis supporting such violence significantly higher. Probably about the same as the number of Palestinians supporting suicide bombings.

Suicide bombings have nothing whatever to do with religious extremism. They are an attempt on the part of the Palestinians to get the Israeli occupying forces out of the West Bank, Gaza, and East Jerusalem.

Subject: RE: BS: Mideast: View From the Eye of the Storm
From: Jack the Sailor
Date: 20 Jul 04 - 02:00 PM

Our religion holds human life to be sacred, and can only be taken in self defense.

---Rabbi-Sol

Killing one person in retrubution for the act of another is not "self-defense". Killing a seven your old with a rocket from a helicoptor is not self defense. Apparantly the government of Israel is not subject to the Torah. Do you stand at your pulpit and rail when a Palestinian child is killed?

Do we hear Rabbis condemning the atrocities of the Sharon government? If not, by your standards then they have no respect for human life. The war on the natives in the US was "justified" with racism and bigotry. If you are saying that you, because you are a Jew that you are better than another man because he is a Muslim. Then you have chosen an apt analogy.

If Israel wants to be like the US and sweep away the natives from their land and take land in "defensive wars" they should be doing it the way the US did, on their own, without our help, without our money. I'm suggesting they keep what they stole up until 1967 and for the sake of Peace give up the rest. That is what almost all of the world is suggesting. How do you feel about that?

I notice Rabbi-Sol that you have said nothing about the so called settlers. Do you think they are stealing land or do you think that they have a right to be there and that the natives should be displaced. Please tell us where you stand on this issue?

Subject: RE: BS: Mideast: View From the Eye of the Storm
From: Little Brother
Date: 20 Jul 04 - 02:24 PM

Jack the Sailor. What do you say about all the militants who are using women & children as a human shield? Aren't they the ones responsible for these tragedies. I'm sure that the helicopters are not deliberately targeting civilians. They are going after militants who are shooting under cover of their own citizens.

Subject: RE: BS: Mideast: View From the Eye of the Storm
From: Peace
Date: 20 Jul 04 - 02:25 PM

Jack hates Israel. What do you expect.

Subject: RE: BS: Mideast: View From the Eye of the Storm
From: CarolC
Date: 20 Jul 04 - 02:29 PM

Here are some of the condemnations from Muslim groups and organizations, of the 9/11 terrorist attacks, Rabbi Sol. The fact that you don't know about them says much more about the sources you rely on for your news (which sound to me like they are more concerned with promoting hatred of Muslims than actually reporting the news) than it says about the religion of Islam.

http://www.nmhschool.org/tthornton/mehistorydatabase/afterseptembereleven.htm#tantawi condemns 911

On March 31, 2002, James Reston, Jr. published excerpts from a recent interview with the Grand Sheikh of al-Azhar, Mohammed Sayyed Tantawi. Tantawi dismissed bin Laden as "no specialist in religious affairs," and went on to say, "Islamic law banishes anyone who issues an untrue fatwa." ("religious opinion") Referring to the September 11 hijackers' claims that they were martyrs and would achieve paradise, Tantawi said, "They are not martyrs but aggressors. They will not achieve paradise, but will receive severe punishment for their aggression." He said Islam teaches that,. "Whoever shall kill a man or a believer without right the punishment is hell forever. Allah will be angry with him and give him a great punishment." Murder by surprise, or "from the back," as he put it, is especially damnable because "it is against morality and good honor." Tantawi went on to distinguish between jihad, a defensive measure which may only be waged when Muslims are attacked and only according to strict rules, and irhab ("terror"), violence against innocent and defenseless civilians. Such violence was said to be explicitly forbidden by the Qur'an as was the harming of captives and the destruction of buildings and civil centers. (Washington Post, March 31, 2002)

The arrests were a devastating blow for the older generation of Muslims in Dudley, who have gained a reputation for moderation and taking a stand against terrorism. After the attacks of 11 September 2001, the Dudley Muslim Association was one of the first in the country to condemn the attacks and, on the two anniversaries since, it has organised a memorial event for the victims.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/religion/Story/0,2763,1101801,00.html

http://www.muhajabah.com/otherscondemn.php#cair

http://www.muhajabah.com/otherscondemn.php

(There are dozens and dozens of condemnations by Muslims of terrorist attacks in the above two links.)

American Muslim groups jointly and individually condemned the 9/11 attacks. An AMPCC statement issued within hours of the incidents stated: "American Muslims utterly condemn what are apparently vicious and cowardly acts of terrorism against innocent civilians. We join with all Americans in calling for the swift apprehension and punishment of the perpetrators. No political cause could ever be assisted by such immoral acts."

http://www.caircan.ca/itn_more.php?id=A57_0_2_0_M

(Ottawa, Canada – 9/11/2001) - The Canadian office of the Council on American Islamic Relations (CAIR CAN) and the Canadian Muslim Civil Liberties Association (CMCLA) today condemned the terrorist attacks in New York and Washington and offered condolences to the families of those who were killed or injured.

The statement by the two organizations read in part:

"Canadian Muslims utterly condemn what are apparently vicious and cowardly acts of terrorism against innocent civilians. We offer our heartfelt condolences to all those who lost loved ones and join with all people of conscience in calling for the swift apprehension and punishment of the perpetrators. No political cause could ever be assisted by such immoral acts."

"We further call on media professionals to exercise restraint and not draw premature conclusions as to who was responsible for the apparent attacks until those facts become clear."

http://www.islamicity.com/articles/Articles.asp?ref=AM0109-335


http://www.cair-net.org/asp/article.asp?id=878&page=NR

http://www.islamicity.com/articles/Articles.asp?ref=AM0109-335

Leaders of the American Muslim Political Coordination Council (AMPCC) held a meeting in Washington, DC, on Tuesday, September 11, 2001, to issue the following points related to the terrorist attacks:

1) We assert unequivocal condemnation based on our religious values and our identity as American Muslims;

2) We do not need to defend every maniacal incident emanating from the Muslim world or the Muslim community, just as other religious groups need not defend their extremists;

3) We offer compassion to the victims and solidarity with all Americans in the face of danger;

4) Notwithstanding the disbelief that anyone following the faith of Islam could commit such a heinous crime, we condemn the act regardless of the identity of the perpetrators;

5) We deplore the irresponsible reporting that twists the realities and complexities of the Muslim world in order to project only anti-American sentiment during this disturbing period when we are all attempting to move beyond the state of mourning for the national tragedy;

6) We warn against opportunists who will exploit the misery and hysteria of the public in order to promote a political agenda aimed at tarnishing the name of Islam and Muslims;

7) We should not diminish our resolve to be active in protecting the civil liberties of all Americans and struggling for justice both locally and globally;

8) We need to organize activities to help the victims medically, psychologically and in every other way we can.


American Muslim Alliance (AMA) Condemns Terrorist Attack

(Newark, California: 9/11/01) The American Muslim Alliance, a national civic education organization, condemned today's terrorist attacks in New York and Washington in the "strongest terms".

Dr. Agha Saeed, the national Chair of the American Muslim Alliance, Stated:

"These attacks are against both divine and human laws and we condemn them in the strongest terms. The Muslim Americans join the nation in calling for swift apprehension and stiff punishment of the perpetrators, and offer our sympathies to the victims and their families."


AMC Deplores The Attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon

(WASHINGTON, DC - 9/11/2001) The American Muslim Council (AMC) strongly condemns this morning's plane attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon and expresses deep sorrow for Americans that were injured and killed. AMC sends out its condolence to all victims of this cowardly terrorist attack. There is no cause that justifies this type of an immoral and inhumane act that has affected so many innocent American lives. AMC supports all efforts of the investigation in order to track down the people responsible for this tragic act of terrorism.

The American Muslim Political Coordination Council (AMPCC) issued a statement which reads:
"American Muslims utterly condemn what are apparently vicious and cowardly acts of terrorism against innocent civilians. We join with all Americans in calling for the swift apprehension and punishment of the perpetrators. No Political cause could ever be assisted by such immoral acts."


The AMPCC consists of AMC, Council on American-Islamic Relations, American Muslim Alliance and Muslim Public Affairs Council.
Donate Blood To Help The Innocent Victims

(WASHINGTON, DC - 9/11/2001) The American Muslim Council calls upon the members of the Muslim community to come together at this tragic time where so many of our fellow Americans have been killed and injured. This American tragedy affects all of us and we should do whatever we can do help save lives of the injured victims. AMC encourages Islamic Centers to start blood drive campaigns and encourages everyone to visit hospitals and medical centers in the capitol and New York City to donate much needed blood to those who are required to receive immediate medical assistance.

Subject: RE: BS: Mideast: View From the Eye of the Storm
From: Jack the Sailor
Date: 20 Jul 04 - 02:31 PM

Rabbi-Sol I believe you are a good man, obviously dedicated to your cause. It is the Christian way to look for good in others, to Love Thy Neighbour, I don't come close to doing that all the time. But I try. I bet you are the same way. I don't know the Torah as such but I am familiar with the Bible. I don't recall that philosophy being put forth in the Old Testament. But I still think you probably share it. I understand that you may not share my principles I am sorry if I spoke to harshly, I was trying to be clear. Since I cannot go back and edit, please take what I have said as poorly worded questions rather than the insults or challenges they may seem to be.

Here is a speech from a Moslem Cleric, I think it answers your question about their respect for human life. Perhaps you saw the sermon the same time that I did. Maybe at the time you cried a little like I did and thought "There is hope after all."

go to this URL

http://www.newsday.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-video-gallery.htmlstory

Scroll down to Friday September 14. and click on the link that says.

• Imam Muzammil H. Siddiqi, a Muslim Cleric, at Memorial (Real)

God Bless you Rabbi

Rob Dale

Subject: RE: BS: Mideast: View From the Eye of the Storm
From: DougR
Date: 20 Jul 04 - 02:35 PM

Wow! Got to hand it to you Amos. You sure know how to jerk Jack and Carol C's chain.

DougR

Subject: RE: BS: Mideast: View From the Eye of the Storm
From: Jack the Sailor
Date: 20 Jul 04 - 02:46 PM

Hello Little Brother.

Are you the same little Brother from Talk Talk Talk. If so I hear you are fine guitar player and teacher.

I've read enough accounts to know that not all the children die becase there are terrorists hiding behind them.

Surely you are not saying that killing innocents, even in self defense, is OK?

The Old Testament says an eye for an eye. It doesn't say "and anyone who gets in the way."

The Muslims and Jews in this conflict are playing by the rame rules. Its "You kill our children and we are justified in killing yours" I don't want to go back in history to find out who did it first I don't even care. I care about what is happening now. I'm not saying that the Palestinians are right and the Israelis are wrong. I'm saying they are both wrong.

I am very much against further displacement and oppression of the Palestians. Are you? I'm against terror by suicide bomb, car bomb, mortor attact, Helicoptor F16 and Bulldozer. Are you? I do not hate Israel, but I do not love it either. I wish the government of Israel would realize that they are not the American frontier and that Sharon is NOT Daniel Boone.

I've told you how I feel, why don't you respond in kind. Maybe we can have a dialog instead of a fight. Maybe we can find some common ground.

Subject: RE: BS: Mideast: View From the Eye of the Storm
From: Jack the Sailor
Date: 20 Jul 04 - 02:52 PM

Hi Doug.

How is married life?

What do you think about Israel?

Settlers land grabbers or "God's Will"?
Is bombing an apartment building to get one man "Justice" or "Terror"?

Subject: RE: BS: Mideast: View From the Eye of the Storm
From: GUEST
Date: 20 Jul 04 - 03:21 PM

Traditional anti-Semitism has lately re-emerged as the kind of anti-Zionism preached by the likes of Jack the Sailor (Rob Dale) and his wife, CarolC (Carol Cunningham), focused on the Jews of Israel, the role of Israel, and the Jews in the United States who support Israel.
At the end of the 1967 war, the plucky little Jewish state was no more. In the years since, as it responded again and again to Arab attacks, sympathy for Israel eroded further still as the world's TVs broadcast images not of terrorists but of armed Israelis responding to terrorism. Only somehow the word "responding" too often got lost in the chaos. The TV pictures seemed to imply that the Israelis were guilty of a disproportionate use of force, for they were rarely accompanied by an understanding that a country with just 6 million in a sea of over 120 million Arabs could never fight a war of equal attrition.

But no matter. It is as if Jack the Sailor and CarolC somehow believe Israel must win the "moral man of the year" award in defending itself — as if responding to those who seek its destruction is morally wrong. Is there really no difference, then, between the violence of murderers who target innocents and the indispensable violence of lawful authorities? Are the arsonist and the firefighter truly moral equivalents? Is Israel's approach, which seeks to minimize civilian casualties, the same as that of the terrorists, who seek to maximize it?

Such questions are prompted by an unprecedented reversal of history: Arab terrorists, incredibly, have managed to inspire more sympathy than their victims among the Jack the Sailors and CarolCs of this world. The Jews, having experienced the genocide of Europe, today stand accused of perpetrating genocide on the hard ground of the West Bank and Gaza. The vocabulary of the accusations presents the Jews as Nazis and their Arab enemies as helpless Jews. The worst crimes of anti-Semites in the past — racist and ethnic cleansing, attempted genocide, crimes against humanity — are now increasingly ascribed to Jews and to the Jewish state. The argument has become, if you are against Nazism, you must oppose Israel. Thus has Israeli self-defense been transmogrified as aggression. As a consequence, the era of reconciliation that obtained between Israel and the world after the Holocaust is, tragically, no more. In much of the world's news media and, here at Mudcat, there is a pattern of delegitimization of Israel.

In the Muslim world, a culture of hatred of Jews permeates all forms of public communications — newspapers, videocassettes, sermons, books, the Internet, television, and radio. The intensity of the anti-Jewish invective equals or surpasses that of Nazi Germany in its heyday. The public rhetoric combines the blood libel of medieval Christian Europe with cockeyed Nazi conspiracy theories that echo the famous forgery, the "Protocols of the Learned Elders of Zion," and the fanciful notion of a Jewish drive for world dominion. Throughout the Islamic world, one finds slanderous quotations about Jews as the sons of apes and donkeys. A leading Saudi newspaper has Jews using the blood of Christian and Muslim children to make their hamantascen pastry for Purim and their matzo, the unleavened bread of Passover. In this fundamentalist religious culture, America and Israel are seen as twin Satanic forces, "The Great Satan" and "The Little Satan," as Iran's religious leader Ayatollah Khomeini used to refer to them.
The linkage of the two Satans has been emphasized even more intently since the beginning of the Palestinian intifada, in September 2000, and the attacks of September 11. Remember the story of the 4,000 Jews who worked at the World Trade Center being told to not show up for work on the morning of September 11? The story was planted on the Internet by Hezbollah under the cover of a Lebanese TV station. This urban legend has now taken root among Muslims the world over, calling to mind the words of W. B. Yeats: "We had fed the heart on fantasies. The heart's grown brutal from the fare."

Islamists see the fingerprints of their enemy everywhere — the fantasy that a secret and all-powerful Zionist lobby drains the lifeblood of Arabs and Muslims and incites Washington to war against Iraq, all the while carrying out its sinister plans for global control. In Egypt, a 41-part TV series was broadcast across the Arab world during Ramadan entitled Horseman Without a Horse. The theme of the series was that the Zionists have controlled the world of politics since the dawn of history and seek to control the Middle East — a fantasy, as Prof. Robert Wistrich of Hebrew University pointed out, imported from the Germany of the 1930s.

I know it's difficult for non-Jews, unmarked by the searing memories of Jewish history, to realize the extent to which the survival of Israel remains an issue for Jews, who cannot dismiss the overheated Arab rhetoric that seeks to justify terrorism against innocent civilians by describing Israel's existence as illegitimate. That rhetoric is the product of a careful calculation by Arab political leaders who recognized the popular appeal of scapegoating Israel for their failure to provide for their own people while legitimizing their regimes.

Tragically, the growth of international hostility to Israel has found its most prominent expression in the operations of the U.N. It has, in fact, come a long way from the legitimization and legalization of the existence of Israel and the right of the Jewish people to have their own state on their own land through its 1947 resolution proposing and approving a two-state solution.

Since then, the U.N. has adopted an almost reflexively anti-Israeli stance canted to the anti-Israeli majority of its membership. The U.N. today is a regular forum for vicious anti-Israel attacks, conferring on the spurious and the hateful the false cloak of reason and legitimacy, and thus has become an organization for the conservation, not the reduction, of the Middle East conflict.
Some U.N. actions simply defy belief. At the World Conference Against Racism held in Durban, South Africa, Israel — the only democracy in the Middle East committed to civil rights, the rule of law, and Arab participation in democratic government — was attacked by Arab and Third World nations and accused of genocide, ethnic cleansing, and apartheid. Then there is the Fourth Geneva Convention, drafted originally in response to the atrocities of the Nazi regime, to protect people like diplomats and visitors subjected to a military occupation.

In 2002, U.N. conferees met and, for the first time in the 52 years since its adoption, excoriated one country — Israel — for alleged violations. Not Cambodia and Rwanda, with their well-documented records of genocide. Not Zimbabwe, with its racist economic policies. Not the Balkan states, with their ethnic cleansing. Not even China, with its dismal record on Tibet. Only Israel was singled out. Similarly, the U.N. Commission on Human Rights, chaired on occasions by such notably enlightened states as Libya, has followed this same pattern, devoting much of its time, energy, and efforts to attacking Israel. The commission went so far as to affirm, last April 15, the legitimacy of suicide bombing against Israelis, or in judgment-free U.N.-speak, "all available means, including armed struggle."

In the Arab World, and certainly by Jack the Sailor and Carol C in the Mudcat world, Zionism is portrayed not as the Jewish response to a history of anti-Semitism in a world that culminated in the Holocaust but as a hyperaggressive variant of colonialism. But since this new anti-Semitism manifests itself so clearly now as political rejection of the Jewish state, it is worth examining the historical record for a moment. Fact: The majority of Jews came to Israel in the late 19th century and early 20th century not as conquering Europeans backed by a national army and treasury but as the wretched of the earth in search of respite from ceaseless persecution. They were not wealthy; they were young, poor, and desperate. The notion that the traditional position of the Arabs in Palestine was jeopardized by Jewish settlements is belied by another fact: that when the Jews arrived, Palestine was a sparsely populated, poorly cultivated, and wildly neglected land of sandy deserts and malarial marshes. Mark Twain, in The Innocents Abroad, described it as a "desolate country whose soil is rich enough but is given over wholly to weeds — a silent, mournful expanse. . . . We never saw a human being on the whole route. There was hardly a tree or a shrub anywhere. Even the olive and the cactus, those fast friends of a worthless soil, had almost deserted the country."

Even people unsympathetic to the Zionist cause believed that Jewish immigrants had improved the condition of Palestinian Arabs. Consider the words of Sharif Hussein, the guardian of the Islamic holy places in Arabia, in 1918: "One of the most amazing things until recent times was that the Palestinian used to leave his country, wandering the high seas in every direction. His native soil could not retain a hold on him, though his ancestors had lived on it for 1,000 years. At the same time, we have seen the Jews from foreign countries streaming to Palestine. . . . They knew that the country was for its original sons. The return of these exiles to their homeland will prove materially and spiritually [to be] an experimental school for their brethren." Hussein understood then, as so many refuse to see now, that the regeneration of Palestine and the growth of its population came only after the Jews returned in significant numbers. As Winston Churchill, then the British colonial secretary, pointed out: "The land was not being taken away from the Arabs. The Arabs sold land to Jews only if they chose to do so."

The hope was that the Arabs would accept Israelis as their neighbors and, finally, recognize them as such. That hope died aborning. Even war, that grim final arbiter of international relations, has made no difference. The Arabs resisted from the outset a Jewish presence in the region. They expanded their war against Israel into an attack on the very idea of Israel. Zionism, the Jewish claim to a land of their own, was declared racist because the Arabs said it deprived them of their land. They substituted the homeless Palestinian for the homeless Jew. The Arabs, having rendered the Palestinians homeless by refusing to accept partition in 1948 and having kept many of the Palestinians who fled the battle homeless in Lebanon, Syria, and Jordan by refusing to resettle them in their lands, now blame this homelessness on the Jews. They have consistently charged that it was the Jews who had driven the Arabs out of Palestine. But as the eminent Arabist Bernard Lewis has written, "the great majority, like countless millions of refugees elsewhere, left their homes amid the confusion of and panic of invasion and war — one more unhappy part of the vast movement of population which occurred in the aftermath of World War II."

The foreign press, in regular contact with all sides during the conflict of 1948, wrote nothing to suggest that the flight of the Palestinians was not voluntary. Nor did Arab spokesmen, such as the Palestinian representative to the U.N., Jamal Husseini, or the secretary general of the Arab League, blame the Jews contemporaneously with the 1948 war for the flight of Arabs and Palestinians. In fact, those who fled were urged to do so by other Arabs. As then Prime Minister of Iraq Nuri Said put it, "the Arabs should conduct their wives and children to safe areas until the fighting has died down." One Arab who fled encapsulated this thinking in the Jordanian newspaper Al-Difaa: "The Arab governments told us, `Get out so that we can get in.' So we got out, but they did not get in." And a bad situation, impossibly, was allowed to get worse. Arabs and Palestinians displaced by the 1948 war were resettled in camps administered by the United Nations Relief and Works Agency, the only such agency established for any refugee group since the massive dislocations of World War II. The partition of India occurred at the same time as the conflict in Palestine, and millions of Hindus and Muslims were uprooted, but virtually nothing was done for them. Nothing was done in response to the Chinese occupation of Tibet, where a long-standing religious, social, and political culture was virtually destroyed.

Yet 56 years after they were first established, the Arab refugee camps still exist. With the exception of Jordan, the Arab governments home to these camps have refused to grant citizenship to the refugees and opposed their resettlement. In Lebanon, 400,000 stateless Palestinians are not allowed to attend public school, own property, or even improve their housing stock. Three generations later, they continue to serve as political pawns of the Arab states, still hopeful of reversing the events of 1948. "The return of the refugees," as President Gamal Abdel Nasser of Egypt said years later, "will mean the end of Israel."

The U.N., through its administration of the camps, has made a complicated problem infinitely more so. How? U.N. officials define refugees in the Middle East to include the descendants of persons who became refugees in 1948. In other parts of the world, descendants of refugees are not defined as refugees. The result of this unique treatment has been to increase the numbers of Arab refugees from roughly 700,000 to over 4 million, by including children, grandchildren, even great-grandchildren. As a former prime minister of Syria, Khaled al Azm, wrote in his memoirs, "It is we who demanded the return of the refugees while it is we who made them leave. We brought disaster upon them. [We] exploited them in executing crimes of murder and throwing bombs. All this in the service of political purposes." And so it goes, to this very day. At the time of the founding of the State of Israel, 900,000 Jewish refugees were forced out of neighboring Arab states in a coordinated effort. These refugees were absorbed into the new Israel. Yet the world was, and still is, untroubled by the plight of Jewish refugees from Arab lands.

To single out Israel as the only state that must restore a refugee population is to hold the Jewish state to a different standard. Or, perhaps, the more accurate term is double standard. Against such a backdrop, with a history so cynically manipulated by its enemies, the distortions and outright untruths that characterize more recent relations between Israel and the Palestinians should probably come as no surprise. There are virtually countless examples from which to choose, but the "massacre" by Israeli forces at the Palestinian refugee camp of Jenin in 2002 is particularly illustrative.
A Palestinian suicide bomber, on Passover eve, killed 29 people and injured 140 in the Israeli city of Netanya. It was the sixth terrorist bombing that week. The Israelis responded by sending troops into the West Bank, including the refugee camp at Jenin, the principal home of the bomb makers. A 10-day battle ensued. The Palestinians, with support from U.N. representatives, alleged that the Israelis had massacred hundreds of innocents, carried out summary executions, refrigerated the corpses, and removed them. Saeb Erekat, a Palestinian spokesman, reiterated the claim of many hundreds killed. The media accepted his version. CarolC repeated it endlessly in her Mudcat postings. But subsequent news reports, and even Palestinian testimony and writings recently collated, established the fact that groups like Fatah, Hamas, and Islamic Jihad used women and children as shields during the fighting. The reports showed, conclusively, that there was no massacre of Palestinian civilians and documented that the Israelis exercised great restraint during the battle to minimize civilian casualties while suffering an inordinately high number of their own as a result.

Distortions and untruths, unsurprisingly, characterize the Palestinians' political dealings with Israel, as well. A critical moment in the relationship was the Oslo agreement of 1993. There, the negotiating principle was land for peace. What Israel received was no peace in return for its offer of land. The most generous Israeli offer of land for peace came at Camp David three years ago. Then Prime Minister Ehud Barak offered Yasser Arafat 97 percent of the West Bank and Gaza, including the Arab neighborhoods of East Jerusalem and the Temple Mount. The Camp David offer was not only rejected by Arafat but used as a provocation to launch a campaign of violence and terrorism that continues to this day.

The notion of land for peace bears exploring. If it is taken to mean that Israel must turn over more land until peace is achieved and Arab belligerence ended, the incurious may be left with the conclusion that the lack of peace must be the result of Israel's failure to yield sufficient land. Nothing could be further from the truth. There have been thousands of terrorist attacks since the second intifada began, three years ago. The only way Israel has been able to reduce the number of suicide bombers is eliminating their sanctuary by controlling the West Bank through occupation and sealing off Gaza.
But the story is not one of occupation of the West Bank by Israel. If the term "occupation" had any relevance at all, it was when Arafat rejected Barak's proposal for a Palestinian state. The issue is Palestinian refusal to grant Israel the right to exist as a Jewish state. Israel's battle is not the battle of Jew against Muslim. It is a battle against the hatred of the Jews and their connection to the land of Israel. How else to comprehend the Palestinian rejection of Jerusalem as the sacred city of the Jews and the Western Wall as the Second Temple, except as a rejection of the Jewish presence there? "There was no temple in Jerusalem," Arafat said at Camp David. "It was only an obelisk." To question the core of the Jewish faith is hardly an indication of readiness to resolve the conflict.

Quite the contrary, the spiraling Palestinian violence evidences a single-minded determination to continue the conflict. The insight of Amos Oz, the liberal Israeli writer, is pertinent. He is haunted, he said, by the observation that before the Holocaust, European graffiti read, "Jews to Palestine," while today it has been changed, to "Jews out of Palestine." The message to Jews, Oz says, is simple: "Don't be here, and don't be there. That is, don't be."

Subject: RE: BS: Mideast: View From the Eye of the Storm
From: GUEST
Date: 20 Jul 04 - 03:33 PM

I am the same guest as 20 Jul 04 - 03:21 PM.

Upon reflection I have decided that Jack and Carol are not anti Semite, I am anti common sense. I also talk way, way too much. Please ignore me, especially if my antipsychotics wear off and I feel the compulsion to post again.

Subject: RE: BS: Mideast: View From the Eye of the Storm
From: CarolC
Date: 20 Jul 04 - 03:42 PM

GUEST, 20 Jul 04 - 03:21 PM, my name is Carol Dale, not Carol Cunningham. Is there some reason why you felt the need to put my full name here in this discussion? Should I be concerned for my physical safety now? Or any other aspect of my wellbeing?

There are people who have a political agenda, like you, GUEST, who like to use the charge of anti-Semitism as a way of discrediting and shutting up anyone who dares to speak up for the human rights of the Palestinians or Muslims and/or Arabs in general. This political agenda is not one of upliftment and regard for human life. It is one of repression and of control. Not too different than the agenda the US government has promoted over the decades. And England before that, and so on.

This is what Marc H. Ellis, Professor of American and Jewish Studies, and Director of the Center for American and Jewish Studies at Baylor University has to say about tactics like yours:

On The Rabbis and the Future of Jewish Life

"It is a strange feeling to stand before a gathering of rabbis and speak of my vision for the future of the Jewish people, especially during a time when helicopter gunships are more and more defining the trajectory of Jewish life. In my youth, my own rabbis, first at an Orthodox synagogue and then within the conservative movement, did not have to warn us against such abuse of power. Like most Jews in America, using tanks and aerial bombardment to quiet resistance in villages, towns and cities was reminiscent of the horrors of World War II; the assault on a weak defenceless people gathered in ghettos and surrounded by superior power reminded Jews in America of the fate of European Jews in what later became known as the Holocaust.

I wonder now whether these rabbis would protest today what is surely the swiftest and strangest inversion of position and power in history. Certainly the rabbis I encounter at home and on the road have little if anything to say about the current situation, except to be silent, to be in unity, to strike at anyone, Jew or non-Jew, who speaks out at the abuse of Israeli power. Perhaps the rabbis with whom I studied, now long retired, escaped the moment of decision when victimisation turned to oppression and the role reversal called for resistance to our own power rather than the power of others.

I think here of Abraham Heschel and Leo Baeck, in ability well beyond my local rabbis, who, having experienced the Nazi era, were spared, at least consciously and critically, these last decades of Israel's life. What would they say about helicopter gunships? What would they say to the displacement of Palestinians that has continued long after the emergency years of the Holocaust? Would Heschel and Baeck have spoken out against the settlements that continue to expand and erode the possibility of self-determination for Palestinians, with sophisticated by-pass roads and checkpoints that isolate Jews from Palestinians, encircle and enclose Palestinian life and create what many call an apartheid reality? If they spoke out what would they say? Would they then be pursued, as many Jews are, by the local rabbis, the Jewish Federation, the Anti-Defamation League, and Hillel chapters on university campuses? Would they be called traitors, self-hating Jews, "unabashedly pro-Palestinian", and among those who "create the context for another Holocaust"?

While we do not know what Heschel and Baeck would say, or for that matter, the local rabbis of my youth, or what would be said about them if they did speak out, we do know that few Jews in public life speak out today against the injustice of Israel's policies toward the Palestinians and that those who do are maligned and pursued. Death threats against dissenting Jews abound, but they are only the most extreme of the tactics used to silence Israel's critics.

What is more commonly used are visits to employers, statements in the press and gossip with local cultural and political elites about the authenticity and character of the Jewish dissenter. Ecumenical relationships that have been built up over many years are often used to signal a dissenting Jew as a troublemaker, one to be ostracised and even demeaned by religious leaders of another faith community.

That these tactics are carried out by leaders of the Jewish community on the local level is bad enough. When aided and abetted by national Jewish leadership—and too often by Jews who are advisers to politicians and intellectuals in universities—the situation becomes more complex. How will critical thought about Judaism and Israel, indeed about the future of the Jewish people, find a home, deepen and be communicated to the next generation? If there is no place for critical Jewish thought in the synagogue, Jewish institutions or the university, how will those who seek to affiliate with other Jews hear diverse viewpoints about what it means to be Jewish after the Holocaust and after Israel?

The phrase "after the Holocaust" is well known today, used sometimes as a cliché, but in the beginning this was not true. Studying with Richard Rubenstein in the early 1970s, I read his book After Auschwitz as an incredible and difficult attempt to come to grips with the aftermath of the Holocaust. I did this as a Jew, but also as a human being confronted with the enormity of Auschwitz. Perhaps I was too young to notice the lack of other agendas in confronting Auschwitz; that came later.

It was our inability to confront the expanding state of Israel and the use of the Holocaust as a sign of our victimhood, paradoxically of our arrival as an empowered and innocent and affluent community, that trivialised the event that defines the past century. That is why we as Jews come after the Holocaust and Israel. It is not only the linear historical sequence that forces this use of after, but the use of the Holocaust as a shield against accountability for abuse of the Palestinians. We as Jews come after the Holocaust and Israel because our victimisation has become a tool of power and because our proclaimed innocence betrays a culpability that increases even today.

What are we to do with this culpability? The situation is complex and has at least two fronts for Jews who live in the West. On the one hand, Jews are a minority living in cultures still defined by Christianity or at least a Christian ethos. On the other hand, Jews are asked to support and in some cases are held responsible for Israel, a nation-state in the Middle East that Jews in the West do not control, nor, overwhelmingly, do they choose to live there.

Both of these fronts have their own complexity. Christianity and Christian culture are increasingly less hostile to Jews. The acceptance of Judaism as a religion and Jews as a people and individuals poses a different threat, the threat of assimilation. For some time the reason to be Jewish has been found outside the internal practices of Judaism and has been located instead in the memory of the Holocaust and the hope of Israel, which most Jews participate in only vicariously. Israel is more and more problematic as a supposed symbol of Jewish life and as a beacon to humanity. The opposite seems to be the case, with Israel mirroring and mimicking the nations of the world and sometimes modelling in microcosm the very problems of the nation-state system.

As Jews we are caught in this dynamic—between an accepting Christian culture and the culpability that an expansionist Israel signals—with little or no leadership to guide us. We are not oppressed and we are not innocent. Too often we use the Holocaust as a shield and are silent on the unjust policies of Israel. To speak out is to dissent on the defining issues of contemporary Jewish life without a way forward. Thus the desire to strike out against those who dissent because they point out the conundrum of contemporary Jewish life that we cannot deny and for which we have no response.

The retreat to the synagogue in the face of these unresolved issues is insufficient to resolve this dilemma. We cannot go back behind the Holocaust and Israel as if to transcend history, nor can we in the struggle for the future of Jewish life pretend that a distinctiveness lived out in the world and unique contribution to the life of the world can be offered through prayer and ritual. The recovery of Hebrew and Jewish forms of community are not enough to face the crisis of Jewish life or the world crisis.

While renewal movements that seek to infuse Judaism and Jewish life with creative adaptations to modernity and post-modernity are praiseworthy and of interest in personal and communal ways, the ancient and still-central thrust of Jewish life, the prophetic, finds no nourishment here. Without the prophetic there is no reason for Jewish life in and of itself other than a way of meaning and personal fulfilment, important to be sure, but ably covered by other religions or indeed the major religion of our time, modernity. The renewal of Judaism and Jewish life can be fascinating but only at the expense of a silence about history, especially the history we are creating, actively or passively, in Israel. And renewal in a Jewish sensibility can only be modestly different than renewal of other communities and traditions. In short, the distinctiveness of Jewish renewal is, for the most part, illusory and at the expense of the prophetic whose base is history rather than language and ritual. Thus despite its outward garb of Hebrew and kippah, renewal is in the end a form of assimilation.

When we assimilate to the state and power, whether in Israel or America, we move toward a Judaism that is passive in the face of injustice and may even argue for that injustice with the sophistication of real politik. The terrain we then enter is one familiar to Jews, though historically we have experienced this terrain as a form of oppression against us. In fact, it may be argued that Judaism, as it developed within the shadow of an empowered Constantinian Christianity, is a sustained engagement with state-orientated religiosity. That we as Jews have formed a Constantinian Judaism, where the energies of our leaders in the religious, social and political arenas are bent toward the justification of privilege and power, is ironic for a variety of reasons, not least of which is our recent survival of Constantinian Christianity in the death camps of Nazi Europe.

In Constantinian Judaism, Israel is always right, threatened, under siege by the unwashed and uncivilised Arabs who resemble, if they do not incarnate, the Nazis. United States foreign policy that supports Israel must be defended at all costs and any group or entity that criticises Israel or United States foreign policy is misguided, probably anti-Jewish and regardless needs to be confronted. The new anti-semitism is less defined by views toward Jews and Judaism as defined by acceptance or non-acceptance of Jews as citizens within the larger society than it is by those who support or criticise the state of Israel. Tied to this unequivocal support of Israel and Israeli policies is the remembrance of the Holocaust as a global obligation, and as the experience of suffering of all time. Any attempt to place the Holocaust in the broader sweep of history or even in the context of the suffering of other peoples or, and especially, as an avenue of solidarity with the Palestinian people, is an expression of anti-semitism.

Today Jewish leadership is defined by the Constantinianism of Jewish life. The rabbis are not exempt from this definition, even if they are not at the head of the structure of Jewish power. In fact, the rabbis are by definition far down the road in terms of power in this form of Jewish life. Still they are expected to carry out and defend policies and viewpoints over which they have little, if any, control. Rabbis do not control and are not even consulted about Israeli policies; in the United States, at least, they have little power in American Jewish organisations that interact with the political life of the country. Yet rabbis are the closest to synagogue-affiliated Jews and the spokespersons for the local Jewish community. Thus rabbis are expected to communicate, interpret and defend policies and statements of a Jewish world that they do not participate in, have no power within, and often, if left to their own conscience, would quarrel with or even oppose. Historically speaking, on what became the two central engines of contemporary Jewish life, Holocaust and Israel, the rabbis were hardly consulted; they were left to integrate, reform and pick up the pieces of a religious world that ultimately supercedes and diminishes rabbinic Judaism. In the end a hybrid is developed between Rabbinic Judaism and Constantinian Judaism where the rabbinic survives only to serve as the local arm of this new form of empowered Judaism. And more often than not, rabbis function as the local arm of the law of Constantinian Judaism, a new halacha that fences in authentic Judaism more narrowly than ever before in Jewish history.

This is how the rabbis are experienced by Jews of conscience who have abandoned Jewish institutions, often fleeing for a life of integrity. Instead of aiding in the formation of conscience and identity, instead of infusing the covenantal obligations of justice and reconciliation with Jewish sensibilities, language and questions, the rabbis have functioned in the main as an agent of reproach and banishment, sealing an exile from the Jewish world that is unremitting. In the main, rabbis do not interact with Jews of conscience on the personal level, at least those who cannot countenance the often twisted argumentation of an empowered Judaism, for they are gone, disappeared from Jewish life, in exile. And most of those Jews of conscience are decidedly, even militantly, nonreligious. After having barely survived the God of Constantinian Christianity, is it any wonder these Jews of conscience reject the God of Constantinian Judaism?

In the end, of course, Jews of conscience see the God of Constantinian Christianity and the God of Constantinian Judaism as the same God, and Constantinian Christianity and Constantinian Judaism as the same religion. That would make the clerics of both religions, and the leadership patterns and arguments employed by them, essentially the same as well. If the same God and religion and leadership is shared by Constantinian Christianity and Judaism, then the historical judgement on Christian and Jewish religiosity and leadership follows. For Jews of conscience, then, Christianity and Judaism, Christians and Jews, priests, ministers and rabbis, are blurring into an interchangeable force that seeks to quell the pangs of conscience and to censor the articulate prophetic speech, that is, the very heart of Jewish identity.

That is, at least, what the heart of Jewish life once was or, perhaps more accurately, what we hoped it to be. That Judaism and Jewish life have failed in the face of power and the state is hardly an exception in the history of religion. Rather it is the norm. But the patterns of Jewish life, shared with other religions but also always searching for distinctiveness in the ethical realm, make more difficult the survival of Judaism and Jewish life in this Constantinian phase. The agnosticism of Jewish life with regard to ultimate realities is rooted in the Torah and carried forth in Talmudic searching and argumentation. This has led historically to a practised religiosity, a religion of deeds and action where God is alternately affirmed or ignored, present or absent, depending on time and place.

In Rabbinic Judaism the practice of Judaism, or we might say more precisely, the practice of the covenant, occurred without power and in the face of power. This was its peculiar strength. In a time of power, in the shadow of Constantinian Judaism, Rabbinic Judaism is a shadow of itself, as are the rabbis. As a Jewish thinker who has taken Jewish history seriously, it is sad to report this fateful transposition, as it means that Jewish history as we have known and inherited it has come to an end. As an ordinary Jew who was born into the faith and has consciously embraced it, who has a Jewish home and children who are being raised as Jews, the sadness is more personal. For what future is carried by helicopter gunships? What kind of Jewish life is constructed around the displacement and humiliation of another people? If Rabbinic Judaism once bequeathed achievement, struggle, ethics and suffering as the cornerstones of Jewish life, what will Constantinian Judaism bequeath to our children?

The hope that Constantinian Judaism will pass is illusory, as is a hope for a complete Israeli withdrawal from the occupied territories and annexed East Jerusalem. The map of Israel, with territory that stretches from Tel Aviv to the Jordan River, and with millions of Palestinians in between, is the map of Jewish life for the foreseeable future. This is a Constantinian map that requires of Jews within Israel and beyond a loyalty to the state and power. No Jew can escape this Constantinianism completely and no Jew can dissent from this map completely and actively and be seen as authentic. At the same time, there will always be Jews who cannot accept the restraints this map places on territory, social organisation and conscience. Will there be rabbis who refuse a Contantinianism that mandates a militarised God and a theology that disguises helicopter gunships with passages from the Torah and learned Talmudic discussions?

That is why Jews of conscience have been and will continue to leave the Jewish community and why the religious consciousness of these Jews atrophies in articulation and symbol. Perhaps these Jews of conscience in exile today from Constantinian Judaism are placing above all and without specific language the two most ancient themes of Jewish life, the refusal of idolatry and the refusal of assimilation to the state and power. I ask you as rabbis, with ordination and congregations, what do you say to these exiles?

My own sense is that these exiles carry the covenant with them, and this perhaps is the last exile in Jewish history, at least as we have known and inherited it. No doubt there will be rabbis who accompany those in exile or who will arise from within the exilic community itself. But first and foremost they will be prophets, with no need of respect from the Jewish establishment or fear of congregational censure, free prophets whose witness is deep and freely given for the historical crisis that envelopes us as a people. It is this witness that will one day provide a reckoning and a possible future, however defined and with whomever pursues the struggle for community over empire.

Whether the children of these Jews of conscience will identify as Jews, whether they will gather for rituals or use language that Jews employ today is doubtful and perhaps beside the point. For the covenant, once given, can never be claimed or owned or named by any one people in perpetuity. In the final analysis, the covenant belongs to the broader arc of humanity. As Jews we have been privileged, even in our suffering, to carry this covenant with us as a people. Today it belongs somewhere else, outside our community.

This analysis may seem too pessimistic to some, but if we look at the covenant as free, given but not owned, carried but also betrayed, if we see the covenant as available and present in the most unlikely places, as it was in the beginning, then this seeming pessimism is lightened. As Jews we have failed, as others before us and as those who go after us. But we also, again with others, have periodically risen to the occasion and become witnesses to the covenant and to the world. Helicopter gunships and the nation-state that employs them, like all forms of violence and all nation-states, vitiate this witness through a Constantinianism to which all religions succumb. Did Jews think we would be different, that placing Jewish before the name of a state would thereby change its dynamics and trajectory?

We are left here, at least today, with a tradition in fragments and a leadership that is bullied by that state and in turn too often bullies those who dare to say that Jewish and state do not mix and that the covenantal affirmation that has carried Jewish life has fled its home. This tragedy prompts a reckoning that can only be approached when we acknowledge that the Judaism that we inherited and the leadership that represents that Judaism is effectively over and that the potential leaders of Jewish life are in exile. For all their limitations and flaws, one can believe that the covenant is travelling with them and the challenge of leadership in the Jewish world is to accompany this exile wherever it leads. For with the covenant there is always the opening to God, as it was in the beginning, recorded in our own sacred books. Should we be surprised that these understandings have returned and that Jews turn towards them?

In this time of helicopter gunships, when we are defined by a power that we once struggled against to survive, the time is now to announce our position. And to live it, until the end."

Subject: RE: BS: Mideast: View From the Eye of the Storm
From: GUEST,Yes Sir, I Are A Fat Ham Ass
Date: 20 Jul 04 - 04:20 PM

CarolC and Jack the Sailor, please you take no shotspot from the zionistics who aggress on you. You are good people for justice.

Subject: RE: BS: Mideast: View From the Eye of the Storm
From: Once Famous
Date: 20 Jul 04 - 04:20 PM

CarolC.

The Guest of 7/20 3:21 wins, hands down.

And Jack telling Rabbi-Sol about the Torah was worth the biggest laugh of the year.

You both are so hopeless in all of your activism new anti-semitism splendor.

Subject: RE: BS: Mideast: View From the Eye of the Storm
From: Once Famous
Date: 20 Jul 04 - 04:34 PM

Fat Ham-Ass, had you figured wrong initially. sorry.

Subject: RE: BS: Mideast: View From the Eye of the Storm
From: GUEST,Corrina
Date: 20 Jul 04 - 04:44 PM

CarolC,

You say that you know oppression because you are a woman. Be very thankful that you're not living as a woman in Palestinian society.

A September 2002 poll taken by the Palestinian Center for Public Opinion, found:

   * 56.9% of Palestinian Arabs "believe that a man has the right to beat up his wife if she underestimates his manhood."

   * 56.2% of Palestinian Arabs "support the physical abuse of a wife if she insults her husband in front of his friends."

   * 51.8% of Palestinian Arabs "support a man's abusing his wife physically if she does not obey him."

   * 51.7% of Palestinian Arabs "recommend beating up a wife if she does not respect her parents, sisters, and brothers-in-law."

   * 59.1% of Palestinian Arabs "believe it is the right of a man to decide for his wife whether or not to work outside the house"; 66.4% "believe it is even worse for a woman to swear, curse, or use bad words than for a man"; 73.9% believe that women should "concentrate on their becoming good wives and mothers rather than get preoccupied with their rights"; and 82.3% "believe that it is a wife's obligation to obey her husband."

   * 56.7% of Palestinian Arabs know a woman who was assaulted by her husband (up from 34.7% a year earlier).


Women Killed in PA Territory to "Protect Family Honor":

   Palestinian Arab women who are suspected of committing moral infractions are sometimes murdered by family members in order to "protect the family honor," a practice which the Palestinian Authority regime has made little effort to stop. "The sheer scale of the phenomenon, along with the weakness of the laws and the lack of a concerted effort on the part of concerned individuals and institutions to deal with the matter, all contribute to worsening the problem in a society that believes restoring honor can only be achieved by the spilling of blood," the Palestinian Arab newspaper Jerusalem Times has noted. (June 1, 2001)

   The article quoted Ayda Masoud, a researcher for the Women's Support and Rehabilitation Program, as saying: "The problem of honor killings is more serious than I had thought before working with the program. I was awestruck by the scale of the phenomenon in Palestinian society." Dr. Iyad Siraj, director of the Gaza Psychological Health Program, was quoted as saying that it is common among Palestinian Arabs to believe that "a woman is among the possessions of a man."

   Sheikh Hazem Al-Siraj of the Palestinian Alms Committee was quoted as saying that when a defendant who is accused of an "honor killing" is tried in a PA court, "leniency is exercised if witnesses confirm that the woman sinned."

PA Doesn't Enforce Laws Against Sexual Harassment of Women:

   "Sexual harassment is a common problem around the world but in [PA-controlled territory] the phenomenon is characterized by several properties that make it more serious than in other places [such as] the wide spread of the phenomenon, the lack of laws against it, and the feebleness with which laws that do exist are implemented," according to the Palestinian Arab newspaper Jerusalem Times. (August 11, 2000)

PA's Judges Look for Ways to Excuse "Honor Killings":

   "[In 'honor killings' of women], judges and police officers have been known to side with the 'wronged' man. In areas under Palestinian control, judges usually look for 'justifiable excuses,' according to Nadera Shalhoub Kevorkian, a criminologist at Hebrew University who participated in a UNICEF study." (Jerusalem Post, July 4, 2000)

Palestinian Arab Law is "Lenient" on "Honor Killings":

   " 'Honor killings' of women are regarded with leniency by the law in Jordan and Palestine," according to Palestinian Arab activist Daoud Kuttab. (Jerusalem Post, Dec. 16, 1999)

22% of Palestinian Arab Women Are Victims of Sexual Assault:

   A study by the Gaza Psychological Health Program in 1999 found that 22% of Palestinian Arab women "experience sexual assault." (Jerusalem Times , Oct.8, 1999)

"Palestinian Arab Society Applauds 'Honor Killings' of Women":

   Reuters reported on Nov. 10, 1997, that when a resident of PA-controlled Jericho murdered his sister for alleged sexual misconduct, "Arab society applauded his deed." A spokesman for a Gaza women's group said that 20 "honor killings" of Palestinian Arab women were reported in the West Bank and Gaza during 1997, "but the number of honor killings is much higher and they are not reported in this tribal society."

Hundreds of Palestinian Arab Women Beaten or Raped in 1997:

   In the West Bank and Gaza during the period from January through September 1997, and 47 Palestinian Arab women filed complaints of having been raped, 398 filed complaints that they were beaten by their husbands. Palestinian women's groups estimate these account for but a tiny fraction of the rapes and beatings that actually occurred.(IINS News Service, Nov. 30, 1997)

Palestinian Arab Girls Pressured to Get Married at Age 13:

   "It is now common to wed girls who are barely 13 or 14 years of age," according to a report in the Palestinian Arab newspaper Jerusalem Times (May 10, 1995). "A part of this complex problem is the practice of polygamy, which is effectively legal." A teacher in PA-controlled Beit Fajjar reported that "the girls begin getting engaged in the seventh and eighth grades," and a gynecologist in PA-controlled Bethlehem said that she sees women "from about 15 villages in the Bethlehem district, and 80% of these are married at less than 16 years of age."

Women Raped by PA Policemen in Jericho:

   An investigative report by the Israeli daily Ma'ariv (March 24, 1995) found a pattern of "random beatings, rapes, and torture" committed by PA policemen in Jericho, which had "turned the lives of the city's 12,000 residents into a living hell." The article described several brutal rapes by PA policemen, which the PA leadership refused to investigate on the grounds that in each case, "she consented."

PA Police Chief Implicated in Rape:

   In early 1995, the PA's chief of police in Gaza, Ghazi Jabali, reportedly raped a local woman. In order to preserve "family honor," the woman's family forced Jabali to marry her. In July 1995, she was found shot to death. (Al Akhbar, July 17, 1995)

Abuse of Women by the PLO Prior to the Establishment of the Palestinian Authority Regime:

"Collaborators" Were Actually Killed to "Preserve Family Honor":

   The leftwing Israeli human rights group B'Tselem reported in early 1994 that "nearly all" of the 107 Palestinian Arab women murdered by the PLO's "Fatah decency squads" during 1988-1993, supposedly because they were "collaborating" with Israel, "were in fact victims of honor killings." (Associated Press, Feb. 15, 1994)

PLO Killers Targeted Women Who Work Outside the Home:

   "During the first intifada all those elements that wanted to impose a conservative way of life on society...made women who worked outside their homes suspect of collaboration with the authorities. These relatively independent women, not subjected to constant supervision by the family men," became the targets of PLO death squads. "In 1989, sewing-shop owner Varda Safariye was murdered, and in 1991 the Fatah Hawks murdered Na'ama Jouda, who worked in a sewing shop in Deir el-Balah...

   "In 1989, six women who worked in medical institutions were murdered--five nurses and one cleaning woman in a clinic--after being accused of collaboration...many nurses decided not to risk their lives and resigned...The murder of the Abu Shawish sisters had particularly great impact. Aisha Abu Shawish was chief nurse and department head in the Nasr hospital;\four hooded men murdered her in her home with axes. Her sister Susan Abu Hussein was murdered in the hospital." (Ha'aretz, June 17, 1994)

Wife-Beating Common Among Palestinian Arabs:

   Palestinian Arab Prof. Mohammed Haj Yahya said in a lecture at Bir Zeit University, near Ramallah, in 1993 that "39% of the women in Palestinian society suffer from wife battering," but "women are afraid to complain due to social pressure. He said "attitudes in the male-dominated Arab society made wife-beating legitimate." (Al Fajr, April 8, 1993)

Women Raped to Punish Their Husbands for Working in Israel:

   During the spring of 1989, there were numerous reports in the Israeli press of Palestinian Arab women who were "gang raped by masked Arab terrorists" because their husbands "persist in taking jobs in Israel for the purpose of supporting their families. 'Offenders' are first warned, and if they persist the terrorist underground visits their wives when they are away, and amid cries of 'Allah is great' and 'Death to the Jews,' perpetrate their dastardly crime." There were also cases in which women were raped by PLO squads "after being accused of promiscuity and cooperating with the [Israeli] authorities." (Jerusalem Post, April 27, 1989; Jewish Post and Opinion, May 31, 1989)

Yes, CarolC, be very thankful that you're not living as a woman in Palestinian society.

Subject: RE: BS: Mideast: View From the Eye of the Storm
From: Jack the Sailor
Date: 20 Jul 04 - 05:17 PM

Yes, CarolC, be very thankful that you're not living as a woman in Palestinian society.

-Corrina

I know that Carol is very thankful to be where she is.

As you saying that any of those things justify bad behavior on the part of the Israeli government? Or is it non specific demonization.

Martin Gibson,

It doesn't take much to amuse you. Most people at least have to understand what they are reading.
Rabbi-sol told me what the Torah said. I implied that the Sharon Government does not follow the principles which Rabbi-Sol described. I'm glad you spoke Martin. I don't mean this as an admonishment at all. If something is beyond your understanding please feel free to speak up. Don't be afraid to look stupid. We won't make fun of you.

Subject: RE: BS: Mideast: View From the Eye of the Storm
From: Jack the Sailor
Date: 20 Jul 04 - 05:19 PM

Opps

As you saying that any of those things justify bad behavior on the part of the Israeli government? Or is it non specific demonization.

Should be...


Are you saying that any of those things justify bad behavior on the part of the Israeli government? Or is it non specific demonization.

Subject: RE: BS: Mideast: View From the Eye of the Storm
From: Once Famous
Date: 20 Jul 04 - 05:49 PM

It's you who looks stupid Jack.

and look like the biggest of two anti-semites on this board. the other being your wife. question is, which of you two was the stupid anti-semite first and brainwashed the other. I fail to believe you both met each other, realized you had the same agenda. One of you is definately the butch. I really don't care who.

Subject: RE: BS: Mideast: View From the Eye of the Storm
From: Bill Hahn//\\
Date: 20 Jul 04 - 05:51 PM

Bobert---of so many long ago posts---I agree with you about the Clinton comments and the Bush --don't do anything that Clinton would have done comment.

Guest---nice post--but why oh why does one not post one's (at least) screen name. Sounds like GUests are afraid of their identity being revealed--yet reveal others.

Carol C--of a way back post too---regarding that how can one think that the Palestinians--once they have a state--would be in any position to push Israel out. Think back to 1948---they are not alone. Let us face it---the neighborhood ain't too friendly as it is said.   Yes, it is a conundrum that can, as said, previously only be resolved by good will on all sides. That is not forthcoming---neither is the U S of much help now either.
       As to you other comment re: stopping retaliation (I paraphrase). Think about it. What if we did not respond to Pearl Harbor, what if Britain did not respond to The Blitz, and so on. It is a rhetorical query.

Subject: RE: BS: Mideast: View From the Eye of the Storm
From: Bill Hahn//\\
Date: 20 Jul 04 - 05:55 PM

SOrry---hit the submit button by accident.

   My final thoughts were that business about giving the Native Americans back their land---well, they would like it back---and you Carol might have a better landlord in your "small plot"--who knows. But, as said earlier---history is ongoing so it will not happen--and hence, the Middle East is also ongoing.

    As to Israel's good will or not---I was reminded in a note that when Egypt signed the peace agreement (Sadat) and recognized the state Israel gave back the entire Sinai---AND the valuable OIL fields. So--good will--good politics and hopes for the future--dashed sadly because, as always, the Palestinians are not welcome by their own brethren.

Bill Hahn

Subject: RE: BS: Mideast: View From the Eye of the Storm
From: Rabbi-Sol
Date: 20 Jul 04 - 06:03 PM

Jack: Let me first address the issue of settlements. Before 1967, we Jews did not have access to our holy places such as the Wailing Wall, Rachel's Tomb, and the Tomb Of The Patriarchs in Hebron. I believe that the prime reason the settlements were put in, was to establish a Jewish presence so that Jews will never again be denied access to our holiest of places, and be allowed to pray there. Assuming that a Palestinian state is established in those areas, one provision that must be honored by both parties is the right of access by all religious groups (Jewish, Muslim, & Christian) to their respective holy sites. It is noteworthy that while Israel in in control of Jerusalem, the area of the Temple Mount and Dome Of The Rock are under the exclusive control of the Muslim Waqif, and Jews are not permitted to pray there. Now, as far as the Torah is concerned, it consists of all the Books in the Old Testament, PLUS the
Talmud & Mishna, which we call the Oral Law. We belive that the Oral Law as well the the Old Testament (Written Law), were both transmitted to Moses at Mt. Sinai. Although the Christians believe that the principle of "Love the neighbor as thyself" originated in the New Testament, we Jews believe that is was transmitted to Moses as part of the Oral Law. There are quotations from Rabbi Akiva and Hillel, 2 great sages of the Tanaaic era to back this up. Therefore Jack, as far as you and I are concerned it is important that we both believe in this important principle, even though we have culled it from 2 different sources. SOL ZELLER

Subject: RE: BS: Mideast: View From the Eye of the Storm
From: Jack the Sailor
Date: 20 Jul 04 - 06:09 PM

As to you other comment re: stopping retaliation (I paraphrase). Think about it. What if we did not respond to Pearl Harbor, what if Britain did not respond to The Blitz, and so on. It is a rhetorical query.

Bill H

If the US has responded to Pearl Harbour by bombing people who hadn't attacked them then World War II would still be going on. It would be a 65 year war. Just as Israel v Palestinians is a 56 year war. Hamas and Likud (and the "settlers") are both served by the constant escalation of the conflict. Peace will not come until the power to provoke is taken from them. On both sides.

Subject: RE: BS: Mideast: View From the Eye of the Storm
From: Jack the Sailor
Date: 20 Jul 04 - 06:15 PM

Rabbi Sol are you saying that all the settlements are there to secure the right to pray? I heard some settlers interviewed on NPR who seemed determined to return Israel to its biblical borders. Were they atypical? Are they not supported by the Israeli govenment? I am asking sincerely I want to know your feelings on this.

Did you read the link I provided? Do you still say that the Moslem Clerics do not respect human life?

Subject: RE: BS: Mideast: View From the Eye of the Storm
From: Rabbi-Sol
Date: 20 Jul 04 - 07:17 PM

Jack; What I am saying is, that was the original intent of establishing the settlements. The settlers that want to return Israel to its biblical borders are not only atypical but also very unrealistic. First of all, we are not exactly sure of what those biblical borders were. Many of the landmarks that were referred to are very vague and may not even exist today in recognizable form. One of the bounaries mentioned is the Euphrates River. I don't think that anyone in their right mind living in Israel today, expects that to happen. You must also remember that Ariel Sharon's government is a secular one and not at all religious. Some ministers such as Tommy Lapid of the Shinui party are totally anti-religious. The last thing that they are looking to support is a biblical agenda.    As far as the Muslim clerics not respecting human life, I do not go by what is said in the English language press for the benefit of Western consumption. I go not only by what is said in Arabic by those clerics in the Middle East, but by their actions which speak far louder than words. I go by what is being taught to the young children of the upcoming generation in the Midrasas of all Arab nations. SOL ZELLER

Subject: RE: BS: Mideast: View From the Eye of the Storm
From: Jack the Sailor
Date: 20 Jul 04 - 07:27 PM

I guess we have something else in common. When I think of chances of Peace in the Middel East I think of the actions of the Israeli government.

So what do you think the borders of Israel should be? Do you think that building "security" barrier should annex 13% of the West Bank?

Subject: RE: BS: Mideast: View From the Eye of the Storm
From: Bill Hahn//\\
Date: 20 Jul 04 - 08:01 PM

Jack/sailor: Let me be frank. The U S responded in kind at Pearl Harbor--happily for us.   Iraq is a whole different issue and thanks to W we may well end up with your scenario. Sadly.

             On the Israel / Palestinan issue it is a different situation all together. I have no empathy for the settlers. They should go. That said, it will still not alleviate the problem. Why? I answer---History. It all comes back to all Arab nations being committed to negating the existence of Israel.   As to the Palestinians---they would end up being the Arab states version of "untouchables".   Think about it. Jordan could and should have been Palestine. What happened?   Read the history books about the artificial nation. Saudi Arabia is on record as to its feelings vis a vis Israel. Syria---what more can I say. 1948.   So---Palestinians are not the major problem in existence. They are, however, the immediate problem since they honestly think a state will help them and they will have the support of their alleged brethren.

Lord, help them for they do not see the reality.

Bill Hahn

Subject: RE: BS: Mideast: View From the Eye of the Storm
From: Rabbi-Sol
Date: 20 Jul 04 - 08:10 PM

Jack: It is unfair for me to be sitting here in the USA and try to dictate to people actually living in that region what their borders should be. It must be negotiated by the 2 parties themselves, sitting at a table with mutual respect and recognition for the rights of each other. Once that is achieved, there should be no need for a security barrier or fence. SOL ZELLER

Subject: RE: BS: Mideast: View From the Eye of the Storm
From: CarolC
Date: 20 Jul 04 - 08:21 PM

GUEST,Corrina. If you ask Palestinian women how they feel about the difficult situations they have to deal with in their every day lives, many of them will tell you that they would like to see many changes in the way women are treated by the men of their society. But they will also tell you that the biggest problem they face, and the one they are the most urgently in need of getting corrected is the Israeli occupation in the West Bank, Gaza, and East Jerusalem.

If you really care about those women, you won't help to promote hatred towards Palestinians and Muslims, and you won't support the occupation. When people promote hatred towards a group of people, it's always the most vulnerable of the group (such as the women), who suffer the most.

Subject: RE: BS: Mideast: View From the Eye of the Storm
From: Jack the Sailor
Date: 20 Jul 04 - 08:27 PM

Bill H. You are absolutly right. The question is about terrorism is what is "responding in kind". I don't think responding in kind includes attacking people who were not involved in the attack. Thank goodness the US did not respond to Tim MacVeigh by bombing Buffalo. Thank God MacVeigh was not from Canada.

It is clear that Israel's attempts at security aren't working why not give them their own state. This time stop bombing the police stations.

Rabbi-Sol a lot of people see that security fence as a land grab before those negotiations take place. And as such, are another barrier to peace, compliments of Likud. I pray that those two parties sit down soon.

Subject: RE: BS: Mideast: View From the Eye of the Storm
From: Bill Hahn//\\
Date: 20 Jul 04 - 08:30 PM

Skirting the issue there a bit (no pun intended). The problem is larger than a "woman's issue".   But as to how they are treated in Muslim society---that is a whole other topic. Their cultural background is not that of Western civilization and much as I abhor it I surely cannot judge it. If they are frustrated (as they should be by my western and modern culture) then that is the issue---not their dealings with Israel and other such situations.   Ah---but what myster lies beneath that veil. Probably beats getting the western face-lifts all the time for vanity. A little humour always helps---don't you think---Carol?


Bill Hahn

Subject: RE: BS: Mideast: View From the Eye of the Storm
From: CarolC
Date: 20 Jul 04 - 08:35 PM

Carol C--of a way back post too---regarding that how can one think that the Palestinians--once they have a state--would be in any position to push Israel out. Think back to 1948---they are not alone. Let us face it---the neighborhood ain't too friendly as it is said.

Back in 1948, Israel clearly had the upper hand, and the superior forces. That's why they ended up with most of the land, and most of the refugees were Palestinians. Add to that, the fact that Israel and Jordan had a secret agreement to prevent the Palestinians from getting their own state, and in which Jordan agreed to (and did) keep the fighting mostly in the areas that were given to the Palestinians in the partition plan. So even if we use 1948 as our point of comparison, Israel still holds most of the cards, and is the most unassailable. Plus, they're the only ones in the neighborhood with nuclear weapons.

As to you other comment re: stopping retaliation (I paraphrase). Think about it. What if we did not respond to Pearl Harbor, what if Britain did not respond to The Blitz, and so on. It is a rhetorical query.

Are you saying that everyone in the world, except the Palestinians has a right to defend themselves? Do you even regard Palestinians as human beings?

As to Israel's good will or not---I was reminded in a note that when Egypt signed the peace agreement (Sadat) and recognized the state Israel gave back the entire Sinai---AND the valuable OIL fields. So--good will--good politics and hopes for the future--dashed sadly because, as always, the Palestinians are not welcome by their own brethren.

So why won't they keep any of their promises to the Palestinians? Arafat signed a peace agreement and recognised the State of Israel. The only response from Israel was to build more settlements. But even more important than that, why won't they end the occupation? From the things I'm seeing people post to this thread, my guess is that nobody wants to give up their idea of "Greater Israel". So if that's the case, it really has nothing to do with "security" and everything to do with getting more land for Israel.

Subject: RE: BS: Mideast: View From the Eye of the Storm
From: CarolC
Date: 20 Jul 04 - 08:42 PM

Bill H, I hardly think it's "skirting the issue". It is the issue. I've spend time reading what Palestinian women have to say on the subject. They say that if Israel would leave them alone and let them begin the process of building their country (and rebuilding their society), it would go a long way toward helping the women get the financial independence they need to begin to make societal changes. You are making broad sweeping generalizations about Muslims that do not have any basis in reality. There are Muslims who oppress women. There are also members of just about every other religion who oppress women. There are also Muslim women who are not oppressed. You're promoting bigoted stereotypes.

Subject: RE: BS: Mideast: View From the Eye of the Storm
From: Bill Hahn//\\
Date: 20 Jul 04 - 08:49 PM

You know I am beginning, finally, to realize that you truly do not see any gray areas here---Carol C.   In fact, you truly see only the Palestinian side of the issue so that further debate is truly not worthwhile---fruitless.

Just a final thought----1948. Israel had the upper hand---your words.    Gee----all those minyons of Arab nations bent on destruction--what was it 100 to 1 or some such number (perhaps larger), asking the residents (Palestinians) for help while their brethren told them to leave because shortly they will return, and gerry built weaponry and tactics to hold of the horde---that is an upper hand?   Read history.

By the way--to anwser your query about human beings. I consider everyone who is one such---but do I applaud their tactics would be a better question.

But---as said---with you, sadly, there really is no discourse---and I will at this point avoid a bad and obscene pun. Hell---the FCC might try to invade the internet.


Bill Hahn

Subject: RE: BS: Mideast: View From the Eye of the Storm
From: CarolC
Date: 20 Jul 04 - 08:56 PM

Just a final thought----1948. Israel had the upper hand---your words.    Gee----all those minyons of Arab nations bent on destruction--what was it 100 to 1 or some such number (perhaps larger), asking the residents (Palestinians) for help while their brethren told them to leave because shortly they will return, and gerry built weaponry and tactics to hold of the horde---that is an upper hand?   Read history.

Bill, the reason you think I have no shades of gray and that discourse with me is fruitless is because you are still clinging to your fictional historical narrative. Even the Israelis who fought in the 1948 war don't believe that nonesense about a 100 to 1 ratio in favor of the Arabs. I'll go back into some earlier threads and retrieve for you the quotes from some of the Israelis who were there.

Subject: RE: BS: Mideast: View From the Eye of the Storm
From: Bill Hahn//\\
Date: 20 Jul 04 - 08:58 PM

Oh well---I guess Uris, New Reports, Film Footage and pure numbers hold no interest to you.

You seem to have the quite the archive----is this obsessive on your part? Pray tell.


Bill H

Subject: RE: BS: Mideast: View From the Eye of the Storm
From: GUEST
Date: 20 Jul 04 - 09:13 PM

I have no shades of gray and...discourse with me is fruitles.

There's the bottom line folks. People have been arguing with CarolC about Israeli/Palestinian issues for years. Over the course of thousands and thousands of posts, she has been remarkably consistent in toeing the Palestinian party line. There really is no point in arguing with her. As she herself has stated, she has no shades of gray and discourse with her is fruitless.

Subject: RE: BS: Mideast: View From the Eye of the Storm
From: CarolC
Date: 20 Jul 04 - 09:22 PM

I've got plenty of numbers, Bill H.

You seem to have the quite the archive----is this obsessive on your part? Pray tell.

You'll probably never believe this, but I never really had an opinion on this subject prior to 2002, except to pretty much accept, without question, the prevailing attitudes towards Arabs and Muslims (and Palestinians) that were the norm in the areas where I lived during the period of my growing up years when such things can become inculcated. Most of my friends were Jewish, I lived in an area with a sizable Jewish population, and when there were Arabs present, such as some exchange students at my high school, I avoided them along with the rest of my friends. And I never really questioned the legitimacy of any of the stereotypes that abound in the US about Arabs, Muslims, and Palestinians. If you do a search on my screen name, you'll see that I never even posted to any threads on the subject of the Middle East prior to spring of 2002. I just didn't know much of anything about it. And I shared the anger of US and Israeli Jews whenever Palestinian "terrorists" killed innocent people.

In spring of 2002, I saw things on my TV coming out of the Israeli incursion into the Occupied Territories that I couldn't believe were possible. I saw Israeli snipers shooting at unarmed old Palestinian women in the street. I saw a Palestinian man sitting in his living room with the bodies of his dead sister and brother-in-law, whose bodies had begun to subside into shapeless masses because the man couldn't leave his apartment to remove the bodies. He'd been there for two or three days with the bodies of his dead family. I would never have believed these things could possibly be committed by the government of Israel.

Then I started listening to and reading the words of the people who were trying to justify these things. They kept saying that all of the Palestinians hate all of the Jews, and that they are brought up and educated on this hate. And I started noticing that the only people I was hearing and seeing expressing hatred towards anyone else were the people who hate Palestinians, Muslims, and Arabs. This didn't add up. So I started asking questions. And then I started finding answers on my own. And I found the Jewish human rights organizations. And the things I was learning from them made everything add up for the first time.

And ever since then, everything I have learned has come about because of people like you and the others on this thread and numerous other threads who ask me questions and who say things that don't add up to me. If it weren't for the other people in this forum who keep starting threads like this one and challenging me in them, I guess I wouldn't have much of an archive at all.

I'm not going to get those quotes or those numbers I mentioned tonight. I'm tired. I'll work on it tomorrow.

Subject: RE: BS: Mideast: View From the Eye of the Storm
From: Rabbi-Sol
Date: 20 Jul 04 - 10:26 PM

Carol was kind enough to tell us how and why she became an advocate for the Palestinian cause. I am curious about you Jack. When and how did you be come interested in the plight of the Palestinians ? Was it before you met Carol or afterwards ? SOL ZELLER

Subject: RE: BS: Mideast: View From the Eye of the Storm
From: Jack the Sailor
Date: 21 Jul 04 - 12:09 AM

I'm not particularly interested in the plight of the Palestinians. I'm interested in Peace in the Holy Land. I'm interested in seeing the world move beyond the current conflict between the developed world and the developing world. I have not said I favour the Palestinians over the Israeli's and I certinly do not. But I have a certain amount of empathy and some knowledge of history. I can't help but sympathize with them just as I admire Israel's historic story of survival.

It seems you may disagree with this But I don't see any superiority of any group between Jews, Moslems or Christains I see far more differences among groups of humans than between them.

I look at the problem thinking what can we do from now on? Likud's and Hamas' actions shown that they do not want peace. I'm not so sure about Arafat. But since he is duely elected, he needs a chance to try. No bombing police stations, no occupation, no fence. If he is given a fair chance and then fails to bring peace then we have reason to ask the Palestinians to elect someone else.

Subject: RE: BS: Mideast: View From the Eye of the Storm
From: Peace
Date: 21 Jul 04 - 12:15 AM

Will he get to keep the $300,000,000?

Subject: RE: BS: Mideast: View From the Eye of the Storm
From: mg
Date: 21 Jul 04 - 12:46 AM

I knew as a child there was something wrong. Not that anyone ever said anything. But something about the way the nuns told us to refer to the Holy Land as such and not call it anything else. I was born in 1948. This must have been around 1957 or 58....we just sensed something was going on that was not right. I am very offended by some things..the "making the desert"..add swampland now I guess too" Bloom...how come Jaffa oranges were so famous if the place was a desert swamp? How about the olive orchards? The dates? The sheep? It's a catastrophe built on a catasrophe. I'm an omniist..I want everyone to have what they need. I think you can't have endless expansion and totally open arms in such a small area, such a small populated area. A small, populated, hostile (now) area. I think there should have been definite borders enforced at the time, and supplemental areas on every continent to handle overflow population. I personally would have given Israel a big chunk of Germany and Austria. That would make more sense. I can not for the life of me understand the "God gave it to us" argument. I can't go back to Ireland and claim what my ancestors lost. I'm sure there is a holy book somewhere that says I can, but I can't.   No one can, unless they still have title (guess what?)

That said, I would, as I have said before, shoot a terrorist point blank. I would take serious measures, many of which are being taken. I also think that many countries, led by the U.S., no actually, led by Great Britain which sort of caused this mess, should be absolutely encouraged to take in many refugees. Palestinian and Jews from oppressed situations. Arab states should do much much more. A free Iraq should be able to absorb a number. I read somewhere..the recent USA supplement, that Iraq could feed the Middle East..does that sound right? Kuwait said so...anyway, maybe they could use a lot of farmers. I also think we need to find trades for many of the Palestinians that would benefit the world..like making eyeglasses, artificial limbs, AIDS medicines etc...they could specialize in this...

I think we need to watch how our money is spent over there, and so does the U.N.....lots of daylight might help....helping the farmers of Palestine get to their lands safely, and be guarded from the settlers is something that has to be done. Getting ambulances through checkpoints doesn't sound that hard to me. Have female guards on both sides for female patients. Strip the patients naked in a checkpoint, check for explosives, transfer to an ambulance on the other side. Add a few minutes but not the hours that are happening now. Have explosive sniffing dogs here and there and everywhere.

I am absolutely totally against the terrorism and the bombings. Don't confuse me with anyone who is for it.

Subject: RE: BS: Mideast: View From the Eye of the Storm
From: Jack the Sailor
Date: 21 Jul 04 - 12:50 AM

Are you saying that he has three hundred million dollars? If he does he is quite a hero to stay where he is under constant threat of assassination by Israeli politicians. He must really love his people.

LOL LOL

Subject: RE: BS: Mideast: View From the Eye of the Storm
From: freda underhill
Date: 21 Jul 04 - 07:48 AM

Subject: RE: BS: Mideast: View From the Eye of the Storm
From: Strollin' Johnny
Date: 21 Jul 04 - 08:14 AM

Mary - "I also think that many countries, ........ led by Great Britain which sort of caused this mess, should be absolutely encouraged to take in many refugees".

We already do. A very great many.

Subject: RE: BS: Mideast: View From the Eye of the Storm
From: GUEST
Date: 21 Jul 04 - 08:22 AM

Referring to Arafat, Jack the Sailor sez: Are you saying that he has three hundred million dollars?

From that, I waould have surmised that Jack the Sailor has been hiding under his trailer and missed all the media coverage of Arafat siphoning off $300 million of Palestinian Authority funds into his personal bank accounts.

Or maybe, Jack the Sailor missed the Mudcat thread about Arafat's $300 million dollars. A thread dominated by his his wife, CarolC, and her 24 posts attacking them that would be critical of Arafat.

But, wait a minute, Jack the Sailor himself posted five times to that thread, saying: Arafat is corrupt! That was you point "Water Pricehouse" wasn't it? Now I have agreed. I am confident that everyone who has posted will agree. Arafat's corruption has never been a secret.

Subject: RE: BS: Mideast: View From the Eye of the Storm
From: GUEST
Date: 21 Jul 04 - 08:29 AM

I'm not so sure about Arafat. But since he is duely elected, he needs a chance to try.

The Palestinian election was almost eight years ago. In a democracy, "duely elected*," means a term that expires after a time-limited term.


*I'm sure Jack the Sailor meant to say "duly elected." But I won't camm him on that because Mudcat is, as J0hn from Hull says, a music and Israel-bashing site, not a speling/spolling/spelling site.

Subject: RE: BS: Mideast: View From the Eye of the Storm
From: GUEST
Date: 21 Jul 04 - 10:33 AM

Why do Palestinians suffer, year after year, despite the opportunity of the Oslo process, despite massive international financial aid, despite the undeniable Israeli desire for peaceful resolution? Two competing explanations are regularly put forth: blame Israel, or blame Arafat.

One view, pushed relentlessly by CarolC and jack the Sailor, holds that IDF actions in the West Bank and Gaza create a desperate culture, incapable of positive development. The other, Israeli position has long been that Yassir Arafat's corrupt regime perpetuates the suffering of his own people by continually deflecting all blame upon Israel and fomenting self-defeating Palestinian terrorism.

Though world media coverage has overwhelmingly adopted the blame-Israel approach, over the past few days the Palestinian people themselves have made it clear that Yassir Arafat's corrupt regime lies at the heart of their problems. A wave of kidnappings, the resignation of Arafat's prime minister, and street violence targeting an Arafat crony drove much of the world press (including the Arab press!) to finally point the finger at Arafat:

쳌œ Times of London: 'Arafat's policy of divide and rule has not only neutralized Palestinian rivals but stymied any political and economic progress... Mr Arafat's cynicism has now run its course, and stoked the present conflict.'

쳌œ MSNBC: 'The walls are closing in on Yassir Arafat...never before have so many disparate groups of Palestinians, including those from Arafat's own Fatah movement, formed such a united front on such a clearly definable issue 쳌\ end corruption or else.'

쳌œ Arab Times (Kuwait): 'Mr Arafat should quit his position because he is the head of a corrupt authority. There is no point for him to remain in politics... He has destroyed Palestine. He has led it to terrorism, death and a hopeless situation... All Arab leaders know this fact. It won't be possible for us to gain from the Middle East road map for peace if this man remains in power.'

쳌œ BBC quoted a Jenin Martyrs' Brigade spokesman: 'With all due respect to President Arafat, the Palestinian Authority cannot continue being monopolised by [Arafat] and his relatives...we have our own ways to show our rejection.'

쳌œ Al-Quds Al-Araby (London): 'What is happening in Gaza is a healthy phenomenon because it is a revolution against corruption and the corrupt... This is a warning not only to Mr Arafat... but to all Arab regimes which subjugate their people by turning a deaf ear to their calls for comprehensive change.'

쳌œ Pravda: Under the headline, 'Nobody trusts Arafat any more,' stated that 'Everything Yasser Arafat has been doing can be described as an illusion of reforms.'

쳌œ Daily Star (Lebanon): 'Mr Arafat increasingly lacks credibility and legitimacy... He has brought Palestine to its knees by relying on symbolism rather than bringing about results.'

쳌œ And long-time Arafat apologist, United Nations envoy Terje Roed-Larsen, finally broke rank and said that the PA has 'made no progress on its core obligation to take immediate action on the ground to end violence and combat terror, and to reform and reorganize.' UN chief Kofi Annan echoed the remarks.

But The Guardian 쳌\ McGrath of Harlow's media outlet of choice 쳌\ declared in a bold July 17 headline: 'Don't Blame Arafat'

The prominent piece, by former Guardian Mideast correspondent David Hirst, not only exonerates Arafat for the collapse of peace efforts, but goes so far as to 1) accuse Israeli intelligence figures of desiring the intifada, and 2) blaming Israel for the entire US invasion of Iraq.

Even when the Guardian gets around to addressing the anti-Arafat riots, the paper's editors can't bring themselves to call for his resignation, stating it would be 'alarming' if Arafat falls from power: 'the already grievous burden imposed on Palestinians will become intolerable if the regime falls apart... Israel must offer more incentives for moderation.'

With Palestinian rejection of Arafat's corruption and cronyism placing his regime on the apparent verge of collapse, The Guardian, like CarolC and Jack the Sailor, clings to the blame-Israel rhetoric.

If the Palestinian people are going to rise above the situation they've been in for far too long, it is vital we recognize that the sad state of the Palestinian people is due first and foremost to the tragic failure of Arafat's leadership.

Subject: RE: BS: Mideast: View From the Eye of the Storm
From: CarolC
Date: 21 Jul 04 - 10:47 AM

One view, pushed relentlessly by CarolC and jack the Sailor, holds that IDF actions in the West Bank and Gaza create a desperate culture, incapable of positive development. The other, Israeli position has long been that Yassir Arafat's corrupt regime perpetuates the suffering of his own people by continually deflecting all blame upon Israel and fomenting self-defeating Palestinian terrorism.

Though world media coverage has overwhelmingly adopted the blame-Israel approach, over the past few days the Palestinian people themselves have made it clear that Yassir Arafat's corrupt regime lies at the heart of their problems. A wave of kidnappings, the resignation of Arafat's prime minister, and street violence targeting an Arafat crony drove much of the world press (including the Arab press!) to finally point the finger at Arafat:

Here's the flaw in your reasoning, GUEST, and it's big enough to drive an iceberg through...

When the Palestinians are showing their dissatisfaction with Arafat's regime, they commit these kinds of acts against other Palestinians within the Occupied Territories. When they are trying to effect change in the way they are treated by the government of Israel, they commit those kinds of acts against Israelis.

Subject: RE: BS: Mideast: View From the Eye of the Storm
From: Jack the Sailor
Date: 21 Jul 04 - 01:29 PM

Are the real people done with this topic? I'm tired enough of it. How about we go on to something else?

Subject: RE: BS: Mideast: View From the Eye of the Storm
From: GUEST
Date: 21 Jul 04 - 01:53 PM

If you, and especially your wife, goes on to something else, then the Middle East will probably disappear as a topic on Mudcat.

Subject: RE: BS: Mideast: View From the Eye of the Storm
From: CarolC
Date: 21 Jul 04 - 07:11 PM

Is that a promise, GUEST?

Subject: RE: BS: Mideast: View From the Eye of the Storm
From: Bill Hahn//\\
Date: 21 Jul 04 - 07:57 PM

Who knows if it is a promise---perhaps a hope.   Then what---you will ruminate amongst yourselves? Good idea----no disagreements by others who also hold an opinion.

Hopefully, at some point, you might visit the Metropolitan Museum or some other one---you will see all the shades there---gray being one.

Bill Hahn

Subject: RE: BS: Mideast: View From the Eye of the Storm
From: Little Brother
Date: 21 Jul 04 - 08:15 PM

Hey Jack the Sailor, sorry for the delay in getting back to you but I've been out of town the last couple of days. In answer to your question, no I'm not from the band even though I do play a little guitar. As far as a dialogue is concerned I'm afraid it will only lead to frustration on both our parts. This is a hot topic if there ever was one and we are both set in our views. We'll just have to agree to disagree.

Subject: RE: BS: Mideast: View From the Eye of the Storm
From: CarolC
Date: 21 Jul 04 - 08:17 PM

Bill H, do you have any shades of gray when it comes to people promoting lies such as "The Protocols of the Elders of Zion", or Holocaust denial? I tend to doubt it. The reason the promotion of these kinds of lies should not be tolerated is because they cause the oppression and the deaths of innocent people (mostly Jews). There should be no shade of gray about the fact that it is wrong to spread these kinds of vicious lies.

It's no different when people promote lies that cause the oppression and deaths of innocent people who are not Jewish. The historical narrative that you have been taught to you and most of the rest of us here in the US and in Israel about the history of the Middle East conflict is fiction (not unlike the American historical narrative that justifies atrocities committed against Native Americans and Blacks). It is not true. And this fiction is being used as justification for the oppression and ethnic cleansing of Palestinians and the killing of innocent people.

We're all human beings, Bill. None of us is any more exalted than any of the rest of us. Telling lies (bearing false witness) in order to promote an agenda that harms people is wrong, whether it is the Protocols of the Elders of Zion, or the lies that you have been taught about the Palestinians.

Subject: RE: BS: Mideast: View From the Eye of the Storm
From: Bill Hahn//\\
Date: 21 Jul 04 - 08:31 PM

Carol C: I think this probably will have to end the discussion. What can I say---without sound you writing sounds like a virulent and loud cacophony of sound---what did Shakespeare say----"signifying nothing".    You misrepresent my thoughts on humanity, you bring up extraneous things (Protocols of Zion---to make you sound fair minded), you bring up alleged justifications (your words) for slavery and subjagation of Native Americans. Things I, and I think no one else, on this thread ever mentioned. Obfuscation does seem to be your forte when all other arguments and the rational behaviour of others cannot be overcome. You have made some valid points---but, sadly, you denigrate them with your ranting.

So--to this thread I bid a fond ado with the thought that you have really gone over the top in your sad and obssesive debating points.

Bill Hahn

Subject: RE: BS: Mideast: View From the Eye of the Storm
From: CarolC
Date: 21 Jul 04 - 08:43 PM

Argumentum ad hominem.

Subject: RE: BS: Mideast: View From the Eye of the Storm
From: Jack the Sailor
Date: 21 Jul 04 - 08:45 PM

Bill H,

I don't think you understand what Carol is saying to you. But then with the amount of rhetoric on all sides of this debate I don't see the point in explaining. You are being insulting, perhaps that is a reflection of your frustration. It certianly makes it less enjoyable to communicate with you. All things considered, I think your "fond Adieu" is a good idea. See you around.

Subject: RE: BS: Mideast: View From the Eye of the Storm
From: Bill Hahn//\\
Date: 21 Jul 04 - 09:00 PM

Looks like you write in tandem----I do love togetherness. Adieu once again.

May peace reign---in the world, in your house (where I guess it does since you write in tandem), and in the universe.

By the way do you both sit at the key board or do you have a his and hers computer that delivers the same confirming messages? Must be crowded.

Bill

Subject: RE: BS: Mideast: View From the Eye of the Storm
From: GUEST
Date: 21 Jul 04 - 09:08 PM

Bill H,

You're far from the first sensible person who has been worn down and chased out of these discussions by CarolC (or now CarolC in her axis with Jack the Sailor). There have been many threads, many people have come and gone, and CarolC keeps posting the same stuff over and over again. Thousands and thousands of posts. Talk about an obsession.

In a nutshell, Israel and its American supporters, are the root of all evil. Zionism lobby is 100% responsible for everything that has gone wrong in the Middle East since the first Arabs arrived in, and conquered, the area in the 7th Century CE (about 3,000 years after the Jews arrived).

If you do not agree with everything that CarolC says, you are a Nazi. No question about it, you're a Nazi.

Subject: RE: BS: Mideast: View From the Eye of the Storm
From: Amos
Date: 21 Jul 04 - 09:27 PM

Guest:

I just looked at Carol's recent post in which she states, quite evenhandedly, that false statements detrimental to the repute of Palestinians/Arabs are just as bad as false statements detrimental to the repute of Jewish people.

This does not at all align with your rendition of her POV.

Do you think she's wrong about this evenhanded view?

A

Subject: RE: BS: Mideast: View From the Eye of the Storm
From: Once Famous
Date: 21 Jul 04 - 10:45 PM

I do. I think she is totally full of shit.

Thanks for asking.

Subject: RE: BS: Mideast: View From the Eye of the Storm
From: Wolfgang
Date: 22 Jul 04 - 08:45 AM

Thanks, Amos. I had read that article in German and would have started a thread about it if I had found an English version. It has an obviously one-sided but nevertheless refrehingly different point of view.

You are in no way guilty of the ballyhoo happening here. To call you implicitely dumb and racist falls back on the poster.

Too many posters here from both sides of the argument do not respond to what has actually been written but to what they want to read.

Wolfgang

Subject: RE: BS: Mideast: View From the Eye of the Storm
From: CarolC
Date: 22 Jul 04 - 11:11 AM

You're right, Wolfgang. Amos is neither dumb nor racist.

The article that opens this thread, unfortunately, is both. The following paragraph alone makes it so:

The problem is that the vast silent majority of these Moslems are not part of the terror and of the incitement but they also do not stand up against it. They become accomplices, by omission, and this applies to political leaders, intellectuals, business people and many others. Many of them can certainly tell right from wrong, but are afraid to express their views.

Let's rephrase it and see what kind of response it engenders:

The problem is that the vast silent majority of these Jews did not massacre civilians at Qibia (substitute any other atrocity committed by the Israeli government here) but they also did not stand up against it. They become accomplices, by omission, and this applies to political leaders, intellectuals, business people and many others. Many of them can certainly tell right from wrong, but are afraid to express their views.

Subject: RE: BS: Mideast: View From the Eye of the Storm
From: GUEST
Date: 22 Jul 04 - 04:02 PM

Bow about:

The problem is that CarolC did not herself kill 10,000 innocent Iraqis in the past year. But, rather than do anything about her own country's killing of civilians in a phony war of agression, she sits in her trailer writing reams of propaganda condemning a country for defending itself against the terrorists that randomly murder little girls eating pizza or riding their school bus. As an American, she is complicit in every Iraqi death, but she ignores them in favor of railing against the Israelis.

Or how about:

CarolC and Jack the Sailor live in Alabama, one of only seven states in the USA that executes children. Not just children, mentally retarded children. Despite this crime against humanity being perpetrated in their names, by their own state government, virtually in their own back yard, CarolC and Jack do nothing. Instead, they sit in their trailer writing reams of propaganda condemning a country for defending itself against the terrorists that randomly murder little girls eating pizza or riding their school bus. As Alabama residents, they are complicit every time their state executes another child.

The problem is that the vast silent majority of these Jews did not massacre civilians at Qibia (substitute any other atrocity committed by the Israeli government here) but they also did not stand up against it. They become accomplices, by omission, and this applies to political leaders, intellectuals, business people and many others. Many of them can certainly tell right from wrong, but are afraid to express their views.

Subject: RE: BS: Mideast: View From the Eye of the Storm
From: CarolC
Date: 22 Jul 04 - 04:17 PM

GUEST, since you don't live here with us, you have no way of knowing how we direct our energies when we're not posting to the Mudcat. However, here in the Mudcat, I am just as critical of my own country's actions as I am of the actions of the government of Israel. My posting history has plenty of condemnations of the crimes against humanity committed by my own government.

In both cases, I have a responsibility to speak up. Against my own country, because I am a citizen here with voting rights and as a taxpayer. In the case of Israel, because Israel would not be able to commit the acts I criticize without the money given it by the US taxpayers, me included.

If you accept the premise of the author of the article that opens this thread, then you must accept the premise that I have not only a right to speak up, but a responsibility. Otherwise, I am complicit. You can't have it both ways.

Neither the US or Israel is acting in self defense. The US and Israel are both agressor countries. And I do condemn the practice of capitol punishment in any states of the US where it is practiced. Especially when it is practiced against minors and/or the mentally handicapped.

Subject: RE: BS: Mideast: View From the Eye of the Storm
From: Peace
Date: 26 Jul 04 - 02:23 AM

So what Palestinians are doing is self defense?

Subject: RE: BS: Mideast: View From the Eye of the Storm
From: CarolC
Date: 26 Jul 04 - 12:00 PM

Brucie, they are under occupation. They have no civil rights of any sort. No rights as human beings whatever. Their lives are completely subject to the whims of the members of the IDF who occupy their land (many of whom are barely out of their teens), who enforce the checkpoints arbitrarily and with blatant disregard for human rights, checkpoints that, according to many members of the IDF even, serve absolutely purpose from a security standpoint. People die because of the arbitrary enforcement of closures. Pregnant women lose their babies because they can't get to a hospital in time to get the medical attention they need while in labor. Their homes are continually being destroyed and their land confiscated, in many cases so that Israeli settlers can build segregated, Jewish only, settlements, accessed by Jewish only roads.

Their water is stolen from them so that the settlers can fill their swimming pools and water their lawns, while water to the Palestinians is rationed so tightly, they aren't even able to meet the most basic household needs. They are subjected to collective punishment on a daily basis. If someone was doing all of these things to you and your family, and you resisted, even with force of arms, would you consider yourself to be acting in self-defense?

Subject: RE: BS: Mideast: View From the Eye of the Storm
From: CarolC
Date: 26 Jul 04 - 12:03 PM

Correction. This statement:

according to many members of the IDF even, serve absolutely purpose from a security standpoint.

Should read:

according to many members of the IDF even, serve absolutely no purpose from a security standpoint.

Subject: RE: BS: Mideast: View From the Eye of the Storm
From: GUEST,Yes, I am a Cunning Ham, I am
Date: 26 Jul 04 - 12:19 PM



What CarolC chooses not to mention about why pregnant women are subject to checkpoints is that there have been multiple instances of Palestinian homocide/suicide bombers disguised as pregnant women, in several cases riding in Red Crescent ambulances, who have been responsible for many murders and maimings of innocent children, women and men in Israel.

Their homes are continually being destroyed and their land confiscated, in many cases so that Israeli settlers can build segregated, Jewish only, settlements, accessed by Jewish only roads.

Personally, I'm against the settlements and believe that most should be dismantled. However, what CarolC says here is a hate-mongering lie. Palestinian homes that are destryoyed -- again something that I'm against -- are those that have been shown to be involved in terrorist activities. There have been no cases of Israeli settlements being built on the grounds of these destroyed homes.

Subject: RE: BS: Mideast: View From the Eye of the Storm
From: CarolC
Date: 26 Jul 04 - 12:31 PM

What CarolC chooses not to mention about why pregnant women are subject to checkpoints is that there have been multiple instances of Palestinian homocide/suicide bombers disguised as pregnant women, in several cases riding in Red Crescent ambulances, who have been responsible for many murders and maimings of innocent children, women and men in Israel.

Perhaps in some cases, but in most cases it's just arbitrary decisions made at the whim of IDF soldiers. Even some members of the IDF admit this.

However, what CarolC says here is a hate-mongering lie. Palestinian homes that are destryoyed -- again something that I'm against -- are those that have been shown to be involved in terrorist activities. There have been no cases of Israeli settlements being built on the grounds of these destroyed homes.

This is pure bullshit. There are even homes for settlers that are being placed on top off existing Palestinian homes... while the Palestinians are still living in them.

Brucie, you're a sadist. Having a slow day are you? Looking to have some fun at the expense of others? Thought you'd give someone a poke just so you could see them jump?

Subject: RE: BS: Mideast: View From the Eye of the Storm
From: CarolC
Date: 26 Jul 04 - 12:40 PM

And of course the thousands of Palestinians homes that have been destroyed for the purpose of building the Jewish only access roads for the settlements, and the thousands of Palestinian homes and orchards that have been razed to the ground to provide "security" for the settlements, are still destroyed because of the settlements, whether a settler's home gets built on the spot where the Palestinian home use to stand or not. If the settlements weren't there, the Palestinians' homes would not have been destroyed.

Subject: RE: BS: Mideast: View From the Eye of the Storm
From: GUEST,Yes, I am a Cunning Ham, I am
Date: 26 Jul 04 - 12:43 PM

CarolC makes a lot of unfounded charges.

Can you provide some sources for your information, CarolC, so we can have a look at it ourselves? That's pretty standard procedure in serious discussions here in the Mudcat.

Subject: RE: BS: Mideast: View From the Eye of the Storm
From: CarolC
Date: 26 Jul 04 - 12:52 PM

No problem, GUEST. I'll have them for you some time in the next hour or two.

Subject: RE: BS: Mideast: View From the Eye of the Storm
From: CarolC
Date: 26 Jul 04 - 01:09 PM

I'll provide the documentation later this afternoon. I'm working on the Pollard thread right now.

Subject: RE: BS: Mideast: View From the Eye of the Storm
From: Bill Hahn//\\
Date: 26 Jul 04 - 04:43 PM

You are really busy---this seems to be a career move at this point.

Bill Hahn

Subject: RE: BS: Mideast: View From the Eye of the Storm
From: CarolC
Date: 26 Jul 04 - 05:10 PM

Here's a little bit to get you started. I'll post more as time permits.

http://www.antiwar.com/hacohen/h021903.html

"So far, the junta's policy has proven quite effective. Driven away by economic strangulation and fear of settlers' violence, the population of 12.000 Palestinians who inhabited Hebron's Old City has dwindled to 5.000 souls since the division of the city in 1997. As for H1 in its entirety, Israeli Channel 1 estimated last week that 20.000 out of its 40.000 Palestinians left their homes. The camera showed rows of Palestinian houses with windows left broken in spite of the cold winter, a clear evidence for a successful policy of ethnic cleansing.

Deserted houses are then taken over by settlers, who get the chance to harass the next row of Palestinian neighbours. Depicting Hebron as a purely Jewish city, the maps of Israel's Foreign Office are thus not just a distortion of reality: they express both a desire and an actual policy of ethnic cleansing, which is carried out with horrendous efficacy in this terrorised Palestinian city. PS: I am well aware of standard Israeli propaganda, so anti-Palestinian readers need not bother to remind me of the 67 Jews massacred in Hebron back in 1929. May they rest in peace. Their children and grandchildren (none of whom is among the present Hebron settlers) have repeatedly condemned the atrocities carried out by the settlers, who claim to be heirs to the massacred, but in fact desecrate their very memory by their crimes."

– Ran HaCohen

http://www.acay.com.au/~stphil/olivegrove.html

"Living conditions in Hebron are hard to describe adequately. It is one of the few cities in the West Bank where Jewish Israeli settlers actually live within the city, and we see signs of the stress everywhere we go. The town has been divided into two sectors, H1, which is theoretically under the jurisdiction of the Palestinian National Authority, and H2, which is governed by Israel. Many Palestinians have relocated from sector H2 to sector H1, and our guide tells us that most Palestinians believe that the government of Israel wants to force all of the Palestinian residents out of H2. Currently about 60,000 Palestinians live in H1, while about 40,000 live in H2, along with 400 Israeli Jewish settlers, protected by 2000 soldiers.

This heavy military presence leads to a powder-keg feeling that we notice immediately walking through the streets of the city. The main street is clogged, not only with boisterous automobile traffic, but with a makeshift market set up right in the middle of the avenue. The old marketplace stands almost empty from shop closures ordered by the army, while resilient merchants try to earn their living by moving sales out into the thoroughfare.

Above the streets are the homes of the Israeli settlers, many built right on top of Palestinian homes. This proximity contributes to the strained atmosphere. Palestinian residents have roofed the streets with metal fencing to catch garbage, bricks, and rocks which are thrown at them from above by the settlers. As we pass under, we see places where the fencing has been dented by huge chunks of concrete."

http://www.findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m0JQP/is_2002_August/ai_90530493

http://www.cpt.org/archives/2004/jan04/0028.html

Subject: RE: BS: Mideast: View From the Eye of the Storm
From: mg
Date: 26 Jul 04 - 10:48 PM

I can see why in cases of terrorism Palestinian homes or buildings might need to be destroyed. I can not think of a military reason why anyone on any side of the issue would be safer by then putting in settlers on the property. What should happen, as far as I can figure out, is in those cases, that the farm should revert to farm land. Barring that, something like a playground, soccor field, community garden or something. As much as possible, it should be farmed by the Palestinian farmers, under the watchful eyes of guards who would both protect them from harm and protect others from any harm they could do. If they need to build watchtowers or whatever, then they need to. They do not need to build homes and put other people there to add insult to injury and increase the chances of harrassment, blockades to their farms etc. Any farmers, workers etc. should have save passage, probably with military escort, to their destinations, but they should also be run through checkpoints and probably have to leave tools etc. in a secure place so they can travel back and forth with as little baggage as possible. As far as ambulances, I have already said that there probably needs to be a transfer to an Israeli ambulance at a heavily armed checkpoint. Unfortunate, but that is the best answer I can come up with right now.

mg

Subject: RE: BS: Mideast: View From the Eye of the Storm
From: CarolC
Date: 27 Jul 04 - 01:11 PM

Here's some more of the documentation I promised:

http://www.palestinemonitor.org/Special%20Section/Closure/hatred_despair_fomented.htm

Where hatred and despair are fomented
By Gideon Levy
Ha'aretz
January 18, 2004

"All of the Israel Defense Forces checkpoints in the occupied territories are immoral and illegitimate. Therefore, they must be removed unconditionally. There is no place to discuss their security value. Even if someone were to succeed in proving that a connection exists between locking residents in their villages and preventing terrorist attacks in Israel - which is highly doubtful - that would make no difference one way or the other. A law-abiding state does not adopt immoral and illegitimate measures, whatever their value.

Equally irrelevant is the discussion about the physical conditions that exist at the checkpoints. Disgraceful as they are, improving them will add nothing to their legitimacy. The only question is why checkpoints exist deep in occupied territory? By what right? Only to satisfy the settlers and abuse the Palestinians? The question of whether the orders that IDF soldiers receive at the checkpoints are legal is also irrelevant. Is the soldier who let an injured boy go through the checkpoint at Beit Iba last week, but prevented the passage of a man who had a slipped disc moral? The answer is unimportant. The very fact that he is posted there, and the authority he is given to routinely deprive people of their basic right to move about freely in their country and in their village is immoral. So the IDF initiative to post Arabic-speaking soldiers at checkpoints is ludicrous. Depriving someone of his rights in Arabic is hardly any more just.

A state that defines itself as a democracy and law-abiding country does not imprison three-and-a-half million people in their villages and towns, slice up their country into strips, and declare roads for the use of Jews only. In Israel, though, the illegitimacy of the checkpoints is not enough to get them removed. The only discussion one occasionally hears has to do solely with their usefulness to security and the need to improve the soldiers' behavior.

A special committee that was established not long ago by the government coordinator of activities in the territories is examining the actions at four different IDF checkpoints. There is no need for a committee; all that has to be done is to dismantle them. Another initiative by Meretz MK Roman Bronfman, who last week convened a group of MKs that will visit IDF checkpoints and monitor events there, is praiseworthy. Like the article in Haaretz by former Tel Aviv mayor and retired major general Shlomo Lahat, who described what he saw at checkpoints, this new parliamentary initiative will be able to generate interest over what happens there. The MKs will see with their own eyes and will report to the public about the soldiers' behavior, the women in labor who are made to wait endlessly, the women who are forced to tell soldiers that they are bleeding so their hearts will soften, and the boy who tries to persuade a soldier to let him pass so he can visit his grandfather. But this welcome initiative must not focus on improving the conditions at the checkpoints; it must focus on getting them removed altogether.

Since the dawn of the occupation, the Palestinians have not been subjected to a harsher decree than the one that deprives them freedom of movement. The dozens of internal checkpoints in the West Bank and Gaza Strip have been augmented by hundreds of other obstacles: concrete blocks, earth ramparts, locked iron gates, fences, walls, surprise roadblocks, trenches and pits - a whole array of imprisonment methods. There is no other nation in the world today that is as incarcerated as the Palestinians have been, by us, for years. However, the majority of Israelis don't have a clue about the scale of the incarceration. The confusion that exists between the checkpoints on the 1967 Green Line, which are legitimate because they are the gates of entry into the country, and the internal checkpoints, which make up the majority and have no other purpose than to make life miserable for the population, helps blur the dimensions of the wickedness. Far from the eye, at checkpoints deep inside the West Bank and Gaza Strip an entire people is being subjected to humiliation as a matter of routine. This has nothing to do with security - or perhaps it does: the checkpoints are the great hothouse of terrorism. It is there that the hatred and the despair are fomented. "Humanitarian officers at the checkpoints?" That is a phrase that is as much an unacceptable internal contradiction as "enlightened occupation."

It's hard to imagine what it means to go through a checkpoint day in and day out - between Ramat Hasharon and Tel Aviv, say - with a foreign soldier who humiliates you, a huge line, and a good chance of being shamefully expelled back to where you came. In this spectacle, even the most humanitarian soldier plays a distinctly inhuman role. One day we will yet have to answer the questions that are not even on the public agenda now: Who gave us the right to control the fate of another people? By what right have we imprisoned millions of people for years? When that happens, the question of whether the soldier allowed the woman in labor to pass, or whether he knew Arabic, will become secondary, as it should be.:

http://www.un.org/unrwa/emergency/stories/deirammar.html

"Mustafa outlines some of the main problems encountered on a daily basis: the checkpoints, the UNRWA ID and the permits issued by the IDF granting passage into Israel or on the so-called 'settler roads' inside the West Bank. He says that with regard to the checkpoints, the fact that he is driving a clearly marked UN vehicle is of little consequence at crossing checkpoints. He maintains that if he ever tried to jump the inordinate queues at checkpoints to exercise his rights under the privileges and immunities accorded to UN staff members, the IDF would detain him.

He complains that the UN IDs don't help either. "UNRWA issues a number of different IDs and many times the IDF maintain that my ID is fake," he says. "It causes a lot of delay before they check our IDs and let us pass."

The permits issued by the IDF to enter Israel or use 'settler roads' inside the West Bank are often of little use. He says, "The IDF don't recognize their own documents and it makes no difference if we do or do not carry these permits. If the soldier at the checkpoint doesn't want to let us pass, we just don't pass."

"But," says Mustafa, "the delays are not our main concern. Traveling in the West Bank in a UN marked car is dangerous." He explains that while driving on 'settler roads' the mini-van carrying the mobile team is frequently stoned by Israeli settlers. Prior to the shooting last week in Ramallah there were two other incidents involving IDF firing shots at or in the direction of the UNRWA mini-van. "The problem is," says Mustafa, "that there is little official appreciation for the trouble UNRWA staff have to go through on a daily basis just to go to work.""

http://www.btselem.org/English/Freedom_of_Movement/Background.asp

http://www.btselem.org/English/Testimonies/index.asp

http://www.btselem.org/English/Testimonies/040111_Soldiers_Beat_Medic_Jamal_Abu_Hamade_near_Ofra.asp

http://www.btselem.org/English/Security_Forces_Violence/index.asp

Violence by Security Forces (B'Tselem)

"Violence against Palestinians by Israeli security forces is not new, and has accompanied the occupation for many years. However, the outbreak of the al-Aqsa intifada resulted in a significant increase in the number of beatings and abuse, in part because of the increased friction between Palestinians and Israeli security forces. According to many testimonies given to B'Tselem and other human rights organizations, the security forces use violence, at times gross violence, against Palestinians unnecessarily and without justification.

Most cases involve a "small dose" of ill-treatment, such as a slap, a kick, an insult, a pointless delay at checkpoints, or degrading treatment. These acts have become an integral part of Palestinian life in the Occupied Territories. However, from time to time, cases of severe brutality occur.

Many instances of abuse are not exposed because they have become the norm, and, for Palestinians, filing complaints is very time consuming. Furthermore, many Palestinian, primarily those who entered Israel without a permit, even refrain from filing complaints in cases of severe brutality because they fear that filing the complaint will harm them. Based on past experience, many do not file complaints because of lack of trust in the system, which tends not to believe them and to protect, rather than prosecute, those who injured them. The numerous restrictions on movement imposed by Israel in the Occupied Territories make it very difficult for Palestinians who want to file complaints to do so.

Israeli law, like international law, allows security forces to use reasonable force in self-defense and for duty-related purposes, such as dispersing rioters, arresting suspects resisting arrest, and preventing a detainee from fleeing. However, the law does not allow beatings, degradation, or ill-treatment of persons who are not rioting, resisting arrest, or fleeing. Also, the requirement that reasonable force be used in those instances where force is allowed demands that the measures taken be limited in severity to that which is necessary to prevent commission of the offense.

The acts described in testimonies given to B'Tselem and to other human rights organizations deviate greatly from what the law allows and constitute flagrant violations of human rights. In this context, an Israeli district court held that, "The exercise of illegal force by police officers is a phenomenon characteristic of regimes that are abhorrent, and undemocratic, of the kind that trample on human rights. It is misuse of the [police officer's] function."

Cases of beatings and abuse receive special condemnation. For example, the former Minister of Public Security, Shlomo Ben-Ami stated: "I relate with great severity to brutality by police officers. I think that that, among the possible sins committed by the police, this is gravest, because the police cannot fight violence by employing violence against citizens." Regarding another incident, in which a soldier beat a settler from Kedumim, the IDF Spokespersons responded that, "The IDF views with great severity the case and violence by IDF soldiers."

However, these condemnations remain solely declarative, while security forces, misusing their power, continue to abuse and beat Palestinians, among them minors. Both the army and the Border Police have yet to make it unequivocally clear to security forces serving in the Occupied Territories that it is absolutely forbidden to abuse and beat Palestinians, and their educational and information actions in this regard have been more lip service than a frank and honest attempt to uproot the phenomenon once and for all.

Until a few years ago, the Israel Police Force itself investigated claims of police brutality. In 1992, handling of these claims was transferred to the Department for the Investigation of Police (DIP), of the Ministry of Justice. B'Tselem forwards to the DIP testimonies it receives regarding police brutality against Palestinians, and requests that the matter be investigated and that the offending police officers be prosecuted. In many cases, the DIP responds that the file is closed, for reasons such as "offender unknown" or "insufficient proof." At times, the DIP decides to close a file following an incomplete investigation or when the complainant was unable to reach DIP offices to give testimony because the complainant's request to enter Israel was rejected. In cases where police officers are prosecuted, they receive light sentences.

The defense establishment's refusal to issue a message of this kind to forces serving in the Occupied Territories has far-reaching consequences. If a message is sent to security forces, it is that, even if the establishment does not accept acts of violence, it will not take measures against those who commit them. The effect of such a message is that the lives and dignity of Palestinians are meaningless and that security forces can continue, pursuant to the function they serve, to abuse, humiliate, and beat Palestinians with whom they come into contact."

Subject: RE: BS: Mideast: View From the Eye of the Storm
From: Little Brother
Date: 27 Jul 04 - 02:49 PM

Carol, you keep referring to the term Occupied Territory. Since when is land captured in a war "occupied territory"? Read your history. And if you want to know the truth, many Arab people prefer living as Israeli citizens in Israel as opposed to being "free" in Palestine territory. They have good jobs and live in decent housing and are afforded all the benefits that any Israeli citizen has. How do I know this? Because I've been to Israel over 20 times. My parents are retired and live there. If you want to refer to Israel as "occupiers" and least have the fairness to call them "benevolent occupiers."

Subject: RE: BS: Mideast: View From the Eye of the Storm
From: Little Brother
Date: 27 Jul 04 - 03:05 PM

The article on violence by security forces is an utter lie. In my recent visits to Israel I've observed many of these checkpoints and so no evidence of abuse. The soldiers were doing their job in a polite and professionasl manner. All your posts are based on heresay and you use every opportunity to put Israel in a bad light. As far as a neccesity of these checkpoints are concerned are you advocating that terrorists should have a clear road into Israeli land to do their dirty work. If you would visit the Israeli news web sites you would read about the dozens of terror acts that have been foiled by Israeli security at these checkpoints every week. You only read about the successful acts in the world media, you never read about the foiled attempts.

Subject: RE: BS: Mideast: View From the Eye of the Storm
From: Jack the Sailor
Date: 27 Jul 04 - 03:08 PM

It is officailly "occupied territory." because Israel cannot claim the land without accepting or ejecting the people living on the territory. If they accept them, the number of "Arab People" living in Israel would have huge political power. After the next election Israel would no longer a "Jewish State". Ejecting the people is proving to be problematic because a majority of Israelis and almost all of the world is against that course of action. So Israel continues to occupy the land with her military but not to officially "claim" the land as the spoils of war.

Would you care to explain your definition of "benevolent"?

Subject: RE: BS: Mideast: View From the Eye of the Storm
From: CarolC
Date: 27 Jul 04 - 03:34 PM

I find it interesting that you call what I've posted "hearsay", Little Brother, considering that most of them are first-hand testimonies given by the people who had these experiences.

Here are some first-hand accounts from members of the IDF.

http://www.refusersolidarity.net/default.asp?content_new=shovrim_shtika

http://www.refusersolidarity.net/

And you didn't read the articles very carefully.. If you had, you would have noticed that much of the problem with the checkpoints happens at checkpoints that are placed far inside of the West Bank and Gaza and do not separate Palestinians from entrance into Israel, but that prevent Palestinians from traveling to different locations within the West Bank and Gaza. How much time have you spent inside of the West Bank and Gaza?

More documentation:

http://www.btselem.org/English/Testimonies/020418_Death_of_Dunya_Shtiye.asp

http://www.btselem.org/English/Obstructing_Medical_Treatment/Testimonies.asp

You are entirely incorrect about Arab-Israelis enjoying the same rights as Israeli Jews. There are many laws in Israel that discriminate against Arab/Israelis. For instance, laws governing ownership of land, and laws that prevent Palestinians from the West Bank, Gaza, and East Jerusalem from living with their Israeli spouses in Israel.

And to add to what JtS posted in response to your question about occupation, after the US invaded Iraq last year, Iraq was under occupation until the US handed sovereignty back to the Iraqis recently (on paper, anyway). Had the US stayed in Iraq and colonized it with Americans, as well as exerting control over the rights of the native Iraqis, that would have been an equivalent situation to what has been happening in the West Bank, Gaza, and East Jerusalem since 1967. And if the US had done what Israel is doing in the "Occupied Territories", it would be in violation of the Geneva convention, to which it is a signatory, just as Israel is in violation of the Geneva Convention, to which Israel is a signatory.

If Israel really wanted security, it would end the occupation and move it's military forces to the Israeli side of the Green Line.

Subject: RE: BS: Mideast: View From the Eye of the Storm
From: Little Brother
Date: 27 Jul 04 - 03:58 PM

Even so Carol, they are an exception rather than the rule. You can't condemn the whole security force because of a few bad apples.

Subject: RE: BS: Mideast: View From the Eye of the Storm
From: Little Brother
Date: 27 Jul 04 - 04:05 PM

Jack, when the arabs were in control of Jerusalem the Jews were forbidden to pray at their holy places and their synagogues were bombed. Israel on the other hand have given them free reign on all their holy places. Do you remember when the terrorists were holed up in a church in Bethlehem the Israeli forces did not attack out of respect for the church. I wonder if they would have chosen the same restraint. The Israelis are not the "barbarians" you make them out to be.

Subject: RE: BS: Mideast: View From the Eye of the Storm
From: CarolC
Date: 27 Jul 04 - 04:39 PM

Little Brother, they are not the exception. The Palestinians in the West Bank, Gaza, and East Jerusalem have no human rights whatsoever. The Israeli government has power over every single aspect of their daily lives. They are very cruelly oppressed by the government of Israel. This kind of behavior is systematic and calculated to produce a specific result. I challenge you to read the testimonies from the people who have been subjected to this behavior on a daily basis, as well as from the members of the IDF who have spoken out about it.

Would you be willing to live under the conditions that the Palestinians in the West Bank, Gaza, and East Jerusalem are subjected to at the hands of the Israeli government? I doubt it. If not, why do you feel Israel has a right to subject others to these conditions?

Subject: RE: BS: Mideast: View From the Eye of the Storm
From: CarolC
Date: 27 Jul 04 - 05:17 PM

These are the words of a young Israeli Jew who has spent time in the "Occupied Territories", not as a member of the IDF, and a young Israeli Jew who has spent time in Hebron as a member of the IDF...

http://www.refusersolidarity.net/default.asp?content_new=one_story_dt

To the Minister of Defense, Shaul Mofaz
From Daniel Tsal, ID 7-20015889
Re: My refusal to enlist in the IDF

"I hereby request to be released from mandatory service in the IDF due to reasons of conscience, and to allow me, instead, to do alternative service outside the army. If I should not be enabled to be thus exempted I shall be obliged to refuse service.

I considered this decision in the course of the past half year and made it after much hesitation, with a growing knowledge that no decision I make will be perfect and only as good as possible in the face of the complicated current situation of our country. In-depth study of what has happened and is happening in our region has led me to see that this step of refusal is legitimate and even necessary. It is not an act of subversion directed against the very foundations of democracy. The principles of the "only democracy in the Middle East" have become void of meaning as a result of the trampling of the rights of about three million people, and more indirectly, of the ongoing destruction of the foundations on which the State of Israel is supposed to be based.

During the past few months I have read a great deal on the issue, visited the occupied territories a number of times, volunteered for Halonot – an organization that enables cooperation between Israeli and Palestinian youth and carries out humanitarian work in the occupied territories. I also participated in some Ta'ayush activities and have witnessed my mother's work with CheckpointWatch. Once I witnessed the daily routines of the occupation I realized that I was not living in a civilized country which is waging a legitimate war upon its enemy, but rather, in a country that ethnically segregates between populations, so that some enjoy basic rights while the others are deprived of the most fundamental rights.

In a sense, when visiting checkpoints, I had a harder time watching a "well functioning" one than being present at a "problematic" spot, where IDF soldiers acted more violently than usual and prompted intervention from human rights activists. When I witnessed a boy who had only just finished high school calling the next in line, and with a condescending expression telling him to open his bag, I perceived the silent truth, the truth of the occupation: Nineteen year old boys who dominate an entire population, men, women and children.

I believe that if more Israeli girls and boys, before conscription, would come to the Palestinian villages under the Israeli occupation, the number of draft refusers would increase. A lot more people would realize how one-sided their education through the schools and media has been. A lot less people would accept military service as our obvious duty, and they would, perhaps, see that this army is no longer a "defense force" but has become an occupying force.

In such historical times, a sane individual must rise up against the system that makes the ongoing oppression possible. I have a moral obligation – not a choice but an obligation - to refuse to participate in the occupation and to struggle against the institutions that cancel such basic human rights. Any sane person, who has not yet been wholly overcome by fear and racism, must by dint of his basic humanity refuse to be part of an occupying and oppressive system such as the IDF has become.

Of course I don't for a moment believe that by refusing to be part of the military system I am relieved of responsibility for what is going on here and blameless. But the IDF is the main active tool used by the government in carrying out the above crimes and in continuing this insufferable occupation. And now I am called upon to take active part in that system. I consider every military role – whether it is doing combat service at the checkpoints or working in military offices in Tel Aviv – as complicit with the crime that is being committed here.

For the reasons stated above I hereby request to be released from military service and be allowed to perform alternative service outside the army."

http://www.refusersolidarity.net/default.asp?content_new=shovrim_shtika

Shovrim Shtika - Breaking the Silence: Soldiers Speak Out About their Service in Hebron

"Recently, we were released from active military duty. Hebron was the hardest, most confusing place we served. Until now, each of us dealt with the difficult things we saw there on our own. Our photo albums - souvenirs from the time we spent in Hebron - have remained, until now, sealed on our respective bedroom shelves. Since we were released, we came to realize that these memories are common to all the guys who served alongside us. We decided to speak out. We decided to tell our stories. Hebron is not on another planet; it's an hour's drive from Jerusalem. But Hebron is light years from Tel Aviv. So we decided to bring Hebron to Tel Aviv. Now, its up to you to come, look, and listen. To understand what's going on there...

...If I'm standing at a checkpoint that prevents people from going somewhere, somewhere it's obvious they need to get to, like from the grocery store to their house, and they can't get there because I'm standing in their way, it really doesn't matter how polite I am. I don't have to behave cruelly for it to be unjust. I can be the most courteous person in the world and still be unfair. Because from their point of view, it makes no difference if I'm a nice guy. I still don't let them go home. What difference does it make if I try to be nice? Or humiliate them? The very existence of the checkpoint is humiliating.

As long as I'm doing my duty according to the regulations, something completely legal, I'm doing something that is inflicting pain on people, harming them unnecessarily. I guard, or enable the existence of, 500 Jewish settlers at the expense of 15,000 people under direct occupation in the H2 area and another 140,000-160,000 in the surrounding areas of Hebron. It makes no difference whatsoever how pleasant I am to them or how pleasant my company commander is, it simply… won't make it any better. I will still be their enemy. There will still be a conflict between us. And sometimes, the fact that I may be nice to them will only cause me trouble because then they'll have someone to argue with, someone to turn to. But there is nothing I can tell them. You can't go through the checkpoint because you can't, and that's it!! It's an order, based on security considerations.

As long as you want to protect these 500 people, that's what you have to do. As long as you want to keep these folks in Hebron alive and enable them to go about their existence in a reasonable manner, you have to destroy the reasonable existence of all the rest. There's no alternative. For the most part, these are real security considerations. They're not imaginary. If you want to protect them from being shot at from above, you have to occupy all the hills around them. There are people living on those hills. They have to be subdued, they have to be detained, they have to be hurt at times. But as long as the government has decided that the settlement in Hebron will remain in tact, even without undue cruelty, the cruelty is there, and it doesn't matter whether or not we act nice."

Subject: RE: BS: Mideast: View From the Eye of the Storm
From: Little Brother
Date: 27 Jul 04 - 05:38 PM

You only have the arabs to blame. If they would stop shooting at innocent Israeli civilians these check points would be unnecessary. IDF stands for Israeli Defense Force meaning they are defending their citizens. If you know a better way then please tell. Why don't you shed some light instead of cursing the darkness?

Subject: RE: BS: Mideast: View From the Eye of the Storm
From: CarolC
Date: 27 Jul 04 - 06:12 PM

You've got it the wrong way around, Little Brother. The only reason they are shooting at Israelis is because they want the Israelis to end the occupation. If Israel would end the occupation, the attacks on Israelis would no longer serve any purpose.

IDF stands for Israeli Defense Force meaning they are defending their citizens. If you know a better way then please tell. Why don't you shed some light instead of cursing the darkness?

I already have, about a half dozen times on this thread alone. The answer is...

END THE OCCUPATION

Subject: RE: BS: Mideast: View From the Eye of the Storm
From: beardedbruce
Date: 27 Jul 04 - 06:22 PM

WASHINGTON (AP) - A major American Muslim charity and seven of its senior officers were charged Tuesday with illegally funneling millions of dollars to support Hamas, a Palestinian terrorist organization blamed for dozens of deadly suicide bomber attacks in Israel.

WASHINGTON (AP) - A major American Muslim charity and seven of its senior office


According to the indictment, Holy Land's main officers met with other Hamas activists in October 1993 to figure out how to back Hamas and also conceal their true aims from authorities.


``The attendees noted the danger of attracting the terrorist perception, which would undoubtedly compromise their efforts in supporting violent jihad (Muslim holy war),'' the indictment said.


Fund-raising events were held at mosques, conventions, seminars and other programs in which speakers, including some of the Holy Land defendants, ``performed skits and songs which advocated the destruction of the state of Israel and glorified the killing of Jewish people,'' the indictment says.

Subject: RE: BS: Mideast: View From the Eye of the Storm
From: CarolC
Date: 27 Jul 04 - 06:30 PM

This is what Ami Ayalon, former head of Israeli Shin Bet has to say about ending the occupation:

"I favor unconditional withdrawal from the Territories -- preferably in the context of an agreement, but not necessarily: what needs to be done, urgently, is to withdraw from the Territories. And a true withdrawal, which gives the Palestinians territorial continuity in a Transjordan linked to Gaza, open to Egypt and Jordan. If they proclaim their own state, Israel should be the first to recognize it and to propose state to state negotiations, without conditions, on the basis of the Clinton proposals, to resolve all pending problems."


Here's the whole interview with Ami Ayalon:

http://www.coalitionofwomen4peace.org/articles/ami-ayalon.htm

Subject: RE: BS: Mideast: View From the Eye of the Storm
From: CarolC
Date: 27 Jul 04 - 06:50 PM

Where is Israel's Daniel Ellsberg? (Haaretz)   

http://www.haaretzdaily.com/hasen/pages/ShArt.jhtml?itemNo=234122&contrassID=assID=0&listSrc=Y&itemNo=234122

By Akiva Eldar

"Daniel Ellsberg, the U.S. Department of Defense official who in 1971 leaked classified documents subsequently known as the Pentagon Papers to The New York Times, has recently published his memoirs. The book presents evidence showing that for 23 years, five U.S. presidents waged a war (in Indochina) they knew America could never win.

In a tape recording, Lyndon Johnson is heard saying to a friend that he does not believe that the Vietnamese will ever surrender. "At the same time, he sent young men to their deaths," Ellsberg bemoans, reminding us that 58,000 U.S. soldiers and more than 2 million Asian civilians lost their lives in that very war...

...According to Ellsberg, Ariel Sharon's war-on-terror policy is costing the lives of more Israelis than it is saving, and his opinion has significant backing from among the upper echelons of the Israeli establishment. The ongoing decline in moral standards is indeed eroding their strength, but in backrooms, there are still experts who are saying things and even writing papers indicating that top-level political and military officials are knowingly feeding the public with falsehoods. In their assessments of the current situation, no inkling of a basis can be found for the promise that Palestinian terror can be stopped without Israel putting an end to the occupation."

Subject: RE: BS: Mideast: View From the Eye of the Storm
From: Jack the Sailor
Date: 27 Jul 04 - 07:08 PM

Jack, when the arabs were in control of Jerusalem the Jews were forbidden to pray at their holy places and their synagogues were bombed. Israel on the other hand have given them free reign on all their holy places. Do you remember when the terrorists were holed up in a church in Bethlehem the Israeli forces did not attack out of respect for the church. I wonder if they would have chosen the same restraint. The Israelis are not the "barbarians" you make them out to be.

I didn't make anyone out to be a barbarian. I simple explained why the "occupied territories" are called that instead of part of Israel. You asked, I answered.

Subject: RE: BS: Mideast: View From the Eye of the Storm
From: Alonzo M. Zilch (inactive)
Date: 27 Jul 04 - 08:09 PM

You've got it the wrong way around, Little Brother. The only reason they are shooting at Israelis is because they want the Israelis to end the occupation. If Israel would end the occupation, the attacks on Israelis would no longer serve any purpose.

I want the occupation to end too. I hope it does, and soon.

However, Palestinian terrorism started long before the occupation began and groups like Hamas have categorically stated that every inch of Israel belongs to them and they will stop at nothing until they have reclaimed every inch of Israel.

May I suggest that you read the Hamas Charter before declaring how and when Palestinian resistance to Israel will stop. Clearly, the Palestinians own words speak for themselves.

The Hamas Charter

Subject: RE: BS: Mideast: View From the Eye of the Storm
From: Little Brother
Date: 27 Jul 04 - 09:41 PM

Carol dear, the occupation has nothing to do with the shootings. Arabs were always attacking Jews in Hebron long before the occupation. Have you ever heard about the 1929 Arab massacre of innocent Jews in Hebron. What was their excuse then??

Subject: RE: BS: Mideast: View From the Eye of the Storm
From: Little Brother
Date: 27 Jul 04 - 09:50 PM

Alonzo is very right. These groups don't want a Palestinian state alongside an Israeli state living in peace. They want a Palestinian state with no Israel. If the Palestinians are so interested in having their state why don't they do more to wipe these groups out. Not only are they not wiping them out but are funding them in secret. Where do you think a lot of American money given to help rebuild the Palestinians went to? Certainly not to the Palestinians.

Subject: RE: BS: Mideast: View From the Eye of the Storm
From: Little Brother
Date: 27 Jul 04 - 09:54 PM

And Carol, besides, Hebron is not part of the occupied territories.

Subject: RE: BS: Mideast: View From the Eye of the Storm
From: CarolC
Date: 27 Jul 04 - 09:55 PM

I'll answer Little Brother first.

The Arabs who committed that atrocity were wrong, obviously. Their greivances were legitimate, but their methods were not. Their grievances were that they were having their homes sold out from under them by absentee landlords to the European immigrants who were also disposessing them of their livelihoods.

However, the people who committed that atrocity should have been the ones who were punished for it, not all of the Palestinian people for all time.

Unfortunately, the Arab man who was the leader of the group of Arab extremists who committed that massacre was pardoned by an Englishman who was of Jewish ancestry, and then appointed by him to the position of Mufti, against the wishes of the majority of the Arabs in the region. The Mufti then went on to commit further atrocities against both European Jews, as well as Palestinians. And the Palestinians have been punished ever since for the actions of this man, whom they didn't even want, and who was appointed to his position of power by a Jew. Can you imagine how they might feel pretty victimized by this? Maybe it's time to stop collectively punishing the Palestinians for something that they, collectively, had no control over.

And I do have the historical documentation to back up my assertions.

Subject: RE: BS: Mideast: View From the Eye of the Storm
From: Little Brother
Date: 27 Jul 04 - 10:04 PM

Carol, you seem to have an answer for everything. I'm impressed. Can't say you haven't been doing your homework.

Subject: RE: BS: Mideast: View From the Eye of the Storm
From: CarolC
Date: 27 Jul 04 - 10:07 PM

Alonzo, the occupation of the West Bank, Gaza, and East Jerusalem is the best way possible to ensure that Hamas will gain power. The PLO/PA had the support of the majority of Palestinians as long as it looked to the Palestinians like they were going to be granted their independent state. The government of Israel has done everything in its power to undermine the PA, and to cause the Palestinians to lose faith in the ability of the PA and the PLO to bring them what they need and want, which is freedom. The majority of Palestinians do not want to destroy Israel. They want to be free and for Israel to leave them alone in the West Bank, Gaza, and East Jerusalem.

The more Israel oppresses the Palestinians, the more powerful Hamas becomes. If Israel wants to ensure that Hamas never gets what it wants, the best thing it can do is to support the moderate Palestinians instead of undermining them, and give them something of their own to fight for, instead of only giving them something (bondage) to fight against

There are plenty of Israeli Jews who want all of the Arabs/Palestinians removed from all of Israel, the West Bank, Gaza, and East Jerusalem. You are holding all Palestinians responsible for the attitudes of the most extreme Palestinians. Should we not also, then, hold all Jews or at least all Israelis responsible for attitudes of their most extreme members?

Subject: RE: BS: Mideast: View From the Eye of the Storm
From: CarolC
Date: 27 Jul 04 - 10:08 PM

Thank you, Little Brother.

Subject: RE: BS: Mideast: View From the Eye of the Storm
From: Alonzo M. Zilch (inactive)
Date: 27 Jul 04 - 10:31 PM

There are plenty of Israeli Jews who want all of the Arabs/Palestinians removed from all of Israel, the West Bank, Gaza, and East Jerusalem. You are holding all Palestinians responsible for the attitudes of the most extreme Palestinians. Should we not
also, then, hold all Jews or at least all Israelis responsible for attitudes of their most extreme members?

Actually CarolC, the extremists in Israel who want that are are a very small percentage of the population. Before the only party (Kach) that has advocated that position was made illegal by an act of the Israeli Knesset, they had garnered only about 1/2 of 1% of the vote. In other words, when you refer "plenty of Israeli Jews," you're being deceptive and misleading. The people in Israel who think that way are a tiny fringe.

I've said quite clearly that I want the occupation to end. I want the occupation to end now. The one thing that we both agree on is that the occupation has turned into a disaster for both sides.

When you say that I'm "holding all Palestinians responsible for the attitudes of the most extreme Palestinians," you are putting words in my mouth that were never there. A propaganda tactic that only cheapens your arguement.

What I said, is that Palestinian terrorism started long before the occupation. That is a fact. What I also said was that ending the occupation will not end the attacks on Israel. I said that because that is the stated, and constantly reapeated, policy of a large Palestinian organization whose popular support has been shown to be equal to, if not greater in some places, than that of Arafat's PA. And that, too, is a fact.

You ask: "Should we not also, then, hold all Jews or at least all Israelis responsible for attitudes of their most extreme members?"

Well, clearly, the fact that Hamas and the Al-Aqsa Brigade (a part of Arafat's own Fatah movement) make it a point to randomly target all Israelis -- men, women, children, babies -- with their terrorism, that is what has been happening.

Subject: RE: BS: Mideast: View From the Eye of the Storm
From: Little Brother
Date: 27 Jul 04 - 10:31 PM

Carol, it's really strange that when peace looks near and deals have been made then the Hamas strikes and quickly puts an end to all the talks. It seems that they are the one's that are undermining the process.

Subject: RE: BS: Mideast: View From the Eye of the Storm
From: CarolC
Date: 27 Jul 04 - 10:44 PM

Hebron is in the occupied West Bank:

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

Subject: RE: BS: Mideast: View From the Eye of the Storm
From: Little Brother
Date: 27 Jul 04 - 10:56 PM

My mistake.

Subject: RE: BS: Mideast: View From the Eye of the Storm
From: CarolC
Date: 27 Jul 04 - 11:04 PM

Alonzo, you presented me with the Hamas charter. Perhaps I misread your intentions in posting that, but when people do that, I tend to think they want me to think that the Hamas charter is proof that the Palestinians shouldn't be granted their independent state.

I agree that there is a good chance of some continued terrorism after the Palestinians get their state, but at least Israel will have the majority of Palestinians helping them to fight against Hamas, since doing so would also be in defense of the Palestinians' own country.

Little Brother, the extremists on both sides are prolonging the conflict. Hamas did on at least one or two occasions, declare unilateral ceasefires, during which the only violence that was committed was by Israel in targeted assasinations of Palestinians (the last of which resulted in the death of the young child of the target of the assasination, but the target survived). This has happened at least once during the last year. Of course, after two or three targeted assasination attempts, Hamas ended its unilateral ceasefire. If the government of Israel had really wanted Hamas to continue its ceasefire, it would have held off on the targeted assasinations for as long as the unilateral ceasefire held.

Subject: RE: BS: Mideast: View From the Eye of the Storm
From: Little Brother
Date: 27 Jul 04 - 11:37 PM

Carol, I disagree, The Palestinians should be fighting the Hamas now. Once they have a state why would they want to fight the Hamas.
The time is now.

Subject: RE: BS: Mideast: View From the Eye of the Storm
From: CarolC
Date: 28 Jul 04 - 12:23 AM

Little Brother, what do they have to fight for?

Continued occupation? Continued expansion of the settlements and confiscation of their land and demolishing of their homes? What do they have to fight for? When they did stop fighting, for two years during the time when they still had hope for some degree of independence from Israel, what did Israel do? It expanded the settlements. Not only that, it increased the rate of settlement expansion. The only thing for them to fight for right now is their freedom. Israel has shown them that being peaceful will not bring them freedom. Israel must give them something to fight for besides their freedom. Right now, to many of them, them it looks like Hamas is in a better position to help them get their freedom than the alternative, since Israel has rendered the alternative completely inefectual.

Do you honestly think that if you were in their shoes, you would not be fighting for your freedom in any way you could? The European Jews who helped bring about Israeli independance used terrorism to help them accomplish their goals. Do you wish that their terrorism had never been rewarded?

Subject: RE: BS: Mideast: View From the Eye of the Storm
From: Little Brother
Date: 28 Jul 04 - 12:43 AM

Carol, your last post has nothing to do with my last statement. We were talking about Hamas, not the Israelis.

Subject: RE: BS: Mideast: View From the Eye of the Storm
From: Jack the Sailor
Date: 28 Jul 04 - 12:54 AM

Little Brother, I think she is saying that until Palistine has a functioning government and police for Hamas is Israel's problem. Israel has the guns and the checkpoints.

Subject: RE: BS: Mideast: View From the Eye of the Storm
From: Little Brother
Date: 28 Jul 04 - 12:59 AM

Jack, if they don't have a functioning government then why is there a prime minister? And they do have a police force albeit an ineffective one. What makes you think they'll be any better when they have an official state? And your right, Hamas is Israel's problem and they are dealing with it.

LB

Subject: RE: BS: Mideast: View From the Eye of the Storm
From: CarolC
Date: 28 Jul 04 - 11:00 AM

JtS makes a good point. I wish I had thought to make that point myself. However, the point I was making in my previous post is this... not only do the Palestinians not have the means to fight Hamas at this point, they also don't have an incentive to fight them.

While the majority of Palestinians are willing to live peacefully in their own independent state along side of Israel, each on their own side of the Green Line, unlike Hamas as stated in its charter, there is no one who will help them get their independent state except for Hamas. There is no one who will help them fight for their freedom except for Hamas. They have no one else with the means or the willingness to help them get their freedom.

Israel has removed any incentive the Palestinians would have to fight Hamas. Why should they? They know from experience that Israel will not give them their freedom no matter what they do. Under such circumstances, why would they want to fight the only people who are trying to help them get their freedom?

Israel needs to give the Palestinians an incentive to fight Hamas by giving them the one thing they want that they think Hamas might be able to give them. Their freedom.

Israel can continue to defend itself just as well against Hamas from the Israeli side of the Green Line as is can from within the Occupied Territories. The occupation does not make Israelis safer. It actually puts them in more danger than they would be without the occupation. So ending the occupation and giving the Palestinians their freedom is the best way to protect Israelis. That way, the Palestinians will no longer have any incentive to help Hamas, and they would have the incentive to cooperate with Israel in fighting Hamas. And Israel would still have the IDF to defend its borders (the Green Line).

Subject: RE: BS: Mideast: View From the Eye of the Storm
From: Little Brother
Date: 28 Jul 04 - 01:39 PM

Carol, you are contradicting yourself. On one hand you say Hamas is their friend and on the other you say they will fight them. Make no mistake about it. Hamas and the other terrorist groups are the reason the Palestinians don't have a state.

Subject: RE: BS: Mideast: View From the Eye of the Storm
From: CarolC
Date: 28 Jul 04 - 02:01 PM

I'm not contradicting myself at all. I'm trying to help you understand the complexity of the situation the Palestinians find themselves in. And you're completely wrong about Hamas being the reason the Palestinians don't have a state. They wouldn't have a state even if there had never been a Hamas or any other Palestinian "terrorist" organizations or activities. It was never the intention of those in power in Israel for the Palestinians to have their own state. The intention has always been for Israel to have as much of the Middle East as it can obatain by any means necessary. That's why there is no Israeli constitution. In order for there to be a constitution, Israel would have to legally define it's borders. Israel is not willing to define its borders because it has no intention to stop expanding its borders.

Subject: RE: BS: Mideast: View From the Eye of the Storm
From: Little Brother
Date: 28 Jul 04 - 04:45 PM

If that is the case then why are they negotiating with the Palestinians at all and why the Oslo Accords where they agreed to release hundreds of militants back into the territories?

Subject: RE: BS: Mideast: View From the Eye of the Storm
From: CarolC
Date: 28 Jul 04 - 08:49 PM

I refer you to this post of mine earlier in this thread (wait a bit for it to load to the specific post):

http://www.mudcat.org/thread.cfm?threadid=71709&messages=210&page=4&desc=yes#1229306

...and the full version:

http://www.spectacle.org/0601/israel.html

...and to these points in particular:

The Oslo Agreement

57.The Oslo Agreement had positive and negative qualities.

58.On the positive side, this agreement brought Israel to its first official recognition of the Palestinian People and its national leadership and brought the National Palestinian Movement to its recognition of the existence of Israel. In this respect the agreement (and the exchange of letters that preceded it) were of paramount historical significance.

59.In effect, the agreement gave the National Palestinian Movement a territorial base on Palestinian land, the structure of a "state in the making" and armed forces-- facts that would play an important role in the ongoing Palestinian struggle. For the Israelis, the agreement opened the gates to the Arab world and put an end to Palestinian attacks --as long as the agreement was effective.

60.The most substantive flaw in the agreement was that both sides hoped to achieve entirely different objectives. The Palestinians saw it as a temporary agreement paving the way to the end of the occupation, the establishment of a Palestinian State in all the occupied territories. On the other hand, the respective Israeli governments regarded it as a way to maintain the occupation in large sections of the West Bank and the Gaza Strip, with the Palestinian self-government filling the role of an auxiliary security agency protecting Israel and the settlements.

61.Therefore, Oslo did not represent the beginning of the process to end the conflict but, rather, another new phase of the conflict.

62.Because the expectations of both sides were so divergent and each remained entirely bound to its own national "narrative", every section of the agreement was interpreted differently. Ultimately, many parts of the agreement were not carried out, mainly by Israel (the third withdrawal, the four safe passages, and others).

63.Throughout the period of the "Oslo Process" Israel continued its vigorous expansion of the settlements, primarily by creating new ones under various guises, expanding existing ones, building an elaborate network of "bypass" roads, expropriating land, demolishing houses and uprooting plantations etc. The Palestinians, on their part, used the time to build their strength, both within the framework of the agreement and without it. In fact, the historical confrontation continued unabated under the guise of negotiations and the "Peace Process", which became a proxy for actual peace.

64.In contradistinction to his image, which became more pronounced after his assassination, Yitzhak Rabin kept the conflict alive "in the field", while simultaneously managing the political process to achieve peace, on Israeli terms. As he was a disciple of the Zionist "narrative" and accepted its mythology, he suffered from cognitive dissonance when his hopes for peace clashed with his conceptual world. It appears that he began to internalize some parts of the Palestinian historical narrative only at the very end of his life.

65.The case of Shimon Peres is much more severe. He created for himself an international image of a peacemaker and even designed his language to reflect this image ("the New Middle East") while remaining essentially a traditional Zionist hawk. This became clear in the short and violent period that he served as Prime Minister after the assassination of Rabin and, again, in his current acceptance of the role of spokesman and apologist for Sharon.

66.The clearest expression of the Israeli dilemma was provided by Ehud Barak who came to power completely convinced of his ability to cut the Gordian knot of the historical conflict in one dramatic stroke, in the fashion of Alexander the Great. Barak approached the issue in total ignorance of the Palestinian narrative and with disrespect to its importance. He presented his proposals as ultimatums and was appalled and enraged by their rejection.

67.In the eyes of himself and the Israeli side at large, Barak "turned every stone" and made the Palestinians "more generous offers than any previous Prime Minister". In exchange, he wanted the Palestinians to sign off on "an end to the conflict". The Palestinians considered this a preposterous pretension since Barak was effectively asking them to relinquish their basic national aspiration, such as the Right of Return and sovereignty in East Jerusalem and the Temple Mount. Moreover, while Barak presented the claims for the annexation of territories as matter of negligible percentages ("Settlement Blocs"), according to Palestinian calculations this amounted to an actual annexation of 20% of the land beyond the Green Line.

68.In the Palestinian view, they had already made the decisive compromise by agreeing to establish their State within the Green Line, in merely 22% of their historical homeland. Therefore, they could only accept minor border changes in the context of territorial swaps. The traditional Israeli position is that the achievements of the war of 1948 are established facts that cannot be disputed and the compromise required must focus on the remaining 22%.

69.As with most terms and concepts, the word "concession" has different meanings for both sides. The Palestinians believe that they have already "conceded" 78% of their land when they agreed to accept 22% of it. The Israelis believe that they are "conceding" when they agree to "give" the Palestinians parts of those same 22% (the West Bank and the Gaza Strip).

70.The Camp David Summit in the summer of 2000, which was imposed on Arafat against his will, was premature and brought things to a climax. Barak's demands, presented at the summit as Clinton's, were that the Palestinians agree to end the conflict by conceding the Right of Return and the Return itself; to accept complicated arrangements for East Jerusalem and the Temple Mount without achieving sovereignty over them; to agree to large territorial annexations in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip and to an Israeli military presence in other large areas and to Israeli control over the borders separating the Palestinian State from the rest of the world. No Palestinian leader would ever sign such an agreement and thus the summit ended in deadlock and the termination of the careers of Clinton and Barak.

Subject: RE: BS: Mideast: View From the Eye of the Storm
From: Peace
Date: 30 Jul 04 - 01:40 AM

Does Arafat still have the $300,000,000? Just curious.

Subject: RE: BS: Mideast: View From the Eye of the Storm
From: beardedbruce
Date: 30 Jul 04 - 06:44 AM

Re the first post to this thread:

In looking back over World Press issues of 2002, I found an article in a Jordanian paper about a UN report, produced by an entirely Arab group, that gives essentially the same figures about the Arab world. I will try to bring it in, and type it up...

Subject: RE: BS: Mideast: View From the Eye of the Storm
From: CarolC
Date: 30 Jul 04 - 11:50 AM

Fuck you brucie.

Subject: RE: BS: Mideast: View From the Eye of the Storm
From: CarolC
Date: 30 Jul 04 - 01:45 PM

Here's some of the documentation on the 1948 war that I promised Bill H and failed to provide:

http://desip.igc.org/The48ArabInvasionDeconstructed.html

"Simha Flapan, perhaps the most accessible of the "revisionist," historians, played an active role during the war of 1948 as a member of Mapam, the United Workers Party. In his landmark book, The Birth of Israel: Myths and Realities (New York: Pantheon, 1987) Flapan wrote that "like most Israelis, I had always been under the influence of certain myths that had become accepted as historical truth" (p. 8).

Flapan divides his book into seven sections, each addressing a myth associated with the birth of Israel. Examining "Myth Five," Flapan argues that it was not the Arab invasion which brought on war, but rather the decision by the Jewish leadership to declare statehood on May 14. Flapan contends that documents show that the "Arabs had agreed to a last minute American proposal for a three-month truce on the condition that Israel temporarily postpone its Declaration of Independence. Israel's provisional government rejected the American proposal by a slim majority of 6 to 4." (p. 9)

Ethnic Cleansing, 1947

The reason the Americans and the international community were alarmed as May 14 approached was that a calamitous communal war had broken out immediately after passage of the U.N. Partition Resolution of November 29, 1947. In the war between the stronger Jewish forces and the less prepared Arab community, parallels can be drawn to the ethnic cleansing that is going on in Bosnia.

Like the Serbs today, the Jewish forces generally did everything they could to force the Palestinians to flee their cities, towns and villages. The Arab flight which numbered 60,000 by the end of March 1948, increased dramatically after April 9, 1948, the date of the infamous Dir Yassin massacre, when Menachem Begin's Irgun (with the tacit complicity of Ben-Gurion's Haganah) slaughtered more than 100 civilians from a "friendly" Arab village near Jerusalem.

News of the massacre, including cases of rape, spread quickly throughout the Arab community and led to the terrified mass flight of civilians in search of safety. Before the middle of May '48 almost 300,000 Palestinians had fled.

Avoiding Repatriation

One reason that Ben-Gurion opted for Statehood on May 14 despite international opposition was because he understood that if he held back and a truce was effected, a new Israeli State might well be forced to repatriate the hundreds of thousands of Palestinians already made refugees. Moreover, by mid-May, there remained more than 500,000 Palestinians in areas that the Jewish forces controlled or desired for their state. Ben-Gurion had no intention of allowing such a large Arab minority to remain in Israel and therefore he chose war. In the end, more than 750,000 Palestinians were exiled forever from their homes.

Flapan also argues that an unprepared Arab nation entered the war reluctantly. The Arab forces were divided politically and, contrary to myth, they were no match for the Jewish forces in numbers either.

Flapan cites figures which indicate that the combined Arab armies totaled no more than 25,000 troops; including 10,000 Egyptian troops, 4,500 Transjordanian troops and perhaps 3,000 troops from Palestine itself, Iraq, Syria and Lebanon respectively. In contrast, all estimates of front-line Jewish troops, united under a single command, put the number at least at 25,000. In addition, some estimates of Jewish forces are as high as 60,000 or 90,000 more if settlement troops, irregular forces and others are counted. (Flapan, p. 196) With these figures in mind, it is easier to see how Ben-Gurion could gamble on a unilateral declaration of the state of Israel on May 14, and war."

Subject: RE: BS: Mideast: View From the Eye of the Storm
From: CarolC
Date: 30 Jul 04 - 02:18 PM

Here's some more:

http://www.merip.org/mer/mer230/230_beinin.html

On July 11, 1948, Aharon Cohen, director of the Arab Affairs Department of the socialist-Zionist Mapam party in Israel, received a carbon copy of a military intelligence report. Israel, a state less than two months old, was embroiled in a war with neighboring Arab states that would last until 1949. . Cohen was upset to read the report's conclusion that 70 percent of these Arabs had fled due to "direct, hostile Jewish operations against Arab settlements" by Zionist militias, or the "effect of our hostile operations on nearby (Arab) settlements."[1] One month before Cohen received this report, Mapam's political committee had issued a resolution opposing "the tendency to expel the Arabs from the Jewish state," in response to Cohen's warnings that such operations were taking place.

Over the course of Arab-Jewish fighting between 1947 and 1949, well over 700,000 Palestinians were made refugees, the majority of them by direct expulsion or the fear of expulsion or massacre. The largest single expulsion occurred after Israeli conquest of the towns of Lydda and Ramla in the Jerusalem-Tel Aviv corridor during July 9-18, 1948. Some 50,000 Palestinians were driven out of their homes in these towns by Israeli forces whose deputy commander was Yitzhak Rabin, prime minister of Israel from 1974-1977 and 1992-1995. Some two dozen massacres of Palestinians were perpetrated by pre-state Zionist militias and Israeli forces, the most infamous of them on April 9-10, 1948, at the village of Deir Yassin.

Yet after the war, it was Mapam's prescription for the conduct of Israeli forces—rather than the reality of expulsion—that became official Israeli history, and eventually, came to define the Jewish Israeli collective memory of what happened in 1948. For decades, the state of Israel, and traditional Zionist historians, argued that the Palestinian Arabs fled on orders from Arab military commanders and governments intending to return behind the guns of victorious Arab armies which would "drive the Jews into the sea." Consequently, the Zionist authorities would admit little or no responsibility for the fate of the Palestinian refugees and their descendants. This was not due to lack of adequate information. Ample evidence from Zionist sources from the period of the 1948 war and immediately afterwards indicates that members of the military and political elite, secondary leaders and intellectuals close to them knew very well what happened to the Palestinian Arabs in 1948, to say nothing of rank-and-file soldiers and kibbutz members who actually expelled Palestinians, expropriated their lands and destroyed their homes. But soon after the fighting, Zionist and Israeli state officials began to consolidate an official discourse that enabled most Israeli Jews to "forget" what they once "knew"—that during the 1948 Arab-Israeli war a large number of Palestinian Arabs were ethnically cleansed from the territories that became the state of Israel."


http://www.angeltowns.com/members/palestine/articles/Morris.htm

"Shlaim, in his well-argued, generally well-founded book had maintained that (a) years of Zionist-Hashemite contacts and shared political interests had resulted, in 1946-47, in the conclusion of an unwritten agreement between the leadership of the Yishuv and 'Abdallah, king of Jordan, not to fight each other but to split Palestine between them, with the Hashemites (rather than the Palestinians) receiving what is today called the West Bank, and eventually to make peace; (b) in early 1948, Britain tacitly approved the Yishuv-Hashemite agreement by supporting a Jordanian takeover of the West Bank (rather than the creation in that territory of an independent, Husayni-led Palestinian state, as the UN General Assembly had ruled), and cautioned 'Abdallah not to attack the Jewish state; (c) the Yishuv-Hashemite agreement, while somewhat shaken, in effect weathered the Jewish-Palestinian battles of November 1947-May 1948, and resulted in limited and indecisive warfare between the Israel Defence Forces and Jordan's army, the Arab Legion, in May 1948-April 1949; and (d) following the war, 'Abdallah wanted to reach peace with Israel but due to the internal weaknesses of his position and Israeli unwillingness to make concessions, no peace treaty was achieved...

...The real question about the Jewish Agency-Hashemite agreement is not whether it existed but what happened to it in the course of the Israeli-Jordanian battles of May-July 1948. Clearly, it partially unravelled in April 1948 under the impact of the Haganah's military successes, the gradual disintegration of Palestinian society, and the Dayr Yasin massacre. 'Abdallah felt unable to stand aside or to break ranks publicly with the other Arab leaders.

But did he really renege on the agreement? ...On 10 May 1948 Ben-Gurion sent Golda Meir to meet 'Abdallah once again in a last-ditch effort to avert a Yishuv-Hashemite clash. Returning to Tel Aviv, she reported to the Mapai Central Committee: "We met [on 10 May] amicably. He is very worried and looks terrible. He did not deny that there had been talk and understanding between us about a desirable arrangement, namely that he would take the Arab part [of Palestine]. . . . "But 'Abdallah had said that he could now, on 10 May, only offer the Jews "autonomy" within an enlarged Hashemite kingdom. He added that while he was not interested in invading the areas allocated for Jewish statehood, the situation was volatile. But he voiced the hope that Jordan and the Yishuv would conclude a peace agreement once the dust had settled.(16)

On 15 May the Arab Legion, along with the other Arab armies, invaded Palestine. But far from unravelling, the agreement, at least in 'Abdallah's mind, appeared to hold fast. 'Abdallah's troops kept meticulously to the 17 November 1947 scenario: At no point in May, or thereafter, did the Arab Legion attack the Jewish state's territory. The Legion occupied the northern half of the West Bank and advanced as far westward as Latrun, Lydda, and Ramla (all UN-allocated Arab areas); and, acceding to local Arab pressures, drove into (Arab) East Jerusalem, essentially to secure the area (and its holy sites, including 'Abdallah's father's tomb on the Temple Mount) against Jewish conquest. But Jerusalem, allocated by the United Nations partition resolution neither to Jew nor to Arab, had not been covered in the Meir-'Abdallah agreement. Moreover, apart from securing the Old City (including conquering its Jewish Quarter), the Legion had refrained from attacking Jewish positions and areas (except for forays around the Mandelbaum Gate and the Notre Dame Monastery designed to safeguard the Legion's line of communication from Ramallah into the city).

No doubt, 'Abdallah was not motivated solely by his adherence to the agreement. His army was small, numbering only some 7,500-9,000 troops at the start of hostilities, and he hardly had enough soldiers to secure the West Bank, let alone attempt to conquer Jewish state territory or fight in costly street battles in West Jerusalem. Moreover, the British had warned him against attacking the Jewish state (see below), and he had promised to refrain from doing so.

Before 15 May, various Jewish officials - Yaacov Shimoni, Moshe Shertok (Sharett), etc. - feared that 'Abdallah might attack the Jewish state nonetheless ("Can any Arab be trusted?"). But in effect, when it came to brass tacks, 'Abdallah adhered strictly to the letter and spirit of the agreement. Rather, it was the Jews who broke it when the Haganah/IDF repeatedly attacked the Legion in Latrun (in late May and June), in Lydda-Ramla (in July), and near Tarqumiya (October). It was Ben-Gurion - because he sought to lift the siege of Jerusalem and expand Jewish territorial holdings beyond what the UN had earmarked - who violated it."

Subject: RE: BS: Mideast: View From the Eye of the Storm
From: Once Famous
Date: 30 Jul 04 - 04:02 PM

Anyone who reads this CarolC Israel hating crap and believes any of it I find kind of pathetic.

A person who takes so much time and is so obsessive for the cause against Israel and is so supportive of anything and everything Palestinian is a mental case.

I would love to see her in front of ANY Jewish group at any synagogue spewing her crap. I'm sure she would be boo'd off the stage.

Subject: RE: BS: Mideast: View From the Eye of the Storm
From: Jack the Sailor
Date: 30 Jul 04 - 04:23 PM

I'm sure that a Jewish group would have much to take issue with with what she has said. But if she is speaking in front of them by invitation and if they booed her off the stage then that would prove that the people who booed were as rude and igornant as you are. I don't believe that you are speaking for many people when you behave so rudely and so insultingly.

Martin Gibson said.....

Anyone who reads this CarolC Israel hating crap and believes any of it I find kind of pathetic.

A person who takes so much time and is so obsessive for the cause against Israel and is so supportive of anything and everything Palestinian is a mental case.

I would love to see her in front of ANY Jewish group at any synagogue spewing her crap. I'm sure she would be boo'd off the stage. Anyone who reads this CarolC Israel hating crap and believes any of it I find kind of pathetic.

A person who takes so much time and is so obsessive for the cause against Israel and is so supportive of anything and everything Palestinian is a mental case.

I would love to see her in front of ANY Jewish group at any synagogue spewing her crap. I'm sure she would be boo'd off the stage.

Subject: RE: BS: Mideast: View From the Eye of the Storm
From: CarolC
Date: 30 Jul 04 - 05:03 PM

I don't think I would be boo'd off the stage if I was speaking in front of any of these Jewish organizations. Especially considering the fact that a lot of the information I post on this subject comes from them:

http://www.nimn.org/
http://www.btselem.org/
http://www.batshalom.org/english/batshalom/index.html
http://www.btvshalom.org/newmem/index.cgi?refer=googlem3
http://www.refusersolidarity.net/
http://www.jfjfp.org/
http://www.gush-shalom.org/english/index.html
http://www.jewishvoiceforpeace.org/resources/other_israel/muhamad.html
http://www.tikkun.org/index.cfm
http://www.jatonyc.org/

However, if you would like to see this thread drop off the page, I suggest you take that up with brucie, since he's the one who keeps refreshing it just for shits and giggles.

Subject: RE: BS: Mideast: View From the Eye of the Storm
From: Bill Hahn//\\
Date: 30 Jul 04 - 06:58 PM

Gee---Carol C. I am staying out of this nonsensical brouhaha as said---going nowhere and returning to the alien planet from which I emigrated in a galaxy far away.   However---your eloquence is just so wonderful to behold. I mean "Fuck You"---what a wonderful debating point. Perhaps you might forward it to the candidates to use in any debates---always a crowd pleaser and a winner when there is nothing else left to say.

My thanks for dedicating an entire length of cyberspace to me in your obsessive rantings. Much appreciatred. Who was it ==P T Barnum---any publicity is good publicity?   Glad you did not dedicate the obscenity to me---bet you will soon though.

Here I thought the Rev. Al was over the top many times---but always clever. Looks like we have a winner in you Carol. Too bad Abe Lincoln is gone---he could have used you for a speechwriter---"Fourscore and seven years ago ---hell who cares---fuck you all". Ah, would that Abe had your input.

Bill Hahn

Subject: RE: BS: Mideast: View From the Eye of the Storm
From: Little Brother
Date: 30 Jul 04 - 08:02 PM

Carol, all the groups you bookmarked are radical left wing groups all with an axe to grind. -LB

Subject: RE: BS: Mideast: View From the Eye of the Storm
From: CarolC
Date: 30 Jul 04 - 09:04 PM

Bill H, here's one for you...

Earlier in the thread, you were wondering something along the lines of "where's the Palestinians' Ghandi or Martin Luther King".

When you or any of the other few thousand people I've heard or read ask that question, you are linking the situation that the Palestinians find themselves in to the situations that the Blacks in the US South found themselves in during the period of US segregation and the people of India during the colonial period there, and the conditions they were subjected to that reqired a Martin Luther King or a Ghandi. The question I keep finding myself asking is this... where's Israel's Abraham Lincoln?

My "fuck you" response is between me and brucie, and it's none of your business.

Little Brother... no, those groups are not radical, left-wing organizations. They are human rights organizations. Just like the groups that worked for civil rights for Blacks in the US were human rights organizations, and the groups that fought against apartheid in South Africa were human rights organizations, and all of the other organizations around the world that fight for human rights are human rights organizations. During the period of segregation in the US South, civil rights workers like Martin Luther King were labled "radical" and "left wing". I'd say that label says a lot more about the mindset of those who throw it around than it does about those who are being labled.

Subject: RE: BS: Mideast: View From the Eye of the Storm
From: Peace
Date: 30 Jul 04 - 11:18 PM

Why, thank you, Carol. I'm on cloud nine lately, and I'll just take that as a compliment.

Subject: RE: BS: Mideast: View From the Eye of the Storm
From: CarolC
Date: 31 Jul 04 - 12:08 AM

Take it however you like brucie. I don't concern myself too much with trolls.

Subject: RE: BS: Mideast: View From the Eye of the Storm
From: Peace
Date: 31 Jul 04 - 12:10 AM

Poor baby.

Subject: RE: BS: Mideast: View From the Eye of the Storm
From: CarolC
Date: 31 Jul 04 - 12:22 AM

Here's the difference between a human rights organization and someone with a political agenda...

Human rights organizations fight for and protect the civil rights of human beings (all human beings) when the people whose job it is to fight for and protect the civil rights of hunan beings find it politically inexpedient to do so.

Here's a for instance:

Some people consider the ACLU to be a "radical left-wing" organization. However the ACLU was willing to act on behalf of Jonathan Pollard when even Senator Leiberman was not willing to do so. The human rights organizations will protect and fight for people, for no reason other than the fact that they are human beings, when no one else will. And that's the difference.

Subject: RE: BS: Mideast: View From the Eye of the Storm
From: Bill Hahn//\\
Date: 31 Jul 04 - 11:38 PM

Well--Carol C--I do not believe I ever made the references you mentioned. Given the length of the thread I can understand your missing or mistaking a comment by various folks---though given your obsessiveness it does seem hard to believe. Perhaps I stand corrected---though I doubt it---but if so you will surely make note of it.
       As to privacy or your personal note (as you say it is) of your "Fuck You" statement--- then you should send it privately. This is a public forum and you have reached your, I am sure, most admiring public in the most impressive manner with your eloquence.

By the way---I use my name:

Bill Hahn
(who also likes fair play, equality with justice, and all the other things you espouse---but in a spirit of historical background and realism---and yes--bless the ACLU)

Subject: RE: BS: Mideast: View From the Eye of the Storm
From: Peace
Date: 01 Aug 04 - 12:39 AM

I think the question about the $300,000,000 is a fair one.

Subject: RE: BS: Mideast: View From the Eye of the Storm
From: CarolC
Date: 01 Aug 04 - 01:15 AM

Bill Hahn, I've given my real name here in this thread. I'm not sure what your point is in bringing up real names.

It is a public forum, as you say, and I'm just as entitled to address a fellow poster in the manner of my choosing ase you are. I didn't say my response to brucie was private. I said it's none of your business.

brucie, maybe it is a fair point. But trolling is trolling. You're just refreshing this thread every time it's gone off the page for a couple of days so you can watch the shit fly for the fun of it.

Subject: RE: BS: Mideast: View From the Eye of the Storm
From: Peace
Date: 01 Aug 04 - 01:45 AM

No, Carol. A question that's inconvenient for you is not the post of someone who's trolling. Both questions are ones you have not answered. Get to the cut and paste. I'm sure they will not be simple answers despite both of them being simple questions. Convolute and conflate.

You ignore the killings done by Palestinians; you write that off as what, Carol? In your hatred of Israel and millions of people who live there, you allow your hatred to dictate pages and pages of tripe in support of what I perceive to be racism. You can call it what you want, but here's a person who doesn't buy into your reasoning.

You don't blame any nation except your own and Isreal. Your hatred of Jews is thinly veiled by your "excuse everything suicide bombers do because Israel is bad" threnody. You do not care that Israeli kids die in the name of what, Carol? And your husband disingenuously pretends that Arafat doesn't have the money.

I used to think you were an ardent defender of human rights. I see now that you are, as long as those rights don't belong to Jewish people who live in their homeland.

Subject: RE: BS: Mideast: View From the Eye of the Storm
From: CarolC
Date: 01 Aug 04 - 01:55 AM

brucie, you're just projecting your own bullshit onto me. I don't know how you arrive at the conclusion that I hate Israel and don't want civil rights extended to Jewish people in their "homeland" when all I am calling for is for them to END THE OCCUPATION of the WEST BANK, GAZA, AND EAST JERUSALEM, and to leave the Palestinians alone to build their own country in THE WEST BANK, GAZA, AND EAST JERUSALEM.

It's you who is full of hate. You hate the Palestinians so much, you don't even see them as human beings wHo deserve the same rights as you and me and the Jews who live in Israel.

And how the hell should I know whether or not Arafat still has that stupid 300 million that you say he has?

Subject: RE: BS: Mideast: View From the Eye of the Storm
From: CarolC
Date: 01 Aug 04 - 02:00 AM

And yes, what the Palestinians is doing is in self defense. My putting it to you as a question was a credit to your humanity, but I see that I overestimated you in that respect.

Subject: RE: BS: Mideast: View From the Eye of the Storm
From: CarolC
Date: 01 Aug 04 - 02:02 AM

You won't be truly happy until they're all dead, and you know it.

Subject: RE: BS: Mideast: View From the Eye of the Storm
From: Peace
Date: 01 Aug 04 - 02:19 AM

I do not see suicide bombers as human. You project your bullshit onto everyone. When will you address the right of suicide bombers to kill Jewish kids, Carol? When? Don't talk to me about bullshit. You are a master of it.

Subject: RE: BS: Mideast: View From the Eye of the Storm
From: Peace
Date: 01 Aug 04 - 02:32 AM

Why do you never discuss the other countries in the region--many of them very rich countries--that have done NOTHING to help Palestinians. Funding for "fraternal organizations" yes, but not the Palestinian people. Israel is surrounded by countries that have vowed to kill everyone in Israel. You tend to ignore that while you spout the party line, don't you? Yeah, you do.

Subject: RE: BS: Mideast: View From the Eye of the Storm
From: CarolC
Date: 01 Aug 04 - 03:23 AM

The only action that is required to solve the problem is for Israel to end the occupation and leave the Palestinians alone so they can get to work building their own country. Everything else, all arguments about who else is responsible for what, is just an avoidance of the real issue, which is that Israel is conducting a brutal occupation against an entire people and killing many, many more Palestinian children than the other way around.

And you know full well that I have condemned the killing of Israeli children and Israeli civilians several times here in these threads. So don't give me that bullshit about not addressing the issue of the suicide bombers killing civilians.

It's you and the others who start these threads, and you, in particular who keep refreshing this one when it goes dormant, who are obsessed. And that's because deep in your heart, you know you are wrong, and instead of just dealing with it, you have to beat me up in threads like this one so you won't have to face the reality of what you are advocating. I'm not the one who starts these threads. I would like to see all of them just go away. But that won't happen as long as there are people who need to promote hatred of Arabs, Palestinians, and Muslims because if they do the alternative- recognize these people as human beings, they won't any longer be able to rationalize away the horrific things that are being done to them.

Subject: RE: BS: Mideast: View From the Eye of the Storm
From: Peace
Date: 01 Aug 04 - 03:33 AM

Save it, Carol. You are abusive. You don't start the threads, Carol, but you keep them going. It is not about rights for Palestinians; it's about Carol being right.

Subject: RE: BS: Mideast: View From the Eye of the Storm
From: CarolC
Date: 01 Aug 04 - 03:43 AM

You call me abusive. After all of the shit I've had slung at me from you, Bill H, Martin Gibson, and a host of others. You are a hypocrite, brucie. I've taken the abuse that's been heaped on me and not responded in kind until you started trolling in this thread. Save it yourself, you fucking hypocrite.

If you don't want this thread to be prolonged, DON'T REFRESH IT!!!

Blaming me for prolonging it, when it's you who have been refreshing it after it's gone dormant, really takes the cake, and requires a degree of lunacy that I can't even begin to understand.

Subject: RE: BS: Mideast: View From the Eye of the Storm
From: Peace
Date: 01 Aug 04 - 03:44 AM

"And you know full well that I have condemned the killing of Israeli children and Israeli civilians several times here in these threads. So don't give me that bullshit about not addressing the issue of the suicide bombers killing civilians."

And every time it comes down to the Israelis being wrong for wanting to live. You hate Israel, Carol. No question. I don't know that you are on such high moral ground. Not at all.

Subject: RE: BS: Mideast: View From the Eye of the Storm
From: Peace
Date: 01 Aug 04 - 03:47 AM

You not understanding lunacy leaves me speechless. Have a nice day.

"Subject: RE: BS: Mideast: View From the Eye of the Storm
From: CarolC - PM
Date: 30 Jul 04 - 11:50 AM

Fuck you brucie.

Your words I believe. Did you think it up all by yourself, Carol?

Subject: RE: BS: Mideast: View From the Eye of the Storm
From: CarolC
Date: 01 Aug 04 - 03:49 AM

brucie, I have supported the building of the wall, ALONG THE GREEN LINE. I have supported Israel putting its troops along its border ON THE GREEN LINE. That is how they can save the lives of innocent Israelis. They do NOT protect innocent Israeli lives by putting settlers in the Occupied Territories and waging a brutal occupation of the Palestinians.

Subject: RE: BS: Mideast: View From the Eye of the Storm
From: CarolC
Date: 01 Aug 04 - 03:51 AM

Yes. Fuck you brucie. Fuck you for refreshing this thread just so you can get your jollies from watching me get beat up for standing up for what I believe in. Fuck you.

Subject: RE: BS: Mideast: View From the Eye of the Storm
From: beardedbruce
Date: 01 Aug 04 - 12:27 PM

Jack the Sailor:
"Date: 18 Jul 04 - 07:39 PM

That is a speech is bigoted hate inducing unsupported diatribe. The man claims to know the all the problems of an area from Morrocco to Pakistan because he lives in Israel even though he says Israel is not a cause of the problem."

Sept 2002 Worldpress article, from July 2002 Al-Ra'i article

quote from article:

"Now that Rima Khalaf has moved to the United Nations as director of the Arab regional office in the U.N. Development Program, she has taken the same idea and expanded it to cover 22 Arab countries in order to make clear the region's faults and give encouragement to those in a position to instigate reform.

The team she chose and led was 100-percent Arab in order to avoid accusations of bias against the Arabs or of focusing on negative points in an attempt to distort the image of the Arabs in the world, according to the conspiracy theory. "

"The Arab development report hangs out the Arabs' dirty washing before the world and offers a wealth of information that mars the image of the Arabs in the world, but unfortunately the information is correct. Perhaps the most Arab regimes will do after reading it is to pressure Kofi Annan to move Rima Khalaf and ask her to pack her bags and return to her home in Amman. "

Subject: RE: BS: Mideast: View From the Eye of the Storm
From: Jack the Sailor
Date: 01 Aug 04 - 01:19 PM

BeardedBruce do you have a point or do you just enjoy posting unrelated quotes on the same thread?

Subject: RE: BS: Mideast: View From the Eye of the Storm
From: Jack the Sailor
Date: 01 Aug 04 - 01:26 PM

Israelis being wrong for wanting to live.


I'll tell you what Brucie. If you are not a troll, you show us where Carol said that the Israelis are wrong "for wanting to live". If she is really as hatefull as you say she is it shouldn't be hard to find. If you can't find anything to back up what you are saying, if you can't back up your disgusting ad hominim attacks then fuck you!

Subject: RE: BS: Mideast: View From the Eye of the Storm
From: beardedbruce
Date: 01 Aug 04 - 01:28 PM

That IS the point of this thread.

This is a source for the information in the starting post, which YOU have claimed the man could not know because he was a Jew. I hardly think that this is unrelated.

" bigoted hate inducing unsupported diatribe " right back at you...

Subject: RE: BS: Mideast: View From the Eye of the Storm
From: CarolC
Date: 01 Aug 04 - 01:51 PM

That article is pretty hatemongering, beardedbruce. It takes the work being done by an Arab to help identify and correct the problems facing the Arab world out of context and only discusses the fact that they have problems, and ignores the fact that their purpose in identifying the problems is so that they can begin to correct them. To their credit they at least have someone who is willing to look the problems of her people squarely in the eye and be honest about them. I wish the United States had someone like her working for us at the UN.

She also has some pretty harsh words for the damage that the actions of the western countries are causing to the the Arab world's efforts to improve and reform their situation. Here's the speech she gave about the Arab Human Development Report for 2003

http://216.239.41.104/search?q=cache:aviwCXvLAiIJ:www.undp.org/RimaSpeechEnglish.pdf+%22Rima+Khalaf+Hunaidi%22&hl=en

"Allow me first, Your Excellency, to express my gratitude to you and my deep appreciation for your kind welcome. We are greatly honoured by your presence on the occasion of the official launch of the Second Arab Human Development Report. It is a source of immense pleasure for us that Jordan, in the reign of His Majesty King Abdullah the Second, is hosting this landmark ceremony. This generous act has given the Report team a platform from which to address the entire Arab people and a forum open to different points of view. Amman for us today is a centre for freedom of expression in service to the cause of development across the Arab world. To our distinguished guests attending from other countries of region, I offer a warm welcome to Jordan. Thank you for taking the trouble to be with us and for sharing our faith in the capabilities of this region and our concern for its future...

...In the time available to me, please allow me to accompany you on a quick tour of the second Report. This is an opportunity to familiarize ourselves with the state of knowledge in the Arab world, in particular its dissemination and production; to take note of the cultural, political, economic and social context for knowledge acquisition; and to review aspects of the authors' strategic vision for enhancing the acquisition, indigenisation and creation of knowledge. Before turning to the topic of knowledge, it is important to remember that, according to the Report team, the two years between starting the first Report and initiating the second have been two years unlike any others in recent Arab history. This has been a time of events that have shaken the world and traumatized the Arab region. In 2002, the Israeli army reoccupied almost the entire Palestinian Territories committing, notably in Jenin and Nablus, a series of human atrocities, including wanton destruction, intimidation and killing that led reputable international non-governmental organizations to describe those acts as "war crimes".

The invasion also caused widespread material destruction that spared neither schools, nor mosques nor churches nor even olive trees. The occupation continues to undermine the capabilities of Palestinian society and its hopes of self-determination and statehood. In 2003 Iraq fell under an occupation that most Arabs saw as embodying plans to reshape the region from the outside to suit the interests of foreign powers. Over the last two years, measures taken in the name of the war on terrorism have stifled freedoms in many parts of the world, notably in the United States. Civil and political freedoms, particularly of Arabs and Muslims, were violated as a consequence. Arabs and Muslims have faced arrest and arbitrary detention without trial or charge. Contrary to established legal principles they have become guilty until proven innocent.

Islam has been the target of an unjust wave of provocation, defamation and criticism that betrays remarkable ignorance most of the time and blatant prejudice at other times. The clearest expression of what Arabs and Muslims have come to suffer as a result of ethnic profiling came from His Majesty King Abdullah The Second when he observed in his Islamic Summit speech that the pre-judgement of Muslims has come to represent the worst form of terrorism. Certain profound events only reveal their full consequences after an interval. Yet in this case the results were felt immediately. The impact of these momentous events would cripple the process of development in Arab societies imposing a pattern contrary to that desired by most Arabs.

Undoubtedly, under these new circumstances, the challenge of human development has become even more important, more urgent and harder to attain. In contrast to these externally driven events, the series of Arab Human Development Reports represents an effort to crystallize a strategic vision of change, developed by Arabs, for the sake of human development from within the region and to deepen an Arab-owned and Arab-led dialogue on ways to safeguard the dignity and well-being of the Arab people. There can be no doubt that self-reform stemming from open, scrupulous and balanced self-criticism is the right, if not the only alternative to plans that have apparently been drawn up outside the Arab world for restructuring the region and for reshaping its identity.

Subject: RE: BS: Mideast: View From the Eye of the Storm
From: CarolC
Date: 01 Aug 04 - 01:57 PM

beardedbruce, just like brucie, you are twisting other peoples words to make it look like they are saying something entirely differen from what they are actually saying. You can't possibly be on very firm ground in your arguments if you have to resort to that kind of dirty trick.

Subject: RE: BS: Mideast: View From the Eye of the Storm
From: beardedbruce
Date: 01 Aug 04 - 02:06 PM

CarolC

Jack the Sailor: " The man claims to know the all the problems of an area from Morrocco to Pakistan because he lives in Israel "

I merely presented WHERE he got the facts that he used in his arguement. Fram an ARAB generated UN Report. Hardly the " bigoted hate inducing unsupported diatribe" that Jack claimed it was- unless you choose to call the UN Report unsupported. At least I had the decency not to post the entire article, when the "blue clicky" makes it available to those interested.
" You can't possibly be on very firm ground in your arguments if you have to resort to that kind of dirty trick. "

Subject: RE: BS: Mideast: View From the Eye of the Storm
From: beardedbruce
Date: 01 Aug 04 - 02:17 PM

from the first posting:

"Why do I put aside Israel and its own immediate neighborhood? Because
Israel and any problems related to it, in spite of what you might read
or hear in the world media, is not the central issue, and has never
been the central issue in the upheaval in the region. Yes, there is a
100 year-old Israeli-Arab conflict, but it is not where the main show
is. The millions who died in the Iran-Iraq war had nothing to do with
Israel. The mass murder happening right now in Sudan, where the Arab
Moslem regime is massacring its black Christian citizens, has nothing
to do with Israel. The frequent reports from Algeria about the murders
of hundreds of civilian in one village or another by other Algerians
have nothing to do with Israel. Saddam Hussein did not invade Kuwait,
endangered Saudi Arabia and butchered his own people because of Israel.
Egypt did not use poison gas against Yemen in the 60's because of
Israel. Assad the Father did not kill tens of thousands of his own
citizens in one week in El Hamma in Syria because of Israel. The
Taliban control of Afghanistan and the civil war there had nothing to
do with Israel. The Libyan blowing up of the Pan-Am flight had nothing
to do with Israel, and I could go on and on and on."


"But that won't happen as long as there are people who need to promote hatred of Arabs, Palestinians, and Muslims because if they do the alternative- recognize these people as human beings, they won't any longer be able to rationalize away the horrific things that are being done to them. "

The question becomes, done to them BY WHOM?

Subject: RE: BS: Mideast: View From the Eye of the Storm
From: beardedbruce
Date: 01 Aug 04 - 02:19 PM

sorry, the second quote was CarolC at 01 Aug 04 - 03:23 AM

Subject: RE: BS: Mideast: View From the Eye of the Storm
From: CarolC
Date: 01 Aug 04 - 02:25 PM

The question becomes, done to them BY WHOM?

Read the speech from Dr. Rima Khalaf Hunaidi (the very same woman you are using as your source of information) that I posted an excerpt from and a link to in my 01 Aug 04 - 01:51 PM post, and see for yourself.

Subject: RE: BS: Mideast: View From the Eye of the Storm
From: beardedbruce
Date: 01 Aug 04 - 02:33 PM

Read the speech by HAIM HARARI, the point of this thread, and see for YOURSELF.


"There are none so blind as those who will not see."



Hundreds of times more moslems are killed every year by other moslems, but since you can't blame Israel, you see fit to ignore that.

The POINT of the article starting this thread was that as long as the Arab world insisted on blaming Israel for all the problems, they would NEVER have "self-reform stemming from open, scrupulous and balanced self-criticism is the right, if not the only alternative to plans that have apparently been drawn up outside the Arab world for restructuring the region and for reshaping its identity. " to quote from Dr. Rima Khalaf Hunaidi

Subject: RE: BS: Mideast: View From the Eye of the Storm
From: Jack the Sailor
Date: 01 Aug 04 - 02:36 PM

"This is a source for the information in the starting post, which YOU have claimed the man could not know because he was a Jew. I hardly think that this is unrelated."

No Beardedbruce, I was pointing out that the man's ONLY CLAIM to expertise was that he lives in Israel.

Here are the areas of expertise that he claims.


Professor HAIM HARARI, a theoretical physicist, is the Chair, Davidson Institute of Science Education, and Former President, from 1988 to 2001, of the Weizmann Institute of Science.

During his years as President of the Institute, it entered numerous
new scientific fields and projects, built 47 new buildings, raised one Billion Dollars in philanthropic money, hired more than half of its current tenured Professors and became one of the highest
royalty-earning academic organizations in the world.

Throughout all his adult life, he has made major contributions to
three different fields: Particle Physics Research on the international scene, Science Education in the Israeli school system and Science Administration and Policy Making.

Here is knowledge he bases his opinion on.

I have never been and I will never be a
Government official and I have no privileged information. My
perspective is entirely based on what I see, on what I read and on the fact that my family has lived in this region for almost 200 years. You may regard my views as those of the proverbial taxi driver, which you are supposed to question, when you visit a country.

He is claiming to know about Morocco and Pakistan even though he lives in Israel.
He is claiming that he knows about the problems in those places, a thousand miles away, even as he claims that those problems have nothing to do with Israel. It just isn't credible. How are Casablanca and Tel Aviv in the "same neighbourhood" Casablanca and Madrid may be in the same neighbourhood. Athens is a lot closer to Israel than Karachi. Is he also qualified to speak about Greece and Spain?

I'm not saying that the man doesn't know what he is talking about because he is a Jew. I'm saying he doesn't know what he is talking about because his claim of knowledge on the matter is hogwash and is not even internally consistant. I am sure a lot of Jews know a lot about this topic. Sharon is one one on the right, no Doubt, Carol quotes a lot who speak the other side.

I you got in a taxi in Chicago would you ask his opinion of New York or San Francisco?

This is what I don't like.

Why do I put aside Israel and its own immediate neighborhood? Because Israel and any problems related to it, in spite of what you might read or hear in the world media, is not the central issue, and has never been the central issue in the upheaval in the region.

I say there is no one central issue. I say, and have said that Israel is as much at fault as any regime in the region and much more so than most. You don't agree, that's fine. But don't accuse me of bigotry. Just like the man who wrote that speech I can read and give my opinion.

Subject: RE: BS: Mideast: View From the Eye of the Storm
From: beardedbruce
Date: 01 Aug 04 - 02:47 PM

Note he said "on what I read " I was presenting the UN report that he must have read, from the figures he presents.

YOU accused him of "bigoted hate inducing unsupported diatribe" when if fact his reasoned remarks were those of an intelligent person given the information in the Arab produced UN report. THAT makes you a bigot- You judge his remarks by his nationality, rather than the content. You are entitled to your opinion, as I am to mine- but YOU made an unsupported accusation.

Your preoccupation with blaming Israel for all the problems of the Arab world detracts from your sometimes valid critism of some of the actions of the government of Israel.

Subject: RE: BS: Mideast: View From the Eye of the Storm
From: CarolC
Date: 01 Aug 04 - 02:49 PM

Haim Harari took the report given by Arabs at the UN out of context and twisted it around to serve a purpose that is entirely the opposite of the purpose of the original report given by Arabs. The way Haim Harari uses this information is racist, bigoted, and highly prejudiced.

And then he makes that racist claim that all Arabs and Muslims are complicit in their silence for the crimes committed by the most extreme Arabs and Muslims. As I pointed out before, if someone would say the same thing, only substituting "Jews" for "Arabs and Muslims", you and many others would call it anti-Semitic.

Subject: RE: BS: Mideast: View From the Eye of the Storm
From: Jack the Sailor
Date: 01 Aug 04 - 02:51 PM

Beardedbruce my point is that Israel blaming the problem on the Muslims being "dysfunctional" is disregarding the log in their own eye to point out the dust in everyone else's eyes.

No one argues that there are problems in the region.
Everyone else but Israel believes that Israel is a good place to address these problems. One of the reasonss Cheney had for starting the neocon plan in Iraq was that the Iraqis were the best educated Middle eastern country and that for that reason it would be a good place from which to spread democracy. The Palestinians traditionally have been the second best educated Middle Eastern population. In my opinion, their main impediment to democracy is the atrocity swapping between Hamas and the Sharon Goverment.

Subject: RE: BS: Mideast: View From the Eye of the Storm
From: beardedbruce
Date: 01 Aug 04 - 02:51 PM

I disagree with your assessment.

Subject: RE: BS: Mideast: View From the Eye of the Storm
From: CarolC
Date: 01 Aug 04 - 02:52 PM

I disagree with your assessment.

Then we will have to agree to disagree.

Subject: RE: BS: Mideast: View From the Eye of the Storm
From: Jack the Sailor
Date: 01 Aug 04 - 02:59 PM

Beardedbruce,

He is the one who uses his nationality both as a source of credibility on the region and as an excuse to claim that he is not involved. To me, that's Bullshit.


He is using race to say in effect that the other Arab countries should be outraged at the Palestinians for their actions against Israel but implying that they should not be outraged at the actions Israel has taken against the Palestinians.

Its Bullshit, an Israeli claiming that the problem is not Israel is bullshit.

Subject: RE: BS: Mideast: View From the Eye of the Storm
From: beardedbruce
Date: 01 Aug 04 - 03:00 PM

WHich I think we both knew.

I doubt if we will ever agree on this topic. I do think, however, that the good information you sometimes present is ignored because of the perceived bias you and Jack have against Israel- more so than the information lost because of my perceived bias in favor of Israel.

Subject: RE: BS: Mideast: View From the Eye of the Storm
From: Jack the Sailor
Date: 01 Aug 04 - 03:02 PM

Beardedbruce, you are welcome to disagree with my assessment. You are not welcome to claim that I claim that someone is wrong BECAUSE they are Jewish. Fair enough?

Subject: RE: BS: Mideast: View From the Eye of the Storm
From: beardedbruce
Date: 01 Aug 04 - 03:06 PM

sorry, crossposted- 03:00PM was to CarolC

Jack, he is quoting an UN report saying that the problem is not Israel. I do not think he "uses his nationality both as a source of credibility on the region ", but rather to identify himself.

"Professor HAIM HARARI, a theoretical physicist, is the Chair, Davidson
Institute of Science Education, and Former President, from 1988 to
2001, of the Weizmann Institute of Science.

During his years as President of the Institute, it entered numerous
new scientific fields and projects, built 47 new buildings, raised one
Billion Dollars in philanthropic money, hired more than half of its
current tenured Professors and became one of the highest
royalty-earning academic organizations in the world.

Throughout all his adult life, he has made major contributions to
three different fields: Particle Physics Research on the international
scene, Science Education in the Israeli school system and Science
Administration and Policy Making."


Seems like a standard academic listing to me...

Subject: RE: BS: Mideast: View From the Eye of the Storm
From: CarolC
Date: 01 Aug 04 - 03:12 PM

beardedbruce, the way things work in the US, and I imagine also in Israel, is that anyone who doesn't have a bias against the Palestinians, and Arabs and Muslims in general, is perceived to have a bias against Israel. But that's just nonesense. The fact that I don't have a bias against the Palestinians is not in any way an indication of a bias against Israel.

I support Israelis. Just not the same Israelis that you support. I challenge you to read the material I posted in this thread from the members and former members of the IDF and the refuseniks, who are not willing to be complicit in their silence about what the government of Israel is doing in the Occupied Territories. Those people are Israelis, and I support them.

Subject: RE: BS: Mideast: View From the Eye of the Storm
From: Peace
Date: 01 Aug 04 - 03:47 PM

Jack, you should take your head out of your ass. Carol has NEVER supported Israel in anything she's written. It is one litany after another about the Palestinians--and she sees no connection between them and the Arabic nations (countries) that have vowed to destroy Isreal. You spout the same shit. So, dear Jack, fuck you, too.

Subject: RE: BS: Mideast: View From the Eye of the Storm
From: CarolC
Date: 01 Aug 04 - 04:03 PM

Carol has NEVER supported Israel in anything she's written.

If you think that, it's obvious that you're not reading what I've written.

Who died and made you God brucie? I challenge you, also, to read the words of the members and former members of the IDF that I've posted here in this thread. And the myriad of other things I've posted from Israeli Jews whose main crime is that they don't agree with you about what's good for Israel.

When you were an activist in the fight against the war in Vietnam, there were people who were accusing people like you of being anti-American. Of hating America, and of not supporting America. Vietnam War protesters were not anti-American. They just didn't agree with the agenda of the US government with regard to Vietnam. I don't have to support the agenda that you endorse in order to be in support of Israel. You don't get to decide that your vision of Israel is the only vision of Israel that is supportive of Israel as a country. And the fact that it's my money and not yours that pays for what the government of Israel does to the Palestinians, gives me a hell of a lot more right to decide which vision of lsrael I am willing to support than you.

Subject: RE: BS: Mideast: View From the Eye of the Storm
From: Little Brother
Date: 01 Aug 04 - 04:58 PM

Carol, and it's also some of your money that pays for what the Palestinians are doing to Israel also. The U.S. gave millions to the Palestinians as well. I don't see much of it going to better their everyday lives. -LB

Subject: RE: BS: Mideast: View From the Eye of the Storm
From: Little Brother
Date: 01 Aug 04 - 05:00 PM

And Carol, using the "f" word doesn't become you as a lady. -LB

Subject: RE: BS: Mideast: View From the Eye of the Storm
From: CarolC
Date: 01 Aug 04 - 05:13 PM

I don't see much of it going to better their everyday lives

The fact that you don't see it doesn't mean that it didn't happen. The actual fact is that quite a lot of foriegn aid money was used by the Palestinians to build the civil infrastructure (schools, hospitals, roads, government facilities, etc.) that the government of Israel destroyed during the incursion into the Occupied Territories in 2002.

I never said I was a lady.

Subject: RE: BS: Mideast: View From the Eye of the Storm
From: CarolC
Date: 01 Aug 04 - 05:16 PM

Let me rephrase that, since that is a bit of a sore point for me...

The actual fact is that quite a lot of foriegn aid money was used by the Palestinians to build the civil infrastructure (schools, hospitals, roads, government facilities, etc.) that the government of Israel used my tax money to help them destroy during the incursion into the Occupied Territories in 2002.

Subject: RE: BS: Mideast: View From the Eye of the Storm
From: Peace
Date: 01 Aug 04 - 05:40 PM

SSDD from you Carol.

Subject: RE: BS: Mideast: View From the Eye of the Storm
From: CarolC
Date: 01 Aug 04 - 06:33 PM

Another thing I was wondering about, brucie, is when you were protesting the Vietnam War, how much time you spent criticizing the people of Vietnam for the things that were being done to them by the US government.

Subject: RE: BS: Mideast: View From the Eye of the Storm
From: CarolC
Date: 01 Aug 04 - 06:41 PM

Or maybe you're just a completely spineless fair-weather activist who is only willing to get involved in fashionable activist or human rights movements, but who won't go anywhere near any human rights causes that won't bring you any glory.

Subject: RE: BS: Mideast: View From the Eye of the Storm
From: mg
Date: 01 Aug 04 - 08:24 PM

the things that were being done for some of them and many are greatly appreciative of our efforts to this day. mg

Subject: RE: BS: Mideast: View From the Eye of the Storm
From: Little Brother
Date: 01 Aug 04 - 08:36 PM

Carol, let me accurately rephrase your rephrasel.
"The actual fact is that quite a lot of foriegn aid money was used by the Palestinians to build the civil infrastructure (schools, hospitals, roads, government facilities, etc.) in which the Palestinian terorrist cowards took shelter after committing their vile and despicable terorist acts." -LB

Subject: RE: BS: Mideast: View From the Eye of the Storm
From: Peace
Date: 01 Aug 04 - 08:54 PM

Carol,

Let me ask this. What have you ever done for anyone but yourself? These posts of yours are self-serving, because most people are tired of the crap you cut and paste. You are a rude individual, and not all that persuasive with your arguments.

You liken yourself to a person who cares about human rights. You do not. You care about Palestinian rights. Not Jewish rights. So, stow your rhetoric. It sucks, and your initial personal attack did, too. Pass that on to the guy you live with, with my warmest regards.

Subject: RE: BS: Mideast: View From the Eye of the Storm
From: Jack the Sailor
Date: 01 Aug 04 - 09:34 PM

I guess you didn't understand.

I said

I'll tell you what Brucie. If you are not a troll, you show us where Carol said that the Israelis are wrong "for wanting to live". If she is really as hatefull as you say she is it shouldn't be hard to find. If you can't find anything to back up what you are saying, if you can't back up your disgusting ad hominim attacks then fuck you!

Defending Palestinians is not the same as saying that "Israelis are wrong for wanting to live"

It seems to me you are going to respond to this in one of two ways. You are either going to back up your statement with a quote from Carol or you are going to demonstate your ignorance one more time by repeating the same lame lies. What is it to be brucie? Are you going to put up or shut up?

Subject: RE: BS: Mideast: View From the Eye of the Storm
From: CarolC
Date: 01 Aug 04 - 09:40 PM

I disagree with your praphrasing of what I said, Little Brother. And I can back that up with documentation.


These posts of yours are self-serving, because most people are tired of the crap you cut and paste.

How can they possibly be self-serving if they bring me so much hostility from people like you, Martin Gibson, Bill H, and various anonymoust GUESTS? I document my assertions because people ask me to. If you don't like it, you don't have to read it.

Let me ask this. What have you ever done for anyone but yourself

I raised a special needs child, essentially by myself.

You are a rude individual

That's pretty funny coming from someone who defends someone whose whole purpose in being here in the Mudcat is to make personal attacks on others.

and not all that persuasive with your arguments

You're entitled to your opinions.

You liken yourself to a person who cares about human rights. You do not. You care about Palestinian rights. Not Jewish rights. So, stow your rhetoric. It sucks, and your initial personal attack did, too. Pass that on to the guy you live with, with my warmest regards.

This is bullshit. Just as I hold the policies of the US government responsible for the deaths of all of the US citizens who died or were wounded in Vietnam, I also hold the government of Israel responsible for all of the Israeli Jews who have died or been wounded as a result of its policies. I am speaking out on behalf of Israeli Jews. Go ahead and read the words of the young people whom you expect to go and die and/or kill in the Occupied Territories in order to carry out the policies of a repressive regime that they don't even agree with. Why will you not read their words?

The reason you won't read their words is because if you do, you'll find out that you have been supporting state sponsored terrorism all this time, and you might have difficulty living with yourself as a result of that realization.

Subject: RE: BS: Mideast: View From the Eye of the Storm
From: Jack the Sailor
Date: 01 Aug 04 - 09:48 PM

I'm sorry Beardedbruce, I quoted him once, I'm not going to do it again. If he's quoting a UN report good for him. He said he was speaking as a "proverbial cab driver" not as a political expert. Pardon me for taking him at his word. But that's what he said.

He is trying to say this is a World War with Israel and its allies on one side and the Muslim world on the other. I say that Israel vs Arabs is not my fight. I'm sorry but I don't value an Israeli child above anyone else's.

I think that there are plenty of people putting across the Pro Irsael point of view. If Carol wants to speak for the Palestinians that doesn't make her against the people of Israel. I am for peace and prosperity for Israel. But I think their current government has other priorities.

Good luck to all of you and God Bless. I am done with this thread.

Subject: RE: BS: Mideast: View From the Eye of the Storm
From: Peace
Date: 02 Aug 04 - 02:59 AM

Jack, take a word from your wife, OK?

"My "fuck you" response is between me and brucie, and it's none of your business."