Tags for this video have been changed from 'palestine, collaboration, Israel, Zionism, Erez, crossing, conflict, two, state' to 'palestine, collaboration, Israel, Zionism, Erez, crossing, conflict, two, state, gaza' - edited by kronosposeidon

>> ^mattsy:
On a more personal note, I consider myself to be a supporter of the sovereignty of both Israelis and Palestinians


Believe me, so do I. I really hope Obama can force some sort of progress out of the useless status-quo we have at the moment of missile-tank-calm.

As an Israeli, it's hard for me to view these things as an American would, since I view them from the inside, as one of the opposing sides, and not as an external observer.

I have had several online debates degenerate into nothing more than simply arguing the same subject over and over again, and I try not to let Videosift become another one Some videos I just can't ignore, though.

I sincerely appreciate your sober and intelligent criticism (on a subject that is all too often tainted by ignorance and name-calling, just look at the comments sections on YouTube for any video relating to Israel/Palestine). I think I may have just viewed the video in a different light. I viewed it in terms of Christian theology and the questions of peace and justice, two characteristics I find to be implicitly lacking in American Christian Zionism.

I do find Hart to be quite propagandistic, but I still feel as though Dr. Sizer's critiques are sound, and important. After (very recently, as in the last half hour) reading about PressTV, I completely understand your doubts concerning partiality; but I still find the conversation to be revealing and interesting.

On a more personal note, I consider myself to be a supporter of the sovereignty of both Israelis and Palestinians (how bland and idealistic I know); I just feel that this video explores an interesting facet of Americans' attitudes towards the conflict.

This is a sadly biased and very badly reported example of the Christians who have a Zionistic swing. In the next month or so, granted I have time, I intend to publish on the sift a detailed explanation of the grounds for Christian Zionism, where it came from, what grounds it has in our modern life, and where it may lead... Unfortunately, it will require (I've found) a GREAT deal of effort on my part, so I expect it to take a while.

I will say in preamble, that a "reporter" who intends at the get go to denigrate a certain group for their "craziness" will obviously chose the most loony and least logical respondents to their interviews. Anyone who criticizes ANY news network absolutely must admit this or be a hypocrite plain and simple... that includes people who hate Fox News. You MUST see the parallel. It is plain as day.

bcglorf: "Your insistence that it was just a series of murderous rampages initiated by Zionists against friendly Arab Palestinians is what's been exposed here."

I never make that claim. Did you even read the article on Benny Morris?

Morris' disease was diagnosed over forty years ago, by Frantz Fanon. Based on his experience in subjugated Africa, Fanon observed that "the colonial world is a Manichean world. It is not enough for the settler to delimit physically, that is to say, with the help of the army and the police, the place of the native. As if to show the totalitarian character of colonial exploitation, the settler paints the native as a sort of quintessence of evil … The native is declared insensitive to ethics … the enemy of values. … He is a corrosive element, destroying all that comes near it … the unconscious and irretrievable instrument of blind forces" (from "The Wretched of the Earth"). And further down, "the terms the settler uses when he mentions the native are zoological terms" (let's not forget to place Morris' metaphors in the context of so many other Israeli appellations for Palestinians: Begin's "two-legged beasts", Eitan's "drugged cockroaches" and Barak's ultra-delicate "salmon"). Morris is a case history in the psychopathology of colonialism.

...

This political explanation, namely that the expulsion was necessary to create the demographic conditions, a large Jewish majority, favored by the Zionist leadership, is the consensus of historians. But as affirmative defense, it is unsatisfactory. So the idea that Jews were in danger of genocide is repeated later, in a more honest way, as merely another racist, baseless generalization..."


...

According to Morris, the establishment of a more advanced society justifies genocide: "Yes, even the great American democracy couldn't come to be without the forced extinction of Native Americans. There are times the overall, final good justifies terrible, cruel deeds." Such hopeful comparisons between the future awaiting Palestinians and the fate of Native Americans are common to Israeli apologists. One delegation of American students was shocked and disgusted when it heard this analogy made by a spokesperson at the Israeli embassy in Washington.

Morris's supremacist view of "Western Civilization," that civilization values human life more than Islam, has its basis in the moral acceptance of genocide for the sake of "progress." Morris establishes the superiority of the West on both the universal respect for human life and the readiness to exterminate inferior races. The illogicalness of the cohabitation of a right to commit genocide together with a higher level of respect for human lives escapes him, and baffles us, at least until we grasp that the full weight of the concept of "human" is restricted, in the classic manner of Eurocentric racism, to dwellers of civilized (i.e. Western) nations.

This is the same logic that allowed early Zionists to describe Palestine as an empty land, despite the presence of a million inhabitants. In the end, it comes down to this: killing Arabs -- one dozen Arabs or one million Arabs, the difference is merely technical -- is acceptable if it is necessary in order to defend the political preferences of Jews because Jews belong to the superior West and Arabs are inferior. We must be thankful to Professor Morris for clarifying the core logic of Zionism so well.

"Is Israel not simply a response to outright hostile actions purported by the States of Egypt, Syria, Jordan, Iraq, Iran and Lebanon?"

The short answer is, no. Israel is a classic settler nation with all the existential attributes and brutality of a colonial ruler.

Sometimes an article deserves reprinting in full.

(copyfree)

Date : 2004-01-29
''Diagnosing Benny Morris: the mind of a European settler''

By Gabriel Ash - YellowTimes.org Columnist (United States)

Israeli historian Benny Morris crossed a new line of shame when he put his academic credentials and respectability in the service of outlining the "moral" justification for a future genocide against Palestinians.

Benny Morris is the Israeli historian most responsible for the vindication of the Palestinian narrative of 1948. The lives of about 700,000 people were shattered as they were driven from their homes by the Jewish militia (and, later, the Israeli army) between December 1947 and early 1950. Morris went through Israeli archives and wrote the day by day account of this expulsion, documenting every "ethnically cleansed" village and every recorded act of violence, and placing each in the context of the military goals and perceptions of the cleansers.

Israel's apologists tried in vain to attack Morris' professional credibility. From the opposite direction, since he maintained that the expulsion was not "by design," he was also accused of drawing excessively narrow conclusions from the documents and of being too naive a reader of dissimulating statements. Despite these limitations, Morris' "The Birth of the Palestinian Refugees Problem, 1947-1949" is an authoritative record of the expulsion.

In anticipation of the publication of the revised edition, Morris was interviewed in Haaretz - ( http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/380986.html,
Hebrew original at
http://www.haaretz.co.il/hasite/objects/pages/PrintArticle.jhtml?itemNo=380119). The major new findings in the revised book, based on fresh documents, further darken the picture.

The new archival material, Morris reveals, records routine execution of civilians, twenty-four massacres, including one in Jaffa, and at least twelve cases of rape by military units, which Morris acknowledges are probably "the tip of the iceberg." Morris also says he found documents confirming the broader conclusions favored by his critics: the expulsion was pre-meditated; concrete expulsion orders were given in writing, some traceable directly to Ben Gurion.

Morris also found documentations for Arab High Command calls for evacuating women and children from certain villages, evidence he oddly claims strengthen the Zionist propaganda claim that Palestinians left because they were told to leave by the invading Arab states. Morris had already documented two dozen such cases in the first edition. It is hard to see how attempts by Arab commanders to protect civilians from anticipated rape and murder strengthen the Zionist fairy tale. But that failed attempt at evenhandedness is the least of Morris' problems. As the interview progresses, it emerges with growing clarity that, while Morris the historian is a professional and cautious presenter of facts, Morris the intellectual is a very sick person.

His sickness is of the mental-political kind. He lives in a world populated not by fellow human beings, but by racist abstractions and stereotypes. There is an over-abundance of quasi-poetic images in the interview, as if the mind is haunted by the task of grasping what ails it: "The Palestinian citizens of Israel are a time bomb," not fellow citizens. Islam is "a world in which human lives don't have the same value as in the West." Arabs are "barbarians" at the gate of the Roman Empire. Palestinian society is "a serial killer" that ought to be executed, and "a wild animal" that must be caged.

Morris' disease was diagnosed over forty years ago, by Frantz Fanon. Based on his experience in subjugated Africa, Fanon observed that "the colonial world is a Manichean world. It is not enough for the settler to delimit physically, that is to say, with the help of the army and the police, the place of the native. As if to show the totalitarian character of colonial exploitation, the settler paints the native as a sort of quintessence of evil … The native is declared insensitive to ethics … the enemy of values. … He is a corrosive element, destroying all that comes near it … the unconscious and irretrievable instrument of blind forces" (from "The Wretched of the Earth"). And further down, "the terms the settler uses when he mentions the native are zoological terms" (let's not forget to place Morris' metaphors in the context of so many other Israeli appellations for Palestinians: Begin's "two-legged beasts", Eitan's "drugged cockroaches" and Barak's ultra-delicate "salmon"). Morris is a case history in the psychopathology of colonialism.

Bad Genocide, Good Genocide

When the settler encounters natives who refuse to cast down their eyes, his disease advances to the next stage -- murderous sociopathy.

Morris, who knows the exact scale of the terror unleashed against Palestinians in 1948, considers it justified. First he suggests that the terror was justified because the alternative would have been a genocide of Jews by Palestinians. Raising the idea of genocide in this context is pure, and cheap, hysteria. Indeed, Morris moves immediately to a more plausible explanation: the expulsion was a precondition for creating a Jewish state, i.e. the establishment of a specific political preference, not self-defense.

This political explanation, namely that the expulsion was necessary to create the demographic conditions, a large Jewish majority, favored by the Zionist leadership, is the consensus of historians. But as affirmative defense, it is unsatisfactory. So the idea that Jews were in danger of genocide is repeated later, in a more honest way, as merely another racist, baseless generalization: "if it can, [Islamic society] will commit genocide."

But Morris sees no evil. Accusing Ben Gurion of failing to achieve an "Arabenrein Palestine," he recommends further ethnic cleansing of Palestinians, including those who are Israeli citizens. Not now, but soon, "within five or ten years," under "apocalyptic conditions" such as a regional war with unconventional weapons, a potentially nuclear war, which "is likely to happen within twenty years." For Morris, and it is difficult to overstate his madness at this point, the likelihood of a nuclear war within the foreseeable future is not the sorry end of a road better not taken, but merely a milestone, whose aftermath is still imaginable, and imaginable within the banal continuity of Zionist centennial policies: he foresees the exchange of unconventional missiles between Israel and unidentified regional states as a legitimate excuse for "finishing the job" of 1948.

Morris speaks explicitly of another expulsion, but, in groping for a moral apology for the past and the future expulsion of Palestinians, he presents a more general argument, one that justifies not only expulsion but also genocide. That statement ought to be repeated, for here is a crossing of a terrible and shameful line.

Morris, a respectable, Jewish, Israeli academic, is out in print in the respectable daily, Haaretz, justifying genocide as a legitimate tool of statecraft. It should be shocking. Yet anybody who interacts with American and Israeli Zionists knows that Morris is merely saying for the record what many think and even say unofficially. Morris, like most of Israel, lives in a temporality apart, an intellectual Galapagos Islands, a political Jurassic Park, where bizarre cousins of ideas elsewhere shamed into extinction still roam the mindscape proudly.

Nor should one think the slippage between expulsion, "transfer," and genocide without practical consequences. It is not difficult to imagine a planned expulsion turn into genocide under the stress of circumstances: The genocides of both European Jews and Armenians began as an expulsion. The expulsion of Palestinians in 1948 was the product of decades of thinking and imagining "transfer." We ought to pay attention: with Morris's statement, Zionist thinking crossed another threshold; what is now discussed has the potential to be actualized, if "apocalyptic conditions" materialize.

The march of civilization and the corpses of the uncivilized

It is instructive to look closer at the manner in which Morris uses racist thinking to justify genocide. Morris' interview, precisely because of its shamelessness, is a particularly good introductory text to Zionist thought.

Morris' racism isn't limited to Arabs. Genocide, according to Morris, is justified as long as it is done for "the final good." But what kind of good is worth the "forced extinction" of a whole people? Certainly, not the good of the latter. (Morris uses the word "Haqkhada," a Hebrew word usually associated with the extinction of animal species. Someone ought to inform Morris about the fact that Native Americans aren't extinct.)

According to Morris, the establishment of a more advanced society justifies genocide: "Yes, even the great American democracy couldn't come to be without the forced extinction of Native Americans. There are times the overall, final good justifies terrible, cruel deeds." Such hopeful comparisons between the future awaiting Palestinians and the fate of Native Americans are common to Israeli apologists. One delegation of American students was shocked and disgusted when it heard this analogy made by a spokesperson at the Israeli embassy in Washington.

Morris's supremacist view of "Western Civilization," that civilization values human life more than Islam, has its basis in the moral acceptance of genocide for the sake of "progress." Morris establishes the superiority of the West on both the universal respect for human life and the readiness to exterminate inferior races. The illogicalness of the cohabitation of a right to commit genocide together with a higher level of respect for human lives escapes him, and baffles us, at least until we grasp that the full weight of the concept of "human" is restricted, in the classic manner of Eurocentric racism, to dwellers of civilized (i.e. Western) nations.

This is the same logic that allowed early Zionists to describe Palestine as an empty land, despite the presence of a million inhabitants. In the end, it comes down to this: killing Arabs -- one dozen Arabs or one million Arabs, the difference is merely technical -- is acceptable if it is necessary in order to defend the political preferences of Jews because Jews belong to the superior West and Arabs are inferior. We must be thankful to Professor Morris for clarifying the core logic of Zionism so well.

The color of Jews

Morris assures us that his values are those of the civilized West, the values of universal morality, progress, etc. But then he also claims to hold the primacy of particular loyalties, a position for which he draws on Albert Camus. But to reconcile Morris' double loyalty to both Western universalism and to Jewish particularism, one must forget that these two identities were not always on the best of terms.

How can one explain Morris' knowledge that the ethnic Darwinism that was used to justify the murder of millions of non-whites, including Black African slaves, Native Americans, Arabs, and others, was also used to justify the attempt to exterminate Jews? How can Morris endorse the "civilizational" justification of genocide, which includes the genocide of Jews, even as he claims the holocaust as another justification for Zionism? Perhaps Morris' disjointed mind doesn't see the connection. Perhaps he thinks that there are "right" assertions of racist supremacy and "wrong" assertions of racist supremacy. Or perhaps Morris displays another facet of the psychopathologies of oppression, the victim's identification with the oppressor.

Perhaps in Morris' mind, one half tribalist and one half universalist, the Jews were murdered to make way for a superior, more purely Aryan, European civilization, and the Jews who are today serving in the Israeli army, both belong and do not belong to the same group. They belong when Morris invokes the totems of the tribe to justify loyalty. But when his attention turns to the universal principle of "superior civilization," these Jews are effaced, like poor relations one is ashamed to be associated with, sent back to the limbo they share with the great non-white mass of the dehumanized. In contrast, the Jews of Israel, self-identified as European, have turned white, dry-cleaned and bleached by Zionism, and with their whiteness they claim the privilege that Whites always had, the privilege to massacre members of "less advanced" races.

False testimony

It would be marvelous if Morris the historian could preserve his objective detachment while Morris the Zionist dances with the demons of Eurocentric racism. But the wall of professionalism -- and it is a very thick and impressive wall in Morris' case -- cannot hold against the torrent of hate.

For example, Morris lies about his understanding of the 2000 Camp David summit. In Haaretz, Morris says that, "when the Palestinians rejected Barak's proposal of July 2000 and Clinton's proposal of December 2000, I understood that they were not ready to accept a two state solution. They wanted everything. Lydda, and Akka and Jaffa."

But in his book "Righteous Victims," Morris explains the failure of the negotiations thus: "the PLO leadership had gradually accepted, or seemed to…Israel...keeping 78 percent of historical Palestine. But the PLO wanted the remaining 22 percent. … At Camp David, Barak had endorsed the establishment of a Palestinian state…[on only] 84-90 percent of that 22 percent. … Israel was also to control the territory between a greatly enlarged Jerusalem and Jericho, effectively cutting the core of the future Palestinian state into two…" Morris' chapter of "Righteous Victims" that deals with the '90s leaves a lot to be desired, but it still strives for some detached analysis. In contrast, in Haaretz Morris offers baseless claims he knows to be false.

If Morris lies about recent history, and even grossly misrepresents the danger Jews faced in Palestine in 1948, a period he is an expert on, his treatment of more general historical matters is all but ridiculous, an astounding mix of insinuations and cliches. For example, Morris reminds us that "the Arab nation won a big chunk of the Earth, not because of its intrinsic virtues and skills, but by conquering and murdering and forcing the conquered to convert." (What is Morris' point? Is the cleansing of Palestine attributable to Jewish virtues and skills, rather than to conquering and murdering?)

This is racist slander, not history. As an example, take Spain, which was conquered in essentially one battle in 711 A.D. by a band of North African Berbers who had just converted to Islam. Spain was completely Islamized and Arabized within two centuries with very little religious coercion, and certainly no ethnic cleansing. But after the last Islamic rulers were kicked out of Spain by the Christian army of Ferdinand and Isabel in 1492, a large section of the very same Spanish population that willingly adopted Islam centuries earlier refused to accept Christianity despite a century of persecution by the Spanish Inquisition. 600,000 Spanish Muslims were eventually expelled in 1608.

Obviously, Islamic civilization had its share of war and violence. But, as the above example hints, compared to the West, compared to the religious killing frenzy of sixteenth century Europe, compared to the serial genocides in Africa and America, and finally to the flesh-churning wars of the twentieth century, Islamic civilization looks positively benign. So why all this hatred? Where is all this fire and brimstone Islamophobia coming from?

Being elsewhere

From Europe, of course, but with a twist. Europe has always looked upon the East with condescension. In periods of tension, that condescension would escalate to fear and hate. But it was also mixed and tempered with a large dose of fascination and curiosity. The settler, however, does not have the luxury to be curious. The settler leaves the metropolis hoping to overcome his own marginal, often oppressed, status in metropolitan society. He goes to the colony motivated by the desire to recreate the metropolis with himself at the top.

For the settler, going to the colony is not a rejection of the metropolis, but a way to claim his due as a member. Therefore, the settler is always trying to be more metropolitan than the metropolis. When the people of the metropolis baulk at the bloodbath the settler wants to usher in the name of their values, the settler accuses them of "growing soft," and declares himself "the true metropolis." That is also why there is one crime of which the settler can never forgive the land he colonized -- its alien climate and geography, its recalcitrant otherness, the oddness of its inhabitants, in sum, the harsh truth of its being elsewhere. In the consciousness of the settler, condescension thus turns into loathing.

Israeli settler society, especially its European, Ashkenazi part, especially that Israel which calls itself "the peace camp," "the Zionist Left," etc., is predicated on the loathing of all things Eastern and Arab. (Now, of course, there is the religious, post-1967 settlers who relate to the Zionist Left the way the Zionist Left stands in relation to Europe, i.e. as settlers.) "Arab" is a term of abuse, one that can be applied to everything and everyone, including Jews. This loathing is a unifying theme. It connects Morris' latest interview in Haaretz with Ben Gurion's first impression of Jaffa in 1905; he found it filthy and depressing.

In another article, published in Tikkun Magazine, Morris blames the "ultra-nationalism, provincialism, fundamentalism and obscurantism" of Arab Jews in Israel for the sorry state of the country (although Begin, Shamir, Rabin, Peres, Netanyahu, Barak, Sharon, and most of Israel's generals, leaders, and opinion makers of the last two decades are European Jews). For Morris, everything Eastern is corrupt and every corruption has an Eastern origin.

One shouldn't, therefore, doubt Morris when he proclaims himself a traditional Left Zionist. Most of what he says hasn't been said already by David Ben Gurion or Moshe Dayan. Loathing of the East and the decision to subdue it by unlimited force is the essence of Zionism.

Understanding the psycho-political sources of this loathing leads to some interesting observations about truisms that recur in Morris' (and much of Israel's) discourse. Morris blames Arafat for thinking that Israel is a "crusader state," a foreign element that will eventually be sent back to its port of departure. This is a common refrain of Israeli propaganda. It is also probably true. But it isn't Arafat's fault that Morris is a foreigner in the Middle East. Why shouldn't Arafat believe Israel is a crusader state when Morris himself says so? "We are the vulnerable extension of Europe in this place, exactly as the crusaders."

It is Morris -- like the greater part of Israel's elite -- who insists on being a foreigner, on loathing the Middle East and dreaming about mist-covered Europe, purified and deified by distance. If Israel is a crusader state, and therefore a state with shallow roots, likely to pack up and disappear, it is not the fault of those who make that observation. It is the fault of those Israelis, like Morris, who want to rule the Middle East from behind tall walls and barbed wire.

Morris is deeply pessimistic about Israel's future; this feeling is very attractive in Israel. The end of Israel is always felt to be one step away, hiding beneath every development, from the birthrate of Bedouins to the establishment of the International Court of Justice.

Naturally, every Palestinian demand is such a doomsday threat. This sense of existential precariousness can be traced back to 1948; it was encouraged by Israel's successive governments because it justified the continuous violence of the state and the hegemony of the military complex. It may eventually become a self-fulfilling prophesy.

But this existential fear goes deeper. It is rooted in the repressed understanding (which Morris both articulates and tries to displace) of the inherent illegitimacy of the Israeli political system and identity. "Israel" is brute force. In Morris' words: "The bottom line is that force is the only thing that will make them accept us." But brute force is precarious. Time gnaws at it. Fatigue corrodes it. And the more it is used, the more it destroys the very acceptance and legitimacy it seeks.

For Israel, the fundamental question of the future is, therefore, whether Israelis can transcend colonialism. The prognosis is far from positive. In a related article in The Guardian, Morris explains that accepting the right of return of the Palestinian refugees would mean forcing Israeli Jews into exile. But why would Jews have to leave Israel if Israel becomes a bi-national, democratic state? One cannot understand this without attention to the colonial loathing of the Middle East which Morris so eloquently expresses.

But taking that into account, I'm afraid Morris is right. Many Israeli Jews, especially European Jews who tend to possess alternative passports, would rather emigrate than live on equal terms with Palestine's natives in a bi-national state. It is to Frantz Fanon again that we turn for observing this first. "The settler, from the moment the colonial context disappears, has no longer an interest in remaining or in co-existing."

Gabriel Ash was born in Romania and grew up in Israel.

Try coming to Palestine and honestly telling me that Hamas is a terrorist organization and not simply a response to outright hostile actions purported by the State of Israel.
Israel reaps the seeds that it has sowed itself.


Your world view must like perpetual war and violence. Do you really wish to defend a group that sends it's own children as suicide bombers against it's enemies, because the enemies sowed the seeds?

Would you honestly accept that Zionism is simply a response to outright hostile actions purported by Europeans? I reject that notion as soundly as your own allegations towards Hamas.

Is Israel not simply a response to outright hostile actions purported by the States of Egypt, Syria, Jordan, Iraq, Iran and Lebanon? Do you accept defending Israel's actions as Arabs reaping the seeds they sowed?

Should we go back further, and declare the Arab attacks on Israel simply a response to outright hostile actions purported by Britain. Do we defend the Arab attacks on the basis of Britain and her allies reaping what was sown?

Do you realize that rationalization is the whole reason the hatred and warfare in the region seems to be a never ending circle?

Here's where I stand, and have stated numerous times before. I condemn war crimes committed by any nation or group, Israel included. There's a lot of undeniable evidence the IDF need to be prosecuted for crimes committed in the recent offensive. Hamas kills more Arabs than Israelis and that is their greatest crime. Yes I condemn them for deliberately targeting Israeli civilians, I condemn them for stating in their charter the elimination of the Israeli state as one of their goals. Their worst crimes though are using Palestinian civilians as human shields to launch their attacks, using child soldiers and suicide bombers and generally using the bodies of their own people as their primary weapon. I refuse to accept the defense of 'Israel deserves it', or 'the Arabs deserve it' when defending war crimes and atrocities.

The Palestinians would not accept living in Israel now, because this has gone for too and too much blood has been spilled. The only solution is a two state solution, but the momentum towards that is never there because many factions in Israel's government believe that all of Israel is theirs and thus have used policies designed to keep the peace process in formaldehyde.

The Muslims and Jews have occupied the lands in peace for ages, it is only when we factor in political interests that declare the land for one or the other religious denomination do the problems arise.

I fervently believe that civilians in both Palestine and Israel wish for nothing more but peace, and could live with each other in peace. Economic interdependence has seen Israel rely on Palestinian labour countless times and conflict between both as only seen both lose out on economic progress, Israel doing far better because of the massive injects of funds it receives mainly from the US.

However we have political movements like Likud and Zionism and extremist thought in Hamas and other entities that make this a virtual impossibility. The reason for the existence of both is varied, in Israel there is the Manifest Destiny belief, in Palestine there is the oppression and deaths of family members that fermented armed struggle that can only end in the destruction of Israel.

Obama came into the Presidency saying that one of the key factors is that Arab states must recognize Israel, how do you force other nations to suddenly normalized relations with a hostile nation? Its like the UK telling the US to normalize relations with Cuba.

I believe everyone is complicit in the events that we see played out, neither Hamas nor the Israeli leadership will suffer from the deaths in Gaza. But the Palestinians see Hamas as the only entity that is actively fighting IDFs aggression, the whole world condemned the attacks, did anyone do anything other then declarations and condemnations? No. Alot of Palestinian civilians got killed.

And no Israel is not a perfect state as you claim, read on HRW and its own news organizations, Israel's Knesset parties nearly threw out an Arab Israeli calling him a representative of terrorists and a immigrant.

Like all Arab democratic states (of which there are few but they claim to be democratic in spirit! LOLZ) it also abuses the democracy it declares to possess, the IDF and the government as a whole have always the security issue to clamp down on progressive movements and protests. Just like every other corrupt Arab state out there who declare the Israeli actions as horrible but beat the shit out of its own citizens for protesting the same.
http://www.hrw.org/en/news/2009/01/21/gaza-crisis-regimes-react-routine-repression

Arabs in my region suspect Obama will change things but he won't, he is a Zionist representative as much as Bush. Bush left office by calling Israel. Obama entered office by calling Israel. The US is the key factor in changing all this however the entire nation in the US is under heavy influence via AIPAC, WINEP, MEMRI and numerous other organizations that paint a very one sided picture of the conflict.

The resolution of this conflict is a corner stone of ending terrorism and extremist action against the US from the Arab world.

Americans are a fiction. There's no such things as a American language or culture and no unique genetic American makeup.

The American language is English and its unique culture of freedom and commerce allows many disparate groups of people to live as one nation. Anyone can become an American. There are both Jewish and Arab-Americans and lo, they're not killing in the streets.

Observe the size of the Arab nations surrounding Israel. They do nothing to absorb or help their "brothers" the Palestinians; they'd rather use them as a thorn in Israel's side..

Arab nations have no interest in getting in a prolonged war with Israel, its political and economic suicide. Both Saudi Arabia and Eygpt have normalized relations with Israel through American policy of paying people off.

Arab nations could easily absorb ALL the "Palestinians" if they wanted to. Why would Israel object to people who want to kill them moving away? And if your cynical idea that the Saudis and Egyptians were "paid off" to have peace is accurate, isn't that better than the endless war and "Israeli cruelty" bemoaned here?

Palestinians have been allowed to flee into GCC states for years even though there is no firm Palestinian government or passport. There are huge Palestinian populations and refugee camps in every GCC state.

"Refugee camps" implies that the Palestinians aren't welcome in their new countries. They're still being used as pawns, victims of "Zionism". Seems a lot of Arab monarchs depend on hatred of the Jews to keep their power. Old habits die hard.

It's no great secret that Jews are reviled in many lands, yet no one seems willing to give them a land of their own, which was in fact THEIR land 5000 years ago.

By your logic you should move out and give back all the lands to American Indians which were murdered by colonists. The land of Jerusalem was occupied by every religious and ethnic denomination over the course of time, its fallacious to claim one ethnic group deserves the land more then the other. This isn't the time of the Crusades.

The American Indians were not "native" to the Americas but crossed the land bridge that used to exist between Russia and Alaska. Not only do American Indians have full American citizenship but their own nations. There is no mandate among the American Indian nations to attack and kill Euro and other Americans. Unlike the Jews, Indians of the Americas were not spread across 80 countries with no homeland to speak of.

Israel is surrounded by enemies on every side. They have no choice but to defend themselves.

Israel isn't surrounded by enemies on every side, a common myth peddled by Israel's apologists, American dollars have bought the tacit tolerance and indifference of Egypt and Saudi Arabia. Lebanon simply wishes to be left alone to be able to rebuild after it was punished for the actions of Hezboallah. Syria was bombed by IDF planes about a possible nuclear site of which details are murky and under reported because there is no conclusive evidence of it. The only nation consistently bombing people using high tech is Israel, who wanted to go as far as bombing Iran and destabilizing the region further when no nuclear weapons have been developed.

Which is the only nation in the Middle East with nuclear weapons? Israel.

If "Palestine" had nukes they would've already have used them. There is no way a Palestinian 'state' can ever be allowed to exist, because it would become just another launchpad for hamas attacks.

I'll just disagree briefly with your interpretation of what Solvent said - he said "alleged atrocities." There's no "maybe there was an atrocity or two, maybe there wasn't." At this point in history, given the staggering amount of documentary and testamentary evidence of the premeditated murder of millions of civilians for reasons of religion, race, politics, and sexual orientation, there can be no denying of the Holocaust.

As to applying the label of anti-semitism. I do think that someone is anti-semitic when they call for the destruction of the State of Israel. Now, I feel that plenty of people bandy about the anti-semitic label in the context of political criticism too easily - certainly the State of Israel is deserving of critique in a number of areas, none of which rise to the level of advocating its destruction.

Still, when people tell me that the Israelis are behaving like Nazis, or that Zionism is Nazism, I consider them anti-semitic, because I know what makes a Nazi a Nazi, and that practically everyone agrees that the Nazis were as pure evil as you can get, and had to be crushed with violence. If Nazi=Pure Evil and Israel=Nazi, then they must think that Israel=Pure Evil, then it seems evident that they think Israel should be destroyed.

If Israel is destroyed, many many many Jews die, who are not pure evil, and that, again, is anti-semitic.

Tomorrow I'll write up a response to your prior post, because I think you give a shit, and I know I give a shit, and probably some other people on here would actually prefer discussion instead of jingoism.

Oh QM doesn't do history, he does ill informed right wing banter.

Israel is a recognized and supported state by most of the world. Not just America. These little places called the EU, Russia and most of Asia. But you know geography isn't a strength of his.

The UN has actually worked time and time again to condemn military actions of Israel in instigating violent reactions from Palestine and bring Israel back to resolution 242 and an acceptance of the 1967 borders. But you know Israel has this buddy in the UN that shoots down Security Council resolutions in the name of US. Which then wonders why China and Russia game security council resolutions in their favor as well.

Islam is not against Jews, Judea and most of Europe were under Islamic rule before during the times of the Moors. If they really wanted to wipe out a religion like Judaism before they could have.

Arab nations are against Zionism not Judaism, but Zionism is a representative policy right now of Israel. There is a healthy Jewish community living in Iran quite well also.

Most Arab Jews moved to Israel due to the fact that Israel citizenship is given to anyone who can claim Jewish lineage.

But I guess you are trying to stir that old clash of civilization story with mharevy42 and Pprt.

Ha.

You guys are ridiculous, you think the IDF bombing Gaza will eliminate Hamas? Did the Lebanon war eliminate Hezbollah? Both these entities came forth from Israel aggression and injustice in dealing with Palestine. Jewish people themselves resent the Zionist actions of the military forces knowing full well that everything that is wrought now will back fire in new groups, new individuals and new suicide bombers.

But you know maybe it will! Who knows! It definitely has worked in Afghanistan and Iraq! Not COIN or hearts and minds but simply we have to bomb Gaza to save it!

Gaza has been under blockade for 2 years, continuous apartheid has been in effect for far longer, its economical, socially and politically been coerced into fighting in any means it can, the Israelis have gone into the West Bank and Gaza countless times to seek out terrorists only to see them rise again like hydra heads because the essential underlining policy of achieving peace is flawed in design to propagate continuous hostility and conflict with the Palestinian people. You know so Israel can claim victim, build walls all over, sniper towers while pushing settlements out and claim a bit more land.

Zionism wants Israel to occupy West Bank and Gaza with no Palestinian state, so in effect Hamas wants the elimination of Israel. The two policies are mirrors of one another.

The Palestinian areas have hand every building bombed, bulldozed and blown through so many times and you guys are saying Hamas should act like uniformed forces against the IDF. It's asymmetrical warfare, the same kind the Fedayeen employed against US forces after seeing how the Taliban got bombed to shit in Tora Bora.

That's just plain military tactics, its unfortunate they use suicide bombing and rocket attacks but hey you know they don't have obligatory military service, Merkava Tanks, F-16s, Apaches or a steady supply of Military Aid from the US.

The US achieved peace with a hostile enemy by employed the methodology of COIN and hearts and minds to allow Iraqis to govern themselves, though years late cooperation and dialog in parts of Iraq have shown that soft contact with the local populace has meant that Iraqis actively gave up insurgents themselves.

Contrast this methodology with Israel hostile stance against all Palestinian people and you quickly realize that peace is not what Israel is striving for. It's a political process of land acquisition through the guise of fighting terrorism.

QM, of those "10,000" rockets how much damage or causulties have resulted from these randomly fired rockets?

How many rockets would have to be launched at your house before you become 'concerned'?

And you really think Israel wants the rockets to stop????? Which side do you think draws the first blood after a week or more of calm in the region?

I don't think Israel wants any more bloodshed and woudl prefer peaceful neighbors. Unfortunately, the rest of the world wants Israel destroyed, including the UN thugocracy.

Isn't it odd that random sifters who decry waterboarding as barbaric think Hamas breaking rule after rule of the Geneva Conventions is A-OK?

Now all that aside, do you realize the whole "paradigm" of this conflict is false?

"Palestinians" are not a people, culture or nation.
Their goal is to destroy Israel, not build or create for themselves.

"Way back on March 31, 1977, the Dutch newspaper Trouw published an interview with Palestine Liberation Organization executive committee member Zahir Muhsein. Here's what he said:

The Palestinian people does not exist. The creation of a Palestinian state is only a means for continuing our struggle against the state of Israel for our Arab unity. In reality today there is no difference between Jordanians, Palestinians, Syrians and Lebanese. Only for political and tactical reasons do we speak today about the existence of a Palestinian people, since Arab national interests demand that we posit the existence of a distinct "Palestinian people" to oppose Zionism.

For tactical reasons, Jordan, which is a sovereign state with defined borders, cannot raise claims to Haifa and Jaffa, while as a Palestinian, I can undoubtedly demand Haifa, Jaffa, Beer-Sheva and Jerusalem. However, the moment we reclaim our right to all of Palestine, we will not wait even a minute to unite Palestine and Jordan."


“We will have peace with the Arabs when they love their children more than they hate us.” --Golda Meir

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.

Listen to this guy really close. He states that we can't blame 9/11 on Al-Qaeda without proof, which on an extremely legalistic level could be accepted. He then carries on to declare that Zionists and Neo-Cons are behind most of it, WITHOUT any proof. Watch this documentary by a moderate muslim born in Pakistan to get a good view of politics inside Paksitan today. A very good number of current and former ISI members are strong supporters of the Taliban and jihadists in general.

This guy is trying to put a legitimate front on some of the worst kind of hate in our world. Anti-Zionism is the new euphemism for kill all the Jews, or at the very least kill all Israeli's, people from both camps are often pretty comfortable with each other.