Say it with me now. A-part-heid

Why do I say 'Fuck Israel'? Because Israel is colonialism. Israel is Imperialism. Israel is apartheid. Sorry folks, but those people living in that country that shrug their shoulders and say 'shitz crazy' are just as much to blame as the United States tax payers whose money goes to pay for the bombs dropped on the American School in west bank, a school built by U.S. $ and destroyed by U.S. $.

Neutrality is siding with the oppressor. Fuck Israel
Israel is an Apartheid state

- So Mr Billionaire Muslim, gonna help Gaza or the West Bank to construct amicable living conditions for their citizens and alieviate most of the crisis in that area?

- Perhaps you could you could help out in welcoming a lot of the Palestinian refugees?

- To hell with that! That shiite is for the pigdogs of the West. We just built the tallest f***ing building in the world! Now, release the burning camels!

This is an excellent summary of why things won't change here in the foreseeable future. The drug addict metaphor is very accurate. A part of the problem is the unending funds coming in from the US, and the lack of any requirements for them, enabling the addict.

Regardless of that, however there is no political force for peace on either side of this conflict. Israel's government is made up of mostly religious, settler and right-wing parties, and the Palestinian "government" is undergoing a power shift that will possibly result in full Hamas control of both Gaza and the West Bank. The current chairman of the Palestinian Authority, Mahmoud Abbas (Abu-Mazen) declared recently that he won't be running in the coming election, leaving the Palestinians with no clear leader and a very divided political system.

So how does anyone expect this crisis to be solved, when the only people who actually care about a peaceful solution here do so for 3-4 minutes while watching a Youtube clip?

Ah yes, cruel Israelis.

They kill dissidents, use human shields and broadcast murderous anti-Muslim propaganda on their main television networks. The most democratic country in the region is truly despicable.

Some people tend to forget that there are nearly TWO MILLION Muslims living, working, praying and enjoying all the social benefits of the most agreeable country in the region. Anyone care to guess the number of Jews in the West Bank or Gaza?

He was right to stress the fact that he really does not deserve it. The award seems like it's been given based on his aspirations rather than his accomplishments. If anything, he'd be most practically served by it by using it as a launching pad to lay out his plans on Israel/Palestine which he has been hesitant to do and to more definitively call for an end to settlement building in the West Bank. Then again with the Copenhagen summit on climate change looming and health care, it's unclear whether he'd be able to feasible accomplish anything with it.

They don't have to create enthusiasm here. For a very long time before Cast Lead, the city of Sderot was taking 10+ rockets a day. The rockets (called Qassam) were basically a street light pole with some fuel and explosives. It's not a very powerful rocket, but it can't be targeted. That means that they can only pick a population center and launch. To the people living in Sderot, an alarm was sounding 10+ times a day that meant "Get to a bomb shelter within the next 20 seconds or you might die".

Israel is a tiny place. To get from the West Bank to one of our major cities (Haifa, Tel-Aviv, Jerusalem) will take about 1-3 hours, depending if the terrorist has someone picking him up, which they sometimes did. That's an extremely short time that the military has to react in, assuming they even know about it in advance.
So they go pro-active. They gather intelligence. They set up road blocks in obvious places where people can cross and build a wall where they can't monitor 24/7. It may seem offensive, but it's really about getting to it before there's nothing that can be done anymore.

The best example I can think of is the Karine A Intercept which also relates to why any army needs offensive units as well as defensive.
The purpose of an army is not to fight, it's not to destroy and it's not to decide it's own agenda. The army takes it's orders from non-military elected politicians and their entire purpose is to give those politicians options in any given situation.

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Americans are always meddling in other governments, election processes and general public perception. Why can't you guys do that here? Start meddling! In the next election, make sure the left-wing peaceful candidate gets elected, and then things might start to change...

We do it all the time to you guys, according to about 20+ videos I've seen on the sift already

^ I believe most of what you're referring to was indeed lost in the translation. I tried to do my best to keep the spirit of it intact, but alas.

The paragraph gwiz665 quoted makes sense (to me, anyway) since this is an Israeli author writing to Israeli readers. To me, the analogy is far far away from Fox News' America-can-do-no-wrong mentality (Under Bush, obviously. Now it's the America-is-being-ruled-by-the-antichrist Fox), and so much closer to Bill Maher's rants about what's wrong with the country, and how to improve it. It's not treason to point out where you are weak, and it's not patriotism to hide it.

The main message I took from this article, is that Israel has to do a better job of communicating with the rest of the world. We spent so long feeling paranoid and alone that we do it automatically now, without thinking. Calling antisemitism against every single piece of criticism against us takes the meaning out of the word.

I heard in a news summary on the radio a while back, that the Israeli government approved construction of new houses in west bank settlements, immediately after promising to freeze construction. The only thought that came to mind was "Hey, it works for Iran, no?". Only after, it struck me, how utterly ridiculous we must sound, denouncing Iran's stall tactics regarding their nuclear program while at the same time using the same tactics with our settlements.

So anyway, Israel needs to care more about how the world views us, and to move in that direction. That's the spirit of the column, for me anyway

>> ^acidSpine:
Come to Australia. We've got more god-forsaken desert than you can beat a war drum at. You guys could bulldoze shit and build fuck off walls that would make the Chinese blush to your hearts content.

Australia will let 7-8 million immigrants in?

>> ^alizarin:
How does "stop committing war crimes" lead to "I have to move"? Just stop committing war crimes.

Aside from the white phosphorous, which is illegal and over which there was a big debate and investigation here recently, everything else in this "creepy music" video is just war. Funny how no one is bothered by rockets being placed inside a UN facility, but later are horrified at it becoming a military target.

>> ^Asmo:
Are you a war criminal? If so, move directly to jail or hell, your choice.
If you aren't, how about standing up against Israelis who are? Then mebbe one day there will be a lasting peace between the Israelis and the former owners of the country you now occupy.

Lovely optimism. Nice cut-and-dry war-criminal/innocent terminology there too. I've been hearing about lasting peace ever since I was old enough to understand that some people will blow themselves up for the opportunity to kill me. I would also love to hear about American plans to restore the rights of the former owners of the currently-occupied United States, aka the Native Americans.

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What most people don't seem to grasp, is that there's no one to make peace with at the moment. Fatah controls the west bank mostly, and Hamas controls Gaza. Those two organizations are currently AT WAR with each other. Neither group can be said to be in power over a clear majority of the Palestinian population, and Hamas has made it clear that it will never accept any agreement Fatah makes with Israel.

I want peace. Every Israeli you ask will tell you the same thing. But I want to live, also. I want to be safe. And at the moment, I can't feel safe if I know there's a chance my bus could explode or that a random rocket might land on my roof.

Imagine for a moment that Iraq wasn't on the other side of the world, but rather, shared a border with the US. Let's say in the south. Instead of Mexico.
Now imagine suicide bombers were crossing into Texas on a daily basis, and some terrorist group was firing rockets from Tijuana on San Diego at a rate of 10-15 rockets a day. What would you want your government to do?

In reply to this comment by Farhad2000:
>> ^Winstonfield_Pennypacker:
Nentanyahu’s speech was Sunday. In it he said that he wanted Isreal recognized as a Jewish state.

You deal in half truths.

The recognition of Israel as a Jewish state means that there is no chance for any resettlement of Palestinians in those areas that Israel pushed them out of them. It means no right of return.

It means Israeli Arabs within Israel become second class citizens.

It means no land returns to those areas settled illegally by Israelis in Palestinian areas. Because de facto these are Jewish holy sites. Those should belong to Israel.

The conditions also required Palestine that has no military force. Nor has any control of it's own airspace.

It means Palestine as a state would simply exist as it does today, an open air prison ringed by military walls and incurred on by illegal settlements. It offers no compromise beyond making sure that the peace process continues to exist in a dead zombie state giving false hope to Palestinians while allowing Israel to further capture areas in the West bank through encroaching settlements.


this was GREAT my friend.
how many americans are aware of the machinations and subtrefuge by political lobbyists to control the information they see or read?
its just sad in its simplicity to rectify.
great response bud..fantastic!
till next time.
namaste.

>> ^Winstonfield_Pennypacker:
Nentanyahu’s speech was Sunday. In it he said that he wanted Isreal recognized as a Jewish state.

You deal in half truths.

The recognition of Israel as a Jewish state means that there is no chance for any resettlement of Palestinians in those areas that Israel pushed them out of them. It means no right of return.

It means Israeli Arabs within Israel become second class citizens.

It means no land returns to those areas settled illegally by Israelis in Palestinian areas. Because de facto these are Jewish holy sites. Those should belong to Israel.

The conditions also required Palestine that has no military force. Nor has any control of it's own airspace.

It means Palestine as a state would simply exist as it does today, an open air prison ringed by military walls and incurred on by illegal settlements. It offers no compromise beyond making sure that the peace process continues to exist in a dead zombie state giving false hope to Palestinians while allowing Israel to further capture areas in the West bank through encroaching settlements.

Denouncing Israeli settlements is great, if I recall correctly, Hilary Clinton did the same publicly a couple of weeks ago, but the significance of that lies in actually putting the foot down and preventing more from going up and eventually rolling back those currently in the West Bank.

Maddow is correct, I don't really see any policy shifts at all through this, most of these are already reflective of his previously outlined positions just expressed more starkly or lucidly. I guess the potential for this to be directly projected to countries in the Middle East as opposed to conveyed indirectly through the US presidential race is quite significant though.

I thought number 4 was really the only striking admittance. The fact that I utterly never hear this mentioned through mainstream media in the US at least from the snippets I watch on this site is pretty deplorable since it represents such a fundamental reason for the conflict with Iran. Hopefully media figures will pick up on this point, discuss it and bring it to the forefront but I'm not holding my breath.

CAIRO — Muslim shopkeepers, students and even radical groups such as Hamas praised President Barack Obama's address Thursday as a positive shift in U.S. attitude and tone. But Arabs and Muslims of all political stripes said they want him to turn his words into action _ particularly in standing up to Israel.

Obama impressed Muslims with his humility and respect and they were thrilled by his citing of Quranic verses. Aiming to repair ties with the Muslim world that had been strained under his predecessor George W. Bush, he opened with the traditional Arabic greeting "Assalamu Aleikum," which drew enthusiastic applause from his audience at Cairo University.

Even some extremist Web sites, which have carried statements from al-Qaida in the past, gave rare praise for Obama by calling him a "wise enemy." One posting on a chat room expressed admiration for Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton "wearing a head scarf ... and she and Obama taking off their shoes" during a visit to Cairo's Sultan Hassan mosque.

Mohammed Zakarneh, a 33-year-old former fugitive militant in the West Bank town of Jenin, said Obama's speech "planted seeds of hope in our hearts, as Arabs and Muslims."

Obama's address touched on many themes Muslims wanted to hear. He insisted Palestinians must have a state and said continued Israeli settlement in the West Bank is not legitimate. He assured them the U.S. would pull all it troops out of Iraq by 2012 and promised no permanent U.S. presence in Afghanistan.

I don't know how much I trust this source but..

Last Friday, at a rally against the ongoing construction of Israel's "separation wall," Tristan was shot in the head by a high-velocity tear-gas cannister. He was taking photographs at a weekly demonstration in the West Bank village of Ni'lin, which stands to lose 25% of its remaining land to the wall. (The wall was ruled illegal by the International Court of Justice in 2004. Undertaken in the name of state security, it effects a further massive land theft by the Israeli government on behalf of Jewish settlers in the West Bank.)

Tristan's skull and face were shattered. Surgeons removed part of the frontal lobe of his brain, and he may lose an eye.

Because the Israeli army does not allow Palestinian ambulances into Israel, Tristan's ambulance was detained for 15 minutes at a military checkpoint, while he lay bleeding from his brain. He was ultimately transferred to an Israeli ambulance.

Israeli government spokespersons said the soldiers followed proper policy, as the protest took place in a closed military zone. This stance is hardly surprising. Since July 2008, Israeli soldiers have killed four unarmed residents of Ni'lin, ages ranging from 10 to 22, at demonstrations against the wall. Three of these four Palestinian youths were shot in the head, and one in the back; three by live ammo, and one by "rubber-coated steel bullets" that lodged in his brain.

By the way.. this is all in response to reports of rocks being thrown. All that tear gas and attempted murder shown here with a 40mm canister over rock throwing protesters.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/03/16/AR2009031602666.html

JERUSALEM, March 16 -- An American injured last week during a demonstration near the West Bank village of Naalin remains in critical condition, still heavily sedated but breathing on his own, a hospital official said Monday.
...
The Californian has been removed from a respirator, and a spokesman for Tel Hashomer hospital in Tel Aviv said he was "semi-conscious" after days under full anesthesia. Anderson's associates and hospital and other officials said he was able to lift fingers on one hand in response to a voice command.

Dannym, you are wrong. It is relevant that an American citizen protesting or even walking down the street or whatever... in the West Bank was shot in the head by IDF troops.

So ask yourself, was this some militant, combatant or terrorist? Was he working with terrorists? Did he put himself in some dangerous conflict spot?

The point I guess is that IDF suppresses anyone protesting the occupation walls. The sad part is that if it was just another Palestinian being shot and killed by IDF it isn't news at all.

We should demand accountability from IDF especially after their butchering of Gazans.