Well, since this has been promoted, I'll paste the reply I left on EndAll's profile to his question.
I'll also correct myself: In my third point I falsely claim that Lehi was responsible for the King David hotel bombing, when in fact it was the Irgun that committed that act. Those guys weren't as extreme as Lehi, but not by much.
>> ^demon_ix:

- The video seems to take it for granted that "Zionists" are a tiny fraction of Jews, when in fact, the opposite is true. The anti-Israel Jews are a tiny minority, and their only objection to Israel is that it's too early. They believe that when the messiah comes again, he will take back the land, and so there is no reason to do it before his return. They are the Jewish equivalent of Christian believers in Rapture, fanatical Muslims and so on.
- There's some nice footage at 5:50 of planes dropping bombs and cannons bombarding settlements while Mr. Rees discusses the Jewish defensive organizations, conveying the appearance that the Jews were attacking Palestinians at the time, when the biggest piece of military hardware they had at the time were rifles, often without ammo.
- The bombing of the King David hotel (6:46) was performed by a tiny splinter group known as Lehi, which was the most extreme bunch of lunatics in our history. They even attempted to ally themselves with Nazi Germany at one point. Mr. Rees generously attributes this to "The Zionists".
- In the description of UN resolution 181 (7:20), he skips completely over the actual formation of the Nation of Israel on May 14th 1948, and declares the 1948 war which involved EVERY SINGLE NATION BORDERING ISRAEL, was in fact simply Jews terrorizing Palestinians. The relevant details about the actual progress of the war are here. He mentions the actual war in about 3 words afterwards.
- The 1967 war, or the Six Day War, started with an invasion of Israel by it's bordering nations. Mr. Rees states that Israel expanded it's borders as though it was on an Imperialist quest to grab more land.
- The quickly described war of 1973, or the Yom-Kippur War, was started AGAIN by an invasion from all sides. This time, they picked Yom-Kippur as their day of attack, and managed to catch most of our army by surprise on the one day where the vast majority of Jews rest and eat nothing. This war wasn't spinnable in an anti-Israeli way for Mr. Rees, so he glossed over it quickly and moved on.
- At around 14:00 Mr. Rees describes the American aid to Jordan and Egypt as "payment for not attacking Israel", and ignores the fact that Egypt signed a peace treaty with Israel in 1979 and Jordan followed in 1994. Syria and Lebanon are still technically at war with Israel, and Iraq actively attacked Israel with Scud missiles during the first Gulf War.
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I could probably go into further detail, find more links and keep debating this, but it's 2:15am and I'm quite sleepy. I'll be glad to continue tomorrow.
In reply to this comment by EndAll:
Can you point out for me what history was rewritten? What facts they got wrong, or left out?

- The video seems to take it for granted that "Zionists" are a tiny fraction of Jews, when in fact, the opposite is true. The anti-Israel Jews are a tiny minority, and their only objection to Israel is that it's too early. They believe that when the messiah comes again, he will take back the land, and so there is no reason to do it before his return. They are the Jewish equivalent of Christian believers in Rapture, fanatical Muslims and so on.

- There's some nice footage at 5:50 of planes dropping bombs and cannons bombarding settlements while Mr. Rees discusses the Jewish defensive organizations, conveying the appearance that the Jews were attacking Palestinians at the time, when the biggest piece of military hardware they had at the time were rifles, often without ammo.

- The bombing of the King David hotel (6:46) was performed by a tiny splinter group known as Lehi, which was the most extreme bunch of lunatics in our history. They even attempted to ally themselves with Nazi Germany at one point. Mr. Rees generously attributes this to "The Zionists".

- In the description of UN resolution 181 (7:20), he skips completely over the actual formation of the Nation of Israel on May 14th 1948, and declares the 1948 war which involved EVERY SINGLE NATION BORDERING ISRAEL, was in fact simply Jews terrorizing Palestinians. The relevant details about the actual progress of the war are here. He mentions the actual war in about 3 words afterwards.

- The 1967 war, or the Six Day War, started with an invasion of Israel by it's bordering nations. Mr. Rees states that Israel expanded it's borders as though it was on an Imperialist quest to grab more land.

- The quickly described war of 1973, or the Yom-Kippur War, was started AGAIN by an invasion from all sides. This time, they picked Yom-Kippur as their day of attack, and managed to catch most of our army by surprise on the one day where the vast majority of Jews rest and eat nothing. This war wasn't spinnable in an anti-Israeli way for Mr. Rees, so he glossed over it quickly and moved on.

- At around 14:00 Mr. Rees describes the American aid to Jordan and Egypt as "payment for not attacking Israel", and ignores the fact that Egypt signed a peace treaty with Israel in 1979 and Jordan followed in 1994. Syria and Lebanon are still technically at war with Israel, and Iraq actively attacked Israel with Scud missiles during the first Gulf War.

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I could probably go into further detail, find more links and keep debating this, but it's 2:15am and I'm quite sleepy. I'll be glad to continue tomorrow.

In reply to this comment by EndAll:
Can you point out for me what history was rewritten? What facts they got wrong, or left out?

Hamas' charter calls for a withdrawal from all land occupied by Isreal since 1967, the West Bank, the Gaza Strip and East Jerusalem. That is their legitimate goal and attacks sanctioned by Hamas are against military targets on occupied Palestinian territory. Attacks inside Isreal are not sanctioned by Hamas and are condemned by Hamas.

The unilateral withdrawal offered by Sharon that you mention was in fact a 10 year truce mediated by Jimmy Carter in return for complete withdrawal of Isreal forces from the occupied lands taken in 1967, and a return to the 1967 borders. Isreal never responded to it.

Hamas then offered another truce in June this year mediated by Egypt. They have agreed to stick to the timetable but will continue to respond to Isreali attacks. Isreal didn't respond to that either.

In 2006 Hamas announced it would cease all violence if Isreal recognised the 1967 borders and withdrew from occupied territory.

I hope you are seeing the parallels with the Irish struggle.

In reply to this comment by bcglorf:

Hamas does not exist to stir retaliatory strikes from Isreal, that is American propoganda and is completely untrue. Hamas wants to liberate their country which has been illegally occupied by Isreal and wants to reassemble their nation which is an entirely legal and legitimate goal.

By Hamas own charter, they define the illegally occupied country as the ENTIRETY of Israel. If taking that 'back' is a legal and legitimate goal I'm content to disagree.


Isreal is circling and taking over Palestinian land, the idea that they are encouraging any kind of withdrawal is laughable and untrue.


Israel took the West Bank, East Jerusalem and the Golan Heights after the six-day war from, not the Palestinian people, but from Jordan and Syria. Israel was not concerned with circling the Palestinians, as they were not in control of those regions, they were concerned with the armies that Egypt, Syria and Jordan were massing on their borders.

As for withdrawal, have the Palestinians put forward anything similar to Sharon's unilateral disengagement plan? I'd think that, at the least, somewhat qualifies as encouraging withdrawal.

Hamas does not exist to stir retaliatory strikes from Isreal, that is American propoganda and is completely untrue. Hamas wants to liberate their country which has been illegally occupied by Isreal and wants to reassemble their nation which is an entirely legal and legitimate goal.

By Hamas own charter, they define the illegally occupied country as the ENTIRETY of Israel. If taking that 'back' is a legal and legitimate goal I'm content to disagree.


Isreal is circling and taking over Palestinian land, the idea that they are encouraging any kind of withdrawal is laughable and untrue.


Israel took the West Bank, East Jerusalem and the Golan Heights after the six-day war from, not the Palestinian people, but from Jordan and Syria. Israel was not concerned with circling the Palestinians, as they were not in control of those regions, they were concerned with the armies that Egypt, Syria and Jordan were massing on their borders.

As for withdrawal, have the Palestinians put forward anything similar to Sharon's unilateral disengagement plan? I'd think that, at the least, somewhat qualifies as encouraging withdrawal.

"Palestine was designated as the Jewish National Home by the League of Nations, enshrining this designation in international law. Why should the Jewish people give up any part of Palestine?"

The Jewish National Home described in the Balfour Declaration, which was later incorporated into the British League of Nation Mandate over Palestine, does not necessarily suggest that there is international legal precedent for an Israeli state encompassing all of historical Israel. One, the Balfour Declaration itself was a wartime expedient designed to build support for WWI among European and, especially, American Jews so its value as legal precedent is suspect. Two, the British Government, who issued the Balfour Declaration, made two other, contradictory agreements: one with King Hussein, in the Hussein-McMahon Correspondence, which gave all Arab speaking lands, except for the Lebanon, to his rule in exchange for orchestrating an Arab uprising against the Ottomans; and the second with the French in the Sykes-Picot Agreement which divided up Ottoman territories for French and British colonization and administration. Three, the League of Nations Mandate was in violation of the League's charter: it denied the right to self-determination to former Ottoman subjects. Four, the Balfour Declaration describes a Jewish National Home within Palestine which shall not "prejudice the civil and religious rights of existing non-Jewish communities in Palestine", not a Jewish state. Five, the Balfour Declaration was a declaration by fiat of the British Government that was performed with out consultation with or consideration of the Palestinian people. For these, and numerous other, reasons it is unwise to take the Balfour Declaration as international legal precedent for an Israeli state.

Fortunately, we don't have to take the Balfour Declaration as precedent. The 1948 UN Special Commission on Palestine enshrines the existence of separate Israeli and Palestinian states living alongside eachother. It is important to note however the the borders of these two states look very different from the borders we see today. In the 48-49 war, the Israelis seized territory beyond the '48 borders and declared them unconditionally Jewish. This seizure of land was in violation of international law but was tolerated, largely as a result of European guilt over the holocaust. Israel expanded it's borders yet again in the Six Day War of '67, in which they launched preemptive strikes against Syria, Jordan, and Egypt, seizing and retaining territory to this day. The seizure of land by war is in violation of the UN charter and as result numerous UN Security Council Resolutions (242 and 338 among others) have been drawn up condemning Israeli's seizure of land and demanding that it be returned. The point is that Israel has a legal right to exist, but it illegally holds much of the land it currently possesses.

A final legal issue is Israel's denial of right to return to Palestinian refugees, a clear violation of international law. Israel faces a demographic problem, in that if they allow refugees to return, within a generation Arabs will outnumber Jews in the Israeli state. Israel would then have to either give up its Jewish identity, or give up its democracy in order to suppress Arab influence over the state. Israel doesn't have a solution to this problem as the Jewish birthrate is much lower than Palestinian. As a result, their only choice, from their perspective, is to continue to violate international law, with the knowledge the US financial and military back will remain, until a longterm solution can be devised. In the mean time, Palestinian refugees continue to languish in the conditions of refugee camps.

This isn't personal. In the marketplace of ideas, we are both selling and buying.

Have you thought this out thoroughly? What happens when/if "the Palestinians" get their "own" nation? It will end up another launchpad for rockets.

http://factsandlogic.org/ad_77.html

But how about the legal aspect of this matter? Isn’t the “West Bank” “occupied territory” and therefore the Jews have no right to be there? But the historic reality is quite different. Very briefly: The Ottoman Empire was the sovereign in the entire area. In 1917, while World War I was still raging, Britain issued the Balfour Declaration. It designated “Paleatine” — extending throughout what is now Israel (including the “West Band”) and what is now the Kingdom of Jordan — as the homeland for the Jewish people. In 1922, the League of Nations ratified the Balfour Declaration and designated Britain as the mandatory power. Regrettably, Britain, for its own imperial reasons and purposes, separated 76 percent of the land — that lying beyond the Jordan River — to create the kingdom of Trans-Jordan (now Jordan) and made it inaccessible to Jews. In 1947, tired of the constant bloodletting between Arabs and Jews, the British threw in the towel and abandoned the Mandate. The UN took over. It devised a plan by which the land west of the Jordan River would be split between the Jews and the Arabs. The Jews, though with heavy heart, accepted the plan. The Arabs virulently rejected it and invaded the nascent Jewish state with the armies of five countries, so as to destroy it at its birth. Miraculously, the Jews prevailed and the State of Israel was born. When the smoke of battle cleared, Jordan was in possession of the West Bank and Egypt in possession of Gaza. They were the “occupiers” and they proceeded to kill many Jews and to drive out the rest. They systematically destroyed all Jewish holy places and all vestiges of Jewish presence. The area was “judenrein.”

In the Six-Day War of 1967, the Jews reconquered the territories. The concept that Jewish presence in Judea/Samaria is illegal and that the Jews are occupiers is bizarre. It just has been repeated so often and with such vigor that many people have come to accept it.

How about the “Palestinians,” whose patrimony this territory supposedly is and about whose olive trees and orange groves we hear endlessly? There is no such people. They are Arabs — the same people as in Lebanon, Syria, Jordan, and beyond. Most of them migrated into the territories and to “Israel proper,” attracted by Jewish prosperity and industry.

The concept of “Palestinians” as applied to Arabs and as a distinct nationality urgently in need of their own twenty-third Arab state, is a fairly new one; it was not invented until after 1948, when the State of Israel was founded.

But here’s a thought: How about a deal by which the “settlements” were indeed abandoned and all the Jews were to move to “Israel proper.” At the same time, all the Arabs living in Israel would be transferred to Judea/Samaria or to wherever else they wanted to go. That would indeed make Judea/Samaria “judenrein,” and what are now Arab lands in Israel would be “arabrein.” The Arabs could then live in a fully autonomous area in eastern Israel and peace, one would hope, would descend on the holy land.

Interesting title, except that the Irgun was established after the 1929 Hebron Massacre in which Arab rioters massacred 67 Jews in Hebron. (It says so in your wiki link above.) As a result the Jews of Hebron were forced to leave.

Wikipedia - 1929 Hebron massacre
"The survivors of the massacre were forced to flee the community, and their property was occupied by Arabs until after the Six Day War of 1967."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1929_Hebron_massacre

So who were the first terrorists of the 20th Century?