israel/palestine
8 May 2008
Israel at 60: Where Did We Go Wrong?
The nation created by the children of the Holocaust, the greatest human catastrophe of the 20th century, is now best known for its ruthless military prowess
Long seen as a nation under eternal siege, and a nation that managed to make the desert bloom in spite of this, Israel has instead come to reflect the darkest aspects of Western liberal democracy. "Israel is very democratic," the veteran peace activist Ram Rahat told me last week, "unless you're not Jewish." All modern nations have wrestled with the desire to limit nationality to certain groups. It is arguable that Western societies have yet to resolve the tension between pluralism and the right, inherent in every nation State, to exclude some.In Israel the right to exclude takes on an added dimension. It is unashamedly a Jewish State that happens to have an ever growing Arab minority that will eventually be in the majority. Some have citizenship but most - those who live under occupation - do not.
Rather than learn from the Jewish peoples' long history of dispossession, Israel describes its dispossession of the Arab population as a matter of survival. To understand this mindset we must first recognise the long history of anti-Semitism and the marginalisation of Jewish communities throughout Europe, the Middle East and North Africa for most of these regions' modern histories.
The Nazi Holocaust was not the only genocide committed against Jews in Europe, only the largest and most recent. While it is often noted that Jews were treated with great tolerance under Muslim rulers, they were usually second-class citizens confined to ghettos, such as the Jewish ahl al-dimma of the Ottoman Empire.
Israel is the first modern State created by Jews, for Jews, and of Jews. The urge to retain this unique characteristic is understandable and it must be acknowledged. Israel's tragedy is that this notion has compelled it to make refugees out of the Palestinians, the people who were unfortunate enough to inhabit the lands Israel's founders sought to colonise.
The creation of Israel in 1948 required the violent removal of most of the Palestinian population from its recognised borders. Since 1967, when Israel defeated its Arab neighbours in six days of war, the occupied West Bank has been so thoroughly colonised by Jewish settlements that it is impossible to see how a viable, contiguous Palestinian State may ever exist there.
The largest settlements are no longer far flung outposts but developed urban sprawls that are constantly expanding. Although there are no longer settlements in the Gaza Strip, Israel has blockaded it from the outside world so utterly that it has become the world's largest ghetto. Locked into the mantra of preserving its Jewish character, Israel refuses to comprehend the extent to which it has forsaken the memory of the oppressed for the fruits of the oppressor.
There is no denying that Israel has achieved a great deal over the past six decades. Israel is a cosmopolitan society with an advanced economy and its Jewish citizens enjoy many freedoms. One of those freedoms is the ability of dissenting voices, although a minority, to challenge Israel's motives in the Occupied Territories. It is among these dissenting voices that the world finds the finest coverage of the Jewish State.
But what confounds is the ease with which the freedoms within Israeli society sit alongside its harsh occupation. How else does one explain Israeli apathy towards Palestinian suffering? Israel's Ambassador to the UN called former US President Jimmy Carter a bigot for meeting Hamas leaders in Syria and suggesting that Israel do the same. When I mentioned that the Israeli Defence Force refused to allow replacement sewerage pipes into Gaza an educated Israeli friend said, "[g]ood, let them suffer. That is what they [will] get until they stop firing rockets."
There are complex forces behind Israel's policies in the Occupied Territories. But what strikes an outside observer is the remarkable chutzpah with which Israel always describes its actions as self-defence. It argues that the occupation prevents it from being overwhelmed by terrorist attacks. The notion that these attacks may be a product of the occupation is rarely mooted. Indeed, many Israelis, secular and religious alike, do not even acknowledge that there is an occupation.
Israel also claimed its 2006 bombing of Lebanon was an act of self-defence against Hezbollah rockets. In fact, according to Human Rights Watch, Israel's bombing campaign was indiscriminate. A UN investigation found that over 1000 Lebanese and 43 Israeli civilians were killed during the Hezbollah-Israel war. Israel lobbies for war with Iran and bombs suspected nuclear facilities in Syria without provocation for much the same reason.
Israel now represents a frightening vision of the future of the liberal Western State. Ever since 11 September 2001 there has been a growing chorus that Western society is threatened by an ambiguous, multi-faced terrorist threat in the guise of Islamic fundamentalism. Political answers have been replaced by this narrative with religious excuses. Western leaders may publicly claim that only a small minority of Muslims pose a threat. But underneath such rhetoric is the presumption, well understood by State security agencies and much of the public, that every Muslim has the potential to turn into a bloody-minded killer obliged to kill by his or her faith.
Commentators were quick to note that London's 7 July 2005 bombers were relatively integrated British Muslims who had no previous record of involvement with any militant Islamic organisation. Largely forgotten in the commentary was whether Britain's role in the occupation of Iraq influenced the attackers. Acknowledging this does not in anyway reduce the gravity of terrorism. The threat of terrorism is as frightening as it is real and Muslims have a responsibility to confront extremists within the Islamic tradition. But rather than treat terrorist attacks as we would any serious crime, some suggest that it hints towards an impending invasion from within.
Long before September 11, 2001 Israeli intellectuals were at the forefront of "terror studies". It was in Israel that terrorism somehow became reduced to "terror". It was from Israel that we learnt to avoid accepting that even the most moribund terrorist acts out of rational motivation. For if they did not act rationally it would become pointless to understand why these people seek to cause so much harm. Israel has exported its brand of terror studies to much of the Western world. Its experts claim to know the mind of the Muslim terrorist and hold Israel's policies in the region as models to emulate. When the US occupied Iraq, it consulted Israel extensively. The US modeled its own separation walls in Baghdad's Green Zone on the Israeli experience, thereby facilitating sectarian conflict between Shia and Sunni. Israel has also had a significant hand in developing American military strategy against recalcitrant Arab populations, such as in Fallujah and Sadr City, on account of its murderous experience invading Palestinian refugee camps.
There is something wrong with our increasingly global society if the nation created by the children of the Holocaust, the greatest human catastrophe of the 20th century, is now best known for its ruthless military prowess. As Avraham Burg, the former Knesset member and speaker, famously noted in 2003, "[t]he Jewish people did not survive for two millennia in order to pioneer new weaponry, computer security programs or anti-missile systems. We were supposed to be a light onto the nations. In this we have failed."
Mustafa Qadri will be reporting for newmatilda.com from
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I make the same comment as on crikey.com.au today with the Lowenstein article "I still remember a Palestinian lawyer giving a lecture in the mid 80ies to ANU law school though I don’t remember exactly what was said. I imagine about the need for a rule of law per se. Which bring me to a direct challenge to the loyal supporters of Israel - am I correct to say there is no written constitution for the State of Israel? Happy to be told I am wrong, but my understanding is that if there were it would be necessary to codify a non racial and maybe non religous social contract, or at least delimit rights accruing to such race or religion … transparently, and legally enforceable. (It’s true the UK doesn’t have a written constitution but that seems to be the exception in democratic jurisprudence.) Indeed isn’t this all a rotten trick on democratic western allies when as Lowenstein says "including news about the allocation of building permits in the West Bank to only Jewish settlers". In Australia we have the Racial Discrimination Act. What say you?"
Yes!
Dazza.
I was heartened to see comment in the Establishment Media (The Age) this morning by Michael Shaik and Antony Lowenstein on the Palestine situation. Some indication, perhaps, that the total throttling grip on any comment in any way slightly critical of the actions of the Zionist israelis in ordinary media by the Jewish Lobby is weakening, or maybe the ‘outrage element’ against their murderous regime is gaining a little ground. After all, the israelis do seem to be losing touch with reality, in that they are still assuming that their outrageous statements in support of their mass murder, genocide, will be accepted at face value by the West. By using that Mark Negev, they must be! He so obviously does not even believe his own bulls**t.
After all, the West is not totally the gullible and ignorant Yanks, though they are the most important to the israelis. More than $7million US per day, and not including a lot of military assistance, or private Jewish moneys, is not chicken feed. I see no sign of the weakening of the Zionist Jewish media control and bulls**t over there! I doubt that any article by Antony Lowenstein would get printed by the Mass Media over there, although some of the web sites are very good, and getting better.
Maybe, one of these days!?
Dazza.
Who is we? And why is there anything wrong about treating people as they treat you.
In the past 60 years the Palestinian people have waged open warfare on Israeli society.
However that doesn’t mean that there are not nearly 1 million Israeli Arabs that have made the choice to live in that society.
Why? When they should be fighting the Zionist enemy.
Because rampant warfare and genocide are not the only Israel agenda.
In fact Israel has over the past six decades lead the world in many fields of agriculture, science and medicine.
The fact that the nationalistic anti- Zionist Palestinians are yet to come to terms with losing half of their original territory/land does not alter the fact that Israel is still only 1% of total Arab lands.
Which is a bit like saying all English speaking westerners are one monolithic nation. Hardly. Quite incredible really to be so cavalier. Paranoid even, which is the psychology of the abused child State grown to adulthood and recently come into great power.
I wonder Denise do you reflect how haughty that reads with the confidence of nuclear weaponry of both of Israel and USA?
So I take it you concede that Israel is effectively an aparthied state.
The sooner Israel gets a written and honest constitution the better off the whole world will be, just as fences can bring neighbours together for the clarity of both the physical and intangible meaning - yes we live close but we want our privacy and quiet enjoyment too.
There is no agreed fence in that part of the world and this is a recipe for confusion and tit for tat that is a damnable spiral of anger and hate, and yes institutionalised violence of thought and deed. And I tell you the whole world is sick to the stomach with it, and don’t buy half the propaganda that comes out of the loyal diaspora Jewry. Indeed we only need to google the local English speaking Israeli press to get far greater diversity of opinion that what can be ‘properly’ discussed here in Australia.
The truth is there are many beautiful Arabic and Jewish people in that part of the world but the rest of the world are constantly prevented from enjoying that potential. Frankly I’m sick of hearing and reading about. Get your house and your neighbourly relations in order for God sake.
This is an excellent article. There can be no resolution without taking into account the Whys of it all but, there will be no resolution unless the truth about Israel’s conduct is openly and frequently discussed.
I think we are seeing a changing, or hardening attitude to Israel in the same way that eventually, international opinion, hardened against South Africa and forced change through sanctions and boycotts.
In the past year or so it has become more common to read about what is happening and despite the fact that those who are brave enough to speak out are villified, and the suffering and dispossession of the Palestinians has intensified, the reality is that Israel can no longer get away with doing what it does quite as easily as it did before.
This move toward truth will only increase and accelerate and will ultimately be in the best interests of both Israelis and Palestinians.
As Israel stands today, a pariah nation, a regional thug, bully and warmonger and an occupier of great brutality, it has become a parody of what its founders hoped it might be. It has also become debased culturally, and, as happened in South Africa, the best, brightest and sanest Israelis leave because they see no future in Israeli tyranny.
Anyone who wants to see Israel survive must support and encourage complete honesty in regard to what is happening.
Israel is a colonising nation which has refused equal rights to Palestinian citizens of Israel and any rights to all other Palestinians. Not only that it has continued to illegally colonise what remains of Palestine under the guise of ‘defence’ and with the aid of one of the most heavily armed, ruthless and brutal armies in the world.
Truth is freedom and without truth no-one can be free, particularly the Israelis for they will never find comfort in what they have become in the way that the victimised Palestinians can.
Re Tom McLoughlin
Israel has multiple Racial Discrimination Acts. They are in place to enforce racial discrimination.
If I remember correctly the Jewish Stern Gang was a terrorist organisation killing British soldiers.I hope this did not encourage Arabs to copy. And was it the Balfour Declaration after WW1 which robbed the Arabs of a promised home land?
Another Anti-Israel piece on New Matilda.
And counting, and counting, and counting.
To all the great supporters of the Palestinian cause:
If you sit down with your enemy to negotiate a settlement, and your declared enemy sits down with you and tells you "My objective, set out in my own Charter, is to obliterate you and all your people" what are you going to negotiate with them? What part precisely of your own death would you like to discuss?
That is Israel’s dilemma. Hamas wants to obliterate Israel and its People.
It is called War.
No settlement can be negotiated when your enemy simply wants to take your life.
Yet Israel has tried. It withdrew from Gaza altogether.
What was the response?
Missiles, missiles and more missiles on its territory and its people.
What was Israel supposed to do? Take it on the chin? No, it must reply with force, brutal force. It is a matter of survival. As a Jew, I don’t like it but there is no choice.
Then do gooders may sit down and pen silly pieces on this and that. Jews are only interested in survival. Hamas is only interested in the reverse.
If it wasn’t for the Israeli army, there would be no Jewish State any more.
The rest is conversation.
And if the Arab states were interested in the plight of the Palestinian people, they would have offered them a better interim way out rather than leaving them in disgusting camps for generations. At $124 a barrel they are not exactly short of cash. If they don’t is because they don’t give a hoot about the Palestine people. They only care about scoring political points and perpetuating the myth that without Israel in the Middle East there would be no problem and money would grow on trees. This is hardly surprising if one looks at how they treat their own people in their fascist states.
Now you can go on writing self righteous pieces against Jews and the Evil Israel all you like. You write, we got our Army, thank you very much.
For 1500 years Christians had strict Usury laws, along with Jews and Muslims. Sadly, only (some) Muslims still maintain -universal- usury laws, which the Jews never had:
"Thou shalt not lend upon interest to thy brother: interest of money, interest of victuals, interest of any thing that is lent upon interest. Unto a foreigner thou mayest lend upon interest; but unto thy brother thou shalt not lend upon interest; that the LORD thy God may bless thee in all that thou puttest thy hand unto, in the land whither thou goest in to possess it." (Deuteronomy, 23:20-21)
I would suggest this single piece of discrimination was the prime cause of the almost universal hatred Jews have endured for the past 2 millenia.
After all the discrimination they themselves have endured over 2 thousand years, one would think they might have learnt something.
www.thecomensalist.com
Well said, rosross!
denise and eet, I am afraid that you people are living in a world of make-believe. When you start believing your own garbage propaganda, you are in deep trouble.
Good article in The Age today by Malcolm Fraser!
I am driven to hope that the tide of public opinion may be changing!
Maybe one day, even our own Jewry, far too many blind supporters of an apartheid and murderous regime, will see the light, and start to add pressure to the change in thinking in israel/Palestine. The chances of israel surviving in it’s present form are NIL, but they are going to take a lot of innocent people down with them in the meantime. The stupid unthinking backing of the Yanks (bought with Jewish money and political pressure) does not help at all.
Dazza.
This corner of New Matilda has become a haven for Anti-Semites.
It is so disgusting.
For these people (who write like Nazis, Eichmann would agree with all of you) Israel is the same as "apartheid". Israel is a "murderous’ state. Another one says that: "WE" (for Jews, all of them) should have learnt something about usury; it is not opinion, it is medieval hatred. Yes, WE are going to learn from a nazi like you.
There is an invisible frontier between opinion and dementia. These people have crossed it.
Dazza, Grim, evanjones, Tom, etc, how unbalanced you have to be in your own lives to write with such venom about a minuscule people, demographically insignificant.
denise and eet, as the only two apologists of Zionist Israel in this forum your posts typify what is wrong with that barbarous state.
"Ignorance" is a derivative of the word "ignore" and your posts, in typical Zionist Israeli apologist language, ignore virtually every truth about the origins and ongoing existence of that barbarous state and the people who live there.
Despite your apologist rhetoric the ultimate truth about Israel is that the world will no longer tolerate the existence of "Jewish" states, or "white" states or "black" states because the modern world increasingly favours "democratic" states.
Moreover, the world no longer warms to the idea of "jewish rights" or "christian rights" or "muslim rights" because the modern world has begun to overwhelmingly favour the concept of "equal rights".
Israel is the last outpost of an era long past, an era of expansionist military colonialism. Those days are gone, and the sooner the Zionist Israelis come to grips with that reality, the greater the chance of a peaceful settlement in which all people of Israel/Palestine will participate.
Should the Israeli Zionists delay, well then their future will be as bleak as the recalcitrant whites of apartheid South Africa who used the same arguments as Denise and eet to justify ongoing apartheid policies and which led to the eventual and inevitable demise of "white society" in that nation, but at least they got away without a blody revolution or a typical African genocide by changing their attitudes in time!
Will Zionist Israelis learn from their former apartheid allies in South Africa? Will Israel survive?
That choice, ironically, is in the hands of the Zionists and not, as denise intimates, in the hands of Palestinians who do not want more of their destroyed country stolen from them by Israel.
To coin a phrase from a popular South African anti-apartheid activist, the zionists have no choice, they have to either "adapt or dye"!
George Vickers
The reality is that ultimately, as George has said, the changes at work in the world, a world which believes in equal rights for all, will force a resolution on Israel and it will not be to Israel’s liking.
Unfortunately, in many ways the whole concept of Israel is hoist on its own petard of being a Jewish State. It is not possible, in the modern world, and neither it should be for it is unjust, to maintain a racist State. All such States,whether Islamic or Jewish are ultimately doomed because they reflect backward and less enlightened values.
But, there is a window of opportunity for those who believe a Jewish State is necessary and that is to end the occupation, withdraw to pre: 67 borders, perhaps even 47 partition borders, and support the creation of a viable Palestinian State where all Palestinians and Israeli Arabs if they choose, can live. Only in this way can a Jewish State be maintained for a time. It will still be ultimately doomed because it is an anachronism in an enlightened world, but it might get another 50 years.
As things stand though, the longer Israel refuses to act for peace, the greater chance that the Israeli State is completely doomed in any way, shape or form. And that is because ultimately, the forced resolution will be one State with equal rights for all. That State will or course have a Palestinian majority who will naturally want the State called Palestine, and, as happened in South Africa, will probably make it hard for those who supported the Israeli apartheid State to make a life for themselves in the new one.
Common sense, reason and an understanding of the modern world make these two outcomes the only outcomes.
The Israelis simply cannot win their war of occupation. It is utterly impossible because of modern attitudes to brutal occupation and colonisation and because, under the stress of their suffering, ironic, but it seems to be the way of human physiology, the Palestinians are outbreeding the Israelis substantially. The irony is that if Israel had been a benign occupier and had provided a good quality of life to those it was colonising, there is every chance that there may have been other options for the Israeli State.
But violence breeds violence and those who live by the sword die by the sword.
grim,
I think you are drawing a very long bow linking ‘usury’ to Jewish discrimination.
The Jews suffered discrimination for exactly the same reasons that a lot of others did …. and that is because they wished to remain different, separate and other from the greater community as their religion dictated.
The gypsies, or Romanies, while not religiously based per se: have been discriminated against for the same sorts of reasons; so have the Armenians in various nations; the Chinese in various nations; and christian communities like the Cathars and Huguenots in France in centuries past.
All of these groups, like the Jews, were constantly demonised, harassed and often killed although with some groups like the Cathars, the killing was rather more substantial in terms of wiping them out.
Any group which sets itself apart from the greater community will, in difficult times, be singled out. The Hasidic Jews have lived in Antwerp for instance for 600 years and kept themselves apart and ‘other’ and most Belgians do not like it. However, neither do they like the the fact that the Indians have arrived in the past 20 years to take over the diamond trade from the Jews, and that this is also a group which lives and works in Belgium but remains other.
Such ‘otherness’ tends not to matter when things are going well and the Jews have a long history of being happily settled in many places, but when things are not going so well, any group which refuses to assimilate into the greater community will be singled out. That is a fact of life even though one would wish it were not so.
Since the 1947 UN Partition of British Mandate Palestine, the global geopolitical theatre has been far from dull; yet in 2008 the Israeli-Arab conflict enters its seventh decade: it has evolved from a conflict between Israelis and, firstly Arabs to secondly Palestinians, and today Islamists.
And yet, in the same year of partition, the Muslim state of Pakistan was carved out of imperial India. As blogger and Crikey contributor Irfan Yusuf says, the formation of Pakistan led to population transfers affecting several million, with a loss of one million lives; Mao Zedong and his “Long March” unified China into a Communist power that, via the death of tens of millions in the subsequent “cultural revolution,” has evolved into the world‘s second superpower; more than two million Vietnamese, fifty thousand Americans and five hundred Australians lost their lives in the first military defeat ever experienced by the U.S; civil war in Indonesia achieved a non-Communist autocracy, yet fledgling democracy, at the cost of one million lives.
During the same period, Iran and Iraq went to war for eight years at the cost of over half a million lives; Egypt and Jordan signed peace treaties with Israel; Afghan and Pushtan mujahadeen repelled the Soviet Union; the Soviet Union collapsed and morphed into a growing ally of the U.S; millions perished in civil wars in Rwanda and Darfur; And of course arguably the most profound geopolitical event of the post-WW2 period was the stunning success of the U.S. in rebuilding Japan and Germany into the economic, cultural, and political powerhouses they are today.
Off the bloody and rhetorical stage of geopolitics, other theatres produced revolutions in human organisation and potential: a lightly-moustached woman of Italian-Catholic origin emerged from Detroit to amass a nine figure fortune simulating sex with a burning crucifix singing “like a Virgin:” another woman, a descendant of African slaves, amassed a similar fortune and even more power with a globally-syndicated daily television talk-show with the message “You Go Girl!” Man landed on the moon; vaccines for small pox and a host of once mass-killers were developed, an openly gay man was appointed to the Australian High Court. Other great cultural achievements. Nobel Prizes were awarded to economists who invented “derivatives’ that have prevented a repeat of 1929. A black woman has replaced a black man as U.S. Secretary of State in Republican Administrations.
And yet in 2000 U.S. President Clinton, Palestinian Authority Chairman Yasser Arafat, and Israeli Prime Minister Barak could not complete a seemingly simple real estate transaction. The subsequent second Intifada resulted in four thousand Palestinian and Israeli lives, surely an infinitesimal blip in the narrative of post-WW2 history? But to read the likes of Loewenstein, one feels as those who were receiving Orson Welle’s War Of the Worlds thunder over the ether in 1938 might well have felt. But then again, Welles would probably have agreed at the time that the chances of suicide bombers turning the Twin Towers into twin pillars of dust were, “like the chances of anything coming from Mars, a million to one, he said”
Why the intractability of a seeming relatively minor dispute? http://culturewarriorwatch.blogspot.com/
‘seemingly relatively minor dispute’.
Palestine is the focus point for a major battle between the United States and their push to make over the rest of the world in the US image.
They may call it ‘democracy’, but in fact it means subjugating Public control of all aspects of States to the non-tender mercies of the World Bank, the IMF and Global Corporations, mostly totally the arms of US foreign policy.
The US are supposedly fighting the growing influence of Islam, where more and more desperate countries are coming under Islamic Sharia Law, and consequently are being taken back into the nastiest, most brutish part of the middle ages. This is mostly a response to the pressure from the USA to become something they can not be, in the short time required by the US. Whole cultures would have to change, with Islam being ‘humanised’, before so-called ‘democracy’ can take hold in the Middle East. Yanks are too used to instant hamburgers, instant coffee, instant meals etc. to understand this.
israel is the front line of the US war on Islam, the puppet Governments there being supplied with arms and money to combat such influences as are coming from places like Saudi Arabia, Iran, places which are actually controlled by different branches of Islam.
To this end they are allowed, encouraged to ‘go Nuclear’. To this end, America fights insanely to stop any other countries in the region, mostly Islamic, from having anything Nuclear.
America has ‘bought’ such countries as Egypt and Jordan. They both use mortal force to subjugate and control their Muslim populace, which encourages and feeds extremism.The US is trying desperately to enforce this same control in Syria, Iran and the Lebanon, with more disruption. Their continued interference in Lebanon is making that place practically unlivable. More money spent on aiding the citizens to cope with dissent and the stresses of life would be much better than being spent on arming and encouraging israel to keep on invading.
All this is most definitely NOT a minor dispute.
But israel has gone ‘rogue’. Totally morally bankrupt, would be financially bankrupt without massive US support. Mass Corruption from the top down. The Military, once a force looked up to by the ordinary citizen, is now a force of killers, rapists and murderers, their soul torn out by what they are required to do by their own Governments. They are now beyond any redemption.
The Government, all Governments, are controlled by Far-Right Fundamentalist Jews, who are insisting on total ‘ownership’ of ALL land in Palestine, as the Religious Home of Jews. All others are to be exterminated or driven out, and the means are to be violent.
George Bush hates the idea of Islamic States (at Jewish insistence), at the same time he is supporting the Jews in israel, to totally remove all rights of the Palestinian Israelis, and to exterminate/disenfranchise the Palestinians who are not yet a part of the One State. He (and the Religious Fundamentalists in the USA) is encouraging this insane idea of a Jewish State! The world does NOT need any more Religious States, of whatever kind.
The ONLY way that this mess can be cleared up is for the Radical Religionists, on both sides, to be totally dis-empowered somehow, and a State of Palestine, with both Palestinians (who would be far and away the dominant culture) and whichever Jews that can live in peace with their neighbours to form this non-sectarian State.
The interference of the Yanks would have to be totally curtailed, unless it was, under an enlightened US Administration (most definitely NOT Bush or Clinton), only used to facilitate this non-sectarian State, and help it to rise and exist. The Religious Nutters, as I have said before, perhaps should go over to the US, where they can join all the other Nutters living in that place. Hopefully they would eventually die out, before they totally consumed the US.
The right of Palestinians, forced to leave by the original invasion and occupation by the Jews, to return to their own Land, would somehow have to be facilitated. By now, there are so many Jews so consumed by hatred that they are ‘senseless’, (as well as on the other side) and these would probably also have to leave for some other place, or places, but definately NOT in a body, because they would be trouble where-ever they went, so long as they cling to this idea that they must remain ‘different’ and ‘superior’ to all others.
Would be a good idea if Jewishness became just an idea, not a consuming, but ‘apart’, religion.
Actually, would be a very good idea if all Religions died a natural death. Then maybe we could see something like peace in the world.
Dazza.
Racist Apartheid Israel grossly violates International Law and Human Rights Conventions but it also grossly and remorselessly violates the memory of the victims of the WW2 Jewish Holocaust, the core messages of which are "zero tolerance for racism" and "never again to anyone".
Any Jew, any American, any Australian - any person - who supports gross, racist, Apartheid Israeli abuse of Indigenous Palestinian human rights sullies the sacred memory of the victims of the Jewish Holocaust.
In Austria there is a 10 year imprisonment penalty for the despicable crime of minimization of the Jewish Holocaust (6 million victims) – what then for racist Zionists (RZs) who in their remorseless support for an Apartheid Israel and anti-Arab anti-Semitic Palestinian Genocide violate the sacred injunctions from the Holocaust of "zero tolerance for racism" and "never again to anyone"?
Courageous Jewish Australian writer and a founder of the eminent, anti-racist, pro-Peace and humanitarian Independent Australian Jewish Voices (IAJV), Antony Loewenstein, deserves great praise for his public objection (The Age, 8/5/08) to a Holy Land situation that outstanding Jewish South African Government Minister and hero in the fight against Apartheid Israeli-backed South African Apartheid, Ronnie Kasrils, has described as “worse than Apartheid” (see: http://www.iajv.org/ ).
The US support for Apartheid Israel has cost it about $3 trillion and we have recently been told by 2001 Economics Nobel Laureate Professor Joseph Stiglitz that the (Zionist-promoted) War on Iraq (accrual cost $3 trillion) has "bankrupted America"- America needs to wise up to the traitorous, racist Zionists that have trashed America’s reputation and wealth (see "Apartheid Israel’s 60 years of war, theft & Palestinian genocide": http://mwcnews.net/content/view/22356/42/ ).
Post-1967 excess deaths in the Occupied Palestinian Territories total 0.3 million and under-5 infant deaths total 0.2 million; 2,400 Occupied Palestinian infants are "passively murdered" by Apartheid Israel each year; annual Occupied Palestinian excess deaths total 5,000; 85% of West Bank Christian Arabs have fled; of 11 million Palestinians in the world 1.5 million are Palestinian Israelis (second class citizens under race-based Apartheid laws) , 4 million are prisoners in the West Bank and Gaza Bantustan-style concentration camps, 5.5 million live outside their Homeland (4.3 million registered as refugees with the UNHCR) and are forbidden to return.
Utterly disgusting violation of the core messages from the Jewish Holocaust - "zero tolerance for racism" and "never again to anyone" - by the UK-, US- and Australia-backed racist Zionists running Apartheid Israel.
I should add that the Nazis wiped my family from the face of Europe - I am obliged to protest the racist violation of the Palestinians (half of whom are KIDS for goodness’ sake) (see: "We are all Palestinian": http://mwcnews.net/content/view/19915/42/ ).
Peace is the only way but Silence kills and Silence is complicity.
dazza
It seems you have become totally brainwashed by the conventional hegemonic narrative. Blaiming the US avoids a lot of the facts.
To speculate how things might have turned out had Truman decided otherwise, “if only Israel had not been created,” is to miss the point. What needs to be re-iterated in letters ten feet high is that the state of Israel was not created by the U.N. let alone given to the Jews: rather, the UN recognised and the international community accepted a functioning and prosperous nation-state that the Jews had built and defended.
Yes, the UN General Assembly voted for a Partition. But the UN did nothing to effect that Partition. Indeed, as we shall see, events took over, and it was only after the dust settled that Israel was a reality. It is also the failure of the nations and citizens of the broader Muslim world to accept this reality that is at the root of their own dissolution: to state the reality bluntly, a rag-tag of lowly dhimmi, and to add insult to injury Jews, won.
So the question of Truman’s wisdom or counter-factual “what ifs” miss the point. The ongoing misery of the Palestinians is not the fault of U.S. miscalculation, much less perfidy. It is overwhelmingly the fault of the Palestinians themselves and their Arab brethren.
Further, there has never really existed anything remotely approaching a consensus of what “problem solved” would entail or look like: the geostrategic threats and ambitions of all the parties - Israel, the various Arab states, and the refugees have all ebb and flowed constantly; and never in-sync.
And people seem to forget that from Haj Amin al-Husseini to the PLO to Fatah to Hamas, Jewish genocide was always the plan.
Even in the mid 1970s, the PLO was arguing.
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…However, the moment we reclaim our right to all of Palestine, we will not wait even a minute to unite Palestine and Jordan.
http://culturewarriorwatch.blogspot.com/2008/05/israel-at-60-part-2-zion…
CultureWarrior, I think that you know little about Jordan and Palestinians. The Palestinian people at present in Jordan, living in ghettos, have been allowed NO rights by Jordan. Health, education, voting, housing, nothing! They have NO LEGAL existence! The idea that a US Puppet regime such as Jordan would do anything to help the Palestinians is garbage. They would be quite happy if they were to die out, or indeed, be allowed to return to their OWN country, so long as they did not become israeli citizens, because their mates, the israelis would not allow that.They would probably be happy if they were to be forced to go into Gaza, so that they could be imprisoned in that ghetto by the Zionists.
Indeed, where-ever Palestinians have been forced to retreat to when the Zionists occupied their land, they have been treated as badly as ‘asylum seekers’ have been treated in Australia under the Howard Government, and indeed again, under the new Rudd Government. Treated as non-human and put into ‘stalags’.
The present situation in Lebanon is a case in point. The Yanks are in there, stirring the pot, blaming Syria and Iran for the mischief, when it is THEIR interference which is causing the most grief. But they control the AirWaves, the Media, so the truth is hard to find.
One of the worst things about the Middle East is that so many Arab states have become US puppets, bought or under duress, and this has split the Arabs down the middle, about as much as the two main branches of Islam, Sunni and Shia. The Yanks, of course have done this with mischief in mind.
The suck-holing to Saudi Arabia, by almost all countries, because of their control of OIL, has caused massive divisions. The incredible amounts of Western Money being poured daily into Saudi Royals bank accounts allows them to back divisions in Lebanon, Iran, Palestine, anywhere there are mainly Shia populace. This is in line with Bush (old and latest) policies, they being great friends of the Saudi dictators. And let us not forget that Saudi Arabia is indeed a total dictatorship, one based on an insane Fundamentalist Wahabi brand of Islam, something supposedly anathema to Bushites! No sign of any ‘democracy’ here! Women are treated very badly indeed, a lot worse than they are under Iran’s Shia fundamentalist tender mercies. But Money is GOD! Especially to Bush and his mates.
Remember also that the majority of the "Terworwists" who hit the Twin Towers etc. were SAUDIS. Remember that Bin Laden is or was a Saudi citizen, and his (Bush friends) family still are.
I had been hoping that with a new Government in Australia, the situation in regard to even handed treatment of humans, whether Jews or Palestinians, or anyone else, would improve. Rudd put an end to such hopes almost immediately with his loud support of israel in Parliament, the enemy of all hope for peace in the Middle East, and now Immigration Minister Evans harsh treatment of asylum seekers.
While we all follow the Yanks down the low road, the road through the swamps, there is little to no chance of anything good happening in the Middle East.
Dazza.
The reality is Tom I know the power of love will eventually overcome the milleniums of hatred felt (and preached) by each and every denomination of monotheism.
And as the religious (written) centre of this monotheism, begins in Jerusalem with Judaism: being the first of the organised religious monotheristic movements, its mere longevity has to say something in its favour.
And this longevity of attachment to the land of Israel was never hidden but stated often and openly as a strong desire which would not be quenched with any other place on earth for the Jewish people.
This longevity also refllects the deeply felt position of the 15 million or so Jews who do still want a Jewish apartheid state, a place for Jewish culture to thrive unimpeded by anti-Semitism, the real reason behind the need for this apartheid state.
Also, ever since the holocaust many Jews are uneasy and nervous about the genocidal tendencies of some European and Arab states towards the Jewish people, hence the perceived need for a Jewish apartheid state.
The world may say the Jews are wrong, but they know they have earnt the right to this apartheid state.
And that even after buying much of Palestine from Palestinians, they the Palestinians obviously still regard Palestinian nationalism above Muslim relligiousity and still refuse to surrender to the will of the Jewish God.
There is no question as to the longevity of the attachment of the Jewish people to the land of Israel, which goes beyond mere attacment to the land, into the realm of religious fervour and belief that Israel is indeed their spiritual homeland - the land from which their original spiritual ancestors were born and died in - a land which was occupied by other denominations because they too were desperately fighting for political control over Israel (God’s perceived land) too!
The Romans began the apartheid in the region as they systematically committed genocide on the Jewish people in their own homeland, causing them flee into other people’s homelands, but always with a return to Israel uppermost in their collective mind.
Aftyer the Romans came the Persians who were relatively kind to the Jewish people, But then the Byzantine Christians took over Israel/Palestine, ruling and occupying the Holy Land of the Jewish people, until the Ottomans took over.
No empire gave the Palestinians autonomy over the Holy Land. Why? Because they knew deep down it wasn’t theirs to give, but really belonged to the the Jewish people who were already openly planning their way back home, as promised in so many Biblical prophesies.
The Old Testament record that has becomed the monotheist’s Bible (and inspiration for another important religious book - the Koran) it (and the Jewish people who are attributted to its survival) are religiously and culturally integral part of the monotheistic world.
And even for many non-believers,the Bible is still a fascinating documentation of the past, even if its language is antiquated and/or quaint, there are still important values and attitudes that through modern religious preaching linger on and are entrenched into the present, in various forms of ideas and language.
And that ancient language, Hebrew is one of the oldest formsof written language - the language of the Old Testament and it and the Jewish people form a continuum with the past and a direct connection back to that ancient culture, which no nationalism could come close to in terms of emotional feelings, especially as wer’e dealing with a people who have been discriminated against, persecuted and murdered just because they were of a particular faith; Judaism.
The Israelis have earnt the right to an apartheid Jewish state if ever a country deserved special treatment, the Israelis on behalf of the Jewish people certainly do. Especially as they have been treated abominably by the Palestinians, who after selling their land to the Israelis, keep returning back to try and kill innocent citezens while attempting to steal it back through violent means!
Newsflash for denise, Jewish is a religion! A REeeeellllliiiiigggggiiiioooonnnn, and Israel has NO right to impose an apartheid autocracy on the inhabitants of Israel/Palestine on the basis of any religion or history of suffering at all. What an entirely insane suggestion!
And denise, Rome did not "begin apartheid" in Israel! What on earth are you talking about? Romans were mean to EVERYONE! But they did insist on assimilation and, if anything, various Jewish communities in Israel refused to assimilate, as the story of Masada tells us, preferring to die rather than to succumb to Roman rule.
Palestinians were PAID for the land occupied by Israelis? Really?
Israel has EARNED the RIGHT to an apartheid Jewish state? Huh?
Please tell me you’re joking denise!
"Especially as they have been treated abominably by the Palestinians, who after selling their land to the Israelis, keep returning back to try and kill innocent citezens (sic) while attempting to steal it back through violent means!" Yes, Denise, you surely have to be making a very sick joke! Selling their land to the israelis??? Well, I have heard about ‘making’ History, but this must take the cake! Even Sarkozy’s latest efforts to deny Vichy France pale into insignificance.
And NO ONE whatsoever, has earned ANY right to an apartheid State. No One!!! Especially when that state has been stolen, occupied, and has flowed with Palestinian blood ever since.
That is the trouble with Jews in Australia, and in America, they live in a world of ‘make believe’, having dropped any pretense of reality, and spout incessantly the garbage that comes out of the mouths of israeli Government spin merchants. Those people could not possibly believe what they spout out, or they would be incapable of doing any job at all. So they keep using the ‘holocaust’ as an excuse for abominable behavior to other human beings. And keep on getting away with it, to our eternal shame. Unfortunately, survivors of other Genocides do not have the money and backing to keep trying to keep the rest of the world feel guilty for the actions of War Time Nations, such as Germany and Italy and Vichy France, and other puppet Governments.
Hell, we have a ‘holocaust’ in the making on our doorstep at the moment, with the Burmese people being left to rot by their own Government, totally concerned only with retaining absolute power.
One has to wonder if the world will back the survivors in an effort to get back THEIR country. Without lots of money and influence in places like New York, Washington, London and Canberra, I doubt it very much.
The Palestinians are in the same boat. Their own Arab peoples have been corrupted by US and British and French moneys for the OIL, so much so that they turn their heads from what is happening to their own people, and keep pocketing the filthy blood money. The US and their mates have made sure of this over the past 60 years. Western Governments totally controlled by Jewish money and influence. There can be no denying this. Just witness the US Presidential Nomination procedures, which almost daily sees all the aspirants paying homage to the Jewish lobbies, and accepting money from them. In the USA, the plight of the Palestinians is almost totally concealed from the public. By direction!
In Australia, the situation is the same.
Get real, Denise. Or get out!
Dazza.
"That is the trouble with Jews in Australia" - Dazza, given that you were expressing outrage against bigotry and racism I am certain that you did not mean to include that comment in your post.
I’m sorry, this thread is getting way too heated for me.
At the risk of sounding like a ‘venomous rascist’, I find it difficult to believe that any reasonable person from, say, South Africa would accuse me of being a Nazi for speaking out against discrimination.
For the record, I have always had great admiration for the Israelis, for their amazing cohesion through all their travails, and for their incredible resilience.
In the sixties and seventies, we all cheered the tough little nation that so successfully defied the might of the Arab world.
There’s just no getting around the fact that Israel can no longer legitimately claim underdog status.
After thousands of years of being beaten up, all they have learnt is that it is better to be the hammer, than the nail.
www.thecomensalist.com
The most startlingly significant factor in this thread is that people who normally disagree on just about everything else, are of almost perfect accord on the invasion and terrorist occupation of Palestine.
This is remarkable considering that only in 1970, Zionists threatened to burn me alive for publishing ‘The Palestinian Side of the Story’. Ironically, I was then a supporter of Israel, but to call for fair play was to invite shrieked accusations of anti-semitism, and to earn pariah status in ‘educated’ society. How things have changed. The people cannot be fooled forever.
However, seven critical issues are invariably absent from such discussions (at least until Rockjaw dropped his ultra-relevant and spectacular ‘newsflash’ last night), or understated, as in the above otherwise very thorough coverage. I imagine all the contributors to this thread (card-carrying sociopaths Denise and eet aside) are well aware of these, and my contention is simply that these are the seven major points of vulnerability in the case for Israel.
(1) Israel can be arrogant and expansionist only because it receives an average of $32 million per day in US-provided military assistance; as well as billions in other military and technological subsidies and ‘foreign aid’. When the US crashes, as it will, so too will Israel.
(2) The White House and American media are dominated by Zionists and, outrageously, some of these are actually Israeli citizens. Americans are being used by Zionists. The tide of public opinion is now turning.
(3) Less than 3% of Israelis are ethnic Jews. The rest are Europeans, Russians or Ashkenazim. Only people of Judean descent are actual Semites; so it’s a bit rich when Israelis condemn critics of crimes against humanity, as being anti-Semitic. Obviously they are not. Mohandas Gandhi refused to support the establishment of Israel, stating that no one has the right to invade the lands of another people purely on religious grounds (thanks Rockjaw). Consequently, India has never recognised Israel; until very recently, that is, with neocon ally Manmohan Singh now doing deals for Israeli weapons and nuclear technology.
(4) Hamas has no objection to Judeans, few of whom supported Zionists anyway.
(5) Ben Gurion wrote that it was his intention to destroy all Arabs in the vicinity of Israel. Israel has no intention of pursuing peace.
(6) The largest entity in opposition to globalisation and the concomitant domination in world events by Zionist bankers, is Islam; and the reason for this is the Koran’s condemnation or ursury; the prime source of global banker income. I don’t know if Grim is historically right when he identifies this link; I would intuit he is, but this is definitely a major motivation in the very real War Against Islam.
(7) Australia is always listed in the foreign print media as a staunch supporter of Israel, yet in our AIA surveys undertaken during the 2006 attack on Lebanon, 74% of Aussies opposed the invasion and occupation of Palestine, and 76% opposed the Israeli attack and invasion of Lebanon.
This seventh factor should be the prime focus of our concern. Why are all Australian Primes Ministers, from Hawke to Rudd, so gung ho in their unreserved support for this bully when an absolute majority of Aussies condemn Israel?
Considering the influence of Zionist bankers (JP Morgan/Rothschild, Chase Manhattan, Hill Samuel et al) and the world’s most powerful media owner (Murdoch) on Australian election outcomes, is it fair to suggest that the Zionists firmly control our own Australian Government?
If so, are we going to just talk about it, or do something? If we do nothing we are complicit in Israel’s crimes; as apparently, many Palestinians feel we are. Certainly, that was the concluding principle of Nuremberg.
There is a simple but powerful gesture we can make, and that is to demand with one voice, that Prime Minister Rudd reflect the real values of Aussies, and condemn the Israeli refusal to form a single consensus democracy state with Palestinians, Druze, Christians and Bedouin.
No Tom, Judaism is an ethnicity "a way of life’, not just a religion. You do not have to be a practising Jew to be considered Jewish - go ask the Nazis.
And Jews have every right as I explained above due to their persecution from ALL of the other major monotheistic denominations over the millenium, to have a land of their own, to run as they please without either Christian or Muslim interference.
To be a Jew is to have Semitic/Arab blood running through your veins and heart. Even converts would feel the intrinsic connection of Judaism to the land of Israel.
Especially as many of the countries where Jews sought refuge forbade a Jew to own land. And this attitude just reinforced the strong desire for an independent homeland for themselves, which they have never stopped fighting for.
This passion for winning back the land of Israel, is partly based on various forms of descrimination over the millenium (the holocaust being the worst) and has resulted in the perceived desire and need for a Jewish homeland for both pride and protection.
But you’re wrong Tom, Judaism is far more strongly connected to ethnicity (if your mother is Jewish - then you are) rather than based on any religious convictions.
Hence the general description of Jews relates first to their racial and cultural identity as in ‘Semitic’, rather than by their faith, which is of a rather dubious concept, highly personal and infinitely variable due to different interpretations of the religious texts.
What does make a Jew special (and some Christians) is of course that they read the Old Testament regularly and discuss the wisdom and knowledge (just as Jesus did) to try and better themselves as people.
Go read Plato about ‘pure breeding’ and you might begin to understand what being Jewish (or any other minority ethnicity) is really like in the face of worldly empirical ambitions.
Rockjaw, I apologise for a too-sweeping statement, nevertheless, the Jewish Lobby in Australia, supported by rich Jewish merchants and bankers, has all Australian Governments ‘under control’. Rudd, as much as any of the last few PMs, is a close associate of some of the richest and most influential Jews, because what they do with their moneys affects so much of what happens in Australian business. They are also mostly very good financial and moral backers of the Zionists in Palestine/israel. No Australian politician in pursuit of high office is game to show any sign of balance on matters of the Middle East. They would find the supply of money dried up, and the media would turn against them, with one baying voice. So-called ‘anti-Semitism’, which is total garbage. Tony Ryan is correct here. Not sure why the Zionists continue with this presumed epithet, do they think that the majority of people are still swayed by their lies? Probably!
Certainly some of the people who accept Jewish ancestry, are now very much vocally against what israel has become. Antony Lowenstein is one of them, and I salute him for it. However, one Phillip Adams, only recently finding that he has some maternal Jewish ancestry, has silenced his voice against the Zionist atrocities.Why??!!
I also, way back as a young man, held the Kibbutzen in high regard, not really understanding at the time just how they had got where they were. The control of Media had been in effect way back then, by the diaspora Jews.
They were heroes, winning against the bad Palestinians, who were killing them. Later, I found out why the Palestinians were desperately trying to fight the violent occupation of their lands, and changed my attitude. However, it took me a long time to understand why so little of the ‘other side of the story’ ever made it to the Australian media. The people HAVE been fooled for a long, long time, far too long!
I think that I have now been censured by New Matilda editors, so it is possible this blog will not appear.
Dazza.
My apologies to the editors of New Matilda, also. I had tried a few times to enter a blog on the Irfan Yusuf article above, and each time it ‘bounced’. However, I just went back up and checked, and it has appeared. Must have passed muster…just?
Denise, perhaps you should read it. My article applies equally well to Judaism. Too many human males (generally speaking) having a heavy hand in the strictures and Laws of your religion, far too many times ‘revised’ down the centuries. Probably the greatest enemy of an Israeli State is the Jewish Religion, as practiced and pronounced by the fundamentalist sects who now seem to have total control of the Zionist Government. I think they even scare the Hell out of moderate and non-religious israelis. If they do not, they should!
Dazza.
Dazza, I think the point is to judge people individually and not on the basis of ethnicity, religion, gender, sexual preference etc
And Denise, you make it all sound like mankind should be divided into groups based on their "jewishness" or "Goyishness" and you go on to justify the existence of the Jewish State on the false assertion that "David Ashkenazi" is sitting in an airconditioned office discovering a cure for cancer while his Palestinian brother Mohamed sits on a squalid Gaza pavement, too incompetent to fend for himself, as he picks stones to throw at the IDF protectors of democracy!
Rubbish denise! We jews are not the "master race" at all. We are not the world’s gift to modern technology either. We don’t pass that simple test because Goyim discovered or invented Electricity, Automobiles, Aeroplanes, Nuclear fission, discovered the earth was round, gravity, radio, television, and just about everything else. Comparatively speaking we are just losers with a capital "L".
Arabs invented algebra and mastered the discipline which is modern medicine. We don’t even have a cuisine or architecture! Hell, even Eskimos have igloos! We have squat…denise…squat! and then we shit in the hole is all we have!
Not until Einstein did jews ever produce anyone within a thousand miles of Homer, Sophocles, Plato, Aristotle, Socrates, Hume, Voltaire, Schopenhauer, Hobbes, Locke, Kant, Hegel, Nietzsche, DaVinci, Newton, Galileo, Darwin, Hutton, Edison, Pasteur, Mendel, Kepler, Telsa, Von Leibniz, Shakespeare, Goethe, Copernicus, Luther, Adam Smith, Ben Franklin and I won’t even list all the great novelists and artists. Even Abraham is technically a muslim!
And what of the "soulless cattle" like Beethoven, Brahms, Bach, Chopin etc etc etc.
Mossad’s MEGAPHONE is policing all blog posts and trying to spread propaganda and silence truth about the zionist theft, murder and lies all over the internet. They are an army of zionists liars, and this fact alone, when discovered, causes massive anti-semitism by enlightened and educated people. A new and sinister reincarnation of Communist Russia’s Red Terror and Nazi anti-semitism rolled into one. What chance do we have to survive this threat denise?
Where are the times when Jews were the very avante-garde of modern society? Today we force our way to the front of the queue with massive lies and deceit denise, as we elbow our way past truth and integrity to demand an existence on the basis of our own clumsy lies!
For 2 thousand years we told the world we were slaves in Egypt forced to build the pyramids because of our "superior intellect". Then the Rosetta stone was found allowing modern man to read the hieroglyphs. Turns out not even slaves built the pyramids let-alone jewish slaves. Some people are capable of embarrassment and shame denise.
But the lies continue, and the facts are distorted and hidden. Like Israel is the primary producer and supplier of date rape drugs…like ECSTASY google (CIA WORLD FACTBOOK) and open the page and view the presidential seal of USA and use the drop down menu and choose ISRAEL - go to bottom of page. ISRAEL WORLD’S LEADER in DATE RAPE DRUGS!
Denise, our Israeli president Moshe Katsav is a serial rapist, the current Prime Minister is up for massive corruption, wanted for war crimes across the civilised world. The top cop in Israel is also corrupt. The world’s leading dope makers and sellers are Israeli jews. The country is rife with sex slavery. Unemployment at 30%.
The epicenter for child porn is Israel. Even the Israeli head of the Air Force is on record for expressing his confusion as to why senior Israeli officers should be held accountable for their serial rape of a 12 year old Muslim child!
And the Israeli people think the world adores them? What a joke! Are jealous of us? What a crock!
Interpol recently issued its most severe arrest warrant for the world’s biggest child sex ring and date drug producer, and it was for for Israeli criminal Yoram El-Al, and Argentine Jewish lobbyists canned both the news and the police efforts to arrest the scum bag in Argentina. Israel’s leading newspaper Yedioth Ahronoth even published a study that found that Israel is the biggest cess pool of dope dealers and child porn producers.
Denise, the number of Muslims making child porn is ZERO. The monopoly is owned by Jews….not because Jews are good at business..it’s because no other people would make child porn denise, but I think that’s lost on you.
No other group in the world would prostrate themselves for money like those who distort the truths about the holocaust and the industry which has evolved from those distortions denise.
You believe, mistakenly, that all this pro Israeli deception is somehow related to genius and intellect. Well it isnt denise, pro Israeli Zionist jewish people like those mentioned above, and all their ilk across the civilised world, are just common criminals, not intellectual giants. Money buys no brains denise.
Paranoia drives us denise, paranoia, and see how those paranoid jewish rabbis in the USA and Canada spray paint anti semitic messages on their synagogue’s walls and jewish college girls paint SWASTIKAS on their dorm doors while yet more jewish women claim to be raped by hordes of muslim youths in subways. The American ADL defends these liars when they get caught and are exposed as liars
Criminals denise, not genius. See the average IQ for Israel denise, look it up. IQ average 90 is what israel rates, check it out for yourself.
There are no "sworn enemies of Israel" to defeat and yet Israel participates in a slow-raging genocide - a holocaust against Arabs - Iraqis, Lebanese, Palestinians - these SEMITIC people did nothing to these so-called, self-styled "Israelites" denise - yes denise SELF STYLED Israelites.
Israel is the most beautiful kingdom of the mind denise, not some dirty grubby shithole in the middle east!
And Israel does not defeat anyone. Simply, the great coward Israel murders women and children and defenseless men and the elderly.
Time for a proper assessment of who Israel really is, and the time is long overdue, because too many of us can no longer countenance the massive crimes committed in our name.
George Vickers
That was quite am impassioned speech, George. I’m floored.
None of you really don’t understand history do you? The jews were chosen (by God)as the literary carriers of knowledge of the written word. No other people had a simple phonetic code until the Hebrews invented the alpha bet. Many are under the false impresssion that it was the Greeks who invented the phonetic language, but this is a slight stretch of the trruth and it was in fact the Hebrews who first employed a phonetic structure to their language code.
This enabled them to record their storie, and the Exodus as a time of trauma and upheavel may have been the impetus to create a more precise language to tell of this event that affected so many lives at the time.
That is the pure and simple explanation for the Jews being the ‘chosen people’ of God, is not because they were any different physically, but because they had aquired the skill of written discourse ( as artisans who were a part of the Egyptian royals literary dedication team) and with it came the responsibility as being chosen as God’s servants, as they had through being well disciplined and skilled acquired power over the written word, which could record and transfer information far more precisely than ever before.
I know ignorance is no excuse, but anyone who reads the Bible, even on a relatively naive basis, with no knowledge of history, will realise that this book written by ancient scribes represents the beginning of recorded history itself.
Jews are a special group of people (in terms of language and education) who are (through their scribes) attempting to record their collective past mythologies and wed it with the present political situation, infusing it with their future dreams of unification and peace amongst the tribal feuding groups (mentioned by Moses) in the Middle East.
And since this ‘gift’ was bestowed upon the Jewish people, nothing much has changed in political terms for them in the past three millenium. They are still misunderstood, reviled and persecuted because of their education, knowledge, ethnicity and religion.
Denise
There is no such thing as god, or gods.
You are perfectly free to believe in gods or fairies of bigfoots if you wish, but you are not entitled to impose your delusions on anyone else. In fact, you are not entitled to impose any beliefs at all.
I doubt your fevered and fanatical mind could grasp this, but the word belief can be defined as Adopting a position that is contraindicated, or even entirely disproved, by the evidence.
You might note that this comes hilariously close to the definition for insanity; which is why, I suppose, people like you are often referred to as religious nuts. So please do not expect your rantings to be respected.
By all means, trot off and mutter to yourself about yarweh or whatever; this is your crazy prerogative; but other religious people, who way outnumber you, have an equal right to their beliefs; which are equally valid (or invalid).
A little harsh George but overall accurate. Sadly Israelis in particular and Jews in general are all hoist on the petard of their own myths. And sadly it is a myth of superiority. The belief in being ‘chosen’ really has infiltrated and corrupted religion and culture. Of course there are exceptions, quite a lot of them, both amongst Jews and Israelis, but it remains a mindset and the sort of mindset Denise proposes. It doesn’t do anyone any good, least of all Israelis and Jews.
We are all of us, equal in ability, intellect, honesty and our capacity for good and evil. Sadly, some cultures and religions enable us to live lies for longer and more effectively.
Interestingly of course, and I note the comments on the Rosetta Stone, advances in translations of Egyptian hieroglyphs shows that the Jewish and Christian Bibles are at core, Egyptian. Then again, it is hardly surprising because the first monotheistic religion was also Egyptian.
The other ‘discoveries’ made by Israeli archeologists and others are that there never was a great State of Israel in ancient times, merely a few Hebrew tribes who roamed around Canaan with a bunch of other tribes. Jerusalem was no more than a village, if that, and certainly no centre of greatness.
The interesting thing however, is when those who cite ‘history’ as a reason for Jews to have a right to this part of the Middle East, but completely ignore the fact that the Hebrew Tribes invaded Canaan, someone else’s land. Like everyone else of course, but they certainly did not originate there. They, like everyone else, probably came out of Mesopotamia, modern day Iraq.
Sadly, so much blood has been shed for the sake of myth, fantasy and irrational dreams. A lot of Jews also opposed the creation of the STate of Israel because they believed that ultimately, it would not serve Jews who had settled elsewhere, well.
Judaism is a religion, first and foremost. The fact that there are so many Jews, certainly not of Semitic stock, is because of conversion. At the same time, a heap of them dropped the religion …. one line of my family along with them. Then again, my family on all sides dropped all religions so I consider myself very fortunate.
While all religions are sourced in a deep human need and capacity for spiritual expression they are also sourced in lies, fantasy, power games, misogyny and more often than not, great unkindness if not cruelty.
There is nothing special about Judaism. It is as inspired and as cruel as all other religions. Like all other religions, unless it changes and becomes more enlightened, it will die out. The ways of all orthodox religions are backward and have no place in a modern world.
Denise,
When it comes to history you do not know what you are talking about. You quote the Bible. This is a book of stories and myths, handed down orally, eventually written down and then re-written and re-written. Great slabs of the Bible were cast out by the Catholics and the Jews kept themselves very busy re-writing their bits.
But, above and beyond all that, you must accept that whatever your beliefs the great majority of people in the world are not Christians or Jews and even many who are, along with most of humanity, put no credence whatsoever in any literal interpretation of the Bible.
The Hebrews did not invent the firs language… the earliest written language comes out of Mesopotamia and as I said earlier, we now have evidence that the Bible came out of the Egyptians. The stories, the Lords Prayer, the Torah, can all be traced to Egyptian hieroglyphs.
There’s nothing wrong with that of course. Islam came out of Christianity and Judaism…. religions draw upon earlier religions and all of the religions have drawn deeply on the earliest religion which was the Great Goddess religion. The Egyptians honoured God as Mother far more than later religions who, in a male dominated world, were keen to make God into some poor excuse for a man, but, at the end of the day, your belief in God is your right, but it has nothing to do with anyone else and certainly has no credence in any court of law or justice. Neither has it anything to do with history.
The trouble with that argument denise is that the title deeds for the property and the jurisdiction of the appropriate court is missing from the Israel/Palestine record.
Until it is found the world will assume that the indigenous people of Palestine belong to the land of Palestine and that they are entitled to be treated like any other human being no matter what their spiritual beliefs are.
Rockjaw, the Romans were mean to EVERYONE??!!
denise, the Romans are responsible for apartheid in Israel?
An American friend sends me this excellent reference material in the form of a link which reminds us that the Romans were neither responsible for "apartheid" nor were they "mean" to the Israelites!
Give Israel back the Roman Catholics I say! After all, Romans like General Titus and Roman Catholics like Richard the Lionhearted did civilise the place!
here is the link! - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IaE3EaQte78&eurl
The only gratitude the Romans ever received in return is the awful whining and whingeing we hear every day from the Zios.
I hope this link brings closure to the entire argument. The Romans OWN Israel, after all, they even gave Palestine it’s name!
Rogerio
Hear Hear Rogerio!
A nice clean Irish Catholic Prime Minister for Israel and the IRA to replace the IDF!
The Pope can be appointed lifetime President!
It took an Irish Catholic President to end race based legislation in the USA, and we all know what they did to him after that!
The Catholics will do a better job in Israel/Palestine, after all, they do have a lot of work experience.
Kennedy for Knesset!! Rah rah rah!
Way to go Rogerio, I’m all for it!
Where do I put my "X"
That’s right, and the Romans settled southern England and founded London in the name of their Goddess Minerva so they should have the right to take it back.
And while the Romans were often ‘mean’ to everyone, they were also quite enlightened which is why there were as many, if not more, Jews who became Romanised and got along fine. Just as there were many Jews who became very ‘Greek’ when the Greeks were running the show.
Fact i