Slashdot Mirror

I'm no expert either, but Uri Avnery's latest article on that topic sounds quite interesting.
http://zope.gush-shalom.org/home/en/channels/avnery/1353080494/

Actually there seems to be a lot of jewish-arab cooperation going on, just type
the keywords jew arab joint protest into google...

http://gush-shalom.org/actions/27demo_eng.html

Here's one where the Israeli state also attacked jews:

http://zope.gush-shalom.org/home/en/events/1161988 506/

It was the stormiest demonstration in Bil'in for some time. Clouds of tear gas, salvoes of stun grenades were showered on the 300 demonstrators - Palestinians, Israelis and internationals - who marched again to protest against the wall in this village, as they have done every Friday for than 20 months...

No life fire though, but I recall reading on indymedia maybe two or three years back
about a similar joint jewish-arab protest where the Israeli police opened fire with regular
guns.

Actually there seems to be a lot of jewish-arab cooperation going on, just type
the keywords jew arab joint protest into google...

http://gush-shalom.org/actions/27demo_eng.html

Here's one where the Israeli state also attacked jews:

http://zope.gush-shalom.org/home/en/events/1161988 506/

It was the stormiest demonstration in Bil'in for some time. Clouds of tear gas, salvoes of stun grenades were showered on the 300 demonstrators - Palestinians, Israelis and internationals - who marched again to protest against the wall in this village, as they have done every Friday for than 20 months...

No life fire though, but I recall reading on indymedia maybe two or three years back
about a similar joint jewish-arab protest where the Israeli police opened fire with regular
guns.

Sir Homer,

All my original post was supposed to show was, that in this day and age, it seems OK in the US to bash Islam but getting critical of the Jewish community is clearly off-limits. That said, I don't live in the US (thank God!), so I can't grasp the extent to which that's true. Yet, when such eminent public figures as John Ashcroft says that "Islam is a religion in which God requires you to send your son to die for him. Christianity is a faith in which God sends his son to die for you", I can't help but notice the mild mainstream response to that. Or the infamous "We should invade their countries, kill their leaders and convert them to Christianity" by Ann Coulter. Contrast with Mel Gibson's latest derogatory comment.
When was the last time a member of the US administration opposed anything Israel does? JFK comes to mind at this point. I'm not claiming he was killed by the Mossad, but merely pointing out to when it was.
Look at the educated analysis of PlanesDragon a few post above; It's not about religion, but simply about power and who's pulling the strings.
As for wanting to throw the Jews in the sea, nobody wants that. Arabs/Muslims are not barbaric savages as Bush&co are trying to depict them. The best example is the row provoked by Ahmadinejad's comment about Israel. Khomeini and Ahmadinejad were referring to the need for regime change, the ending of the regime occupying the Palestinians in violation of international law. They were not talking, as Netanyahu and co claim, about the destruction of the state of Israel or the Jewish people. The Iranian head of state is far from a being a saint, yet compared to Bush, he emerges as one.
Yes, Arabs were jerks for putting their selfish interests above enforcing the intergrity of a Palestinian state and working out with Israel towards peace. And yes, Jews have suffered a great deal throughout human history. Is that a reason to punish innocents in Gaza? Before you attempt to answer that question do me a personal favour and read the following article: http://zope.gush-shalom.org/home/en/channels/avner y/1160914974.

Malhmold is not the only person who thinks the goals were larger than humiliating Hezbolla. Some say the Bush administration wanted Syria and Iran. Conquering that much of the middle east might indeed have triggered a war with Russia, Turkey and even China and Europe. It's a good thing that did not happen, but there's still time for Israel's incompetent and murderous military leaders to blunder themselves into a wider conflict. All they have to do is provoke Syria on the new border.

"you should do some reading about the '48, '67, and '73 wars. They are wars of aggression and conquest launched by Israel's Arab neighbors."

1946 until now, looks to me like someone has an unfair advantage. They've got friends, you've got friends. It's a damn shame they have to be mutually exclusive. The crusades were a great plague on the region, and so is war from Arab allies.

"You should also look at Barak's peace offer. It's a great deal."

Errrmmm.. Yeah, generous. Wow.

3 years ago it was known as "Barak's Generous offers".
Today its name is "The Separation Wall"
The plan remains the same:
Grabbing maximum land, while driving the Palestinians out.
The same people who swallowed whole-heartedly the lie:
"Barak offered the Palestinians everything, but they preferred war"
are now eating the second serving:
"The fence is not political. It is a security measure."

look at the maps of those generous offers

Each time, btw, the Palestinian response was, no, was can't do that until all jews in Israel are dead. What pigs.
* do you actually r

3 years ago it was known as "Barak's Generous offers".
Today its name is "The Separation Wall"
The plan remains the same:
Grabbing maximum land, while driving the Palestinians out.
The same people who swallowed whole-heartedly the lie:
"Barak offered the Palestinians everything, but they preferred war"
are now eating the second serving:
"The fence is not political. It is a security measure."

look at the maps of those generous offers

Each time, btw, the Palestinian response was, no, was can't do that until all jews in Israel are dead. What pigs.
* do you actually r

Oh, and BTW, ask yourself: if Israel withdraws from the teritories, wouldn't that mean deportation, or "ethnic cleansing" in you terms, of the jewish settelers in the bank ?

It's hypocrisy and double-standard to demand that Israel deports its own jewish citizens while denouncing any possible deportations of arabs as "ethnic cleansing"

Isreali settlers should never of been allowed to settle in the occupied territories to begin with. Now as far as relocating them, that's exactly what Isreal did in 1979 after Egypt and Isreal signed their agreement. All the Isreali settlements in the Sinai Peninsula were dismantled.

And what of the Jewish Palestinians? Or the Arabs who are Israeli citizens, afterall there are Arab members of the Israeli Parliament? I don't like deportation either, for either side. Deportation only creates hardlines in those being deported, some of those being forcibly relocated get bitter and will strike out any way they can.

Though it's hardly known there almost was an agreement reached at Taba, Egypt in 2000-01 wherein Arafat made significant compromises:

"Uri Avnery"
"5.9.01"
"The Day Barak's Bubble Burst"

"Were a student to present Professor Shlomo Ben Ami with the paper that was published in his name in the HaAretz supplement (14.9.01), the professor would have handed it back with the comments: 'Grade: 50%. Large holes in the argument. Many internal contradictions. No connection between the facts and the conclusions. No support for the main argument. Try again!'"

"The article, presented as an interview, must be read several times before the weaknesses become apparent. As it extends over 8 long pages, it can be assumed that most readers were satisfied glossing over the headlines and the highlighted quotations, phrased like campaign slogans. Thus Ben Ami further augments the damage that he and Barak wreaked when their short and catastrophic political term of office crashed to its end."

"From between the lines, scattered unintentionally, emerges a true picture. He says of himself and of Barak: 'We were not really members of the 'in-group' of the left. Neither of us were members of the peace industry. Neither of us is a true peace industrialist.' His words, ironically intended, can be translated more simply: neither of them knew anything about the Palestinians, the traumas, the historical narrative, the fears and ambitions of the designated partner. Ben Ami and Barak shared the staggering audacity to approach this historical peace-making task equipped exclusively with ignorance and arrogance - military bravado in Barak's case, and intellectual vanity in Ben Ami's."

"The ignorance worked against them as they did not understand the internal code of the Palestinians but were entirely imprisoned in that of ours. Hence they simply did not understand the other side. All its positions were incomprehensible and all its actions unanticipated. Those who understand the Palestinian issue, who have spent long years studying the subject and thousand of hours of personal dialogue, with some degree of empathy, with Palestinians were not surprised by any of the moves made. (Allow me to remind you that I myself predicted and published in advance most of the steps taken by the Palestinians.)"
The Day Barak's Bubble Burst

The above is just the first section, the whole thing is 5 pages to printout. There's also this, I started on paragraph 4:

"Prime Ministers Rabin, Peres, and Barak (again in the first half of his brief tenure in office) did negotiate with the Palestinians at Oslo (after suffering a painful rise in Palestinian violence against Israelis in 1993), but avoided the key issues. They ensured failure by strategic error. Each hoped to use time and fact creation to produce a phony Palestinian state, one that would be as comfortable for Israel as possible regardless of its consequences for the requirements of the Palestin

I don't have to assume, actually - it's pretty easy to discover that those beliefs were held by most Lutherans of the time, and not only in Germany but also in the US and UK.

Niemoller was, at one point, supportive of the Nazis; but he not only came to realize their racism was harmful to society but actually did something about it.

It's really worth reading about all this. We all live in the shadow of WW2 - organizations like Al Quaeda and Likud are the direct result of the global anti-semitism of the 1930s and 40s.

He accepted it with 16 "reservations". He flat out refused to follow certain parts, saying the Palestinians had to do their end first, and they had been already. So the Palestinians had to put away all their guns, and maybe the Israelis would pull their tanks out if they were lucky.

"Try looking back to the July 2000 Camp David summit between Clinton, Barak, and Arafat. When Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak offered Arafat 96% of what Palestinias claim they want, including a Palestinian capital in parts of Jerusalem, rather than accept or even come up with a counter-offer, Arafat refused the offer and left the peace talks."

That's a huge load of propaganda. Look at the reality of Barak's 'generous' offer

Oh and by the way, the Palestinian Liberation Orgranization PLO, was founded pre-1967 and their charter calls for the destruction of Israel so don't go thinking this is about borders.

So what, in 2000 Arafat accepted and officially recognized Israel. At the same time as the PLO made those former statements, Prime ministers said the following:

"There is no such things 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.

"In our country there is room only for the jews. We shall say to the Arabs: Get out! If they don't agree, if they resist we shall drive them out by force." --Professor Ben-Zion Dinur, Israel's First Minister of Education, 1954 from History of the Haganah.

I never implied that Hamas or Islamic Jihad were interested in a two-state solution. They're not running Palestine. Part of Hamas wants a two state plan, but the other part rejects it, however.

Give me the rundown on the Oslo accords then. Israel destroyed and shut down the Palestinian police force. Did the accords say something about stopping settlements or right of return?

Going out to find news that has _your_ slant does not make this news any less unbiased. Think about that. You need _diversity_, not a single source that you like because they echo your own line.

Very insightful and true.

The government of the United States was elected by the people. If you have a problem with the government, you have a problem with the Americans, since they put it in power. The government is acting under _their_ authority. And, notably, polls show most citizens support the actions of the government so far.

Total BS. The only 'problem' I have with Americans is they are ignorant of their governments real policies and thus they are not able to protest against them, since they have no real idea what they are. But this ignorance is not entirely their fault given the useless media organizations they have; it takes real effort to find information on some of these policies.
How many Americans knew their government assassinated Allende 30 years ago? How many approved?
How many Americans knew their government was selling weapons to Iran to support the terrorism of the contras? How many approved?
How many Americans knew their government gave the Baath regime the biological weapons it used in its terror attacks on the people of Iraq? How many approved?

It's just like those idiots in France who can't put together "rising anti-Zionism" leading to "rising (and violent!) anti-Semitism": you don't have one without the other.

Right, because you can't criticize Israel without being an anti-semite? Sorry friend, criticizing Israeli policy does not make you an anti-semite. As I've said before, the most vociferous opponents of Israeli policy are Jewish. And it's really because they are Jewish and they want to promote human rights.
If there is racism and violence against Jews, then that is a seperate, and terrible, problem that must be dealt with. Racism, all racism, is awful.

* Solve the underlying issues. Downside: You will need to make painful concessions.

Actually, if we just quit giving Israel $6B+/year to fund the military occupation of Palestine, the problem would go away. Where's the pain in that?

It's hard to understand why Arabs hate us.

On Paper, sort of. You're missing the rest of the facts. The areas of land had no real transportation, and were disjointed.

Look at this map, and see how the Palestinians were being cheated with an offer like that.

For example, The USA keeps about 0.7% of the population behind bars. For comparison, a rate of 0.1% is common in western Europe. It gives a whole new meaning to "the land of the FREE". See this story from The Economist (may require registration...).

My Country, Israel, does not think that Humans have rights at all; like leaving their own front door. I am lucky on that front, I only got arrested three times, and my home was searched, for making minor protests, like waving a pirate flag on my own balcony.

Would rather (just) have my phone tapped.

http://www.gush-shalom.org/generous/generous

First of all, Arafat won the Peace Prize in 1994 for negotiating and signing the 1993 Oslo Peace Accords.

Secondly, Barak never offered all of the West Bank, Gaza, and Arab neighborhoods of Jerusalem. He offered most of the Gaza strip (I don't have an exact number), ~80% of the West Bank, and left Jerusalem for "final status negotiations," making no concrete offers regarding it. See here for some maps of Barak's offers in the West Bank (from Gush Shalom, an Israeli peace-advocacy group).

Arafat won the Peace Prize jointly with Yitzhak Rabin and Shimon Peres for his part in negotiating and signing the Oslo peace accords in 1993. I think that was justified - it was certainly a vast step for all of them to take.

I don't have space here to go into an in-depth discussion of the current Israeli-Palestinian situation, but suffice it to say that Israel never offered to end the occupation. They offered to end a significant percentage of it, but the remaining ~20% was so strewn about the West Bank that it would've made any Palestinian state unviable. See this site (an Israeli one, no less) for some maps of Barak's offers.