Israeli Air Strike

[kuronosan]

From what I understand, Jerusalem belongs to Palestine but the Jews pretty much overran it during the war. Afterwards, they've been wanting to make the entire city theirs but the Palestinians will have none of it.

I don't think the Israelis should be wiped off of the face of the map (which some extreme groups want to do) but I really don't think they have the right to own any land they have confiscated, especially since the desire to own it is so that the Palestinians don't.

[guartz]

You don't like my illegal settlements, Why dont you sanction me with your army? oh wait

http://www.baltlantis.com/public/jew_bwa_ha_ha.gif


Had to be done.

[Kuya]

@Kuya

Jerusalem is part of Palestine according to the Partition Plan. All of it. However, the Arabs lost the war and Israel went from it's 52% (estimate) alloted land to 77% (estimate). It is inadmissible under international law to acquire territory by war but in the case of the 48' War I believe the Palestinians lost their claim (via the UN, not their 'claim' in general) to their alloted land. The UN does not have the authority to dictate the creation of States. The Arab world was undergoing decolonization and everyone was taking handouts from the British and the French.

So there was a lot of new rules being drawn up at the time.

I don't believe in these arbitrary lines. All of Palestine belongs to the Palestinians but it's a political impossibility. So you have to make do with what you can legitimately advocate in accordance with international law. I believe we should follow those rules - otherwise we too, like the Zionists, could colonize Iraq and then point to our own Supreme Court saying it's acceptable because "we said so."

The International Court of Justice ruled that Israel has no claim to the W. Bank and Gaza and East Jerusalem. The World Court also said the Wall annexing the W. Bank is illegal as well. So the Occupation is illegal. The colonization is illegal. As a matter of tactics and politics, I concede my moral outrage and liberal Utopian blah blah to the rule of law here. So a Palestinian State on the 67' borders with E.Jerusalem as the capital would be as 'just' as we can get given the political reality.

Ah, alright, thanks for the info.

I would ignore residue, he never really says anything than isn't related to jingoism. Besides, it's nice to have him around to prove our point.

[Kuya]

Survival of the fittest - Haaretz - Israel News

Elvis, is there any way to get to read more of it? I keep getting eror 404 when i try to read the rest, also:

According to your findings, how many acts of Israeli massacre were perpetrated in 1948?

"Twenty-four. In some cases four or five people were executed, in others the numbers were 70, 80, 100. There was also a great deal of arbitrary killing. Two old men are spotted walking in a field - they are shot. A woman is found in an abandoned village - she is shot. There are cases such as the village of Dawayima [in the Hebron region], in which a column entered the village with all guns blazing and killed anything that moved.

"The worst cases were Saliha (70-80 killed), Deir Yassin (100-110), Lod (250), Dawayima (hundreds) and perhaps Abu Shusha (70). There is no unequivocal proof of a large-scale massacre at Tantura, but war crimes were perpetrated there. At Jaffa there was a massacre about which nothing had been known until now. The same at Arab al Muwassi, in the north. About half of the acts of massacre were part of Operation Hiram [in the north, in October 1948]: at Safsaf, Saliha, Jish, Eilaboun, Arab al Muwasi, Deir al Asad, Majdal Krum, Sasa. In Operation Hiram there was a unusually high concentration of executions of people against a wall or next to a well in an orderly fashion.

"That can't be chance. It's a pattern. Apparently, various officers who took part in the operation understood that the expulsion order they received permitted them to do these deeds in order to encourage the population to take to the roads. The fact is that no one was punished for these acts of murder. Ben-Gurion silenced the matter. He covered up for the officers who did the massacres."

...

[Elvis]

The link didn't work? Just copy a segment of what Morris said and put it in quotations. Then Google that and you'll get a bunch of hits that have the entire interview via a blog entry.

Benny Morris is a 'New Historian' - a group of historians who went into the Israeli archives and essentially retold the history of the conflict with all that new information.

However, there were Arab scholars saying many of the same things decades before - no one paid attention to them though.

Declassified IDF documents revealed - among many other startling facts - that the Nakba was not the result of Arab commanders radioing in to the Palestinians to flee but rather the terror and atrocities committed by the Jewish terror groups such as Irgun.

It's sad that Residue has the Irgun emblem as his avatar. I recall some people giving me flak for what they perceived as my support for Hamas (you'd have to find proof in this thread though and I asked people to do so), and yet no one has remarked on his obvious support for Irgun. I don't think he knows what they've done though. It's a cool looking emblem. So is Hezbollah's.

Now, my stance on these groups is that they are militant nationalists. They use terror. It is a useful and immoral tactic. However, so do vastly more powerful AND 'legitimate' State actors and when they use terror it's on an obviously larger scale.

To call these groups 'terrorists' wouldn't be far off but given the political reality of our zeitgeist I think the word is almost always used as a rhetorical and ideological bludgeon.

Much like the use of the Nazi/Hitler/Holocaust/Antisemitism card.

Moreover its just so fucking hypocritical. Israel was founded with the use of terror. That's what militant nationalist groups are like all throughout history. Doesn't mean we approve of them but we should understand that reality.

Since we're passing the anniversary of the founding of Israel and the Nakba, I thought I'd post this blog entry from which is a list of 61 Palestinian children you don't know - who have died during the course of this conflict.

Pay attention to the early acts of violence committed by groups like Irgun. See any similarities? Zionist terror has never dissolved. Instead of Irgun, we now have the IDF.

Nakba Day 2009: How many Palestinian Children Does It Take To Make A Jewish State In Palestine?

Sixty-one years, sixty-one children you've probably never heard of.

1. Unidentified Palestinian girl (below left), one of the victims of a bomb attack in Jerusalem on 29 December 1947. Members of the Irgun militant Zionist group threw a bomb from a passing taxi at a bus (below right) in the Palestinian residential quarter near Herod's Gate, killing 17 Palestinian
civilians. (Walid Khalidi, Before Their Diaspora).

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2 - 6. Five Palestinian children of the Abu Suwan family, killed when militant Zionists blew up the Semiramis Hotel in Jerusalem.

*5 JANUARY 1948 Haganah terrorists made a most barbarous attack at one o'clock in the early morning of Monday at the Semiramis hotel in the Katamon section of Jerusalem, killing innocent people and wounding many. The Jewish Agency terrorist forces blasted the entrance to the hotel by a small bomb and then placed bombs in the basement of the building. As a result of the explosions, the whole building collapsed with its residents. As the terrorists withdrew, they started shooting at the houses in the neighborhood.

Those killed were: Subhi El-Taher, Moslem; Mary Masoud, Christian; Georgette Khoury, Christian; Abas Awad, Moslem; Nazira, Lorenzo, Christian; Mary Lorenzo, Christian; Mohammed Saleh Ahmed, Moslem; Ashur Abed El Razik, Moslem; Ismail Abed El Aziz, Moslem; Ambeer Lorenzo, Christian; Raof Lorenzo, Christian; Abu Suwan, Christian family, seven members, husband, wife and five children.

Beside those killed, 16 more were wounded, among them women and children.

- From United Nations Security Council Official Records, Supplements for 1948 - Palestine. (via the Encyclopaedia of Palestine).

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Ruins of the Semiramis Hotel, located in the Palestinian residential quarter of Bak'a in West Jerusalem. On 5 January 1948 (the day after Zionist militants blew up the local government offices in Jaffa, killing 26 Palestinian civilians) members of the Haganah blew up the hotel, killing 20 civilian guests. (Walid Khalidi, Before Their Diaspora).

7 - 14. Eight Palestinian children under the age of fourteen, killed when a Zionist militant planted a bomb in the suq in Ramleh, Palestine.

18 FEBRUARY 1948 At 2:30 in the afternoon, an Irgun Z'vai Leumi terrorist disguised as an Arab and riding a donkey, arrived at the Ramleh vegetable market. The terrorist started to bargain for some vegetables from a woman vendor, paid her the price and asked her to look after his donkey and the basket on its back, while the terrorist left, saying he was going to buy some meat from an adjacent market.

In less then ten minutes the mines and high explosives in the basket exploded killing 12 and wounding 43 persons. Among the killed were four children less then ten years of age and four less than fourteen.


The explosion was so terrible that it was impossible to identify more than one of the victims. The Palestine Government official communique describing this incident said that pieces of the heads, hands, legs and internal parts of the dead were gathered from places two miles away from the scene of the explosion.

-- From United Nations Security Council Official Records, Supplements for 1948 - Palestine. (via the Encyclopaedia of Palestine).

15. Newborn Palestinian infant, name not known, taken prisoner with his or her mother when Israeli troops overran the village of al-Dawayima, near Hebron, on 28 October 1948. Murdered with his/her mother and at least 80 other residents of the same village, in an attempt by the Israeli 89th Battalion to expel the Palestinian population from the region.

Ben-Gurion, quoting General Avner, briefly referred in his war diary to the 'rumours' that the army had 'slaughtered 70-80 persons.' What happened was described a few days later by an Israeli soldier-witness to a Mapam member, who transmitted the information to Eliezer Pra'i, the editor of the party daily Al Hamishmar and a member of the party's Central Committee. The party member, S. (possibly Shabtai) Kaplan, described the witness as 'one of our people, an intellectual, 100 percent reliable.' The village, wrote Kaplan, had been held by Arab 'irregulars' and was captured by the 89th Battalion (8th Brigade) without a fight. 'The first [wave] of conquerors killed about 80 to 100 [male] Arabs, women, and children. The children they killed by breaking their heads with sticks. There was not a house without dead,' wrote Kaplan.

Kaplan's informant, who arrived immediately afterwards in the second wave, reported that Arab men and women who remained were then closed off in their houses 'without food or water.' Sappers arrived to blow up the houses. 'One commander ordered a sapper to put two old women in a certain house ... and to blow up the house with them. The sapper refused ... The commander then ordered his men to put in the old women and the evil deed was done. One soldier boasted that he had raped a woman and then shot her. One woman, with a newborn baby in her arms, was employed to clean the courtyard where the soldiers ate. She worked a day or two. In the end they shot her and her baby.'


The soldier-witness, according to Kaplan, said that 'cultured officers ...had turned into base murderers and this not in the heat of battle ...but out of a system of expulsion and destruction. The less Arabs remained--the better. This principle is the political motor for the expulsions and the atrocities.'

Benny Morris, Birth of the Palestinian Refugee Problem, pp. 222-223; cited here.

16. Palestinian teenaged girl, name not known, captured and raped by Israeli troops of the 22nd Battalion (Carmeli Brigade) stationed near Nirim in the Negev, 22 August 1949. Murdered the following day and buried in a shallow desert grave by her abductors, who decided against driving her back to her home village and releasing her there, on the grounds that:"It was a shame to waste the petrol."

(See also Benny Morris, Israel's Border Wars, 1949-1956, pg. 179-180).

17, 18, 19. Two Palestinian girls, names not known, raped and murdered by Israeli soldiers of the IDF's 22nd Battalion, on or about 16 March 1950. Also one Palestinian boy, name not known, murdered in the same incident.

On 2 April 1950, Ben-Gurion recorded a similar atrocity in the Negev: 'Again our soldiers (Moroccans) caught two Arab girls, raped and murdered them. ... The rapists are from Battalion 22, which is prone to such acts. [The IDF Advocate-General] was ordered to speed up the trials and demand severe punishment.' Ben-Gurion was referring to two girls and a boy from the Gaza Strip village of `Abasan murdered by IDF troops around troops around 16 March, whose bodies were found in Israel on 28 March. (Morris, Israel's Border Wars..., p.180)

20, 21. Ali Muhammad Ali Alayyan, aged 12, and his 10-year-old sister, Fakhriyeh, abducted by an IDF patrol as they gathered wood near Deir Ayyub in the Jordanian-controlled West Bank on 2 November 1950. Shot dead by a member of the Israeli patrol in the wadi bed south of Deir Ayyub.

(Benny Morris, Israel's Border Wars, 1949-1956, p180 & 181 ).

22. Thirteen-year-old Palestinian boy, name not known, one of five Palestinians abducted, shot dead, and mutilated by an Israeli patrol while herding sheep near al Burj, 25 February 1953.

23, 24. Rashika Faek Ibrahim Budeir, aged 14, and Muhammad Salim Khadr Sarsour, aged 15.

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Two of the 49 Palestinian civilians, including 19 children, who were shot dead by Israeli Border Police in the Kfar Qassem Massacre.

On the afternoon of 29 October 1956, officers of the Israeli Border Police declared a 5:00pm curfew for the inhabitants of the village of Kfar Qassem. About 400 residents were working the fields outside the village, and were unaware of the sudden curfew. As the first of them began to return from the fields that evening, they were stopped at the police checkpoints established at three of the entrances to the
village, and executed at the side of the road. Forty-nine Palestinian civilians were killed. The commander of the Israeli Border Police unit that carried out the killings was subsequently put on trial, found guilty of an "administrative error", and fined one penny.

25. Mohsin Maha (محسن طه), aged 16; of Kafr Kana, Israel.

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One of six Palestinian citizens of Israel who were shot dead by Israeli soldiers on 30 March 1976, while protesting the Israeli government’s confiscation of 5,000 acres of Arab-owned land in the Galilee, for the development of housing for Jewish Israelis.

The anniversary of their death is now celebrated annually as "Land Day" by Palestinians in both Israel and the Occupied Territories, and commemorates the historic and continuing confiscation of Palestinian-owned land by the state of Israel, for the exclusive benefit of its Jewish citizens.

26. Palestinian girl, name not known, filmed by a Danish TV cameraman in Shatila Refugee Camp as she was being loaded with other Palestinian refugees into trucks by Phalangist militiamen, on the second day of the Sabra-Shatila Massacre (16 - 18 Sept 1982).

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Eyewitnesses in the Lebanese villages of Shweifat and Hadath, south of Beirut, report that at noon on the same day cameraman M. Petersen shot his footage, three large trucks and two smaller vehicles loaded with civilians passed through their area, but the people taken away on trucks remain unaccounted for.

27 - 40. Haitham Ali Erakat, aged 16, shot dead in Abu Dis (West Bank) on 21 May 1989, when an IDF patrol opened fire on Palestinian youths throwing stones.

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Also: Ziya Haj Muhammad (aged five); killed 18 Oct 1988; Khaled Tbeileh (14), 18 Oct 1988; Manal Samour (14), 25 Oct 1998; Osama Ahmed Abu-Rama (4), 9 Nov 1988; Husni Abu Sido (15), 10 Dec 1988; Asad Talal Hamuda (15), 19 Mar 1989; Amjad Hisham Nasser (four), 27 Mar 1989; Fuad Yussef Najajra, (15), 13 Apr 1989; Muhammad Rab'i (10), 16 Apr 1989; Shihadi Ziad Rabah Awad (eight), 10 Jun 1989; Muhammad Majed Abu-Hamadiya (16), 12 Jul 1989; Sultan Abu Musalam (12), 31 Jul 1989; and Buthana Adib Hadji (three), 12 Aug 1989.

All killed during the First Palestinian Intifada by Israeli soldiers who opened fire on children throwing stones (via UNGA Report A/44/352 of 13 July 1989, UNGA Report A/44/599 of 12 Oct 1989, and CADFA).

41 - 47. Walid Abu Hamdiyeh, aged 13; Ala' Badr Abdul Jalil Taha Abu Sneineh, 17; Kamal Jamal Kafisheh, 13; Jabr A'aref AbuHadid Abu Sneineh, 11; Kifah Abdul Mu'az Marakeh, 11; Rami Arafat Ali Al Rajabi, 11; Tareq Abu Sneineh, 14;

Shot dead on 25 February 1994 by an Israeli settler who entered the al-Ibrahimi Mosque in Hebron, and opened fire on worshipers as they performed dawn prayers, killing at least 29 people.

48, 49. Hilmi Shusha, aged 11, and his two-year-old sister, Suha.

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Hilmi Shusha was killed in October 1996 by a West Bank settler named Nahum Korman, who beat him to death with the butt of his gun. For beating to death an 11-year-old Palestinian child, Korman was sentenced by an Israeli district court to six months of community service.

The killing of Hilmi Shusha was also a death sentence for his younger sister, Suha. Suha Shusha was already seriously ill at the time of her brother's death, and in need of a bone marrow transplant. Her family members had been tested as possible bone marrow donors, and a match had been found, but it was her older brother, Hilmi. He was killed before the transplant operation that might have saved Suha's life could be carried out.

50. Khalil al-Mughrabi, aged 11, who was killed when an Israeli soldier opened fire with a heavy-caliber tank-mounted machine gun on three Palestinian children playing soccer in Rafah, Gaza Strip, on 7 July 2001.

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Khalil mughrabi aged 11, Responding to a complaint from the Israeli civil rights group, B'Tselem, IDF Chief Military Prosecutor (Colonel Einat Ron) ruled there was no reason to open a criminal investigation into Khalil's death, as her inquiries had found the soldier had acted properly, opening fire when confronted by rioters.

Unfortunately for Col. Dan, the supporting documents that her office sent to B'Tselem (.pdf link) inadvertently included internal army documents, never intended for release to the public, showing that Col. Dan had actually found there was no riot going on at the time Khalil was shot, that his killing was unjustified, and that she had experimented with various phony explanations for B'Tselem before settling on the "killed in a riot" scenario.

51 - 55. Akram Naim Astal, aged 6; also his brother Muhammad (13), and their cousins Omar (12), Anis (10) and Muhammad (12), who were all killed by an IDF booby trap bomb planted outside an elementary school in Khan Younis, Gaza Strip, on 22 November 2001.

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Last Thursday, an undercover unit of the Israeli army buried a mine in the sand that flows around Abdullah Siyam Primary School in Khan Younis, Gaza Strip. A few hours later, as Palestinian children headed to school, the mine exploded...

Initially, the Israeli army denied any guilt, alleging instead that the children had played with an old unexploded (Israeli) tank shell. But after left-wing Israelis like Meretz leader Yossi Sarid accused the government of a cover-up, the occupation army at last admitted "indirect responsibility."

A statement issued by the army on 26 November accepted that the bomb that killed the five children had been planted by an undercover unit and that it "might have been activated" by an officer.

(Al Ahram, Israel's Morning Class)

56, 57. Jamil Abu Aziz, aged 13, and his six-year-old brother, Ahmad, who were killed by shrapnel from an Israeli tank shell in Jenin, on 21 June 2002.

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The IDF maintained that Jamil and Ahmad were killed because they were part of a group of Palestinians that threateningly approached a tank. Footage aired by the BBC showed that they were killed instead as they ran away from a tank that had surprised them as they walked in the street outside their home, and fired on them at pointblank range as they tried to flee.

58, 59. Sixteen-year-old Asma Mughayer, and her brother Ahmed, aged 13; shot dead by an IDF sniper as they brought in laundry from the roof of their home in Tel Sultan, Rafah, on 18 May 2004.

Spoiler: show

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The IDF said of their deaths: "A preliminary investigation indicates they were killed by a bomb intended to be used against soldiers. It was set outside a building by Palestinians to hit an Israeli vehicle". But the Mughayer family said that the children had not been killed by a bomb, but shot by an Israeli sniper, operating out of a neighboring building.

An Australian journalist visited the Mughayer house, and found no signs of an explosion there, though he did find bullet holes on the roof, made by bullets which seemed to have been fired from the neighboring building. He visited the neighboring building, and found that its occupants had been held prisoner by an Israeli sniper team that had operated out of their house on the morning that Asma and Ahmed were killed, and left behind MRE wrappers and ammunition boxes (labeled in Hebrew).

British journalists who examined the children's bodies at the morgue found no signs of injuries except for a single bullet hole through the head.

After the British and Australian journalists published their findings, the IDF announced it would hold an internal investigation into the death of the Mughayer siblings. But six months later, while world attention was distracted by a new, large-scale invasion of the Gaza Strip refugee camps, the IDF quietly dropped its investigation.

The following year, some of the Israeli soldiers who took part in the May 2004 attack on Rafah gave their testimonies to the Breaking the Silence exhibition. They testified that they had killed innocent Palestinian civilians, under orders from their superiors to kill any Palestinian they encountered, armed or not.

They were concerned, in retrospect, that they were guilty of carrying out illegal orders, and one of them testified about the specific case of Asma and Ahmed Mughayer:

Asma Moghayyer, 16, and her brother Ahmed, 13, were shot as they went to collect clothes from a rooftop washing line. The Israeli army insisted the children had been blown up by a roadside bomb. However, journalists visiting the morgue saw only single bullet wounds to the head. The truth, said Rafi, was that they were shot by an Israeli soldier following clear orders to shoot anyone on a roof regardless of their role in the conflict. Rafi says that his overriding impression of the operation was "chaos" and the "indiscriminate use of force".

"Gaza was considered a playground for sharpshooters."

60. Ahmed Ussam Yousef Mousa, aged 10, killed about four hours after this photograph was taken, when an Israeli soldier fired live ammunition at close range against Palestinians protesting the construction of Israel's Wall through the farmland of the West Bank village of Ni'lin,
29 July 2008.

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(Photo: Palestine Solidarity Project, via karmalised).

61. Kaukab Al Dayah, aged 4, killed when a missile fired by an Israeli F-16 fighter destroyed her home, during an Israeli Air Force attack on a Gaza City mosque, 6 January 2009. (Photo: Getty Images).

Spoiler: show

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Of the 1,417 Palestinians killed in Israel's attack on the Gaza Strip, 27 Dec 2008 - 18 Jan 2009, 926 were civilians, including 313 chidren.

[Kuya]

I wonder what the American people would think of Israel, if all this information were played on all tv news channels for an entire week.

[Elvis]

I dunno. I mean, we didn't stop the Iraq War right? With the flimsy pretext and the torture and the destruction and blah blah. Plus, I'm sure plenty of people either do not care/cared but wanted the war/feel marginalized/.

Kind of hopeless to be honest. Israel is pushing for a war with Iran now. It's so disgusting hearing our politicians telling Iran that it must stop it's effort to "destabilize" the region.

How fucking cynical are they? Or maybe they count on Americans to be fucking retarded. Oh and didn't Obama make a subtle comment about the Iranian's during his inauguration?

I think it went like, "...and for those nations with a clenched fist," or some bullshit.

Bibi and Likud do not want a Two-State solution. Bibi has always been ambiguous about it as well. The Likud charter is quite clear and Israel manages to *in-action* destroy Palestinian self-determination as well as in-words.

So the new thing is a "side-by-side" solution. He want's to keep the apartheid and to keep the Palestinians stateless.

Moreover, the settlements are getting expanded and East Jerusalem is being colonized more and more under the guise of promoting 'Jewish tourism'.

Western politics is about power - not justice.

politics-raaaaaaaaaaaaaaage

[Kuya]

Well, that's what i mean. What if the media was honest and actually cared for human dignity and critical reporting? I'm sure you know how they played up the war in Iraq. Have you heard at how they uncritically invited supposed war experts to promote the Iraq War? And it just so happens that recently it was revealed that the government actually fed these war correspondents info on how they wanted the war to be portrayed. The embedded journalists only reported what the military wanted them to report, and the media basically turned itself into the government's propaganda machine. Not to mention the US media is notorious for its horrid coverage of global issues or even critique of US foreign policy.

So i don't quite believe that the American people know of this and they don't care, i am loosing hope that they do, but the media is an immense issue here.

If the US media had photos of the hundreds of dead civilians that are killed by predator attacks, and if they had them almost every day while letting experts with an anti war stance spoke the most, i can assure you people would feel differently about it.

The Iraq war wasn't stopped, because the media failed.

[Faris]

media propaganda baby, prooooopaaagandaaaa.
at its best

[Elvis]

So I always wonder how people buy into the Zionist hasbara line that those savage Arabs want to throw 'the Jews' into the sea and that they are hell-bent on destroying Israel. These same groups are pushing for a war with Iran.

In fact, the NY Times article on the recent Bibi-Obama meeting reframed the discussion of a resolution to the I-P conflict as a conversation on the Iranian 'threat' to not only Israel but to the US.

The media in the West have always portrayed the I-P conflict dishonestly. We're given this impression that it's a 50-50 conflict logistically and that Israel is innocently defending itself from radical Islam.

I think Gaza has helped educate people about Zionism and about the 'other side' of the story to a degree. It's helped mobilize the BDS movement to divest from companies that are profiting off of the Occupation of Palestinian land. It's helped a significant number of Jews say 'Not in our Name' to Israel and to the Jewish-Zionist groups who give off the impression that they and the Israeli State are representatives of Judaism and Jewishness.

Anyways, this article is part of that sea-change. The mask is slipping and I feel like Israel is just being more honest since it can't wage a successful PR campaign anymore.

Right thinking up alternatives to 2-state solution | Israel | Jerusalem Post

"We need to come out of the closet and say that we are proud to be anti-Palestinian state," Danon said. "The Israeli public understands the damage of a Palestinian state but is not aware of other alternatives. A Palestinian state cannot and will not be formed in the present coalition. Bibi can remove an outpost but he cannot advance a Palestinian state. That is a matter of principle that would break up his coalition."

Bibi himself has always been ambiguous on the formation of a Palestinian State.

And that's the idea. Israeli leaders want to delay the 'peace process' (industry) as long as they can while building "facts on the grounds" - which basically means expanding settlements and checkpoints. Bibi has said he would not build more settlements but that he would allow the 'natural' growth of existing ones.

However, I do recall reading that a new settlement is being built now. I'll have to look up the details. The other point is East Jerusalem and the continued house demolitions. Even Hilary Clinton has spoken out against them (she said they were 'unhelpful' which is just about as far as any American politician will go).

In the recent Pelosi-Bibi televised meeting, Bibi called for a 'side-by-side' solution.

I recognized what they meant by this immediately. Jeff Halper, an Israeli peace activist, wrote an article positing that the United States and Israel are trying to turn the Palestinians into a perpetually State-less 'warehoused surplus people'.

[...]The rapid expansion of the facts on the ground, however, continued to overtake language and political analysis. An occupation is defined in international law as "a temporary military situation." While the establishment of more than 200 settlements and outposts in the Occupied Territories, all tied inextricably into Israel proper by a massive network of Israeli-only highways and, ultimately, the Separation Barrier, seemed to indicate that the Occupation was no longer temporary, that it grown into one indivisible system between the Mediterranean and the Jordan River, many Palestinians, Israelis and international observers and decision-makers alike, committed to a two-state solution, were loathe to admit the transformation of the Occupation into a permanent state of apartheid. The implications of so doing were simply too daunting.

The transformation of the Occupation into a country-wide system of apartheid meant the end of the Zionist dream of a Jewish state - unless apartheid could somehow be packaged as a two-state solution, a sleight-of-hand to which many liberal Israeli and Jewish peace groups have succumbed. Nevertheless, slowly, painfully (as Jimmy Carter discovered), the realization that we now have a de facto regime of apartheid over all Israel-Palestine - officially sanctioned if the Annapolis Process succeeds - has begun to sink in, although resistance, even among the Israeli peace movement, is still strong.

[...]Warehousing is the best, if bleakest, term for what Israel is constructing for the Palestinians of the Occupied Territories. It is indeed worse than the apartheid-era South African bantustans. The ten non-viable mini-states established by South Africa for the black African majority on only 11% of the country's land were, to be sure, a type of warehouse. They were intended to supply South Africa with cheap labor while relieving it of its black population, thus making possible a European dominated "democracy."

This is precisely what Israel is intending - its Palestinian Bantustan encompassing 15% of historic Palestine, but with a crucial caveat: Palestinian workers will not be allowed into Israel, which has found a cheaper source of labor, some 300,000 foreign workers imported from China, the Philippines, Thailand, Rumania and West Africa, augmented by its own Arab, Mizrahi, Ethiopian, Russian and Eastern European citizens. From every point of view, historically, culturally, politically and economically, the Palestinians have been defined as "surplus humanity;" nothing remains to do with them except warehousing, which the concerned international community appears willing to allow Israel to do.

Here's an illustration that gives an initial approximation to what Halper is trying to convey (for those who do not like to read):

http://blackmaps.files.wordpress.com.../palestina.jpg

[Artist's rendition of what's left of Palestine after the wars and Occupation (checkpoints/walls/settlements/'Israeli-only roads and highways').]

[Kuya]

http://www.goisrael.com/NR/rdonlyres...apOfIsrael.pdf

Why is this Israeli tourism company displaying a map of Israel that inclues the Gaza strip and the West Bank as parts of Israel?

[Faris]

cus they can and noone can say shit about it.

[kuronosan]

I'm beginning to really despise Israel. It seems like all of our problems with the middle east come from them.

[Kuya]

I'm beginning to really despise Israel. It seems like all of our problems with the middle east come from them.

Well, maybe, maybe not. What the US did to Iran and Afghanistan is pretty rancid, but the relationship the US has with Israel (which is to say, defending Israel no matter what) is certainly the biggest reason why the US is hated in the Middle East. It's the big destabalizer. The elephant in the room, so to speak.

[Kuya]

The most amazing thing is- look at Elvis's post, the number 805. Look at everything that was done to the Palestinians, yet not once has Israel given the Palestinians anything in return for the suffering, no admitting of what they did, no reparations, nothing. That is what is so outrages; how can they complain about Holocaust deniers, when they deny everything they did in 1948, well, some deny, others downplay, and the rest just say it doesn't matter.

I am wrong though, they have given the Palestinians something for their suffering. The day that the Israelis massacred and chased the Palestinians away from their land is called Nakba, which means day of catastrophe; this is the acknowledgment Israel gives of that day:

Nakba Day (Arabic: يوم النكبة yawm in-nakbah — 15 May) meaning "day of the catastrophe"[citation needed] is an annual day of commemoration for the Palestinian people of the "anniversary of the creation of Israel"[1][2][3][4][5] which marks the beginning of the 1948 Palestinian exodus, the resulting defeat in the 1948 Palestine War, the loss of land that followed from the war[6] and their displacement and dispossession as a result [7]. While for Israelis this day represents the "fulfilment of a historic ideal of the Jewish people" to establish a homeland for the Jewish people, for Palestinians the day represents "the dispossession of hundreds of thousands of their people who were made homeless as Israel was born.”[8] In May 2009, the Yisrael Beitenu party of Israeli Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman proposed a ban on commemoration of this day.[9]

A ban on a memory.

In May 2009, the Yisrael Beitenu party announced planned legislation to ban commemorations of Nakba Day, with a jail term of up to three years for violators. According to party spokesman Tal Nahum, "The draft law is intended to strengthen unity in the state of Israel and to ban marking Independence Day as a day of mourning."[9]

[Zilong]

The thought police are after you.

[Kuya]

I was planning on not posting this unless it actually passed the Knesset, because then it would have been news, but because i've read that instead of people in Israel actually being overwhelmingly opposed to these legislations i'm about to post, they are actually divided on them. Which to me is absolutely horrifying, since both these legislations that the highly right wing government is trying to pass are completely anathema to democracy and free speech.

See for yourself:

Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman's Yisrael Beiteinu party plans to propose controversial legislation requiring citizens to swear loyalty to the state, a party spokesman said on Monday.

The bill calls for enabling the interior minister to lift someone's citizenship if he or she fails to either serve in the Israel Defense Forces or do a term of national service.

Party spokesman Tal Nahum said the measure would require all Israelis to declare loyalty "to the state of Israel as a Jewish, Zionist and democratic state" before they can be issued a national identity document. The law requires all Israeli residents over 16 carry their identity cards at all times.

I remember him making it a campaign promise, but i found it so extremist that i thought it was just for political capital... horrifying to see that i was wrong.

As for the Nakba:

Defense Minister and Labor Party chairman Ehud Barak opposes a bill that would forbid Israeli Arabs from commemorating the Nakba on Israel's
Independence Day and plans to raise the issue with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, his associates said Monday.

Social Affairs Minister Isaac Herzog, Agriculture Minister Shalom Simhon, and Minority Affairs Minister Avishay Braverman said the bill damaged freedom of expression and freedom of association.

"This law will increase the isolationism and alienation in society and will strengthen the extremist minority among Israeli Arabs," the ministers said in a statement.

On Sunday, the Ministerial Committee for Legislation approved a preliminary proposal which would make it illegal to hold events or ceremonies marking Israel's Independence Day as a "Nakba," or catastrophe.

Rather than holding barbecues and parades on Independence Day, Israeli Arabs and Palestinians usually take the day to commemorate the dispersal of Palestinians during the 1948 War of Independence.

According to the bill, those found in violation could face up to three years in prison.

And an article discussing the debate and the split opinion on it, i got all three links in Mondoweiss. Here is an interesting part from it:

The State has the right to educate the public and mold the citizens' character, even through tools of legislation . . . I don't see anything wrong with a State that proclaims it is Jewish not giving legitimization to the denial of it being so. Imagine US Jews declaring a day of morning on July 4 - that would be unacceptable. How can citizens view the birthday of the country they live in as illegitimate? People forget where we are living. Claims being made these days that it is a state of all its citizens is against international law and what was written in the British Mandate.

Considering that the US Supreme Court said that flag burning, in this specific case burning the American flag was part of free speech, i really doubt that they would censor people from declaring July 4th as a day of mourning.

[Elvis]

Yea, he changed it from just Arabs to all Israeli citizens. His intentions are so transparent.

Same with the notion that Israel should remain the 'Jewish State'. So that means disregarding the Palestinian 'right of return' to their homes and land from which they were ethnically cleansed (through violence/intimidation/etc.).

Those Israeli Arabs have always lived there and just because a group of European immigrants decided to build a State on top of them, does not mean they have to swear allegiance to their dispossession and oppression.

You cannot be ethnically exclusive and democratic. And here in the West, Zionists use that line 'Oh, they do not believe the JEWISH State has a right to exist' to tug at people's sense of guilt/fear of slighting 'the Jews' (more accurately the Jewish Establishment or the Jewish Zionist groups such as the ADL).

It's sad because a lot of professors are losing their jobs or getting denied tenure because of their criticism of Israel. Even fucking Will Smith got shit a couple of years ago for a comment he made about Hitler. (He said Hitler thought what he, Hitler, was doing was ok, and that bad people do not think they are bad.) The ADL went ape-shit on him and tried to skew it to imply that Will Smith was approving of Hitler in some way and so did the JDL (classified as a terrorist group until the 1990s I think).

Just imagine what those crazy settlers would do/say if they were asked to declare themselves Palestinian citizens? And their situation is much less sympathetic since they were transplanted there by the Israeli government. They are protected by the Israeli military, exempt from military service, they virtually never get in trouble for the countless crimes they commit against the Palestinians, and are essentially paid to colonize the rest of Historic Palestine.

[Elvis]

The continued colonization of Jerusalem:

[Beckwin]

recent developments:

Obama takes tough and risky stance on Israeli settlements - Yahoo! News

WASHINGTON — President Barack Obama Thursday ratcheted up what might be America's toughest bargaining position with Israel in a generation, demanding anew that Israel stop expanding its settlements in the disputed West Bank as a key step toward making peace with its Arab neighbors.

thoughts?