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Israel To Join CERN As First Non-European Member
First time accepted submitter WorldPiece writes "More accurately, first non-European full member. This comes with some opposition from groups pushing to boycott Israel academia in response to the Israeli government's policies. 'It is a vital part of our mission to build bridges between nations. This agreement enriches us scientifically and is an important step in that direction,' CERN's Director General Rolf Heuer, a German physicist, told the signing ceremony."
Politics have no business in science.
I do not fail; I succeed at finding out what does not work.
Israel is actially in West-Asia. Geographically that place was never considered to be a part of Europe. However there are strong cultural ties.
BDS is one piece of weapon in an arsenal diplomatic warfare. Yes, weapons can be used to push peace, but they are not, generally, considered a "peace device".
BDS is particularly evil for several reasons. The most ironical is that it attempts to collectively punish all Israelis for what Israel is supposedly doing, thus using collective punishment to protest collective punishment. Presumably, this is okay because it's done by "the good guys"(tm).
More to the point, BDS strives to prevent the other side from voicing its opinion to argue whether the acts protested are real, or just products of propaganda and distortion. In that respect, BDS is just another propaganda employed against Israel. Weapons may, in some rare circumstances, bring peace, but propaganda seldom does.
More to the point, however, BDS strives under all that is "Academia". I can sometimes agree that economical sanctions are in order (nothing that Israel has justified, but I can see how others might disagree with that sentiment). I can understand a cultural boycott, though don't see how it ever does any good. An Academic boycott, however, is never justified.
True discourse and exchange of ideas, some of which you might not like, is the cornerstone of academia. Shutting down someone else's voice is never an academic thing to do, least of all for political reasons.
Shachar
That government has no right to exist except by the force it uses to subjugate the natives.
The same could be said of any government. That's what a government is.
"It is a vital part of our mission to build bridges between nations."
I thought CERN was all about science. What's this about building bridges?
International co-operation is pretty critical in science, without touching on politics at all. That's one of the great things about conferences. I went to a conference in the US earlier in the year, and met someone doing a PhD in hydrology. After chatting with them, it turned out that as part of their work they had collected a pretty comprehensive set of deep-sea water samples for an area I was interested in. I work on marine microbiology, and my university has no way of collecting deep-sea water samples. After a little discussion and a few polite emails later to her P.I., they kindly gave me pretty hefty aliquots of water from as deep as 5,600m below the sea surface. That stuff has been pretty central to the work in my PhD and like I said, I had no way of getting it on my own.
International co-operation, collaboration and exchanges of ideas and equipment/samples is incredibly important and doesn't have to involve politics one bit.
Wow, what a condescending reply.
Israel is not a "military state" in the sense that the military controls politics. It's a pretty dynamic democracy with a highly-diverse set of viewpoints. It also has a very educated labour force and a high number of high-tech companies and startups.
Israel has long been known for innovation. Just google "Israeli Innovation".
Those who propose BDS on the spurious basis of "Israeli Apartheid [sic]" are blind to reality, either out of ignorance or malice. While Israel is not perfect and its Arab citizens do suffer discrimination, it's nowhere near the level of South African Apartheid, and those same Arab citizens have more civil rights in Israel than in any Arab country.
I wonder how many potential Palestinian scientists have gone undetected, untrained and unfunded?
Probably dozens. Lebanon keeps Palestinians in poverty in refugee camps instead of integrating them into society. There were no universities at all in the West Bank prior to 1967. Hamas spends money on weapons that could be spent on education.
Yes, indeed. Palestinian society, much like the rest of the Arab world, allows a criminal waste of human potential by diverting energy towards a conflict instead of towards building up civil society. That's why most Arab states have a low (and usually declining) human development index and shockingly inefficient economies compared to Israel.
Devoting your energy to conflict and bitterness will destroy you before it destroys your enemy.
Your question is irrelevant because Israel is not South Africa. It's not even like South Africa. The odious comparison is simply a propaganda point used to demonize Israel.
They've probably blown themselves up so they can get to their 72 virgins already.
...presently occupied by rich, white Eurasians...
....has no right to exist except by the force it uses to subjugate the natives...
...Another remnant of the British Empire...
It's funny how that's not so much different from the United States :)
Funny.
I suggest you take a look at, e.g, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Start-up_Nation. Here's one paragraph (the source is backed by reference):
"How is it that Israel -- a country of 7.1 million people, only sixty years old, surrounded by enemies, in a constant state of war since its founding, with no natural resources -- produces more start-up companies than large, peaceful, and stable nations like Japan, China, India, Korea, Canada, and the United Kingdom?[4] The Economist notes that Israel now has more high-tech start-ups and a larger venture capital industry per capita than any other country in the world."
Or, e.g., browse the list that ranks the top-100 computer science departments in the world and observe where and how many times the Israeli flag appears in the list. (FYI, Israel has only 6 universities.)
etc. etc.
Most of the Jews in Israel come from Poland/Germany
That is not true. There are more Sephardim ("Oriental") Jews in Israel than Western.
See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Israel where it says: "Approximately 68% of Israeli Jews are Israeli-born, 22% are immigrants from Europe and the Americas, and 10% are immigrants from Asia and Africa (including the Arab World). Jews who left or fled Arab and Muslim lands and their descendants, known as Mizrahi or Sephardi Jews, constitute approximately 50% of Jewish Israelis."
I wonder how many potential Palestinian scientists have gone undetected, untrained and unfunded?
From TFA: "In a news release on the agreement, CERN said Israel had supported Palestinian students studying and working there, as well as sending mixed Israeli-Palestinian contingents to its summer study programme."
No, the modern day country of Turkey is Asia Minor, because it was previously the Roman Imperial province of Asia and we later decided that there was more to Asia than just Ionia. The part of the Middle East that Rome controlled was called the province of Syria (due to the Assyrians) and it included the modern day countries of Syria, Jordan and Israel. Today we just consider the whole thing Asia, though where it ends is really just drawing line in the sand. For instance, is all of Russia in Asia?
Politics IS a science. And science has politics. I wonder how many potential Palestinian scientists have gone undetected, untrained and unfunded?
As a student at the Technion, Israel's premier university, I can tell you that Arabs are very disproportionately overrepresented there. That's fine, there is good reason: the Arabs have strong motivation to work hard and push ahead. Despite the huge number of Arabs in Israeli universities, I do not recall a single political or racial event in my time at the Technion. Not one.
It is dangerous to be right when the government is wrong.
Turkey actually straddles Europe and Asia... the line between the two continents goes right through Istanbul.
It just doesn't look that way on the map because maps use water for designating boundaries, not continental plates.
To be fair, water was discovered a fair while before continental plates.
Ah, right. BDS is "collective punishment" hence equivalent of Israel keeping the entire Gaza on the brink of collapse. How very perceptive of you.
And theft of the Litani.
"Flyin' in just a sweet place,
Never been known to fail..."
Wow it's great Israel is a democracy. Do the Arabs in the West Bank get to vote in elections?
It's some democracy you have there when only Jews and a few token Arabs in the north can vote. Or where you have to, as of 2010, swear to a loyalty oath in order to vote - unless you're a Jew. You're not that bright spouting this democracy nonsense here - this is not the mass media where that stuff is spouted without question, with the other commissars nodding their head, this is a discussion forum on which you can be challenged.
The point of BDS is not to demonise the average Israeli(like you seem to believe) but to make Israeli citizens realise that it is the fault of the government which THEY ELECTED AND SUPPORTED that they are being shut out by the rest of the world. It is intended to remind them, peacefully, that they have the power to change this by electing a government whose policies do not violate international laws. If that means their scientists are blocked from participating in international projects due to BDS then it is upon the scientists, as some of their society's more educated members, to articulately protest to their government to alter its policies. Do you believe there is a better solution that regular citizens in the rest of the world could employ?
Are you seriously suggesting that refusing to deal with people on a voluntary basis is somehow equivalent to blockading them, denying the importation of food after calculating the absolute minimum calories required to prevent mass deaths and joking about how it's "like a visit to the dietician, the Palestinians will get a lot thinner but won't die," destroying their capacity to make food by destroying chicken farms and flour mills, destroying sewage treatment pond retaining walls so they spoil farmland, destroying their electrical plants then denying the importation of parts to repair them, destroying thousands of homes and refusing to allow them to rebuilt by forbidding the importation of building materials, and denying the export of what little they do produce so they can't have any economy?
Did you read that article? There may be de jure equality but the situation on the ground is very different.
Don't pretend that Israel is some poor, put upon liberal democracy. It isn't. That said, it seems churlish to refuse scientific cooperation with them. Isolation will only serve to make them more paranoid, more reactionary, and more likely to lash out in response to threats.
If we can put a man on the moon, why can't we shoot people for Apollo-related non-sequiturs?
If Gaza is not Israel, then why did Israel have commandos with machine guns rappel onto a flotilla boat bringing food to people in Gaza? As far as the "area under their control", the area in the case of the flotilla raid was international waters. You know, international waters, like where the USS Liberty was when Israel killed 34 of its crew. It's funny how people sailing on a ship with food in international waters are the ones "agressively awaiting to attack any Israely they see", while the commandos rappelling onto the boat with machine guns (the "any Israelys (sic) they see" I guess) are not the aggressive ones. The Israeli commandos were armed with machine guns, the flotilla passengers were armed with nothing but pieces of wood from the mast and knives they grabbed from the kitchen.
For a military state such as Israel, it is impressive that every now and then they come up with innovations; not very many, but they do come up with them.
I can cite two clear counter-examples in tech. If you posted on a computer that using an Intel chip newer than an Pentium IV, the technology came from Intel's Israel development center. If you've played a game using a MS Kinect, that also came from Israel.
Well, there's spam egg sausage and spam, that's not got much spam in it.
Not really. They have many more traits in common with their Arab neighbours, even if they have a very hard time accepting it. Hebrew is closely related to Arabic, they eat similar foodstuff and have similar rules about what they can and can't eat and drink, similar religious rituals (circumcision for example), similar genetic makeup, music and so on.
Football Odds
Do you even think that Israel would exist today without US backup?
Well, it's impossible to answer "what if" questions, but Israel didn't receive substantial assistance from the US until after the 1967 war and it survived quite nicely from 1948-1967.
It is intended to remind them, peacefully, that they have the power to change this by electing a government whose policies do not violate international laws.
But what if I disagree with you that my government is, indeed, violating international laws? If you will not hear what I have to say (because you are boycotting my academia), then how will you find out in case you are wrong?
BDS is about saying "there is no chance we can possibly be wrong, and no further discussion is necessary", which is another way of saying it is just propaganda. It is also the anti-thesis of the most fundamental core academic value.
Shachar
Just the systematic purging of Arabs in Jerusalem (by refusing permits to Arabs to modify or build new houses) though is not something you would expect to find in any true developed democracy conscious of it's minorities.
You can wonder if a democracy can operate properly at all if it's main issues are related to security
The fact that most of Israel's neighbours are fucked up countries as well (although Jordan doesn't seem bad imho and we can hopefully see positive things developing in Egypt) doesn't plead in any way that Israel is a democratic country. It'd be like comparing the US to Mexico and conclude that the US doesn't seem to have a lot of gun fights
Repeat after me: We are all individuals
Long though it may be, your comment still contains far too many mischaracterizations to comfortably fit into a single paragraph.
1. I am not suggesting BDS is equivalent to anything in particular. I'm just stating that it is part of a propaganda warfare, rather than, like its supporters claim it is, a peaceful tool.
2. I'm not sure where you took that quote from. It fits with neither anything I'm aware that Israel has done, nor anything I'm aware that my (not always smart) leaders have said. Care to give the precise origin?
3. Long list of things Israel has, supposedly, done. Some of those are just a figment of someone's imagination. The rest are taken out of context so as to say "Israel is bad", rather than the more accurate "war is bad". In other words, it's propaganda.
But without real discourse, how can you tell the two apart? How can you get the context you need in order to evaluate whether Israel is indeed so much worse than any other country involved in urban warfare since the beginning of time, or did your sources merely mislead you into hating a country for no really good reason? If you shut yourself off from criticism, you are willfully ignorant. Be so, if you wish, but don't call yourself "intellectual" or an academic.
Shachar
Engineering is union of applied science, business and art.
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
I thought CERN was all about science. What's this about building bridges?
CERN was founded in the post second world war period. Part of its aim was to build bridges between nations THROUGH science since it was well recognised that science provides a common goal to work towards and that scientists are usually pretty open minded about most things. It certainly worked for me - as a Brit I now have many friends and colleagues scattered around the globe from a huge variety of different national, cultural and religious backgrounds thanks to CERN.
"Wow it's great Israel is a democracy. Do the Arabs in the West Bank get to vote in elections?"
Do Afghanistanis get to vote in American Elections? How about Iraqis? What about Mexicans?
Arabs in the west bank are not Israeli citizens, they're a people who live in disputed territories, although many of them are Jordanian citizens.
Israeli Arabs are citizens, however, and do vote in elections and are otherwise protected as equal citizens. Considering they make up more than 20% of the Israeli population and government, I'd hardly call that a "token" minority.
For one, it's not the Palestinian nation that's firing rockets, it's individuals within, and for two, most of the rockets they're firing don't actually have a warhead, and aren't actually any more dangerous than a bottle rocket. Rather different than using live ammunition and launching rocket air strikes, no?
I have never said that either side is without fault. I am, however, drawing issue with people who seem to believe that no fault at all lies at the feet of the Israelis. As I said previously, it's mutual, and it's not ever going to end if they keep on down the current road they're taking. Somebody needs to put down the weapons, and take the other side seriously, and frankly, I think it should be the ones using live ammunition, bombing schools and hospitals, and running a blockade preventing even basic construction supplies from entering the other side's territory that should be making a few concessions here. They're essentially holding the entire west bank hostage, and that's not a negotiating position... it drives the people within to acts of desperation. If they want the rocket attacks to stop, then perhaps they should stop doing things that make people desperate enough to start lobbing rockets their way.
I mean, do you understand the economic opportunity Israel is giving up on with the way they're handling the west bank? Most of it is arable farm land, in an area that's mostly desert. If the news reports of the rent situation in Israel are to be believed, there's a major economic problem developing in Israel in the near future, and having a supply of cheap food should be a high priority. If they took the Palestinians seriously, they have an opportunity to develop a major bread basket for the area, and work with the Palestinians to develop sustainable economic prosperity. but apparently, they'd rather just kill each other.
You may want to read this article:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/7375994.stm
There's some interesting numbers regarding the numbers killed by each side that may help you to understand why I'm less than sympathetic to the Israelis... nearly 10x as many Palestinians have been killed by Israelis as have been Israelis by Palestinians, and that's using the Israelis' own numbers. I'm not particularly sympathetic to the people shooting rockets into Israel either, but it's naive to believe that Israel is doing no wrong here. As I said in my previous post, neither side is without fault, and both sides are doing wrong to the other. It's not going to end until somebody matures enough to put down their fucking gun and start taking the other side seriously.
Europe and most of Asia are on a single plate- the creatively named Eurasian Plate (the Urals were created 250 million years ago and no longer mark a plate boundary). If you were to divide up the continents by plate boundaries, Eurasia would be a continent that stretched from half of Iceland to half of Siberia, but would not include the Arabian peninsula or the Indian subcontinent. Also, parts of the Pacific Northwest would be in Juan de Fucaland or something. So that's not the best way of doing things. While it may not be supported by geology, I think there is merit to the idea that Europe exists as a place distinct from the rest of Eurasia due to the long history of cultural separation (though by this notion, it's silly to consider vast Asia as a single location). The whole "Urals are the boundary between Europe and Asia" idea comes from an eighteenth century cartographer named Philip Johan von Strahlenberg, but really was only done to draw a definite (but arbitrary) line between two entities that had been considered separate since antiquity.
"FDA staff reviewers expressed concern about the number of patients who were left out of the study because they died."
"criminal and inhumane state" This accurately describes every middle eastern country that has been trying to remove the Jews for the past 70+ years. Since their military efforts showed that they could not fight their way out of a wet paper bag they switched strategies by abandoning those who where living in the sovereign territories that Jordan and Egypt controlled leaving them stateless. A small sacrifice to make sure Israel has to deal with all the problems. If the Palestinians are really suffering as much as people claim why has Egypt, Jordon, Lebanon, or Syria never allowed the Palestinians to settle in their lands? Why have all the Arab countries not kept their promise of providing financial aid? Of course they would never do this because it would mean putting an end to their relentless harassment of Israel. The Arabs are only using the Palestinians as a tool to provoke Israel into violent confrontations that result in Palestinian casualties so they can loudly proclaim to the world about the evils of Israel. They don't give a shit about the people being killed they just want feed their propaganda machines. Anti-US and anti-Israel rhetoric is the only issue that the entire Arab world can agree with and their politicians take full advantage of this to distract the masses and keep them from looking at their own government corruption and incompetence.
Two sources for the quote are ynet and Haaretz. The NYT passed it along too. The BBC reported on documents obtained by Gisha from the Israeli government detailing the blockade and containing estimates of the calories required by Gazans to stay alive.
It took five minutes to Google this up. Open your eyes and see that what has been happening for decades now is real and not just some "narrative." Of course, I'm sure you can cook up some explanation of why it's a military necessity to prevent food from entering Gaza.
How this ever got to +4 insightful I will never know. Rather, it just shows how much pro-Israel propaganda has been successful in the west. The image of Israel as a beleaguered state, surrounded on all sides by enemies while it is only defending itself is largely a creation of the media and has no relation whatsoever to the actual history of the region.
I will not go into a discussion of the conflict here as any not pro-Israeli posts get modded -1 overrated to oblivion but I will point out what I do know and that is wrong with your post. Though if anyone is interested "The Gun and the Olive Branches" is a very informative book(written by a British journalist).
"If the Palestinians are really suffering as much as people claim why has Egypt, Jordon, Lebanon, or Syria never allowed the Palestinians to settle in their lands?"
Each nation has its own situation, in the case of Lebanon(my country, which, by the way, is a democracy and where a large segment of the population does not really have a major issue with Israel -- the Christians, ~40% of the population, and I happen to be one), the Palestinians aren't given citizenship because doing so would upset the current balance of force in the country, tilting it towards the Sunni Muslim side. Given that the country is still in the early stages of recovering from a devastating 15 year civil war(in which the Palestinians played a major role igniting, but they weren't alone) and given the fact that Sunni/Chiite tensions continue to rise year-on-year in the whole area almost all analysts agree that attempting to assimilate the Palestinians into Lebanese society would shatter what fragile equilibrium currently exists.
"Lebanon keeps Palestinians in poverty in refugee camps instead of integrating them into society"
"Yes, indeed. Palestinian society, much like the rest of the Arab world, allows a criminal waste of human potential by diverting energy towards a conflict instead of towards building up civil society. That's why most Arab states have a low (and usually declining) human development index and shockingly inefficient economies compared to Israel."
Of course in the case of Lebanon this has absolutely *nothing* to do with a 15 year civil war, sparked, in large part, due to the presence of the Palestinian refugees in the first place. From the Wikipedia article on the Lebanese civil war:
Between 1968 and 1975, there was a gradual buildup in the assertion by Yasser Arafat's PLO of its right to fight Israel from the Lebanese south, in spite of Lebanese sovereignty. A sample of the incidents includes: Palestinian roadblocks in the city of Beirut killing Lebanese civilians; kidnapping by PLO militants of Lebanese gendarmes; Syria's backing of the PLO included punishing Lebanon by closing the borders between the two countries, which choked the Lebanese economy; incursions by Palestinian contingents of the Syrian Army such as the Palestine Liberation Army, the Al-Saiqa commandos, the Yarmouk Brigades, etc. into Lebanese territory and carrying out massacres against Christian villages in the north and the east; ineffective attacks by PLO militants against the Israeli north were often met with massive and deadly reprisals by Israel against the civilian population; the assassination of the Israeli ambassador in London led to Israel bombing Beirut Airport and destroying the entire fleet of the Lebanese national air carrier - MEA, Lebanese army air force bombing the Palestinian camps, etc. After these incidents, several accords were signed between the Lebanese State and the PLO (examples: The Cairo Accord of 1969 and the Melkart Accord of 1972), only to be violated by the PLO, then backed by Syria, Libya, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait and Egypt.
In the spring of 1975, this build-up erupted in an all-out conflict, with the PLO pitted against the Christian Phalange, and the ever-weaker national government wavering between the need to maintain order and catering to its constituency.
See: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lebanese_Civil_War#First_phase_1975.E2.80.931977
The peace that Lebanon has had since 1990 is still extremely fragile and integrating the Palestinians into Lebanese society would probably shatter that. But go ahead, plunge a nation back into civil war for the sake of potential scientific talent that is being wasted. I hate it when people do armchair politicking, things aren't as easy or uncomplicated as you think. I've spent the past 4 years of my life trying to make sense of this region I was born in, reading books and watching documentaries. And things are just incredibly complex. I used to think "just integrate the Palestinians" and I now know it's just not possible, do that, and someone *will* take up arms and fight it(yes, it's wrong, but they'll do it, so you better make your decision knowing this), I've talked to enough fundamentalists on all sides to know that most people here just aren't rational. But then, can you blame them? Almost everyone I know who's over 40 has lost someone close and feelings and emotions surrounding this issue are still very high.
So what you are saying is that Lebanon and the other countries have pretty much the same damn problems as Israel does when it comes to dealing with the Palestinians so they can't really be expected to contribute aid (other than weapons) to the Palestinians but Israel should just bow down to the demands of the knuckleheads currently running half the government and the terrorists running the other half of the Palestinian "government". This is a textbook example hypocrisy. Those countries use the ongoing conflict to hide their own failures and it has been a winning strategy for the past 60 years. Egypt, Jordon, Lebanon, Saudi Arabia, Syria, and any other country in the vicinity do not want this current conflict to end. A conflict born on their aggression and abandonment of their own citizens who were living in the areas under dispute. Israel did not claim that land the Arabs withdrew from leaving a stateless population behind to harass Israel with. Any way if the Palestinian-Israeli conflict is solved who would be left to blame all their problems on? Their are a lot of Arabs making serious money because of this ongoing conflict. From weapon sales to stealing international aid and reselling it to those who actually need it while making a hefty profit. Arafat died a billionaire with bank accounts scattered all over the world. They certainly don't want the situation resolved either.
Holy horse-shit batman, +5 Informative?!?!?!?! You may have missed the Arab Spring, revolutions carried out by predominantly educated Arabs trying to live a middle class life. I have many problems with previous (and probably future) Arab governments, but suggesting they devote their energy to conflict and bitterness only shows your ignorance. In fact your entire post is hyperbolic bullshit. Who are your sock-puppets? Or is Slashdot being overran with ignorance?
Dude, Just look through yesterdays headlines or past 20 years of headlines and you will see that Hamas, who is theoretically in charge of at least half of the Palestinian territories, doesn't want UN recognition of Palestine statehood at the UN because that would mean acknowledging the fact that Israel actually exists. Their only goal has always been the elimination of Israel and all of it's non-Arab population. They have even put it in writing in their organization charter. They have been quite clear that this is and will remain their goal. Would any country in the world put up with a neighbor that is continually and loudly calling for their destruction on a daily basis and have proven more than willing to use indiscriminate violence to accomplish their stated goals? When the US vetoes or convinces enough UNSC members to vote against the Palestinian UN statehood recognition the wide scale violence will start again but this time around I seriously doubt that Israel will give a damn about any international sensibilities or how many people they kill as long as it removes the threat once and for all. The UN or NATO will do nothing to prevent this. The only country with the assets and capabilities on the scene is the US and they will not engage or obstruct Israel military operations. There is 0 percent chance of this happening. If Turkey or any other country in the area such as Iran was to try and hit Israel while they are busy with the Egyptian, Jordanian, and Syrian border fights the US would and could stop them. The US government and military understands that an Israeli defeat would end with half of the middle east ending up under a radioactive cloud.
I, again, only speak about that country which I know most, Lebanon, and almost anyone I know here, and even the politicians, do want the conflict to end.
Great! What have you done, so far, to achieve that goal?
Second, the difference between Lebanon(or any other Arab state) and Israel in this issue of difficulties dealing with the Palestinians is that the Arab states did not take their lands away from them, nor did they force them(directly or indirectly due to conflict) to migrate en-masse from their lands.
This is simply a lie. Well, a collection of lies, really.
Te very charter which established Israel as a state also invited the Arab inhabitants to stay and be part of the process of building a new nation. The Idea that Israel forced them to move is ludicrous. The (Arab-initiated) war which followed certainly did lead to much occupation and displacement - namely, the territories currently known as "Palestine" were occupied by Egypt and Jordan, all Jews were expelled, and the Arab inhabitants were largely ignored and/or mistreated. This is all a matter of public record - I don't know how you can expect to tell such baseless lies and not be challenged on them.
Given your commenting history and the fact that - in your first comment to me - you've chosen to resort to personal attacks in lieu of a rational argument, I was debating whether to bother responding at all. I'm quite certain about what it is that you would do with pearls. Still, I suppose I can at least give you a couple links. Here you go:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Palestine#Partition_between_Israel.2C_Jordan_and_Egypt
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Israeli_Declaration_of_Independence#Context_and_content
Those two pages document what I've said, and give you a starting point for further research, should you be so inclined. Don't expect any more until you change your attitude and demonstrate the ability to learn.
Israel has been at war or preparing for war for the past 65 years. Underestimating their war fighting capabilities is the main reason the Arabs were defeated in 48,67, and 73. In 73 the Arab attack was well coordinated, well trained, and well armed with USSR modern weapon systems such as SAMS, Sanger wire guided anti-tank missiles, night vision targeting scopes in their tanks, and a whole bunch of Soviet "military advisors". It was also Israel's biggest intelligence failure and they were taken by total surprise. The Arabs outnumbered the Israelis 6 to 1 in tanks and 20 - 1 in troops and they still got their assess handed to them. Israel will not go gently or quietly and frankly I doubt too many people in the world really give a shit if a couple of million Arabs go out in a radioactive flash. And with all the recent bullshit at the UN, embassy attacks, or Turkey's veiled threats the Israeli government has been very quite. And that should worry people. If Israel truly believes it is useless to engage diplomatically because it won't make any difference that only leaves a few options remaining. Capitulation or full on military actions and the chance of capitulation is pretty close to 0.