Slashdot Mirror
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.'"
A whole new game, ain't it now?
NO SIG
We're all gonna die !!
...conveniently omitting any mention of Qatar.
All new messengers to shoot!! "al-Jazeera" sounds like terrorists to boot!!
AC Forever and the win.
How can the following script be repeated for 1600 pages:
"You started it!"
"No, you started it!"
"No, you started it!"
Nuke them all. Their respective God will provide his true chosen people with the ability to live in the radioactive wasteland.
Jesus was all right but his disciples were thick and ordinary. -John Lennon
Why in the fuck is this article on slashdot? The Middle East situation is not a nerd story, its not something that matters here. Tagging this story under security and internet makes no sense whatsoever. You can find this news anywhere else, not on an ostensibly tech oriented blog.
Slashdot, you are jumping the shark with this. BTW, before you mod this down -1 consider its an ontopic meta comment.
The person who leaked this has raped me.
Please arrest him immediately. Thanks.
I wonder if there will be the calls for treason and terrorism arising from this, with the Big Media not coming to their aid. al-Jazeera is even closer to our American media than Assange is by their own standards they gave when not defending him. Eventually, those who do not like free press will come for Big Media too.
How long before the world's secret services adapt to the "megaleak" phenomenon, and start using it as a tool to spread propaganda? Wikileaks might be an independent arbiter, but will other start-ups be so? In time, the space will become so polluted with lies, that the real leaks will be treated as lies, along with the rest of it.
Please, Internet, stop trying to force your sorry culture on the real world. This has nothing to do with memes.
"'We do not like this suggestion because it does not meet our demands,' Israel's then foreign minister, Tzipi Livni, told the Palestinians"
Things like right to exist probably aren't in it yet.
"we are the the most psychopath right wing coalition that can ever come into being in a country through a democratic process", Tzipi Livni should have said.
no really, its beyond fathoming, the nature and formation of this ungodly coalition is. my israeli friend (colleague too) says that the exterior minister of this coalition, liebermann, is known as outright mafia in israel. not in a manner of speaking, but, literally. he says the entire coalition is filled with similar right wing zealots and psychos, came to being as a coalition government only through an unholy alliance they have set up among each other after the scattered elections. they, naturally, dont even reflect the true will of the majority of israeli people.
its no surprise to me to hear these leaks, after being told about the situation in israel and nature of these people by my friend, tho it may be worthy of news to some people.
Read radical news here
http://www.c-spanvideo.org/program/297544-1
Worth watching in its entirety to get a good idea what Israel is up against.
LOL, "End Of Days":
Please take your sorry, shitty, flawed, religion and kindly go fuck off and die.
Internet = the true voice of the people > your corrupt culture that rules by fear, ignorance, and submission.
Those assholes are the ones who left their land in the first place. Then they come back, get upset that they don't have it, so they start taking it over. When the Palestinians are all like, "hey, we have a right to be here too", the Israeli's tell them to eat shit and die. This conflict has gone on far longer than it should have.
means that they promised Israel that they absolutely do not want to destroy them if only Israel would give them back their land...
and by their land...they mean all the land in the middle east, including all of Israel.
and by absolutely not destroy them...they mean, hey, let's have a bit of peace, for now at least, we still don't recognize your right to exist, and hey we might try to annihilate you AGAIN in the future, like we tried to do in '48 and '53 and '67 and '73 and so forth...you know those wars when we original lost the land...but for now...hey let's all just get along.
My God can beat up your God. Just kidding...don't take offense. I know there's no God.
...but not the right to expand by force.
Israel does not negotiate with terrorists.
Internet = astroturf, banner ads, malware, lots of porn, more malware, torrents, lolcats and the true voice of the people.
and memes. lots of them.
You were willing and happy at the time.
If the the internet is really the voice of the people, then perhaps extinction isn't such a bad thing. The internet is a sewer.
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.
I think history will find that Wikileaks and by association Julian Assanges greatest contribution to the world, will not necessarily be the Wikileaks service, but helping to cultivate a greater culture of leaking, by showing that it can be done effectively, and that your message will be heard.
Now that, is something extremely valuable, that's almost impossible to be taken away.
This is my footer. There are many like it, but this one is mine.
This is an invitation to all to check out www.merlinslibrary.com, a wiki site where you can upload all your favorite links to help each other find good sites. All you need to do is just find the appropriate topic or create a new article and upload the link. It's that easy! So check out www.merlinslibrary.com
The only thing in that which is even the slightest bit shocking is that the Israelis know Lieberman to be full of it.
I think most Israelis know that building settlements in the disputed territories isn't helping the cause of piece and is certainly provoking further attacks. I think they also realize that unnecessary provocation isn't going to serve their interests in the long term. Whether they're more aware of that or scared of the FUD is not something I have any clue about.
my friend told me that actually even that psycho coalition is trying to get rid of liebermann, because he is way 'far out' in his radicalness. but, so far have not been able to.
Read radical news here
is that it would be a carte blanche to expel all immigrants from Europe.
If a lifetime in an area is insufficient to get such an attachment that you cannot be removed from it, then spending 5-6 years as an asylum seeker on the run is a laughably short time to get any short of attachment.
Not that hard at all. Get the documents. Make important but small changes. Publish. Call the next guy to publish a liar. Really - how hard is that. remember that changing just one word changes, "that's not easy." to "that's easy." I cannot find the reference, but I believe a war was either fought or almost fought because of a missing comma.
As if a left/right=Rebublican/Democrat flame war wasn't enough.
Let's drag in one of the most vicious, long running and intractable disputes in the world.
This should be good for a few hundred highly polarized replies. ;)
Yeah, and my sister's friend's hairdresser says that Jews drink the blood of children!
Gamingmuseum.com: Give your 3D accelerator a rest.
Lets just separate them for 100s of years until they cool down... 2 nations with a big wall.... that will work! We just have to get them to agree where to put the wall ;-) How about along the legal borders? oh...wait...
Democracy Now! - uncensored, anti-establishment news
Lock the Palestinians and the Israels in a room with some bricks. The winner (the ones who come out of the room on their own) get to stay there, the losers have to move to Utah. You're welcome! Nobel Prize, please!
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
Ask yourself who benefits from these allegations. How can these papers claim that the PLO offered most of Jerusalem to Israel when no less than a year earlier Olmert offered *them* most of Jerusalem? What these papers claim is completely illogical.
Hamas and their supporters leaked these fabricated papers in other to simultaneously smear the Palestinian Authority and Israel. What better way to kill two birds with one stone?
All this talk about settlements, territorial concessions and refugees are all a distraction. The real conflict is about religion and oil. You won't see peace in the middle-east until *those* topics are discussed.
Ask yourself why Muslims were slaughtering Jews in Israel as far back as 1929: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1929_Hebron_massacre
Al Jazeera
New York Times
Any question on why Americans and Arabs have completely different perceptions of the same conflict?
I am officially gone from
they went from being persecuted and on the brink of extermination at the hands of the Nazis during WW2 to being the oppressors of another group semitic peoples themselves, all Israel needs now is some ovens and gas chambers and the picture would be complete.
Politics is Treachery, Religion is Brainwashing
Not only that, but there is NO "peace process". That is just Israeli bullshit. Jews have had problems with the surrounding people since a pharaoh 3,700 years ago, and in every culture and country and century since. In EVERY case, they saw the problems as due to the meanness of the surrounding culture, never due to their own cultural shortcomings.
Israeli politics has its share of problems, of that I have no doubt.
What I *do* doubt is the word of your Israeli friend. Let me put it this way: there is a strong left-wing leaning in Israeli culture. The Israeli courts are pretty much all left of center. The government itself swings from left-wing to right-wing over the years, as do governments of many countries around the world. What I dislike very much is how left-wing people (by the sound of it, your friend being one of them) categorize anyone to the right of their political views as "zealots and psychos" and right-wing people categorize anyone to the left of their political views as "traitors". Neither accusation holds water.
If Lieberman really had mafia connections, as you allege, evidence of it would have come out by now and he'd be out of the government. The left-wing courts would be more than happy to oblige. It might interest you to know that every single political party (whether on the left or right) had similar accusations leveled at them. Most of it is just political mudslinging.
I wish people would stop treating foreign countries as 3rd-world countries. Every single country in the world has its share of problems. What matters is that we act in good faith and do our best to make the world a better place.
Quick word of advice to anyone who may be reading this and has reached the point at which the injustice is more important than their life.
Suicide bombings are a very poor way to attempt to gain a measure of justice. They only give Israel further justification for their action and provides distraction for the rest of the world (and that doesn't take much) from the continual strangulation of the Palestinian people.
A much more effective approach would be public self-immolation recorded on video for broadcasting along with an explanatory note of the no-hope situation underlying the act. The unimaginableness of this makes it something that cannot be ignored. It leaves people no distracting details like they killed all these people, and instead forces them to confront the depth of despair and hopelessness that necessarily exists behind such an act.
I would also give the same advice to any Israel whose life has become meaningless suffering under the continual oppression by the Palestinian people, except I really don't believe their would be any of them that desperate, and I believe that says something about the situation.
anything they release, take it with a truck load of salt.
If you mod me down, I will become more powerful than you can imagine....
I can't read your post because your lack of capitalization makes me angry.
It's hard to describe, but I get the feeling that someday somebody is going to write another illiterate post like yours and I'm going to snap, find out where they live, and gouge their eyes out.
Anyway, whatever you said, I'm sure it made sense.
Security is mostly a superstition... Avoiding danger is no safer in the long run than outright exposure. - Helen Keller
, I'd say they're probably more secular than the US in reality,
They have complete freedom of religion
Riiiight. Pay no attention to the fact that TWO THIRDS of ultra-orthodox men live on welfare and don't work (and amongst the women, 50% don't work, whereas 25% in general Israeli population don't.) If you elect to go into such studies, the government gives you automatic welfare AND excuses you from military service (where it is ordinarily compulsory) AND gives you a complete tax break.
Did I mention that these ultra-orthodox freeloaders are causing most of the upheaval and supporting hard-line policies? And multiplying like rabbits, marrying young and having huge families?
If that's "Secular", then I guess you'd be OK with the federal government giving welfare to people who decide to become ultra-right-wing Christians?
Please help metamoderate.
Is this the only Israeli friend you have? If you talk to another Israeli you are likely to get a diametrically opposite opinion. There are over 30 political parties in Israel, a country of 7 million people. Also, you really should see what Lieberman has to say before calling him "psycho".
A much more effective approach would be public self-immolation recorded on video for broadcasting along with an explanatory note of the no-hope situation underlying the act. The unimaginableness of this makes it something that cannot be ignored.
Oh, I don't know...the "hard right" has devolved. Our right - America's, that is, for the international viewer - would never have dared to lie us into a war once upon a time. Now I fear they would think something like "Another Muslim devil gone..." after glancing at a picture similar to the Buddhist priest of lore in Vietnam and turn to the funny pages.
And Israel's hard right? They have devolved even faster.
Orwell: "In a Time of Universal Deceit, telling the Truth is a Revolutionary Act"
I suspect any jewish Israelis who would take you up on your offer would be doing because of the oppression of their own government. Living in Israel isn't fun for anyone.
Jews are not the problem in Israel, neither are the Palestinians. The largest problem is governing bodies on both sides with short-sighted goals and a desire for power that eclipses any compassion for the people they are ruling over.
The other problem is meddling from outside rulers who think they know the right solution for a complex situation after spending mere hours being briefed on it.
Supporter of the +1 Over Dramatic mod option. In memory of apk.
greatly reduced number of suicide bombings by palestinians in Israeli cities.
--
sorry- too lazy to create an account.
The truth wants to be free. When the old media is full of lies and propaganda, the truth finds other outlets. This is not something that can be stopped or controlled. It will just happen, as it has just happened in previous generations.
By trying to stop it, the government and the old media (newspapers, radio, and TV) are merely contributing to the problem. By attacking wikileaks with silly trumped-up charges, they have not stopped anything. They have only guaranteed that the new media will develop diversity of paths.
Individuals who have knowledge, even documents, that they believe should be made public, will always find a way to do so. Before the "news" media became consolidated and controlled, they would just send it to the Washington Post or some other newspaper. Now, they will publish it themselves.
I tended to see WWI as a stalemate that the Americans helped the Allies tip the balance of; it may have ground down in the Germans' favor in an alternate timeline.
I can also see a isolationist US continuing to be that way sans a Pearl Harbor; WWII in Europe would depend on whether Britain can hold out like they did in reality, who breaks Molotov-Ribbentrop and how, and whether & how Japan actually wants to tangle with the USSR or vice versa.
Yeah yeah, too many variables.
I listen to both RIAA and non-RIAA stuff if I like the music, tangential business/politics nonwithstanding.
More media leaking documents. Seems like vi need to cancel al-Jazeera and the Guardians Visa and Mastercard accounts.
Well, lets see what Avigdor Lieberman has had to say.
Hmm, mass murder and ethnic cleansing. Sounds pretty psycho to me.
Self-immolation is not all that uncommon, it just rarely makes the world news. I do not think self-immolation by Palestinians would make anything significant happen, unless it happened in large numbers.
Finally! A year of moderation! Ready for 2019?
There are lots of sources of alternative media, on the Internet especially.
Beyond that, many people in the US have personal ties to people elsewhere in the world. Many of my co-workers and fellow students have friends and relatives elsewhere in the world, and those friends and relatives pass on both first-hand accounts and news from their parts of the world. The grapevine is not reliable, but it does shake up complacency with mainstream US media from time to time.
1600 papers you say, then it is a kilo leak. ;P
Reporting works so much better without hyperbole.
Carbon based humanoid in training.
they were willing to give up parts of their own land
Excuse me, but was there ever a "Palestinian" country?
There was Israel but there was no-such-thing as "Palestine".
NO-SUCH-THING
Not then, not now, not ever !
People all over the internet are so fond of pointing out that you would be uninformed if you only watch MSM. I've gotten so tired of this; because I wonder how many people still exist that are MSM-only viewers.
I'm not saying that there's *nobody* who just watches NBC Nightly News and considers themselves informed. It just seems that it's rapidly diminishing number of people. I don't have statistics to back it up though. I suppose ratings would be a good place to start; but you need some kind of rating that's not just a "TV rating", which is obviously out of date for such a study.
At any rate, the very fact that so many people no longer consider primetime news a serious source, kindof makes the "MSM-only viewer" a bit of a strawman.
For all intensive purposes, "whom" is no longer a word. That begs the question, "who cares"?
Sounds like your Israeli friend is a typical Israeli leftist -- when the left is in power, dissent is dismissed as "against the rule of law", but when the right is in power, it's all about "they're destroying our democracy", "they don't reflect the will of the average voter", etc. In fact, look at the results of the last Israeli election, and you'll see that the current government definitely reflects the will of the Israeli citizen. A recognizable majority of Israelis are right, and the right's numbers are only growing as more Israelis realize the failure of the peace-at-any-cost philosophy. cf. the recent complete breakdown of the Labor party.
May I suggest another first-hand perspective?
Livni should not have said your version of the sentence, because it is not true - the current government that came to power shortly the aforementioned negotiations was markedly more right-wing than the one in which Livni served.
Look, I don't like the current government. I didn't like the Olmert and Livni government either. But to claim that it was not democratically elected, or that it does not reflect the will of the people, would be misleading. A small majority of the Knesset seats is held by parties clearly identified as the "right wing" - Likud, Yisrael Beytenu, Shas, etc. Many, and possibly most of the voters of these parties outright object to the creation of a Palestinian state in the west bank. The rest of these voters want a government that is "tough", and do not care much if the Palestinian state is created or not - they're not sufficiently interested in it to vote to any party that is seriously committed to a 2-state solution.
It's true that Yisrael Beytenu ostensibly claims to support some form of a 2-state solution - as does parts of the Likud - but you can see from the lack of willingness to negotiate just how uncommitted they really are. From decades of experience of living in this country, I can assure you that almost no right-wing voter is going to protest the lack of peace talks.
Now, if you claimed that the elections do not represent the will of the people because the west-bank Palestinians don't get to vote, then you'd be somewhat correct (some of the Palestinians do have their own government now, of a sort). But as long as you're talking about Israeli citizens, the current government has very firm implicit support for its line of no-serious-negotiations. The main pressure they feel from the electorate is not to cede any territory.
A final note - none of them is a psycopath. It's just that these governments and their voters do not care much about democracy. The way some of them see it, the Arabs were pretty much ready to murder every Jew in this land back in 1948, and to repay those Arabs with anything less than genocide is being "generous". I don't agree with that point of view, but I can see where they're coming from.
> "We do not like this suggestion because it does not meet our demands"
We hold the knife by the handle.
There's English Al Jazeera which you can buy at least in Finland as a part of pay tv packages. Apparently they're by far more balanced with their reporting than the Arabian version is. Not too surprising, perhaps, considering their target audience.
Oh my God, I already speak German! (not an ethnic German)
So long as Israel continues to function as a US military colony there will be no resolution of this issue - except by the extermination of the Palestians, which the Israelis are gradually working towards.
Just to pick a few points from the guardian article..
"How Israeli leaders privately asked for some Arab citizens to be transferred to a new Palestinian state." - yes indeed, lieberman and his ilk have long said this.. nothing private about it. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lieberman_Plan
"The intimate level of covert co-operation between Israeli security forces and the Palestinian Authority." - security cooperation has long been part of the deal with the PA, nothing new about that.. it collapsed during the intifadas but otherwise has continued at various levels. It is also mentioned in the 2001 Tenet plan.. http://www.mideastweb.org/tenet.htm
"How Palestinian Authority (PA) leaders were privately tipped off about Israel's 2008-9 war in Gaza." - huh? Were they not watching TV? Or looking out the window? It was not exactly a surprise. Anyway again it is public knowledge and a matter of record that there is security cooperation between israel and the PA.
It also suggests the pals were basically handing over all the land israel wanted except for a handful of settlements yet still the nasty israelis rejected it. Actually those few "settlements" included cities such as Ariel which has a University and 10,000 students, jewish and arab.. It's no surprise the israelis were not going to just abandon it.. they abandoned all of gaza already and that didnt exactly help the peace process. Of course some would say it shouldn't be there in the first place but anyway..
Fuck Israel and fuck you americans how support them. To bad the jews survived WW2, they now use it as a pretext todo the same to others (Palestinians). I look forward to Iran throwing the bomb. Nope Im not a muslim, Im a european atheist.
Except that the leak is about the previous government...
I can't believe you were modded interesting (and not off-topic), but of course, it's /..
You've been reading too much bad fiction and believing it. Your should be aware that you have been manipulated by multinational corporations brainwash.
It was never palestinian land either. That area has been "owned" by the other larger tribes in the area, neither the Jews nor the Palestinians ever owned it except as the chattel of others.
Add to that most of "Palestine" is under Sudan and Sudan (and Jordan) treat the Palestinians no better than the Jews treat them and you have a lot of "so what" going on.
If the leaks are correct, though, here the Jews are being arseholes. That's nothing to do with what right either side has with the ground.
And now my question is - why it wasn't leaked by Assanage? I worry that Assanage might be not so honest as he is being protrait to be - he might have some agenda and leak only things people behind him want to leak. Its just these little things I base my judgments on but its exactly this kind of news I was expecting not to see on wikileaks.
Hamas is pissed off and is claiming this shows that the Palestinian authority is in bed with Israel. So what side was exactly willing to make more concessions? It would be like the democrats agreeing to do X knowing full well the republicans can and will block it anyway.
Diplomacy, it is a lot more complex then people think. There are rarely just two sides to deal with.
For instance, one of the simplest solutions to all this would be to build a wall around Israel and make the occupied bits the problem of the Arab nations on whose ground they are. Yeah, because Egypt, Jordan, Syria and Lebanon want that... NOT!
How many Palestinians want to have Israel become arab land BUT with Jewish wealth. We could relocate all the jews to a safe place. But then Israel would be the poor dustbowl it has always been. Not many Palestinians keen on that. Why do you think blockades that stop them going into Israel hurt their economy so much?
Diplomacy doesn't just deal with a dozen parties with different needs but parties that themselves have different and often conflicting needs and wants.
These leaks show very little of that. Because they are still the public musings of career diplomats who have made it their trade to hide the truth.
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
These 'leaks' are just the usual carefully crafted agitprop that we have come used to in the mainstream media. Anyone who wants to be informed about the details of the many power struggles in the Middle-East reads academic journals, follows the statements by the foreign ministries closely, and corresponds with the negotiators, which is surprisingly easy and informative. The fact that the mainstream media fails to inform the public well is caused by human inability to grasp the consequences of other societies (America, Europe, Middle-East) being different in structure. Both the inability of journalists as well as readers/watchers. The only real problem upholding an agreement between Israel and the Arab population in the former British mandate of Palestine are neighboring countries of which the leadership cannot tolerate a democratic flourishing Arab state, because it would undermine the stability of their own rule. We once had a semi democratic Arab state that did well, which was Lebanon. We all know how that was finished by rulers like al-Assad. Once the price of oil gets below $25 a barrel for a sustained period of time, countries like Iran will no longer be able to spend billions of dollars per year in destabilizing Gaza and the West Bank and other territories. It is horrible to see that the governments in Europe and the US fail to address their opponents in the Middle-East, while a few dictators find our weak spots consistently and exploit them to the fullest.
he doesnt have any 'leaning' whatsoever other than night clubs and playing music in them as dj.
Read radical news here
yeah, he sounds like a leftist alright. and how did you come up with that half assed conclusion ? pulled out of your butt ?
he doesnt have any leanings politically.
and heres avigdor liebermann for you.
http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=1963090&cid=34978892
Read radical news here
that's pretty much psychopath for me :
http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=1963090&cid=34978892
Read radical news here
a noticeable amount of the previous government is in this government. livni was in the earlier coalition too.
Read radical news here
If anybody knows the academic research behind this (without the politicking) that would be really useful.
Summary and citations.
Given that there are more Muslims in the Israeli Parliament than there are in the US Congress
Statistics fail : Israel has a greater percentage of Muslim citizens than the U.S. (about 10 times more) i.e. you are comparing values without accounting for population demographics.
I'd say they're probably more secular than the US in reality
Do you really think that a system of government that includes state religious schools is more secular than the U.S., where the Constitution explicitly prohibits that kind of thing?
Livni was in the previous coalition, she is now the head of the opposition.
when did that happen ?
Read radical news here
Except that Livni was the foreign minister in the previous government, and is currently in the opposition...
The whole art of negotiation is changing due to these leaks. You would think that a greater transparency would be a byproduct, but there is also the result of increased security and cloak and dagger type of behavior. Then you have leaks that were controlled to either provoke a response or pass on misinformation. All this leads to a level of complexity that surely will hamper any negotiation process. Until we get to a point where the politicians and diplomats can no longer hide anything, (good luck with that) I think these leaks just muddy up the process.
The election were held in 10th Feb 2009, the current government was established in 31th of March. So, about 2 years ago.
Israel has been moving to the right quite dramatically over the past decade or so, with every point of friction being exploited perfectly by nationalists like Netanyahu and Lieberman both to extend the conflict and build support for it within Israel. Left and right are always very fluid terms, but on the Palestinian issue Israelis have been adopting the views of it's right wing, with some polling now indicating that a majority of Israelis oppose a two-state solution.
As for Lieberman, he has repeatedly been the subject of corruption investigations by the Israeli police resulting in recommendations for indictment. His influence peddling, bribery, fraud, money laundering, and ties to shady Russian business organizations are all by now very well documented.
I can't read your post because your lack of capitalization makes me angry.
Seriously, what is it about some people that can't stand informality in an informal forum? You are really incapable of considering someone's opinion or facts simply because of the informal method they use to describe it? Should /. reject all submissions that have sentence fragments, poor punctuation or flawed grammar as well? I am simply sick of all the grammar spelling nazis whose only contribution to the conversation is to nitpick about the way someone else presented their ideas. Leave if it is that difficult to comprehend, or at least stfu about it.
Tequila: It's not just for breakfast anymore!
[from what I can tell] ALL the U.S. media outlets skim over or completely ignore world issues (esp like what happened in Tunisia last week). This weekend, Wikileaks tweeted about the NYTimes being a shill for the US government (because NYT didn't ask pressing questions about Quantico treatment of prisoners), and my initial reaction was an eyeroll (there's a difference between incompetence and "shilling"), but I imagine that's how most of the world sees US press.
Problem w/ that is, Americans [voters] are being left somewhat unawares of how we're being represented and handling diplomatic issues (or even what the issues are!). We're being fed [alarmist] stories about the economy and politicians, celebrities, and other crap that the media outlets believe drive up ad revenues, but if we don't have some kind of real world news, so we can hold our reps accountable, the idea of representative democracy fails.
I have a higher opinion of Americans than the news outlets, and wish the mass media would toss in some mid-east stories throughout their "2012 will it be the end" reports. Not every viewer would be interested, sure, and I guess freedom of the press means the press doesn't have to report anything of real value, but the press OUGHT to feel it's somewhat their job to keep Americans informed of worldwide issues.
I believe the description is a bit biased.
On what basis does it claim the Palestinian side weak ?
In my humble opinion years of government sponsored terrorism has made them quite a guerrilla force.
The Palestinians would easily take down many European countries and Canada as well.
The Israelis have been fighting for 50 years so they aren't as easy that's all,
but the Palestinians aren't weak at all.
This is why they say negotiating for your state while Israel is building settlments is like negotiating for a pizza pie while the other person is eating the pizza.
"The Palestinians affirmed their position that negotiations are based on UNSCR 242 and 338, while the Israelis continued to assert their claims to land within the 1967 line and stressed they are not "giving" anything back. The Israelis backtracked on swaps and would not discuss swaps unless Ma'ale Adumim, Givat ze'ev and Ariel are discussed."
The Israelis are making a mockery of justice and the Palestenians have no one with enough power to stand up for them. I hope the Boycott movement catches on and does what the governements of the world have not done.
http://mondoweiss.net/2011/01/israel-rejects-the-biggest-yerushalayim-while-palestinian-negotiators-plead-what-more-can-i-give.html#more-34124
As an Israeli I tell that there's a growing right wing majority in Israel.
Israelis have had enough of peace talks. Most Israelis think that Israel should exploits is military superiority to achieve it's political goals even if that means harming the Palstinian assperatiotion for independance.
A large majority of the social elite, media academe etc are left wing though. Meaning they are willing to give up land for the sake of peace and betterment of Palestinian lives.
Former US secretary of state Condoleezza Rice reassured Israel that the US military presence in Iraq should calm any Israeli security concerns "from the east," minutes from a 2008 trilateral meeting between Rice and the Israeli and Palestinian negotiation teams reveal.
Discussing the needs of Israel regarding Palestinian security forces in a future-Palestinian state, former foreign minister Tzipi Livni expressed concern over a third-party military force protecting a Palestinian state's external borders. Secretary Rice inserted, "At this time there is no threat from the east because our forces are in Iraq and will stay there for a long time." Chief Palestinian Authority negotiator Saeb Erekat added, "For a very, very long time."
http://www.jpost.com/DiplomacyAndPolitics/Article.aspx?id=204986
Will this be on CNN? Fox? Will the leaders of our government respond this?
No. Cause thats the type of democracy/freedom we have...we only learn what our government is doing when government documents are leaked on the internet....
Looks like al-jazeera has launched a portal for leaking documents...something called the "Al-jazeera transparency unit"
http://www.ajtransparency.com/
http://www.ajtransparency.com/how-submit
In order to protect the identity of the submitters they recommend
-encrypting files to be uploaded using PGP with their public key
-using the Tor network to protect the identity of the submitter....
-also the submission forms are ssl secured..
Well they certainly seemed to have covered their bases
I heard that somewhere
If I remember right Hitler was elected at first.
There's not much to be an expert about. Arabs are stupid assholes and they'll sell each other out at the first opportunity. Jews are smart assholes and they'll sell anyone who isn't a Jew out at the first opportunity.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
It was Colonel Mustard, in the library, with the pipe.
I will only comment on one other point. What exactly is wrong with the offer to transfer parts of Israeli territory with predominantly Arab population to the Palestinian Authority? Your "source" refers to "Israeli territory with Palestinian populations". If these people are Palestinians, then is it not reasonable for them to live in the Palestinian state? And if they absolutely must remain Israeli citizens, then why are the called "Palestinians"?
Here are some actual quotes from Lieberman's inaugural speech: http://www.danielpipes.org/6258/avigdor-liebermans-brilliant-debut Does not sound like a psycho to me. Sounds like someone who is actually seeing the reality of the situation.
Lieberman proposed that the West Bank be divided into four cantons, with no central Palestinian government and no possibility for Palestinians to travel between the cantons.
That's even worse than the original Israeli proposal (3 sections, Israeli army controls travel between them, external borders, ports and airspace, and can shut them at will).
Your "quotes" are from electronicintifada.com, hardly an unbiased source. Actual quotations, together with context would be much more helpful.
Don't be so lazy, go look for yourself. Every one of those was quite thoroughly covered by mainstream media within Israel at the time. For example, try searching the Haaretz website.
The point is that in his capacity as the foreign minister Lieberman has been making statements that make sense, even though his manners can use a lot of work. http://www.danielpipes.org/6258/avigdor-liebermans-brilliant-debut
yes
Read radical news here
That's not the only result... Suicide bombing and deadly terror attacks emanating from the West Bank have dropped dramatically since the wall went up. The wall is not a long term solution...but it certainly helps to reduce violence in the near term.
My God can beat up your God. Just kidding...don't take offense. I know there's no God.
A single state solution is what Lebanon has. It didn't work out very well (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lebanese_Civil_War).
-- Support a free market in the field of government
Try replacing "Jews" with any group. Most social groups are incapable of seeing their own shortcomings.
Slashdot readers. Definitely.
(And yes, I include myself in that.)
Pardon for posting AC in a controversial topic -- I lost my account a decade ago.
There were lots of ruckus regarding the peace talks within the leaked embassy cables, if you happened to read them.
The major pet-peeve was with Egypt being the arbiter between the players; an incompetent arbiter while at that. This notion was repeated several times by different diplomats and politicians, whom claimed in unison that the continuous Israeli conflict was most notable destabilizing force within the Middle East. Suggestions were made regarding potential alternatives whom could actually get the process moving. However these complaints have been largely ignored.
Now, going all conspiracy theorist here..
But at the End of the Six Day War, Israel (with United States diplomatic "assistance") made a pact with Egypt. Egypt avoided the complete slaughter of their cornered army divisions, and Israel got something in return.
This event is a major turning point in Egyptian foreign politics. I claim it has a major effect to the situation at hand. Is this unthinkable?
Ps.
Whomever claims the situation is nothing but shades of grey, with both sides standing on equal footing -- wake up. Even a ten year old could tell its not quite like that when presented with undisputable facts (such as treaties, events, maps, numbers -- irrefutable evidence). Propaganda is a strong tool, blessed are those not corrupted by it.
I have to call you out on your reference to Pslam 82. This is not in fact at all a reference to polytheism any more than the use of multiple names of God in the Hebrew texts are. Please be aware that this type of theory comes from Christian athorities who wish to "prove" that they, not the Jews, had the one and only contract with God. Rather than trust Wikipedia on this, please consult with your local Orthodox Rabbi, he will most likely be more than happy to explain this matter.
Wow, just wow. Did you copypasta this from stormfront or come up with it all on your own?
This is the same "science" that talks about how the Ashkenazi are really Khazars.
How does the conditions of the Charedi refute c6gunner's point?
At one time the USSR was more than happy to arm its Arab proxy client states and their Arab non state actor proxies. We all know how well that worked out. Also as far as "barely enough food to eat": first that is propagandist non fact, secondly, how would arming people give them more food?
Humans started writing 5000 years ago.
http://goo.gl/eSqS
Hence no religion is older than 5000 years.
Govt must constitute a panel to rewrite US Constitution and Quran
Evidently you use a different definition of "accurate" than others.
"Middle East peace" will be an oxymoron until radical Islamic Jihadists are exterminated. At the rate they're blowing themselves up, hopefully it will be sooner than later.