Thank you for your comprehensive defense of Israel's continued terrorism. I, like many others are not scholars, just individuals who bristle at blatant injustices and all forms of bullying. I am ashamed to have to admit that I took little interest in the troubles of the region over the decade following decade, and that was because to me …
Thank you for your comprehensive defense of Israel's continued terrorism. I, like many others are not scholars, just individuals who bristle at blatant injustices and all forms of bullying. I am ashamed to have to admit that I took little interest in the troubles of the region over the decade following decade, and that was because to me politics is an unclean term that has been soiled by lies, underhand deals, and obfuscation, and self-interest. The self-interested parties have deliberately kept things slumbering along nicely to prevent disruption to their various little and big schemes...not anymore...it is out in the light of day and people are reacting to it strongly. That is very "inconvenient" to Israel and the USA as well as complicit countries now being dragged into it reluctantly...and now stating what ordinary pro-Palestinians...the students and the marchers and organisers of the resistance who have been vilified over more than eighteen months of genocidal intent by Israel, have been TELLING them. To put it simply as I can...oppressors are ALWAYS wrong and the oppressed ALWAYS right!
I agree with you -- oppressors are wrong; the problem is determining who is the oppressor. Two examples:
1) Arab-initiated violence created two groups of refugees. Fewer than 700,000 Arabs fled or were displaced from Palestine and over 1,000,000 Mizrachi Jews were driven from their homes in the Muslim countries of the Middle East and North Africa. Some of the Mizrachim emigrated to France or the US, but Israel absorbed 800,000 of them during the first three decades of the existence of the modern State of Israel. Food was being rationed in the early years, Israel was also rehabilitating Holocaust survivors, Arab armies were still attacking, and terrorist raids were being staged in areas illegally occupied by Egypt and Jordan. But Israel absorbed and uplifted the Mizrachim whose descendants comprise the majority of Israel's current Jewish population. Every post in Israel's governance (except Prime Minister) has been held, at one time or another, by someone with roots in the MIzrachi communities.
In contrast, Arab nations refused citizenship to the Arabs who' fled or were displaced and to their descendants. Their numbers have grown to 6,000,000 Palestine refugees on UNRWA rolls; 99.5% of them were born in UNRWA "camps" (actually cities that have become breeding grounds for terrorism). The "refugees" have been told (by Arab and Palestinian leaders) that Israel will, someday, be forced to give them the homes that their parents, grandparents, great-grandparents,... lost when Israel became a state. But the "refugees" have grown up seeing Palestinians honored and rewarded for killing Jews. Taking them in would be the death knell for the Jewish state (which is the intention of Arab and Palestinian leaders).
2) Between 1948 and 1967, when Judea and Samaria ("The West Bank") were under Jordanian occupation, Jews were ethnically cleansed from the areas and Palestinians were given the homes from which the Jews had been driven, Israel liberated "The West Bank" and Gaza in the Six Day War in June, 1967.
In September, 1967, the Arab League rejected Israel's offer to withdraw from newly-liberated lands (not all; Israel wanted to retain control over east Jerusalem) in exchange for recognition and peace. The Arab League reponded with "Three NO's" -- no recognition; no negotiations; no peace. There is no record of Palestinian leaders objecting ("Accept the offer! We want to build our state.") This left Israel with a problem. Palestinians were living in home to which Israelis had legitimate claims. Israeli courts ruled that Palestinians would be recognized as owners of the homes if Jordan had given them title. However, those Palestinians who had been granted title would be considered tenants and required to pay minimal rent to the Jewish owners. This worked well until the Palestinian Authority told the tenants to stop paying (and the tenants stopped--it's not safe for a Palestinian to defy the PA or Hamas). There was a big to-do about this situation a few years back when Israel (of course) was accused to trying to push Palestinians out of thei homes so Jews could be installed in them,
I have to admit that you have knowledge(whether it is correct or not is a different matter). I am sure there are many different opinions on this subject...shall we blame Germany? or perhaps Britain after the first world war, when Britain and France dishonoured agreements with some of the Arabs that fought with the allies? Some historians claim that T E Lawrence was much disaffected by this treason. However.as I have stated, I am neither historian or scholar...you might be. What I and many other ordinary people are highly disturbed about is the present. an I candidly ask you if you consider starving a population ethical and permissive?(especially young children that need nutrition to develop and grow. If you have children would it concern you that they were being deliberately starved as well as bombed and denied all medical necessities? I will answer that question I posed for you...you would, so how can you appear to detach and defend Israel's cruel and evil intent to ethnically cleanse Gaza and to expand the illegal occupation? I appreciate that you have been civil despite our opposing perspectives, but I shall adhere to the wisdom of great orator and holocaust survivor Stephen Kapos. I suggest with all due respect that his opinion bears more weight than yours or mine.
I will refer you to the opinions of Major John Spencer, head of Urban Warfare Studies in West Point's Modern Warfare Institute, who has praised Israel's efforts to avoid killing civilians (by revealing plans for actions against Hamas and advising people to leave areas in which combat will be occuring). He has noted that Hamas' fortifications were deliberately embedded so deeply amid the Gazan populace that any Israeli response to Hamas' attacks on Israel would inevitably kill some noncombatants. Major Spencer said (on X) that Hamas has gone beyond using Gazans as human shields and is, in fact, sacrificing them.
Now I know that the US rebuilt Germany and Japan after World War II and people used to joke about starting wars against the US and deliberately losing (because the US would now boost the "enemy's" economy after the war. (Check out "The Mouse That Roared", a Peter Sellers movie.
But Israel is being criticized for not supplying enough aid to the people who cheered the vow of Israel's attackers to continue raping, torturing, and killing Israelis and anyone working with them -- while the war is still ongoing!! That is unheard of. And, frankly, I'm amazed that Hamas isn't ashamed that, after 20 years of running Gaza, the people living under Hamas administration are still dependent on food, water, electricity, and medicine supplied by Israel.
You've said, "The oppressors are always wrong and the oppressed are always right. That'a a bit simplistic. People can think and learn drom life. Most of us are neither angels or devils, but people -- bad ones may have some redeeming features and very good ones may occasionally sin. Today's "Woke Folk" cling too strongly to their characterizations and act on Woke dictats instead of making their own decisions.
Has Israel besieged Gaza for about seventeen years..calorie- counted aid going into this fenced- in Palestinian enclave and prevented freedom of travel for the majority of the population or not. Has it weaponised electricity and water...turning it on or off abitrarily? Does Israel's policies deliberately confer hardship on Palestinians and attempt to repress their everyday tasks in life? Do heavily armed indoctrinated thugs invade Palestinian homes under the pretext of suspicion of "terrorist" activity therein...does the illegal Israeli occupying forces arrest young and old in what is called administrative detention and are the illegal so-called settlers constantly harassing Palestinian and Bedouin herders and farmers, intimidating families, frightening the children?.. (to my mind the worst of crimes) among the gamut of perpetual persecution. The British Empire became so by ruthless suppression of the poorly or unarmed natives of far-flung places, many other European nations the same as you well know...but what expiation of their former sins have we witnessed? The Arabs involved in the heinous practice of slavery...we know that the globe is a heaving mass of iniquity...we know that Europeans and a few others pillaged the pristine continent of the Americas...but we can't go back to re-set those abominations but we should try our best to prevent the present ones. It is known that Israel is one of the worst examples today, though there are many others but most are not described as "our allies". I believe that after the attack on the US ship "Liberty" when many were killed and injured and the Israelis claimed it was misidentification Dean Rusk is reported to have stated " I didn't believe them then and I don't believe them now". Not many do.
Yeah. That awful little country which shares its advances in agriculture, technology, and medicine with the world. The Jewish country where an Arab Supreme Court Justice sent a President to jail. The tiny country which, while under attack and suffering food shortages, rehabilitated Holocaust survivors and Mizrachim driven from their homes in the Middle East and North Africa and which still sends rescue teams when disaster strikes world wide (even to countries with which it doesn't have diplomatic relations). Israeli teams are often the first to arrive and the most effective in giving help.
Compare that to the Arabs -- despite having huge landholdings and some being oil rich, they used their numerous votes in the UN to set up a special "refugee"agency" which hasn't resettled a single "refugee" but teaches second, third, and fourth generations of Palestinians who fled or were displaced from PAlestine in Arab-initiated wars, that killing Jews is an Arab's ticket to Heaven. Consider what money wasted on the Palestine refugees' eternal internment in UNRWA "terror towns" could do for current refugees and survivors of natural disasters.
Many Israelis are troubled by the "administrative detentions." But a tiny country surrounded by enemies depends heavily about being able to act pre-emptively. And open arraignments could threaten the exposure of intelligence-gatherers' identities. Israel is not the evil entity you think it is. And the Palestinian leaders aren't the innocent victims you think they are.
Thanks again. I admire many Jews...illan Pappe who I once had the honour to pass a few words with on a pavement as we made our individual ways to a lecture he was giving...a very good man. Norman Finkelstein, Gabor Matte, Max Blumenthal, Aaron Matte, Gideon levy and others I very much like listening to though my hearing is defective and don't always hear all their interesting words. There are many in Israel that I admire...the young "refusniks"...The Peace activists...the brave individuals that attend the persecuted shepherds and farmers as they struggle with the regular incursions of those thuggish louts...in gangs and protected by IOF and police. Also some film-makers and academics that speak the truth. I must say too that I agree with what Yair Lapid stated about the recent inflammatory celebrations..."violent and degrading". Amongst the punk like gyrations of the indoctrinated, perhaps the worst and most hideous to witness was the ungracious leaps of extremely ungainly old women! But then one took in the equally repellent capers of the young ones only marginally less offensive perhaps because they so easily led. As i have said in a post elsewhere "it is hard to see how Israel could degrade itself yet further but I am certain it can find a way".
I don't know how old you are but I certainly hope that you have not been so firmly cemented into WOKE oppressed/oppressor delusions that you will never be able to look at life outside your completely predetermined notions.
Hi Toby...I am 78 and still groovin' on pretty well except for my knees! I have never understood that term WOKE and haven't bothered to investigate. I usually ignore new catch words such as "gobsmacked" etc that I presume are propagated by the crap mainstream papers. Yes I am about the same age as Israel's illegal occupation! Don't worry...the "world" has a very tenuous hold on me! Do you like this Don Vliet phrase "there would be no game brother if no-one would play"? I do. I watch birds bathe and drink. It is very relaxing.
Israel is not an illegal occupier. Modern Zionists posited that the way for Jews to end persecution and repeated expulsions was to return to their ancient homeland. They began returning in the mid to late 1800's and found that Zion had become Palestine, a sparsely populated, underdeveloped area in the Southern Syrian administrative district of the Ottoman Empire. The Jews bought land and improved its productivity, built schools and hospitals, organized civil defense units, and lobbied world leaders for the cause. Many of today's Palestinians descend from Arabs who entered the area only after Zionist activity had raised its living standards. When the Ottoman Empire collapsed after entering WWI on the losing side, its land was divided into mandates and, later, modern states, the Zionists had a de facto government ready to rule.
The Arabs of Palestine might have gotten a state of their own had Arab leaders accepted the UN Partiton Plan and helped the "Southern Syrians" get ready for autonomy. But the Arab states went to war and the Jews had to defeat them so Israel could be reborn.
Instead of moaning and groaning about the "nakba" (getting trapped in refugee limbo (by their own leaders)), the Palestinians should follow the Jews' example. Remember your past, but always work to build your future.
Thank you for your comprehensive defense of Israel's continued terrorism. I, like many others are not scholars, just individuals who bristle at blatant injustices and all forms of bullying. I am ashamed to have to admit that I took little interest in the troubles of the region over the decade following decade, and that was because to me politics is an unclean term that has been soiled by lies, underhand deals, and obfuscation, and self-interest. The self-interested parties have deliberately kept things slumbering along nicely to prevent disruption to their various little and big schemes...not anymore...it is out in the light of day and people are reacting to it strongly. That is very "inconvenient" to Israel and the USA as well as complicit countries now being dragged into it reluctantly...and now stating what ordinary pro-Palestinians...the students and the marchers and organisers of the resistance who have been vilified over more than eighteen months of genocidal intent by Israel, have been TELLING them. To put it simply as I can...oppressors are ALWAYS wrong and the oppressed ALWAYS right!
I agree with you -- oppressors are wrong; the problem is determining who is the oppressor. Two examples:
1) Arab-initiated violence created two groups of refugees. Fewer than 700,000 Arabs fled or were displaced from Palestine and over 1,000,000 Mizrachi Jews were driven from their homes in the Muslim countries of the Middle East and North Africa. Some of the Mizrachim emigrated to France or the US, but Israel absorbed 800,000 of them during the first three decades of the existence of the modern State of Israel. Food was being rationed in the early years, Israel was also rehabilitating Holocaust survivors, Arab armies were still attacking, and terrorist raids were being staged in areas illegally occupied by Egypt and Jordan. But Israel absorbed and uplifted the Mizrachim whose descendants comprise the majority of Israel's current Jewish population. Every post in Israel's governance (except Prime Minister) has been held, at one time or another, by someone with roots in the MIzrachi communities.
In contrast, Arab nations refused citizenship to the Arabs who' fled or were displaced and to their descendants. Their numbers have grown to 6,000,000 Palestine refugees on UNRWA rolls; 99.5% of them were born in UNRWA "camps" (actually cities that have become breeding grounds for terrorism). The "refugees" have been told (by Arab and Palestinian leaders) that Israel will, someday, be forced to give them the homes that their parents, grandparents, great-grandparents,... lost when Israel became a state. But the "refugees" have grown up seeing Palestinians honored and rewarded for killing Jews. Taking them in would be the death knell for the Jewish state (which is the intention of Arab and Palestinian leaders).
2) Between 1948 and 1967, when Judea and Samaria ("The West Bank") were under Jordanian occupation, Jews were ethnically cleansed from the areas and Palestinians were given the homes from which the Jews had been driven, Israel liberated "The West Bank" and Gaza in the Six Day War in June, 1967.
In September, 1967, the Arab League rejected Israel's offer to withdraw from newly-liberated lands (not all; Israel wanted to retain control over east Jerusalem) in exchange for recognition and peace. The Arab League reponded with "Three NO's" -- no recognition; no negotiations; no peace. There is no record of Palestinian leaders objecting ("Accept the offer! We want to build our state.") This left Israel with a problem. Palestinians were living in home to which Israelis had legitimate claims. Israeli courts ruled that Palestinians would be recognized as owners of the homes if Jordan had given them title. However, those Palestinians who had been granted title would be considered tenants and required to pay minimal rent to the Jewish owners. This worked well until the Palestinian Authority told the tenants to stop paying (and the tenants stopped--it's not safe for a Palestinian to defy the PA or Hamas). There was a big to-do about this situation a few years back when Israel (of course) was accused to trying to push Palestinians out of thei homes so Jews could be installed in them,
I have to admit that you have knowledge(whether it is correct or not is a different matter). I am sure there are many different opinions on this subject...shall we blame Germany? or perhaps Britain after the first world war, when Britain and France dishonoured agreements with some of the Arabs that fought with the allies? Some historians claim that T E Lawrence was much disaffected by this treason. However.as I have stated, I am neither historian or scholar...you might be. What I and many other ordinary people are highly disturbed about is the present. an I candidly ask you if you consider starving a population ethical and permissive?(especially young children that need nutrition to develop and grow. If you have children would it concern you that they were being deliberately starved as well as bombed and denied all medical necessities? I will answer that question I posed for you...you would, so how can you appear to detach and defend Israel's cruel and evil intent to ethnically cleanse Gaza and to expand the illegal occupation? I appreciate that you have been civil despite our opposing perspectives, but I shall adhere to the wisdom of great orator and holocaust survivor Stephen Kapos. I suggest with all due respect that his opinion bears more weight than yours or mine.
I will refer you to the opinions of Major John Spencer, head of Urban Warfare Studies in West Point's Modern Warfare Institute, who has praised Israel's efforts to avoid killing civilians (by revealing plans for actions against Hamas and advising people to leave areas in which combat will be occuring). He has noted that Hamas' fortifications were deliberately embedded so deeply amid the Gazan populace that any Israeli response to Hamas' attacks on Israel would inevitably kill some noncombatants. Major Spencer said (on X) that Hamas has gone beyond using Gazans as human shields and is, in fact, sacrificing them.
Now I know that the US rebuilt Germany and Japan after World War II and people used to joke about starting wars against the US and deliberately losing (because the US would now boost the "enemy's" economy after the war. (Check out "The Mouse That Roared", a Peter Sellers movie.
But Israel is being criticized for not supplying enough aid to the people who cheered the vow of Israel's attackers to continue raping, torturing, and killing Israelis and anyone working with them -- while the war is still ongoing!! That is unheard of. And, frankly, I'm amazed that Hamas isn't ashamed that, after 20 years of running Gaza, the people living under Hamas administration are still dependent on food, water, electricity, and medicine supplied by Israel.
You've said, "The oppressors are always wrong and the oppressed are always right. That'a a bit simplistic. People can think and learn drom life. Most of us are neither angels or devils, but people -- bad ones may have some redeeming features and very good ones may occasionally sin. Today's "Woke Folk" cling too strongly to their characterizations and act on Woke dictats instead of making their own decisions.
Has Israel besieged Gaza for about seventeen years..calorie- counted aid going into this fenced- in Palestinian enclave and prevented freedom of travel for the majority of the population or not. Has it weaponised electricity and water...turning it on or off abitrarily? Does Israel's policies deliberately confer hardship on Palestinians and attempt to repress their everyday tasks in life? Do heavily armed indoctrinated thugs invade Palestinian homes under the pretext of suspicion of "terrorist" activity therein...does the illegal Israeli occupying forces arrest young and old in what is called administrative detention and are the illegal so-called settlers constantly harassing Palestinian and Bedouin herders and farmers, intimidating families, frightening the children?.. (to my mind the worst of crimes) among the gamut of perpetual persecution. The British Empire became so by ruthless suppression of the poorly or unarmed natives of far-flung places, many other European nations the same as you well know...but what expiation of their former sins have we witnessed? The Arabs involved in the heinous practice of slavery...we know that the globe is a heaving mass of iniquity...we know that Europeans and a few others pillaged the pristine continent of the Americas...but we can't go back to re-set those abominations but we should try our best to prevent the present ones. It is known that Israel is one of the worst examples today, though there are many others but most are not described as "our allies". I believe that after the attack on the US ship "Liberty" when many were killed and injured and the Israelis claimed it was misidentification Dean Rusk is reported to have stated " I didn't believe them then and I don't believe them now". Not many do.
Yeah. That awful little country which shares its advances in agriculture, technology, and medicine with the world. The Jewish country where an Arab Supreme Court Justice sent a President to jail. The tiny country which, while under attack and suffering food shortages, rehabilitated Holocaust survivors and Mizrachim driven from their homes in the Middle East and North Africa and which still sends rescue teams when disaster strikes world wide (even to countries with which it doesn't have diplomatic relations). Israeli teams are often the first to arrive and the most effective in giving help.
Compare that to the Arabs -- despite having huge landholdings and some being oil rich, they used their numerous votes in the UN to set up a special "refugee"agency" which hasn't resettled a single "refugee" but teaches second, third, and fourth generations of Palestinians who fled or were displaced from PAlestine in Arab-initiated wars, that killing Jews is an Arab's ticket to Heaven. Consider what money wasted on the Palestine refugees' eternal internment in UNRWA "terror towns" could do for current refugees and survivors of natural disasters.
Many Israelis are troubled by the "administrative detentions." But a tiny country surrounded by enemies depends heavily about being able to act pre-emptively. And open arraignments could threaten the exposure of intelligence-gatherers' identities. Israel is not the evil entity you think it is. And the Palestinian leaders aren't the innocent victims you think they are.
Thanks again. I admire many Jews...illan Pappe who I once had the honour to pass a few words with on a pavement as we made our individual ways to a lecture he was giving...a very good man. Norman Finkelstein, Gabor Matte, Max Blumenthal, Aaron Matte, Gideon levy and others I very much like listening to though my hearing is defective and don't always hear all their interesting words. There are many in Israel that I admire...the young "refusniks"...The Peace activists...the brave individuals that attend the persecuted shepherds and farmers as they struggle with the regular incursions of those thuggish louts...in gangs and protected by IOF and police. Also some film-makers and academics that speak the truth. I must say too that I agree with what Yair Lapid stated about the recent inflammatory celebrations..."violent and degrading". Amongst the punk like gyrations of the indoctrinated, perhaps the worst and most hideous to witness was the ungracious leaps of extremely ungainly old women! But then one took in the equally repellent capers of the young ones only marginally less offensive perhaps because they so easily led. As i have said in a post elsewhere "it is hard to see how Israel could degrade itself yet further but I am certain it can find a way".
I don't know how old you are but I certainly hope that you have not been so firmly cemented into WOKE oppressed/oppressor delusions that you will never be able to look at life outside your completely predetermined notions.
Hi Toby...I am 78 and still groovin' on pretty well except for my knees! I have never understood that term WOKE and haven't bothered to investigate. I usually ignore new catch words such as "gobsmacked" etc that I presume are propagated by the crap mainstream papers. Yes I am about the same age as Israel's illegal occupation! Don't worry...the "world" has a very tenuous hold on me! Do you like this Don Vliet phrase "there would be no game brother if no-one would play"? I do. I watch birds bathe and drink. It is very relaxing.
ing
Israel is not an illegal occupier. Modern Zionists posited that the way for Jews to end persecution and repeated expulsions was to return to their ancient homeland. They began returning in the mid to late 1800's and found that Zion had become Palestine, a sparsely populated, underdeveloped area in the Southern Syrian administrative district of the Ottoman Empire. The Jews bought land and improved its productivity, built schools and hospitals, organized civil defense units, and lobbied world leaders for the cause. Many of today's Palestinians descend from Arabs who entered the area only after Zionist activity had raised its living standards. When the Ottoman Empire collapsed after entering WWI on the losing side, its land was divided into mandates and, later, modern states, the Zionists had a de facto government ready to rule.
The Arabs of Palestine might have gotten a state of their own had Arab leaders accepted the UN Partiton Plan and helped the "Southern Syrians" get ready for autonomy. But the Arab states went to war and the Jews had to defeat them so Israel could be reborn.
Instead of moaning and groaning about the "nakba" (getting trapped in refugee limbo (by their own leaders)), the Palestinians should follow the Jews' example. Remember your past, but always work to build your future.