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
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
... conveniently omitting any mention of Peru.
The person who leaked this has raped me.
Please arrest him immediately. Thanks.
"'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
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
...but not the right to expand by force.
Yeah, except they were willing to give up parts of their own land, and you didn't bother to read the story since it doesn't fit your moronic prejudices.
RTFA you Fucking Moron. Seriously, get your head out of your ass and fucking READ IT. The Palestinians are the ones doing all the giving here, Israel is still WAY outside it's fucking borders, but stupid fucking racist retarded cunts like you are the reason it can get away with it.
One day in the future we'll all be saddened that Israel was the child of ethnic cleansing and racism, and chose instead of becoming a beacon to inflict misery upon a new set of innocents.
And where did you leave new jersey motherfucker!!??
We tried to leave it in Antartica, but the penguins sent it back.
Similar to the upcoming US election results
How long before the world's secret services adapt to the "megaleak" phenomenon, and start using it as a tool to spread propaganda?
What do you mean "start"? False flag and disinformation campaigns have been a staple of foreign policy for at least as long as recorded history.
Similar to the upcoming US election results
You mean like the Arabs that lost the west bank and gaza during the six day war and the yom kippur war did?
So we set the marker in the ground only where _YOU_ think we should start over?
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.
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
Try replacing "Jews" with any group. Most social groups are incapable of seeing their own shortcomings.
And I guess Hitler killing millions of Jews was their fault too, eh?
If you ask an ultra orthodox Jew, you might even get a Yes as answer. A minority opinion among them is that European Jews were punished by god for not living orthodox.
(Just to be clear: I don't agree with that. I merely wanted to answer your question.)
Um, there were no Jews 3,700 years ago. A monotheistic religion that would later become Judaism was just getting started. Even the first "proto Jews" weren't strictly monotheistic (the Hebrew Bible / Old Testament contains fragments of polytheism, eg. Psalm 82) which -- at least by today's standards -- would not qualify them as Jews...
As for your Pharaoh comment: There is not a single piece of archeological evidence that hundreds of thousands of people migrated away from Egypt and wandered through the desert for 40 years.
So either the Exodus never happened and the story is just made up or the ancient people of Israel were the cleanest people ever by not leaving any pottery, weapons, etc. behind....
It's actually a lot more complicated than that. My advice when people ask me about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is that if you think either side is right, it's because you don't know anything. Spend any time really studying the issues and you realize that there's nothing but shades of grey in this conflict.
They would send it back too, only they would put lead in it first.
"I don't care about the Constitution!" --Bill O'Reilly, November 17, 2009
, 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.
Hmm, That would be a significant improvement. It would give NJ some redeeming value, lead prices are going up after all.
Let's do it.
Constitutional rights may be respected, repealed, or modified; but they must never be ignored.
vi users? *Ducks*
Ducks and Beavers have their little tiffs, why do you think the yearly game between them is referred to as the 'civil war'.
I read the story, and I didn't see Palestine offer the one thing that will force Israel to compromise: a credible commitment to peace.
What exactly would they have to offer that you would find a "credible commitment"?
"I don't care about the Constitution!" --Bill O'Reilly, November 17, 2009
"of course, the old accounts also describe Amazon warriors."
You do realize that there is significant evidence that at least part of the Amazon myth is based on reality right ? Genetic evidence at that. Based on the oldest writings about them - they had entered Europe and Greece from the Russian Steppes to which they later returned. In the steppes are Burial Mounds in which were found the bodies of woman with the adornments of warriors. That's already a big hint.
It gets better, we know for a fact that the people who lived in those parts of the steppes later migrated from Russia toward Asia - and were the ancestors of Genghis Kahn's hordes. To this day their descendants expect women to fight as well as men - and here it gets really interesting. A small minority of Mongol children are born as blonds, and as far as we know - it's only EVER daughters. Apparently suggesting a female-only gene that causes blondness in a small minority. Genetic testing of some of them found a clear mitochondrial DNA link (that is maternal only) with the bodies found in the Steppes.
It's not absolute, nothing in science ever really is - and less so in archeology because evidence is *always* incredibly sparse, but right now the evidence we do have, suggests that at least part of the amazon legend as written by the first Greek historians was, in fact, true.
Unicode killed the ASCII-art *
If you go back and read the same Bible most of the West does, you'd see the Jews are constantly their own worst enemy.... they rise to the occasion under extreme suffering, only to wallow in the gutter when everything goes their way. It's like a micro cell of humanity... it's happened before, it will happen again... 60 years ago somebody tried to exterminate one part of their ethnic group, yet they can't have any kind of grace or honor with people lesser than them. It's straight out of Dickenson where somebody with everything claims injury because they had to clean a little poor kids guts off their carriage and it ruined their day.
The problem is that most of the "Jews" that ended up in Israel after WW2 would best be termed "carpet baggers". Most of them were from other well-to do places. It was founded as a "fairy tale" religious state... like if Pat Robertson and Dick Cheney had their own country. I think part of why Americans are starting to find it so vulgar is that it mirrors what the Americans did to the Indians not that long ago... and they're starting to realize it was a mistake.
From a purely "biblical" point of view, the land being squabbled over is the same land Israel failed to take back in the time of King David and the Philistines. There is a prophesy that it would NEVER be their land... and 4000 years later it's still the case. They are trying to take land their OWN religious text says they won't ever get.... They're trying to starve them out, to cheat on their peace treaties, etc, etc. when 60 years ago those people were just "folks" of the land. In ANY western country (like Bosnia, Serbia, Kosovo, etc) we'd call out Israel for "Ethnic Purges" which is exactly what they're doing. It's high time they stop getting a free pass to randomly execute residents of their country... we overthrew Saddam for the same kind of crap.
Babylon, Persia, Greece, Rome, Crusaders.... all gave the jewish people a chance to participate in their cultures, then wiped them out... then the next guy gave them another chance, rinse n repeat. The UK/USA is another in a long line of big world players that felt the Jewish people earned great respect.... watch them squander it all just as fast!!!
My opinion is that in the next 5-10 years Israel is going to step over the line with Iran and the US will have to put them down for their own good (and to save our own face with the UN), wipe out all the stuff we've sold them... or 8 other countries will try to wipe them out. Iran is playing a game of talking big, but being careful not to actually violate any international laws, while at the same time stepping up response to minor violations on their own borders. It's a clever game to talk smack, but make sure the other guy throws the first punch. Russia and China have too much invested in Iran to let the US knock it over too... I think those two would hit the veto button on any military action against them.
To the victors go the spoils. The Arabs started both those wars and the arabs can live with the consequences.
... is what we would say, if we were six years old and/or unfamiliar with the concept of a pyrrhic victory.
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.
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.
The Hitler excuse is starting to wear pretty thin. Some of my relatives died in the death camps (my mother's family were German Jews who left the country in the '30s, but not all of them got out in time), so I'm not exactly unbiased on this issue, but every time someone calls Israel to task for their behaviour the reply is always 'but... Hitler killed loads of Jews'. He also killed loads or homosexuals and gypsies, but these groups don't seem to get to use him as an excuse for behaving like asshats several generations later.
I am TheRaven on Soylent News
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 /..
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.
If you read a little more closely, you might have noticed that "Hitler killed a lot of Jews" was in response to "Jews have had problems with their neighbors for 3700 years" -- it was challenging the strong element of one-sided blame in the latter.
If the critics of Israel being asshats spent a little more time criticizing Israel's neighbors when the neighbors were being asshats, instead of coming across as stereotypical haters (technically, anti-Semitism isn't quite accurate here), then perhaps both Israel and its neighbors would have a better sense of when their behavior was outrageous.
If anybody knows the academic research behind this (without the politicking) that would be really useful.
Summary and citations.
Bury their weapons and take an oath never to raise them again, except in self-defense.
See, there's a problem already even in the first sentence. Given how the Israelis are treating the Palestinians (choking off inflow of critical supplies, bombing civilian architecture such as power plants and claiming it's in "self-defense", retaliating against every attack by killing more civilians than the attack killed, et cetera) how is the Palestinian use of weapons not already in self-defense? It's a community using weapons to defend itself against outside aggression and violence. Even if the Palestinians do concede that what they're using weapons for now is not self-defense, how do you handle it when Israel acts aggressively again, and you and the Palestinians have a different definition of where the "self-defense" line lies?
Note that I don't take the Palestinian side in this. I think both sides need to make changes. But I see Palestine held to a literally impossible standard by Israel apologists, and I have a problem with that.
"I don't care about the Constitution!" --Bill O'Reilly, November 17, 2009
Oh please don't forget that gypsies, homosexuals, etc. were more of an ideological "by-catch". Though the Nazi ideology hit them, too, the main theme was "Kill the jews! And do it thoroughly!". That's kind of a difference.
Nope, not really a by-catch at all. Nazism had a particularly nasty, but otherwise fairly typical, eugenics-based ideology. All of the killings - of the Jews, the gypsies, the homosexuals, the disabled, etc - were aimed at one goal: purifying the population.