>> ^Winstonfield_Pennypacker:
There's no spin. It's an accurate and fair assessment of the situation. There are more players in the game than just Israel and the Palestinians.

Oh blah blah blah, there is no point reading the rest of it.

You say the Arab world is supporting Palestinian efforts but don't acknowledge the large military and political help the Israelis receive from the US. Who they circumvent by attacking Palestinian areas anytime their big brother isn't looking. Note how vicious attacks got post 9/11 (under guise of fighting global terrorism not local oppression) and before transition of power in the US.

The Israels making concessions is a facade, the Road map to peace which I mentioned in my previous comments clearly was a progress to peace that Kadima's Sharon perused. The Palestinians at the time agreed to it, what happens next? Israel unilaterally imposes 'reservations' on the peace process and dismantles the no expansionary Israeli settlement clause in the articles. One of the key arguments Palestinians have with Israel.

Israeli demands and their concessions are out of balance, a 1% adjustment in Palestinian lands to Israelis remove all economic and political areas out of Palestinian lands. This is all while more lands in the West bank are criss crosses and ceded back into Israel with walls, towers and troops moving in to defend these new settlements from people whose homes just got bulldozed.

Israel doesn't want peace, all it wants is to keep the peace process in formaldehyde. The seeming appearance of perusing peace while it builds walls, sniper towers, blockades, and walls the Palestinians in further and further. That's why Palestinians and the rest of the Arab world do not really take their declarations of seeking peace seriously because it's always the same bullshit.

But you know I can see why you would think otherwise, Israel has AIPAC, WINEP, MEMRITV and a thousand other media apologists to fight the media perspective on how this conflict is read out in the rest of the world. I quote:

"Simultaneously, the Israeli media has been towing the government line to such a degree that no criticism of the war has been voiced on any of the three local television stations. Indeed, the situation has become so absurd that reporters and anchors are currently less critical of the war than the military spokespeople. In the absence of any critical analysis, it is not so surprising that 78% of Israelis, or about 98% of all Jewish Israelis, support the war."
http://www.counterpunch.org/gordon01162009.html

"The Immigrant Absorption Ministry announced on Sunday it was setting up an "army of bloggers," to be made up of Israelis who speak a second language, to represent Israel in "anti-Zionist blogs" in English, French, Spanish and German."
http://haaretz.com/hasen/spages/1056648.html

""We used to hold signs at protests reading 'The occupation will corrupt'," she told me. "Now, we can see that it has [come to pass]. As a society, we have lost our ability to see clearly; we have let fear blind us. Once, calling someone a racist was the harshest accusation you could make. Later, you began to hear people say 'I know I'm a racist, but...'; nowadays [during Cast Lead], we heard 'I know I'm talking like a Nazi, but at least the Nazis knew how to deal with their enemies'."" Yeah, yeah, yeah. I know, I know. But I don't like those analysis which refers to 1967 as the year when Israel "lost its soul"--whatever that means. It never had a soul to be begin with.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2009/jan/21/gaza-protest

But most disturbing of all was the graffiti they daubed on the walls of the ground floor. Some was in Hebrew, but much was naively written in English: "Arabs need 2 die", "Die you all", "Make war not peace", "1 is down, 999,999 to go", and scrawled on an image of a gravestone the words: "Arabs 1948-2009".
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2009/jan/20/gaza-israel-samouni-family

"Estimates for the proportion of civilian deaths among the 1,360 Palestinians killed range from more than half to two-thirds. Politicians, diplomats and journalists are by and large shying away from the obvious, namely that Israel has been deliberately targeting Palestinian civilians and the very infrastructure of normal life, in order to – in the best colonial style – teach the natives a lesson."
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2009/jan/20/gaza-israelandthepalestinians

«Singapore would become one of the most important commercial and military centres of the British Empire, and the hub of British power in Southeast Asia.»

« When the Communist Party of Malaya tried to take over Malaya and Singapore by force, a state of emergency was declared in June 1948. The emergency lasted for 12 years. Towards the end of 1953, the British government appointed a commission under Sir George Rendel to review Singapore's constitutional position and make recommendations for change. The Rendel proposals were accepted by the government and served as the basis of a new constitution that gave Singapore a greater measure of self-government. »

«The PAP had come to power in a united front with the communists to fight British colonialism. The communists controlled many mass organizations, especially of workers and students. It was an uneasy alliance between the PAP moderates and the pro communists, with each side trying to use the other for its own ultimate objective--in the case of the moderates, to obtain full independence for Singapore as part of a non-communist Malaya; in the case of the communists, to work towards a communist take-over.»

The PAP finally struck an independence deal with the British. Go figure. (S'pore is since a member of the Commonwealth.)

«Singapore's strategy for survival and development was essentially to take advantage of its strategic location and the favourable world economy. »

Not to mention that Singapore as an HEAVILY interventionist government - which practice eugenics o_0.

Non-violence ? Yearn for economic success? Ingenuity ? or History ?

reference
http://asnic.utexas.edu/asnic/countries/singapore/Singapore-History.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Singapore

Wow, talk about histrionic titles.... geesh.

Look, if you want any Western strategic interests located in the heart of the Middle East, this is how it's accomplished. If the US didn't pay this money, they'd have less influence over Israel and the region as a whole. The money buys the US a spot at the table. It also buys the US a military presence, a proxy military, a military jumping-off point, and thus political pressure in the area. Whether that's a good thing or a bad thing is another discussion.

As to the current fiasco: it's war and it's not a new war. If this were the dark ages and the groups could fire weapons the distance of a football field or two, I'm sure the groups could live together. Given the small size of the country and the advancement of weaponry, it's far easier for for the Israelis to be harmed by state or non-state players.

Look at the current situation: Hamas in Gaza started firing rockets into Israel. Israel asked the world for help. No help came. Israel attempted to remove this enemy once and for all. The attacks wouldn't be a problem if we were in the pre-rocket days - catapult fire wouldn't travel far enough. Pity our advancement of "civilization", eh?

Is there a right or a wrong in this fight? Wow. That's a naive question. Both sides have a right to live in the area. What right? There are historic rights for both groups. Military rights, too, for the Israelis, since 1948 and reaffirmed in '67. Both groups also have political/lawful rights. The problem is that the groups can't seem to Just Get Along. That puts Israel in a pickle: they can't readily defend themselves from hostile fire from enemies, many of whom refuse to accept that Israel is a legitimate state. They can't get make those people move to other countries... not legally, anyway. That leaves them with their only legal option: defend themselves from attack.

The Palestinians this time are fighting against the war of attrition; being cut off. The Israelis are defending against the reprisal terrorist attacks. Enter the circle of violence.

Of course nobody wants the civilian deaths in Gaza; neither child nor adult. That said, if you choose to live in Gaza or the West Bank, there's no doubt you'll have terrorists (and I say "terrorist" instead of "freedom fighter" because Hamas, Hezbollah, and the PLO have have plenty of civilian blood on their hands) living with you. And if you have terrorists as neighbors, you'll have bullets as weather.

Don't let the wingnuts read that... There heads will explode trying to come up with half-truths. From Fisk:

Yes, Israelis deserve security. Twenty Israelis dead in 10 years around Gaza is a grim figure indeed. But 600 Palestinians dead in just over a week, thousands over the years since 1948 – when the Israeli massacre at Deir Yassin helped to kick-start the flight of Palestinians from that part of Palestine that was to become Israel – is on a quite different scale. This recalls not a normal Middle East bloodletting but an atrocity on the level of the Balkan wars of the 1990s.

>> ^quantumushroom:

Israel has every right to defend itself while the world waits in vain for the "Palestinian people" to get their act together. And for those who think appeasement is the answer: if you could theoretically give the exact same resources to Palestine that Israel has, including the same area of land, Palestine would not build itself up, it would use all those resources to tear Israel down.
Palestine and Friends don't want peace, and so they have war.


God you're an idiot...

While the possibility of a Jewish homeland in Palestine had been a goal of Zionist organisations since the late 19th century, it was not until 1917 and the Balfour declaration that the idea gained the official backing of a major power. The declaration stated that the British government supported the creation of a national home for the Jewish people in Palestine. In 1936 the Peel Commission suggested partitioning Mandate Palestine into a Jewish state and an Arab state, though it was rejected as unworkable by the government and was at least partially to blame for the 1936-39 Arab revolt.

The UN partition plan

In the face of increasing violence, the British handed the issue over to the United Nations. The result was Resolution 181, a partition plan to divide Palestine between Jews and Arabs. The Jewish state was to receive around 56% of the land area of Mandate Palestine, encompassing 82% of the Jewish population, though it would be separated from Jerusalem, designated as an area to be administered by the UN. The plan was accepted by most of the Jewish population, but rejected by much of the Arab populace. On 29 November 1947, the plan was put to a vote in the United Nations General Assembly. The result was 33 to 13 in favour of the plan, with 10 abstentions. The Arab countries (all of which had opposed the plan) proposed to query the International Court of Justice on the competence of the General Assembly to partition a country against the wishes of the majority of its inhabitants, but were again defeated. The division was to take effect on the date of British withdrawal from the territory (15 May 1948), though the UK refused to implement the plan, arguing it was unacceptable to both sides.

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/9/97/UN_Partition_Plan_For_Palestine_1947.png/180px-UN_Partition_Plan_For_Palestine_1947.png

Can you at least go read some history before you try to pass yourself off as conversant in it?

Jewish and Arab relations through history since the conquest of Roman controlled Israel in about the 7th century have varied from cordial to strained to persecution (the Jew's lived on Arab owned lands and were subject to their laws).

The start of the modern conflict was the Arab backlash over the forced creation of Israel by the UN, effectively disenfranchising the Palestinians of the land they had owned for many centuries.

Basically your "who started it first" rant is based on a very thin slice of recorded history.

I'm not pro/anti Jew on this matter, but I think using the UN to mandate the carving of a state out of a sovereign country is a pretty big first punch in the current fight. And let's face it, if the UN came along and told the US that it had to permit the establishment of a new country for the Native Americans that would be ruled by them, ceding 56% of the land mass of the USA, I doubt you would be in here supporting them...

In some way one can say that colonial actions by the British government at the time, created a volatile situation in the post colonial world, leaving a spectre of war and instability in the same way we see played out in the creation and seperation of India, Pakistan and Bangladesh.

Agreed on the analogy, with the added factors of WW2 going on and complicating Britain's commitments and Jewish ambitions considerably. My problem with this video is instead of portraying the complexities that led to what was a civil war within Palestine between jews and arabs, it portrays only a British supported Zionist military occupation of all of Palestine. In my book that is just as indefensible as saying that Palestinian civilians deserve to live in fear because some of their 'leaders' are some very bad mofos.


Essentially nearly three decades before, it was preordained that a Jewish state be created in Judea, the British government finding favour with Zionist interests.


But that is again only partially true. Britain simply stated they would not object to Zionist ambitions in Palestine. Later on after Balfour though some Zionist terrorists changed Britains position by killing a bunch of people they didn't like. Israel wound up arresting and deporting a hundred some such Zionists to Britain tor trial to avoid Britain becoming hostile toward them.

My other major beef with the presentation here is that it completely ignores the treatment of Jewish people in Palestine under the Arab majority from 1900 to the early 1940s. The Jews tolerated many of the same restrictions and abuses that Palestinians 'enjoy' today. I'm obviously not saying two wrongs make a right, I'm saying that both were wrong. Pretending like this video does that Zionists just decided in 1948 to chase out all the Arabs that had previously treated them kindly as equals is false. Worse, that false presentation creates a, I'll say deliberate, bias against Israel.

What about to say is covered within http://www.videosift.com/video/Palestinian-Israeli-Conflict

bcglorf,

That's an interesting counter reading of the events that surround the times, I believe that section of the documentary should have gone further into explaining the historical context of the creation of Israel but perhaps they assume pervious knowledge of the Balfour agreement of 1917, which was a classified policy adopted by the British government for the creation of a Jewish state within Palestine. The original plan called for the creation of a single Jewish state in all of Judea, something Israel is seemingly achieving over the last 60 years.

Essentially nearly three decades before, it was preordained that a Jewish state be created in Judea, the British government finding favour with Zionist interests. The analogy being that your landlord desclares that someone else will get half of your living space. How do you react to that? The 1947 UN plan to partition the area in to two states, was not in line of its own article 73b that stipulated that any area would come into state under its own localized population.

Mass evacuation of Palestinians followed because there was wider insecurity for them, even though armed resistance had started understandbly because no one asked them about partition of their lands nor the massive immigration of Jews even though a reduction was stipulated in the 1939 white paper. The USA withdrew support for the partition plan, the Arab League and the Arab Liberation Army thought it could end the partition. The British however showed support to Israel, who now enforced forced military service, and taken an offensive stance in securing areas of Palestine. Jordan at the time did not seek to help set up a Palestinian state, wanting to capture more land to annex. The State of Israel comes into form having secured numerous settlements. World wide sympathy existed for Jewish Zionism post Holocaust reducing any international action. Military assessments in 1947 showed that Palestine did not have the military capability to withstand a conflict with Israel.

I could go on but I believe there is more to be found the more on goes further into the history and origins of the creation of State of Israel, the Balfour agreement, the 1947-1948 war, the 1948 Arab-Israeli war. In some way one can say that colonial actions by the British government at the time, created a volatile situation in the post colonial world, leaving a spectre of war and instability in the same way we see played out in the creation and seperation of India, Pakistan and Bangladesh.

There are a lot of factual errors in this 'documentary', in particular regarding the description of the lead up and execution of the 1948 war. If you can really listen to a description that declares Israel had everyone outnumbered with a better trained and equipped army then you need to go down to your local library and read a real account of what happened. This is the point where this video goes from 'documentary' to one sided propaganda, and it's subtlety in doing so is extremely harmful.

>> ^bcglorf:
>> ^Irishman:
Free Palestine. End the illegal occupation. Stop the oppression.

If only it could be that simple.
How is ending the occupation defined?
-Removal of all troops?
-Lifting aerial and naval blockades?
-Granting right of return?
-The elimination of the Israeli state and restoration of historic Palestine?
Hamas founders and charter define it is all the above by the way.
What borders define Palestine?
-1946?
-1948?
-1967?
-1973?
-Current Day?
Finally, in the -ahem- unlikely -ahem- event that rocket and suicide attacks on Israel(if it is still allowed to exist) continue for years afterwards, what is Israel expected to do?


Well, it's an ugly, ugly mess down there. It was a mistake to create Israel in the first place, because there was no historic basis for it. It was just done. And the borders have even fluctuated pretty wildly, as you already indicated.

There are no easy solutions.

One solution is for the involved parties to duke it out, so to speak, at the cost of many innocent lives.
Another is for the rest of the world to take a side and either force an agreement (and risk another uprising) or wipe out one side (which is virtually impossible, and also genocide).

There are no laws for the world, so we have no real jurisdiction to arbitrate their conflict, so natural conclusion is to isolate the countries from the rest of the world and let them have their fight, and to the victor goes the spoils. This is of course tremendously unfair, because we've already helped one side pretty damn much, and it's also very inhumane because many, many lives are wasted.

As I said, there are no easy solutions. Can you think of reasonable solutions?

(I hesitate to add this, but at the heart of this conflict is once again the elephant in the room - religion. If people were reasonable, this would not be nearly as bad as it is.)

>> ^Irishman:
Free Palestine. End the illegal occupation. Stop the oppression.


If only it could be that simple.

How is ending the occupation defined?
-Removal of all troops?
-Lifting aerial and naval blockades?
-Granting right of return?
-The elimination of the Israeli state and restoration of historic Palestine?
Hamas founders and charter define it is all the above by the way.

What borders define Palestine?
-1946?
-1948?
-1967?
-1973?
-Current Day?

Finally, in the -ahem- unlikely -ahem- event that rocket and suicide attacks on Israel(if it is still allowed to exist) continue for years afterwards, what is Israel expected to do?

>> ^rougy:
>> ^bcglorf:
That's either the most ignorant or racist remark that seems to be made by people about the issue.

I'm not surprised you said that.
I'm actually pro-Israel.
For some reason, some people equate any criticism with Israel, its actions or origins, with a certain form of racism.
You can't sugar coat it: millions of Palestinians who used to own land and live in that region no longer own the land and are living as expatriates or refugees.
They received zero recompense for their loss.
That is not a racist statement; it is a painful and obvious reality.


And before you said:
Yeah, they stole that land fair and square, right?

Sounds really pro-Israel there now doesn't it? Did you even read my post? All the 'occupied' territories where originally 'stolen' by Arab countries in 1948 through an effort to destroy Israel. They never gave the land back to the Palestinian people, they instead used it to launch attacks on Israel in new attempts to eliminate it. As a result of Israel winning many of those wars they took control of much of that land themselves. Solely laying the blame for the Palestinian plight on Israel is ignorant or racist and I stand by that.

As for Israel keeping Palestinian land, Israel has removed all it's forces from Gaza(unilaterally). Just this week Israeli soldiers forcefully removed jewish settlers from the West Bank. Unless the land you refer to is within Israel's own borders, Israel has made many efforts to return the occupied lands to the control of the Palestinian people. They could do more, but groups like Hamas and Hezbollah and surrounding countries like Syria and Lebanon could all be doing a lot more as well. Solely blaming Israel is ignoring all the other problems of a very complicated situation.

Many are also keen to point out how cruel it is for Israel to close it's borders with regions like Gaza because the people require aid that comes through them to survive. They are so busy blaming Israel for that, they forgot that some credit should be given to Israel when the borders are open since the largest single source for that aid is Israel itself.

^unclejimbo,

directly comparing murder rates country-to-country is not a valid comparison because of a convolution of variables and you should know that. the figures i quoted were not simple murders, if one included those, the numbers would be even higher. genocide is only possible under a differential of force. that occurs when one group disarms another group. i think you should read up on gun myths further before you jump to the conclusions held by "popular knowledge". if this is a subject you are interested in, (at least interested enough to read about while you are at work) i can point you to a lot of enlightening information.

"In 1911, Turkey established gun control. Subsequently, from 1915 to 1917, 1.5-million
Armenians, deprived of the means to defend themselves, were rounded up and killed.
In 1929, the Soviet Union established gun control. Then, from 1929 to 1953, approximately 20-
millon dissidents were rounded up and killed.
In 1935, China established gun control. Subsequently, between 1948 and 1952, over 20-million
dissidents were rounded up and killed.
In 1956, Cambodia enshrined gun control. In just two years (1975-1977) over one million
"educated" people were rounded up and killed.
In 1964, Guatemala locked in gun control. From 1964 to 1981, over 100,000 Mayan Indians
were rounded up and killed as a result of their inability to defend themselves.
In 1970, Uganda got gun control. Over the next nine years over 300,000 Christians were rounded
up and killed."

It is not enough to say that gun control resulted in these deaths, this requires additional analysis which is found in that book. Gun confiscation rarely results in the direct, immediate death of its owner, rather it establishes a force differential which makes oppression, genocide, and murder possible.

You may not realize it, but one of the few things stopping someone from rounding you up and killing you is the fact that there are 150 million guns in this country. It does not mean that in the absence of guns genocide always occurs, but there has never been an instance of genocide where the victims had a means to defend themselves. If you take away the guns, and somewhere down the road something intense happens which causes a philosophical shift, you are ripe for genocide. Just look at WW2, the Japanese were rounded up into internment camps. How many Japanese lives do you think were spared because the US government did not have the physical power to kill them as a result of an armed populace? How about for arabs after 9-11?

It is extremely dangerous to trust your life with complete strangers, and that is what you do when give up your right to defend yourself.

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They've basically taken the country from the arabs and then imprisoned them. They've created the biggest ghetto of all time. They've moved their borders over all the water supply in the area, coincidence?


And if that's how warped your view of Israel's history is then I think you've demonstrated my point for me. Expanding their borders beyond the UN mandate back in 1948 was there insidious plan all along. By tricking all surrounding arab nations to declare war on them, Israel was able to seize all the good land for themselves.


I give up, George Galloway is obviously a big fat liar


Well I guess that's something. Of course, if you've watched either of the videos I've linked it's completely impossible to deny.

@CP:

The funny thing is that I totally agree with you that the US shouldn’t keep supporting an Israel that insists in (inter alia) violating UN resolutions, but I’m afraid that this particular documentary doesn’t get the point across and could easily be interpreted as too anti-Israel or, even worse, as anti-semitic (which usually happens if one mixes up Jews and Israeli’s). In other words, I think overlooking all of Israel’s history between 1948 and 2000 and simply comparing Sharon to Saddam Hussein isn’t going to change anybody’s mind.

So maybe I should rephrase my earlier comment to: do the Palestinians still need an enemy if their friends keep fighting each other .

And without daring to ask you to do my research for me, I tried to find out more about this vid (looking for “Ring of Power”), but it looks as if nobody knows who the producer/director is and there’s also a lot of confusion re titles, bylines and context. Do you know who made this and/or where to find the rest of the documentary? It looks like an excerpt of this: http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=8250619454941053618.