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New Mega-Leak Reveals Middle East Peace Process
An anonymous reader writes "There's been yet another mega-leak, this time of 1,600 papers describing the Israeli/Palestinian peace process negotiations. It's independent of Wikileaks and came to light via al-Jazeera, showing perhaps that the mega-leak meme is here to stay whatever happens to Assange. The papers show a weak Palestinian side offering ever greater concessions to Israel, which flatly rejected this as being insufficient: 'We do not like this suggestion because it does not meet our demands,' Israel's then foreign minister, Tzipi Livni, told the Palestinians, 'and probably it was not easy for you to think about it, but I really appreciate it.'"
You realize the term "meme" predates its modern usage of describing "LOL cats", and other internet ephemera, right? The guy who coined the term, Richard Dawkins, coined it to explain much larger phenomena, like the evolution of society as a whole, and pretty much all evolving intellectual and sociological phenomena that is not immediately traceable to genetics.
A patriot must always be ready to defend his country against his government. -edward abbey
I said "effectively". Maybe the meaning was unclear. Would you prefer "essentially"? How about "more-or-less"?
Given that there are more Muslims in the Israeli Parliament than there are in the US Congress, I'd say they're probably more secular than the US in reality, if not on paper. They have complete freedom of religion, and have had Muslims and Druze serving in all aspects of the government, including as Supreme Court judges, ambassadors, and army generals. When the only thing making them non-secular is that they self-identify as a Jewish state, it's fair to say that they ARE secular for all intents and purposes.
Pretty close to it, yes. Courts in Israel are civil courts, not based on Jewish religious law. Legislation is passed by a civil legislative body, not a religious one. Religions are considered equal before the law. There is no official state religion, and there is freedom of religion and of worship.
There is one weirdness, which is marriage. There is no "civil" marriage in Israel; there are only religious marriage under the auspices of the various religions practiced by the people being married. This can cause problems for non-Orthodox Jews, for interfaith marriages, etc. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marriage_in_Israel has details.
Also note that in Israel being Jewish is not necessarily a religious matter; it's an ethnic matter. You can be an atheist and still be considered Jewish ethnically.
This can matter for things like military service, where ethnic minorities are generally exempt from the draft (though accepted as volunteers).
In any case, I suppose it depends on your definition of "separation of religion and state". It's not exactly a black-and-white line; there are gradations. Would you say that religion and state are separated in Germany, say?
Last time I checked (a few years ago), Al-Jazeera was a shining example of independent journalism that reports all sides of a story, and is criticized in the West for being too pro-Islam, and very harshly criticized in the Islamic world for being too anti-Islam. Have things changed? Can you please cite me an example of Al-Jazeera having an agenda (other than "the truth", which is what Al-Jazeera means)?
Al-Jazeera receives funding from the government of Qatar (and is based in Qatar). The government of Qatar is a pretty big ally of the government of the United States. The government of the United State is a pretty big supporter of the Government of Israel. You make of that what you will when you see them report on news that is not taken well in Israel, the United State, or Qatar.
Even wikileaks leaves itself wide open to astroturfing with manufactured 'leaks' to suit someone's agenda. It doesn't even have to go that far if someone somewhere is deciding what to leak and what to bury.
Wikileaks do their best to verify the leaks before publishing them. IIRC, they sent some people to Iraq to confirm the authenticity of the leaked video, before publishing "Collateral Murder", for example. While it's possible that they will make a mistake sooner or later, I don't think that what you're describing is so easy.
A point of information: The leak makes the PA look bad. The PA comes out as lying to their citizens
Israel comes out of it pretty much as they were before, as simply not interested in negotiation that do not give them all they want.
AlJazeera has demolished the PA with this article. *I* am truly shocked.
This is not a signature.
You know what the saddest thing about the whole Middle-East crisis is ? The people fighting are the same people on both sides.
Genetic research has shown that the Palestinians and the Israeli's are the SAME people. More specifically the Palestinians are the descendants of the so-called "ten lost tribes" - it's not even conjecture, it's basic proven science. In the years since the diaspora (and the classic story about why that happened is simply not true: the Romans never displaced any culture, so to think they did it in Israel is silly).
Here's what science says happened: A lot of Jews left Israel during the Roman occupation, settling around Europe in two major groups. The Azkanazi in Eastern Europe and the Sephardi in Spain. These two groups were the two not-lost tribes. What happened to the other ten ? They were not scattered and dispersed or lost, that legend is false. They stayed right there where they were, over time they converted to Islam.
When the other two tribes started coming back they found a largely Arab culture with an Islamic religion living in the area and claiming it as their homeland.
They could not believe that these Muslim Palestinians were fellow Jews (especially since it didn't fit their legends that all the tribes left), and the Palestinians would never have thought that their ancestors were Jewish Israelites.
But the scientific evidence is extremely strong - they share a very direct common ancestry and were one people just about 1700 years ago (in other words, almost exactly when the diaspora started).
An inevitable war between brothers, over a homeland that historically belongs as much to one as the other... and they still can't figure out a way to get along. Now that is human nature at it's worst, in a nutshell.
Unicode killed the ASCII-art *
They did in fact leave in the fragment where you see people carrying what appear to be rifles. They also gave a clear link to the full unedited version, for people interested in the broader context. The editing is understandable, because few people would want to sit through the whole thing, where mostly nothing happens -- they left in only the most interesting parts.
Yours is an oft repeated argument, but I just don't see how you can honestly claim such strong bias on their behalf. While they did choose the name "collateral murder", suggesting anti-American military bias, they provided all the necessary information for any intelligent person to make up their own mind about it. The title was just about the only slanted aspect of the release.
While they could have named the release differently, they certainly did a good job of attracting attention to it, leading to many press articles with more detailed behind-the-scenes information.
Just as you don't read newspapers that seem wrongly biased to you, you didn't have to watch the Wikileaks release. Pretty much all the media used it as a source and offered their own analysis. But this was only possible thanks to the public service of publishing the leak and drawing attention to it in the first place.
All things considered, such a service is so valuable that anyone who supports government accountability should be thankful to Wikileaks, even if they disagree with the apparent bias.