Aces High Bulletin Board
General Forums => The O' Club => Topic started by: Udie on April 23, 2002, 03:51:56 PM
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So what happened to all the people that were spouting out about the "masacre" in Jenin?!!?!?!!!?!?!?!
Awefully quiet now that the PA propaganda has been proven false.
I fail to understand how any educated westerner could believe a word that comes out of Arafat's mouth.
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So true...
I guess the next lie will be the "massacre of Gaza City".
I belive the fighting in Gaza will be lot worse than the west bank was:(
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It wont work...the Israelis have hidden the "evidence" ...the commies and arabs can live on that lie for ages now.
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Just so interesting that scuicide bombings stopped.
WTG Sharon,You are my hero:D
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I rather wait what people U.N sent there will find.
Oh and I'm already worried what will happen if those massacres did happen. I really hope they don't find too many bodies under those ruins 'cause in that case U.S needs to think really hard how to continue its policy in middle-east.
Anyway Israel has showed its true colors already and because actions of Sharon it also lost many supporters.
I believe people remember Jenin and Ramallah similar way as they remember Shabra and Shatila and in both cases same person was behind these actions.
Personally I think Israel did not achieve anything. Actually I believe it created whole new generation of suicide bombers and terrorists. And that is not good news to U.S.
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Originally posted by ~Caligula~
Just so interesting that scuicide bombings stopped.
WTG Sharon,You are my hero:D
I hope you're not celebrating too early...
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Originally posted by Staga
I rather wait what people U.N sent there will find.
Oh and I'm already worried what will happen if those massacres did happen. I really hope they don't find too many bodies under those ruins 'cause in that case U.S needs to think really hard how to continue its policy in middle-east.
I hope they don't either....
Anyway Israel has showed its true colors already and because actions of Sharon it also lost many supporters.
I believe people remember Jenin and Ramallah similar way as they remember Shabra and Shatila and in both cases same person was behind these actions.
If you're talking about the masacre committed by Lebanese Christians I think you need to study the history and see that they were once themselves the victom of "ethnic/religeous clensing by the pal's and that they acted out of vengence not from Sharon's orders.
Personally I think Israel did not achieve anything. Actually I believe it created whole new generation of suicide bombers and terrorists. And that is not good news to U.S.
There haven't been many homicide bombings lately have there? They stopped the situations that was at hand. Future generations of murdering bombers has already been handled by Arafat's propaganda machine.......
The following article could be propaganda, but personaly I'm more inclined to believe CNN (YUK) over Yes sir Arafat...
http://www.cnn.com/2002/WORLD/meast/04/22/jenin.fighter/index.html
"It was like hunting ... like being given a prize. I couldn't believe it when I saw the soldiers," he said. "The Israelis knew that any soldier who went into the camp like that was going to get killed."
"It was a very hard fight. We fought at close quarters," he said, "sometimes just a matter of a few meters between us, sometimes even in the same house."
Asked about the allegations of a massacre, Mardawi said, "By my own standard, what happened there was a massacre. But if you are asking, 'Did I see tens of people killed?' Frankly, no. In my group, we were in an area with no other people. Three fighters with me were killed. Later when we started to move from place to place, we saw destroyed houses and could smell bodies."
He said there were about 100 Palestinians in the battle -- 60 to 70 fighters from the camp and 20-30 members of the Palestinian security forces.
The UN is a joke and a fraud! They are the fools who caused this whole mess to begin with and are defenately biased against Isreal now. Lets see just after 9/11 USA gets kicked off the human rights commitee and Syria gets put on in our place?!?!?!?! Syria?!?!?!
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I rather wait what people U.N sent there will find.
Following a deliberation held Tuesday evening, Prime Minster Ariel Sharon decided that Israel would suspend its agreement to cooperate with the United Nations fact-finding mission to the Jenin refugee camp. Well-informed sources in Jerusalem cited three reasons for the decision.
1. The criteria for appointing the candidates to the mission differ from those agreed upon by Israel.
2. The committee has a political rather than military make-up. Israel is of the opinion that the mission should be made up largely of military experts.
3. Israel was consulted on very few matters regarding the mission, and issues that were agreed upon were altered.
Israel's ambassador to the UN, Yehuda Lancry will inform Secretary General Kofi Annan of the decision later Tuesday.
Earlier Monday, Annan announced that former Finnish President Martti Ahtisaari would lead the team, which would also include Cornelio Sommaruga, former president of the International Committee of the Red Cross, and Sadako Ogata, the former UN high commissioner for refugees.
One of Israel's main criticisms - the absence of a military man on the inspection panel - was answered when Annan upgraded U.S. Maj. Gen. William Nash from military adviser to the team, to a full-fledged delegate. Nash commanded a multinational force in Bosnia in 1996 and was the U.N. administrator in northern Kosovo in 2000.
The official Israeli sources were critical of the composition of the team, saying they were "surprised that the secretary general did not consult Israel about its makeup. We expected the fact finding about operations would be done by military experts." But they reiterated comments by Foreign Minister Shimon Peres to Annan, that "Israel has nothing to hide."
http://www.haaretzdaily.com/hasen/pages/ShArt.jhtml?itemNo=154990&contrassID=1&subContrassID=0&sbSubContrassID=0
Nothing to hide at all...
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Your hero seems to be a crook on top of a reincident war criminal. :rolleyes:
http://www.jpost.com/Editions/2002/04/23/News/News.47526.html
Police question Sharon for 7 hours
By Etgar Lefkovits
Prime Minister Ariel Sharon was questioned by police for nearly seven hours yesterday about alleged fund-raising violations during the 1999 Likud primary campaign in which he was elected party chairman.
He was questioned by members of the National Fraud Squad at his Jerusalem residence. Some reports said he was questioned under caution, meaning that his testimony may be used against him in court.
Clearly embarrassed by police leaks to Channel 2 Sunday night about Sharon's impending questioning, the police spokesman's office officially declined to comment on the interrogation throughout the afternoon, issuing only a terse statement confirming Sharon was questioned.
The questioning centered on Sharon's alleged involvement in the operation of fictitious companies used to transfer funds from foreign donors to Sharon's campaign.
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Read this. It's from an Israeli newspaper, not a Palestinian one.
The building under discussion is a five-story structure in El Bireh that houses the Palestine International Bank. It was captured by the Israel Defense Forces on Friday, March 29, the first day of its incursion into Ramallah and its twin city, El Bireh.
For 23 days, a large force of soldiers remained in the building, on the bank's three floors (plus the basement) and on the two floors housing private consulting and advertising agencies (including the Sky advertising agency, which won the monopoly on Palestinian advertising on Palestinian television and is run by Tarek Abbas, Abu Mazen's son).
For three weeks, four or five armored vehicles and a tank or two were permanently positioned next to this building that symbolized a milestone on the road to developing the Palestinian yuppie business sector, considered a pillar of the concept of "building a peace process by developing the private sector." The building and the main branch of the Palestine International Bank were described as a "five-star hotel"; it had marble corridors, designer furniture, matching drapes, state-of-the-art electronics, pleasant waiting rooms, the latest computers and a parking lot for clients' cars.
For three weeks mounds of dirt and flattened cars dragged into the middle of the adjacent streets ensured that no one would approach the building. On the third day of the IDF's invasion of the city, March 31, two days after it had taken over the building, the soldiers were observed bringing some things into it and removing other things from it. With guns aimed, they instructed journalists to leave the place and said they were searching for weapons and wanted individuals.
Two days ago, walking from room to room and floor to floor, one found it was possible to discover what had transpired in this building.
The IDF force's attempt to break into the main safes was apparently unsuccessful and the locks were ruined. Bank officials' safes were broken into and their contents disappeared. The safe of the automated teller machine also could not be broken into, but the soldiers did manage to ruin the actual machine, which costs around NIS 40,000.
The soldiers smashed glass doors and windows; on some floors, they broke down walls, apparently in a not very thorough search for weapons that were not found (otherwise they would have broken down all the walls), tore out marble tiles, ripped out telephone wires, destroyed telephones (other equipment disappeared), broke a few pieces of furniture, littered the floors with food scraps and scrawled in Hebrew on the walls.
The state-of-the-art telephone switchboard (made by Telrad) was removed. The soldiers threw around files of documents while other folders disappeared or were found piled up in a corner of the room.
But the main focus of the force's mission was to destroy the bank's entire computer network.
"The saboteur knows about computers," concludes the bank's director general, Osama Khader, who on Sunday wondered around from room to room in a daze and pointed out the damages. The bank, which was founded in 1997, serves 16,000 clients. The up-to-date database of accounts, recent transfers, transactions, checks paid out to and received by customers - all was destroyed. The soldiers, Khader pointed out, damaged the main computer room, ripped out wires, took away diskettes and damaged the hard drives or took them away. The bank's computer terminals were all thrown around, broken or had missing or broken drives. Computer parts were found strewn around the courtyard and other parts were found charred in the pile of food that had been set alight.
"Please don't litter," was written on a piece of paper found hanging on a wall in the manager's office. The floor was covered with sunflower seed shells and coffee stains. There were blue booklets strewn next to demolition tools and hammers, and the stamp on each one indicated that they were a donation from the Kabbala Learning Center for world peace, love and human dignity.
There was a similar scene in the offices of Sky: a decorative wall near the entrance had disappeared; Tarek Abbas, the director, wondered where the wall had disappeared to: there was no trace of it. The clogged toilets emitted a stench. There were computers strewn about the room that had been damaged, disk drives that had been broken and hard drives that had disappeared. One drawer had had $1,000 in it and that too disappeared. A VCR disappeared. Children's toys marketed by the company were destroyed. All of the business cards of customers and potential customers had disappeared.
Similar and even worse scenes of destruction were uncovered two days ago in other offices in Ramallah and El Bireh (as well as in Nablus and Bethlehem) which the soldiers had stormed into: in the housing bank and in all of the Palestinian Authority's offices (except for the Ministry of Planning headed by Nabil Sha'ath and the Ministry of Sport and Youth), the computers had been destroyed by various methods and documents were tossed out, torn up and disappeared. The offices of human rights organizations, independent research institutes and non-governmental health organizations were destroyed: at the Medical Relief Committees' eye center, all the eyeglasses were found broken and scattered on the floor, the same organization's warehouse for aids for handicapped people was broken into and some of the equipment was destroyed; data bases and computers used by the research institutes to monitor health, agriculture and environmental and water quality were destroyed.
Officials at the Higher Education Authority thought that they had been spared the destruction: Last Friday, when the curfew was lifted for a few hours, its three floors of offices and six wings were still intact. Officials even made sure to leave the doors open so that the soldiers would not break them down if they wanted to enter the offices in their search for wanted individuals and weapons.
But on Friday night, the soldiers burst into the building. A neighbor counted 11 explosions and related that the soldiers remained in the building no more than an hour. On Sunday morning, Dr. Gabi Baramki, the authority's adviser on academic affairs and a former president of Bir Zeit University, hurried to the place. "So much damage in just one hour," he said stunned and searching for words to describe the losses incurred.
All of the computers were piled up in a few corners and blown up, along with the printers. The explosion tore a hole in the floor of one of the rooms. In the Ministry of Education, which had been broken into two weeks earlier, written documents, books and printed research papers were destroyed or had disappeared. In the offices of the Higher Education Authority, at least some of the hand-written documents remained intact. But as Baramki says, the general destruction indicates that the purpose of the operation was to strike at the infrastructure of Palestinian civil society, to cause it to regress, erase its accomplishments and halt its development.
The IDF also blew up the computers in the large Max supermarket in the city's southwest. A few Palestinian businessmen built it in 1998. Some of them had lived for years in the United States. The force entered the supermarket twice: once some food products were taken from the shelves, but that isn't what bothers Hisham Abd al-Rasul, one of the owners; when the computers were blown up or disappeared, the large supermarket lost all of its business records, receipts and orders.
The first time the force went into the store, it tried unsuccessfully to break open the safe. Two weeks later, the force returned with more appropriate equipment for breaking into safes. There was NIS 60,000 in the safe, but one day after the curfew was lifted, the supermarket's managers discovered that the money had disappeared. Neighbors and managers circulated this information in e-mails that were sent all over the world. After a few days, Civil Administration officials contacted Palestinian liaison officials and informed them that this was not the objective. The money was returned.
Dozens of Ramallah residents (and residents of other cities) were not so lucky even though many of them wrote in e-mails about the money, jewelry and electronic items that disappeared from their homes after IDF soldiers broke in or were positioned there. An eight-year-old girl's gold earrings, gold jewelry, cash (NIS 800 here, $400 there and more), VCRs and video cameras were hidden beneath a soldier's coat. Hundreds of people have been busy over the last two days cleaning the mess left behind by the soldiers, trying to straighten out the apartments and offices and recording the damages incurred: the office owners and private banks, at least, are planning to file suit against the IDF.
http://news.haaretz.co.il/hasen/pages/ShArt.jhtml?itemNo=154751&contrassID=2&subContrassID=5&sbSubContrassID=0&listSrc=Y&itemNo=154751
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Israel is colonizing the West Bank. The simple problem is that the Arabs are in the way, so the Arabs must be removed. It's operations like this that are the current way to remove them, by making life too difficult to stay.
Just like in 1947, when Israel wasn't satisfied with the land given to it under the partition plan, and so attacked Arabs towns and villages to force the inhabitants out. Towns like Haifa, that was supposed to be Arab, and that the Israelis shelled for days with mortars to drive out the Arabs.
The problem for Israel is that within the area of greater Israel, (ISrael, West Bank, Gaza), Jews make up 53% of the population, Arabs 47%. They have got round this problem by not giving votes to the Arabs of the West Bank and Gaza, but that is only a temporary solution. The permanent solution is expulsion, as Caligula has said on this board many times.
I don't condone terrorism, but if I were a Palestinian, being driven out of my homeland, I'd probably think differently. The Zionists were happy to use terrorism to found their state, it is hypocritical to condemn the Arabs for using terrorism to try to defend theirs.
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Originally posted by Nashwan
Israel is colonizing the West Bank. The simple problem is that the Arabs are in the way, so the Arabs must be removed.
Only some religious hardliners among jews are settling the West Bank. They also built settlements on Sinai once.
Most of israelis are not religious and strongly dislike their religious fundamental minority. They also have no wish to settle in those places - they mostly prefer to live in large cities.
When Israel signed peace with Egypt and did not need Sinai as buffer against aggression, they buldozed those settlements out of Sinai overnight.
The same will happen to West Bank and Gaza settlements if Israel does not need to control those territories for military safety - the israeli settlers would be evacuated again whether they want it or not.
Of course the peacefull solution is not in the interests of Hamas or other fundamentalists - they do not hide their intent of eliminating Israel altogether. They cannot allow palestinian life to improve - the better palestinians live, the harder it would be to find recruits...
miko
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If you're talking about the masacre committed by Lebanese Christians I think you need to study the history and see that they were once themselves the victom of "ethnic/religeous clensing by the pal's and that they acted out of vengence not from Sharon's orders.
Yes, but the IDF had obervation points over Sabra and Shatila, and observed the massacres in progress. Sharon authorised it, letting the militias in to the camps, ordering the IDF not to intervene.
An internal Israeli investigation found him responsible, and he was forced to resign.
Sharon has other war crimes in his past, however, like Qibya (69 civilians murdered on a cross border raid, similar (though much, much larger) to the ones Palestinians use now on Israeli settlements). Or like the murder of Arab women collecting water from wells in Katama.
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Only some religious hardliners among jews are settling the West Bank. They also built settlements on Sinai.
Most of israelis are not religious and strongly dislike their religious fundamental minority. They also have no wish to settle in those places - they mostly prefer to live in large cities.
When Israel signed peace with Egupt and did not nees Sinai as buffer against aggression, they buldozed those settlements out of Sinai overnight.
The same will happen to West Bank and Gaza settlements if Israel does not need those territories - the israeli settlers would be evacuated wether they want it or not.
Read what Sharon has to say about the settlements.
The Sinai was never considered in the same way as the West Bank, ie an integral part of Israel.
The Jewish communities in Judea, Samaria and Gaza are the realization of Zionist values. Settlement of the land is a clear expression of the unassailable right of the Jewish people to the Land of Israel and constitutes an important asset in the defense of the vital interests of the State of Israel. The Likud will continue to strengthen and develop these communities and will prevent their uprooting.
The Government of Israel flatly rejects the establishment of a Palestinian Arab state west of the Jordan river.
The Palestinians can run their lives freely in the framework of self-rule, but not as an independent and sovereign state. Thus, for example, in matters of foreign affairs, security, immigration and ecology, their activity shall be limited in accordance with imperatives of Israel's existence, security and national needs.
5. Jewish settlement, security areas, water resources, state land and road intersections in Judea, Samaria and the Gaza Strip shall remain under full Israeli control.
6. Israel will keep its vital water resources in Judea and Samaria. There shall be no infringement of Israel's use of its water resources
All from the Likud (current Israeli government) party platorm.
The comments about water are particularly revealing.
There are over 1 million Palestinians in Gaza, around 8,000 settlers. The 8000 settlers are allocated 75% of all water resources, the Palestinians the remaining 25%.
In the West Bank, settlements have grown to over 400,000 people, about half of them in and around Jerusalem.
The 200,000 settlers in the rest of the West Bank use as much water as the 2,000,000 Palestinians who live there.
Drilling of wells without a permit is illegal, and permits are restricted for Palestinians.
Even under Barak's proposals, all water rights were to be retained by Israel.
Of course the peacefull solution is not in the interests of Hamas or other fundamentalists - they do not hide their intent of eliminating Israel altogether. They cannot allow palestinian life to improve - the better palestinians live, the harder it would be to find recruits...
Or of extremists like Sharon, or the even more right wing parties that make up his coalition.
Go to this page
http://www.masada2000.org/cancerwithin.html
They represent an extreme wing in Israeli society, but the figures they present are broadly accurate. Israel cannot remain Jewish and democratic with the Arabs inside Israel. The goal of the right in Israel is to expel the Arabs. That cannot be done under peace, only under extreme conditions.
Sharon and others like him seek to bring about those conditions.
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Originally posted by Udie
So what happened to all the people that were spouting out about the "masacre" in Jenin?!!?!?!!!?!?!?!
Awefully quiet now that the PA propaganda has been proven false.
I fail to understand how any educated westerner could believe a word that comes out of Arafat's mouth.
LOL.
I dont know what propaganda news you are watching, but the main german TV senders - like ARD, ZDF, NTV, RTL or SAT1 - are all reporting about a brutal israeli massacre. None of these senders agreed in their reports with the official israeli version.
In these reports Jenin is considered as a war-crime like Sebrenica.
Since the massacre of Sabra and Shatila Sharon is considered in Europe as a war-criminal. He cant travel in many european contries, because there is arrest order against this war-criminal.
Now - lets wait what details the investigation teams will find out, if Israel agrees to let them in.
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Originally posted by babek-
LOL.
I dont know what propaganda news you are watching, but the main german TV senders - like ARD, ZDF, NTV, RTL or SAT1 - are all reporting about a brutal israeli massacre. None of these senders agreed in their reports with the official israeli version.
In these reports Jenin is considered as a war-crime like Sebrenica.
Of course they are...makes for a much better story.
I will wait until all the dust settles before believing ANY news source.
:rolleyes:
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Originally posted by Nashwan
Just like in 1947, when Israel wasn't satisfied with the land given to it under the partition plan, and so attacked Arabs towns and villages to force the inhabitants out. Towns like Haifa, that was supposed to be Arab, and that the Israelis shelled for days with mortars to drive out the Arabs.
You really need to read a history book man, beacuse this toejam is embarrassing.
Who started that first war now again?
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Originally posted by babek-
I dont know what propaganda news you are watching, but the main german TV senders - like ARD, ZDF, NTV, RTL or SAT1 - are all reporting about a brutal israeli massacre. None of these senders agreed in their reports with the official israeli version.
In these reports Jenin is considered as a war-crime like Sebrenica.
Since the massacre of Sabra and Shatila Sharon is considered in Europe as a war-criminal. He cant travel in many european contries, because there is arrest order against this war-criminal.
Now - lets wait what details the investigation teams will find out, if Israel agrees to let them in.
hey babek i watch ARD, ZDF and all the other german TV stations too,
sorry but i never heard anything about "war-crime like Srebrenica",
thats all speculations until the inverstigation team starts theyr job.
I dont like this way of propaganda from you, nobody from the press
where in Jenin during the fighting, so how comes the press talk
about "brutal israeli massacre" ? have you seen the massacre on TV ?
Gh0stFT
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Originally posted by Gh0stFT
hey babek i watch ARD, ZDF and all the other german TV stations too,
sorry but i never heard anything about "war-crime like Srebrenica",
thats all speculations until the inverstigation team starts theyr job.
I dont like this way of propaganda from you, nobody from the press
where in Jenin during the fighting, so how comes the press talk
about "brutal israeli massacre" ? have you seen the massacre on TV ?
Gh0stFT
Now dont confuse him with pesky details like "facts", "truth" or "evidence"...it ruins his theory.
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Originally posted by Hortlund
You really need to read a history book man, beacuse this toejam is embarrassing.
Who started that first war now again?
No kidding!
I would say to him that the Palestinians are refugees because they moved out of the area to allow Syria, Jordan and Egypt to come in and kill all the Jews. When the invading forces were thrown back the Palestinians suddenly found themselves with no home and surrounded by a very (understandably) unfriendly bunch of people who were supposed to be dead when they returned.
If I was an Israeli I would have problems with simply handing back this land to people who were anxious to see you slaughtered a few weeks previously.
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I am an Isreal supporter. I feel they are our best Allie in the Mid-East. I still see scenes of Arabs/Pala's burning our flag and cheering from the gulf war to 9-11. Those that support things like that can burn for all I care.
BUT... Isreal needs to be held accountable. They are not above "hate" crimes.... the passions over there are so intense I can see how something "bad" could happen. Hopefuly they'll show some restaint, or did. Hopefuly the stories of looting and such I'm hearing here are just that..stories.
No matter what happens I'll NEVER support the PLO or its cronies... they are our mortal foe. I'll never trust an Arab state...as I dont see how ONE has ever earned our trust.
I only hope we can still trust Isreal...
xBAT
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You really need to read a history book man, beacuse this toejam is embarrassing.
Who started that first war now again?
You mean when the Arab armies united to destroy the state of Israel just as it was born?
If you read the history, you will see the Israeli forces were on the offensive months before the Arabs.
I would say to him that the Palestinians are refugees because they moved out of the area to allow Syria, Jordan and Egypt to come in and kill all the Jews. When the invading forces were thrown back the Palestinians suddenly found themselves with no home and surrounded by a very (understandably) unfriendly bunch of people who were supposed to be dead when they returned.
Ah, the old myth that the Arabs were told to leave to make way for the Arab armies to come and conquer Israel.
Seems a strange way to make war, doesn't it?
Encourage the civilian population to leave, the people who can aid your armies with food, shelter, local guides, intel on enemy troop movements etc.
It's basically been admitted as a myth by the Israeli government. Read the memoirs of the leaders of the time, and it's obvious just how false it is.
Look at Deir Yassin, where the Stern gang and Haganah and Irgun combined to massacre a hundred or so Arab civilians. Haganah, the main Jewish military force, spread the story that they had counted the bodies of 254 Arab civilians, according to Mordechai Raanan to cause panic amongst the Arabs.
The Arabs accused Haganah of making the figures up to spread terror.
"...at the company and platoon levels, officers and men cannot but have been struck by the thought that the steady Arab exodus was 'good for the Jews' and must be encouraged to assure the security of 'Jewish' Haifa. A trace of such thinking in Carmeli Brigade headquarters can be discerned in the diari entries of Yosef Weitz* for 22-24 April, which the JNF executive spent in Haifa; "I think this state of mind should be exploited and press the other inhabitants not to surrender. We must extablish our State". On 24 April, Weitz went to see Carmel's adjutant, who informed Weitz that the nearby Arab villages were being evacuated and that Acre had been 'shaken'. "I was happy to hear from him that this line was being adopted by the Haganah command, to frighten the Arabs so long as flight-inducing fear was upon them"...Weitz, it appears found a responsive echo in Carmeli Brigade headquarters. It made simple military as well as political sense..."
"...the truth was different: The commander of the Carmeli Brigade, Moshe Carmel feared that many of the Arabs would remain in the city. Hence, he ordered that three inch mortars be used to shell the Arab crowds on the market square. The crowd broke into the port, pushing aside the policemen who guarded the gate, stormed the boats and fled the city. The whole day mortars continued to shell the city even though the Arabs did not fight..."
"...It was understood by all concerned that, militarily, in the struggle to survive, the less Arabs remaining behind and along the front lines, the better, and, politically, the less Arabs remaining in the Jewish State, the better. At each level of command and execution, Haganah officers in those April-May days when the fate of the State hung in balance, simply "understood" what the military and political exigencies of survival required...."
"...In accordance with Plan D, the Haganah and dissident Zionist groups launched a series of military offensives, the fully anticipated result of which was the Arabs' flight from Palestine. The attacks themselves were the most important single factor in the exodus of April-June from both the cities and from the villages...This demonstrated clearly by the fact that each exodus occurred during and in the immediate wake of each military assault. No town was abandoned by the bulk of its population before Jewish attack..."
"...The widely publicized slaughter at Deir Yassin, the massacres in Khirbet Nasr ad Din near Tiberias and Ein az Zeitun near Safad, the indiscriminate and protracted mortarings at Haifa and Acre, the use of loudspeakers broadcasting 'black propaganda' messages in Arabic, crop burnings and so on, spurred into exile those Palestinians not sufficiently impressed by the lightning assaults of the Zionist forces. Especially outside the major urban centers, it was standard Haganah and IDF policy to round up and expel the remaining villagers (usually old people, widows, cripples) from sites already evacuated by most of their inhabitants...."
"...Throughout March and April 1948, the broadcasts of AHC and neighboring Arab countries were consistently urging the Palestinians to remain in place..."
"...as early as December 1947 these broadcasts were instructing Palestinians to 'stay put and fight'. Furthermore, by and large the local leaderships and militia commanders whether in obedience to the AHC or indpendently, discouraged flight, even to the extent of issuing formal threats and imposing penalties, but it all proved to no avail..."
All from Benny Morris' Birth of a Nation, via the onwar.com forum.
Benny Morris is an Israeli historian, who used Israeli sources in writing his books.
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I see, Bennie Morris is the guy who has it all right, and everyone else is wrong.
mmmkay...
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Hopefuly the stories of looting and such I'm hearing here are just that..stories.
The story I posted about the looting, vandalism and destruction is by an Israeli reporter writing in an Israeli newspaper. It isn't propoganda.
As to the first post on this thread, don't speak too soon. The UN aren't being allowed in, neither are a Greek rescue team:
Israel is preventing a Greek team made up of 34 earthquake rescue experts from coming to Israel to help salvage bodies from beneath the ruins in the Jenin refugee camp, Palestinian and Greek sources have confirmed to Ha'aretz.
Queried on the issue, a spokesperson for the Foreign Ministry said, "Israel does not prevent humanitarian aid. We are aware of the problem and it is being handled by the relevant authorities."
A plane loaded with equipment has been delayed for two days at the Athens airport since the Foreign Ministry informed the Greek embassy that "there is no need for such a team."
http://www.haaretzdaily.com/hasen/pages/ShArt.jhtml?itemNo=155517&contrassID=1&subContrassID=0&sbSubContrassID=0
Talk of a massacre is undoubtedly overblown, as such things usually are, but Israel is going to very long lengths to make sure no one can dig in those ruins. Jenin is still a closed military zone, with the only way in involving circiting Israeli checkpoints.
4 bodies were recovered in Jenin yesterday, 3 teenagers and a 10 year old girl.
I see, Bennie Morris is the guy who has it all right, and everyone else is wrong.
Who is "everyone else"?
Benny Morris' works are widely respected in Israel.
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see, Bennie Morris is the guy who has it all right, and everyone else is wrong.
If you don't like Benny Morris' work, you could look for Erskine Childers, an Irish historian who went through the BBC monitoring service and it's American equivalent, looking for the broadcasts urging the Palestinians to leave. What he found were broadcasts urging them to stay, and calling the ones who left cowards and traitors.
Or you could try Mordechai Bar-On, a soldier in the IDF for 22 years.
Better yet, go to primary sources, like the records of some of Ben Gurions meetings:
"Regarding the Galilee, Mr. [Moshe] Sharett already told you that about 100,000 Arabs still now live in the pocket of Galilee. Let us assume that a war breaks out. Then we will be able to cleanse the entire area of Central Galilee, including all its refugees, in one stroke. In this context let me mention some mediators who offered to give us the Galilee without war. What they meant was the populated Galilee. They didn't offer us the empty Galilee, which we could have only by means of a war. Therefore if a war is extended to cover the whole of Palestine, our greatest gain will be the Galilee. It is because without any special military effort which might imperil other fronts, only by using the troops already assigned for the task, we could accomplish our aim of cleansing the Galilee."
Israel declassified many of the government papers in the 80s, and it has revealed a lot about what really went on.
The first documented Israeli version of the Palestinian exodus appeared as early as October 1948 in a report by a senior JNF official Yosef Weitz to the Israeli Government. "The migration of the Arabs of the Land of Israel was not caused by persecution, violence, expulsion …[but was] … deliberately organised by the Arab leaders in order to arouse Arab feelings of revenge, to artificially create an Arab refugee problem …". He also writes that the Arabs expected to return to their homes in a few weeks, not only to their homes but also to the houses and possessions of the Jews.
In 1952 Joseph Schectman, a prominent American Jewish writer and confidant of Jabotinsky, drafted a pamphlet for distribution by the Israel Information Office in New York. This pamphlet added the new claim that the Palestinian's exodus was promoted by "the Arab Higher Committee (Command), municipal authorities, local commanders and at a later stage, by Arab Governments themselves."
These two documents became the basis for all future Israeli and Jewish comment and analysis. Until the late 1980's the veracity of their claims was accepted without question. The "Arab orders" thesis moved from hearsay to historical truth through the quoting and requoting of these original documents by pro Israeli authors like Kimche, Eban, Syrkin, Sachar, Gilbert and even the anti Israeli writer, Moshe Menuhin. The novel Exodus, by Leon Uris and the film that followed established these views as historical fact. They all quote that "documented proof exists that the Arabs were promised they could return to their homes on the heels of Arab victories to loot the destroyed State of Israel." (Uris:1958).
But the truth is otherwise.
Ben-Gurion never urged Arabs to stay in Israel. In fact he instructed Rabin to expel over 50,000 Arab citizens from Lydda (Lod) and Ramle on July 12, 1948. Rabin issued the following order, "the inhabitants of Lydda must be expelled quickly without attention to age." The Mapam Mayor of Haifa, Abba Hushy did plead with the Arab minority in Haifa to stay.
On the other hand Weitz, Head of Settlement and Land Acquisition of the JNF wrote in his diary on April 22, 1948 that "the state of mind of the fleeing Arabs should be exploited" and that the "inhabitants of Haifa who had not left should be pressed to leave." After hearing from the local Haganah commander that two Arab villages outside of Haifa had been evacuated Weitz wrote on April 24 that "I was happy to hear that this line was being adopted by the command - to frighten the Arabs so long as flight-inducing fear was upon them."
In the months prior to Independence, Yigal Yadin, Head of the Haganah prepared an operation plan called Tochnit Dalet (Plan D). He explained that its objective "is to gain control of the territory of the Hebrew State and to defend its borders and to gain control of the areas of Jewish population and settlement outside the areas allocated to the Jewish State." He elaborated that "if Arab towns or villages occupied strategic points … the Haganah must undertake … the expulsion of the population outside the borders of the State."
Prof. Sir Martin Gilbert, the famed historian of the Holocaust and Israel, details in his most recent book "Israel A History" (1998) incident after incident of Palmach, Haganah and IDF actions that aimed "to clear out the Arab population." He quotes Yigal Allon, official historian of the Palmach, "We regard it as imperative to cleanse the interior of Galilee and create Jewish continuity in the whole of Upper Galilee."
The war hero of Israel, Yigal Allon, ordered the harassment of (Arab villages and towns) in order to speed up their evacuation. Only the leaders of Mapam, the socialist Zionist party, protested against this policy of "filling the roads with women, children and old men.".
Since the late 1980's, Israeli historians have gained access to declassified documents from the Israeli State Archives. Historians like Flapan, Segev, Kapeliouk and Benny Morris, published books that dared to challenge the amnesia, mythology and fabrication of traditional Israeli-Zionist history. These Israelis are proud Zionists and cannot be accused of running an anti-Israel agenda.
Morris found that direct Jewish expulsions in many parts of Israel was significant in the Palestinian flight. Morris however says, there is no evidence of a Cabinet or General Army Staff level decision to expel Arabs from Jewish areas. These historians found there was also no evidence of any blanket Arab Higher Command order to flee.
On October 21, 1948 the Government of Israel took a decision that was to have the most lasting and divisive effect on the rights and status of the remaining Palestinians who lived within the State's borders. The creation of military government security zones in the remaining areas of Arab habitation which prohibited residents' movement without permission and authorised the military to remove and transfer residents from their homes.
The reassessment of Israel's early history has radically transformed contemporary discussions about the Palestinian refugee origin and resulted in far reaching changes to the Israeli education curriculum. Its influence on the wider Jewish diaspora, Australia included, has not surprisingly, been more limited. But it is past time that we accept the evidence, based as it is on solid historical research. To continue to claim otherwise is to fabricate history.
http://www.ajds.org.au/1948.htm
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I'd think the cameras would be all over a "massacre"
Instead you see the same news clip over and over showing 3 to 4 body bags of adult size being laid out
The phrase:
"Israel killing Palestine civilians in Jenin" confuses me.
As the Pals do not have a military, what else is Israel gonna kill, who else are the suicide bombers?
I don't think CNN or MSNBC would state it as it really is:
"Israel is accused of killing murderous Palestine nutbugs in Jenin" :rolleyes:
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Ya know...here in the good ole U.S of A., we are hunting down and shutting down terrorists.
Israel does the same, and the PLO cries foul foul foul.
What I find hilarious (yes, I laugh at the PLO...gleefully, might I add)...is that they think the rest of the world should be *outraged* for the Israeli's saying enough is enough and stomping the living toejam out of them. The PLO seems to think hiding in the birthplace of Jesus Christ will win them something. They couldn't be more wrong.
All through this conflict, they have been hiding behind women, children and non-militants. To hide behind the birthplace of Christianity just shows how cowardly they are.
If the Arabs wanna truly "support" the PLO, come and get em. If they are your "brothers and sisters" in arms, then come pick up the trash and dont come back.
Israel is doing the same things we are doing in Afghanistan, Pakistan, etc. I find it "entertaining" that people want to condemn Israel for defending itself. The first, immediate result of their actions....the terrorism has all but stopped. Gee...
So I'm sorry, whenever I see a thread that starts with the Palestinians as the victim, I tune out. And I'm not Pro-Israel or Anti-PLO, etc....I'm just a pundit watching from the sidelines. Everytime Israel and PLO have talked of a cease fire or negotiations, its the PLO who violate it. Then condemn Israel for reaction....its that same old Tom and Jerry cartoon over and over again.
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Originally posted by Gh0stFT
hey babek i watch ARD, ZDF and all the other german TV stations too,
sorry but i never heard anything about "war-crime like Srebrenica",
thats all speculations until the inverstigation team starts theyr job.
I dont like this way of propaganda from you, nobody from the press
where in Jenin during the fighting, so how comes the press talk
about "brutal israeli massacre" ? have you seen the massacre on TV ?
Gh0stFT
Maybe you should put a little bit more attention to our news.
Here only three examples of news-reports of yesterday and today:
Yesterday - ZDF - Heute Journal - 21:45 - a report how israeli soldiers killed civilians in Jenin and how Israeli troops plundered safes and damaged car-park of the Goethe-institute (in one of the palestinian cities).
Yesterday - RTL - 0:00 - RTL-Nachtjournal - a report how iosraeli troops destroyed intentionally civilian buildings in Jenin in order to destroy palestine infrastructure.
Today - ARD - 13:00 - Tagesschau - a report how israelis killed a crippled man in a wheelchair by destroying the house and himself in Jenin with a bulldozer although the palestine neighbors informed them that the crippled man was in the house.
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Nashwan, I suggest that you stop pounding your head against this brick wall here. Doing so would save you major headache.
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Ok, lets compare two quotes shall we.
First this:
Originally posted by babek-
I dont know what propaganda news you are watching, but the main german TV senders - like ARD, ZDF, NTV, RTL or SAT1 - are all reporting about a brutal israeli massacre. None of these senders agreed in their reports with the official israeli version.
In these reports Jenin is considered as a war-crime like Sebrenica.
Wow..sounds pretty bad doesnt it? Brutal massacres fully compared to Sebrenica (where 6 000 people were murdered)
Lets look at Babeks version of things:
Maybe you should put a little bit more attention to our news.
Here only three examples of news-reports of yesterday and today:
Yesterday - ZDF - Heute Journal - 21:45 - a report how israeli soldiers killed civilians in Jenin and how Israeli troops plundered safes and damaged car-park of the Goethe-institute (in one of the palestinian cities).
Yesterday - RTL - 0:00 - RTL-Nachtjournal - a report how iosraeli troops destroyed intentionally civilian buildings in Jenin in order to destroy palestine infrastructure.
Today - ARD - 13:00 - Tagesschau - a report how israelis killed a crippled man in a wheelchair by destroying the house and himself in Jenin with a bulldozer although the palestine neighbors informed them that the crippled man was in the house.
And once again, Babek proves that he doesnt really know what he's talking about.
But then again, what he lacks in knowledge and sources, he makes up for in hate, lies and distorted exaggerated half-truths.
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Originally posted by babek-
Today - ARD - 13:00 - Tagesschau - a report how israelis killed a crippled man in a wheelchair by destroying the house and himself in Jenin with a bulldozer although the palestine neighbors informed them that the crippled man was in the house.
i saw this too, but you put it in the wrong light babek.
The cameraman was filming in front of a destroyed house,
interviewing an palestinian man, he was talking about his
missing brother (crippled man in a wheelchair),
the cameraman then filmed a empty wheelchair between the ruins,
thats all.
Is that proof enough for you that Israelis killed him ?
Why dont you speak about the ZDF news report who showed heavy armed
palestinians who use children and civilians as shield inside the
buildings. If the Israelis dont care about civilians they could blow
up each house from distance, but they got in very dangerous close combat
fight from house to house just to avoid civilian victims. All this
info from the same source you talking about (ARD & ZDF).
Gh0stFT
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Originally posted by Nashwan
http://www.ajds.org.au/1948.htm
For every source you quote I am sure that I can come up with one to contradict it....I just don't seem to have the time you do and frankly it would be a waste of time. You have your views, I have mine.
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cut them off without a dime.
see how brave they are then.
wussys with machine guns and arty killin civilians i spit on them.
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Originally posted by lord dolf vader
cut them off without a dime.
see how brave they are then.
wussys with machine guns and arty killin civilians i spit on them.
Best spit on the other side as well.
Ignorant fools strapping explosives to themselves and intentionally targeting the future of Israel, women and children at dances, restaurants and marketplaces.
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babek...how long is it going to take You to understand,
nobody really gives a toejam about what`s in the german TV about Israel.
I`m sure some IDF soldiers did things they shouldn`t have.
That`s just how things work.I never belived all Israelis were angels.But to bring up these incidents to picture the whole operation as a looting trip of the IDF is just plain BS.
Scuicide bombings seem to have stopped.PA terror infrastructure is destroyed.And pals now know what they`ll get if they start the bombings again.
WTG Israel
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Originally posted by lord dolf vader
cut them off without a dime.
see how brave they are then.
wussys with machine guns and arty killin civilians i spit on them.
You're talking about hezbula arent you? That's what they do....
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Some people are less naive, some more :)
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And some people just hate jews no matter what...
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And some people drink beer...
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...and some people should read this (http://www.jpost.com/Editions/2002/04/24/News/News.47622.html)
It`s from jpost.com,so some will say it`s biased.
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care for a little bet caligula ? i bet you that there are more (plural) suicide bombings in the next 3 months.
the palistinians however distastfull in their actions are being systematicly eradicated. what are they supposed to do? report to the adolf hitler memeorial kilns?
one side has rocks, grenades and aks. isreal has about a hundred billion in u.s.a. wepons, such brave men. if your homland was invaded you would do whatever you could to damage the invaders expecialy if you condsider your own death inevetable anyway. just like in viet nam they cant give up they know what is in store for them.
sherone wants the land and is willing to kill anyone to do it. it has nothing to do with religion . facists always wrap themselves in a flag of hes just another tired copy of the ones befor him
and dont cry jew hater im not . what these savages are doing has nothing do do with judaism.
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propoganda.
i guess the whole world hates jews? the only ones telling the truth are the isreali propaganda rags? cause it seems like they see a totaly different picture than all the other reporters. why do you post this blather. ohh your a zelot i forgot.
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LOL
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For every source you quote I am sure that I can come up with one to contradict it....I just don't seem to have the time you do and frankly it would be a waste of time. You have your views, I have mine.
I'm sureyou could, just as I could come up with sources to say the holocaust never happened, a plane didn't crash into the pentagon, and Elvis is still alive.
However, what I posted is accepted as fact in Israel. When the minutes of meetings are released, and the government archives are opened, theres not much you can do to deny it.
As I said, it's an accepted truth in Israel, even taught now in Israeli state schools as part of their history.
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Just like we could dig up dirt in every nation`s history.
What are you trying to prove?
Israel is a country that had and has to do some dirty buisiness to stay alive.Anyone who looks at what`s going on in the middle east can see that there will never be peace untill one side is completly defeated.I want that side to be the palestinian.Call me biased,racist,zionist or whatever You wish, I couldn`t give a damn.
Arabs don`t want the jews there,they will never accept Israel as a legit state.They`re trying to prove that the land of Israel has nothing to do with the jews,that Jerusalem was allways an arab city and the jewish temple never existed.
Too bad for them,because the jews are there to stay.And the jews will inflict massive pain and suffering on them untill they reallize their struggle is futile,or untill they are all destroyed.
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Israel is a country that had and has to do some dirty buisiness to stay alive.Anyone who looks at what`s going on in the middle east can see that there will never be peace untill one side is completly defeated.
The Palestinians have been completely defeated.
Their country has been occupied for 35 years.
There still isn't peace.
There won't be peace until Israel gives them a deal, their own country.
Israel won't do that because that means no more land to colonize.
Hence, no peace.
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Why should Israel give them any land?
Palestine`s not only Israel or the west bank but Jordan ,Syria and part of Egypt.How come palestinians aren`t demanding land from those countries?
Their desire of having their own country is by far not as strong as their desire of destroying Israel.
That`s just how it is,and that`s why Israel has to beat them over and over again.They just never learn.
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The US should drop H-bombs on both and be finished with it.
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Very nice idea..........next...
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Originally posted by Nashwan
The Palestinians have been completely defeated.
Their country has been occupied for 35 years.
There still isn't peace.
There won't be peace until Israel gives them a deal, their own country.
Israel won't do that because that means no more land to colonize.
Hence, no peace.
If I have time today, I'll go through your big wall of text you posted in this thread. It all depends on how much work there is. Let me just say that
a) there were no Israeli army before the state of Israel was created, and
b) the arabs attacked Israel within 6 hours of the creation of the nation.
I fail to see how it would be possible for Israeli army troops to be "On the offensive" months before the arab attack.
Leaving that aside, as I said, I'll try to find some time to go thorugh all the text you posted today. There are some things you should remember.
There is no, and there never has been any Palestinian country.
Some day there will be peace. By the way things are going right now, I suspect that will only happen after the Israelis decide that enough is enough and empty the west bank of Palestinians one way or the other.
It really is not possible to give the Palestinians a country of their own. Why? Several reasons, most notably:
1. They dont seem to want one, unless they get their rediculous demands met..and that wont happen.
2. Examples of (1) is the status of Jerusalem, water rights (kinda important in a country mostly filled with sand), the rights of palestinian refugees to return (to what, one might ask) etc etc
3. The security issues. It is not possible to make deals with the arabs, it is not possible to trust the arabs, you simply cannot. These people have their own agenda (no Israel in mid east), and they seem to use any method possible to advance their goals.
Let me give one example:
In 1982 Israel invaded Lebanon after countless attacks across the border by Hezbollah terrorists. These attacks were either random shelling across the border using katyusha rockets, mortars or whathaveyou, OR they used commando-style cross border infintration raids using heavily armed terrorists. These raiders had but one objective, to kill as many Israelis as possible (there is a very well known occation when such a group managed to enter a jewish settlement and slaughtered a number of sleeping Israelis)
Eventually this led to Israel saying enough is enough, they invaded Lebanon, with the objective of removing the PLO from Lebanon, and to create a security buffer in the southern part of Lebanon. After that, there were no more shelling of Israeli villages, and there were no more cross border activity.
So what happens next? Well, time pass, and the Hezbollah and the IDF slug it out with eachother in the buffert zone. There are alot of casualties on both sides. Naturally the pacifist left in europe and the US startyed squeaking and moaning over this (In fact, that seems to be their sole purpose of being, to squeak and moan, be it over election results in Florida or France, Israeli actions, or whatever)
The Hezbollah claimed that the only reason they fought the Israelis was because of the injust and illegal occupation of southern Lebanon. "Leave us alone and we will leave you alone" they said. (The left in Europe and the US supported them naturally...after all, all they wanted was to be free and not-occupied by the Israelis)
SO
The Israelis withdrew from southern Lebanon. And guess what happened next? Yup, the shelling of Israeli villages and towns within reach has started again.
----
You cannot trust these people, there is no way to achieve peace with these people, and they will not stop...ever. They are like Terminator on steroids, and they are ready to do just about anything (be it suicide bombers or other terrorist actions) to achieve their goal...to rid the world of Israel.
----
And (as usual) history is bound to repeat itself. Now the Israelis have crushed the Palestinian infrastructure, and guess what..the suicide bombings have pretty much stopped...Which is kinda weid, because the terrorist organizations should not be dependent on the Palestinian infrastructure in order to function now should they..?
Hmm...gee...I wonder why the terrorist activity has pretty much dissapeared after the Israelis have dismantled the Palestinian "government" and "security" forces.
BUT,
people like yourself are squeaking and moaning again over the poor innocent palestinians who only want a country of their own. And the vicious murderous Israeli thugs who roam the streets of Palestinian cities killing people at random, or just for the heck of it...or whatever...
Soon the US will force Israel to pull back from the Palestinian towns, and soon humanitarian aid will start to flow back into Palestine..and soon the terrorists will start killing Israeli civilians again.
You make me sick.
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...people like yourself are squeaking and moaning again...
It seems to me like Nashwan was trying to have a debate, avoiding comments like:
You make me sick.
It seems you are incapable of doing the same.
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Thanks for that fascinating analysis.
And it seems to be your only addition to the debate too. Well, thanks for trying.
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You make me sick.
Coming from someone who has stated he would like to kill Arabs, I'll take that as a complement.
a) there were no Israeli army before the state of Israel was created, and
The Haganah was the de facto Israeli army, before the founding of the state of Israel.
When the IDF proper was formed, it was merely a name change from the Haganah, although Haganah is still part of the name (Tzava Haganah Yisrael)
The Haganah had a strength of approx 45,000 men prior to the ending of the British mandate and the founding of Israel.
b) the arabs attacked Israel within 6 hours of the creation of the nation.
The IDF have their own website, with a history section.
The first sentence of the first article is
"A unique feature characterizing the first phase of the War of Independence up to May (1948) was the "battle for the roads." "
So for the IDF the war had begun before the Arab armies invaded, before independence.
Tiberias, Haifa, Jaffa and Jerusalem were towns that were in the areas granted to the Palestinians under partitioning. Before Israel declared independence, before any Arab armies invaded, Tiberias, Haifa and Jaffa had been conquered and most of the Arabs driven out, and the Israelis had driven a wedge through Palestinian territory to Jerusalem.
Some day there will be peace. By the way things are going right now, I suspect that will only happen after the Israelis decide that enough is enough and empty the west bank of Palestinians one way or the other.
Considering your views, I am sure that is a very enjoyable prospect for you.
The problems are too great for it to happen, however.
Firstly, the vast majority of Israelis wouldn't support it. They know there history, and images of people being rounded up and driven off in trucks wouldn't go down well with them.
Secondly, it wouldn't go down well with the rest of the world.
You can't evict 3 million odd people without causing a humanitarian disaster, with many thousands of the old and young dieing, not least from lack of water in the Middle East.
Thirdly, none of the surrounding Arab states would welcome the refugees, any more than the US would conive at ethnic cleansing of Canada by welcoming displaced Canadians.
It really is not possible to give the Palestinians a country of their own. Why? Several reasons, most notably:
1. They dont seem to want one, unless they get their rediculous demands met..and that wont happen.
The Palestinians rediculous demands presented at the Taba talks were:
96.9% of the territory of the West Bank.
Control of water sources inside their own territory.
Control of their external borders.
Agreement to an international presence to monitor their military.
Control of their own immigration policies.
The only points of contention with the Israelis were:
Israel offered 94% of the West Bank
Israel wanted control of all water sources
Israel wanted control of Palestinian external borders.
Israel wanted several corridors running through Palestinian territory, splitting it up into 3 blocks.
Under the current Iraeli leadership, none of the above would happen. Sharon has stated as recently as Monday that even the most isolated Israeli settlement is as important to him as Tel Aviv, and not to be given up. He has said he will never allow a Palestinian state, only areas of self rule on some matters.
2. Examples of (1) is the status of Jerusalem, water rights (kinda important in a country mostly filled with sand), the rights of palestinian refugees to return (to what, one might ask) etc etc
The right of return was all but settled, with around 10,000 Palestinians a year allowed to return to their property in Israel, providing Jewish immigration is a larger figure. ie if only 5000 Jews arrive in Israel, less than 5000 Palestinians will be allowed to return that year.
Water rights are the dispute, with Israel wanting to continue their consumption of 250 litres per person per day, and wanting to continue restricting the Palestinians to 50 litres per person per day.
The status of Jerusalem was also agreed upon, with East Jerusalem being the Palestinian capital, West Jerusalem the Israeli capital.
Of course, none of thi remains on the table with Sharon in charge, and if the hisory of the Oslo accords are anything to go by, any agreement would have been renaged upon by a right wing Israeli government.
3. The security issues. It is not possible to make deals with the arabs, it is not possible to trust the arabs, you simply cannot. These people have their own agenda (no Israel in mid east), and they seem to use any method possible to advance their goals.
Oh I agree, the filthy untermensch.
The Hezbollah claimed that the only reason they fought the Israelis was because of the injust and illegal occupation of southern Lebanon. "Leave us alone and we will leave you alone" they said. (The left in Europe and the US supported them naturally...after all, all they wanted was to be free and not-occupied by the Israelis)
SO
The Israelis withdrew from southern Lebanon. And guess what happened next? Yup, the shelling of Israeli villages and towns within reach has started again.
Hezbollah are controlled by Syria. The current fiction for the dispute is some farmland, that Israel claims is Syrian territory, Syria and Lebanon claim is Lebanese territory.
Israel occupies the farm land along with the Golan heights, that Syria wants back. Syria is using Hezbollah to attack Israel to keep the issue of the Golan open.
Hezbollah themselves are also motivated by a sense of solidarity with the Palestinians, as can be seen by the fact that cross border attacks often coincide with Israeli attacks on the Palestinians.
You cannot trust these people, there is no way to achieve peace with these people, and they will not stop...ever. They are like Terminator on steroids, and they are ready to do just about anything (be it suicide bombers or other terrorist actions) to achieve their goal...to rid the world of Israel.
THe same was said of the Sinai. It was vital to the defense of Israel. The Egyptians would just take it back and use it to launch more attacks on Israel.
Irael gave it back, and have had peace with Egypt ever since.
However, follow your racist beliefs to their logical conclusion.
You can't make peace with the Arabs. Israel has to expel the Palestinians to Jordan, and settle the West Bank.
The Palestinains, Hezbollah etc will keep on attacing Israel.
Israel has to occupy parts of Lebanon and Jordan to stop cross border attacks.
Occupation brings a steady death toll amongst Israeli troops doing the occupying. That's why they pulled out of Lebanon.
So Israel can't occupy the countries bordering them, but they can't let any Arabs live on their borders. What's your solution to this little problem?
I know, kill all the Arabs!
And (as usual) history is bound to repeat itself. Now the Israelis have crushed the Palestinian infrastructure, and guess what..the suicide bombings have pretty much stopped...Which is kinda weid, because the terrorist organizations should not be dependent on the Palestinian infrastructure in order to function now should they..?
Hmm...gee...I wonder why the terrorist activity has pretty much dissapeared after the Israelis have dismantled the Palestinian "government" and "security" forces.
Soon the US will force Israel to pull back from the Palestinian towns, and soon humanitarian aid will start to flow back into Palestine..and soon the terrorists will start killing Israeli civilians again.
So, rather than the Palestinian infrastructure being destroyed, it sounds more like the suicide bombers have stopped because the Palestinians are still under curfew, liable to be shot if they go outdoors breaking the curfew, can't travel about because Israel has called up 40,000 reservists.
Israel is in a financial crisis caused by the operations in the West Bank. They have just introduced emergency taxes, and are looking at stopping child benifit to Israeli Arabs as one of the cutbacks they can make (Jews of course will still get the benifit)
In other words, Israel can't maintain the clamp down, and as soon as they go, suicide bombings are likely to resume. God knows the Palestinians have even more cause to hate now than they did.
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Nashwan It has been a pleasure to read your posts;
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100% agree.
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Originally posted by Nashwan
The Palestinians rediculous demands presented at the Taba talks were:
96.9% of the territory of the West Bank.
Control of water sources inside their own territory.
Control of their external borders.
Agreement to an international presence to monitor their military.
Control of their own immigration policies.
The only points of contention with the Israelis were:
Israel offered 94% of the West Bank
Israel wanted control of all water sources
Israel wanted control of Palestinian external borders.
Israel wanted several corridors running through Palestinian territory, splitting it up into 3 blocks.
[/b]
Thats right, the Palestinians said no, they wanted to go for broke, and indeed they lost. Instead of having 94% of the west bank, no control over the water, no control over their borders, no own immigration process, what did they get? Thats right, the secret prize they got for turning the offer down was NOTHING. Now they have absolutely zip. They wanted to play hardball, well they lost and now they are paying the prize for it.
On water rights:
That water has to come from somewhere. If the Israelis would have given up the water rights and handed them to the palestinians Israel would have been forced to import water from Turkey. Now how would the water get from Turkey to Israel I hear you ask? A pipeline THROUGH SYRIA. Yeah…I wonder why the Israelis turned that one down.
On Palestinian control over external borders:
Take a look at a map over Israel. Take a look at the west bank. If you would let the Palestinians have control over the external borders you would effectively open up the entire country. 95% of the populated areas of Israel are within artillery range from the West bank and Lebanon. You would effectively take the IAF out of the equation too, since most of the Israeli military airfields would be within arty range. IT AINT GONNA HAPPEN.
On control of Immigration rights:
Yeah, and what would the first thing to happen be? Jordan, Syria, Lebanon and Egypt emptying their refugee camps reinforcing the Palestinians with millions of new wannabe-martyrs.
On breaking up Palestinian territory with roads:
Look at a map again. Consider where the Palestinian and Israeli settlements are located. Try to form a continuous Palestine territory AND a continuous Israeli territory. Good luck.
Under the current Iraeli leadership, none of the above would happen. Sharon has stated as recently as Monday that even the most isolated Israeli settlement is as important to him as Tel Aviv, and not to be given up. He has said he will never allow a Palestinian state, only areas of self rule on some matters.
[/b]
Good.
The right of return was all but settled, with around 10,000 Palestinians a year allowed to return to their property in Israel, providing Jewish immigration is a larger figure. ie if only 5000 Jews arrive in Israel, less than 5000 Palestinians will be allowed to return that year.
[/b]
LOL "all but settled" Where do you get these ideas? Where are the refugees supposed to return? You are aware of the fact that the pals want the refugees to be able to return to their previous homes inside Israel right? The demand is as ridiculous as if some German family who used to live in East-Prussia before the war wanted to return to their old estates, throw out the current owners, and be given the same rights as a Russian citizens. It aint gonna happen.
Water rights are the dispute, with Israel wanting to continue their consumption of 250 litres per person per day, and wanting to continue restricting the Palestinians to 50 litres per person per day.
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Well, the issue is a bit more complicated than that, see above.
The status of Jerusalem was also agreed upon, with East Jerusalem being the Palestinian capital, West Jerusalem the Israeli capital.
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Hmm...yes...that would be the agreement that the Palestinians refused to sign then?
Hezbollah are controlled by Syria. The current fiction for the dispute is some farmland, that Israel claims is Syrian territory, Syria and Lebanon claim is Lebanese territory.
Israel occupies the farm land along with the Golan heights, that Syria wants back. Syria is using Hezbollah to attack Israel to keep the issue of the Golan open.
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Hezbollah are also funded and equipped by Iran. Dont forget that. And yeah, Syria wants the Golan heights back. Cant imagine why the Israelis wont give it back though…considering how far artillery positioned on those heights will reach (Tel Aviv anyone?)
Hezbollah themselves are also motivated by a sense of solidarity with the Palestinians, as can be seen by the fact that cross border attacks often coincide with Israeli attacks on the Palestinians.
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Is that justification in any way in your opinion? "Yes, the are shelling towns and villages, but they are motivated by a sense of solidarity"
Besides, what the F&%¤ do you know about their motivation? You say solidarity, I say hate. Because you have to hate pretty much in order to willfully and intentionally kill civilians.
THe same was said of the Sinai. It was vital to the defense of Israel. The Egyptians would just take it back and use it to launch more attacks on Israel.
Irael gave it back, and have had peace with Egypt ever since.
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Perhaps indicating that land is not as holy for Israel as you might want to imply? Israel is more than willing to change land for peace. Problem with the west bank and the Golan heights is that Israel would be changing land for more terrorist attacks instead.
Besides, when the peace deal with Egypt was made, there were no terrorist activity funded and led by Egypt against Israel. Perhaps that might have something to do with things too?
However, follow your racist beliefs to their logical conclusion.
You can't make peace with the Arabs. Israel has to expel the Palestinians to Jordan, and settle the West Bank.
The Palestinains, Hezbollah etc will keep on attacing Israel.
Israel has to occupy parts of Lebanon and Jordan to stop cross border attacks.
Occupation brings a steady death toll amongst Israeli troops doing the occupying. That's why they pulled out of Lebanon.
So Israel can't occupy the countries bordering them, but they can't let any Arabs live on their borders. What's your solution to this little problem?
I know, kill all the Arabs!
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There are options you know. One would be to allow the Pals some self governing in some cities and areas. Then you surround these areas with Berlin-wall -like defenses. Easier than just emptying the west bank of palestinians.
There are no cross border attacks from Jordan into Israel. But the safety zone in Lebanon would have to be reoccupied. Here the UN could actually do some good. But we all know that wont happen. Ideal solution would be to have UN troops in that safety zone, but Lebanon and Syria wont allow that…why not? Because they want the Hezbollah to keep killing Israelis "To keep the issue about the Golan heights open"
So, rather than the Palestinian infrastructure being destroyed, it sounds more like the suicide bombers have stopped because the Palestinians are still under curfew, liable to be shot if they go outdoors breaking the curfew, can't travel about because Israel has called up 40,000 reservists.
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What are you talking about? There is no "Palestinian curfew". There has been curfews set in various cities and towns at various times, but not a general curfew for Palestinians. Next theory please. And they can travel wherever they want, as long as they arent carrying explosives on them. (And given that they have permits to enter Israel naturally, if they want to go to Israel that is)
Israel is in a financial crisis caused by the operations in the West Bank. They have just introduced emergency taxes, and are looking at stopping child benifit to Israeli Arabs as one of the cutbacks they can make (Jews of course will still get the benifit)
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Yeah, I know, and that is bad. But there is a motion in the US congress right now to grant Israel $200 million, so your worries for the Israeli economy is probably exaggerated. They will make it, I'm confident in that. Besides, Im sure they can accept a financial crisis for a while, considering that the suicide bombings have stopped.
In other words, Israel can't maintain the clamp down, and as soon as they go, suicide bombings are likely to resume. God knows the Palestinians have even more cause to hate now than they did.
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Im not so sure about that. The Israelis have an ingenious strategy where they are going after the mid and high-level leaders of the PLO and the terrorist organizations. They realized that it is too hard to try to stop the individual bombers, it is better to go after the infrastructure that supplies the bombers with bombs. In this last crackdown on the terrorists, the Israelis managed to capture several high ranking leaders alive. That is a severe blow to the terrorists. The Israelis also managed to get Arafats second in command alive (funny, dont you think that Arafats second in command guy is also the leader of the Al Acqsa brigades…you know, the suicide bombers). The Israelis also have 35 known terrorists held up in Bethlehem. With any luck, all this will lead to a severe blow to the terrorist organizations, and severely hamper their ability to bomb women and small children.
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Hortlund You da man:D
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A Palestinian fighter's version of the Jenin battle
'Al-Ahram Weekly'
CAIRO - Omar sits restlessly on his chair in the safe-house. He is an "engineer" from Jenin refugee camp: one of the revered bomb-makers from the City of the Bombers. To the Israelis he is the most lethal, and wanted, of terrorists. The poison from the cobra's head.
We meet late last Thursday, hours after he escaped from the camp as Israeli soldiers took control of the area. We are still close enough to Jenin that we can see the constant stream of illumination flares, three launched by the army at a time, that light up the soldiers' dark work in the city below.
But Omar will not be staying here long. He is going to ground deeper in the West Bank before regrouping with his comrades from Jenin.
There may not be too many. Even according to Israeli army sources, at least 100 fighters were killed and hundreds more wounded and captured during the eight days of savage fighting.
Omar will not give his name or age. He is slim, in his mid-20s, with a closely cropped beard. He is a member of Islamic Jihad, but says in Jenin all the factions were loyal to only one cause: liberation or death.
Visible beneath a blue bomber jacket is the tightly bandaged stump of his right arm, the end of which he rubs distractedly.
How did he lose it? During the previous invasion of Jenin by the Israeli army several weeks ago, he says. He was hiding with only his arm visible as he tried to throw a kwa - a home-made pipe bomb - at a tank. Shrapnel from a shell severed it, he says.
But as a bomb-maker, one of the most highly respected positions in the Palestinian resistance, he could equally have lost the arm in less glorious circumstances: in one of the explosions that are a professional hazard of his job.
Omar admits he is one of only a few dozen fighters not to emerge either dead or in plastic handcuffs from the fiercest battle waged by the Palestinians during the Israeli army's invasion of the West Bank.
Of his group of 30 gunmen, only four escaped from the camp on Wednesday, after the Palestinian arsenal ran dry. Most of the others were shot dead.
"Of all the fighters in the West Bank, we were the best prepared," he says.
"We started working on our plan: to trap the invading soldiers and blow them up from the moment the Israeli tanks pulled out of Jenin last month." Omar and other "engineers" made hundreds of explosive devices and carefully chose their locations.
"We had more than 50 houses booby-trapped around the camp. We chose old and empty buildings and the houses of men who were wanted by Israel, because we knew the soldiers would search for them," he said.
"We cut off lengths of mains water pipes and packed them with explosives and nails. Then we placed them about four meters apart throughout the houses - in cupboards, under sinks, in sofas." The fighters hoped to disable the Israeli army's tanks with much more powerful bombs placed inside rubbish bins on the street. More explosives were hidden inside the cars of Jenin's most wanted men.
Connected by wires, the bombs were set off remotely, triggered by the current from a car battery.
According to Omar, everyone in the camp, including the children, knew where the explosives were located so that there was no danger of civilians being injured. It was the one weakness in the plan.
"We were betrayed by the spies among us," he says. The wires to more than a third of the bombs were cut by soldiers accompanied by collaborators. "If it hadn't been for the spies, the soldiers would never have been able to enter the camp. Once they penetrated the camp, it was much harder to defend."
And what about the explosion and ambush last Tuesday which killed 13 soldiers?
"They were lured there," he says. "We all stopped shooting and the women went out to tell the soldiers that we had run out of bullets and were leaving." The women alerted the fighters as the soldiers reached the booby- trapped area.
"When the senior officers realized what had happened, they shouted through megaphones that they wanted an immediate cease-fire. We let them approach to retrieve the men and then opened fire.
"Some of the soldiers were so shocked and frightened that they mistakenly ran towards us." On Wednesday, after the fighters ran out of ammunition, he says, armored vehicles roamed the streets calling out to them in Arabic: "You are finished and can't win against us. We are more powerful than you. Surrender."
He saw one fighter who went down to the street with his hands in the air shot dead by snipers. He chose to flee the camp, although he will not say how.
Using his left arm, Omar shot a revolver during the gun battles.
With a new intensity on his face, he leans forward to ask a question. Do I think the doctors will be able to give him a strong new artificial arm with fingers he can operate. I don't know, I say. Why?
"Because I want to be able to hold a heavy rifle again. That way I can kill more Israeli soldiers. It's that or become a suicide bomber."
no comment...
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same paper different artical. bet you have a comment on this one.
"The US, which has at successive junctures posed as the prime, then sole, sponsor and occasionally a full partner in the Arab Israeli peace process, has single-handedly undermined all its qualifications to serve in such capacities. The only function it retains is as the foremost partner of Israel and, as a consequence, the sole sponsor of the atrocities Israel is perpetrating against the Palestinian people.
Many explanations have been given in the struggle to fathom, or justify, the curious inconsistencies that have given rise to this position. What is certain, however, is that Washington has lost its credibility as a fair and impartial partner or mediator in the intricate process of seeking a settlement to an even more complex conflict.
Common cultural affiliations, ideological outlooks and the existence of a powerful Jewish lobby in the US may help to explain Washington's pro-Israeli bias. However, these factors cannot explain why it is so staunchly and exclusively pro-Israeli as to jeopardise its own interests in the region and its international prestige.
The US's unmitigated support for Israel's aggression and crimes against humanity in Palestine will leave a deep and lasting scar on its image, particularly in the Third World and among the Arabs. The nation that sought to promote itself as the champion of human rights, and invented the concept of humanitarian intervention to defend those rights, appears blind to the humanitarian plight of the Palestinian people. It has done nothing to stop the massacres being perpetrated against the Palestinians in West Bank camps and cities. US Secretary of State Colin Powell, for example, could not be bothered to see for himself the devastation Israeli forces wreaked on Jenin. Instead, he reiterated Sharon's accusations against Arafat and ended his tour by giving the war criminal in Tel Aviv and his occupation army a grace period to cover up evidence of their crimes.
Nor will the world forget that the US threatened to use its veto to prevent a Security Council resolution to send international forces to protect the Palestinian people. Similarly, it brandished its veto to forestall a resolution to send an international investigatory commission to Jenin, forcing the Security Council to adopt, instead, resolution 1405, creating a mere "fact-finding" committee whose remit will extend only to the making of recommendations rather than instigate further actions based on its findings.
There is no doubt who was pulling the strings. Israel made it clear that the resolution was passed only after intense communications with Washington. It further refused to have UN Middle East envoy Terji Roed-Larsen included in the committee because he was audacious enough to announce that Jenin looked as though it had been struck by a natural disaster. The appalled Roed-Larson responded that he could very well understand why Israel objected to his inclusion in the fact-finding team, and that he would present his testimony to the committee.
At least there was one US official who could not conceal his horror. Upon seeing the inhabitants of Jenin searching through the rubble of their demolished homes in order to extricate the corpses buried in mass graves, Assistant Secretary of State William Burns stated that "what we see here is an appalling human tragedy." On the very day that Burns issued this statement, US President Bush declared that Sharon was "a man of peace."
Little wonder that Washington's credibility is at rock bottom. Given its collusion in the atrocities perpetrated against the Palestinians, in violation of all international conventions, how can Washington continue to pose as a defender of human rights, democracy, freedom and justice?
In responding to this situation, it is increasingly obvious that the Arabs must stop appealing to the US to take a more active role in efforts to reach peace, since the closer the US gets involved the more Israel escalates its crimes and the greater the suffering of the Palestinian people. Instead the Arabs, whose foreign ministers will be meeting soon, should bring the Palestinian case in its entirety before the Security Council and demand that that international body assume its full responsibility towards a human tragedy that is the product of a brutal foreign occupation. That the occupying power, in addition to the crimes it commits against innocent civilians, has threatened neighbouring states for merely voicing their sympathies for the victims of its brutality makes this increasingly imperative. This will entail invoking Chapter 7 of the UN Charter, which furnishes the mechanisms to counter what has become a very real threat to international peace and security.
The case that the Arabs will bring before the Security Council rests on a number of resolutions that the Security Council has itself passed. The first is Resolution 181 of 1948, which Israel had to accept as a condition for being admitted to the UN. Under this resolution, the territory comprising historic Palestine was partitioned to create two sovereign states -- Israel and Palestine on 56 and 44 per cent of the land respectively. Since then Israel has expanded into half of the territory allocated to a Palestinian state and then occupied the remaining 22 per cent in June 1967. What the Palestinians today are demanding is only the occupied 22 per cent, or half the land promised to them under the partition resolution. As Lebanese Prime Minister Rafiq Hariri put it: "The Israelis think that what they have they should keep and what remains should be divided between them and the Palestinians."
Other documents to be placed before the Security Council include a host of resolutions adopted by the General Assembly and the Security Council, calling for Israel's withdrawal from the occupied territories, the right of return for Palestinian refugees and the establishment of an independent Palestinian state with its capital in East Jerusalem. Specifically, I refer to UN General Assembly Resolution 194 pertaining to the return of refugees; UN Security Council resolutions 242 and 338, issued in the wake of the June 1967 and October 1973 wars respectively; and, finally, Security Council resolutions 1397, 1402, 1403 and 1405, all adopted within the past five weeks, and, as a whole, demanding the establishment of a Palestinian state, the withdrawal of occupation forces and the immediate implementation of these resolutions.
The task of the Arab governments, after reminding the Security Council of these resolutions, is to urge it to enforce them. Towards this end they should appeal to the UN to consider invoking Chapter 7 of the UN Charter, which provides for the use of armed force in order to enforce its resolutions.
The Arab governments must be determined not to let Washington's anticipated threat to use its veto prevent them from bringing the Palestinian cause before the Security Council. It has become essential to expose Washington for what it is: a full accomplice in Israel's crimes and the first and foremost impediment to the implementation of the resolutions of international legitimacy. The Arabs must make it clear that the US and Israel are defying the entire world.
The Security Council, for its part, must resolve the Palestinian case by adopting all the necessary resolutions towards ending the Israeli occupation of Palestinian territories. In this regard it must treat Israel as a state operating outside international law and in defiance of Security Council resolutions intended to apply the law. It must, therefore, explore, in accordance with Chapter 7, means of enforcing its resolutions.
Simultaneously, the Security Council must assume the urgent task of investigating the crimes committed against the Palestinian people in Jenin and other Palestinian cities and camps. The events that have and continue to take place in Palestine furnish model conditions for compelling the dispatch of an international protection force under Chapter 7 of the UN Charter.
In short, the most immediate needs at present are to provide protection for the defenceless Palestinian people and to mount an investigation into the crimes committed against humanity in the land of Palestine. Initial estimates indicate that more than a thousand Palestinians died in Jenin alone. If this appalling figure is not enough to awaken the American conscience, then the international community must take action to investigate these crimes, the horrors of which will be exposed regardless of attempts to cover up evidence and distort facts. "
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The case that the Arabs will bring before the Security Council rests on a number of resolutions that the Security Council has itself passed. The first is Resolution 181 of 1948, which Israel had to accept as a condition for being admitted to the UN. Under this resolution, the territory comprising historic Palestine was partitioned to create two sovereign states -- Israel and Palestine on 56 and 44 per cent of the land respectively. Since then Israel has expanded into half of the territory allocated to a Palestinian state and then occupied the remaining 22 per cent in June 1967. What the Palestinians today are demanding is only the occupied 22 per cent, or half the land promised to them under the partition resolution.
How come they`re not demanding the other 88% from those "other"countries?
Can`t You see it`s not about wether they`re gonna have a land or not,it`s about pushing Israel off the map.
So the arabs are pissed at the US.Big diddlying deal.What are they gonna do?
If they cared about palestinians they would take care of them in those regugee camps,where they keep them as animals now.
The palestinians are just a tool in the greater arab hands,with the sole porpuse of destroying Israel.They don`t give a toejam about what happened in Jenin,they just use it for propaganda.
They actually kill more arabs than israel ever will.
At least there was one US official who could not conceal his horror. Upon seeing the inhabitants of Jenin searching through the rubble of their demolished homes in order to extricate the corpses buried in mass graves, Assistant Secretary of State William Burns stated that "what we see here is an appalling human tragedy." On the very day that Burns issued this statement, US President Bush declared that Sharon was "a man of peace."
So the jews dug mass graves under the palestinian homes,than bulldozed them over it?
Give me a diddlyin` break!!
How can You belive these people?They can`t even make up a decent lie.
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i was wrong about you being a zealot
Q: What’s the difference between a fanatic and a zealot.
A: A zealot can’t change his mind. A fanatic can’t change his mind and won’t change the subject.
~ Winston Churchil
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Thats right, the Palestinians said no, they wanted to go for broke, and indeed they lost. Instead of having 94% of the west bank, no control over the water, no control over their borders, no own immigration process, what did they get? Thats right, the secret prize they got for turning the offer down was NOTHING. Now they have absolutely zip.
There is no point accepting an unworkable deal.
Read this from Ha'aretz
There may be nothing new about that, but the operation in the territories brought about the collapse of the Palestinian governmental structure and put an end to the concept of "Rajoubization," the security model - the epithet is based on the name of Jibril Rajoub, the head of Palestinian preventive security in the West Bank - that placed the battle against terrorism in the hands of Palestinian subcontractors in return for personal and economic advancement and vague political promises
How long could such a situation last?
The deal offered to Arafat would have meant selling out the Palestinians, accepting the permament status of the occupation and settlements.
It would have meant the Palestinians having to live with less water than they needed, every year having to reduce the amount of irrigated land, whilst Israeli settlers built ever more swining pools and orchards. It would have bred more resentment.
In return, Arafat would have had to crack down on the Islamic extremists who would have been strengthened by the sell-out.
In effect, Israel offered to turn the Palestinian authority into Kapos. (I'm not comparing the West Bank to concentration camps, but the Kapo principle is the same.)
That wouldn't work in the long term.
It was a stupid and short-sighted attempt by the Israelis, but one that Arafat was sucked into with the Oslo accords. Perhaps Arafat genuinely believed it was going to lead to a Palestinian state, more likely he was too stupid to see it couldn't last, and that he wouldn't be able to exercise his new-found power for long.
The end result was, Arafat couldn't sign, because one of the extremist groups would have killed him. Anybody who tried to keep to the same bargain with the Israelis would have suffered the same fate sooner or later.
As it is, Arafat didn't sign, the Israelis too continued to play hardball, and both sides are suffering the consequences.
On water rights:
That water has to come from somewhere. If the Israelis would have given up the water rights and handed them to the palestinians Israel would have been forced to import water from Turkey. Now how would the water get from Turkey to Israel I hear you ask? A pipeline THROUGH SYRIA. Yeah…I wonder why the Israelis turned that one down.
Or cut back consumption. Currently Israelis are using 5 times as much water per head as the Palestinians. Cut back Israeli consumption, and they could survive on the sources located within Israel.
Or they could set up desalination plants. One or the other option will have to be used sooner or later anyway, Israel is drawing more water than is being replenished in the underground aquifers.
Do you apply such logic in your judgements, Hortlund?
Criminal: I needed a car, my neighbour had a car, I stole his
Hortlund: Oh, that's allright then
No? Didn't think so. Perhaps if the theft victim was an Arab?
On Palestinian control over external borders:
Take a look at a map over Israel. Take a look at the west bank. If you would let the Palestinians have control over the external borders you would effectively open up the entire country. 95% of the populated areas of Israel are within artillery range from the West bank and Lebanon. You would effectively take the IAF out of the equation too, since most of the Israeli military airfields would be within arty range. IT AINT GONNA HAPPEN.
None of the Arab armies can challenge Israel, even combined together they couldn't.
However, safeguards were offered by the Palestinians. Borders could be monitored and policed by international observers, possibly with Israeli observers included. What they refused was allowing borders to be controlled by the Israeli military.
The Palestinians also agreed to Palestine having a limited military, with international observers to monitor their weapons procurement and deployment.
The Palestinians also agreed to Israeli requests for three Israeli military early warning stations to be set up in the West Bank.
On breaking up Palestinian territory with roads:
Look at a map again. Consider where the Palestinian and Israeli settlements are located. Try to form a continuous Palestine territory AND a continuous Israeli territory. Good luck.
You can't. That's why some settlements will have to go.
Interesting to note your beliefs:
3 million Arabs can be uprooted from their ancestral homes, a few thousand Jewish settlers must be maintained in their new built tax haven settlements at any cost.
LOL "all but settled" Where do you get these ideas? Where are the refugees supposed to return? You are aware of the fact that the pals want the refugees to be able to return to their previous homes inside Israel right? The demand is as ridiculous as if some German family who used to live in East-Prussia before the war wanted to return to their old estates, throw out the current owners, and be given the same rights as a Russian citizens. It aint gonna happen.
This week 12 Arab families were evicted from a houses their families had been living in for years, because a Jewish organization managed to unearth deeds to the land dating from before 1948.
So it's okay to force Arab out, but not Jews?
In fact, it isn't much of a problem in Israel.
All the land siezed from Arabs is held by the Israeli government and it's agencies, it is only leased out to individuals. Over80% of land in Israel is owned by the state.
As I said, the right of return has been all but settled, with numbers strictly limited. The Palestinians aren't asking for millions of people to be let back in.
Of course, it' worth pointing out that anyone in the world who converts to Judaism has the right to go and settle in Israel, but people who were born there who aren't Jews haven't got the right to return.
The status of Jerusalem was also agreed upon, with East Jerusalem being the Palestinian capital, West Jerusalem the Israeli capital.
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Hmm...yes...that would be the agreement that the Palestinians refused to sign then
The Palestinian negotiating position was the East Jerusalem must be their capital. At no point did they make any claims on West Jerusalem.
THe same was said of the Sinai. It was vital to the defense of Israel. The Egyptians would just take it back and use it to launch more attacks on Israel.
Irael gave it back, and have had peace with Egypt ever since.
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Perhaps indicating that land is not as holy for Israel as you might want to imply? Israel is more than willing to change land for peace. Problem with the west bank and the Golan heights is that Israel would be changing land for more terrorist attacks instead.
Exactly what was said of the Sinai.
It's interesting to note, that despite your "terminator" view of the Arabs, Israel has borders with 4 Arab states. It has resolved it's land disputes with two, Jordan and Egypt, and has good relations with both, with neither country allowing themselves to be a base for terrorist operations against Israel.
It still has land disputes with two, Syria and the Palestinians, and both are a constant source of terrorism.
The Sinai was never regarded by Israel in the same way as the West Bank. It's largely a desert, not suitable for settlements, and the numbers of settlers there were small.
Besides, when the peace deal with Egypt was made, there were no terrorist activity funded and led by Egypt against Israel. Perhaps that might have something to do with things too?
We can't make peace becaue we're at war?
There are options you know. One would be to allow the Pals some self governing in some cities and areas. Then you surround these areas with Berlin-wall -like defenses. Easier than just emptying the west bank of palestinians
I think the word you are looking for is ghetto
It wouldn't work. If you create some walled ghettos, but don't put everyone in them, the ones outside are still capable of mounting attacks.
You can't move everyone into a few small ghettos, they wouldn't be able to feed themselves, and whilst seeing them all die of hunger might please you, most of the rest of the world wouldn't accept it.
The biggest problem with a fence/wall situation is it's length. A sensible coherent border might be workable, but if you draw a border including the Israeli settlements it will be far too long. The IDF says it takes an entire battalion to provide security for each settlement.
There are no cross border attacks from Jordan into Israel.
But surely you can't stop the Arabs? They just keep on and on until Israel is destroyed. Don't you know they're like the terminator?
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Sorry, too long again.
But the safety zone in Lebanon would have to be reoccupied. Here the UN could actually do some good. But we all know that wont happen. Ideal solution would be to have UN troops in that safety zone, but Lebanon and Syria wont allow that…why not? Because they want the Hezbollah to keep killing Israelis "To keep the issue about the Golan heights open"
I get it, the rest of the world can send their troops to be killed to support Israeli colonisation.
That's an exellent idea. Even small countries can develop Empires now, they can get the UN to keep down the natives whilst they settle the land.
What are you talking about? There is no "Palestinian curfew". There has been curfews set in various cities and towns at various times, but not a general curfew for Palestinians. Next theory please. And they can travel wherever they want, as long as they arent carrying explosives on them. (And given that they have permits to enter Israel naturally, if they want to go to Israel that is)
A great many areas are still under curfew. Hebron for example, was under curfew for more than 150 days last year.
Travel restrictions in the West Bank even before the current occupation were severe, in many places now all movement is stopped.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/hi/english/world/middle_east/newsid_1899000/1899387.stm
That's a description of a journey taken before the current Israeli operation. Many of the checkpoints are now totally closed. Read for example the description of people trying to reach Jenin.
Yeah, I know, and that is bad. But there is a motion in the US congress right now to grant Israel $200 million, so your worries for the Israeli economy is probably exaggerated. They will make it, I'm confident in that. Besides, Im sure they can accept a financial crisis for a while, considering that the suicide bombings have stopped.
What's bad, the budget crisis or the descrimination against Israeli Arabs?
$200 million is a drop in the ocean. The emergency budget in Israel is designed to cut the budget deficit, which has soared to over $4000 million. With Israel's already high debt levels, that's hard to sustain.
The shekel has dropped to it's lowest ever level, the state had announced a 5% wage cut for all workers, taxes have gone up to over 60%, VAT up to 18%, pensions and benefits have been cut.
That's after a month of operations at the current level. It' not something Israel can sustain.
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This is a translation of the current Yesh Gvul (There's a limit) leaflet for distribution to IDF soldiers:
SOLDIER
We all want to defend our country.
We're all sick and tired of terrorism.
We all want peace.
But do our actions permit of an end to the cycle of bloodshed ?
Since 1967, Israel has ruled over 3.5 million Palestinians, running their lives by means of a forcible occupation, with continual violations of human rights.
The occupation regime has merely exacerbated Israel's security problems; at this time, it endangers the life of each one of its citizens, yours included !
SOLDIER, it's in your hands !
Ask yourself whether your actions in the course of your military service enhance national security ? Or do those actions merely fuel the enmity and the acts of violence between us and our Palestinian neighbours ?
YOU CAN STOP THE VIOLENCE
SOLDIER: THE OCCUPATION BREEDS TERRORISM
When you take part in extrajudicial killings ("liquidation" in the army's terms);
When you take part in demolishing residential homes;
When you open fire at unarmed civilian population or residential homes;
When you uproot orchards
When you interdict food supplies or medical treatment -
YOU ARE TAKING PART IN ACTIONS DEFINED IN INTERNATIONAL CONVENTIONS (SUCH AS THE FOURTH GENEVA CONVENTION) AND IN ISRAELI LAW, AS WAR CRIMES.
As far back as 40 years ago, an Israeli court ruled that a soldier is forbidden to obey a flagrantly illegal order.
Soldier - do you consider such war crimes justifiable ?
Don't acts of "liquidation" provoke suicide bombings ?
Is it justifiable to demolish the homes and vandalise the property of entire families ?
Can one justify the killing of children, women, old people - or, overall, of unarmed civilians ?
What are the "security" grounds to justify starving entire villages and depriving the sick of medical care ?
Soldier: don't these daily acts of repression, which are part of the routine of the occupation - curfew and blockade, land confiscation, preventing people from working or studying, the run-around and humiliation at the roadblocks and the violent searches in Palestinian homes - fuel hatred of us ?
END THE OCCUPATION - END THE CYCLE OF BLOODSHED !
SOLDIER: THE OCCUPATION CAUSES LOSS OF LIFE
Even the heads of the defence establishment concede that there is no military solution to terrorism.
"All the preventative work we've done this past year is like trying to empty out the sea with a teaspoon," a senior security official admitted. ("Haaretz", 19.12.2001)
Ami Ayalon, former head of the Shabak security police, says: "An ideology can't be killed by killing leaders."
Soldier, is there a people anywhere in the world that will not resist an occupation regime ?
If you were in the Palestinians' shoes, would you be willing to bow your head to a foreign ruler ?
Two years ago, we were convinced that the occupation of southern Lebanon was vital for our security. Twenty years ago, we were certain that our occupation of the Sinai peninsula guaranteed our security.
But thanks to termination of our occupation of those areas, we have avoided shedding the blood of our soldiers.
Since the onset of the current intifada, over a thousand Israelis and Palestinians have been killed, most of them unarmed civilians taking no part in the fighting. As long as we hold on to the occupied Palestinian territories, we will continue to shed our own blood and that of the Palestinians.
END THE OCCUPATION - END THE BLOODSHED !
SOLDIER: THE OCCUPATION UNDERMINES OUR COUNTRY
We are all concerned for the wellbeing of the state of Israel. We all want the state to invest more in education, social services, health, and development of our infrastructure.
But to maintain the occupation, the state spends billions on upkeep of the army in the territories, on settlements, on laying bypass roads and all the rest.
The state is cutting back on civilian services to enlarge the military budget.
The occupation, and the violence that it prompts, drag the economy down into recession. Investors are in flight, tourists stay away, entire sections of the economy are in collapse.
Wouldn't it be preferable to use the money to reinforce our social structures ?
Wouldn't it be preferable to channel the funds to our crumbling health and education systems ?
Is it just to neglect the aged, the handicapped and the unemployed in favour of further settlements ?
END THE OCCUPATION, PUBLIC ALLOTMENTS TO THE DISADVANTAGED, NOT THE SETTLEMENTS !
SOLDIER, THE OCCUPATION UNDERMINES THE ARMY
The occupation is harmful to the army and its soldiers. Training is called off because soldiers spend so much time on routine duty in the territories - guarding settlements, protecting highways, and forays into Palestinian towns and villages.
Soldiers are required to serve under inhuman conditions - like the four soldiers of the armour corps who spent 234 uninterrupted hours in their tank. In order to sustain the occupation, they weren't even allowed out to relieve themselves.
Military sources admit the occupation routine subjects soldiers to exhaustion - and exhaustion leads to a decline in fitness and causes accidents.
Wouldn't it be better to dedicate the time to the country's real defence needs ?
Ending the occupation will restore the army's combat readiness.
Wouldn't it be better to reduce the burden borne by reservists and grant conscripts better conditions ?
END THE OCCUPATION - REDUCE MILITARY SERVICE TO TWO YEARS !!
CUT DOWN THE BURDEN OF RESERVE DUTY !!
SOLDIER
There are acts that decent people don't commit, even if they're given orders ! Decent people don't demolish homes; they don't kill children, women and babies; they don't starve the neighbouring people, and don't deny medical care to people just like you and me.
Such conduct weakens our country's moral fibre.
These acts are actually harmful, even if we're told they're for "security purposes". Every "liquidation" (killing) prompts a bombing. The child you wounded today is tomorrow's terrorist.
Anyone concerned for national security won't do things that fuel terrorism.
SOLDIER - IT'S IN YOUR HANDS
We don't have a surefire recipe. Make up your own mind, guided by your conscience, your feelings, your convictions. We can't take the decision for you. We can only tell you that many, very many soldiers, have said "NO !" to war crimes !
From the Lebanon war, right up to the present intifada, thousands of soldiers - conscripts and reservists - have plucked up the courage to say "NO !"
Anyone who decides to refuse, reaches that decision on his own. But when he does make up his mind, he will find us extending a helping hand, offering advice, support and help.
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LOL
That leaflet was actually very funny :D
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nevermind. laugh all you want
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Dont mind - takeda.
There are even people who are able to laugh, when they see pictures of the tortured in concentration camps...