Three Stooges
Olmert and Abbas smiled stiffly at Bush's words on Wednesday but did not shake hands, as they did awkwardly at Tuesday's international conference in Annapolis, Maryland.The two sides will continue with a meeting on December 12 in Jerusalem. But serious questions remain about the viability of the new peace effort.
All three leaders - Bush, Abbas and Olmert - are politically weak at home, raising doubts whether they can make good on their promises. [NZH]
It's all a bit pathetic. They are each desperately unpopular with their own people. Bush couldn't even pronounce their names - he had to mumble them - and he's the turkey who's supposed to be facilitating this thing. This charade of deciding how much land Israel will be prepared to give back after its built a giant military wall around every fucking millimetre of it. The elected Palestinian Prime Minister's government in the over-flowing Gaza ghetto refugee camps meanwhile doesn't appear to enter into the equation.
Why are we not boycotting Israel? Because we will be accused of anti-semitism? It will damage our relationship with the US?Because the NZ government is controlled by a settler population which has a similar confiscation policy?
And right when all the Arab leaders are at a conference:
Al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden has urged European countries to end their military cooperation with US forces in Afghanistan in an audio tape aired by Al Jazeera television.[stuff]
posted by Tim Selwyn @ 3:00 pm
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Considering the level of financial, logistical and military support that the U.S. provides to the Israeli state (the likes of Noam Chomsky regularly describe Israel as an appendage of the U.S.) and understanding that if that support were to cease and/or drastically diminish then the standard of living in Israel would plummet; Israels ability to maintain the logistical infrastructure of its armed services would be stretched to the point of collapse (on a per-capita basis Israel spends more on its military than the U.S.), then taking into account the precarious state of the U.S. economy and the slow-motion collapse of the U.S. currency you would think the Israelis would be falling all over themselves in a desperate attempt to present a solution that would be acceptable to the Palestinian majority represented by the democratically elected Hamas government (how's that for a mega-sentence?)
Not only is this charade an ongoing crime against the Palestinian people it is a threat to a long-term viable Israeli society. All I see is Ehud Olmert and George Bush taking turns at painting targets on their puppet's, Mahmoud Abbas, forehead.
................ to me the world becomes more and more like a ben elton novel every year.
With bush and blair devoting themselves to peace in the middle east ..................... we should see a nuclear war there in no time at all.
The One State Declaration
Various authors, IMEU
November 29, 2007
On the 60th anniversary of the passage of United Nations General Assembly Resolution 181, the below signatories have issued the "One State Declaration." The statement is the result of two conferences held this year in Madrid and London on the one-state solution.
For decades, efforts to bring about a two-state solution in historic Palestine have failed to provide justice and peace for the Palestinian and Israeli Jewish peoples, or to offer a genuine process leading towards them.
The two-state solution ignores the physical and political realities on the ground, and presumes a false parity in power and moral claims between a colonized and occupied people on the one hand and a colonizing state and military occupier on the other. It is predicated on the unjust premise that peace can be achieved by granting limited national rights to Palestinians living in the areas occupied in 1967, while denying the rights of Palestinians inside the 1948 borders and in the Diaspora. Thus, the two-state solution condemns Palestinian citizens of Israel to permanent second-class status within their homeland, in a racist state that denies their rights by enacting laws that privilege Jews constitutionally, legally, politically, socially and culturally. Moreover, the two-state solution denies Palestinian refugees their internationally recognized right of return.
The two-state solution entrenches and formalizes a policy of unequal separation on a land that has become ever more integrated territorially and economically. All the international efforts to implement a two-state solution cannot conceal the fact that a Palestinian state is not viable, and that Palestinian and Israeli Jewish independence in separate states cannot resolve fundamental injustices, the acknowledgment and redress of which are at the core of any just solution.
In light of these stark realities, we affirm our commitment to a democratic solution that will offer a just, and thus enduring, peace in a single state based on the following principles:
The historic land of Palestine belongs to all who live in it and to those who were expelled or exiled from it since 1948, regardless of religion, ethnicity, national origin or current citizenship status;
Any system of government must be founded on the principle of equality in civil, political, social and cultural rights for all citizens. Power must be exercised with rigorous impartiality on behalf of all people in the diversity of their identities;
There must be just redress for the devastating effects of decades of Zionist colonization in the pre- and post-state period, including the abrogation of all laws, and ending all policies, practices and systems of military and civil control that oppress and discriminate on the basis of ethnicity, religion or national origin;
The recognition of the diverse character of the society, encompassing distinct religious, linguistic and cultural traditions, and national experiences;
The creation of a non-sectarian state that does not privilege the rights of one ethnic or religious group over another and that respects the separation of state from all organized religion;
The implementation of the Right of Return for Palestinian refugees in accordance with UN Resolution 194 is a fundamental requirement for justice, and a benchmark of the respect for equality;
The creation of a transparent and nondiscriminatory immigration policy;
The recognition of the historic connections between the diverse communities inside the new, democratic state and their respective fellow communities outside;
In articulating the specific contours of such a solution, those who have been historically excluded from decision-making -- especially the Palestinian Diaspora and its refugees, and Palestinians inside Israel -- must play a central role;
The establishment of legal and institutional frameworks for justice and reconciliation.
The struggle for justice and liberation must be accompanied by a clear, compelling and moral vision of the destination - a solution in which all people who share a belief in equality can see a future for themselves and others. We call for the widest possible discussion, research and action to advance a unitary, democratic solution and bring it to fruition.
Madrid and London, 2007
Signed:
Ali Abunimah
Naseer Aruri
Omar Barghouti
Oren Ben-Dor
George Bisharat
Haim Bresheeth
Jonathan Cook
Ghazi Falah
Leila Farsakh
Islah Jad
Joseph Massad
Ilan Pappe
Carlos Prieto del Campo
Nadim Rouhana
The London One State Group
Lol wonder where that leaves all the Jews expelled from all the Arab counries after 1948? Would they also have "the right of return", fat chance.
so two wrongs makes a right
whats funny about that?
The WOJAC figure who came up with the idea of "Jewish refugees" was Yaakov Meron, head of the Justice Ministry's Arab legal affairs department. Meron propounded the most radical thesis ever devised concerning the history of Jews in Arab lands. He claimed Jews were expelled from Arab countries under policies enacted in concert with Palestinian leaders – and he termed these policies "ethnic cleansing." Vehemently opposing the dramatic Zionist narrative, Meron claimed that Zionism had relied on romantic, borrowed phrases ("Magic Carpet," "Operation Ezra and Nehemiah") in the description of Mizrahi immigration waves to conceal the "fact" that Jewish migration was the result of "Arab expulsion policy." In a bid to complete the analogy drawn between Palestinians and Mizrahi Jews, WOJAC publicists claimed that the Mizrahi immigrants lived in refugee camps in Israel during the 1950s (i.e., ma'abarot or transit camps), just like the Palestinian refugees.
The organization's claims infuriated many Mizrahi Israelis who defined themselves as Zionists. As early as 1975, at the time of WOJAC's formation, Knesset speaker Yisrael Yeshayahu declared: "We are not refugees. [Some of us] came to this country before the state was born. We had messianic aspirations."
Shlomo Hillel, a government minister and an active Zionist in Iraq, adamantly opposed the analogy: "I don't regard the departure of Jews from Arab lands as that of refugees. They came here because they wanted to, as Zionists."
In a Knesset hearing, Ran Cohen stated emphatically: "I have this to say: I am not a refugee." He added: "I came at the behest of Zionism, due to the pull that this land exerts, and due to the idea of redemption. Nobody is going to define me as a refugee."
The opposition was so vociferous that Ora Schweitzer, chair of WOJAC's political department, asked the organization's secretariat to end its campaign.
http://www.ifamericansknew.org/history/magic-carpet.html
"What the actual outcome of all this is of course an unknown, but my best guess is – not much. Israel is where it has liked to be over the past several decades, allowing itself to be perceived as the victim of terror while at the same time occupying and terrorizing the citizens of Palestine. While negotiations drag on, while more land is settled, while the brutality of the occupation continues, the Palestinians lose, Israel wins."
http://www.middle-east-online.com/english/?id=23307
"Lol wonder where that leaves all the Jews expelled from all the Arab counries after 1948? Would they also have "the right of return", fat chance."
If the jews aren't allowed to return and live in peace in such places as Baghdad where they once consisted of a third of the population, with their security guarenteed by US forces do the Arabs have any moral high ground in insisting on the right of return. For arab govnts to do so without offering the same opporttunity to jews would make them hypocrites.
"If the jews aren't allowed to return"
Who says they are not?
Shlomo Hillel, a government minister and an active Zionist in Iraq, adamantly opposed the analogy: "I don't regard the departure of Jews from Arab lands as that of refugees. They came here because they wanted to, as Zionists."
Who says they want to?
What kind of moral scheme excuses the State sponsored terrorising of nearly a million Palestinians out of their homeland on the basis that "Arabs" (who are not Palestinians) made Jews unwelcome after Israel waged war on them. This is not to mention incidents like the Lavon affair, black ops designed by Israel to force Jews to become Zionists.
THE JEWS OF IRAQ
By Naeim Giladi
I write this article for the same reason I wrote my book: to tell the American people, and especially American Jews, that Jews from Islamic lands did not emigrate willingly to Israel; that, to force them to leave, Jews killed Jews; and that, to buy time to confiscate ever more Arab lands, Jews on numerous occasions rejected genuine peace initiatives from their Arab neighbors. I write about what the first prime minister of Israel called "cruel Zionism." I write about it because I was part of it...
I was an Iraqi Jew in the Zionist underground. My Iraqi jailers did everything they could to extract the names of my co-conspirators. Fifty years later, pain still throbs in my right toe-a reminder of the day my captors used pliers to remove my toenails. On another occasion, they hauled me to the flat roof of the prison, stripped me bare on a frigid January day, then threw a bucket of cold water over me. I was left there, chained to the railing, for hours. But I never once considered giving them the information they wanted. I was a true believer.....
About 125,000 Jews left Iraq for Israel in the late 1940s and into 1952, most because they had been lied to and put into a panic by what I came to learn were Zionist bombs. But my mother and father were among the 6,000 who did not go to Israel. Although physically I never did return to Iraq-that bridge had been burned in any event-my heart has made the journey there many, many times. My father had it right....
Later I made my way to the new state of Israel, arriving in May, 1950....
When I reported to the Labor Office in al-Majdal, they saw that I could read and write Arabic and Hebrew and they said that I could find a good-paying job with the Military Governor's office. The Arabs were under the authority of these Israeli Military Governors. A clerk handed me a bunch of forms in Arabic and Hebrew. Now it dawned on me. Before Israel could establish its farmers' city, it had to rid al-Majdal of its indigenous Palestinians. The forms were petitions to the United Nations Inspectors asking for transfer out of Israel to Gaza, which was under Egyptian control...
I read over the petition. In signing, the Palestinian would be saying that he was of sound mind and body and was making the request for transfer free of pressure or duress. Of course, there was no way that they would leave without being pressured to do so. These families had been there hundreds of years, as farmers, primitive artisans, weavers. The Military Governor prohibited them from pursuing their livelihoods, just penned them up until they lost hope of resuming their normal lives. That's when they signed to leave....
I was there and heard their grief. "Our hearts are in pain when we look at the orange trees that we planted with our own hands. Please let us go, let us give water to those trees. God will not be pleased with us if we leave His trees untended." I asked the Military Governor to give them relief, but he said, "No, we want them to leave.".....
I could no longer be part of this oppression and I left. Those Palestinians who didn't sign up for transfers were taken by force-just put in trucks and dumped in Gaza. About four thousand people were driven from al-Majdal in one way or another. The few who remained were collaborators with the Israeli authorities......
Uri Mileshtin, an official historian for the Israeli Defense Force, has written and spoken about the use of bacteriological agents. According to Mileshtin, Moshe Dayan, a division commander at the time, gave orders in 1948 to remove Arabs from their villages, bulldoze their homes, and render water wells unusable with typhus and dysentery bacteria....
I am using bank vault storage for the valuable documents that back up what I have written. These documents, including some that I illegally copied from the archives at Yad Vashem, confirm what I saw myself, what I was told by other witnesses, and what reputable historians and others have written concerning the Zionist bombings in Iraq, Arab peace overtures that were rebuffed, and incidents of violence and death inflicted by Jews on Jews in the cause of creating Israel.....
http://www.bintjbeil.com/E/occupation/ameu_iraqjews.html
Giladi's position that the bombings were "perpetrated by Zionist agents in order to cause fear amongst the Jews, and so promote their exodus to Israel" is shared by a number of anti-Zionist authors, including the Israeli Black Panthers (1975), David Hirst (1977), Wilbur Crane Eveland (1980), Uri Avnery (1988), Ella Shohat (1986), Abbas Shiblak (1986), Marion Wolfsohn (1980), and Rafael Shapiro (1984).[4] In his article, Giladi notes that this was also the conclusion of Wilbur Crane Eveland, a former senior officer in the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) who outlined that allegation in his book "Ropes of Sand" [2].
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Naeim_Giladi
Good to know there are some out there who deem an arab life more worthy of a jewish one.
"Good to know there are some out there who deem an arab life more worthy of a jewish one."
I'd settle for equal value. Current Israeli sentiment seems to run about 9 to one.
119 Israeli children have been killed by Palestinians and 971 Palestinian children have been killed by Israelis since September 29, 2000
http://www.ifamericansknew.org/
It's good to know that you find religious cleansing of jews a 'perfectly understandable' reaction as a way minimizing their suffering.
I guess you'd find the actions of Germany in the 30s and 40s a 'perfectly understandable' reaction too. Nice to know you're a covert anti semite who uses the Palestinian issue as a cloak of moral indignation to justify your hatred of jews. Since you care little about the suffering of the tamils or kurds this much is clear.
"Nice to know you're a covert anti semite who uses the Palestinian issue as a cloak of moral indignation to justify your hatred of jews."
No. I despise the Zionist gang for their crimes against humanity as perpetrated against the Palestinians and trolls who obfuscate in order to justify them. Nothing anti-semitic about that unless you subscribe to the theory that an anti-semite is anyone whom the Zionists hate.
You can guess as much as you wish about how I view the actions of Germany. Here is a clue:
"An ignoble sentiment granted but understandable under the circumstances. Wasn't it America who herded ethnic Japanese into camps during WWII? Even little old NZ made things hot for ethnic Germans during that stoush. It is an unfortunate fact of human nature that when one ethnic or religious group starts in to killing a second, the second party's brethren are apt to go a bit racial." That is what I refer to as perfectly understandable.
As for the Kurds and the Tamils I have never expressed my opinion publicly so I am a little perplexed as to how you managed to deduce that I care little about their suffering. I am curious however, how do you view the Tamil struggle and their methods?
You are just one of many on the left who have now found a way to disguise their anti semitism through their concern for the palestinan people and claim that its ant zionism that you stand against.
All you represent is just a more respectable form of nazism. You're a pretty disguistinig individual.
"a pretty disguistinig individual"
Is that someone who publicly defecates while wearing a cloak and false moustache?
"a pretty disguistinig individual"
Whoaa. Slow down there soldier. Take a moment to wipe the spittle off your keyboard. Looks like your "i" is stuck to your "u'. While you're at it, reflect on the kid at primary school who, unable to form a reasonable argument, exploded into a bout of name-calling - cause that's what you're starting to look like.
BTW. I like "ant zionism". I shall think of the settlers on the West Bank every time I apply the Neverwrong to my pantry.
"You'll think of poisoning Jews?
Typical."
According to Mileshtin, Moshe Dayan, a division commander at the time, gave orders in 1948 to remove Arabs from their villages, bulldoze their homes, and render water wells unusable with typhus and dysentery bacteria....
http://www.bintjbeil.com/E/occupation/ameu_iraqjews.html
"You'll think of poisoning Jews?
Typical."
Wouldn't put it past him. I've met people like him before who have an absolute fixation on jews but they have to justify their hatred in a respectable way so the Palestinian issue provides an excellent opportunity.
If you follow Brewers posts the only thing he goes on about are the evil jews to the exclusion of everything else. It's his singular fetish. Its kinda weird.
"I've met people like him before who have an absolute fixation on jews but they have to justify their hatred"
I guess the fellows who wrote this share the same fixation??
Letters to the Editor
New York Times
December 4, 1948
TO THE EDITORS OF THE NEW YORK TIMES:
Among the most disturbing political phenomena of our times is the emergence in the newly created state of Israel of the "Freedom Party" (Tnuat Haherut), a political party closely akin in its organization, methods, political philosophy and social appeal to the Nazi and Fascist parties. It was formed out of the membership and following of the former Irgun Zvai Leumi, a terrorist, right-wing, chauvinist organization in Palestine.
The current visit of Menachem Begin, leader of this party, to the United States is obviously calculated to give the impression of American support for his party in the coming Israeli elections, and to cement political ties with conservative Zionist elements in the United States. Several Americans of national repute have lent their names to welcome his visit. It is inconceivable that those who oppose fascism throughoutthe world, if correctly informed as to Mr. Begin's political record and perspectives, could add their names and support to the movement he represents.
Before irreparable damage is done by way of financial contributions, public manifestations in Begin's behalf, and the creation in Palestine of the impression that a large segment of America supports Fascist elements in Israel, the American public must be informed as to the record and objectives of Mr. Begin and his movement. The public avowals of Begin's party are no guide whatever to its actual character. Today they speak of freedom, democracy and anti-imperialism, whereas until recently they openly preached the doctrine of the Fascist state. It is in its actions that the terrorist party betrays its real character; from its past actions we can judge what it may be expected to do in the future.
Attack on Arab Village
A shocking example was their behavior in the Arab village of Deir Yassin. This village, off the main roads and surrounded by Jewish lands, had taken no part in the war, and had even fought off Arab bands who wanted to use the village as their base. On April 9 (THE NEW YORK TIMES), terrorist bands attacked this peaceful village, which was not a military objective in the fighting, killed most of its inhabitants ? 240men, women, and children - and kept a few of them alive to parade as captives through the streets of Jerusalem. Most of the Jewish community was horrified at the deed, and the Jewish Agency sent a telegram of apology to King Abdullah of Trans-Jordan. But the terrorists, far from being ashamed of their act, were proud of this massacre, publicized it widely, and invited all the foreign correspondents present in the country to view the heaped corpses and the general havoc at Deir Yassin. The Deir Yassin incident exemplifies the character and actions of the Freedom Party.
Within the Jewish community they have preached an admixture of ultranationalism, religious mysticism, and racial superiority. Like other Fascist parties they have been used to break strikes, and have themselves pressed for the destruction of free trade unions. In their stead they have proposed corporate unions on the Italian Fascist model. During the last years of sporadic anti-British violence, the IZL and Stern groups inaugurated a reign of terror in the Palestine Jewish community. Teachers were beaten up for speaking against them, adults were shot for not letting their children join them. By gangster methods, beatings, window-smashing, and wide-spread robberies, the terrorists intimidated the population and exacted a heavy tribute.
The people of the Freedom Party have had no part in the constructive achievements in Palestine. They have reclaimed no land, built no settlements, and only detracted from the Jewish defense activity. Their much-publicized immigration endeavors were minute, and devoted mainly to bringing in Fascist compatriots.
Discrepancies Seen
The discrepancies between the bold claims now being made by Begin and his party, and their record of past performance in Palestine bear the imprint of no ordinary political party. This is the unmistakable stamp of a Fascist party for whom terrorism (against Jews, Arabs, and British alike), and misrepresentation are means, and a "Leader State" is the goal.
In the light of the foregoing considerations, it is imperative that the truth about Mr. Begin and his movement be made known in this country. It is all the more tragic that the top leadership of American Zionism has refused to campaign against Begin's efforts, or even to expose to its own constituents the dangers to Israel from support to Begin.
The undersigned therefore take this means of publicly presenting a few salient facts concerning Begin and his party; and of urging all concerned not to support this latest manifestation of fascism.
ISIDORE ABRAMOWITZ
HANNAH ARENDT
ABRAHAM BRICK
RABBI JESSURUN CARDOZO
ALBERT EINSTEIN
HERMAN EISEN, M.D.
HAYIM FINEMAN
M. GALLEN, M.D.
H.H. HARRIS
ZELIG S. HARRIS
SIDNEY HOOK
FRED KARUSH
BRURIA KAUFMAN
IRMA L. LINDHEIM
NACHMAN MAISEL
SEYMOUR MELMAN
MYER D. MENDELSON
M.D., HARRY M. OSLINSKY
SAMUEL PITLICK
FRITZ ROHRLICH
LOUIS P. ROCKER
RUTH SAGIS
ITZHAK SANKOWSKY
I.J. SHOENBERG
SAMUEL SHUMAN
M. SINGER
IRMA WOLFE
STEFAN WOLF.
New York, Dec. 2, 1948
That letter was written a few weeks after I was born. All of my life Israel has been the the cause of tension in the Middle East yet I supported it. For years we lived under the threat of nuclear annihilation and the ignition point was always expected to be Israel. It wasn't until the disgraceful attack on Lebanon last year that I began to question the history and came to the unmistakeable conclusion that what was going on had nothing to do with the Jewish people or faith but was the same old colonial battle waged by the powerful against the weak for possession of land and resources dressed up to look like it's opposite.
So you know what you can do with your pathetic accusations of anti-semitism, they don't mean a rat's arse to me.
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