More than just distrubing...this sort of thing is done every day by the IDF.
Palestine children are shot every week, Palestine homes are torn down every week. This isn't unique or unusual.
Steve should visit Phil Weiss's blog..mondoweiss.com occasionally to see the almost daily occurances of this kind of thing by the Israelis.

BTW..here is the youtube video of the razing of the village.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bvD-2BsPAQU&feature=player_embedded

The IDF is dressed all in black with face mask and carry these huge silver shields with a large cross insigna on them....looks like a version of the nazis iron cross.

This is what congress is supporting with our money. Midget nazis.

Clemons, what do you or this Blumenthal know or care about this town, the Bedouins, or the Negev? What do you know of the history of settling the Bedouin in Israel, in Jordan or anywhere else? Nothing! Somebody saw a story about Israel tearing down some Arab houses, made a big sob story out of it, and you're off to the races with incendiary language: "an Israel that is playing recklessly with its own interests and America's."

This is the new name of the game: make an international case of it every time Israel evicts a squatter (unless the squatter happens to be a Jew - in that case, no story). Now you are even suggesting that America should declare Israel an enemy because Israel has resettled 300 Bedouin?

Presumably America should make a Grand Alliance instead with the wonderful mullahs of Iran, who would never, ever be so nasty to their minority nomads this way (try asking the Kurds, Balouchi or Arabs of Iran about that question some time).

Pure irresponsible anti-Israel agitprop on your part, Clemons. And let's not have any hand-wringing about how "disturbing" it is to see towns removed. If the inhabitants of that town were Jews, you'd call it a "settlement" and be delighted to see it torn down.

The fact that you agitate continually for engagement with Hizbullah and Iran makes a mockery of your human rights concerns. Let's just have it straight with the bark on: you are against an alliance with the country that has Gay Pride parades and for an alliance with the country that hangs homosexuals. Let's stop the pretending this is about human rights, shall we?

As Wigwag has observed before, from a pattern of bad actions one can deduce bad intent. Enjoy Carroll's comments, she has clearly found her proper home at TWN.

Keep talking, Nadine. It only underscores what we point out about you racists and the inhumane policies of The Jewish State.

"Now you are even suggesting that America should declare Israel an enemy because Israel has resettled 300 Bedouin?"

RESETTLED???

You lying racist sack of shit.

"Thus the scenes from al-Arakib, from the demolished homes to the uprooted gardens to the grinning teens who joined the mayhem, can be viewed as much more than the destruction of a village. They are snapshots of the phenomenon that is laying Israeli society as a whole to waste"

Amen. And how ironic is it that a minority of despicable Jewish bigots and monsters such as Nadine are wielding the axe that will bring Israel down.

"Disturbing" seems like an understatement. Not too hard to see where these kind of actions are leading. Immoral and illegal. Hopefully Blumenthal is able to identify the civilian participants.

As always, Nadine is the voice of Jewish supremacy--the right to steal other people's land without compensation, the right to flog the wogs everyday, the right pursue ethnic cleansing and commit war crimes with impunity.

Yes, the ethnic cleansing of Bedouin is disturbing. But what's more disturbing are the powerful voices that defend such atrocities.

"Hopefully Blumenthal is able to identify the civilian participants"

To what end? So racist Jews such as Nadine can hold them in high esteem?

Better to identify the organizers of this horrific orgy, and expose the despicable and demonic fanatics that inflict such sick ideology and racist hatred upon the youth of Israel. There is some sick radical racist piece of shit in the forefront of this action. Someone dreamed this up, and had the power to enact it. Expose him, for he, and those like him, are the rot that is infecting Israel.

Occupied Palestine: Home Demolitions, Dispossessions and Residency Rights Revoked

By Stephen Lendman

Daily, Israeli oppression continues - demolishing homes, dispossessing occupants, and revoking residency rights, three of its many crimes under international law, Israel spurning it with impunity.

On July 22, the Israeli Committee Against House Demolitions (ICAHD) reported mass Jordan Valley Al Farisyie village demolitions, displacing 107 people, including 52 children. Targeted were 26 residential tents, 22 animal shelters, seven taboun clay ovens, eight kitchens, 10 bathrooms, four water tanks, and an agricultural equipment shed - in all, 74 structures illegally bulldozed, family homes and belongings destroyed along with large quantities of food and animal fodder.

Many families weren't warned or present, so lost everything under rubble, Israel displacing Palestinians to make way for Judaization, area residents on their own, abandoned and unaided.

In July, three other communities were affected:

-- Fasayile al Fuga where a family home of nine, including seven children and a 10-month old infant, was destroyed;

-- Bardala where evacuation and demolition orders were issued; and

-- Ras Ar Ahmar where 13 homes and dozens of animal shelters were bulldozed after declaring the area a Closed Military Zone.

The Jordan Valley comprises about 30% of the West Bank, Israel continuing demolitions, dispossessions, land theft, and appropriation of water resources, annexing areas for Jews, collectively punishing its residents by declaring large areas Closed Military Zones, ordering entire villages evacuated in defiance of international law, hundreds of residents affected, half of them children.

On July 7, Haaretz writer Mijal Grinberg headlined "More than 800 protest Bedouin house demolitions in front of the Knesset," saying they erected a tent city after arriving in 17 buses to petition the government to "stop destroying homes."

Arab MKs and Hadash Party member Dov Hanin joined them, demanding this stop and accommodation with Bedouins reached, Israeli citizens denied their rights.

They rightfully claim ownership to 800,000 dunams of land, about 200,000 acres - around 6% of southern Israel's Negev desert. Israel, however, doesn't recognize them, saying about 75,000 Bedouins live in unrecognized villages, their public funding and services denied. More on that below.

Still, in recent years, 11 unrecognized villages were legalized. But another 36 are in limbo, their homes subject to demolition and land confiscated. In 2007, the government destroyed 110 homes. A-Sira is slated for demolition, its residents petitioning Israel's High Court to prevent it. Some lost their homes earlier. Others hope to save theirs. All Palestinians fear they're next - dispossession for Judaization, ongoing throughout East Jerusalem, the West Bank, and Bedouin areas.

On July 27, Ma'an News reported that all Al-Araqib homes, fruit orchards and olive trees were destroyed, another unrecognized Bedouin village in southern Israel. At 4:30AM, 1,500 police arrived, including special riot forces, mounted officers, helicopters and bulldozers, awakening residents to evict them after an 11-year trial and court battle, residents winning to no avail. Israel dispossessed them anyway.

continues....

http://www.opednews.com/articles/Occupied-Palestine-Home-D-by-Stephen-Lendman-100731-550.html

(Take the time to email Baird and let him know you support his efforts)

US Rep. Brian Baird: US on the side of injustice in Palestine

Washington – The US Campaign to End the Israeli Occupation held its ninth annual National Organizers’ Conference in Kansas City, Missouri last week. Keynote speaker US Representative Brian Baird (D–WA) spoke about his own experiences visiting the Palestinian territories and how the ongoing occupation hurts not only Palestinians, but Israelis and Americans as well.

"When the United States is on the side of injustice, it harms our country, it harms our integrity, it harms our principle, it harms our standing in the world,” said Baird. “People want to believe that we, as the world's leading superpower, live up to our highest virtues. And when we fail to do that, it threatens, and endangers, and undermines us."

Baird also joined a growing choir of voices that emphasize how the occupation poses an existential threat to its own Israeli enforcers. “The soul of Israel is being harmed by these actions, and the security of Israel is being harmed by these actions,” argued Baird.

Baird bemoaned the realities of the US Congressional system. Many congressman vote “reflexively” in favor of resolutions that support Israel actions, like they did following the 2008-2009 Israeli offensive on the Gaza Strip and again following the release of the subsequent Goldstone Report.

But things are changing, remarked Baird. 54 votes were either present or against the resolution in support of Israel’s 2008-2009 Operation Cast Lead. And now nearly a dozen congressmen have visited the Strip to see the realities on the ground.

Ignorance remains, however, said Baird. And this is the main source of why most congressmen vote the way they do on the Israel-Palestinian conflict, he said. “I’m certain there is ignorance involved…because they’ve never been [to Gaza],” insisted Baird.

Baird has himself been to the Strip twice and plans to go again next month. Speaking on his observations in Gaza, Baird argued “it’s collective punishment…there’s no question about it.”

In his closing comments, Baird urged his audience to appreciate to subtle and smaller victories. “Appreciate gradual changes,” said Baird. The congressman is not seeking reelection this November but plans to continue his advocacy for the Palestinian struggle. As Baird evoked his own audience to do, “never give out, never give up, never give in.”

Other speakers at the conference, held July 24, included Ramzi Kysia of the Free Gaza Movement and Cindy and Craig Corrie, parents of killed American activist Rachel Corrie, who was crushed by a bulldozer in 2003 in Gaza while trying to prevent a home demolition.

http://palestinenote.com/cs/blogs/news/archive/2010/07/30/us-rep-baird-us-on-the-side-of-injustice-in-palestine.aspx

Also, go here.....

http://www.endtheoccupation.org/

"I support Israel's legitimate interests and rights in what is a very tough neighborhood, but this behavior -- reported by Max Blumenthal -- is not that of an Israeli that is behaving responsibly and is rather, an Israel that is playing recklessly with its own interests and America's."

What does Israel's foreign relations have to do with forced displacement of its own citizens? Conflating the two is sloppy.

"What does Israel's foreign relations have to do with forced displacement of its own citizens? Conflating the two is sloppy." (non-hater)

...unless the purpose is just Israel-bashing. As for his declaration of support of Israel's legitimate interests, I cannot recall an instance of actual, as opposed to theoretical, support.

"Conflating the two is sloppy"

So is presenting the blockade as just an effort to stop arms from reaching Hamas, (as Steve did in a prior essay), as if the ridiculous array of banned items has anything to do with Israel's "defense". I note the bigot Nadine raised no opposition to that bit of disingenuous pandering to the Israeli narrative.

As much as I "like" Steve, it is disheartening to see him precede his every little tepid criticism of Israel's attrocities with a qualifier. It only underscores what a tightrope one has to walk when navigating the minefield of debate concerning middle eastern affairs inside the beltway. Its as if an Israeli ninja hides behind every pillar and corner, ready to pounce at any poor insider hapless enough to utter the wrong comment or opinion about Israel and its horrendously inhumane and racist policies. Steve seems genuinely cowed when he broaches any criticism of Israel, and the willing whores in DC that bow to Israeli control, such as this pathetic Secretary Of State, Hillary Clinton. Best to avoid the topic when possible, but, when outraged to the point of comment, always make clear that you stand firmly in Israel's corner, and somehow this endless chain of Israeli attrocities is just an unfortunate mistake in policy, and, after all, its a tough neighborhood.

If you were threatened with Hamas rockets, and Iranian nukes, you'd kick the Bedouin out of their homes too!

"As for his declaration of support of Israel's legitimate interests, I cannot recall an instance of actual, as opposed to theoretical, support"

OMG NADINE!!!! He must be one of them nasty anti-semites!!!! Quick, bring up the holocaust!!!!!

non-hater: It matters because displacing its own
citizens is grossly against the values of the
West, from which Israel gets 100% of its
diplomatic support (and is 100% democratic,
meaning the opinions of the individuals in these
states matter). It matters because this is a
Jewish-dominated state displacing Arab Bedouins;
it would be like the US government demolishing
homes in an African-American community, except
worse, seeing as the Bedouins have been here
longer than those Israelis that are European-
descended. It also threatens the viability of
Israel's Arab allies (Jordan and Egypt), because
these despotic states have taken stances that run
directly counter to their citizenry and actions
like this only feed the anti-Israeli attitudes of
their citizens - thus threatening the only Arab
governments that were intelligent enough to
realize (at the time) that Israel probably wasn't
going to go away. Again, as someone who wants an
Israeli state to continue to exist, the problem
here is not a problem of tactics but of strategy.
Israel is operating without one, lurching forward
towards a future it could have created but has
instead decided to submit to.

BTW, it would be interesting to find out if that Bedouin furniture that those sneering little mini racists and wannabe nazis are lounging in was "resettled" along with its rightful owners. Somehow, I doubt it.

What kind of sick twisted pieces of shit do this to their youth?

POA: People who are afraid do this. The two-state
solution is almost dead, and we have to pray that
Bibi's 2001 comments were a function of "speaking
to your audience" and not what he truly believes.
He is the only person with the rightist
credentials to deliver on Israel's behalf, the
only person with the credentials to convince
Israelis that he is 100% acting in their
interests. We have to pray and hope that this time
really will be different. People are people.
Israelis get rocketed and they go crazy.
Palestinians see their land gobbled up and they go
crazy. We have to hope for something crazy-good to
happen in the direct talks. We have a president
who is handcuffed by Congress but who is genuinely
perceived as being impartial, a Palestinian
leadership in charge of a large portion of
Palestinian land that is without the baggage of
Hamas. It could actually happen this time around.

If it doesn't, we can become vindictive because
that will be justified. Until then I think we need
to cool the rhetoric.

Well, after all, its not without precedent....

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/a/a6/Hitler_jugend.jpg

"As for his declaration of support of Israel's legitimate interests, I cannot recall an instance of actual, as opposed to theoretical, support."

If you think Clemons is anti-Israel you are quite simply unable to comprehend reality.

"We have a president
who is handcuffed by Congress but who is genuinely perceived as being impartial, a Palestinian leadership in charge of a large portion of Palestinian land that is without the baggage of Hamas. It could actually happen this time around"

Oh horseshit. A feather outwieghs Obama's balls. Blaming Congress just doesn't cut it anymore. Obama rolled over with nary a glimmer of fight, the act of a coward with NO conviction.

And who are you claiming perceives this posturing insincere clown as "impartial"??? That illusion was shattered along time ago, PARTICULARLY amongst the global Muslim community.

Your comment is right out of the Twilight Zone.

Compare the racist screaching of that psycho junk yard bitch we keep hearing on here to this:

http://mondoweiss.net/2010/07/the-children-whose-spirit-a-siege-couldnt-break.html

And then compare those Palestine children to the
jewish supremist high schoolers lounging on chairs after they destroyed all the personal belongings of the villagers.

PissedOffAmerican,

Identifying the individuals matters, because it lends additional credibility to Blumenthal's account (e.g. who's to say that the pictures of people lounging around aren't simply staged; how do we know for sure that these are in fact Israelis?)

This is a useful and necessary part of establishing the historical record. When Blumenthal mentioned that he was trying to discover identities, it was a heartening sign to me that he's approaching this with an eye towards telling the story as fully as possible,

POA - Check out this image:

http://s.wsj.net/media/051410pow11.jpg

Forgot to include the caption:

http://www.gettyimages.com/detail/99045450/AFP

"Check out this image"

Now that is major disturbing, beyond words. I wonder what this useless bigot Nadine has to say about that.

Posted by sagesiah, Aug 01 2010, 3:05AM - Link

POA: People who are afraid do this.
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>

Drop it. No one buys it or gives a damn about
'Jewish fear' when they are sitting on the best army American tax money can buy, protected by the world's superpower, occupying someone else's land, stealing their resources and killing civilians indiscriminately and at will while crying holocaust and victim.

That 'excuse' is like serial killer Ted Bundy's attorney claiming Bundy only killed those 15 women because his 'Mommy' didn't love him enough when he was growing up.

Makes me sick.

I get your point, Franklin, but its not as if there is a dearth of evidence of Israeli crimes and despicable atrocities. Capitalizing on the victimization of these little aspiring bigots will serve little purpose. This purposeful nurturing of racial hatred has rendered these kids every bit the victims that the displaced Bedouins are. The sick bastards that would instill this kind of hatred in their nation's children have consigned these kids to a miserable hate filled existence. Look at the photograph that "non-hater" linked to. These kids weren't born with that kind of animous. They were taught to hate like that. They are victims, too. Israel has become detestable, and has earned our loathing. I hope these kids break free of the terrible burden they've been inflicted with.

Posted by non-hater, Aug 01 2010, 3:30AM - Link
>>>>>>>>>>>

My God what hateful looking people!... they actually do look exactly like the snarling jewish faces you see depicted in anti semitic cartoons.

People are people. Americans freak out about
immigrants because the economy is down. Yet
Americans are, relatively, extremely well-off.
It's all perception.

POA wants us to believe the Israelis are blood-
sucking aggressors. Nadine wants us to believe
that any Muslim and any Arab is a disease and that
if you came from a Jewish woman's womb then you
can do no wrong. I've tried to be reasonable in my
language, but you are two sides of the same
jackassed, dipshit sham. I imagine the combined
age of you two has to be at least 60, possibly 80,
maybe even 100, but I still have a large portion
of my life to live. I know there is an Israel
Lobby in Washington but I also know that Israel is
a state that is capable of occasionally
understanding its interests (watch Ehud Barak on
Charlie Rose). I know that the Palestinians have
engaged in illegitmate acts of violence but also
that they may have a reason to do so. This is a
terrible forum for actual dialogue. This is a
circus of clowns. nonhater is the most reasonable
person that has posted here in the last few hours
and my first post was in response to his/hers.

Here's the uncomfortable truth, a truth I said at
the beginning. People are people. Almost every
comment argues from the vantage point that
Israelis are fully evil or Arabs are full evil.
Maybe I made a mistake last week by wading into
all of this. I don't know. But I doubt I will be
entering the comments section on TWN again.

POA,

I'm looking at this from a much narrower perspective. As a journalist, it's important that Blumenthal get the facts straight in context about this particular event.

In this case Blumenthal might be interested in the identities because he wants to try to get follow-up interviews with the participants. That's part of the story too.

Whether the people perceive themselves as victims as a result of the reporting isn't really relevant from Blumenthal's perspective (e.g. so long as he has given them a fair-hearing; a fair-hearing doesn't mean that you necessarily agree with a person's view of an event or perspective, simply that you include it as part of the account -- the statements may even make a person look more culpable, or less, or they could put a completely unexpected light on the particular event and you learn something that you didn't know before).

The background information might lead to other stories, or it might help Blumenthal answer some questions that he has in his own mind about the larger story.

Not really a point of disagreement here, we're looking at this issue with a different set of questions in mind.

"Nadine wants us to believe
that any Muslim and any Arab is a disease and that
if you came from a Jewish woman's womb then you
can do no wrong."

sagesiah, I have never said anything of the kind. I am perfectly capable of being critical of Israel, but it is hard to have a nuanced discussion while surrounded by open anti-Semites like Carroll and potty-mouthed haters like POA.

What I have said is that the people using this situation for anti-Israel agitprop have no idea of the situation, its long history, and they don't care. Did you even know, that these long running land disputes aside, Bedouin are far more supportive of the State of Israel than other Arabs, and often volunteer for the IDF? Did you know that?

But the Israel-bashers don't give a damn, they just hate Israel. No story is too small or insignificant for them to peddle as morality play of Israel's villainy. It's easy as pie to go interview the dispossessed families -- if the original people are not available, the PA will supply actors (I have heard this from journalists over and over; most just play along).

The Israel bashers may pretend to wring their hands over human rights, but this is not about human rights. It's about hating Israel. When their hypocrisy is pointed out to them, we get told how it's correct to care only about those human rights Israel violates, because of our tax dollars, as if billions of our tax dollars weren't going to Egypt, to the PA, to Jordan, just to name a few places, who all commit human rights violations day in, day out, that lay anything Israel does in the shade, under far less real security pressures. But in those cases, nobody gives a damn about tax dollars or human rights.

You tell me, what is one common factor of those cases everybody cares about?

There's a very old trope that describes this situation perfectly. It is usually expressed as a short conversation:

A: Jews steal.
B: But other people steal too.
A: Ah! But we were talking about the Jews!

sagesiah, I heard Ehud Barak too. He made a good faith effort to negotiate in 2000; it was not reciprocated. Instead of a counter-offer, the Israelis got a terror war.

The Palestinian leadership is utterly convinced that they don't have to compromise, that if they keep saying "NO" they will eventually get everything for nothing. You say Obama was regarded as an honest broker? He certainly thought that he would improve the chance for talks if he put distance between himself and Israel. Yet look what actually happened - instead of helping talks, Obama made talks impossible. The Palestinians were so convinced that Obama would do their negotiating for them, they thought they had nothing to do but run away from direct talks and wait to collect free concessions. Abu Mazen even said as much!

Mentally, the Palestinian leadership shows no sign whatsoever of being prepared to accept the existence of Israel and live next to it. They tell the Palestinians that Jews are all European thieves with no connection to Palestine, Jewish History is a lie, that Israel is illegitimate and will disappear, that all the Palestinian refugees will have the right to return to Israel. Unlike the Israelis, they have done nothing to prepare their people for compromise.

Occasionally Abu Mazen or Fayyad may say different in English, but you should read what is said in Arabic.

What you heard from Ehud Barak is basically the same story whether in English or Hebrew: we'd like to negotiate, but there is no peace partner, esp. when Gaza is in the hands of Hamas, who are dedicated to the destruction of Israel. Who has the authority to sign a deal and survive, let alone make one stick? The Israelis were even seriously considering a unilateral withdrawal from most of the West Bank, but the rocket barrage they got from Gaza after 2005 put an end to that idea.

and the wheels just keep coming off the racist zionist wagon.

keep up the defense of the indefensible, americans are catching
on.

http://mondoweiss.net/2010/07/does-israelo-fascism-
exist.html

“The suicide bombings of the second intifada after 2001
radicalized even many Israeli democrats to the right. By 2002, it
was possibly to hear language within the right wing of the Likud
Party and some of the small religious parties that comes close to
a functional equivalent to fascism. The chosen people begins to
sound like a Master Race that claims a unique ‘mission in the
world,’ demands its ‘vital space,’ demonizes an enemy that
obstructs the realization of the people’s destiny, and accepts the
necessity of force to obtain these ends.”

The Western mainstream devotes a great deal of time and energy
to every Islamic extremist statement, and the word
“Islamofascism” has even been used by an American president.
But their Israeli extremist equivalents, who have only gotten
louder and more powerful since Paxton’s book appeared, hardly
ever appear in U.S. news reports. The unstated assumption is
that the "Israelo-fascists" like Avigdor Lieberman are only crazy
uncles hidden up in the attic, not worth paying attention to. "

"sagesiah, I have never said anything of the kind. I am perfectly capable of being critical of Israel"

Has anyone here EVER seen her criticize an Israeli policy???

In fact, read her last post before this one. See anything about the Bedouins in that bit of spew??? See anything about teaching kids racism??? See anything about these little mini nazis going into people's homes and destroying and defacing property??? See anything about the kind of sick twisted scum that recruits teenagers to participate in this kind of action???

She claims to be a rabbi. Is she all that different than Alwaki?? If we are going to start assassinating religious radicals and haters, lets start with her.

nadine takes the defensive claim that her words were taken out of context: "sagesiah, I have never said anything of the kind."

In her own words when attacking others:

"…and you're off to the races with incendiary language…"

"Now you are even suggesting..."

"Pure irresponsible anti-Israel agitprop on your part, Clemons."

"The fact that you agitate continually..."

" …you'd call it a "settlement" and be delighted to see it torn down."

"…you are against an alliance with the country that has Gay Pride parades and for an alliance with the country that hangs homosexuals."

"…while surrounded by open anti-Semites like Carroll and potty-mouthed haters like POA"

"…people using this situation for anti-Israel agitprop have no idea of the situation…"

And so on, and so on, and so on ad infinitum.

Nadine, you are so damn selective and hypocritical on this subject that your blatant racism and pure hatred just spews forth like so much BP crude. God you are tiresome.

So what is it nadine, hypocrisy, double standards, feeble intellect or just flat out childish lying that forms your core personality.

What a sad, pathetic f-ing loser you are.

gotta love it when the hasbara crowd gets called out on the matt.

Neocon/Israel lobby strategy for getting US into war with Iran
by Philip Weiss on August 1, 2010

"Gareth Porter at antiwar.com responds forcefully to Reuel Marc Gerecht, at the Weekly Standard, calling on Israel to bomb Iran. Again, I ask, when is this type of discussion going to happen in the mainstream media, so that Americans can sort out what they really want?

the aim of Gerecht and of the right-wing government of Benjamin Netanyahu is to support an attack by Israel so that the United States can be drawn into direct, full-scale war with Iran.

That has long been the Israeli strategy for Iran, because Israel cannot fight a war with Iran without full U.S. involvement. Israel needs to know that the United States will finish the war that Israel wants to start.

Gerecht openly expresses the hope that any Iranian response to the Israeli attack would trigger full-scale U.S. war against Iran. "If Khamenei has a death-wish, he’ll let the Revolutionary Guards mine the strait, the entrance to the Persian Gulf," writes Gerecht. "It might be the only thing that would push President Obama to strike Iran militarily…." Gerecht suggest that the same logic would apply to any Iranian "terrorism against the United States after an Israeli strike," by which we really means any attack on a U.S. target in the Middle East. Gerecht writes that Obama might be "obliged" to threaten major retaliation "immediately after an Israeli surprise attack."

That’s the key sentence in this very long Gerecht argument. Obama is not going to be "obliged" to join Israeli aggression against Iran unless he feels that domestic political pressures to do so are too strong to resist. That’s why the Israelis are determined to line up a strong majority in Congress and public opinion for war to foreclose Obama’s options....

The idea of waging a U.S. war of destruction against Iran is obvious lunacy, which is why U.S. military leaders have strongly resisted it both during the Bush and Obama administrations. But Gerecht makes it clear that Israel believes it can use its control of Congress to pound Obama into submission. Democrats in Congress, he boasts, "are mentally in a different galaxy than they were under President Bush." Even though Israel has increasingly been regarded around the world as a rogue state after its Gaza atrocities and the commando killings of unarmed civilians on board the Mavi Marmara, its grip on the U.S. Congressappears as strong as ever"

http://mondoweiss.net/2010/08/neoconisrael-lobby-strategy-for-getting-us-into-war-with-iran.html

Sagasiah said: "But I doubt I will be entering the comments
section on TWN again."

I hope you will, Sagasiah, because you are a sane and
informed voice. I read your posts re. Iran recently, and
they were interesting and nuanced.

Have a look at the middle part of the Newt Gingrich thread
below, the section where Dan Kervick, DonBacon,
Kotzabasis, and Nadine discussed the ideological
implications of the American constitution, to see an
example of how interesting some of the discussions here
can be.

On the other hand you get these horrible Israel-Palestine
debates, where the opponents just mirror each other in
their biases and their endless tirades of accusations and
invectives. I participated in these discussions for a long
time, but I have taken a break due to the circumstances
you described: one part blaming the Arabs/Muslims all the
time, and ALWAYS defending Israel; the other one crying:
The Jews! The Jews! comparing every aggressive act by the
Israelis with Heinrich Himmler and Adolph Hitler, with a
complete lack of proportions.

It's really a destructive and sad waste of energy, and
somehow it just mirrors much of the hate filled language
in the region.

Yes, it's hopeless to turn these Israel/Palestine threads
into something interesting or constructive, but I hope you
could once in a while write comments on some of the less
crazy threads when you are interested in the topic,
because your voice is valuable here.

Then in chimes Paul with his supercilious nattering that really has nothing to do with anything except his own pious high horse of condescending and self-appointed moral superiority.

So what about it, Paul? Why don't you address the ridiculous nature and content of "Sagesiah's" post? Do you think that any agreement can be reached by excluding Hamas? Do you think that Abbas can represent ALL Palestinians in direct talks, and that the Palestinians in Gaza respect of feel represnted by Abbas? Do you actually buy into this ignorant Twilight Zone horseshit that Sagesiah offered about Obama being perceived as "impartial", after his backpeddling and cowardice on the settlement issue, Hillary's despicable position on the Goldstone Report, and Obama's recent lovefest with Netanyahu?

And what do you have to say about the ACTUAL subject of this thread? Take your pious little natterings and shove them, Paul. It has become obvious that you derive some sort of vicarious satisfaction by portraying yourself above the fray, when all you are really doing is seeking to feed the arguments of these racist pieces of shit like Nadine, and attempting to assign credibility to the ill informed and disingenous Twilight Zone appraisals of clowns such as Sagesiah.

Heres a challenge for you, Oh Pure One, find one single aspect of Sagesiah's below quoted little drip of intellectual maple syrup that has even a small iota of respect for reality.....

"POA: People who are afraid do this. The two-state solution is almost dead, and we have to pray that Bibi's 2001 comments were a function of "speaking to your audience" and not what he truly believes. He is the only person with the rightist credentials to deliver on Israel's behalf, the only person with the credentials to convince Israelis that he is 100% acting in their interests. We have to pray and hope that this time really will be different. People are people. Israelis get rocketed and they go crazy.
Palestinians see their land gobbled up and they go crazy. We have to hope for something crazy-good to happen in the direct talks. We have a president who is handcuffed by Congress but who is genuinely perceived as being impartial, a Palestinian leadership in charge of a large portion of Palestinian land that is without the baggage of Hamas. It could actually happen this time around"

And how did this become a thread about "Israel/Palestine", as you and Nadine erroneously allege?? This is about Israel's treatment of the Bedouins, and the act of recruiting teenagers to participate in the atrocities committed against these people. Where is the "threat", Paul? How can this be explained away by invoking "Israel's right to self defense"?

No Paul, your recent metamorphosis doesn't wash. I find your pious admonitions and self serving appointment extremely cowardly and pretentious. If Sagesiah's contributions here consist of the kind of feel good fantasies and scripted pseudo-optimism that I quoted above, then really, who gives a shit if he goes or stays? Except you, of course, who now seems to be eager to jump at any chance of exhibiting himself as some sort of caped crusader for the civil defense of intellectual absurdity.

If you are going to feign outrage, at least have the good sense to direct your outrage at the deserving issues. As it is, you are just using piety, masqueraded as outrage, to paint yourself in a superior light. Its really quite pathetic, Paul.

"God look at those smarmy creepy kids. I could execute every stinking one of em. Kill em all and everyone that looks like em. Im so sick of these so called people. Truly spawn of satan. Israel, the demons child"

And in comes a troll, feeding the accusation of anti-semitism. Gee, how timely. Theres more than one way to launch a false flag attack.

Will Paul react accordingly, and play the role assigned to him, buttressing the charade?

Well thanks, POA, for interpreting my motives and
explaining them to the readers here. Thanks not least for
repeating how pious I am, a dozen times in one post. And
yes, you, Carroll, and Nadine are correct: I happen to be a
saint. I can't help it, I guess I was born a saint.

But sorry for distracting you with my pious gestures:
please continue screaming The Jews! The Jews! or The
Arabs! The Arabs to your hearts content. It is so
interesting and meaningful. And it must really feel good to
tell the truth all the time.

Did you notice that I just painted myself in a superior light
- again!

POA, I hope you'll allow me politely to suggest that you go
screw yourself and your intolerance and your incessant
harassment of fellow posters. The same goes for Nadine,
that "abominable racist piece of shit" (in your own words)
who calls you POS. Please go screw yourself, both of you,
for systematically screwing up every single I/P thread, or
Israel thread, or Arab thread.

Because that's what this is about. It's that simple. If you'd
been on the outside, reading these threads, you would've
see it. You two are screwing up every bloody I/P thread
with your ritual and tireless accusations and defenses,
harassing every voice that doesn't obey to your script. I
can live with being accused of riding on my pious high
horse for saying this.

But I guess, if you are addicted to these ad hominem
attacks and tireless accusations back and forth, you can't
help it anymore than I can help it for being a saint. I guess
we're all to old to change.

Report: US to cut ties unless PA resumes direct talks

Washington - Palestinian Legislative Council member Hanan Ashrawi said Saturday that the US has threatened to break its ties with Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas unless he resumes direct negotiations with Israel.

Israeli daily Haaretz reported:

"There has been huge pressure on the Palestinian Authority to move to direct talks," Ashrawi said in an interview with al-Quds al-Arabi, an Arabic-language newspaper published in London.

"They even threatened to isolate the Palestinians and cut off relations," she was quoted as saying.

Thursday the Arab League gave the green light for the PA to resume direct talks with Israel, but they left when and under what conditions up to the Abbas and the PA.

Abbas has said he'll resume direct talks, which broke down when Israel launched a 22-day offensive on Gaza in December 2008 that killed roughly 1,400 Palestinians, once he receives "written assurances [about] accepting the 1967 border and halting the settlement [building]."

Israel has been clear in recent days that the settlement construction moratorium, due to expire in September, will not be extended.

http://palestinenote.com/cs/blogs/news/archive/2010/07/31/report-us-to-cut-ties-unless-pa-resumes-direct-talks.aspx

Amazing, isn't it??? So much for Obama's "impartiality". In effect, he is ordering Abbas to become a puppet, to enter talks in a manner that is disdainful of the actual interests of the Palestinians. What concessions has Israel offered that portend a constructive round of direct talks? Abbas is ALREADY seen as a puppet by a vast majority of Palestinians. And now we are asking him to ignore the continued expansion of settlements, the continuation of home demolitions, a continued bombardment of Gaza, the continued violent supression of peaceful dissent?

When will the "pre-conditions" that Israel demands be labeled as such? Why are the realistic expectations of the Palestinans called "preconditions", while the outrageous expectations and demands of the Netanyahu government are considered condusive to a resumption of direct talks?

Apparently, as long as Hamas and the PA are willing to accept a continued blockade, continued settlement expansions, continued home demolitions, expanding "military zones", violent suppression of peaceful dissent, continued razing of farmlands, continued targeting of farmers and fishermen, continued incarceration and torture of children, continued destruction of wells and sewage facilities, and continued failure to receive redress and unbiased consideration in the Israeli courts, then Israel is ready and eager to resume direct talks. And the "impartial" Obama administration is fully on board with this.

Here's the deal with Israel.

Could you find some bigots in the US like those snarling Israeli kids attacking the Palestine woman whose house was seized. Probably in very rare and isolated examples of bigots screaming at Jews or bigots attacking US muslims or blacks or who ever.

BUT.BUT.BUT...in Israel it's a 'government sanctioned' everyday occurrence accompanied by home razings cheered on by teenagers bused in by the government to take part in, witness and gloat over how they are able to destroy other people's lives.

What do you suppose would happen in the US, if at the request of Israel and the Jews, the government sent bulldozers and soldiers to raze a American neighborhood of Muslims and bused in high school students to go into their homes and remove and destroy their personal belongings and cheer on the bulldozers?

Actually in reality this is exactly what the US government is doing, just not here, but in Israel.

"You two are screwing up every bloody I/P thread
with your ritual and tireless accusations and defenses, harassing every voice that doesn't obey to your script"

Paul, you want to show me where you have addressed the ACTUAL subject of this thread?

Who is taking it off track?

I see you couldn't be bothered to address Sagesiah's bit of intellectual flotsom, that has about as much truth as a Rush Limbaugh segment on Fox TV.

Did you miss the link to Baird's efforts?

Did you miss the link to an organization working to address the very real plight of the Palestinians?

Did you miss my empathy and sympathy for these kids that are victims of their parent's and mentor's racial animous?

Did you miss my explanation about why I found Sagesiah's post inane and unrealistic?

Did you miss my inclusion of Lendman's
statistical evidence concerning Israeli expansionism?

What have YOU contributed to this thread, Paul?

You're scared, Paul. You're scared because a huge segment of the Jewish population in Israel has reached the point that they are actually earning serious criticism, disdain, and loathing. You're scared because these racist policies and actions can no longer simply be attributed to a radical minority in the Knesset, as the Jewish citizens participating in this atrocity so clearly demonstrate. You're scared because pictures, and actions, such as we are discussing on this thread reveal the ugly truth about what Israel, and a huge segment of Jewish Israeli society, is becoming. You're scared because the cat is out of the bag, and for you to be TRULY moral and humane in your commentary, you are going to need to admit to uncomfortable truths that you'd rather deny.

Look again at the pictures, Paul. Particularly the one that Non-hater linked to. Then go look in the mirror, and ask yourself about the focus of your outrage.

"Could you find some bigots in the US like those snarling Israeli kids attacking the Palestine woman whose house was seized"

Yes, in any urban metropolis in the United States and Europe. The are called "Skinheads", and "neo-nazis".

In Hayden Lake Idaho I saw such vivid expressions of hatred on the faces of Reverend Butler's people, and their children, when they ran Chef Rosen out of town, and paraded down the street in Coeur d'alene, spitting their venom with racist slogans painted on vile hand held signs. These are faces that are hard to forget.

Posted by sagesiah, Aug 01 2010, 4:13AM - Link
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>

The actual uncomfortable truth my dear is we have discussed and debated Israeli actions in 'reasonable terms' for years and years.
Yes indeed, even those like POA and myself 'use to be' reasonable...until we caught onto the never ending 'reasonable' 'discussion, 'debate' game.

Any of you who suggest we should continue to "discuss" in a 'reasonable way' the psychopathic actions of Israel which get worse and worse while we are all 'discussing it' are either missing a conscience or are Israeli apologist plying their stall game.

I said a year ago that I was going to personally going to go off on Israel and it's racist supporters, up the anty, break every taboo about the poor holocaust victims and call a spade a spade and slurs be damned.
Why?
Because as we ALL now see and understand, ONLY the OUTRAGE of the PUBLIC, exemplified by the private citizen Gaza flotillas, has made the SLIGHTEST bit of difference in I/P and Gaza.

So you can discuss and debate and pretend civilized all you want, I intend to keep feeding that outrage every chance I get.

Nadine's pathetic justification for the behavior of Jewish Supremacists:

a: Jews steal (thank you for finally acknowledging what we have long know about Jewish Supremacists, Nadine!)
b: But other people steal too.

Therefore it must be right.

[Amazing how these "religious" zealots--in their self righteous arrogance--believe that they are above the laws of man--and above the Commandments of their own God! Of course, such attitudes are what got them kicked out of Israel in the first place! At least, that's what their religious books say...]

Nazi Germany - Hitler Youth

In the early 1920s, the Nazi party had established a youth movement led by Kurt Gruber, with the aim of attracting young men who could be trained to become members of the SA (Stormtroopers).

On 4th July 1926 the group was renamed the Hitler Youth, League of German Worker Youth and became attached to and run by the SA.

The Hitler Youth (Hitler Jugend) wore uniforms and attended meetings and rallies where they were indoctrinated with Nazi views.

Adolf Hitler believed that the support of the youth was vital to the future of the third Reich and aimed, through the Hitler Youth programme, to produce a generation of loyal supporters of Nazi views.

Posters were used to attract more members and membership rose from 5,000 in 1925 to 25,000 in 1930.

When the Nazis came to power in 1933 other youth groups were forcibly merged into the Hitler Youth and by the end of 1933 membership stood at just over 2 million.

In December 1936, membership of the Hitler Youth became virtually compulsory for all boys and girls aged over 10 years - membership could only be avoided by not paying subscription fees, but this 'loophole' was relaxed in 1939 and membership increased to 8 million members by 1940.

There were separate Hitler Youth groups for boys and girls:

Boys aged 6 - 10 years joined the Little Fellows (Pimpf). They did mainly outdoor sports type activities such as hiking, rambling and camping.

Boys aged 10 - 13 years joined the German Young People (Deutsche Jungvolk). They still did sporting activities but these had a more military emphasis such as parading and marching as well as map reading. They also learnt about Nazi views on racial purity and anti-semitism.

Boys aged 14 - 18 years joined the Hitler Youth (Hitler Jugend). They were prepared to be soldiers by doing military activities.

Girls aged 10 - 14 years joined the Young Maidens (Jungmadel) where they were taught good health practices as well as how to become good mothers and housewives. They also learnt about Nazi views on racial purity and anti-semitism.

Girls aged 14 - 21 joined the League of German Maidens (Deutscher Madel) where they were further prepared for their roles as the mother of future Germans.

http://tinyurl.com/history-repeated

"Boys aged 14 - 18 years joined the Hitler Youth (Hitler Jugend). They were prepared to be soldiers by doing military activities"

Hmmm. Look at the picture at the head of this thread, Paul.

"Israeli daily Haaretz reported:

"There has been huge pressure on the Palestinian Authority to move to direct talks," Ashrawi said in an interview with al-Quds al-Arabi, an Arabic-language newspaper published in London.

"They even threatened to isolate the Palestinians and cut off relations," she was quoted as saying.

Thursday the Arab League gave the green light for the PA to resume direct talks with Israel, but they left when and under what conditions up to the Abbas and the PA.

Abbas has said he'll resume direct talks, which broke down when Israel launched a 22-day offensive on Gaza in December 2008 that killed roughly 1,400 Palestinians, once he receives "written assurances [about] accepting the 1967 border and halting the settlement [building]."

Let me translate into English: Obama, having found out the hard way that trying to be an honest broker makes the Palestinians run away from talks instead of enter them, is finally trying pressure. Abu Mazen is so desperate to stay away from talks that he now demands the US guarantee the results of talks before he even sits down at the table.

Of course this won't work. Abu Mazen doesn't want it to work. Abu Mazen doesn't want to talk. He's far too weak to talk, and in dread lest somebody ask him for any concessions at all.

If somebody at the Obama administration had talked to Barry Rubin, they could have known all this two years ago and not wasted the effort and the political capital. Besides looking like impotent fools. But noooooo, they were stuck on the idea that the impasse had to be 100% Israel's fault and the Palestinians really wanted to talk under the right circumstances.

Abu Mazen has finally learned something from watching his opposite number in Tel Aviv--demand that the other side give you what you want BEFORE you enter into negotiations. Then you can sit around, drink tea, and talk about whatever the other side thinks is important without any fear of being blamed when the discussions fail.

POA, you know that I know that the actions described in this
post and many other events in recent times are alarmingly
similar to movements like the Hitler Jugend. These kind of
comparisons are not the reason why I react the way I do. I
have even made that comparison myself.

Ah yes, the great European eagerness to call Israelis Nazis to erase their own burdens of history.

Posted by JohnH, Aug 01 2010, 4:10PM - Link
>>>>>>>>>>>>>

Exactly.
The most effective way to handle Israelis in any conversation is the same way the Arab Gulf Council responded to Gates when
he addressed them by saying the US would act as an honest broker for I/P peace ...they all broke out in hilarious laughter and Gates went into a mumbling melt down.

Nadine, you must know by now that your credibility on these
issues amounts to zero. On this blog, you have defended
absolutely EVERYTHING Israel does, and EVERY time
someone criticizes anything Israel does, you type a tirade of
invectives against the commenter. Your contribution is poison.

JohnH, who is Abu Mazen's opposite number in Tel Aviv?

No, Norheim, you jerk, I have criticized lots of Israel's policies. What I object to is every problem inside Israel being yanked out of context and turned into a morality play to display Israel's villainy. This sets up a standard where Israelis can't be ordinary assholes, to use your own term - if they are not saints, they must be devils.

While PA & the Hamas are wrapped in the sanctifying cloak of eternal victimhood, which means nobody will even notice how they behave.

The similarity between zionism and nazism is not new....that same mentality has been there since the begining.

[8.44] January 1946, British Consul, New York reporting a mass demonstration for Jewish freedom put on by the New Zionist Organization of America. "It was constantly patrolled by the Betarim, the new Jewish Youth Army, attired in a Hebrew version of the old Nazi Bund uniform." "Great Britain was public enemy no. 1 of the Jewish people, more dangerous and shrewder than the Nazis..."

[8.65] February 1946, formation of B´rith Trumpeldor of America or Betar, affiliated with the NZO. "there is noticeable similarity in the organisation´s character, structure and aims to those of the Hitler Youth…", reported by British Embassy, Washington

Nadine, except for a handful of "tactical mistakes", please
name ONE SINGLE ISRAELI ACTION that you may regard
as morally problematic or objectionable. Because you have
not done so once so far at TWN.

Until you start admitting, with actual examples, and not only
on an abstract level, that also Israelis frequently act like
assholes – instead of accusing EVERYONE of us who say so
of being jerks, morons, pieces of shit, Jew haters, Holocaust
deniers, in bed with the anti-Semites, Hamas-supporters, air-
brushers of the crimes of the other, Hizbullah-supporters,
Achmedinejad-supporters – and so forth and so on – until
then your contribution here remains poison in concentrated
form.

Posted by nadine, Aug 01 2010, 4:45PM - Link
>>>>>>>>>>>>

Ah yes, the latest hasbara taking point...'we're just ordinary folks like everyone else who makes mistakes so you are picking us unfairly'..(probably because you are a Jew hater).

The defenses just get funnier and more absurd with time.

You know how some Jews claim they are somehow genetically more intelligent than other people and groups? Well I have yet to see a scintilla of evidence for that claim among the US zionist or Israel.
But wait....could it be that only the stupid Jews are zionist and the smart ones aren't?
That would seem more genetically plausible.

"No, Norheim, you jerk, I have criticized lots of Israel's policies."

Nadine has criticized Israeli policies FROM THE RIGHT, decrying perceived weakness and lack of sufficient brutality in dealing with Palestinians and other non-Israelis.

That doesn't count as 'criticism'. Personally, I'm tired of Nadine's hasbara propaganda, and I am not at all convinced that she is anything but a full time paid mouthpiece. But that's neither here nor there.

What's undeniable is that Steve Clemons has attempted to be an even handed gadfly on I/P. The Zionist zealots hereabouts are tirelessly virulent in their attempt to slander anyone who does not genuflect at the altar of poor, righteous Israel. Even when the evidence is that Israel has become a brutally calous and racist society.

Oh well, now I suppose the US zionist will be calling for us to bomb Great Britain to preempt a holocaust.
Anyone who can't see how crazy these people are and how they are burning their bomb fuse down to detonation isn't paying attention.

HomeNewsWorld NewsMiddle EastIsrael

Fury as Israel president claims English are 'anti-semitic'

Israel's president has accused the English of being anti-semitic and claimed that MPs pander to Muslim voters.

By David Harrison and Adrian Blomfield in Jerusalem
Published: 9:00PM BST 31 Jul 2010

Israel's President Shimon Peres said that England's attitude towards Jews was Israel's "next big problem". Photo: REUTERS Shimon Peres said England was "deeply pro-Arab ... and anti-Israeli", adding: "They always worked against us."

He added: "There is in England a saying that an anti-Semite is someone who hates the Jews more than is necessary."

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The best and worst MPsHis remarks, made in an interview on a Jewish website, provoked anger from senior MPs and Jewish leaders who said the 87-year-old president had "got it wrong".

But other groups backed the former Israeli prime minister and said the number of anti-semitic incidents had risen dramatically in the UK in recent years.

The controversy follows the furore last week over David Cameron's remark that Gaza was a "prison camp", as he urged Israel to allow aid and people to move freely in and out of the Palestinian territory.

Mr Peres, a Nobel Peace Prize winner who is three years into his seven-year term as president and was awarded an honorary knighthood by the Queen in 2008, said that England's attitude towards Jews was Israel's "next big problem".

"There are several million Muslim voters, and for many members of parliament, that's the difference between getting elected and not getting elected," he said.

"And in England there has always been something deeply pro-Arab, of course, not among all Englishmen, and anti-Israeli, in the establishment.

"They abstained in the [pro-Zionist] 1947 UN partition resolution ... They maintained an arms embargo against us in the 1950s ... They always worked against us. They think the Arabs are the underdogs."

By contrast, relations with Germany, France and Italy were "pretty good", he added.

He made the comments in an interview with the historian Professor Benny Morris of Ben-Gurion University of the Negev published last week in Tablet, a Jewish news website.

The wide-ranging interview covered Mr Peres' role as one of Israel's longest-serving political leaders – an MP for 48 years, twice prime minister, and holder of other ministerial posts over the decades. He is firmly on the Israeli Left.

He was awarded Nobel Peace Prize in 1994 jointly with Yitzhak Rabin and Yasser Arafat for his part as foreign minister in the peace talks which produced the landmark Oslo Accords.

But following his comments, James Clappison, the Conservative MP for Hertsmere and vice-chairman of Conservative Friends of Israel, said: "Mr Peres has got this wrong.

"There are pro- and anti-Israel views in all European countries. Things are certainly no worse, as far as Israel is concerned, in this country than other European countries."

The MP added that he could "understand the frustration" that people in Israel felt with "certain elements of the British broadcast media" which present an unbalanced view of Israel.

He said: "I can understand Mr Peres' concerns, but I don't recognise what he is saying about England."

Yet in Israel, Mr Peres is far from alone in holding such views, which have gained a wider following, particularly on the Right, since the expulsion of an Israeli diplomat over accusations that Mossad sent agents using British passports to assassinate a Hamas commander in Dubai.

Aryeh Eldad, a right-wing member of the Israeli parliament, the Knesset, accused Britain of working against Israeli interests for decades – ever since it "betrayed" its promises to build a Jewish homeland when it governed Palestine under a League of Nations mandate.

"Both governments from the right and the left prefer Arab interests over Israeli interests," said Mr Eldad, whose father Israel was a leading figure in the Stern Gang, the most radical of the Jewish terror groups that fought British mandatory rule.

"The other layer is an ongoing, subtle form of anti-semitism. It is not as overt as it was in Germany, it is a quiet, polite form."

Some leading Jewish commentators in Britain disagreed. Rabbi Dr Jonathan Romain, minister of Maidenhead synagogue and a writer and broadcaster, said: "I am surprised at Peres. It is a sweeping statement that is far too one-sided.

"Britain has supported both Israel and Arab causes at different periods over the last 50 years. There are elements of anti-semitism but it is not endemic to British society.

"The tolerance and pluralism here make Britain one of the best countries in the world in which to live."

Mr Peres found support, however, from other pro-Israeli groups. Jacob Vince, the director of Christian Friends of Israel, said there was anti-semitism in the UK although many people had a positive view of Israel but were unwilling to express it publicly.

Mr Vince said it was "difficult to see how many MPs would not be influenced by the number of Muslim voters in their constituencies".

The Government was not treating Arabs as the underdogs but rather was trying to appease them, he said. "The question is how well they understand those with whom they are seeking conciliation."

Mr Peres is "measured and moderate," he added.

He said: "His comments have serious connotations and I am sure would not be said lightly."

One Israeli politician expressed disbelief that the doveish Mr Peres had launched such a broadside against the British.

Benny Begin, a cabinet minister whose father Menachem was prime minister and before that leader of Irgun, the group that killed 91 people in an attack on Jerusalem's King David Hotel in 1946, said: "Peres? I simply can't believe he said that."

The latest figures show that the number of anti-semitic incidents in Britain is rising, according to the Community Security Trust (CST), a charity set up in 1984 to monitor such incidents.

The situation in Britain had worsened "significantly" in the past decade, a spokesman said.

In 2009 there were 924 anti-semitic incidents, the highest figure since CST began keeping records in 1984, and 55 per cent higher than the previous record in 2006.

The figures include reports, accepted only when backed by evidence, of physical assaults, verbal abuse and racist graffiti.

The monthly figure has soared from 10-20 incidents in the 1990s to 40-50 now.

Last year nearly half of the 924 anti-semitic race attacks recorded by the CST showed a political motivation, with 66 per cent of those including some reference to Israel and the Middle East.

A 2009 report by the US-based Anti-Defamation League found one in five Britons admitted Israel influences their opinion of British Jews, and the majority of those said that they felt "worse" about Jews than they used to. It found, however, that Britain was less anti-semitic than other European countries

I wonder if this: United Arab Emirates, Saudi Arabia To Block BlackBerry Over Security Fears

has anything to do with this:

Israel is aiding an exiled Arab sheikh who is vying to seize control of a strategically important Gulf emirate only 40 miles from Iran.

The Israeli ambassador to London, Ron Prosor, has met Sheikh Khalid bin Saqr al-Qasimi, the exiled crown prince of Ras al-Khaimeh (RAK), who asked him to help with his campaign to oust the leadership of the northernmost state in the United Arab Emirates.

The meeting took place in London in March and has been followed by phone calls and wider assistance and advice, according to records of the relationship seen by the Guardian.

Khalid, who has been based in London and has hired a solicitor from Ickenham as his agent, is bidding to replace his ailing father, Sheikh Saqr, and half brother, Sheikh Saud, to take control of RAK.

Israel's involvement in what would be a bloodless coup in one of the most sensitive regions in the world, would be "extremely uncomfortable", according to Dr Christopher Davidson, an expert on the politics of the UAE at Durham University.

Khalid, who was sent into exile in 2003, claims RAK is now acting as a trafficking hub for nuclear arms parts to Iran and has spent more than £4m on an international public relations and lobbying campaign to persuade American politicians and the pro-Israel lobby in the US that it would be safer if he were in charge.

The alliance with Israel is the latest twist in the already extraordinary saga of Khalid's bid to return to power. In June the Guardian revealed that his fighting fund was being channelled through Peter Cathcart, a 59-year-old miniature steam railway enthusiast and parish council chairman who runs a family firm of solicitors in Ickenham, west London.

He in turn was spending it on top Washington lobbyists, Californian PR consultants and military experts to draw up dossiers damning the regime in RAK.

Prosor has pressed his contacts in the US government on behalf of Khalid whose aides asked for help setting up meetings in Washington with anyone interested in their claims about RAK's alleged sanctions busting, particularly concerning parts for the Iranian nuclear programme, plot records seen by this newspaper show.

An email from Cathcart to the ambassador's office reports that "His Highness … very much enjoyed his meeting with the ambassador".

In April Cathcart arranged for the two men to speak on the phone when the sheikh was in Oman and a note of the conversation recorded by Cathcart shows the ambassador "is working with certain people from his side" and "promised that the matter will be solved in his [the sheikh's] favour".

Sheikh Saqr is understood to be dying in hospital in Abu Dhabi and his son, Sheikh Saud, 54, the sitting crown prince, has been told to begin preparations for his wake, a significant event in emirates politics, which is likely to be attended by Abu Dhabi's rulers, who will have a large influence over which of the sons will succeed him.

"By meeting with the Israeli ambassador, he is sending out signals to Abu Dhabi and Washington DC that he will be hawkish on Iran if it comes to war," said Davidson. "This is a new kind of coup. It doesn't involve slitting throats, but instead spending large sums of money on global communications. It is the first of its kind and I am betting on it being successful. I think by the end of the summer we will have a verdict."

Asked about Israel's involvement, Peter Ragone, a spokesman for Khalid, said: "There is significant interest in the current RAK regime's relationship to Iran, particularly in the context of trying to stop the flow of arms, goods and technology from going through RAK to the Islamic Republic. Sheikh Khalid and representatives from his team meet with elected officials, high-ranking government officials and media representatives of various countries all the time. In fact, this week Sheikh Khalid's representatives are in Washington DC meeting representatives of the US foreign policy/national security establishment who are very concerned about the activity in RAK."

Odelia Englander, a spokeswoman at the Israeli embassy in London, declined to comment.

www.guardian.co.uk

I don't recall Nadine ever criticizing any Israeli policy that involved stealing Palestinian land without compensation, killing women and children without remorse, or massive destruction of Palestinian homes, business and government establishments.

There seems to be nothing that Israel might do to Palestinians that could ever offend Nadine's moral values. Should a Palestinian look askance at an Israeli, however, then he is itching to have his family beaten and home his home stolen...just like the Jim Crow South.

It's how supremacists think.

"Here's the uncomfortable truth, a truth I said at
the beginning. People are people." (sagesiah, Aug 01 2010, 4:13AM)
---

So what? Dogs are dogs and cats are cats!

What you fail to understand is this: is not about human nature -- rather it is about the Law that humans should live under ... one law for all, rich, poor, or any color, race or creed. It is called in civilized countries the rule of law.

The issue with Israel, as described in this thread and links to images of the Israeli youth evicting Palestinians in their own land is simple. People who designate others as subhuman are still yet to evolve to the full meaning of the term 'human'.

However, when a nation State and system of governance enshrines this degeneracy and supports it with the power of the state then you have an evil system at work.

Whether it is driven by theories of genetic (in)breeding or various philosophies of superiority embedded in religious codes and cultural mores, people should be able to live in peace and work together for the common good.

Palestine, under the British mandate, was able to accommodate this principle far better than the largely nonviable state of Israel -- which to all intents and purposes is simply an expression of frustrated covert American colonialism and German/European shame.

Far better that Palestine was handed back to a UN style mandate for all the people living there. Israel is not a good State -- nor is the US for supporting it unconditionally in this ugly settler orientated expansionism.

The issue is not about "people" -- that will never change -- the issue is about systems of governance of the people, for the people, by the people. That is what the US stands for on paper -- but the theory and the practice are diverging.

The struggle for African Americans to emerge from slavery to human citizens of the USA is reflected in the struggle for Palestinians (and other non Jews) to be human and citizens in the eyes of the governing system covering their land -- i.e. the so called state of Israel at this time.

If the state of Israel cannot, or will not, provide good governance for all the people of the region then it should be held to account. That lack of 'accountability' is where the US is missing the mark, as an empire, a nation, a culture and a society.

There is no escaping how creepy this is. Even if one accepts Israel's claim to have a right to evict the Bedouins, no sane and well-governed country sends busloads of high school kids to carry out an eviction, as though it were some sort of summer camp project. What the hell is going on it that country?

Nadine - You don't have to respond to the over the top comments about Israel. But please stop and think about the comments you are making. I have followed your comments for a couple of years and DonS is 100% correct. The only criticisms you have leveled against Israel were due to insufficient military approaches to "arabs". I have not read any criticism of yours that Israel should be more humanitarian.

Now on to the Bedouins and the razing of their village. Israel has had a difficult time with these nomadic people. It tries to urbanize them and take them away from their traditional agriculture and animal grazing livelihood. They are trying to jam square pegs into round holes. Idealy they would like to put the bedouin on reservations and watch them become lost and underdeveloped people like American Indians.

I'm sure you are aware that Netanyahu has called the lack of Jews in the Negev to be a significant National Security risk. The talk in Israel is that if the Bedouin are recognized as indigineous people of the land, their claims might very well predate that of the Jews. That is the reason for the current rush to herd the bedouin into small urban areas. The same thing happened in the Jordan Valley where in the last 2 weeks the villages of Faresiya and Ras Al-Ahmar were destroyed.

Nadine, I hope you have not swallowed the tale of the area around al-Arakib being turned into a forest. Already recruiters are asking for volunteers to move to a new Jewish town to be established 2 kilometers from al-Arakib. It will be a suburb of Bersheeva.

You will get solid debate points if you can come up with a valid reason to bus in all those High School kids along with 1200 police to participate and witness this devastation. What earthly purpose did it serve?

I cannot emphasize enough the necessity of you going to Israel and spending a couple of weeks touring the West Bank to see with your own eyes what really occurs. I have to believe if you did you would come back a changed woman.

"Nadine, except for a handful of "tactical mistakes", please name ONE SINGLE ISRAELI ACTION that you may regard as morally problematic or objectionable." (Paul Norheim)

Okay Paul, the fact that Israel slow-walks removing illegal religious Zionist settlements (though they have done so in some cases, to the fury of the settler movement), the kind on hilltops in Judea and Samaria, while more aggressively removing illegal Bedouin settlements in the Negev, is morally objectionable. Those settlers are the obnoxious minority who do run around cutting down olive trees that belong to Palestinians.

However, quick as you are to point out Palestinian reactions, let me it turn point out an Israeli one: the vast majority of Israelis don't go to the West Bank anymore, thanks to twenty years of Palestinian violence, so the whole problem is "out of sight out of mind" for them -- and those who do think of it, are probably not too upset to have some pressure on the Palestinians to come to the table, as everybody knows that all those ideological hilltop settlements would be evacuated and razed in the event of of a deal.

See, this is the part that is hard to rationalize: the Palestinians wail endlessly how they are "losing" 40% of the West Bank, how the Israelis are "eating up the land through settlement expansion", etc etc. Dan Kervick repeats this over and over.

Well, everybody knows that if they sat at the table they could get 95% of the West Bank with land swaps with Israel to make 100% of the area - basically the Taba parameters, with a firm international border to protect it all. No more settlements on hilltops, no settlement expansion, no Israeli-only roads, in fact no Jews in Palestine, period. For the Palestinians, this is considered a legitimate demand, not apartheid, as it would be for the Israelis.

So you tell me, why, if the Palestinians are REALLY losing 40% of the land, aren't they desperate to sit at the table and negotiate to cut their losses and get back the lost 40%? Why do they obviously feel that time is on their side, no need to ever compromise? Riddle me that, Paul.

To me it seems there are only two logical choices: either they are painting a false picture of the bleakness of their situation to increase their status (& welfare checks) as helpless victims, or they are extremely confident that their current situation doesn't matter, because Israel will collapse internally and have to give them everything back, all of Palestine from the river to the sea. Actually, I think it's a bit of both.

If you would ever like to read a thoughtful, balanced and extremely well informed view of the situation, let me recommend the blog of the historian Yaacov Lozowick. He knows the history of the region and presents it in its own terms, not filtered to fit some European view of the world.

Here is a recent post on the settlements, and his tour of the West Bank with Dror Etkes, a veteran of Peace Now and Yesh Din, and Michael Totten, a freelance reporter: http://yaacovlozowick.blogspot.com/2010/07/roaming-with-dror-etkes.html

jd, what is it that makes you think touring the area would make me agree with the roughly 3% of Israelis who are far-left, instead of the 97% who are not? Don't the 97% also get to see the situation up close and personal?

Breaking news!

Nadine said – "Okay Paul, the fact that Israel slow-walks
removing illegal religious Zionist settlements (...), is morally
objectionable. Those settlers are the obnoxious minority who
do run around cutting down olive trees that belong to
Palestinians."

I have to admit that I thought I would never ever ever hear
you say that. It's a start.

Congrats.

I am fascinated by the ability of grown people to resort to 8 year old boys combat techniques: figuring out how many swear words you can use to describe your opponent.

I suggest to you all, that you do not have to buy into a person's agenda, if that agenda is irrelevant. It should be obvious to all that Nadine is a plant of Israeli intelligence, designed to deflect all reasonable arguments into fruitless name called. Just ignore her.

Steve should feel proud that Israeli intelligence perceives his blog as necessary to attempt to corrupt.

I mention one of Nadine's latest diversion tactics as an illustration. She presents Barak's Camp David offer as compatible with Taba. Nothing could be further from the truth. Barak offered a Bantustan situation which was untenable; and just before Taba, which was very close to the Geneva accord agreement, was done Barak pulled the Israeli negotiators out, and no future government came close to that offer. Barak hiding his real offer at Camp David with the lie "we have no reliable partner with whom to negotiate".

POA, name calling never ever results in a person listening to the content of your argument, which often shows extensive exposure and insight.

I suggest everyone interested in the Palestine situation read "The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine" by Ilan Pappe. He exquisitely documents, often using Ben-Gurion's own diary, that from the 1890's onward, most Zionist theorists knew that many Arabs would have to be cleansed (killed or forced to leave) for a "Jewish" State to be erected. From the 1930's onward a specific intelligence unit was created to obtain plans for each and every Arab village they wanted to cleanse, and those plans were then used in 1947-49 to cleanse almost all the Arab villages in the areas the Zionist leadership wanted to cleanse. Most often by killing a number of the men, thereby encouraging everyone else to begin to walk to the West Bank, which the Zionist leadership had established a secret agreement with the King of Jordan he would keep after Israel declared itself a state.

Close to 1,000,000 Arabs were chased out of the area. Many were killed, often with horrendous techniques: in Haifa and other cities barrels filled with explosives and nails were rolled into Arab neighborhoods followed by trails of oil which were then ignited.

What the Palestinians did in both Intifadas, and their current rocket attacks from Gaza is mild compared to the mass killings and forced exodus that the Jewish forces did to the Arabs in 1947-49. It is simply a matter of what goes around comes around.

What the Zionists did is Palestine is pure and simple ethnic cleansing through terror and killing. Exactly what the Nazis did to the Jews in WWII, which provides further proof, that all who experience harm, and then consider themselves victims, will unavoidably begin to behave toward others in the same manner, once they are in charge. It has happened over and over again in history.

If Israeli's don't face this unpleasant background, its leaders (who always reflect the mind set of the majority of Israeli citizens) will never actually offer a solution that can work.

Having said all that, I further suggest that only until the Palestinians achieve the maturity (which they currently lack) to create a multi-party secular government, that repeatedly presents all future Israeli governments with the same peace treaty plans, and sufficient Israelis recognize their fascist racist past ethnic cleansing behaviors, no foreign government will be able to impose a workable settlement. So let's stop putting out energies into name calling against the Israeli government and citizens and put our efforts into encouraging reality testing in Israelis and maturing techniques for the Palestinians.

Also realize that American foreign policy for the world for the past 60 years has been identical to Israeli government Palestinian policy, which is why our Federal government officials and legislators are such happy bed fellows with the Israel government.

And to Don Bacon, I'm sorry to inject common sense into the TWN discussions again. But I've spent the past 63 years working hard to be in reality land all the time, and I'm not about to abandon that technique now, just because all the Beltway insiders have made common sense illegal. :-)

Here's an amazing parallel.....

http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/world/la-fg-israel-foreign-workers-20100802,0,6695058.story

Reporting from Jerusalem —

Israel moved Sunday to deport the offspring of hundreds of migrant workers, mostly small children who were born in Israel, speak Hebrew and have never seen their parents' native countries.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said the new policy was intended to stem a flood of illegal immigrants, whose children receive state-funded education and healthcare benefits, and to defend Israel's Jewish identity.

"On the one hand, this problem is a humanitarian problem," Netanyahu said during a meeting Sunday of the Cabinet, which had debated the move for nearly a year. "We all feel and understand the hearts of children. But on the other hand, there are Zionist considerations and ensuring the Jewish character of the state of Israel.

"We don't want to create an incentive for the inflow of hundreds of thousands of illegal migrant workers," he said.

Critics, including some government officials, said the decision would punish children by sending them to impoverished or insecure nations that their parents had left in search of better lives in Israel."

Nadine the bigot can "criticize" till hell freezes over, but absent any outrage towards a nation that is doing this kind of despicable and longlasting damage to its youth, her "criticisms" don't amount to diddly squat.

Today I went to a friend's house to assist her and some nieghbors of hers in refinishing some oak furniture that they were shuffling around in some nieghborhood swaps. Conservatives all, and not particularly informed or interested beyond the occassional visit to Fox or CNN, or barely listened to news reports on the radio enroute to work. I happened to mention this particular Israeli atrocity, and how out of sorts it had rendered my mood for the day. One neighbor, a man in his sixties, took great umbraqe at my depiction of the event. In short, he called me a liar. The host of this community effort, my friend, quietly went inside and booted up her laptop. To make a long story short, I received an apology, and five conservative Americans, with a lifetime of Israeli propaganda under their belts, received an eye opening education. The picture that Non-hater linked to brought tears to the eyes of one member of this group.

Nadine seems to take offense at the Nazi comparisons. Considering that Israel is now recruiting its youth to participate in actions such as this "resttlement", (Where else in history, and from whom, have we seen that terminology used?), perhaps Nadine will tell us how these day-glo vested Jewish teens differ from the Hitler Youth, (specifically the grouping of fourteen to eighteen year olds), described above, and requoted below.....

"Boys aged 14 - 18 years joined the Hitler Youth (Hitler Jugend). They were prepared to be soldiers by doing military activities"

Go for it, Nadine. Tell us what the differences are.

If nadine were a "plant of Israeli intelligence" she'd probably be a little bit more subtle.

She's not subtle at all. And she's prickly around POA, which certainly suggests that she's a person, not a spy, and a regular person at that....

Can we stop with the name calling completely? No, of course not. Whatever names any one of us uses feel totally justified at the time.

nadine's basic point is simple. The security issue is real. The Palestinians are not trustworthy and no one has reasonable incentives to settle. In fact, all the incentives are to strengthen one's own position for future negotiations -- which of course may never happen.

What country is dumb enough to weaken itself before negotiations? nadine's view would seem to be that neither side will, that when Israel has tried, things have not gone well.

I don't think that's a horrible position, actually. It's not really mine, but it's well within the realm of the thinkable.

The problem with discussing any of this is that people have set out moral stakes such that compromise instantly becomes immoral, showing parallels becomes a sign of the devil, noting the utter lack of exceptional behavior on Israel's part is considered irrelevant.

Israel is acting fairly rationally all in all. The call, which I have made in the past here, for Israel to act irrationally is a difficult thing to expect any nation to engage in.

Clearly the bulldozing of villages is beyond acceptable. Clearly sending teens in to cheer and ready them for the next round of fighting is sick. Clearly, the racial hatred there is parallel to racial hatred here. Urban renewal bulldozed many many homes and shops, gentrification destroys neighborhoods, homelessness is rampant -- all in the US.

When we lose sight of the parallels and see only Israeli exceptionalism, which is what happens around here and seems to be one of nadine's complaints, and a justified one at that, we do nothing helpful at all.

I'm sure POA will be POA and do his rectal dance....

But the fact remains that there is racial and land conflict and this new generation rather than liberalizing is doing the opposite. To the extent that external pressure has made it worse, I told you so. To the extent that someone might start to feel sick about it, I say that indeed, Robert Byrd and Barack Obama served in the Senate together. Maybe something will change, maybe not.

The world should focus on some version of short term stability such that long term trust can start to emerge. But I gotta tell you, it's not like racism's ill effects have dissipated from the US, and we've had a fair amount of time living with legal equality.

Now let's get rectal!!!

A little more from the LA Times piece -- A-mazing!

"Israel has yet to formulate a clear policy on dealing with the foreign workers, including how and when such people can obtain residency or citizenship.

Some critics have called for Israel to expel all the foreign workers, whom they blame for rising crime and strained government resources. But last year Israel issued about 120,000 new permits to foreign workers who fill low-skilled jobs.

To stem the flow of illegal immigrants, Israel recently said it planned to construct a wall along its border with Egypt. The government also has cracked down on employers hiring illegal workers, set up a special immigration law-enforcement unit and offered $3,000 payments to foreign workers with children who agree to leave."

questions, to compare my opposition to illegal immigration to this unfolding parade of illegal and racist actions committed by the state of Israel against the Palestinians and non-Jews is EXACTLY the kind of sleazy slimey tactic I have come to expect of you.

However, Netanyahu shows a real concern for his nation's ability to control its borders, even though much of that concern seems to be founded in religious and racial bigotry. Despite your despicable admonitions and accusations, I KNOW what my motives are for wishing my government would exhibit the same deep concern for the security of our borders, (albiet based on more moral and humane motives), and my motives are NOT the racial animous towards hispanics that you are so fond of alleging.

Go squat on someone else's head, questions. I am no longer concerned or interested in your drivel.

"When we lose sight of the parallels and see only Israeli
exceptionalism, which is what happens around here and
seems to be one of nadine's complaints, and a justified one
at that, we do nothing helpful at all."

That's not correct, Questions. If some of us occationally
compare Israeli violence or exceptionalism with US violence
or exceptionalism, she immediately accuses the poster of not
only being an anti-Semite,, but also an America hater and
leftist who secretly wants al Quaeda, Taliban, and The Other
to take over and crush democracy and capitalism. Something
like that.

The obvious reason why she doesn't do that to you, is that
you use these comparisons in your polemics with POA.

"Leftist" she uses for sure, "American hater" I don't remember actually, but maybe she does.

The fact remains that her views aren't unthinkable, aren't that uncommon actually.

jdledell who seems really balanced and informed to me doesn't completely condemn her views, only about 85% or so. So she's got a little bit there, 15% or so, maybe a bit less.

I don't see eye to eye with her at all on domestic politics, but I know so many people who do that I'm kind of used to hearing these things.

But really, most expressions of views don't really bother me around here save for conspiracy theory and POA's self-righteousness which drives me bonkers, I have to admit. But I'm sure that's common knowledge.

And since he's now finally done reading any of my posts and he didn't even bother responding to the post on the earlier thread responding to his response to me.... Maybe things will quiet down again for a while.

I still can't figure out, by the way, how Israel is at all different from the US and how anyone can condemn Israel with the volume POA uses and simply accept the all the comforts that have come from the same behavior here. And I can't see how his worries about immigration are any different from what Israel is doing according to the LA Times piece above.

But somehow, he is able to make all sorts of fine and subtle distinctions when such distinctions preserve his self-righteousness.

"jd, what is it that makes you think touring the area would make me agree with the roughly 3% of Israelis who are far-left, instead of the 97% who are not? Don't the 97% also get to see the situation up close and personal?"

If 97% of Israeli Jews support actions such as described here, and support recruiting children to participate in these actions, it would seem that the return of widespread anti-semitism is not only inevitable, but is warranted as well.

(If directed towards this 97% of Israeli Jews in Israel that Nadine admits, (or at least alleges), are racist hateful ghouls)

Was it not morally and ethically astute to oppose and feel bias against the Nazis in Germany?

By the way, POA, the 9:31 post from the LA Times could have been written by you, practically. Though I don't actually know if you're pro-wall or not, to be fair.

Steve Clemons

Why have you censored and deleted my post without explanation? It's obvious that in your bitterness toward Israel you are not only becoming intellectually rattled but also losing your sense of humour.

Why is everything a "tactic" anyway? Smacks of conspiracy or war or something.

I disagree with your views on a range of issues, and I cite what I find. Sometimes I find actual facts that undermine your stated certainties, and sometimes I make arguments against your stated preferences.

There's no "tactic," just a sincere, genuine disagreement about your worldview, and some dislike of your "persona" and a preference for less self-righteous "I am the only moral boy in New York" stuff.

Warren Metzler, I have a deal for you: I will read Pappe if you read Ephraim Karsh's "Palestine Betrayed," very meticulously documented, with many sources only newly available. Plus a much, much more balanced account.

And do be more careful with numbers. Before 1948, there were 1.2 million Arabs in the Mandate of Palestine. After 1948, 170,000 remained in Israel, and over 500,000 remained in the West Bank and Gaza. So "over 1,000,000" could not possibly have been "driven out". The number of Arab refugees of 1948 is estimated by nearly all historians as 600,000 to 700,000.

"Why have you censored and deleted my post without explanation?"

Are you sure you actually posted it?

Is there anyone sane in your household that might be able to attest to your whereabouts during the time-frame in question???

Thank you, Paul. Now do you have any comments or answers to the riddle I asked before?

So you tell me, why, if the Palestinians are REALLY losing 40% of the land, aren't they desperate to sit at the table and negotiate to cut their losses and get back the lost 40%? Why do they obviously feel that time is on their side, no need to ever compromise? Riddle me that, Paul.

To me it seems there are only two logical choices: either they are painting a false picture of the bleakness of their situation to increase their status (& welfare checks) as helpless victims, or they are extremely confident that their current situation doesn't matter, because Israel will collapse internally and have to give them everything back, all of Palestine from the river to the sea. Actually, I think it's a bit of both.

To stem the flow of illegal immigrants, Israel recently said it planned to construct a wall along its border with Egypt.

They also started constructing walls and private roads when they no longer wanted cheap Palestinian labor.

"To stem the flow of illegal immigrants, Israel recently said it planned to construct a wall along its border with Egypt."

Israel is the only First World country that Sudanese refugees can walk to. They have an increasing problem with illegal immigrants from Africa.

"Leftist" she uses for sure, "American hater" I don't remember
actually, but maybe she does."

All the leftists here hate America, Questions, haven't you
noticed? Even Barack Obama, influenced by Rev. Wright for
decades, works tirelessly to undermine America's power,
secretly helping The Other in his ambitions to rule the world.

Or – who knows? – perhaps Barack Hussein is The Other!
His Kenyan father certainly was.

Oh, Paul, I forgot that part!

Geeze, what if I'm a leftist? Yikes! Better start hatin'!

By the way, the piano inspiration has stuck. I "play" nearly every day now, I make the most painful progress possible, but it's progress nonetheless. I dedicate this next number to you, but please don't scream that I'm supposed to play Eb and Bb.... Sometimes I do forget!

It would be interesting to find out if any of the Israeli high school students were US citizens spending their summer in Israel. If so, it should be possible to begin prosecutions for assault, grand larceny and arson here in the US.

A few of years ago , the BC government made a desicion to deal with a sqautter population, that had set up camp in a park, there were a couple hundred people that got evicted. In fact I`m quite sure that squatters are evicted from a great many places everyday.

After, there was a community effort (including teenagers) to clean-up the park ,pick-up the rubbish, and re-juvenate the ruined patchs of forest.

If I recall correctly. people were quite pleased that the Gov. had finally acted.

If the Bedouin of Israel want to continue their nomadic lifertyle ( camp where they want or graze their herds wherever they want ) I suggest they find a time machine to take them back to the 12th century.

Israel has adopted a system of laws that include land deeds and so forth. I hardly think that this eviction (from land that even the Bedouin do not claim they "own" and re-location would muster any outrage,outside of squatters right NGO`s (if those even exist )

Any NORMAL person sees this as a law and order issue of a mundane sort.

"jdledell who seems really balanced and informed to me doesn't completely condemn her views, only about 85% or so. So she's got a little bit there, 15% or so, maybe a bit less."

Jd seem to me a balanced and informed Labor voter of 1992. Unfortunately, he's stuck in a time warp and seems utterly unconscious of anything that has happened over the last 17 years.

Nadine,

Karsh's book is ordered. I just have two questions. When someone who speaks English writes "...I will read Pappe if you read Ephraim Karsh's "Palestine Betrayed," very meticulously documented, with many sources only newly available. Plus a much, much more balanced account." That means "I have not yet read Pappe's book". Well if you have not yet read his book, how do you know Karsh's book is a "much, much more balanced account"?

Second question is what is your basis for the 1948 Arab population figures for the Mandate Palestine area? And that 170,000 Arab were still living in Israel in 1950? And that 500,000 Arabs lived in the West Bank and Gaza in 1950?

You did get these figures from a recognized census conducting organization didn't you? Do you have sufficient integrity to present your exact source for these figures?

The source for 1948 Arab populations are the 1947 British Census and the 1949 Israeli Census, and estimates for the population of the West Bank and Gaza can be found here http://israelipalestinian.procon.org/view.resource.php?resourceID=000636 along with the sources.

I have not yet read this new book by Karsh, except for excerpts and reviews, but I have read other works by him. He is meticulous and detailed.

You should find Karsh interesting. If you can manage to do so with an open mind.

Astounding. As Palestinians lose more and more land to "military zones", settlement expansion, and the separation fence, Nadine claims that time is on the Palestinian's side, that they are just biding their time.

Anyone with half a brain, that has paid a bit more attention than the occassional snippet of Fox News, knows that it is Israel that is playing out the clock.

On this thread; Intriguing that one of the most blatant examples of nazi-like behaviour committed by Israel, and by Israel's most staunch defenders here, is responded to by commentors attempting to bait other posters into off topic, divisive, and incendiary directions.

Other than Nadine's despicable comment about "resettling" these Bedouin, she has completely IGNORED responding to the issue of recruiting teenage children, (ala Nazi Germany), to participate in such evictions and acts of oppression. No comment, explanation, or justification for these kids destroying and defacing property. No comment about the busloads of cheering Jews, mirthful over the travails and misery of over three hundred people, many of which are children. No comment about the photograph of these detestable leering children ghouls taunting a woman that has been evicted from her family home. No comment about the loathsome adults that consigned these kids to a life of bitter hate filled misery by inflicting them with the burden of racism.

Questions offers only baiting, prefering to make the topic POA, rather than this despicable display of state sponsored racism, and the unforgivable corruption of the very souls of these Jewish children.

Paul defends Sagesiah, without addressing the simplistic, naive, and pathetically scripted prattle that Sagesiah's post consisted of. Apparently pablum rates high on Paul's list of acceptable offerings, just so long as the pablum is "civil" pablum.

For those of you that are reading this with motives other than division, I hope you'll act on my suggestion to drop Baird a note letting him know we aren't all Fox News swilling assholes, and that some of us here outside the beltway actually support his efforts on behalf of what we once strived to be.

And check out the website I linked to....

http://www.endtheoccupation.org/

Its your chance to actually DO SOMETHING about our continued financing of racism, human rights abuses, unspeakable attrocities, and the collective punishment of an entire people.

(Haven't you heard? The Master Race has been replaced by the Master Race. Did we learn nothing from the holocaust?)

"Astounding. As Palestinians lose more and more land to "military zones", settlement expansion, and the separation fence, Nadine claims that time is on the Palestinian's side, that they are just biding their time. "

POA, we all know your reading comprehension skills are so low that you think I am a rabbi just because I quoted a rabbi, but let's try this one again from the top.

I did NOT claim that time is on the Palestinians' side. I said THEY act like time is on their side. If THEY thought time was running out, they would want to negotiate before it was too late.

Instead, Abu Mazen does NOT want to return to direct talks, and is being pressured to do so. My question was, why not? If the Palestinians were in as dire straights as they claim, losing land every day, and knew they could secure a state on 95% of the WB + swaps, why not talk? The Quartet support that deal, so if Israel offered less, the Palestinians could always walk out.

Ans: they're not really in such dire straights (the leadership are being paid very handsomely, thank you, and the economy is booming) and Hamas will kill anybody who negotiates. Plus the Palestinians have always practiced a kind of fantasy politics, telling each other that Israel is about to collapse. So naturally they want no part of talks, they figure they'll get it all for free. It's not rational. But it's reality.

Warren,

Sigh, now I will have to buy Pappe's worthless book. I wish you had at least read Morris or Segev; the other New Historians have something to say. Pappe admits he doesn't stick to the facts:

"My bias is apparent despite the desire of my peers that I stick to facts and the "truth" when reconstructing past realities. I view any such construction as vain and presumptuous. This book is written by one who admits compassion for the colonized not the colonizer; who sympathizes with the occupied not the occupiers."

Does that sound like a historian or a story teller? That's a direct quote from Pappe's introduction to his "A History of Modern Palestine: One Land, Two Peoples," according to Karsh's review http://www.meforum.org/897/a-history-of-modern-palestine-one-land-two-peoples (you get one guess if he likes it).

Even Benny Morris, another New Historian, has no use for Pappe, calling him mendacious.

Now , if we could all just be rid of the arab squatters on the west bank, this little drama could be wrapped up.

Questions said (quoted from two separate posts):

"jdledell who seems really balanced and informed to me doesn't
completely condemn her views, only about 85% or so. So she's
got a little bit there, 15% or so, maybe a bit less."

"nadine's basic point is simple. The security issue is real. The
Palestinians are not trustworthy and no one has reasonable
incentives to settle. In fact, all the incentives are to strengthen
one's own position for future negotiations -- which of course
may never happen.

What country is dumb enough to weaken itself before
negotiations? nadine's view would seem to be that neither side
will, that when Israel has tried, things have not gone well.

I don't think that's a horrible position, actually. It's not really
mine, but it's well within the realm of the thinkable."

--------------------------------------------

Isn't that a distortion of her views, Questions? What is her
actual message, repeated again and again, explicitly or
implicitly?

1a) Israel has only good intentions.
1b) Israel wants peace. Israel wants a fair and just deal, and
would love to negotiate a settlement (i.e. a two state solution) if
the other side was credible and trustworthy.

2a) The Palestinians have only bad intentions.
2b) The Palestinians don't want peace. They do everything to
sabotage negotiations because their ultimate goal is to
exterminate the Jews and take over all of Israel, and invite all
the refugees back home.

To 1a - what does it mean that Israel only has good intentions.
You know very well that this is an extremely biased and false
claim, because there are both plenty of bad intentions and
good intentions within Israel, and the recent signs and
developments are worrying, as a matter of fact, they are
alarming.

To 1b - What does it mean that Israel wants peace? On terms
that the other side can accept with regard to its future welfare
and its dignity as a people? You know, Questions, that this is a
highly questionable claim with Netanyahu in charge.

To 2a) The implicit claim that the Palestinians have only bad
intentions (living on welfare, until the time and opportunity to
exterminate the Jews has arrived) is absurd.

To 2b) Their ultimate goal is to exterminate the Jews and take
over Israel? Sure, the charter says so. But both jdledell, you,
Nadine, and most of us here know that claiming that Hamas
unambiguously denies Israel's right to exist and want to
destroy Israel and exterminate the Jews, is a patent lie. I would
like to leave it to jdledell and others who know more about the
details than myself to elaborate on this, but we all know that
there are highly influential voices within Hamas who do not
share these views, and who are much more flexible with
regards to the "right to exist" issue, refugees and several other
core issues.

And then there is the terrorism issue, civilian casualties, etc.
where the facts speak for themselves: The casualties on the
Palestinian side are ten times as high as those on the Israeli
side. Still, Nadine defends the Israeli methods five times a day,
in average.

Nadine has once - once in two years; one sentence among
more than 1000 posts - admitted that Israel has committed
morally objectionable actions. That happened in this thread
some hours ago, and I appreciate the fact that she did so. But
the rest is accusations, defense, accusations, defense, ad
nauseam. You have to admit that that is pretty extreme? And
not less provocative than POA's invectives and intolerance
towards some of his opponents, perhaps especially you?

Using myself as an example: She still insists that I am in bed
with the Jew-haters, that I support Hamas, support terrorism
etc. You know my positions, Questions, repeated here many
times. Would you not consider that pretty sick and extreme?

Are you really saying that the rest of us have no reason to be
provoked, confronted with such behavior? That her views and
demeanor are "reasonable" and nothing to make a fuzz about?

15 % correct? Well, that's the problem, isn't it? I have no doubt
that Pol Pot, Glenn Beck, Putin, Hitler, Arafat, Limbaugh, Stalin,
BP, Idi Amin, Achmedinejad, Netanyahu, Kim Yong Il, Bush jr,
Dick & Liz Cheney, Addington, Yoo, Osama bin Laden, Avigdor
Lieberman, Yassir Arafat are or were all at least "15 % correct".
If not, they wouldn't achieve anything. The problem occurs
when someone distorts a kernel of truth to a degree that
perverts it.

Those who are 100 % wrong are harmless. Yes, Questions, it's
true that Nadine is 15 % correct. And that's the problem.

"Their ultimate goal is to exterminate the Jews and take
over Israel? Sure, the charter says so. But both jdledell, you,
Nadine, and most of us here know that claiming that Hamas
unambiguously denies Israel's right to exist and want to
destroy Israel and exterminate the Jews, is a patent lie."

Can you even find one Hamas leader who says anything different than this so-called "patent lie"?

Norheim, you are blind as a bat. Hamas talk like Islamist fanatics, act like Islamist fanatics, make the political choices of Islamist fanatics, and you sit there and proclaim that for anyone to think Hamas actually ARE Islamist fanatics is "absurd". You leave evidence to other people. You just know it.

Well, I think you and your whole myopic little Norwegian exercise in multi-cultural pretense is absurd. And dangerous to Western civilization.

p.s. In WWII, the Germans suffered more casualties than the Americans did. The Japanese suffered lots more casualties. Does that mean the Americans were wrong and should have lost? Do you even care what people are fighting for?

"Marcus, Aug 02 2010, 2:45AM" -- have another look at http://s.wsj.net/media/051410pow11.jpg (non-hater, Aug 01 2010, 3:21AM) and tell me which one of these spoiled little louts is you?

It would be interesting to see if they are dual citizens of the US or EU for prosecution purposes (see Robert J Molineaux, Redfield, New York, Aug 01 2010, 11:29PM) Perhaps it was a field trip on Israeli 'ethics'?

BTW: I actually enjoy the lively language here -- American cathartics. Check out an old 1997 film called "As Good as it Gets" (Jack Nicholson and Helen Hunt). This blog reminds me of it sometimes. A version can be found in 21 parts at -- http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s86QwWRNNkw&feature=related

"Can you even find one Hamas leader who says anything
different than this so-called "patent lie"?"

Yes I can. And many commenters here have given
examples of that before, also at TWN. But then you just
repeat some extreme statement that some Hamas guy has
said in Arabic, as evidence of their "real" intentions.

But if those Hamas statements, said in Arabic, addressing
Palestinian audiences, represent the truth about their
intentions, as opposed to what they say in English to
please an international audience, then the logical
conclusion is that, say, what Netanyahu said to some
Jewish settlers in Hebrew in a recently published video
from 2000 also represents his real intentions, as opposed
to what he says in English to please an international
audience. The logical implications are that neither
Netanyahu nor Hamas have any sincere intentions to make
peace.

This may well be the truth. But if that is the case, Nadine,
you should stop claiming that only one side is unwilling to
achieve peace, or that only one side says something to an
international audience, and something entirely different
when they speak in their native tongue.

"Norheim, you are blind as a bat."

I don't think so. It's not regarded as politically constructive
to claim that there are significant sinister forces on both
sides intending to destroy each other, and who mirror and
encourage each other in this goal. But that seems to be
the case here. If you seriously believe that the Israelis have
only good intentions while the Palestinians have only bad
intentions, which is an accurate summary of your message
here during the last couple of years, then it's you who is
blind as a bat.

Yes, Nadine, I'm a Norwegian, but I don't represent the
official Norwegian positions on these issues. The
Norwegians have been naive in their attempts to be
mediators in the Israel/Palestine conflict and the conflict
in Sri Lanka - to mention two places where they did not
succeed as mediators. I think they were too optimistic, too
naive, and too eager to save the world. I don't believe in a
settlement on these issues within this decade, because the
sinister forces on both sides are too strong and too deep,
both structurally and historically. Their respective
nationalistic ideologies are not helpful either.

I have no solution to offer, and if I had one, smarter
people than me would have suggested it years ago. But to
claim that the Israelis have the monopoly on good
intentions, as you tirelessly try to convince the readers of
TWN, is a waste of time. Your credibility is at point zero,
and you know that.

There is no way to escape the painful, but probably also
liberating fact that the Israelis are assholes, like everybody
else on this planet. They've had more than 60 years to
prove this, and they have succeeded. Good for them!

However, being the occupiers, systematically stealing land
that does not belong to them, land they pretend to
exchange for a peace they do not believe in - they
happen to be bigger assholes at the moment than their
Palestinian enemies. And immensely more powerful.

These are all established facts. So where do they go from
there? Secondly, are external powers able to convince
them to change course, or able to stop them if they
continue to prove their assholeness?

And let me admiringly add, Nadine, that while Israel has had
more than 60 years to prove that they are assholes, no one
here can deny that you, as a faithful defender of the
assholeness of the Israeli government, have achieved the
same goal within an impressively short timespan as a
commenter at The Washington Note. Point taken.

But the question to you remains the same as the question
regarding Israel. Your credibility is, as it always has been, at
point zero (or why don't we just say "15 % correct"?) So
where do you go from there?

Your admission on this thread was a refreshing first step
upwards.

Questions:

Just one comment to your posts here re illegal
immigration (and I am not only referring to your
comments on this particular thread, but on other recent
and past comments as well).

1) Sure, the Mexican illegal immigration issue is related to
Israeli illegal immigration from Africa and elsewhere (as it
is related to illegal immigration to Europe). But this issue
is not in any direct way related to the Israeli occupation,
the wall against Palestinian rockets, the intifada, the
bombardment of the Gaza Strip, the blockade etc.
Regardless of your or POA's or my positions on illegal
issues, these are politically separate from the core
Israel/Palestine issues. Many Mexicans and Africans want
to escape home and find a better place. But the
Palestinians we are discussing here insist that Gaza or the
West Bank is their home, and that the Israelis should stay
away from their homeland.

2) The core Israel/Palestine issues regarding occupation of
Palestinian territory, as well as the example on this post of
destroying a Bedouin village, are however to some extent
related to the white Americans' treatment of the native
Indian population and the European colonial enterprise,
South Africa included.

A couple of questions:

Do I, as a "European" - as Nadine and Carole often use as
a label to "explain" the motives for some of my statements
- feel personal guilt for Holocaust?

Nope.

For the European colonial project?

Nope.

I was born in 1962, and feel no guilt whatsoever for these
events. I played no part in them, knew nothing about them
before I accidentally entered this world.

Should ordinary Americans like you and POA and Carroll
feel some personal guilt related to what was done against
the native population in America centuries ago?

Why?

How?

But we should all feel responsible for stuff happening
today, and ask ourselves if we can influence those events
in any way - including effects of events happening long
before we were born.

Perhaps we can't in many cases. But arguing against
outrage for what is happening today in the Middle East by
referring to the guilt POA or DonS should feel towards
what happened to the Indians, or analyzing my statements
here as some therapeutic activity to treat my guilt for stuff
happening before I was born, and elsewhere, is not
convincing.

It's nonsense.

Nor is your discussion with POA regarding Mexican
immigration related in any meaningful way to the actual
problems in the Middle East. As I see it, these problems
are better discussed as separate issues, despite the
common humanitarian aspect that penetrates virtually
every political issue as such.

Israel wants peace -- on its own terms, of course.

The US wants peace in Iraq, Iran, Afghanistan, Yemen and so on -- on its own terms.

I don't doubt that nadine has no problems with "on its own terms" as a defining characteristic of any international player. The point of realism is this kind of power play -- peace is always to be waged only on your own terms.

And I think nadine sees a split in the Palestinian elite vs. masses -- the elite may very well have something like "bad intentions" vis-a-vis staying in power, keeping the corruptocracy going, and hoping for a return to greater land holding.

Cuban ex-pats have certainly had such a fantasy, many white Americans harbor the same kind of taking back our country from THOSE people fantasies.

nadine has very conservative views. I think they stem from a particular kind of anxiety that picks a range of supporting facts and avoids risk like the plague.

There are supporting facts for her position. There are real security issues, there's a hostile neighborhood, there are purity issues, there are a whole bunch of identity points she draws on.

These identity points are carbon copies of the right wing in the US -- purity, land and political control, corruptocracy at the state level and local gov't level as well as some national concern over welfare state issues, fears of takings and status changes in a new order.

nadine is conservative and she takes on the conservative line because it expresses her set of worries.

I'm fine with that.

The conservatives in the US do a lot of things that bother me deeply, that strike me as profoundly immoral, that are basically sick fuck. Read anything about prison rape and prison conditions (Republican prison privatization, Wackenhut Corp and Corrections Corp of America -- really sick stuff), read anything about the way that the right has legalized the stripping of wealth from those who hardly have any (through the failure to regulate rent-to-own, usury, the forcing of prime-qualified borrowers into the subprime market) -- this is what conservatives do in the US.

There's simply nothing singular about nadine's views, nothing exceptional, nothing that needs to be singled out for extra condemnation. It's standard order, boiler plate conservatism.

I can deal with it.

Correction:

"Regardless of your or POA's or my positions on illegal
IMMIGRATION issues, these are politically separate from the
core Israel/Palestine issues."

Israel has adopted a system of laws that include land deeds and so forth.

Yeah?

If Jewish Israelis can claim property in East Jerusalem based on land deeds that predate 1948, why can’t Palestinians with similar deeds reclaim their homes in West Jerusalem?

I have in mind the Kalbians, our neighbors in Sheik Jarrah. Until 1948, Dr. Vicken Kalbian and his family lived in a handsome Jerusalem-stone house on Balfour Street in Talbieh. In the spring, the Haganah, the Zionist militia, sent trucks mounted with loudspeakers through the streets of Talbieh, demanding that all Arab residents leave. The Kalbians decided it might be prudent to comply, but they thought they’d be back in a few weeks.

Nineteen years later, after the Six-Day war, the Kalbians returned to 4 Balfour Street and knocked on the door. A stranger answered. “He was a Jewish Turk,” Dr. Kalbian said, “who had come to Israel in 1948.” The man claimed he had bought the house from the “authorities.”

That year the Kalbians took their property deed to a lawyer who determined that their house was indeed registered with the Israeli Department of Absentee Property. Under Israeli law, they learned, due compensation could have been paid to them — but only if they had not fled to countries then considered “hostile,” like Jordan. Because in 1948 they had ended up in Jordanian-controlled Sheik Jarrah, the Kalbians could neither reclaim their home nor be compensated for their loss.

The Kalbians eventually emigrated to America, but their moral claim to the house on Balfour Street is as strong as any of the deeds held by Israelis to property in Sheik Jarrah.

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/05/01/opinion/01bird.html?_r=1

Actually the immigration issue comes up for very good reason. That is, I bring it up for very good reason.

POA positions himself as THE moral voice of the universe. THE moral savior. THE CHOSEN ONE who SEES all great wrongs and must scream the world into righteous behavior.

POA sees himself as a seer. As one who once was on Israel's side but then learned THE TRUTH regarding the "chosen one" and has become an evangelical bringing the good news to the rest of the world.

POA KNOWS. POA SEES. ALL.

But then he has this funny little gigantic blind spot when it comes to the brown skinned folk.

POA HIMSELF feels threatened by the brown skinned border transgressors and it's his sense of threat to his way of life that makes it okay for him to support deportations and stringent enforcement of the border.

He doesn't feel threatened by Palestinians. He does, however, feel threatened by Israel.

When POA feels threatened, he explodes with indignant moralism. When he doesn't feel threatened, he's happy as a clam.

The asymmetry here is typical for moralizers and I merely point this out.

The policy that emerges from POA's moralizing and his own set of anxieties and preferences is counter productive on every side.

Defunding Israel, breaking relations, pressuring from the outside... is likely to cause more problems than it solves. And indeed may well make life for the Palestinians worse rather than better. But then that's the underlying point. It isn't a deep concern for others that motivates him, or maybe it isn't a deep understanding of the multi-dimensional nature of IR gaming that works through his brain. Rather, he has a simplistic overly moralistic and anxiety-informed inflamed skull. He's in a moral panic because he feels threatened, and so he lashes out.

Or at least, his "persona" lashes out.

So, yes, I bring up the immigration issue and many others because they show the blind spots.

And it's profoundly important to remember the people who live in glass houses line. Of course just because we do it too doesn't make it right when you do it -- BUT -- if we're going to bash you for something we also do, maybe a little self-awareness is called for?

More provocation

Hamas vows revenge after Israel kills commander in Gaza strike
Palestinian witnesses report one dead and 13 injured in heaviest strike on Hamas-linked targets since Operation Cast Lead, as Israel retaliates for rocket attack on Ashkelon.
By Barak Ravid, Avi Issacharoff, Shlomo Shamir,

http://www.haaretz.com/news/diplomacy-defense/hamas-vows-revenge-after-israel-kills-commander-in-gaza-strike-1.304966

Pretty good rant actually, questions.

But I must say that the immigration issue seems unrelated to I/P in ways that, should you put your mind to it, you could dissect in detail. However, the point seems to be rather to criticize POA's makeup, something most of us here are good at from time to time. I would like to suggest, however, with my usual disclaimer not to know POA's heart, that it is rather straight forward of him to state his views, likely knowing they are out of the 'progressive' mainstream, wherein you seem to find a contradiction with views related to US Israel policy.

Which brings me to your condemnation of policy aimed at " . . .pressuring from the outside . . . is likely to cause more problems than it solves" Whether you are negating the notion of 'pressure' solely related to POA or just in general, I'm kind of left scratching my head. So we're not supposed to pressure from outside, regardless of the potential leverage the US has (but has not used in decades), exactly what kind of impotence are you suggesting? I for one am angry as hell that my tax dollars go to Israel with as few strings as they do now, much less continue to do so but without even holding out the potential off gaining some leverage from the giveaway. Talk about nadine being a conservative; your approach is a conservatives wet dream, in effect, and picking a range of supporting facts. And for the 'progressives? They're supposed to just say Oh, that's just Israel, that's just the way they are; can't do anything about it. Oh well, just sign the check.

I see the baiting continues.

Being small is one thing, but putting your smallness on exhibition in such a shameless manner only puts one's character on display.

Just as he misrepresented the body of the Arizona law, he also misrepresents not only MY motives for opposing illegal immigration, but the motives of a clear majority of Americans, if virtually EVERY poll on illegal immigration is to be believed.

POA this, and POA that. What is questions' problem? Are there really those here that find my own alleged defects of character so much more worthy of indignation and discussion than that of Marcus or Nadine, whose manners and commentaries are so much more apropos to discussion regarding the subject at hand??? Is questions' apparent obsession with POA more worthy of bandwidth than a debate about Israeli policies that entail recruiting children to participate in despicable acts of oppression and racism?

Peruse the thread. Whose comments imply a narcissistic feeling of entitlement to attack a commentor with off topic and purposely inciteful baiting designed to hijack the discourse?

Examine the possible motives of someone that would compose a post such as the one you see above this one.

Is that the kind of post you opened this thread to read?

DonS,
My point over and over again around here is something like the following:

Israel has developed a deeply problematic psyche, there is no doubt. Internal political pressures guide foreign policy and in a competitive electoral system one will generally find structural space for a lot of crazy position-taking. Israel's Knesset is especially structured for that position-taking given the multiple party parliamentary system.

Israelis have a wide and deep range of psychic scars from the Holocaust (2nd and 3rd generation guilt is a funny thing, too), from the former Soviet Union, from pushes east and west simultaneously, and from actual real suicide terrorism directed actually and really at them.

So there's craziness, much based on real experience, and much amplified through the generations. That craziness coupled with the internal political structures makes the current situation not unlikely.

In terms of "doing" things -- "doing" is a funny notion. I've brought up the idea of "wu wei" multiple times here. It's often translated as "action through inaction" or something like you get what you want by not pursuing it directly.

I don't really want Israel to continue in its present policy path. BUT getting anyone or anything to stop what it's doing and do something else is not usually accomplished by direct action.

You can stop a particular criminal from acting on impulses by locking him up, certainly. But you don't actually stop the impulses, or the fact of criminality, by locking up any one guy. There are structural pressures that must be brought to bear on any complex situation with multiple causes.

So, no, I'm not in love with the status quo, but I don't want change for change's sake. I want a well thought out series of steps that actually makes it something like safe for Israelis to take some steps away from the craziness.

I long ago noted that I couldn't see how they in Israel could want their children growing up in what they've built. I still think that in a way, but I also note that social norms can make us "want" really dumb shit sometimes. In societies that practice genital mutilation, it's the women doing it to their daughters and despite the craziness, they can't imagine not doing it. In urban gang war zones, the sons do it to each other with the moms' implicit permission -- permission granted simply by the norms, by the inability to stop the craziness. The father is already in prison, as are a few uncles and brothers and neighbors, and there's not much else to do. It's a norm, and many people live up to social norms. We don't all, of course, and it's the exceptions to these norm-followers we need to understand better than we do.

People are very adaptable, and in Israel they seem to have evolved/adapted to an internal and external acceptance of violence. This violence has been normed and, of course, is rejected by some, but not by enough people.

If I actually knew how to get through it, I'd write a brilliant policy piece and win a Nobel Prize!

As for tax dollars, I don't care how MY MONEY gets spent, actually. Some of it will be spent on a border wall, much of it is spent on corruption, the money I give to Target for plastic crap now goes to a homophobic Minnesota candidate.... I'm not retentive regarding MY MONEY and I don't think of it as MY SOUL, MY LIFE, MY CASH.... That's actually not far from the line that Shylock bleats out in "Merchant" -- what is it, "My money, my jewels, my daughter" as if he can't quite tell the difference. I just don't identify that way, I guess. (I don't have the line quite right and I'm too lazy to open up a new tab and get it right.... Sorry.)

I'm not advocating complete passivity, but I'm also not advocating doing something really dumbfuck we'll regret later just to ease my sad and sorry and sore soul.

I do indeed think that certain kinds of pressure put people on moral panic alert status, and if we do that to Israel in the name of saving private Palestinians, we'll condemn more Palestinians to horror. It's paradoxical, but sometimes when you go for it, you get smacked by an equal and opposite reaction.

POA screams out unnuanced unthinking unread ignorant action for action's sake in the most direct ways possible.

nadine is not far behind on this -- she's been largely accepting of Israel's direct attempts to gain security without really noting how insecure their security is. Wu wei comes to the fore in lots of places.

Neither view seems particularly smart or humane to me, but at least nadine isn't self-righteous about it. She's merely anxious.

If I ever figure out some wonderful way to speed along negotiations that are this freighted with psychodrama, apocryphal imagery, death and destruction, moral panic, ethnic and religious insanity, water rights, land use, money, political power, position-taking...I'll let you be the first to know!

Blahblahblah.....

I'm going to work. Maybe by the time I get home questions will have figured out what color socks to wear today.

POA, perfect timing, as I was composing a note to explain precisely why I spend so many electrons on this! Thanks for the segue!

Now, I will be the first to say that I haven't read enough Freud to get this exactly right, but it'll do at any rate.

There is a common technique in literature to split a character's psyche into multiple people so that each side of a complex person can be investigated. Freud shows this kind of multiplying of personality as the id, ego and super ego.

Assuming we take on roles that are really aspects of a totality, just as a writer assigns them in a good novel or play, and just as Freud finds these same basic parts in any single psyche, here's the analysis of this site.

POA and Steve are alter egos of one another, or rather, POA is the wild id that gives in to desire, doesn't think or analyze particularly much but is heavily motivated by action. Steve is the superego that follows the rules with stringent devotion.

Steve lets POA rant because Steve would really like to rant rather than not, but he must be restrained or risk offending those whose support he needs.

By opposing POA's rants, then, I am actually going against much of what I think has Steve's basic seal of approval.

POA screams routinely about the absence of mentions of Hillary Clinton, and funny enough, his rants are the embodiment of the presence of Hillary Clinton. Steve need not say anything as POA does it for him.

They are, then, flip sides of the coin, id and super ego, two characters in a narrative who are actually one.

If I thought that POA's views were as insignificant as, say, I think Marcus's are, I wouldn't bother. But in fact POA's views are central to the blog, so yes, I spend some energy on this.

The rest of us who post often try to go back and forth between POA's id and Steve's super ego, and so we play the role of the ego -- we look for things left out, connections unmade, patterns unseen. We try to bring in outside material that might be relevant. Sometimes we lean one way or another, but we don't worry about diplomacy particularly much or offending the elites any more than we simply give in to wild desire.

If nothing else, it's fun to play with this!

Free for all, and corrections are more than welcome as I have honestly not read much Freud at all, no Lacan to speak of, a little Zizek here an there, and that's about it for psychoanalysis.

This whole issue comes down to Israelis don't trust Palestinians and the latter doesn't trust Israelis. This is a legitimate beef for both sides. For example, one of the greatest "sins" for an Israeli is to be a "frier" (sucker). This concept permeates Jewish society. Well, the Palestinians have picked up on that and are being careful also not to be a frier.

You ask a Palestinian about the Wye River agreement and the first thing they tell you is about Sharon's and Netanyahu's call for the youth to take the hilltops for whatever we don't take now will go to them. Add to that the video of Bibi talking in Ofra where he explained how he uesed the term "militarily significant" to screw the Palestinians in the Oslo agreement.

The concept of frier is the real reason Israel wants to negotiate. It gives them the opportunity to use the fine print to take away what the large print givith. The Palestinians are so wary of this they screw themselves up negotiating. For this reason face to face negotiations will not suceed. It takes mediation to come to an agreement and even then the agreement will probably run many thousands of pages. Until every popssible contingency is covered in written detail there will be no peace.

I wish people would drop references to Camp David 2000 and the Olmert plan. Neither one of those plans existed - it was just a bunch of talk. In both cases only big picture stuff was discussed with nothing, much less detailed written descriptions, committed to by either side. In other words, without a complete multi-thousand page documnet, there is NO OFFER.

p.s. - Nadine, I first voted in Israeli elections in 1981 for Shinui as I did in 1984. Subsequently, I did vote Labor but in the last election I voted Kadima.

By the way, DonS,
There's a guy who posts at TPM Cafe under the name "bslev" -- Bruce S. Levine, he informs us from time to time. He's a labor negotiator, and he's Jewish and he, like I and Sweetness, would like to see Israel do better and would like to see the continuation of Israel on the planet -- minus the insanity of course.

It's worth reading what labor negotiators say about negotiation, positioning, aggrandizement, conditions and preconditions and the like.

This profession likely has a lot of insights about how pressure works and when it fails.

Look up some of his posts.

He gets the same world weary sense of "here come the anti-Semites" that shows up around here, he makes many points similar to things Sweetness and I have said, he's better versed in Israeli history by far than I am, and he's got a lot of experience in negotiations.

Understanding diplomacy-speak is probably a good experience for getting the ME dudes together around a table.

When I linked at some point recently to a Dan Kervick/bslev back and forth, POA's response was typical -- Dan rocks, bslev is an ass.....

Thanks for the reference questions. I am fairly familiar with negotiations, formal and informal. One problem in the ME is that all parties are also all too familiar with playing and posturing on he world stage. Any meaningful negotiations, and their analogues, are going on behind the scenes. I'll take a leap and guess they're not going anywhere very fast either. Ergo, pressure may well be a necessary component -- and I have no idea what the current state of play is, except Obama falls over himself to seem ineffective and with elections coming that's unlikely to change.

Sorry you don't care how you tax dollars are spent.

jdledell has a nice point about the lack of trust, and of course that's a central problem all over the place. In econ, it's the assurance issue -- same basic structure. I won't do what's in my basic interest because I don't know if you will follow through because what you really want if for me to be the sucker and for you to be well-positioned.

I think I did a thing on smoke stacks earlier and was told by Carroll, I think it was, that it was totally irrelevant to the cause.... Ugh.

As for tax money, it's kind of like this -- I can't control the system on my own, I believe firmly in a robust tax system, I hope that some of the money goes to something I think of as good, but I live in a system, in a group, with others whose notion of good differs from mine.

I can deal with it.

I think most of the religious right is nutty, I think Bloomberg and Klein are off the deep end, I totally do not want Arne Duncan where he is, I think our wars are crazed but I don't see easy ways out, I think we should be doing far more regarding full employment and liberal book-laden education and music education, I think there should be public swimming pools in every low income neighborhood with free swimming lessons early on as the drowning rates are astounding and the obesity rates are, too.

I'd love for public money to go to all kinds of really great things for lots of people. I'd like every state to have sales tax, reasonable income tax, gas tax, transit, subsidized goodness....

But I don't think I'll get much of this.... Because plenty of people think all of this stuff is immoral if it's paid for publicly.

I can cope.

"When I linked at some point recently to a Dan Kervick/bslev back and forth, POA's response was typical -- Dan rocks, bslev is an ass."

Please keep me out of this discussion.

Sorry Dan Kervick.

I was recounting recent history, but consider yourself written out.

"That year the Kalbians took their property deed to a lawyer who determined that their house was indeed registered with the Israeli Department of Absentee Property. Under Israeli law, they learned, due compensation could have been paid to them — but only if they had not fled to countries then considered “hostile,” like Jordan. Because in 1948 they had ended up in Jordanian-controlled Sheik Jarrah, the Kalbians could neither reclaim their home nor be compensated for their loss.

The Kalbians eventually emigrated to America, but their moral claim to the house on Balfour Street is as strong as any of the deeds held by Israelis to property in Sheik Jarrah. "

Yes, I would agree with that. Of course many millions have been in that position, in Europe after WWII, in India/Pak, in Israel/Arab countries. Property owners on the winning side of a last war always have a better chance in reality. The Israeli court system is imperfect, but at least it's there. Can't say that of most of the rest of the Mideast.

Incidentally, I do believe that is the very first time the New York Times has ever mentioned that the Jewish owners in Sheikh Jarrah are claiming pre-1948 property rights. The articles on Sheikh Jarrah just call them "settlers".

Please Norheim, I'm waiting for examples of Hamas recognizing Israel. Offers of truces aren't good enough.

Here's a transcript of a BBC interview with Khaled Meshaal, where the BBC reporter keeps trying to get him to recognize Israel in some circumstances, maybe after a withdrawal to the 1967 borders, but Meshaal won't be cornered.

After Israel completely withdrew to the 1967 borders, he says Hamas could offer a truce, then adds "If the international community is talking about a permanent solution then it has to find out what the roots to the problem are and what the Palestinian rights are."

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/4693382.stm

Okay, I think I can figure out what "roots to the problem" he's talking about, Norheim. Can you?

jd, this "there was on offer" schtick seems to be yours alone. Nobody else claims it. For example, when Arafat refused to agree to the Taba accords in early 2001, he went home to Ramallah and proudly proclaimed that he had "turned over the table" and refused the deal. Why, if there was no deal?

Clinton in his accounts of the negotiations, goes into detail about how the offers were read to Arafat and why you could not give Arafat a written proposal - basically, instead of saying, like most negotiators 'I agree to this part but not that part,' he would pocket all the concessions but consider that he himself had agreed to nothing.

"nadine is not far behind on this -- she's been largely accepting of Israel's direct attempts to gain security without really noting how insecure their security is. Wu wei comes to the fore in lots of places."

An odd comment, questions, as every time I mention "existential threat" I get told that Israel has no real existential threats, why the entire Mideast is nothing but hugely powerful Israel beating up on the poor helpless Palestinians. I am very aware how insecure Israel's security is.

nice series of rants, btw

Barry Rubin has a good piece in the Jpost, where he points out the derangement and indeed racism of treating Iran or Hamas as passive victims who only react to the West:

"In this era, the most common way of dealing with radicalism, repression, terrorism, and such things in the Third World is to blame it on democratic states so often victimized by such things.

The latest contribution to this genre comes from British ambassador to Israel Tom Phillips who said Israel’s sanctions’ regime on the Gaza Strip “was breeding radicalism.”

He claimed it had driven “Gaza into a Hamas-controlled tunnel economy, and the Palestinian Gaza private sector has been almost completely destroyed….Young boys on the streets [have had] no role models apart from the Hamas guy in the black shiny uniform on the street corner... creating, in psychological terms, another generation of people that are not going to feel that friendly about Israel.”

The message is that the problem is completely due to “us.” The other side doesn’t actually exist. It has no history, no worldview, no ideology, and no goals. The “other side” is merely a blank screen or mirror, reflecting back what we do.

This is, of course, a racist and imperialist vision. It denies the other any cultural or historical mentality of its own.

If one is only a victim always, one has no volition, higher intelligence, or ability to affect history.

Yet let’s look at the events. For instance, Islamist Iran is not radical because it has been isolated; rather, it has been isolated because of its radical behavior."

rest at http://www.jpost.com/Opinion/Columnists/Article.aspx?id=183313

Israel has never wanted to be, or claimed to be a Multi-cultural society,they like the vast majority of the worlds nations are not in any way officially multi-cultural and are in no way obliged to become so.

The minority cultures (like the Bedouin) survive only on the largesse of the majority culture and can over time be reduced in size and influence.( this can be done legally,by resticting the use of their language,re-locating them or in other ways incouraging them to emigrate the hell out of there.

Just as the American south-west has the right to limit immigration,the official use of spanish and the singing of the national anthem so too does Israel.

personally, beyond a sufficient number to take tourists on camel rides,I see no reason to allow the Bedouin to continue their traditional lifestyle.

According to the usual boors and imbeciles who post here,Israelis are now actually, demons fron hell,because they have not embraced multi-culturalism, What a Joke ! In these idiots (POS and that ..... Carroll) rush to attack Israel ,they will sieze any inch of space opened up,even this most inane ,insignificant issue that this thread is based on.

Cee- My argument is applicable to all arabs in Israel, they are living (in their own language,neighborhoods and culture ) only because of the current largesse of the majority pop.

nadine, backwards reading of "insecure their insecurity is" -- sorry, I should have made it clearer, my fault.

What I meant is that Israeli intransigence and overreaction contributes to Israeli insecurity at some level.

This is a mixed reading though. The overreaction to the Mavi Marmara, which was indeed an over reaction, has probably helped ensure that there aren't going to be a whole lot more armed boats headed past the blockade.

I'm surprised they let the ship go in the end, as the denial of return of a ship makes the whole endeavor far more expensive for the activists. How do you get insurance for the trip? How do you get a bunch of ships if the ship owners know they are going to lose their ships in the process?

But at any rate, I have maintained all the way through that there are most likely many many steps Israel could take that go far beyond the occasional free surgery for a birth defect or whatever that ease some pressure on civilians and the masses while maintaining some pressure on the elite.

Collective punishment is used by everyone from parents and kindergarten teachers through nations, but it doesn't make it necessarily the best way to run things.

My current prediction, which isn't actually far from the one I made after Steve did his original "Netanyahu/Nixon in China" thing is that Israel is going to settle quite reasonably with the West Bank thanks to Fayyad's state building.

Rather than unite, though, Gaza will stay in its sphere and will not thrive. The West Bank will have some status that might not be quite a state, but will be more than a household.

After all, though I disagree with some half of my fellow citizens, I don't get my own state just for me. I'm stuck with a significantly lesser status and I can't do much about it.

I think the West Bank is likely well positioned to settle a transitional status that will feel a little more autonomous and will lead to decent growth and prosperity.

I wonder how Gaza will respond, as I think that many Gazans would now prefer to live in a transitional status with concrete for foundations and apartment blocks than with what they have now.

I think WB prosperity is a nice tool to use in the ME in general and I really hope it works.

Ain't nothing like doing well to help encourage people to do good. We overcome a lot of qualms when we have money....

Regarding the snippet above, it's just not that simple. When you close off avenues to functioning, and then people don't function, it's unseemly to blame those non-functioning people for their lack of free will.

The right uses this technique frequently with regard to racial politics. That urban blacks in the US have ended up in crime filled neighborhoods merely because of white privilege is to deny black selfhood and free will. But it's not really that simple.

Free will and selfhood are far more complex phenomena than this, and our environments have huge impacts on how free our will is, on what we can choose, on how depressed we get, on what we see as normal, on how angry our testosterone-laden sons become, on how poorly we fare, on how much domestic abuse there is, on how much we pursue drugs to help us cope....

So I find it consistent with your general conservatism that you would be worried about the denial of Palestinian free will by liberal thinkers, and not be quite as worried about the actual denial of Palestinian freedom by Israeli military policy.

The US does the same in our cities.

"What I meant is that Israeli intransigence and overreaction contributes to Israeli insecurity at some level." (questions)

Yes, I know you meant that too. But the important part of recognizing Palestinian free will is understanding that they too get a vote in the situation. If the leadership doesn't want peace and is perfectly willing for the people to suffer, then they get to arrange the situation to their liking.

"This is a mixed reading though. The overreaction to the Mavi Marmara, which was indeed an over reaction, has probably helped ensure that there aren't going to be a whole lot more armed boats headed past the blockade."

So that's a good effect, right? which is a score on the side of those who said Israel should be sinking the blockade runners to discourage the others. I agree it was a mistake to return the ship - Israel chickened out to Erdogan's bullying and demagoguery.

BTW it was bad intelligence, NOT an overreaction. They sent commandos in to do crowd control on peaceful demonstrators. Instead commandos rappelled down into a large armed mob trying to kill them. The commandos had only paintball guns and pistols. At that point it was shoot to kill, or get killed or taken hostage. Forget Steve's idiotic "oh why oh why did they shoot at their heads" hand-wringing.

"I think the West Bank is likely well positioned to settle a transitional status that will feel a little more autonomous and will lead to decent growth and prosperity."

No, questions, they just look that way. You are ignoring internal Palestinian politics, quiet for the moment, but it can rear its ugly head at any time. Fayyad has no base but the international donor community. The guys with the base and guns are hardliners like Abu Gheit who will succeed Abu Mazen in the not too distant future.

See, you are making the classic Western mistake of assuming that everybody wants decent growth and prosperity and will let it continue if it's happening. 'Tain't so. Sometimes people want total power or ideological victory instead.

I'm not saying it's a mistake to back Fayyad, or that people who prosper won't have a stake in continued quiet. But you have to look at the standard playbook of Arab dictatorships to understand that Arab dictators go for total control of the economy rather than prosperous economies as a general rule. Look at the Syrian economy for example.

"But at any rate, I have maintained all the way through that there are most likely many many steps Israel could take that go far beyond the occasional free surgery for a birth defect or whatever that ease some pressure on civilians and the masses while maintaining some pressure on the elite."

Like what? As you're fond of saying, it's not that simple. The one successful method Israel has found of maintaining pressure just on the leadership is called targeting killing, like they just did to Hamas in response to the Grad rocket attack on Ashkelon. They get grief for that too.

As a side note, a Jordanian/Palestinian notes how bad the demonizing of Israel is for the Palestinians in camps in Arab states, whom nobody gives a damn about. All this wailing about concrete in Gaza, the Palestinians in the Lebanese camps haven't had building supplies for 30 years. http://www.jpost.com/Opinion/Op-EdContributors/Article.aspx?id=183252

"The minority cultures (like the Bedouin) survive only on the largesse of the majority culture and can over time be reduced in size and influence.( this can be done legally,by resticting the use of their language,re-locating them or in other ways incouraging them to emigrate the hell out of there."

Marcus - Are you for real? Are you Jewish? It is exactly this kind of attitude that we have been fighting against for at least the last 1000 years. This is how the arab world thinks of the Israeli presence in the middle of the arab world. Israel is a Jewish minority amoung 300 million arabs and they have been trying to "encourage" our exile for at least 100 years.

I am stunned to find you agree with the arab train of thought! I guess if they are ever successful, you'll just chalk it up to "that's the way the world works". I would hope we all are trying to progress beyond this.

Warren, here's another Ilan Pappe quote

"[V]ery pedantic and empiricist historians like to argue and to waste a lot of ink so to speak on figures, on numbers, as if the numbers are really important for the construction of myth, or if you have the accurate number you can destroy a myth or debunk it and I don't think it's very true."

(Quoted in a film about the Latrun battle and originally posted on the Web here - http://www.olinfilms.com/latrun/script.html)

David Pryce Jones quotes Pappe from an interview: "We do [historiography] because of ideological reasons, not because we are truth seekers" and "there is no such thing as truth, only a collection of narratives" http://www.literaryreview.co.uk/pryce-jones_11_06.html

So if Pappe himself tells us that he is constructing a "myth" and a "narrative" for "ideological reasons" with little regard for facts, why would anyone regard what he writes as history? It might have history in it, but once the purpose is not truth-telling, who knows how far from the facts it might stray?

Normally we call this "artistic license" and we're just fine with it, as long as the novel or movie script is presented as "based on a true story" and doesn't claim to be a work of history.

Myself, I am more interested in finding out what actually happened, best as anyone can reconstruct it, with due regard for actual dates and figures and original sources, even if they interfere with the creation of "narratives."

What does the word "narrative" mean here anyway, but dressing up propaganda with the claim that nobody really tries to tell history straight, so it's okay to make stuff up if it fits?

"If I thought that POA's views were as insignificant as, say, I think Marcus's are, I wouldn't bother. But in fact POA's views are central to the blog, so yes, I spend some energy on this.

The rest of us who post often try to go back and forth between POA's id and Steve's super ego, and so we play the role of the ego -- we look for things left out, connections unmade, patterns unseen. We try to bring in outside material that might be relevant. Sometimes we lean one way or another, but we don't worry about diplomacy particularly much or offending the elites any more than we simply give in to wild desire." (questions)

Interesting Freudian analysis, questions, but I think it is Carroll who is Steve's alter ego. She is the one who is most useful to his political aims, the one whose discourse he is working to legitimize. POA is sort of a carnie side-show to that.

"What, then, are we to make of a recent survey for the Al Arabiya television network finding that a staggering 71 percent of the Arabic respondents have no interest in the Palestinian-Israeli peace talks? “This is an alarming indicator,” lamented Saleh Qallab, a columnist for the pan-Arab newspaper Al Sharq al Awsat. “The Arabs, people and regimes alike, have always been as interested in the peace process, its developments and particulars, as they were committed to the Palestinian cause itself.”

But the truth is that Arab policies since the mid-1930s suggest otherwise. While the “Palestine question” has long been central to inter-Arab politics, Arab states have shown far less concern for the well-being of the Palestinians than for their own interests.

For example, it was common knowledge that the May 1948 pan-Arab invasion of the nascent state of Israel was more a scramble for Palestinian territory than a fight for Palestinian national rights. As the first secretary-general of the Arab League, Abdel Rahman Azzam, once admitted to a British reporter, the goal of King Abdullah of Transjordan “was to swallow up the central hill regions of Palestine, with access to the Mediterranean at Gaza. The Egyptians would get the Negev. Galilee would go to Syria, except that the coastal part as far as Acre would be added to the Lebanon.”

From 1948 to 1967, when Egypt and Jordan ruled the Palestinians of the Gaza Strip and the West Bank, the Arab states failed to put these populations on the road to statehood. They also showed little interest in protecting their human rights or even in improving their quality of life — which is part of the reason why 120,000 West Bank Palestinians moved to the East Bank of the Jordan River and about 300,000 others emigrated abroad. “We couldn’t care less if all the refugees die,” an Egyptian diplomat once remarked. “There are enough Arabs around.” "

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/08/02/opinion/02karsh.html?hp

Are Arabs losing interest in Palestine?

* Last Updated: July 22. 2010 8:27PM UAE / July 22. 2010 4:27PM GMT

The Al Arabiya news channel conducted an online survey over the past week to gauge the extent to which ordinary Arabs are still interested in the Palestinian-Israeli peace talks. The results were quite astonishing; 71 per cent of the respondents affirmed that they do not care to know anything about the subject.

“This is an alarming indicator. The Arabs, people and regimes alike, have always been as interested in the peace process, its developments and particulars, as they were committed to the Palestinian cause itself,” according to Saleh Qallab, a columnist with the pan-Arab newspaper Asharq al Awsat.

Sick of waiting and too tired of peace summits and now proximity talks, Arabs have come to the bitter conclusion that nothing has changed 18 years after the Oslo Accords, except for a greater appreciation of Israelis for rightist, radical leaders.

Even Palestinians in Gaza are indifferent to visits by the US peace envoy George Mitchell to the region. Gazans could not care less about what happens in diplomatic meetings and political photo ops. All they want is for the Israeli-enforced siege to be lifted.

“By no means does this mean that the Palestinians have given up on their own cause […] it’s just that they realise that the peace process they have bet on a long time ago has simply been a cover for systematic Israeli repression.”

http://www.thenational.ae/apps/pbcs.dll/article?aid=/20100723/opinion/707229939/1006/frontpage

***********
Probably it's worth seeing more info about the survey, how the questions are worded, and what people are really uninterested in. There do seem to be two different slants to the presentation of the data here.

But if there's even a little truth in the disinterest, it may signal that the Palestinian situation isn't really super likely to generate terrorism.

Doesn't mean it's not a humanitarian problem, but it MIGHT mean that the terrorism angle is indeed overblown, as has been my sense of things.

Doesn't mean it's not a humanitarian problem though. Let's remember this side, as well.

Slow day at the office nadine? Trying to get the comments shut down? Piggybacking on questions mania? Continuing to bait the host? You've been treated far better by the host than you deserve. Certainly than you've shown in return.

The sickness of ultra conservative neocons.

More from the NYT op-ed piece:

"This history of Arab leaders manipulating the Palestinian cause for their own ends while ignoring the fate of the Palestinians goes on and on. Saddam Hussein, in an effort to ennoble his predatory designs, claimed that he wouldn’t consider ending his August 1990 invasion of Kuwait without “the immediate and unconditional withdrawal of Israel from the occupied Arab territories in Palestine.”

Shortly after the Persian Gulf War, Kuwaitis then set about punishing the P.L.O. for its support of Hussein — cutting off financial sponsorship, expelling hundreds of thousands of Palestinian workers and slaughtering thousands. Their retribution was so severe that Arafat was forced to acknowledge that “what Kuwait did to the Palestinian people is worse than what has been done by Israel to Palestinians in the occupied territories.”

Against this backdrop, it is a positive sign that so many Arabs have apparently grown so apathetic about the Palestinian-Israeli conflict. For if the Arab regimes’ self-serving interventionism has denied Palestinians the right to determine their own fate, then the best, indeed only, hope of peace between Arabs and Israelis lies in rejecting the spurious link between this particular issue and other regional and global problems.

The sooner the Palestinians recognize that their cause is theirs alone, the sooner they are likely to make peace with the existence of the State of Israel and to understand the need for a negotiated settlement.

Efraim Karsh, a professor of Middle East and Mediterranean studies at King’s College London, is the author, most recently, of “Palestine Betrayed.”

***
The author of this piece is Efraim Karsh, a nadine-approved author, so beware!

Probably, it's a good idea to get more info about the survey, which was an online survey according to the Arab source. Karsh does leave that out.

Nonetheless, maybe he has a point at some level

More complications to think through......

"But if there's even a little truth in the disinterest, it may signal that the Palestinian situation isn't really super likely to generate terrorism."

Odd conclusion. You speak as if terrorism sprang only from the feelings of the Arab street, instead of state sponsorship. The feelings of the street are in part under regime control (not as totally as in the pre al Jazeera days), so perhaps what is really being measured is the lack of interest of the Arab regimes in the Cause of Palestine. Perhaps they are thinking, this is not the time to whip people into a frenzy against Israel, because we really really want Israel to take out Iran's nukes.

To endure I believe Israel must be as homogoneous and united as possible,behind defined/declared borders. That`s my War strategy,not any ethnic hatred. ( I do admit to not liking the sound of certain languages.)

Jedeledell; ( Dude,your name is so much like Jezebel ) Israel has to fight into the forseeable future, pick a side.

Last Saturday a special-needs childrens clinic in Sderot was destroyed by a direct hit from Gaza..

( don`t break-out your Heineken`s just yet )

Noone was hurt,it was the Sabbath.

Nadine; Lots of great posts, I like reading you,so you don`t have to be scared to get close.

"I am stunned to find you agree with the arab train of thought!"

The asshole Marcus has managed to "stun" you??? Why? He posts to inflame and incite, not to offer sincere opinions.

And you don't seem to be stunned about Israel reviving Nazi Germany's technique of recruitment and use of teenage children in acts of oppression and military operations. Nor do you seem to be very incensed by the reports of cheering civilians.

And your reaction to the photo of the Jewish youths harrassing the evicted Palestinian woman?

Perhaps this incident is too disturbing, (even for you), to consider in all its horrible implications about what Israel and a large segment of Israeli Jewish society is becoming?

One thing is for sure, the Israelis can thank their lucky stars that this story, and these two photographs, are not going mainstream. The same can be said for Emily Henochowicz's story. If the Palestinians and their American supporters ever get their stuff together and competently manage their stateside media narrative, Israel's gravy train is going to be in deep shit. Considering what Israel is becoming, that day can't come soon enough.

"I am fascinated by the ability of grown people to resort to 8 year old boys combat techniques: figuring out how many swear words you can use to describe your opponent" (Warren)

Gee, he couldn't be talkin' about me, I try to limit it to a select few favorites of mine. But, hmmm, I guess, if I applied myself......

“There is justification for killing babies if it is clear that they will grow up to harm us, and in such a situation they may be harmed deliberately, and not only during combat with adults.” Rabbi Yitzhak Shapira, a revered Rabbi in The Jewish State.

Israeli settlers escalate attacks on civilians’ property. Photos........

http://desertpeace.wordpress.com/2010/08/02/photo-essay-of-illegal-settlers-latest-crimes/

"Detainees, including children, were taken from their homes, held in large pits (two – three meters deep), unsheltered from the bitter cold for days, each pit holding 60 – 70 prisoners, their hands shackled and eyes covered. They couldn’t even leave their pits to relieve themselves. The sanitary conditions were appalling, the amount of food, water, and blankets negligible"

Further......

"On January 4, 2009, Jabalia resident Abed Elkarim Mustafa Abu Salah said 20 soldiers burst into his home, damaged contents searching it, handcuffed him and his son, arrested them, then used them as human shields for 10 days in a combat area"

"“During this whole period, my son and I were transported with the soldiers and in the night they would take us back to sleep in the house of Ismail Nabhan. Over this period, (we were) sent….into countless homes” to search and open doors and windows"

"Declared an “unlawful combatant,” Abu Salah was detained in Israel for four months, then released. Adalah complained to the CMAG on his behalf, demanding a investigation. On August 27, 2009, Israel’s Military Police Criminal Investigations Division (CID) began one, Abu Salah and his son testifying on November 24. No decision was announced. If one comes, it will whitewash IDF responsibility."

"Numerous other accounts reported similar mistreatment, one saying “IDF soldiers cuffed me and three of my brothers, and for three days had us walk ahead of them, and made sure we did so at gunpoint. They used us as human shields by ordering us to go into houses ahead of them.”"

"At the time, an IDF spokesman denied it, saying:"

“Regrettably, PACTI keeps rehashing allegations which have been heard – and dismissed by the High Court,” even though true. Breaking the Silence Israeli soldiers confirmed it, one saying:

“The method used has a new name now – no longer ‘neighbor procedure.’ Now people are called ‘Johnnie.’ They’re Palestinian civilians, and they’re called Johnnies….To every house we close in on, we send the neighbor in, ‘the Johnnie,’ and if there are armed men inside, we start, like working the ‘pressure cooker’ in the West Bank.”

"He explained that “pressure cooker” meant using civilians to check if armed men were inside houses, “Johnnies” to smash walls for Israeli troops to storm through"

"Amnesty International, other human rights groups, and the Goldstone Commission also found evidence of human shield use, confirming PACTI and Adalah, discrediting Israel’s denial, its inexcusable cover-up"

http://www.intifada-palestine.com/2010/08/palestinian-detainee-abuse-during-operation-cast-lead/

Whats next???? Ovens???? Showers????

"It is exactly this kind of attitude that we have been fighting against for at least the last 1000 years. This is how the arab world thinks of the Israeli presence in the middle of the arab world. Israel is a Jewish minority amoung 300 million arabs and they have been trying to "encourage" our exile for at least 100 years.

I am stunned to find you agree with the arab train of thought! I guess if they are ever successful, you'll just chalk it up to "that's the way the world works". I would hope we all are trying to progress beyond this." (jdledell)

I don't agree with marcus either, though I'm not stunned he feels like this. After 100 years, it's easy to conclude that "Arab rules" are just the name of the game, so if that's the game, play it to win.

The curious thing about you, jd, is that you have a much better understanding of where the Arabs are coming from than Paul ("It's absurd to believe that Hamas actually wants to destroy Israel") Norheim, yet you persist in supporting positions that basically demand Israeli national suicide, even to the point of denying that Rabin, Barak or Olmert ever tried to negotiate a deal.

" What`s next???Ovens????Showers" POS That`s hysterical,you craked me up. Your a Comedian,who knew ???

Nadine~s; "carnie-side-show" Your so right !

"....yet you persist in supporting positions that basically demand Israeli national suicide..."

I can't believe that this ignorant fanatic can't see that Israel IS committing suicide by committing the kinds of atrocities described on this thread. What does the racist monstrous wretch think will be the end result of Israel sentencing its youth into a lifetime of racial animous? Enough already, mankind has suffered sociopaths like her for far far too long.

How'd this kinda stuff work out for Hitler and Nazi Germany, Nadine?

questions, did you read Sol Stern's article on "The Nakba Obsession" in City Journal? It is apropos to the various "narratives" being created by various post-modern historians such as Ilan Pappe, self-professedly in the business of narrative creation, not fact-finding, and adopted by many on this thread. As Stern points out, this "blame Israel for absolutely everything" narrative has become the main obstacle to Mideast peace:

"Unfortunately, no amount of documentation and evidence about what really happened in 1948 will puncture the Nakba narrative. The tale of dispossession has been institutionalized now, an essential part of the Palestinians’ armament for what they see as the long struggle ahead. It has become the moral basis for their insistence on the refugees’ right to return to Israel, which in turn leads them to reject one reasonable two-state peace plan after another. In the meantime, the more radical Palestinians continue to insist that the only balm for the Nakba is the complete undoing of the historical crime of Zionism—either eliminating Israel or submerging it into a secular democratic state called Palestine. (The proposal is hard to take seriously from adherents of a religion and a culture that abjure secularism and allow little democracy.)

Nor will the facts about 1948 impress the European and American leftists who are part of the international Nakba coalition. The Nakba narrative of Zionism as a movement of white colonial oppressors victimizing innocent Palestinians is strengthened by radical modes of thought now dominant in the Western academy. Postmodernists and postcolonialists have adapted Henry Ford’s adage that “history is bunk” to their own political purposes. According to the radical professors, there is no factual or empirical history that we can trust—only competing “narratives.” For example, there is the dominant establishment narrative of American history, and then there is the counter-narrative, written by professors like the late Howard Zinn, which speaks for neglected and forgotten Americans. Just so, the Palestinian counter-narrative of the Nakba can now replace the old, discredited Zionist narrative, regardless of actual historical facts. And thanks to what the French writer Pascal Bruckner has called the Western intelligentsia’s new “tyranny of guilt”—a self-effacement that forbids critical inquiry into the historical narratives of those national movements granted the sanctified status of “oppressed”—the Nakba narrative cannot even be challenged."

"The Nakba Obsession"
http://www.city-journal.org/2010/20_3_nakba.html

nadine, you don't have me quite pegged yet!

As soon as I see someone freaking out about post modernism, I tune out.

I've read a small portion of the Lyotard essay, I'm actually quite sympathetic with Derrida's work which is often tossed in to the pomo salad.

It's not the case that there's "no fact", but rather that any fact we pull out, we pull out because of a range of other concerns. Simone de Beauvoir has a quick couple of sentences regarding muscle differences across gender -- yes men are factually stronger, but in a world in which strength doesn't matter, the fact doesn't matter. So in the fact/value distinction, values determine the facts we pay attention to. And indeed, when we tell our stories, we tell them based on values. We shouldn't just make up facts as they aren't absent, but we should know that the facts we pick out are suggested by our values.

Just try describing any event and then ask someone else to describe the same event and see what happens. (Isn't Rashomon like this?)

I haven't been back to Lyotard in ages, so I may well have details totally murked up at this point, but suspicion of grand narratives seems fairly sensible to me at some level. I seem to remember that he thought, by the way, that it was a throwaway piece that kind of caught fire, and I wouldn't be surprised if there were some abuses and exaggerations of the basic points, but I'm too much of a text freak to trust anyone who, like you, just tosses out "pomo" as a curse instead of engaging in the particular take of a particular post modernist within a particular text. I really am a text freak. Even POA has caught on to that!

And by the way, again it's vague as I haven't been through this stuff in years, I think pomo started as a reaction against modernism's enlightened/Enlightenment sense of the wonders of human reason in the wake of the Holocaust. (I have oh so vague a memory of Habermas's having weighed in on this on the Enlightenment reason thing is ok side.)

So it's amusing that anyone who wants to attack the Holocaust simultaneously defends the intellectual tradition that may have given rise to it, and fails to defend a tradition that tries to grapple with it.

But, as with all things I'm not currently steeped in, I could be off a bit. Anyone who's been through this stuff more recently (Paul?) feel free to correct it.

I never pegged you as pomo, questions. You philosophize a lot and often it's hard to follow, to put it mildly. Certainly values matter, but one of the achievements of the Enlightenment was the promotion of empirical facts, which the current climate threatens to overthrow altogether by denying the existence of any objective reality. Certainly, the 20th century's loss of civilizational confidence in the wake of the Nazi crimes is one reason. Freud and quantum physics also played their part in undermining the old verities. But to call the Holocaust a culmination of Enlightenment reason is just freakishly wrong.

"Certainly values matter, but one of the achievements of the Enlightenment was the promotion of empirical facts, which the current climate threatens to overthrow altogether by denying the existence of any objective reality"

http://www.gilad.co.uk/writings/gilad-atzmon-israel-cannot-handle-its-past.html

Gilad Atzmon: Israel Cannot Handle Its Past
Saturday, July 31, 2010 at 11:37PM Gilad Atzmon

Israel cannot handle its past. Israeli PM Benjamin Netanyahu decided this week to extend from 50 to 70 years the time state archives remain classified. Israel realizes that it has too much to hide.

Haaretz reported this week (in its Hebrew edition only), that the first documents will be released to the public only in 2018 (1948+70). Many of the documents that are stored in the archive are relevant to the history of the first 20 years of the Jewish state: the mass expulsion of the Palestinian people, the massacres in Deir Yassin, Tantura and many others, the 1956 Suez conflict, the Israeli nuclear project and so on. Disclosing such documents may bring to light some facts that could “shatter myths and cause embarrassment to many entities and individuals” said the Israeli paper. I guess that president Shimon Peres is one of those ‘many individuals’.

In my latest work I elaborated on the concerning fact that history is foreign to the Jewish religion, ideology and politics. Israeli and Jewish history are set as phantasmic tales. Facts and historical documents are either pushed aside, shoved under the carpet, eliminated or simply destroyed. As we all know, truth seeking is interpreted by Israelis and Zionist as anti Semitism or even holocaust denial.

As it seems, 50 years were not enough for Israel to tackle its original sin. The reason is simple, the crimes that are entangled with the foundation of the Jewish state have never been resolved. Millions of Palestinian refugees are still awaiting to return to their land. Israel is still driven by racist and supremacist laws. The Jewish state has never matured from its lethal philosophy of constant physical intimidation. Consequently, the IDF, the Mossad and the security services mounted pressure on the government to extend the classification status of these 50 year old documents. And no surprise, Netanyahu has provided the required extension.

Haaretz pointed out that it is slightly peculiar that PM Netanyahu, the son of Benzion Netanyahu, a Zionist historian, gave his hand to a crude attempt to conceal historical research and truth seeking. I read Benzion Netanyahu, I actually learned a lot from him. Benzion wasn’t exactly an ordinary historian, he was a Zionist historian (as opposed to a historian of Zionism). He was there to give the Jewish national aspiration a contextual pseudo academic meaning. PM Netanyahu's decision to hide facts for another 20 years is actually in line with his father’s philosophy.

A disclosure of the truth regarding Israel's early days would reveal that the Jewish state was a murderous lethal attempt from its very beginning. As much as Zionist and Israeli leaders vowed publicly to make Jews ‘people like all other people’, behind closed doors they commanded their army and secret services to kill like their imaginary Biblical forefathers.

I would argue that from a historical perspective, Israel can keep sitting on its secret files as long as it wants. We do not really need the Israeli archive in order to examine the true murderous meaning of the Jewish state and the Jewish national project. However, the fact that Israel insists on hiding its past, means that there is a little bit of shame and consciousness left in this tribal collective. This is actually a positive sign.

Israel Arrests Children Walking Near West Bank Separation Wall
by Joseph Dana

At 12pm on Monday August 2nd, three children who had been walking near the wall in Bil’in village where arrested by Israeli soldiers. The three 14-year-old friends Moatasem Ali Mansor, Majde Burnat, and Mohamad Abu Rahmah often take walks near the wall. Today they were detained by soldiers behind the wall for three hours. While behind the wall their families tried to negotiate for their release to no avail. They were then arrested and taken away in an army ambulance. This happened three hours ago, and no ones knows where they have been taken yet. Soldiers claim that the boys were throwing stones.

http://desertpeace.wordpress.com/2010/08/02/palestinian-children-arrested-for-walking/

Have another look at this photograph.....

http://s.wsj.net/media/051410pow11.jpg

If this is the way the Jewish Israelis treat Palestinians IN PUBLIC, imagine what Palestinian kids (like these three young teens) are subjected to behind closed doors.

Shimon Peres, the President of Israel, who has been active in Israeli politics since the founding of the state (he was Ben Gurion's aide in 1948) recently gave an interview to Benny Morris. It never goes as deep as you want, but this bit, talking about the reasons for the delegitimization campaign against Israel, is too good to pass up:

"But why the delegitimization, especially in the West?

Firstly, there is a problem in the Scandinavian countries. They always want to appear like yefei nefesh [the Hebraism roughly translates as “bleeding hearts,” with an undertone of hypocrisy]. And I don’t expect them to understand us. Sweden doesn’t understand why we are at war. For 150 years they have not had a war. There were even Hitler and Stalin, but they kept out of the picture. As did Switzerland. So, they don’t understand why we are “for war,” as if we really like wars. It’s like Marie Antoinette didn’t understand why the people didn’t bake cakes. The same logic."
http://www.tabletmag.com/news-and-politics/40409/making-history/print/

"If this is the way the Jewish Israelis treat Palestinians IN PUBLIC....."

And make no mistake, that is an important distinction. These racist hateful leering Jewish teens treated that woman so despicably IN PLAIN PUBLIC VIEW. What does that tell you about what Jewish society in Israel has become? These kids obviously felt comfortable acting this way IN PUBLIC, openly, in broad daylight.

Would Nadine allow her children to act in this manner? Would she encourage it?

Has anyone seen her condemn it?

God help Israel if it is becoming a society of Nadines. Apparently, judging by the looks on these kid's faces, it is.

Israel delegitimizes itself. It needs no outside assistance.

The subject of this thread demonstrates that FACT perfectly.

Some things seem to go together in my feverish brain.....

First story:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/08/02/AR2010080203880.html?hpid=topnews

"Following a protocol demonstrated moments earlier, the Colorado youth pressed his bare hands against the rim of a urinal, licked each palm, then reached out to accept a Tic Tac. Before popping the mint into his mouth, Christian added a move of his own: He dropped it onto the tile floor and stomped on it. The ad lib elicited gasps, congratulatory pats on the back, and applause from onlookers crammed into the men's room on a lower level of the Hyatt Regency Crystal City.

As the others took their turn at the bizarre ritual, Christian leaned on a wall outside, seeming pleased if perhaps a bit queasy. "I wanted to challenge myself," he said. Christian later told his father, Kern Low, that he would no longer struggle with paralyzing fears of contamination associated with public restrooms, a problem that had interfered with family outings for the past three years. "

****
All about OCD contamination fears.....

**********
And second story:

http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/2010/08/mcconnell_makes_his_choice.php#more?ref=fpblg

"There was a very important development this afternoon which Sam Stein of the Huffington Post managed to get the jump on: Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) has come out in support of congressional hearings into the matter of whether the US Constitution grants citizenship to every person born in the United States -- so-called 'birthright' citizenship. (The Hill followed up with a more detailed story.) "

*****
All about contamination fears.
********

What an interesting pair.

Maybe we could get McConnell to that camp and have him touch an actual Mexican baby and then not be allowed to wash his hands for 15 minutes!!!!

" The Jewish state has never matured from its lethal philosophy of constant physical intimidation. Consequently, the IDF, the Mossad and the security services mounted pressure on the government to extend the classification status of these 50 year old documents. And no surprise, Netanyahu has provided the required extension."

I don't why they think a lot of it isn't already known. The British National Archives has volumes on the zionist terrorism in both England and Palestine. I am guessing that Israel wants to protect the exact details and true motives of their terrorism and the names of the people still living who were involved.

If someone made a movie on the zionist out of the material in the British Archives it would give Hollywood's films on the nazis as their favorite bad guys a run for their money.

Carroll notes: "I am guessing that Israel wants to protect the exact details and true motives of their terrorism and the names of the people still living who were involved."

Nadine notes: "Shimon Peres, the President of Israel...has been active in Israeli politics since the founding of the state (he was Ben Gurion's aide in 1948)."

Some of the terrorists are still alive and posing as statesmen...

Another day, another example of nazi Israel.
Note that there is no 'security issue' this can be excused as.
This is just filthy supremacist pigs doing what racist pigs do.

What Zionism has wrought
by Adam Horowitz on August 3, 2010

The above video shows 5-year-old Khaled Jabari crying as the Israeli military takes his father away for stealing water. In fact, he was only trying to access water that had already been stolen by Kiryat Arba, a nearby Israeli settlement. Palestine Monitor reports:

Dr Mustafa Barghouthi, Secretary General of the Palestinian National Initiative, commented the video, circulated yesterday on SKY TV and Al Jazeera, saying that “Palestinian children grow up under the Israeli occupation, surrounded by the Apartheid Wall, by oppression and destruction. Israel repudiates children’s rights and welfare and treats them like adults, clearly violating UN Declaration of Child’s Rights”.

After watching the footage, Hashem Abu Maria, of the Defence For Children International charity, said it was obvious the child thought his father would never return.

He said he was contacting child support agencies in the field to offer him psychological help to cope with the trauma."This child does not comprehend the concept of arrest - he does not know what it means, like the policeman or soldier understands it," he added. "I think that the child thinks that his father is leaving and not coming back - that he has lost him."

Israeli forces raided the town of Bakka after accusing Palestinian farmers of stealing water from the nearby Jewish settlement of Kiryat Arba. They pulled out irrigation pipes supplying vines and vegetable fields before arresting several villagers, including the boy’s father. Angry Palestinian residents say they have documents to prove they are registered with the Palestinian Water Authority, and are paying for the water they use.

They say it is the second time in a month police have removed their irrigation pipes. "This land is the source of our income, and it is the cause of our struggle with the occupation since day one of the occupation," said Khaled’s grandfather Badran Jaber. "We live from it, we have no other job opportunity in light of unemployment reaching over 40% in the occupied territories."

The child’s grandmother, Im Ghassan, added: "What right do they have to do this? Where can we go? This is our land, our home and nation, this is ours. We live here, we were born here, and we want to die here. Let them do what they want, we cannot do any more."

questions, where are you coming from? Wanting to control the border is not about hating Mexicans, it is about wanting to control the border! a uncontrolled flood is bankrupting the South Western states, and bringing a crime wave and drug wave with it.

Plus, I heard last night that about 10% of the flow are OTMs - other than Mexicans. If even one of these turns out to be a successful terrorist, there is really going to be hell to pay.

Immigration is a tinderbox issue because it's one the politicians haven't really wanted to address. The Republicans want the labor, the Democrats want the voters. The American public wants the border controlled, and there are in a mood to throw the bums out until they get it.

BTW, when the Border Guard arrests Mexican kids for throwing rocks, do you suppose POA takes his entire account of the incident from the kids' relatives who all swear they are innocent victims of the guards' cruelty? No, I didn't think so either. Wasn't there a recent incident where a border guard killed a kid who was throwing rocks? I didn't hear POA proclaim how that proved all our border guards were Nazis and racists, did you?

Link to the above Carroll?

Posted by JamesL, Aug 03 2010, 3:45PM - Link

Link to the above Carroll?
>>>>>>>>>>>>

http://mondoweiss.net/

Today's Example of Ridiculous Media Bias Against Israel

By Barry Rubin

Along Israel's border with Lebanon, east of Metulla, some bushes were pushing in on the border fence. The fence is set in slightly from the border precisely so that Israeli soldiers can work on it. The IDF called UNIFIL and informed the UN that this work was going to be done today so that they could tell the Lebanese army that there was no aggression going on but just routine maintenance. Soldiers from UNIFIL came to observe and can be seen standing next to Israeli soldiers in the photos. Photographers were also standing by to film the operation.

But Lebanese soldiers opened fire on the Israelis who were working and in no way acting aggressively. The fact that journalists were standing next to the Lebanese soldiers shows that they knew Israel was going to do this maintenance and were observing. After the Israeli soldiers were ambushed, they returned fire. One Israeli officer was killed, another seriously wounded; three Lebanese soldiers, and a Lebanese (?) journalist were killed.

So how did Reuters and Yahoo report this? By saying that Israeli soldiers had crossed into Lebanon and been fired on, thus implying the Lebanese army was acting in self-defense! Other news agencies merely reported: Israel says the soldiers were inside Israel; Lebanon says they were on Lebanese territory.

Reuters: "An Israeli soldier is seen on a crane on the Lebanese side of the Lebanese-Israeli border near Adaisseh village, southern Lebanon August 3, 2010. Israeli artillery shelled the Lebanese village on Tuesday, wounding two people, after Lebanese Army troops fired warning shots at Israeli soldiers."

Yahoo: "A Lebanese officer spoke on condition of anonymity under military guidelines, said the clash occurred as Israeli troops tried to remove a tree from the Lebanese side of the border." No Israeli is quoted.

AP also missed explaining the story properly: "The violence apparently erupted over a move by Israeli soldiers to cut down a tree along the border, a sign of the high level of tensions at the frontier where Israel fought in 2006 with the Lebanese militant group Hezbollah....There was no sign of any extensive Israeli preparations for a large-scale operation — an early indication the clash might not trigger a wider conflict."

By the way, AP was so "accurate" as to correct the name of their photographer but not the biased inaccuracy of its facts!

The New York Times also takes a "neutral" approach: "Each side blamed the other for the flare-up, trading accusations of violating the United Nations Security Council resolution that underpins the four-year cease-fire." But what is most amazing is the additional information that tells us more about contemporary journalism than almost anything you can read:

"Israel said that its forces were engaged in routine maintenance work in a gap between the so-called Blue Line, the internationally recognized border, and its security fence, and that it had coordinated in advance with the United Nations peacekeeping force in South Lebanon, Unifil."

Hello? Can't the mighty New York Times contact the UNIFIL offices and find out that Israel's story is true? Indeed, isn't it indicated by the UNIFIL presence as observer? Well, it isn't surprising since the same newspaper is unable to find the evidence, publicly available, that the Turkish IHH group that organized the Gaza flotilla had a history of being a terrorist-supporting group.

Oh, and then there's this amazing little example of bias in the article:

"Israeli and Lebanese army troops exchanged lethal fire on their countries’ border on Tuesday, in what was the fiercest clash in the area since Israel’s monthlong war against the Lebanese Hezbollah militia in the summer of 2006."

So, there's no mention of the cause of the war: a Hizballah attack into Israeli territory, killing several Israeli soldiers and kidnapping two who were taken into Lebanon. According to the great "newspaper of record," Accorfing to the Times, Israel just arbitrarily attacked Lebanon in 2006, just as it is said to be doing in 2010.

The truth, however, is easy to ascertain--did Israel announce the maintenance, permit the photographers and UN people to watch and then cross deliberately into Lebanon?--but Israel is being portrayed as an aggressor that caused the outbreak of fighting. So millions of people will either believe that Israel was at fault or that the event is in question.

The narrative, however, is simple: In an unprovoked attack, Lebanese soldiers fired on Israelis and murdered one soldier.

If the mass media cannot get this right how can it report accurately on other situations like the following:

2000: Israel offers to return the entire Golan Heights to Syria in exchange for full peace. Syria refuses.

2000: Israel offers to accept an independent Palestinian state in all of the Gaza Strip, almost all of the West Bank, and most of east Jerusalem. The Palestinian Authority refuses.

2008: Hamas tears up a ceasefire, begins massive mortar and rocket attacks on Israeli civilians, Israel defends itself.

2010: A Turkish pro-terrorist organization trying to help Hamas, a genocidal and antisemitic terrorist group, sends self-described jihadis on a ship who chant slogans about killing Jews and being Jihadi martyrs. When Israeli soldiers land, the Jihad warriors attack them with weapons and kidnap several. Israeli forces rescue the soldiers, killing nine attackers in the operation.

Note, though, that the Times discounted the video of Israeli soldiers being attacked by claiming--with no evidence--that perhaps Israeli forces had been shooting beorehand at unarmed civilians on the ship!

But if the media cannot even get right a previously announced, UN-approved, maintenance activity on Israeli territory then what hope is their getting right anything more complex?

Here's a video of the attack from Reuters.

To its credit, the Canadian Broadcasting Company issued a correction saying that the tree's location is disputed and changing the photo caption to say the tree is "near" the border rather than on the Lebanese side.

We now have a UNIFIL official on record as saying that the Israeli soldiers who were attacked were on Israeli territory. Which mainstream media outlets will or won't cover this fact?
http://rubinreports.blogspot.com/

Here you go...not a false flag but the usual Israeli ' we didn't do nuthing, they just attacked us!' provocation.......I imagine Isr is having a hard time due to the scrutiny they are under in setting up a good false flag war starter so these types of provocations will have to do. Notice that Hezbollah was not involved in this go round.

UPDATED ON:
Tuesday, August 03, 2010
23:35 Mecca time, 20:35 GMThttp://english.aljazeera.net/news/middleeast/2010/08/20108310240207599.html

News Middle East

Troops die in Israel-Lebanon clash


The UN peacekeeping force in Lebanon says it has dispatched troops to the area [AFP]

At least three Lebanese and one Israeli soldier have been killed during an exchange of rocket and gunfire along the border between the two countries.

A journalist was also killed, and four more Lebanese soldiers wounded by Israeli shelling on Tuesday. The Israeli army did not say how the Israeli soldier was killed.

"The Israelis fired four rockets that fell near a Lebanese army position in the village of Adaisseh and the Lebanese army fired back," a Lebanese security official in the area said.

Lebanese news sources reported that the journalist killed was Assaf Abou Rahhal, from the Lebanese newspaper Al-Akhbar.

The clashes erupted after Israeli soldiers reportedly attempted to uproot trees on the Lebanese side of the border.

'Maximum restraint'

A spokesman for Unifil, the United Nations peacekeeping force in southern Lebanon, confirmed the fighting and urged both sides to use "maximum restraint".

"Unifil peacekeepers are in the area and are trying to ascertain the circumstances of the incident and any possible casualties," Neeraj Singh said.

"Our immediate priority at this time is to restore calm in the area."

The United Nations Security Council held a brief meeting about the skirmish on Tuesday afternoon. It concluded without any official statement; Alain Le Roy, the head of UN peacekeeping operations, said the UN was still investigating.

Saad Hariri, the Lebanese prime minister, called the raid a "violation of Lebanese sovereignty and demands".

He called in a statement for "the United Nations and the international community bear their responsibilities and pressure Israel to stop its aggression."

Michel Sleiman, the Lebanese president, issued his own statement denouncing the clash as a violation of UN resolution 1701. That resolution ended the 2006 war between Israel and Hezbollah, and called for both Israel and Lebanon to respect the Blue Line, the UN-administered border between the two countries.

Sleiman also called on the Lebanese army to "confront any Israeli aggression, whatever the sacrifices".

"This is a very significant development," said Rula Amin, Al Jazeera's correspondent in Beirut. "For the first time in years, clashes are taking place between Israel and the Lebanese army, not Hezbollah."

Hassan Nasrallah, the leader of Hezbollah, said in a speech on Tuesday night that he ordered the group's militia not to get involved. He also threatened to retaliate against any future "Israeli aggression".

Roots of conflict

General Gadi Eisenkot, the head of Israel's northern command, predicted the clashes were a "one-time event".

Avigdor Lieberman, the Israeli foreign minister, said Israel "holds the Lebanese government responsible" for the incident, and asked the Israeli envoy to the UN to file a complaint.

The fighting reportedly started when a group of Israeli army soldiers went close to the border to uproot some trees near the villages of Adaisseh and Kuferkilla.

Israeli security sources said that Israeli army engineers came under fire from Lebanese soldiers while working along the frontier and the troops shot back.

Israel said its army engineers came under fire from Lebanese soldiers and shot back [AFP]In a statement, the Israeli military said its soldiers came under fire while they were "on routine activity in Israeli territory in an area that lies between the blue line [the internationally recognised border between Israel and Lebanon] and the security fence, thus within Israeli territory".

Jacky Rowland, Al Jazeera's correspondent in Jerusalem, said "the overall picture that seems to be emerging from Israeli television reports is that the whole incident seems to have started over some misunderstanding".

"There was some kind of Israeli incursion perceived ... to have crossed over into Lebanese territory" which precipitated the exchange of fire, Rowland said.

Israeli TV has reported that Hezbollah was not involved in the skirmish

"Notice that Hezbollah was not involved in this go round."

We don't know that for sure, since Hezbullah has deeply infiltrated the Lebanese military. It's possible Hizbullah wanted to start something covertly while passing the blame to others. It's noteworthy, however, that Nasrallah is saying "Hezbullah had nothing to do with it". He might boast of victory in 2006, but his words show he does not want to risk a repeat of his claimed "victory". Surreptitious actions that do not bring Israeli reprisals would be a different matter.

We do know that UNFIL had been notified and was present before any shooting started - we have the pics. It is their job to see there are no border crossings, and they are on record now saying there were none.

The clash with Lebanon is standard operating procedure: "I know how at least 80 percent of the clashes there (Golan) started. In my opinion, more than 80 percent, but let's talk about 80 percent. It went this way: We would send a tractor to plow someplace where it wasn't possible to do anything, in the demilitarized area, and knew in advance that the Syrians would start to shoot. If they didn't shoot, we would tell the tractor to advance farther, until in the end the Syrians would get annoyed and shoot. And then we would use artillery and later the air force also, and that's how it was. I did that, and Laskov and Chara (Zvi Tsur, Rabin's predecessor as chief of staff] did that, and Yitzhak did that, but it seems to me that the person who most enjoyed these games was Dado [David Elazar, OC Northern Command, 1964-19]. --Moshe Dayan

Israel loves "provocations." They serve as justification for pogroms against the neighbors and the killing of a thousand or more civilians.

Marcus,

You know you lost when you went there.

Some history of incursion to provoke

Menachim Begin himself has admitted in this regard that: “In June l967, we had a choice. The Egyptian Army concentrations in the Sinai approaches do not prove that Nasser was really about to attack us. We must be honest with ourselves. We decided to attack him.”[20] The Israeli Defence Minister of the time has voiced similar revelations. According to the New York Times: “Moshe Dayan, the celebrated commander who, a Defense Minister in 1967, gave the order to conquer the Golan…[said] many of the firefights with the Syrians were deliberately provoked by Israel, and the kibbutz residents who pressed the government to take the Golan Heights did so less for security than for their farmland.”[21] Dayan testified that “at least 80 per cent” of two decades of border clashes were in fact initiated by Israel, under pressure from land-hungry farmers and army commanders in Northern Israel.[22] This concurs with the assessment of former Israeli General Matityahu Peled, who admitted that more than half of the border clashes before the 1967 war “were a result of our security policy of maximum settlement in the demilitarized area.

According to Israeli Defence Minister Moshe Dayan, the Israeli settlers “didn’t even try to hide their greed for their land,” wanting “to grab a piece of land and keep it until the enemy will get tired of us.” Describing the idea that Syria was threatening Israel before the 1967 war as “bullshit”, he affirmed in detail that: “I know how at least 80% of all the incidents with Syria started…

“We would send a tractor to plow some area where it wasn’t possible to do anything, in the demilitarized area, and knew in advance that the Syrians would start to shoot. If they didn’t shoot we would tell the tractor to advance further, until in the end the Syrians would get annoyed and shoot. And then we would use artillery and later the air force also, and that’s how it was… You do not attack the enemy because he is a bastard, but because he threatens you, and the Syrians in the fourth day of the war were not threatening us.”[27]

http://www.mediamonitors.net/mosaddeq24.html

John,

I didn't know you saved me the trouble of posting some history!

As long as we're doing history, let's talk about Qibya: "Unit 101 was commanded by an aggressive and ambitious young major named Ariel ({Arik") Sharon. Sharon's order was to penetrate Qibya, blow up houses, and inflict heavy casualties on its inhabitants. His success in carrying out this order surpassed all expectations. The full and macabre story of what happened at Qibya was revealed only during the morning after the attack. The village had been reduced to a pile of rubble, forty-five houses had been blown up, and sixty-nine civilians, two-thirds of them women and children, had been killed. Sharon and his men claimed that they believed that all the inhabitants had run away and that they had no idea that anyone was hiding inside the houses. The UN observer who inspected the scene reached a different conclusion: "One story was repeated time after time: the bullet splintered door, the body sprawled across the threshold, indicating that the inhabitants had been forced by heavy fire to stay inside until their homes were blown up over them." --Avi Shlaim

Fast forward Gaza, Operation Cast Lead, Al-Samouni family massacred: The Israelis attacked two houses of the Samouni family, killing 23 people in total. Subsequently, they prevented the Red Cross and PRCS from providing care to the wounded and dying for three days.

In Israel, extreme brutality has its consequences--Sharon got the nickname of the Butcher of Beirut, then became Prime Minister.

Cee, there are a lot of little quotes floating around Internet, sometimes taken out of context, sometimes just plain invented by "narrative making" "new historians", that all purport to show Israeli villainy. What they never show is a a realistic view of the big picture, because it would undercut their case.

It's true that Begin said in 1982

"In June 1967 we again had a choice. The Egyptian army concentrations in the Sinai approaches do not prove that Nasser was really about to attack us. We must be honest with ourselves. We decided to attack him."

But his next paragraph was

"This was a war of self-defence in the noblest sense of the term. The government of national unity then established decided unanimously: We will take the initiative and attack the enemy, drive him back, and thus assure the security of Israel and the future of the nation."
http://www.mfa.gov.il/MFA/Foreign%20Relations/Israels%20Foreign%20Relations%20since%201947/1982-1984/55%20Address%20by%20Prime%20Minister%20Begin%20at%20the%20National

Just quoting the snippet by itself makes it sound like Nasser's May 1967 actions were trifles used as an excuse, which is not at all historically accurate. Egyptian archives opened since 1982 prove conclusively that not only was Nasser about to attack Israel, he had actually already ordered an attack for May 27, 1967, but had aborted it on the advice of Soviet FM Kosygin. Michael Oren lays out the evidence in "Six Days of War". Nor does the Begin quote give any idea of Nasser's May 26 speech to the Arab Trade Unionists:

"We were waiting for the day when we would be fully prepared and confident of being able to adopt strong measures if we were to enter the battle with Israel. I say nothing aimlessly. One day two years ago, I stood up to say that we had no plan to liberate Palestine and that revolutionary action was our only course to liberate Palestine. I spoke at the summit conferences. The summit conferences were meant to prepare the Arab States to defend themselves.

Recently we felt we are strong enough, that if we were to enter a battle with Israel, with God's help, we could triumph. On this basis, we decided to take actual steps.

...With regard to military plans, there is complete coordination of military action between us and Syria. We will operate as one army fighting a single battle for the sake of a common objective - the objective of the Arab nation.

The problem today is not just Israel, but also those behind it. If Israel embarks on an aggression against Syria or Egypt, the battle against Israel will be a general one and not confined to one spot on the Syrian or Egyptian borders. The battle will be a general one and our basic objective will be to destroy Israel. I probably could not have said such things five or even three years ago. If I had said such things and had been unable to carry them out my words would have been empty and worthless.

Today, some eleven years after 1956, I say such things because I am confident." http://www.mideastweb.org/nasser26may67.htm

By the time Nasser gave that May 26 speech, he had closed the Straights of Tiran, a known casus belli, ordered the UN peacekeepers to leave the Sinai (they left) and massed nine divisions on the Israeli border together with tanks and heavy artillery.

The Israelis were debating whether they should wait for Nasser to strike, or preempt. They waited throughout May, then as more troops and speeches like the one to the Trade Unionists promised an attack, they preempted on June 4, 1967.

Out of curiosity, Cee, have you ever read an actual history book on the Mideast?

"ut of curiosity, Cee, have you ever read an actual history book on the Mideast?"

Someone with absolutely NO knowledge of Middle Eastern history need only look at the two photographs discussed on this thread, and action described, to draw conclusions about what Israel has become. It is obvious, Nadine, that the diversions you offer to take the debate AWAY from the present are designed to shove this incident, and its implications, under the rug.

You can't hide from it Nadine. These racist sacks of shit steering the ship of state in Israel are now TRAINING their kids, ALA NAZI GERMANY, to be involved in acts of military oppression of a defenseless civilian population.

Your original comment about "resettlement" tells us all we need to know about you, Nadine. And the action described in Steve's posting, and the two photos, do not require a knowledge of "history" for one to be morally repulsed.

But judging from Netanyahu's recent actions resulting in a longer classified status for Israel's historical archives, "history" lessons we are apt to learn from Jews of YOUR ilk will undoubtedly be altered to fit a narrative that might as well be filed under "fantasy".

The topic of this thread speaks for itself, Nadine, and you cannot silence it with your usual line of shit, or by attaching yourself to this scummy little maggot Marcus and his ideological flatulence. The two of you are obviously too fuckin' ignorant, or too radicalized and bigoted, to see how badly Israel damages itself with its current policies. When it falls, and on its present course it WILL fall, you can pride yourself in having played a part in bringing it down.

Army vandalism in Hebron: soldiers destroy family’s well in Wad Lerus

Posted on: August 3, 2010 ISM Media

Yesterday morning (2 August 2010) a group of Israeli soldiers, reportedly drunk, used two bulldozers to destroy a well that belonged to a family living in Wad Lerus, Hebron.

Several ISM activists went out to talk to members of the Al Jaabel family in Wad Lerus, close to the Kyriat Arba settlement in Hebron, yesterday afternoon.

The family members we talked to were very upset since Hebron already has limited water supply, and they depend on this private well in front of their house as a water source, as do some of their neighbours. They had also invested a lot of resources, both on building the well and filling it with water.

They explained that a group of approximately 50 soldiers and border police arrived at the family home at 11:00 in the morning on Monday. The soldiers were reported to be drunk, drinking cans of beer while carrying out the destruction work. ISM activists observed empty beer cans scattered around the destroyed well.

The family said that soldiers and border police brought two bulldozers, and that these were used to destroy the walls at the side of the well, causing huge rocks to fall down into it. When the family tried to stop the soldiers, they were met with violence and aggression, including towards the women. The soldiers also destroyed the gate to the house, which was now standing at the side, off the hinge. The attack lasted for about 30 minutes, and severe damage was done to the well during this time. Several water pipes were also cut off.

At the time ISM visited the family, they were about to empty the well since they fear that children might fall into it. There used to be an edge preventing this possibility, which was bulldozed down by the soldiers. The family told us that they had just bought and refilled the well with 80 cubic meters of water, to the cost of 2000 shekels, and now they had to see it all going to waste. The incident was the first time they had experienced a military attack of this nature, and even though they fear it will happen again, they have no other choice but to try and rebuild the well.

http://palsolidarity.org/2010/08/13525/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+palsolidarity+%28International+Solidarity+Movement%29

"The union representing U.S. Border Patrol agents is defending the actions of a colleague who shot and killed a Mexican teenager on Monday -- the second killing of a Mexican by U.S. agents in two weeks.

The National Border Patrol Council said the still-unidentified agent acted appropriately after Sergio Adrian Hernandez Huereka, 15, started throwing rocks in his direction.

"Since biblical times, rocks have been used as a crude but effective weapon to injure and kill humans," the union said. "On June 8, 2010, when Border Patrol Agents were assaulted at the U.S./Mexico border by several individuals armed with rocks, they were forced to defend themselves and their fellow agents. Border Patrol Agents are not trained, nor paid to withstand violent assaults without the ability to defend themselves. Rocks are weapons and constitute deadly force."

The union also stated, "While the loss of this teenager’s life is regrettable, it is due solely to his decision to pick up a rock and assault a United States Border Patrol Agent. We stand behind the actions of the agents who did their duty in El Paso, and are confident that the investigation into his incident will justify their actions."

Hernandez Huereka was buried Thursday in Ciudad Juarez.

Speaking Thursday at the announcement of a crackdown on Mexican drug cartels, Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. on Thursday called the shooting "extremely regrettable."

Mexican officials condemned the shooting and phoned Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano to issue a formal protest. Some officials want the agent extradited south of the border to face charges. Reaction to the shooting intensified Thursday night when Univision aired exclusive cell phone video of the shooting (see above)."

http://voices.washingtonpost.com/federal-eye/2010/06/border_patrol_union_defends_me.html

"CIUDAD JUAREZ, Mexico (CBS/AP) Mexicans are outraged after a U.S. Border Patrol agent shot and killed a 15-year-old who was believed to be throwing big stones at agents, as they tried to detain illegal immigrants.

Mexican authorities are asking for an investigation into the shooting death of the teenager, which is the second death of a Mexican citizen at the hands of American border patrol agents in two weeks.

On Tuesday, U.S. authorities said that the Border Patrol agent was defending himself and his fellow agents when he fatally shot Sergio Adrian Hernandez Huereka in the head.

Although the agent was believed to be on the U.S. side of the Rio Grande, the young boy's body was found on the Mexican side of the river.

According to Border Patrol Special Operations Supervisor Ramiro Cordero, the U.S. officers were on bicycle patrol and "were assaulted with rocks by an unknown number of people" potentially attempting to cross the Mexican border into the United States.

"During the assault at least one agent discharged his firearm," he said. "The agent is currently on administrative leave. A thorough, multi-agency investigation is currently ongoing."

Family and friends came together late Tuesday to mourn the loss of Sergio Huereka.

Sergio's mother told RTV that the Border Patrol agent crushed her son's hopes and dreams, along with her own spirit.

"My son had many hopes, many dreams to move ahead. He used to tell me 'mama, I want to study, I want to be a policeman, I want to be a soldier' and they didn't let him realize his dreams and they killed him.""

http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-504083_162-20007262-504083.html

Interesting.

Throwing rocks at someone trying to stop drugs, illegal entry, and human trafficking.

Or, throwing rocks at someone who is razing your people's orchards, destroying your wells, violently attacking peaceful protestors, dumping white phosphorous on your families, stealing your land, incarcerating and torturing your siblings, and training Jewish teenagers to hate your fuckin' guts because you are not Jewish.

Eenie meeny miney moe....

"Throwing rocks at someone trying to stop drugs, illegal entry, and human trafficking." (POA)

I think you mean "throwing rocks at someone trying to run drugs and commit illegal entry and human trafficking."

"Someone with absolutely NO knowledge of Middle Eastern history need only look at the two photographs discussed on this thread, and action described, to draw conclusions about what Israel has become"

Oh, yes, photographs aimed at swaying the opinions of those with absolutely NO knowledge Middle Eastern history are very popular. Not only POA indulges - the New York Times has done it many times. One famous case:

"The Photo that Started it All

On the day the Intafada broke out, Tuvia Grossman was riding a taxi to visit the Western Wall. He was unwittingly thrust into the international limelight -- and nearly killed in the process.

Updated May 2002

On September 30, 2000, The New York Times, Associated Press and other major media outlets published a photo of a young man -- bloodied and battered -- crouching beneath a club-wielding Israeli policeman. The caption identified him as a Palestinian victim of the recent riots -- with the clear implication that the Israeli soldier is the one who beat him.

The victim's true identity was revealed when Dr. Aaron Grossman of Chicago sent the following letter to the Times:

'Regarding your picture on page A5 of the Israeli soldier and the Palestinian on the Temple Mount -- that Palestinian is actually my son, Tuvia Grossman, a Jewish student from Chicago. He, and two of his friends, were pulled from their taxicab while traveling in Jerusalem, by a mob of Palestinian Arabs, and were severely beaten and stabbed.

That picture could not have been taken on the Temple Mount because there are no gas stations on the Temple Mount and certainly none with Hebrew lettering, like the one clearly seen behind the Israeli soldier attempting to protect my son from the mob.'

In response, the New York Times published a half-hearted correction which identified Tuvia Grossman as "an American student in Israel" -- not as a Jew who was beaten by Arabs. The "correction" also noted that "Mr. Grossman was wounded" in "Jerusalem's Old City" -- although the beating actually occurred in the Arab neighborhood of Wadi al Joz, not in the Old City.

In response to public outrage at the original error and the inadequate correction, The New York Times reprinted Tuvia Grossman's picture -- this time with the proper caption -- along with a full article detailing his near-lynching at the hands of Palestinians rioters."
http://www.honestreporting.com/articles/reports/The_Photo_that_Started_it_All.asp

"I think you mean "throwing rocks at someone trying to run drugs and commit illegal entry and human trafficking."

Huh???? Are you really that ignorant, Nadine?

Still lacking the character or the courage to comment on Israel's recruitment and corruption of these teens, eh Nadine???

Is it your contention that the New York Times PURPOSELY misrepresented that photo, Nadine??? Gee, that must mean the two photos discussed on this thread are misrepresented, right??? Actually those kids were just delivering pizza to the local population of Swedish immigrants. And the other photo??? Just some harmless little Jewish boys, teaching a Catholic nun how to sing "We are The World".

You really are pathetic, Nadine. How many eons of misery will mankind suffer because of sociopaths like you?

questions, thanks for the account of the Border patrol incident. Did you notice that your account asked the Border Patrol's opinion of the incident, as well as the families and friends of the deceased? A small detail that is lacking in all the electronicintifada.com et. al. accounts the POA puts up.

Asking both sides, imagine that. Gone by the wayside, like the New York Times hiring reporters who can be bothered to identify the subjects of photographs correctly.

Nadine,

I have. Since you've mentioned Benny Morris

In 1936, the mainstream Zionist leaders were more forthright in their support of transfer. In July, Ben-Gurion, the chairman of the Jewish Agency Executive and de facto leader of the Yishuv, and his deputy, Moshe Shertok (Sharett), the director of the agency's political department, went to the high commissioner to plead the Zionist case on immigration, which the Mandatory was considering suspending: Ben-Gurion asked whether the government would make it possible for Arab cultivators displaced through Jewish land purchase … to be settled in Transjordan. Mr. Ben-Gurion replied that this might be considered

Photo of an Israeli soldier in Lebanese territory

http://www.spiegel.de/fotostrecke/fotostrecke-57819-11.html

No, Cee, both sides of the Israeli road and security fence are inside Israel near the Blue Line. UNFIL, which usually does Hezbullah's bidding, even admits that it was notified of the work beforehand and the work was all done inside Israel:

U.N. Supports Israeli Account of Border Clash
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/08/05/world/middleeast/05mideast.html
areal photo of the area of the incident http://idfspokesperson.com/2010/08/03/aerial-photograph-of-location-of-incident-along-lebanese-border-3-aug-2010/

UNFIL observers and a Lebanese journalist were at the site of the incident, so obviously they were notified. The Israelis are starting to believe that they were also notified by the Lebanese forces that they would have an ambush to report.

So the known facts are unequivocally in Israel's favor, but 99% of the media reported it wrong. A few of the better ones are retracting it now, but most aren't.

A better illustration of the media's laziness and anti-Israel bias would be hard to come by. If you present them with some pictures and claims that fit an anti-Israel framework, in the story goes without ever being checked.

Oh yes, Israel NEVER gets to tell its side of the story, do they Nadine?

Has anyone told you today just how full of shit you are??

I know you are, but what am I?

"Okay, let us recap..." (Raimondo)

Link to photograph.........

http://whatreallyhappened.com/

This road represents the border between Israel (to the right) and Lebanon (to the left). This is the border as defined by the United Nations following the last invasion of Lebanon by Israel. Israel has every legal right to so whatever they wish to their side of that border (the land stretching off the right side of the frame). They have no legal right to do anything at all to the land or trees on the Lebanese side of the border without permission. And, Lebanon informed Israel, twice, that Lebanon would not allow Israel to remove or otherwise alter the trees on Lebanon's side of the border. Israel went ahead and did so anyway, uprooting a tree on the Lebanese side of the border, supposedly because it blocked the view of a surveillance camera.

The reports are that the Lebanese military fired warning shots over the heads of the Israelis, and the Israelis retaliated with gun and artillery fire. Five people are dead, three Lebanese military, a reporter and one Israeli officer.

The point is that this is hardly an "Ambush." The Israelis knew they were someplace they were not supposed to be, and that the Lebanese military knew they were there and had refused permission for Israel to remove the tree. It was a provocation, and Netanyahu calling it am ambush is the usual Israeli attempt at blaming the victim in order to avoid responsibility for their own behavior.

Amazing, ain't it? After sniveling that Israel never gets to tell its side of the story, and that the NY Times is biased against Israel, the bigot Nadine links to a NY Times article that she claims vindicates Israel.

Here is an excerpt from the article she linked to....

"But the head of peacekeeping operations for the United Nations, Alain Le Roy, also noted on Wednesday that United Nations peacekeepers had tried to prevent the clash before it occurred"

"Israel told the United Nations at around 6:30 a.m. on Tuesday that it was planning to trim a tree on a narrow strip of land the Lebanese believe should be on their side of the border, Mr. Le Roy said. The United Nations then informed the Lebanese, who objected. Mr. Le Roy said his troops began negotiating back and forth between the two sides, but that Israel had decided to go ahead after a few hours, leading to a clash at around 11:40 a.m. on Tuesday"

“We asked for more time for both parties to agree,” Mr. Le Roy said."

End excerpt.

So, uh, the Israeli's KNEW there was an issue in dispute, yet went ahead with thier operation.

World English Dictionary

provocation (?pr?v??ke???n)

—n
1. the act of provoking or inciting
2. something that causes indignation, anger, etc
3. (English criminal law)-words or conduct that incite a person to attack another

So what about it, you ignorant hasbara wretch? Was trimming that tree worth four lives, and a possible escalation that will undoubtedly claim many many more?

Gee, maybe Israel can clusterbomb a few hundred Lebanese civilians because of a dispute over trimming a tree, eh Nadine? Lucky you!! Just love the smell of burning Lebanese, doncha Nadine?

"This road represents the border between Israel (to the right) and Lebanon (to the left). This is the border as defined by the United Nations following the last invasion of Lebanon by Israel." (Raimondo)

That is a brazen lie by a brazen liar, easily disprovable by resort to a map. Even the UN, not exactly known for sympathy to Israel, has confirmed where the border (the Blue Line) is in the area. They could hardly make a mistake, since the UN drew it up in the first place.

But both Lebanon AND Israel dispute certain areas of the Blue Line, don't they, Nadine? So, if this was a lebanese ioncursion on a portion of the Blue Line that Israel disputes, you'd be singing a differenbt tune, wouldn't you.

This is from the article YOU linked to, Nadine....

"Unifil added that in the area in question, the Lebanese government had “some reservations concerning the Blue Line,” which was demarcated by the United Nations when Israel withdrew its forces from Lebanon in 2000, “as did the Israeli government at some other locations.”"

"But both sides committed themselves to respecting the line as identified, Unifil added, saying the United Nations believed “that the Blue Line must be respected in its entirety by all parties.”"

"The Lebanese Army commander, Gen. Jean Kahwaji, said on Wednesday that Israeli troops had entered a disputed area along the Blue Line despite objections from the Lebanese Army and Unifil"

So, Israel, KNOWING that they were agravating the situation, allowed a mere five hours for it to be resolved, with the Unifil officials cautioning for more time.

So Israel KNEW it was committing an act that Lebanon would see as an incursion. Just to cut down a fuckin' tree???? Right, yeah, sure.

Knowing the facts, (if they are facts, as presented by the article YOU claimed vindicated Israel), can only lead to the conclusion that Israel KNEW it was committing a provocative act, KNEW it could well escalate into violence, and KNEW that they were ignoring the Unifil efforts to defuse the situation.

Look at the definition of "provocative" again, Nadine. Whats worse, its obvious these bloodthirsty pieces of shit did not do this solely for the sake of a brief spark on the border. Who can doubt this racist prick Netanyahu will use this incident as a pseudo-justification to launch a round of punitive strikes against Lebanese non-combatants?

Gee, maybe they can load a few C-130s up with Jewish teenage punks and parachute them in to deface and destroy households before they send in the white phosphorous.

Here's some background information for you, Cee, about the upcoming "scandal" in Jerusalem where the Palestinians will wail about Israel desecrating brand new, fake "ancient Muslim graves" and the media will swallow it whole and repeat whatever they say.

What you have to understand is that Palestinians know they can count on a media that will accept fraudulent claims as readily as real ones, just so long as they fit the "narrative".

"Exclusive: Arabs Faking Graves to Grab Jerusalem Land

by Gil Ronen, Chezki Ezra and Shimon Cohen

In the heart of Jerusalem, dozens of new tombs are being added to an ancient cemetery, but no one is buried beneath them. Jewish observers and sources in the Jerusalem Municipality say the pretend-graves are simply a Muslim project for grabbing land.

The Mamilla Cemetery is located on the outskirts of Jerusalem's Independence Park (Gan HaAtzmaut), between Agron and Hillel streets. It is an ancient Muslim cemetery containing several dozen graves, which has been in a state of severe disrepair for more than a century, despite being under the supervision of the Muslim Waqf.

In recent days, however, there has been much hustle and bustle in the cemetery, and its seems to be growing from day to day, cutting into land that is a part of Independence Park. Trucks, tractors and other heavy machines come and go, dumping building materials, which workers then shape into Muslim-style tombstones with no one buried beneath them. Dozens of these faux-graves are being created on the eastern end of the park, in row after row, where only bare earth and grassy areas existed until now.

Some of the fake tombs have been completed and others are in the process of being built.

Arutz Sheva's Chezki Ezra visited the site following a tip from a local resident and was surprised to see many dozens of new "tombs." He estimated their number as approaching 100.

Funding from the Gulf?
“They are trying to take over this territory,” a Municipality gardener said. The Arab workers who dumped stones at the site did not answer Arutz Sheva's questions and made haste to leave instead. Other Municipality employees who were at the site confirmed that the construction is a Muslim land grab. Several tombstones were dug up and it was found that there were no ancient graves or even remnants of graves underneath them, they said, adding that the Municipality “is aware of the activity” and that it has initiated legal moves against the “tomb planters.” Another worker at the site said that the “tomb planting” project was being financed by a rich Muslim from one of the Gulf states.

Another worker said that the police “instructed the Muslims to stop their activity immediately” but that they are ignoring that instruction.

Deputy Mayor of Jerusalem, David Hadari, heard about the matter from Arutz Sheva and was dumbstruck by the news. “I am in a state of total shock,” he said. “Arutz Sheva has discovered the naked truth, and I intend to immediately turn to the Municipality Director to make use of all of the municipal enforcement arms so that while honoring the Muslim's deceased, we will not honor Muslim fictions that are simply intended to capture more land in eastern Jerusalem.”

MK Nisim Ze'ev (Shas) said the matter was a very serious one. “The Jerusalem Municipality is allowing complete abandonment of territory and assets," he said. "The Arabs are trying to conquer the Land of Israel in every possible way. If we do not wake up to their conniving ways we will find ourselves before a gaping chasm. We need to plow the area and take down all of the fictitious tombs.” "
http://www.israelnationalnews.com/News/News.aspx/138949

Get back to me when Haaretz or the Forward report on this.