news…

news…

i see that you are an american.

what do you think of the genocide of the native americans by the european immigrants?

what about the slavery and segregation?

what about the occupation of hawaii, us virgin islands, guam, puerto rico?

what about the land that was taken by force from the mexicans?

according to your logic you should be disgusted with the US, and support mexicans firing rockets at US cities and conducting terroist activities to end the US occupation of their land.

pick up any credible peer-reviewed history book about the region and the time and you’ll get the same facts.

if you want to read more accessible works you are welcomed to read Thomas Friedman (”from beirut to jerusalem”), Bernard Lewis (”the middle east”).

zionism is a typical 19th century nationalist movement. your disgust of it tells more about you than about the movement.

- israel does not occupy any lebanese soil.
- israel has returned all lebanse prisoners in 2004, except for 4 terrorist (look at my pervious post about Samir Kuntar if you want to know who israel is still holding)

keep on reading anti-semite publications if you enjoy them, but at least be honest with yourself and admit you hate jews.

with regard to anti-zionism=antisemitism:
it may not be the case with you, but it is indeed the case of many others. in a world where it is not politically correct to be an out-right racist, falling back to a rational argument (i.e. “israel is a fascist country”, “israel is an apartheid state”, etc.) is a convenient excuse.

antisemitism didn’t disappear at the end of WWII. it was embedded into the european mindset for centuries, and old-habits die hard.

with regard to the essence of zionism:
jews have been living in the land of israel for thousands of years. hundreds of thousands of jews were living in israel at the on the 20th century (about the same number as arabs). immigration of jews to israel driven by modern zionism started in 1882 with eastern european jews, and continued in several waves between 1882 and 1945.

so as you can see the modern jewish immigration started during the ottoman regime and continued through the british mandate.

the jews and the arabs in palestine have been clashing all along. there were peaks of violence between the two.

at the time there was no such thing as a “palestinian people” in the same way that there was no jordanians, syrians,iraqis, or lebanese (these countries like israel did not exist). after WWI the french and the british divided middle-east drawing maps and creating countries.

jews in europe facing increasing antisemitism were basically divided into 3 groups: those who migrated to america, those who chose to stay in europe and hope that the wave of hatred will pass, and those who recognized that the only way to guarantee a safe existence for the jews was to create a jewish state (zionists).

different options were considered and the land of israel was chosen because of its historic role in the life of the jewish people, the fact that there was already a significant jewish population living there and a relatively small indigenous population.

the arab lands that were settled by jews prior to 1948 were bought legally from arab owners.

during WWII and after it ended jews immigrated to israel illegaly, since the british government did not allow them to enter the country. at 1948 when israel was etablished following a UN the arab states surrounding israel attacked, trying to destory the new state (most of the arab leader supported the nazis, too).

during that war many arabs that lived within the borders of israel left their homes. some willingly and some unwillingly. these refugees were not welcomed by the arab countries and many of them still live in refugee camps.

israel is not immune to making mistakes and has done immoral things in its past, like every other democracy and every other country.

and like it or not, time does play a role. rhetoric and behavior that was acceptable in the past, is not acceptable today.

the source that your provided is a known antisemitic and pro-arab publication. i believe it was them who claimed that the number of jews that were murdered in the holocaust should be cut in-half at least.

if this is indicative to sources from which you get your information than no wonder you hold these positions.

now with regard to the hezbollah and the current conflict:
- hezbollah attacked israel unprovoked. crossing international recognized border killing and kidnapping soldiers. i don’t know how you can support this action?

- israel wants hezbollah disarmed (consistent with UN resolution 1559) because it is an illegal militia armed by iran, calling for the destruction of israel, and firing rockets into israeli towns unprovoked (it did so even before the current conflict, just in a much lower frequency)

- what do you mean by “senselessly killing and indiscriminately killing Palestinians”? this is yet another absurd claim. israel is in conflict with the palestinians and it occupies much of their land (which i believe it should mostly give back), but it by no means senselessly killing.

- where do you see israelis rejoicing by the death of civilians? maybe, maybe, you can find a handful of extremists by i doubt it. on the other hand after 9/11 Palestinians went out to the street to celebrate. when suicide bombers carry out their missions successfully palestinians are giving away candies in the street.

i am sorry to say it yet again.
but you are misinformed.
you rely on a fringe racist information source.
and you are repeating senseless claims that show a strong emotional bias (using words like disgust and believing israelis rejoice when civilians are killed). baseless, uninformed, and yes, racist.

Israel did not achieve independence by force those people who come from Europe and created Israel in a land that isn’t theirs is not achieving independence it’s imperialism. Zionism is a political ideology if you support the existence of Israel today fine but that does not mean you are a Zionist. My being an anti-Semite because I do not believe in this ideology is ridiculous and my being anti-Israeli government being an anti-semite is saying that my being anti-Bush means I am anti-American, which is damn ridiculous. I realize that you will probably resort to calling me that now since you have yet to counter my arguments with anything but names and my so called “hatred”.

this is the Zionist movement and you can not change what Zionism is with the changing of time that’s irrational.
“The dispossession and expulsion of a majority of Palestinians were the result of Zionist policies planned over a thirty-year period. Fundamentally, Zionism focused on two needs:

1. to attain a Jewish majority in Palestine;
2. to acquire statehood irrespective of the wishes of the indigenous population. Non-recognition of the political and national rights of the Palestinian people was a KEY Zionist policy.”

and there’s much more to it but I thought copying and pasting was kind of stupid so here’s the website to the rest of the article.
http://www.washington-report.org/html/focus.htm
if you think that the Washington report isn’t a reputable source let me know. I can find others that can not be disputed.

How are they taken out of context? How are words that expressly say that the expulsion of Arabs from the region is what they have to do to achieve Jewish dominance out of context??

let me TRY to answer those questions because you obviously can’t read between my lines properly. Israel is the agressor in lebanon, israel wants hezballah eliminated because it is the organization on its borders that shows they won’t put up with Israel’s bullshit. It isn’t about what Israel gains by killing civilians, what did Israel gain by senselessly killing and indiscriminately killing Palestinians? They do no CARE about the civilians, they hit their target and if a Hezballah militant is killed at the cost of several civilians they are fine with that and REJOICE in it. So please stop making Israel to be this righteous country that is constantly attacked just because it exists.

Another thing “who started it first” and “i was here before you” arguments are ridiculous but it does NOT go back thousands of years. It started when European Jews wanted the Palestinian land. European Jews were NEVER there. Period.

some of these quotes i saw in the past.
some i did not.
and i don’t know with regard to the accuracy of them

i can tell you that with regard to the more recent quotes, many of them, and i hate to use this sentence, have been taken out of context.

but in any case these quotes do not prove much with regard to your assertion of a zionist plot. and your disgust with zionism. today being a zionist means that you support the existance of israel, and as a jew involve yourself in activities to support israel. what is disgusting about it? the people who live in israel and were born there, don’t even think of them as zionist, they just want to continue to live safely in the country where they were born.

israel is not a saint. it has made mistakes, it was arrogant and it achieved its independence by force. this is not different from the history of many countries.

the arabs are no saints either. many of them still do not recognize the right of israel to exist (hamas, hezbollah, syria, iran and others), and would like to destroy it. rather than move on to solve the problems of the arab people the cynical leaders of the arab world are focusing all of their attention on fighting israel.

no body is going to win the “who started it first” and “i was here before you” arguments. it is going back thousands of years now. the question is how do you handle today’s reality.

is israel the aggressor in lebanon? what do you think israel wants from lebanon? what does israel gains by killing civilians?

why don’t you try to answer these questions?

As for the body count, I just dropped in to tell I told you so. A miracle happened 29 people came back to life in Qana. Check the final report of the red cross. I stand behind what I said: The Lebanese government lies about civilian casualties. If not we would have seen hundreds of films of dead women and children already. The intl. press doesn’t bother to confront them about this and demand the details.

The Lebanese also lie about the damages to Beirut. This was posted by a Lebanese in order to prove that Beirut was “destroyed”. Taken from an Arab website:
http://arabist.net/archives/2006/08/02/beiruts-southern-suburbs/

Look at the pictures again. See how accurate and concentrated the bombings are. I counted 9 blocks who were taken out. Probably 1%-3% of Beirut’s urban area. This was HZA area, accesible only to HZA and thier families. And even when attacking this military target the air force warned them in advance that it’s going to bomb it.

We must expel Arabs and take their places.”
– David Ben Gurion, 1937, Ben Gurion and the Palestine Arabs, Oxford University Press, 1985.

“We must use terror, assassination, intimidation, land confiscation, and the cutting of all social services to rid the Galilee of its Arab population.”
– David Ben-Gurion, May 1948, to the General Staff. From Ben-Gurion, A Biography, by Michael Ben-Zohar, Delacorte, New York 1978.

“There has been Anti-Semitism, the Nazis, Hitler, Auschwitz, but was that their fault? They see but one thing: we have come and we have stolen their country. Why would they accept that?”
– Quoted by Nahum Goldmann in Le Paraddoxe Juif (The Jewish Paradox), pp. 121-122.

“Jewish villages were built in the place of Arab villages. You do not even know the names of these Arab villages, and I do not blame you because geography books no longer exist. Not only do the books not exist, the Arab villages are not there either. Nahlal arose in the place of Mahlul; Kibbutz Gvat in the place of Jibta; Kibbutz Sarid in the place of Huneifis; and Kefar Yehushua in the place of Tal al-Shuman. There is not a single place built in this country that did not have a former Arab population.”
– David Ben Gurion, quoted in The Jewish Paradox, by Nahum Goldmann, Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1978, p. 99.

“Let us not ignore the truth among ourselves … politically we are the aggressors and they defend themselves… The country is theirs, because they inhabit it, whereas we want to come here and settle down, and in their view we want to take away from them their country.”
– David Ben Gurion, quoted on pp 91-2 of Chomsky’s Fateful Triangle, which appears in Simha Flapan’s “Zionism and the Palestinians pp 141-2 citing a 1938 speech.

“If I knew that it was possible to save all the children of Germany by transporting them to England, and only half by transferring them to the Land of Israel, I would choose the latter, for before us lies not only the numbers of these children but the historical reckoning of the people of Israel.”
– David Ben-Gurion (Quoted on pp 855-56 in Shabtai Teveth’s Ben-Gurion in a slightly different translation).
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Golda Meir
Prime Minister of Israel
1969 - 1974

“There is no such thing as a Palestinian people… It is not as if we came and threw them out and took their country. They didn’t exist.”
– Golda Meir, statement to The Sunday Times, 15 June, 1969.

“How can we return the occupied territories? There is nobody to return them to.”
– Golda Meir, March 8, 1969.

“Any one who speaks in favor of bringing the Arab refugees back must also say how he expects to take the responsibility for it, if he is interested in the state of Israel. It is better that things are stated clearly and plainly: We shall not let this happen.”
– Golda Meir, 1961, in a speech to the Knesset, reported in Ner, October 1961

“This country exists as the fulfillment of a promise made by God Himself. It would be ridiculous to ask it to account for its legitimacy.”
– Golda Meir, Le Monde, 15 October 1971
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Yitzhak Rabin
Prime Minister of Israel
1974 - 1977,
1992 - 1995

“We walked outside, Ben-Gurion accompanying us. Allon repeated his question, What is to be done with the Palestinian population?’ Ben-Gurion waved his hand in a gesture which said ‘Drive them out!”
– Yitzhak Rabin, leaked censored version of Rabin memoirs, published in the New York Times, 23 October 1979.

“[Israel will] create in the course of the next 10 or 20 years conditions which would attract natural and voluntary migration of the refugees from the Gaza Strip and the west Bank to Jordan. To achieve this we have to come to agreement with King Hussein and not with Yasser Arafat.”
– Yitzhak Rabin (a “Prince of Peace” by Clinton’s standards), explaining his method of ethnically cleansing the occupied land without stirring a world outcry. (Quoted in David Shipler in the New York Times, 04/04/1983 citing Meir Cohen’s remarks to the Knesset’s foreign affairs and defense committee on March 16.)

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Menachem Begin
Prime Minister of Israel
1977 - 1983

“[The Palestinians] are beasts walking on two legs.”

– Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin, speech to the Knesset, quoted in Amnon Kapeliouk, “Begin and the ‘Beasts,”‘ New Statesman, June 25, 1982.

“The Partition of Palestine is illegal. It will never be recognized …. Jerusalem was and will for ever be our capital. Eretz Israel will be restored to the people of Israel. All of it. And for Ever.”
– Menachem Begin, the day after the U.N. vote to partition Palestine.

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Yizhak Shamir
Prime Minister of Israel
1983 - 1984,
1986 - 1992

“The past leaders of our movement left us a clear message to keep Eretz Israel from the Sea to the River Jordan for future generations, for the mass aliya (=Jewish immigration), and for the Jewish people, all of whom will be gathered into this country.”
– Former Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir declares at a Tel Aviv memorial service for former Likud leaders, November 1990. Jerusalem Domestic Radio Service.

“The settlement of the Land of Israel is the essence of Zionism. Without settlement, we will not fulfill Zionism. It’s that simple.”
– Yitzhak Shamir, Maariv, 02/21/1997.

“(The Palestinians) would be crushed like grasshoppers … heads smashed against the boulders and walls.”
– Isreali Prime Minister (at the time) Yitzhak Shamir in a speech to Jewish settlers New York Times April 1, 1988

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Benjamin Netanyahu
Prime Minister of Israel
1996 - 1999

“Israel should have exploited the repression of the demonstrations in China, when world attention focused on that country, to carry out mass expulsions among the Arabs of the territories.”
– Benyamin Netanyahu, then Israeli Deputy Foreign Minister, former Prime Minister of Israel, speaking to students at Bar Ilan University, from the Israeli journal Hotam, November 24, 1989.

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Ehud Barak
Prime Minister of Israel
1999 - 2001

“The Palestinians are like crocodiles, the more you give them meat, they want more”….
– Ehud Barak, Prime Minister of Israel at the time - August 28, 2000. Reported in the Jerusalem Post August 30, 2000

“If we thought that instead of 200 Palestinian fatalities, 2,000 dead would put an end to the fighting at a stroke, we would use much more force….”
– Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak, quoted in Associated Press, November 16, 2000.

“I would have joined a terrorist organization.”
– Ehud Barak’s response to Gideon Levy, a columnist for the Ha’aretz newspaper, when Barak was asked what he would have done if he had been born a Palestinian.

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Ariel Sharon
Prime Minister of Israel
2001 - present

“It is the duty of Israeli leaders to explain to public opinion, clearly and courageously, a certain number of facts that are forgotten with time. The first of these is that there is no Zionism, colonialization, or Jewish State without the eviction of the Arabs and the expropriation of their lands.”

– Ariel Sharon, Israeli Foreign Minister, addressing a meeting of militants from the extreme right-wing Tsomet Party, Agence France Presse, November 15, 1998.

“Everybody has to move, run and grab as many (Palestinian) hilltops as they can to enlarge the (Jewish) settlements because everything we take now will stay ours…Everything we don’t grab will go to them.”
– Ariel Sharon, Israeli Foreign Minister, addressing a meeting of the Tsomet Party, Agence France Presse, Nov. 15, 1998.

“Israel may have the right to put others on trial, but certainly no one has the right to put the Jewish people and the State of Israel on trial.”

– Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, 25 March, 2001 quoted in BBC News Online