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Israel Suspends MS Office Purchases For Now
case_igl writes "The Seattle Times is reporting 'that in an apparent showdown over price, Israel's government has suspended purchases of Microsoft Office software and is encouraging the development of an open-source alternative.' The Finance Ministry has cooperated with Sun Microsystems and IBM in designing the Hebrew-language version of OpenOffice software, a freely distributed open-source alternative to Microsoft Office. The spokeswoman said the government was unhappy with Microsoft's refusal to sell individual programs from its standard Office package, which includes e-mail, spreadsheet and word-processing applications. Microsoft representatives in Israel did not immediately return phone calls seeking comment." The Associated Press article is carried on many other sites as well.
...than you pretend it was.
"sink a known US ship"
As opposed to all those unknown US ships, I suppose.
If you're going to try and correct me, at least have the right war. In 1967 Israel conducted a preemptive strike against Egypt and her neighbors. You're confusing the '67 and the '73 war.
Hoist Number One and Number Six.
I'll point out the inaccuracies of your statements about Israel. Each one of your statements is false. Israel has been attacked continuously since it's formation in 1948. Israel attacked Egypt because Egypt was threatening quite openly to attack Israel. The land that was occupied by Israel following the war was given back. Israel has offered to create a Palestinian state more than once. The Palestinians refused to have a state. The Arab countries surrounding Israel also refused to take Palestinian refugees. Israel did not intentionally try to sink a US ship, much like the US did not intend to shoot down an airliner over the Indian Ocean in the 1980s.
I will assume that you use incorrect information because you hold a different belief about Israel. Either you are misinformed, or you choose to be.
http://github.com/gbook/nidb
Hey, do you have a summary of this stuff with references? Even a good book? Something for us boobs who know nothing about the Middle East? Most of what I hear is from heavily biased sources, so I go to great lengths to ignore it... that practice, well, by definition makes me ignorant.
It would be nice if somebody put something together which explored the history, various biases and lies surrounding the issues (on all sides).
I know... nothing is devoid of bias, but even a 20-year old book would tell current events more accurately than the newspapers.
Yes, the Palestinians didn't manage to stop all the suicide bombers
The PA (as well as their main opposition, the Hamas) was and is directly and indirectly, financially and militarily involved with the attacks.
There is, both in the law and with common sense, the issue of bad faith. When a person, or body, says one thing and actively porsues the opposite, then there is bad-faith: he/it did not intend to fulfil his statements from the start.
That is blatant fraud, and claiming that the con-man "couldn't mannage" to stop the acts is naieve at best.
It was this willful-blindness, this sort of double-standard and hypocrisy that made me, and many Israellies, furious with both the Israelly left and the Clinton administration.
But don't pretend that Isreal didn't use every shred of opportunity it got to strike back at the Palestinians as well, closing borders
Actually, with the Avoda-government, Israel did not strike back, and the result was the much worse violence of 2000-03.
And as for closing borders, what would you have done if your country was invaded by a flock of genocide-bombers ?
replenishing the jewish settlement, creating new ones.
Here, I agree, was a mistake maded by Israel (not because it affected Oslo: Oslo was doomed by the Palestinians from the start, but because it is insane demographically). However, Israel never (untill recently) comitted not to expand the jewish settelments, dedfinately not in Oslo: there was no fraud involved, just stupidity.
There was no real desire for peace from the Israeli either, just peaceful assimilation.
Yes there was. That was exactly the Oslo deal, the Oslo dream: you (the PA) will eventually get independance on a part of the land, we will get security. This was the lie that was sold to the Israelly people. The true desire for peace was so strong it led Israel to make insane choices even when evidence clearly indicated fraud.
To reduce the Palestinians to a bunch of small reservations with no real power, much like what happened to the native indians in the US.
That was never a realistic goal. And anyway, if this was so, why did the IDF withdraw from the areas of the PA ? Did the US army withdraw from a quarter of the area of the US in order to allow the N.A. self rule ?
Now they want to wall them in and isolate them by force. While it may keep them apart, it'll also stigmatize the entire situation more.
You know what, many Israellies don't care about stigmas any more. We want to seperate from a nation that has made civilian-killing more than a strategy: a value by itself. A nation that, by their own words, will not agree to anything but the full anihilation of their opponents.
I think the Palestinians should get their freedom, in the west bank and Gaza, and manage for themselves. We don't wish to use them; no more jobs in Israel. We (most of us) don't wish to interact with them; No more settelers to kill and hate. Just grow up and take care of themselves. If they can't manage by themselves, tough shit. Don't decieve us, kill and maim us, and expect us to care.
Working for necessity's mother.
I note that you still have not addressed the question as to the reason for the massacre of the Israeli Jewish settlers in 1929.
That is because, w.r.t. the 1929 massacre, there was no "peace-process" at the time. Or a palestinian people as a defined entity like today.
The views and actions of Palestinians seem to range the normal gamut from saintly to criminal. You seem to wish to tar them all with the same brush; this does not seem logical or evidence-based.
The phenomena is a national one; i.e. it involves collective behaviour of many individuals. With such phenomena, indeed the average is much more important than a single-individual's actions. If one sees phenomena only at the scale of the individual, one will not understand much of the world.
And BTW, the Palestinians are a people, because they define themselves as such. In their society, genocided-murderers are idolized and considered martyrs. What is that if not tarring themselves with the same brush ?
Such demonisation is the first step taken by those who wish to justify racism and genocide. Palestinian bombers doubtless think the same way about Israeli Jews.
I don't need to demonize Palestinians. They do it by themselves with their actions.
And as for racism, this is a racist and ethnic conflict. Putting on pink glasses will not change that.
The difference between most israellies and most palestinians is that israellies don't want genocide, just separation, while palestinians want (and indeed encorage and engage in small-scale practice of) genocide.
Working for necessity's mother.