The AJC Durban II controversy

Yehuda

Most members of the UN Human Rights Council have a totally different conception of the nature of human rights from the traditional Western one.
This Council is yet another theatre of war in the clash of civilisations.
The West has to make a decision:
will it accommodate the crocodile in the hope that it will be tamed, or will the West subdue it in order to ensure that the Western conception of human rights prevails?

Ronnie

Juvenile drivel.

David

"The fact of the matter is that the only reason the US made a tactical retreat from the process was the pressure created by criticisms such as ours, along with protests made by Israel, Canada, and other American Jewish organizations and leaders."

Ahahahah! Of course it was dear, of course it was.

Jenny

Yes, Ronnie, David Harris most certainly is a juvenile thinker.

This wretched Harris man is basically prepared to put his reputation over the survival of Israel and the free world.

You got it so wrong, Daveypoos.

Now that he has quite finished trying to pull everyone under the steam roller with him can he not keep his humiliation to himself?

alanadale

And all the time the inexorable theft of Palestinian lands continues with the publishing recently of a proposal to build another 70,000 dwelllings in the Occupied Territories - a move that would double the number of West Bank settlers to 1 million and kill the chances of a two state solution.

What kind of parallel universe do you inhabit Melanie that you indulge yourself in such academic debates while ignoring this central grievance against Israel and its supporters and their refusal to abide by international law?

Si, N

"The fact of the matter is that the only reason the US made a tactical retreat from the process was the pressure created by criticisms such as ours, along with protests made by Israel, Canada, and other American Jewish organizations and leaders."

Lobbying on behalf of a foreign country (demented) in other words - precisely the activities the misters Walt and Mearsheimer spoke of precisely - the same lobby freaks insist does not exist.

Well, get your gloating in while you can - because when the whole thing finally does does explode you're going to wind up with more than egg on your face.

Si, N

Well said alanadale.

Brace yourself for the foam-flecked opprobrium ...

stanley Jerusalem

For a public figure he has a remarkably thin skin and might exercise his literary talents in an outward direction rather the safer choice of pissing inwards.
He has achieved zilch with his outburst but there must now be a distinct lack of confidence in his ability to handle real attacks from outside.Let him relinquish his position to one who has a bit more nous and a lot less blather.

Linda Smith

If the UN wishes to maintain credibility, it needs to set up an international debate on the philosophical underpinnings of the notion of Universal Human Rights and all that devolves from that.

Islamic ideology is supremacist and values the life of a Moslem above that of a non-believer. Any state that declares itself to be Islamic and that implements that ideology cannot by definition subscribe to the notion of Universal Human Rights.

"... in 1981, the Iranian representative to the United Nations, Said Rajaie-Khorassani, articulated the position of his country regarding the Universal Declaration of Human Rights by saying that the UDHR was "a secular understanding of the Judao-Christian tradition", which could not be implemented by Muslims without trespassing the Islamic law." (Wikipedia)

It is irrational that Islamic States who do not subscribe to the principles underpinning the notion of universal "Human Rights" should sit on the UN Human Rights Council whose purpose as defined on its own website is "addressing situations of human rights violations and making recommendations on them.".

What is rational is that if the UN wishes to set up a Human Rights Council, then that Council's members must agree to, and be seen to implement in their own States, the basic principles of an agreed UN Human Rights philosphy as a prior qualification for a seat on that Council.

.

Linda Smith

Si, N, you posted "...Lobbying on behalf of a foreign country (demented) in other words,,"

You're alway lobbying here on behalf of "Palestinians". Are you "Palestinian" or are you demented?

Larry

yes there should be calls for Harris's resignation. The kindest thing one can say of him is that he is naive. He has neither sense nor Israel's best interests at heart.

With friends like Harris who needs enemies?

VulgarSpud

"It just goes to show you can't be too careful!"

Ben-Tsiyon (ha rishon)

So Alanadale and Si,N would obviously object to Charles Freeman, President of MEPC (the Arab Lobby)and board member of the Iranian-American Council, "lobbying on behalf of a foreign country" - like Saudi Arabia, for example !

Mesenchyme

Linda 'it's the muslims, it's the muslims!' Smith yet again displays her perpetual ignorance by failing to identify the difference between lobbying (this is to pressure a democratically elected government into looking after your own interest) and what Si,N is doing on this blog (namely to bring your blinkered attention to the daily crimes perpetuated by your beloved Israel). Now, maybe you can enlighten me, how does Si,N comments on this blog constitute 'lobbying'? Is this blog directly linked to the Israeli government? Are you in anyway involved in the decision making process? Me thinks not

George

I have only recently discovered Anne Bayefsky thanks to Melanie's blog and boy does she know her onions.

So we have Melanie Phillips, Caroline Glick and Anne Bayefksy - the free world's version of Charlie's Angels!

Original Tony

Ronnie...it's juvenile drivel because you don't understand a word of it and also because it's 1-0 to us buddy.

George Laird

Dear All

Shock horror, Melanie has been righteously criticised by David Harris for her views.

Well done David, keep up the very good work you are doing.

These parts of quotes caught my eye;

“stunningly overheated rhetoric”.

Spot on the money, top drawer analysis from the AJC Head. I have for some time liken the daily post as my favourite light reading, if I want a laugh I like to read a post by Melanie because it is so over the top.

Now that others are speaking out it kind of proves my point.

I have a habit of being right and saying it before anyone else.

This quote by Melanie was just terrible;

"Having voted this man into power, the AJC now has its head up Obama's backside”.

Didn’t Melanie state that there was no such thing as the “Jewish Lobby”?

Also is that not quite insulting of the new American President and her fellow Jews?

What I take from this piece is that Melanie is as I always suspected is out of touch and the world has passed her by.

Yours sincerely

George Laird
The Campaign for Human Rights at Glasgow University

Dom Marino

I have long been an admirer of Melanie Phillips and Caroline Glick. Ladies keep up the excellent work. Tell the truth, as always. Some of us are actually listening.

Ronnie

Frankly, Original Tony, I've no idea what you are talking about. As usual.

Somehow I don't think I'm missing anything.

If, 'its 1-0 to us buddy,' isn't juvenile I don't know what is.

alanadale

Linda Smith

It's a pity, isn't it, that UDHR does not extend to the Palestinians and their rights under the Fourth Geneva Convention.

Truthtriumphs

Alanadale.
Your post is the product of an ignorant and bigoted mindset.
There is no such thing as Palestinian land ----if there is show us the title deeds.
The West Bank was illegally annexed by Trans-Jordan in 1950, to create Jordan.
This illegal annexation was only recognised by Great Britain and Pakistan, and that without Jerusalem, which annexation they did not recognise.
Aside from which areas of the West Bank, such as the Etzion Block, were legally purchased by Jews in the 1920s.
In addition, Judea and Samaria were, for 400 years, under the rule of the Ottoman Empire.
Palestine was only ever an administrative area---never a country. Can you name a Palestinian head of state,or name a time in history when such a country existed? I think not.

People like you, whose arguments are based on ignorance and prejudice instead of knowledge, always invoke the "illegal occupation" argument because it sounds good and it is rarely challenged.
In fact, it is baloney.
If you were to take the trouble to do a proper study of the history of the region, you would find that the last legally binding document relating to the West Bank, Gaza and the Golan, was the "Mandate for Palestine" document which was ratified in 1922 by the League of Nations, and which awarded those areas to the Jews "as of right" and called for their "the close settlement by Jews", to create the future Jewish state.
When the League was disbanded, this was incorporated into Charter 80 of the UN and remains legally binding in international law until the present day.
Further, the idea that any person should be disqualified from living where they choose on account of their ethnicicity is nothing but racism in its purest form, with the added irony that the Jews should be disallowed from living in their ancient homeland.
Just out of interest, do you object to the settlement of some 4,000,000 Muslims in the UK on account of its being "British land". There are upwards 25,000,000 Muslims living in Western Europe on "European land" by extrapolating your illogical argument. No, the idea hasn't even crossed your mind.
And, by the way, there are some 1.5 million Arabs living behind the Green Line in Israel, most of whom are descendents of those Arab immigrants from mainly Syria and Egypt, who flooded into the Holy Land on the back of Jewish immigration which provided economic opportunities. That represents some 20% of Israel's present day population.
Would you like to tell us all the reason why not a single Jew would be allowed to remain in a future Palestinian state?
I look forward to your answer.
If you were honest, you would admit that it is based, not on reason, but on the oldest hatred.

stanley Jerusalem

George Laird
March 17th, 2009 4:32pm
"I have a habit of being right and saying it before anyone else."
Best laugh of the week

Penny

Oh that it was all about land.

I'm not feeling particluarly foam-flecked tonight, so I'll let Nonie Darwish speak instead.

Nonie was born in Egypt and lived in Gaza in 50's. Her father was the rather famous Lt General Mustafa Hafez, who formed the Fedayeen, launching attacks against Israel in which 400 Israeli's died. He himself was 'Shihad' in 1956. Apparently, Nasser himself asked Nonie and her siblings which one of them would avenge their father's death and kill Jews.

The following is taken from one of her articles in respect of Gaza:

"No Muslim leader can survive in a Muslim country if he announces the end of Jihad against non-Muslim countries and states that all references to Jihad in Islamic law do not apply today. Treating non-Muslim neighboring countries and individual as equals, with respect and in peace without trying to convert them to Islam, is simply against Islamic Law.

"Muslim leaders who dare to go against this theology are called traitors and puppets of the ‘Great Satan’ West. That is a description that no Muslim leader wants to be labeled with. When president Anwar Sadat of Egypt signed the peace treaty with Israel in 1979, he told his confidants that he knew he was signing his own death warrant. He understood that under Sharia he must have permanent war with non-Muslim Israel"

"Many Muslims claim that Arabs and Jews lived well together for many years before 1948. But that claim ignores the fact that Jews had to live as ‘dhimmies’ under Islamic Law and were never allowed to rule themselves separate of the Islamic Sharia. When Muslims were weak they often treated their dhimmi subjects well and ignored the commandments to kill, subjugate and humiliate them. But Jew hatred is intrinsic to Islamic scriptures that do not permit reformation under the penalty of death."

"This is the real basis of the Arab/Israeli conflict: not a conflict over land or occupation, but a divine obligation to destroy neighboring (non-Muslim) Israel, where Jews are no longer dhimmis but are free to rule themselves. We cannot ignore the root of the problem in Muslim scriptures. That is the true force behind the hate and propaganda Jihadist machine against Jews in the Muslim world."

I didn't say it - Nonie did, but after Gaza was handed back and the jihad just kept on coming......???

Frank P

Truth Triumphs: Indeed it does. But never in the minds of the deluded idiots who troll this blog and have an agenda that they cannot abandon; most are people who look for scapegoats for their own inadequacies and have chosen the Jews as a 'lower racial grouping' to elevate themselves in their own minds and relieve their sense of deep inferiority - like most committed leftists, actually. The politics of envy is rife in this world and will be the death of reason if we do persist in trumpeting truth until it does indeed triumph. If the trolls weren't so dangerously deluded it would be pathetic. Thank you for your excellent historical and legal analysis and your rational conclusions. I sometimes wonder whether those who so irrationally attack Israel think that once Islam pervades Western civilisation unto demographic superiority, that they will be given a special rank within Dhimmitude because of their prior support of Palestine, Iran & etc. If so then they are even more seriously deluded that I first thought. The aim of militant Islam is to annihilate ALL infidels either by submission or the sword. I speak as a non-Jewish supporter of Melanie and all who sail with her.

Truthtriumphs

Just to emphasise the point, the name Palestine comes from Palestina, the name that the Romans gave to the land after the Roman occupation of the Holy Land and the final revolt by the Jews, who had dominion there for 1700 years, in 135CE,
and the subsequent expulsion of the majority, but not all, into exile and slavery.
The Romans wanted to obliterate the names of Israel and Judah forever.
The ancestors of the so-called Palestinians of today were not there, so who are they then?
They are the descendents of the indigenous people of the Arabian peninsula who were part of Islam's invading hordes in 638 AD under the banner of Islam.
There is no record of any other identifiable peoples living under Jewish sovereignty at that time.

Michael B

David Harris's combination of locutions and elisions makes for an interesting and revealing study. Perhaps most notably, the very purpose of Durban II had already been solidified and declared to be an affirmation of Durban I. Yet Harris foregoes mention of this salient fact entirely, arguably an absolute, archimedean point in and of itself. Likewise, the "new team," the new U.S. admin., has simultaneously and newly decided to partake in the UNHRC, the U.N. "Human Rights" Council - which is no such thing given its extraordinary programmatic excesses directed at a single country of note, while programatically ignoring genuine, systematic and severe human rights abuses in other countries of note. Apparently, it's that very participation in the UNHRC - if only preliminary at this present stage - which lends further ambiguity (arguably a too kind term) to the current administration's aims and which has allegedly caused nations such as Australia hesitation in withdrawing from Durban II itself. The idea that participation in Durban II's preliminary session together with newly initiated participation in the UNHRC serves to fortify a rejection of Durban II and the UNHRC's excesses is indulgent at best.

There is the additional fact that Bayefsky, Phillips and Glick have been redoubts of note, remarkably trenchant, probative and articulate voices deserving, absolute bare minimum, of a far more faithful representation and a far more conscientious review by David Harris. A regrettable showing by Harris on both scores.

Menachem Chazan

An appeal to disfranchised and exploited Arabs of the Middle East.

While most of us follow, with admiration Obama's example of inspired leadership, we cannot but decry the apparent damning effect of mediocre leadership on the exploited and deprived Arab masses of the Middle East
It is unfortunate that Achmanijad and Ben Ladin, like the despicable demagogues of the past, continue to use the Jews and Israelis, in particular, as a means of promoting their particular narrow interests and their despicable agendas.
The benighted Arab populations of the Middle East, most of whom are still deprived of basic human rights, would be better served by demanding of their Leaders a measure of enfranchisement
and a fairer and more constructive exploitation of the National Wealth.
Inspired leadership is a rare phenomenon avidly sought in the Business, Political and
Religious fields. The mediocrity of most leaders tends to highlight the rarity of the inspired revelation.
Khomeni's initial indication of apparent inspirational leadership, for example, gained him worldwide admiration because of his show of deep affinity for his people. Had he concentrated his efforts in constructive endeavors, in behalf of the Iranian people, he would have gone down in history as a unique statesman of universal acclaim.
His insistence on the denigration and even the decimation of others, in his strife for political and religious autocracy, has him, now, categorized as simply another of those despots whose transgressions
will be disdained by the civilized world and revered by the abounding degenerates.
Iraq's Hussein disastrous war on Iran has been interpreted as attempt to undermine the Iranian
struggle for National integrity and its oil dominance as well as an attempt at ensuring ongoing Sunni political dominance of the Muslim World. He, like his Iranian counterpart, was indulging in megalomaniac practices that were detrimental to the pursuit of the best interests of his people.
It was, in fact, the Iraq/Iran War that highlighted the fact that Israel's existence was neither central to the Middle East unrest nor to the World's dependency on oil.
The Despots vindictive insistence on spewing hatred, and inflaming the mobs against the corruptive Western Democracies, result in regimented outbursts that routinely peter out leaving these unfortunate indoctrinated Muslims mired in destructively spent euphoria.
When will the long suffering Middle East peoples awaken to the fact that their benighted Despotic Leaders or only intent on ensuring the subjugation of their people and in perpetuating their own regimes. They have no compunction, whatsoever, in sacrificing their youth in the vainglorious battle of warding off encroaching Democracy.
These opportunist Muslim Fundamentalist Leaders, of the World, who are waging a war against Democracy, would be wise to read the writing on the wall and move towards the granting their peoples improved standards of living and the benefits of the basic human rights.
The ongoing dissipation of Arab wealth, on personal indulgences, political strife and sacrilegious declarations of Jihads, in face of the dire needs of the Arab multitudes, should no longer be condoned by the civilized populace of this word or be tolerated by the deprived Arab masses.

alanadale

It would appear that this blog is censored. This is a second attempt to respond to TruthTriumphs intemperate reply to my post. If this is off topic then so was his reply and his inaccuracies should not go challenged.

TruthTriumphs says the "Mandate for Palestine" document which was ratified in 1922 by the League of Nations, and which awarded those areas to the Jews "as of right" and called for their "the close settlement by Jews", to create the future Jewish state.

Nonsense. The Mandate for Palestine document ratified by the League of Nations in 1922 simply endorsed the Balfour Declaration. This calls for the establishment of a Jewish national home in Palestine, not a state, and it certainly does not give the Jews title to all the land. Moreover this ‘home’ was to be established without ‘[prejudicing] the civil and religious rights of existing non-Jewish communities in Palestine’ who in many cases have title deeds to their lands going back many centuries.

Let’s assume, however, that the League of Nations had gifted the land to the Jews. True the United Nations took on lock stock and barrels the obligations of the League of Nations but it was done without consulting the wishes of the indigenous population which runs counter to all human rights legislation developed since the Second World War and the Fourth Geneva Convention.

Now let us consider the ‘confusion’ over the true import of UN Security Council Resolution 242 and Israel’s obligation to withdraw from ‘lands occupied in the recent conflict’ in return for a comprehensive peace. This confusion has been sown to enable Israel to pursue its own idiosyncratic interpretation requires it to give only back some of the lands although a rider to the resolution forbids the acquisition of territory by war and the chief drafter of the resolution, Lord Caradon, wrote in notes that he did not stipulate the Green Line as the border because it was impracticable and needed to be ironed out in like for like land swaps. There is absolutely no doubt the international community intended the ‘lands occupied in the recent conflict’ should constitute a state for the indigenous (Palestinian) population.

This view has been enshrined in more than 100 UN Security Council Resolutions, most of which Israel has chosen to ignore, the Fourth Geneva Convention (to which Israel is a signatory) and last but not least the 2003 World Court ruling on the illegality of Israel building its defensive wall on occupied land. This was a unanimous Opinion but for the US member, Judge Thomas Buergenthal, himself a holocaust survivor, who recused himself on the grounds that Israel’s security needs had not been sufficiently considered. However, it is interesting what weight he attaches to human rights law independent of any legal title (which anyway as far as Israel is concerned is completely spurious). For he goes on to say: ‘My negative votes with regard to the remaining items of the dispositif should not be seen as reflecting my view that the construction of the wall by Israel on the Occupied Palestinian Territory does not raise serious questions as a matter of international law. I believe it does, and there is much in the Opinion with which I agree,’ adding ‘I share the Court’s conclusion that international humanitarian law, including the Fourth Geneva Convention, and international human rights law are applicable to the Occupied Palestinian Territory and must there be faithfully complied with by Israel.'

You don’t have a leg to stand on and the sooner you and your fellow Zionists renounce any claim to the ‘lands occupied in the recent conflict’ and accept the Arab Peace plan which has been on the table since 2002 the sooner we can reach closure on this terrible tragedy.

Linda Smith

Alanadale: your post of 17 Mar 11:07 referred to "a two state solution" and a "central greivance against Israel and its supporters and their refusal to abide by international law?

I would be interested to know your opinion on why the Arabs refused to abide by UN Partition Plan, Resolution 181 of 29 November 1947, setting out a "two state solution", and chose instead to go war with Israel.

I would also be interested to know your opinion on why a "Palestinian" state was not created between 1949 and 1967 during which time Gaza was under 100% control of Egypt and the West Bank was under 100% control of Jordan.

I find myself perplexed to understand why the Arabs refused to create a "Palestinian" state between 1947 and 1967 when the opportunity was entirely theirs for the taking. Aren't you?

stanley Jerusalem

Alan-a-Dale (horse)
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Alan-a-Dale (1899-1925) is an American Thoroughbred racehorse best known for winning the 1902 Kentucky Derby. He was bred by Thomas McDowell at his Ashland Stud in Lexington, Kentucky. Raced and trained by McDowell, att age two Alan-a-Dale won three of his four starts but the following year health problems kept him out of racing until Kentucky Derby time.

Si, N

Excellent alanadale - just to be absolutley clear on the notes for Buergenthal's dissenting vote in relation to Israeli land-grabbing - he stated:

'I agree that this provision applies to the Israeli settlements in the West Bank and that their existence violates Article 49, paragraph 6. It follows that the segments of the wall being built by Israel to protect the settlements are ipso facto in violation of international humanitarian law. Moreover, given the demonstrable great hardship to which the affected Palestinian population is being subjected in and around the enclaves created by those segments of the wall, I seriously doubt that the wall would here satisfy the proportionality requirement to qualify as a legitimate measure of self-defence."

Still, world opinion will not alter a jot the intransigence of Arab haters such as Linda Smith.

phil

Mesenchyme--"Connective tissue arising from multiple germ layers consisting of unspecialized cells"-does your name have a message for us as you seem to have achieved the above objective by connecting with SIn and the ludicrous messages of hatred he brings here on a regular basis ,perhaps seen as lobbying by you ?

phil

alanadale any chance you will address Linda,s question ?Perhaps you will also tell me how the Israelis should defend themselves from the suicide bombers without the wall.or would you prefer that they should die to placate your sensitivities ?

You do of course have the freedom to post here as we all do but you cannot expect to post untruths without an answer,and sharp ones too -we are used to it but most of you just disappear when confronted with historical fact rather than spurious accusation .

phil

still more stupidity from the obnoxious keyboard of the aptly named Sin who writes ---"--Still, world opinion will not alter a jot the intransigence of Arab haters such as Linda Smith" --he is a person who cannot even understand that the people who post here in support of Israel do not indulge in hatred-they just have a different opinion -the hatred emenates from him and his pals ,and is never ending-it is a sickness that cannot be eradicated and sometimes I wonder why I even bother to write ,as most of us agree with each other and then respond to those that twist the truth.for what ?

Adam B.

Sin, if Linda is an Arab hater, then you're a Jew hater.

Linda Smith

Si,N On what grounds do you assert that I am an "arab hater"?

You seem to confuse disagreement with hatred. I don't hate anyone unless they give me cause to hate them by their hostile actions or threats.

alanadale

Thank you Si N for your kind intervention and thanks too for filling me in on Buerghental’s dissenting note.
Yes, Phil, I will address the issues Linda Smith raises.
1/ Why did Arabs refuse to abide by UN Partition Plan Resolution 181? They refused because it was scandalously weighted against the indigenous population. At Partition Jews represented some 30% of the population of Mandate Palestine yet they were awarded 52% of the land area, further the Jews were overwhelmingly settled in the urban centres so the Partition Plan put a hugely disproportionate number of Palestinian rural communities under Jewish control.
Ref your second point. There is no doubt that the Palestinians have been victims of Arab ‘imperialism’ as well as Israeli expansionism and have been let down by neighbouring Arab regimes which continue (as they have always done) to promote their own agendas (which are not necessarily in the interests of their own constituencies or ever have been ref Prince Faisal cutting a deal to carve up Palestine with Weizmann in 1919).
But Jordan and Egypt have seen the light, acceding to the Palestinians’ legitimate national aspirations. When will Israel?

alanadale

stanley Jerusalem

Alan a dale may indeed have been an American thoroughbred but he was also a wandering minstrel who chronicled Robin Hood's nefarious deeds -depending on which side of the argument you are coming from.

stanley Jerusalem

alanadale
March 18th, 2009 4:48pm

stanley Jerusalem

"Alan a dale may indeed have been an American thoroughbred but he was also a wandering minstrel who chronicled Robin Hood's nefarious deeds -depending on which side of the argument you are coming from."

No, really? Go on; you're pulling my leg, I thought thhat was Will Scarlet, Robin's tratorous brother or even Kevin Costner.Well I never!
On balance Iprefer the horse.

phil

alanadale I see you posted to Linda ,meddled with the facts, but you did not answer my question .Linda,s were easy to obfuscate but mine was to the point and you have dodged it -the posters are too sharp for you here A they quickly write off the statements of those that dodge the issues ,and applauding the greatest fibber who ever has written here will win you no friends either -Sin has a history all of its own .lie after lie ,posted month after month ,and the lies regularly destroyed by the truth,at which point he disappears ,only to reappear when he thinks we have forgotten the nonsense -we do not and we will not ,so I suggest you fight your own battles the truth always wins ,sometimes it takes a little longer.---

Nobody objects to support for the Palestinians ,it is in everyone's interest to make peace ,or at least we think so ,but those who come here solely to denigrate the Israelis and those of the Jewish faith will find few friends .Make your points but make sure they are correct,offer solutions that are pragmatic and fair and you will find many intelligent posters that will engage in debate with you ,but expect nothing if you do the opposite ,the whole of Sherwood forest will not stop an arrow up your toches-- (stanley:)

Suffolkbor

I liked Friar Tuck .
Cockney Rhyming slang for ......?

Ronnie

Well, stanley, I think we can be sure that Robin Hood's mate was not named after your horse, so you are on dodgy ground here.

Ronnie

I'm sorry, alanadale, I wish you had not introduced the term 'indigenous population' to the discussion. I, and a few others, know exactly what is going to happen now. Its only a matter of time.

Adam B.

alanadale, the Arabs rejected the UN partition plan in 1948 because they opposed the very concept of any Jewish state, of any size. Much of the Islamic world still does. To pretend that the rejection of the UN partition plan was simply a matter of borders is patently false.

You seem to be cozying up to Sin. For your information, Sin also opposes the very concept of a Jewish state, as he has repeatedly demonstrated in his hateful posts. It is therefore bogus for him to pretend that he disputes the security fence purely on legal grounds. He has an agenda, which is simply anti-Israel, come what may.

Furthermore, you seem to be in thrall of international bodies. There is no such thing as an independent, impartial, equally applied international law. There are, however, politically driven interpretations of theoretical international law. The World Court, to which you refer, has never seen fit to look into the legality of China's invasion and annexation of Tibet. Why? Is it because there is no case to answer? No. It's because there is no political agenda from any of its actors to ask the question.

Incidentally, I believe the Chief Judge on the case about the security barrier was from the Communist dictatorship of China. Ask yourself how one rises to the top of a legal system which imprisons political prisoners (who are routinely tortured in the most horrific way - no outcry from the Israel hating left) and executes more people than the rest of the world put together. Some "justice" system.

The case against Israel was put forward by Cuba, another Communist dictatorship with political prisoners languishing in its "justice system."

If you want to be impressed by the "morality" displayed by these tyrants and despots, that's your right.

Perrsonally, I couldn't care less what they have to say.

Linda Smith

Alanadale: I am concerned that you apply different standards for Jews and Arabs, ie by criticising Israel for refusing to comply with UN Resolutions but condoning Arab refusal to comply with UN Resolutions.

In your post of 17 Mar 11:08pm you criticise Israel for its refusal to comply with UN Security Council Resolutions: "This view has been enshrined in more than 100 Security Council Resolutions, most of which Israel has chosen to ignore.."

In your post of 18 Mar 4:42pm you give your reasons for the Arabs' refusal to compy with UN Resolution 181.

Do you condemn the Arabs for refusing to abide with the will of the international community as set down in Resolution 181 of 29 November 1947 setting up 2 states?

Or, in your opinion, is it only Israel that must comply with UN Resolutions?

alanadale

Phil. What on earth are you talking about and precisely what is your point? It is very generous of you to aver that ‘Nobody objects to support for the Palestinians, it is in everyone's interest to make peace, or at least we think so, but those who come here solely to denigrate the Israelis and those of the Jewish faith...’ This is utterly offensive and completely unfounded. If you have any points of fact you wish to dispute, name them.

Ronnie says he can see where introducing the term 'indigenous population' to the discussion is leading us. Please enlighten us.

May I come to the more substantive arguments of Adam B and in another post Linda Evans?

Adam B

Point 1/. Yes, of course the ‘indigenous population’ fought the establishment of an alien culture in their midst back at the start of the 20th century just as the British would have resisted the establishment in the 17th century of a Huguenot state in south east England of those escaping persecution in France.

And to counter the argument that the Jews had title to the land because of links going back to a Jewish Kingdom two thousand years ago gifted them by their self righteous God, well what would Americans say if the Wappani tribes mustered the financial wherewithal and the firepower to reclaim Manhattan. And their claim is barely four hundred years old.

And to say ‘Oh well the land was acquired in a fair sale’ (as indeed some land was acquired by Jewish settlers) then why does not Israel now allow Arabs to acquire land in Israel. The rights of Israeli Arabs are penuriously restricted let alone the right of Gulf Arabs to acquire land in Israel or the West Bank. Why not? Brooklyn Jews can acquire land in illegal Jewish settlements? What’s sauce for the goose is not apparently sauce for the gander.

2/ Whether one agrees or not with the original creation of Israel is really academic. Israel is an established fact and EVERY STATE IN THE REGION now accepts that it has the right to exist in peace and security WITHIN ITS 1967 borders. Israel’s refusal to accept this accommodation keeps the conflict alive and will in the longer term endanger its very existence, let alone complicating life for the rest of us and making it much more dangerous. I personally have a lot of sympathy with the particular circumstances in which Israel came into existence. But remember it was not the Palestinians who were responsible for the Shoa yet they have been their ultimate victims, the West disgracefully shovelling its ordure on to their doormat and Israel colluding. If you can’t kick the perpetrator of your misfortune kick the dog – to use Churchill’s colourful characterization of Palestinians.

3/ I’m not particularly in thrall of International bodies. Unfortunately they are all we’ve got if as a common humanity we are to establish a rule of law. I utterly condemn Chinese actions in and claim on Tibet based as it is on a specious claim of suzerainty going back more than a thousand years. But no one pretends that China is part of the ‘civilized’ Western club. Certainly US protection of Israel greatly complicates Western calls on China to be civilized in Tibet. The significant point about the World Court ruling was that it was unanimous and as Si N has already posted Judge Buerghental’s notes that clearly state the primacy of international human rights legislation – the big change in law since the early 20th century when the rules were set by the Imperial powers and their narrow self interest. Some cite the beginning of the end of the Apartheid regime in South Africa from the World Court ruling on Namibia.

4/ It doesn’t need Cuba to put forward the case against Israel. Public opinion polls in Europe overwhelmingly support a just deal for the Palestinian and a majority of Americans (over 60%) want their government to be more even handed in the Israel Palestine dispute. Eventually the political elites in the Western democracies will have to heed their public opinion. It is better for Israel as Ehud Olmert has concluded that Israel settle now while it is still ahead. Israel settle now while it is still putatively ahead.

alanadale

Linda Evans

Well to be thoroughly pedantic Resolution 181 was a General Assembly Resolution which doesn’t have the same force as a Security Council Resolution (and a Chapter VI Security Council Resolution which is non binding does not have the same force as a Chapter VII Resolution which does. All the Resolutions regarding Israel are under Chapter VI because of the threat of the US veto while hapless Iraq – though not so flagrant or so prolific in its defiance of the UN - was nailed under a Chapter VII resolution.)

I’m not seeking to justify but to explain the Arab reaction which is to resist anyone who tries to take something from you. The Resolution 181 provision was inherently unjust from the point of the demographics but understandable from the point of view that if the Jews were to have a viable state it would have to have critical landmass – funny the same principle doesn’t seem to apply in US and Israeli eyes to the Palestinians seeking to build a viable state with only 22% of the same landmass sharing water resources proportionately.

But isn’t that all water under the bridge? The Arabs have accepted Resolution 242 which recognizes Israel within its 1967 borders. The problem is that Israel is resisting the overwhelming weight of world opinion – the litany of ignored UN Resolutions, the World Court Ruling etc – and can’t continue doing so indefinitely.

Linda Smith

Alanadale: I personally support the idea of 2 states - but as I am not Israeli my opinion is irrelevant.

I would point out that your statement "The Arabs have accepted Resolution 242 which recognises Israel within its 1967 borders" is false. Hamas and Hezbollah and their supporters do not accept the right of Israel to exist.

Linda Smith

Alanadale: I just noticed in your post printed immediately above the one you addressed to Linda Evans (I suppose you meant me), you wrote:

"EVERY STATE IN THE REGION now accepts that it has the right to exist in peace and security..."

Iran doesn't.

Ronnie

Alanadale et al.

We can argue about 2,000 year-old rights of residence, ignored UN resolutions, 1967 borders and world opinion until we are blue in the face, that is what we mostly do here.

The issues here and now remain, Recognition, Universal Security (including economic development), Israeli Settlement Building, The Right (or not) of Return, The Status of Jerusalem and, more recently, the political crisis among the Arab population.

These are THE issues and only by resolving them will any kind of peace be achieved. Right now they are not even being discussed in any substantive way, either deliberately or because people find all the other intractable crap more exciting.

phil

alandale "alanadale I see you posted to Linda ,meddled with the facts, but you did not answer my question" did I miss your answer in the long winded post you subsequently sent -the one about the wall if you lost it ?

alanadale

Apologies Linda for the slip over your name.

In reply to your comments:

Hamas and Hizbollah are not states. However Hamas is considerably more flexible than Israeli propaganda would suppose. Viz Jeremy Greenstock's BBC interview

http://news.bbc.co.uk/today/hi/today/newsid_7823000/7823746.stm

which the sainted Melanie has much maligned. However I would draw your attention to this blurb promoting a Memri analysis of Hamas:

‘The current fighting in Gaza poses a dilemma for the adherents of the Salafi-jihadi ideology in Gaza and elsewhere. On the one hand, the Salafi-jihadis perceive Hamas as engaged in defensive jihad against the Israeli invasion of Gaza, and thus feel obligated to assist it. At the same time, they view Hamas as insufficiently devout in that it has refused to implement the shari'a law in Gaza fully and to the exclusion of any other legal system.(1)

‘Debates on Islamist Internet forums reveal that the Salafi-jihadis' dilemma is doctrinal in nature.(2) Salafi-jihadi forum members discuss whether the Hamas regime in Gaza should be viewed as apostate, or as a devout Islamic regime that is nevertheless neglecting some aspects of Islamic law. If the latter is true, one is obligated to assist Hamas against Israel, whereas if the former is the case, one is prohibited from any association with Hamas, even during a crisis.

‘Some Salafi-jihadis contend that "Hamas' announcements and conduct" since its coming to power (i.e., its failure to implement the shari'a, its participation in a secular parliament, and its association with Iran) are sufficient legal grounds for declaring it apostate.(3) [My emphasis]. They state that "the banner of Hamas... is a banner of jahiliyya... defiled by apostasy, [prohibited] innovation, and distortion, and fighting under it is therefore the biggest error and deviation [from the shari'a], even during [war] against the Jews."(4) Indeed, a communiqué recently published by the Gaza-based Salafi-jihadi group Jaysh Al-Ummah calls on the Salafi-jihadis to resist the Israeli invasion, but stresses that they must fight under the banner of tawhid (rather than the banner of Hamas) and that the goal of the campaign is to "render the word of Allah supreme," rather than merely resist occupation.(5)

‘However, even the Salafi-jihadis who regard Hamas as apostate still refrain from issuing official statements to that effect, "as a precaution" (i.e., probably in order not to provoke Hamas into intensifying its campaign against the Salafi-jihadists in Gaza).

‘On the other side of the argument, some Salafi-jihadis see Hamas as an Islamic movement that is guilty of religious innovation (i.e., of deviating from the shari'a in limited cases), but not of full-fledged apostasy. Accordingly, they believe that the Salafi-jihadis must fight alongside it in its current struggle against Israel, since Islamic law requires one to assist a Muslim – even one who is guilty of "innovation" – against an infidel.(6) ‘

Now Memri is not an organization known for its love of Hamas or anything that it is not violently, rabidly Zionist.

Ref Iran. Iran has said it would abide by any democratically conducted plebiscite. As opinion polls indicate a significant majority of Palestinians favour the Arab Peace Plan it is reasonable to assume Iran would fall into line. If it did not it would be isolated which it is not at present - in Middle East opinion.

alandale

But my point is, Ronnie, that if Israel were to renounce all claims to the territories it occupied in 1967 as it is required to do under the Resolution 242 deal it would clear the way to discussion of these substantive issues. After all the Palestinians were required to recognize Israel in return for negotiations - playing their trump card with nothing offered in return except interminable haggling, continued Israel settlement building and in the end a set of Bantustans. I’m afraid there’s no deal unless Israel accepts the terms of 242.

Ronnie

Linda Evans, now there is an interesting freudian slip up.

Have you ever appeared in Dynasty, Linda (Smith)?

alanadale

Phil to save you further grief, sorry I missed your point ref suicide bombers. Leave aside my sensibilities, my advice is for Israel to get out of territories that do not belong to it and cease using obscenely disproportionate force to control, subdue and oppress the local population. Is that good enough for you?

Original Tony

Yawn!

alanadale

Original Tony

Is this your usual response to losing the argument? Why won't any of you guys address the key question? Why won't any of you accept that 78% of Palestine is a more than fair deal? You all studiously circumambulate this elephant in the room.

Adam B.

alanadale

1. The Arabs are not uniquely "indigenous" to the area. That is revisionism, and displays your true agenda.

2. The Arabs rejected the very notion of any Jewish state, regardles of borders.

3. There has been a continuous Jewish presence in the land of Israel since ancient times, so your analogy with the US is bogus. In addition, do you think the US should cease to exist? Or is it only Israel which should have its right to exist questioned endlessly?

4. You make various claims about public opinion polls, as if this proves anything. Every poll from the US shows overwhelming support for Israel, (your 60% claim comes from where?) As for Europe, recent polls have shown deep seated anti-Semitism (not anti-Israel feeling) to be prevalent. Pardon me for not giving a toss what they think about the Jewish state.

5. Iran does NOT accept Israel's right to exist, as you claim. Nor do groups such as Hizbollah or Hamas, which advoctae the extermination not just of Israel but of every living Jew.

6.If you are

alanadale

Adam B says:

1. The Arabs are not uniquely "indigenous" to the area. That is revisionism, and displays your true agenda..

I never said they were. Palestinians (Muslim and Christian), Circassians, Turks, Kurds and others lived in Palestine as well as Jews. But the Jewish population at the time of the Balfour Declaration was less than 8%.

2. The Arabs rejected the very notion of any Jewish state, regardless of borders.

Can’t we move on from this one? The Palestinians resisted just as any people would resist an attempt to take their lands. And didn’t Golda Meir once famously say there was no such thing as a Palestinian? These are negotiating positions.
.
3. There has been a continuous Jewish presence in the land of Israel since ancient times, so your analogy with the US is bogus. In addition, do you think the US should cease to exist? Or is it only Israel which should have its right to exist questioned endlessly?

What is that supposed to mean? There has been a continuous Chinese presence in Tibet for over a thousand years; does that entitle China to take it over? Why is the analogy with the US bogus? Israel’s right to exist has been settled – provided it gives up the Occupied Territories and reaches a much more generous deal on the right of return than it has offered heretofore.

4. You make various claims about public opinion polls, as if this proves anything. Every poll from the US shows overwhelming support for Israel, (your 60% claim comes from where?) As for Europe, recent polls have shown deep seated anti-Semitism (not anti-Israel feeling) to be prevalent. Pardon me for not giving a toss what they think about the Jewish state.

You are wrong the latest Pew poll in the US shows a much more even handed public perception of the Israel Palestine dispute. As to Europe, give over. If you talk about anti Semitism long enough and if Israelis continue to behave in the outrageous way they did in Gaza it will become a self fulfilling prophecy

5. Iran does NOT accept Israel's right to exist, as you claim. Nor do groups such as Hizbollah or Hamas, which advocate the extermination not just of Israel but of every living Jew.

The question here is these groups’ pragmatism which I have dealt with elsewhere. I believe they are pragmatic and are taking positions vis a vis Israel and keeping their powder dry – as has Israel in its dealing with the Palestinians. Ahmadinejad said he looked forward to the day when Israel disappeared from the page of history. I think Reagan had much the same view of the Soviet Union. That did not mean he wanted to exterminate Russians, likewise it is an outrageous calumny to say that Iranians, Hizbollah or Hamas advocate the extermination of Jews.
Anyway if there are crackpot Muslim clerics, Islam does not have a monopoly of them - I refer you to no less than a former chief Rabbi Ovadia Yosef who In a Passover sermon in April 2001 called on God to annihilate Arabs. ‘It is forbidden to be merciful to them, you must give them missiles, with relish - annihilate them. Evil ones, damnable ones,’ he was quoted as saying. Rabbi Yosef was at the time head of the Shas party which held the balance of power in the Knesset.

Finally when will any of you raise your head above the parapet and say whether 78% of Palestine isn’t a good deal to settle this thing.

Adam B.

alanadale, I don't have time for a point by point rebuttal (wish i did), but just as a quick comment, you refer to the land as being "their" (Arab) land.

It is not - never was. No more than a quarter of Baghdad was "Jewish land".

phil

alanadale of course not -the wall the wall the wall -it is a short answer that is needed not a book that sent me to sleep .I think its the arrow up the toches for you my boy -its getting vey boring .

alanadale

What do you mean Phil. The Palestinians had been living on the land for centuries and many had deeds to prove it.

The Jews made up less than 8% of the population, a minority of a minority.

I'm amazed at you guys' sense of entitlement. For you the Palestinians simply don't feature. They are are non people who should just go away and play.

You still adamantly refuse to address my question. Is 78% a good deal or no.

As for Phil I think you should retire disgracefully.

Robert

So its boring when you can't win an argument because its too dense and the other person is too well-informed and ad hominem attacks aren't working and you just don't know enough to win. Maybe its too tiring. You should have a nap, losers.

Truthtriumphs

Alanadale.
"The Palestinians were not responsible for the Holocaust"
Is that so?
You are evidently ignorant of the pivotal role of the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem, Haj Amin al Husseini, in the Final Solution.
He was complicit with Hitler and was a permanent guest at his residence since 1941.
He was especially credited with the plot to liquidate Hungarian Jewry, together with Adolf Eichmann.
Indeed, in the early twenties, he set out to murder Jews living in the Holy Land wherever he could find them, without mercy just because they were Jews, as well as Arabs who opposed his brutal methods.
He was also the uncle of one Yasser Arafat, who, by the way, was Egyptian, not "Palestinian".
That makes you an apologist for a murderer.

Truthtriumphs

Alanadale.
You have not answered ANY of the points I put to you earlier.
As you are so fond of droning on about the "illegality" of Israel's so-called occupation, and invoking legalistic arguments to "prove" your spurious assertions, how about this?
Judge Stephen Schwebel,who headed the ICJ, itself the legal body of the UN, in 1970 ruled in relation to the ownership of the West Bank that "Where the prior holder of territory had seized that territory unlawfully,(ie. Jordan),the state which subsequently takes that territory in the lawful exercise of self-defence,(ie. Israel), has against that prior holder, better title.

As to your invoking of the 4th. Geneva Convention, you will find that it is not applicable to the West Bank and Gaza, since under its Article 2, it pertains only to "Case of ....occupation of the territory of a High Contracting Party by another High Contracting Party".
The West Bank and Gaza have never been the legal territories of any High Contracting Party.
You are ignorant of the facts, preferring to pander to your prejudices instead.

Oh, and by the way, are you also concerned about other territories acquired in warfare, such as the Kurile isles, whole chunks of Germany lost to Poland, etc, etc, or is it only in the case of Jews regaining what is rightfully theirs, that your self righteous indignation finds its voice?

Truthtriumphs

Alanadale.
"It is an outrageous calumny to say that the Iranians, Hezbollah or Hamas advocate the extermination of Jews".
Really?
They not only advocate it but practise it wherever and whenever they can.
Who, then, just to take one example, was responsible for the 1994 bombing of a Jewish community centre in Buenos Aires, with the loss of over 100 innocent lives, some 8,000 miles from the Middle East?
I think you will find that it was Hezbollah, masterminded by the Iranians.
Hezbollah is only too happy to brag about its "long arm".

Truthtriumphs

Hassan Nasrallah also addressed his followers to say about the Jews that if they all gather in Israel "it will save us the trouble of going after them
worldwide".
So, Alanadale, every one of your comments is based on fantasy, not fact.

Truthtriumphs

Alanadale.
You quote Resolution 242 to bolster your spurious claims that Israel is in "illegal occupation" of the WB.

Your malevolent ignorance needs correction.
Resolution 242 called for "the withdrawal of Israeli armed forces from territories occupied in the recent conflict".
It was linked to the second unambiguous clause calling for the "termination of claims or states of belligerency".
It deliberately did not specify how much territory Israel needs give up.
Just so that readers of this blog are in in no doubt, on October 29, 1969, the British Foreign secretary told the House of Commons that Israeli withdrawal would not be from all the territories. Lord Caradon further added that it would have been wrong to demand that Israel return to its position of June 4 1967, "because these positions were undesirable and artificial".

alanadale

No takers yet it seems for my 78% solution, must assume you all – with the exception of Linda Smith - think Israel is ‘entitled’ to the whole of Palestine.

Truthtriumphs now posits the interesting idea (based presumably on the butterfly wings fluttering in Brazil theory) that the Palestinians played a pivotal role in the Nazis’ extermination of 9 million souls thanks to the Grand Mufti Haj Amin Husseini availing himself of Hitler’s hospitality in Berlin. There is no doubt that Haj Amin Husseini was a creep who ‘hated Jews ‘because’ they stole his homeland’. As an individual he certainly had charges to answer over his conduct in Berlin. But he never got a treaty with Hitler to secure Palestine, which was his objective; and the Nazis anyway would have ditched the Arabs had they won just as the Allies ditched them after World War I.

But the Haj was not the only one cozying up to Hitler in 1940 when the Nazis seemed to have the upper hand. I’ll admit they didn’t quite make Berlin but in late 1940 Avraham Stern and Yitzhak Shamir put their signatures to a letter exploring a deal with the Nazis that would have given the Jews Palestine. And other whackier irregulars were dealing with the Nazis much more directly.

Shamir of course had Count Bernadotte and Lord Moyne assassinated and for this and other acts of heroism was to be later elected prime minster - by Israelis exercising their sovereign democratic rights. Shamir was not quite as bad as that little creep Menachem Begin who boasted at blowing up the King David Hotel (91 killed) – Bibi Nethanyahu wants the anniversary to be celebrated as national holiday – and the murder in cold blood of two British squaddy hostages and the stringing up their booby trapped bodies, amongst other acts of heroism for which he too was duly elected prime minister - by Israelis exercising their sovereign democratic rights.

I shouldn’t make too much of the alleged blood link between Arafat and the Haj – if it matters? They shared the same family name and may have been distant cousins. The rest I suggest is Zionist propaganda.

Ref Judge Stephen Schwebel. He was considering the claims of Israel and Jordan (then in 1970 the putative Arab power) to the West Bank. Had the issue been between Israel and a Palestine Authority it would have been very different matter. International judicial opinion since has unanimously supported the view that the land belongs to the Palestinians, principally upon the basis of Human Rights Legislation.

Ref the 4th Geneva Convention calling ....’occupation of the territory of a High Contracting Party by another High Contracting Party". This puts the Palestinians in a catch 22 position because Israel and its allies refuse to allow the establishment of a Palestinian state until the Palestinians have signed more of their lands and water rights away. Suffice it to say that international legal opinion is unanimous that Israel has obligations under the Geneva Convention to the populations of the lands it occupies.

As to the question of acquiring territory by war: Of course over the centuries land has been seized and regained. But in a very important way after the Second World the music stopped and that is the point of the United Nations – to prevent another Nazi state emerging. Undoubtedly there are many injustices and land disputes still unresolved. But Israel owes its being and certainly its international legality to the UN and promised solemnly as a condition of acceptance into the organization to uphold its Charter. Yet it is in breach of over 100 Security Council Resolutions. How can you explain that other than that Israel feels it has the right to pick and choose international law to suit its needs.

Finally slaughter and the long arm of whomsoever’s law.

I certainly don’t approve of blowing up 100 innocents ‘some 8,000 miles from the Middle East’ as you put it. But Israel has also been behind terror operations on foreign soil

You may remember the 1954 Lavon Affair in which Israeli intelligence arranged for a series of bombs to be planted in downtown Cairo in the hope that they would be pinned on the Muslim Brotherhood. Thus Israel introduced the ‘agent provocateur’ into the Middle East terror lexicon. And one only has to think of the hapless Moroccan waiter mistakenly gunned down by Israeli agents in Norway in the mid 1970s to be aware that Israel is quite prepared to play away from home when necessary.

In fact Israel introduced the concept of taking the law into ones own hands. Most of the terror tactics used in the Middle East were introduced by Zionists, mainly because they were smarter and more ruthless.

Finally when it comes to wholesale slaughter I don’t know how you have the nerve to raise your head after what the IDF did in Gaza. How on earth can you account for around a third of the 1,300 killed being children. I have it on very good authority that the IDF was instructed to go into Gaza and trash the infrastructure and destroy all industrial plant. And then yesterday we had the news on the BBC that Israeli reservists have admitted to being given orders to shoot to kill. Two instances were cited of an officer ordering an elderly woman to be ‘taken out’ because she was in the way and the killing a mother and two children coming out of a building because the CO had forgotten to inform the sniper covering the building. Accidents happen in ‘war’ but I think even you have to admit that there is something very, very rotten in the state of Denmark.

Don’t you find something morally troubling when Ehud Barak can extol the bravery of Israeli pilots going to drop bombs on defenceless Palestinians? Where’s the bravery, where’s the risk to one’s own precious skin, in dropping bombs on people who can not fire back?

My purpose in this is not to justify Arab action but to puncture your hypocrisy and self righteousness.

phil

alandale has retreated to sherwood forest with the arrow up his toches -as you say truth triumphs.

alanadale

Truthtriumphs’ interpretation of Lord Caradon’s remark that Israel could not be expected to return to its position of June 4 1967, "because these positions were undesirable and artificial" is partial.

Leave aside the plethora of Israeli interpretations of Resolution 242 on Google, what Lord Caradon actually said in relation to drafting Resolution 242 was this:

‘Knowing as I did the unsatisfactory nature of the 1967 line, I wasn’t prepared to use wording in the Resolution that would have made that line permanent. Nonetheless, it is necessary to say again that the overwhelming principle was the ‘inadmissibility of the acquisition of territory by war’ and that meant that there could be no justification for the annexation of territory on the Arab side of the 1967 line merely because it had been conquered in the 1967 war.’

It couldn’t really be any clearer than that, could it?

Phil sniffs round the carcass like a marauding jackal.

phil

ALANDALE "I have it on very good authority that the IDF was instructed to go into Gaza and trash the infrastructure and destroy all industrial plant" is this the authority from which you found all the other nonsense ?-it was like a frederick forsyth novel except he writes the truth -perhaps you should take up writing novels -you certainly have the energy -perhaps you can let us have the source of all this very secret info you get -amazing !please take the arrow out now it must be painful and could be the cause of all this twisting of facts -sorry not to be retiring ,someone needs to expose those that do not tell the truth .

Linda Smith

Alanadale: you posted "..you all...think Israel is 'entitled' to the whole of Palestine".

You seem to have overlooked the fact that Jordan is part of "Palestine".

I think you need to revise your percentages.

Truthtriumphs

Alanadale.
By your last post you hang yourself on your own petard.
Any child could recognise it for the cant it is.
As to Israel not being saytisfied with 78% of historic Palestine, as you put it.
Now just where do you get your figures from?
Just to remind you and others, the whole of historic Palestine, which the British emphasised was only ever an administrative area and never an independent state, was allocated in its entirety in 1920 to the future Jewish state.
That comprised the WHOLE of the east bank of the Jordan river, as well as the west bank and Gaza and the Golan.
It was in 1922 that Churchill gave away 77% of Palestine to the Arabs to create Trans Jordan as a reward to the Hashemite dynasty of Saudi Arabia for its loyalty to the British in fighting the Turks in the Ottoman Empire.
Iraq was given to Faisal bin, Hussein and the future Trans Jordan to his younger brother, Abdullah.
In fact ,political rights in the entity that was left, ie. the whole of the West Bank, Gaza and the Golan, were granted to Jews only, as the future inhabitants of the countries of Lebanon, Syria, Iraq and Trans Jordan were granted political rights there.
So much for your earlier assertion that the League of Nations only intended a Jewish homeland and not an independent Jewish entity.
That is just semantics.
Of the 23% of Palestine that was granted to the Jews in 1922, this area was then divided up further to placate the Arabs for whom even one centimetre was too much to give the Jews, so that Israel behind the Green Line only constitutes some 17% of the original Palestinian area.
The actual wording of the July 24th.1922 ratification granting the Jews their homeland read:-
Wheras recognition has been given to the historical connection of the Jewish people with Palestine and to reconstituting their national home in that country.
Note the word-- reconstituting.
Note: No word from you that Trans Jordan stole the west bank and illegally annexed it to create Jordan, in 1950.
As to the false identity of the so-called Palestinians, in 1937 Amin Bey Abdul-Hadi, a local Arab leader testified before the Peel Commission that "There is no such country as Palestine. Palestine is a word the Zionists invented. Our country was, for centuries, part of Syria".
I cannot be bothered to answer all the points made by you in your revisionist accounts, which are all distortions and fabrications.
Suffice to say that for you, 1/6 of 1% of the ME is too much for you to allow the Jews.

In the Germany of the 1930s the constant refrain by the anti semites like yourself was "go back to Palestine".
Now their ideological heirs scream "get out of Palestine".

I note that you never answered Linda Smith when she asked you why a Palestinian state was never created in the west bank and Gaza in the years between 1948 and 1967 when nothing and no one prevented it. Answer it, or be exposed for your hypocrisy.

alanadale

Linda, your lumping together Jordan and Palestine is racist, a bit like lumping together South Africans and Zimbabweans simply because they are African.

The Palestinians are Palestinians because they see themselves as Palestinian in the same way Jews are Jews because they consider themselves Jewish. Further, the Palestinians have an attachment to their patch which is land that happens to be in Palestine and not Jordan - the Jordanians are basically bedu, culturally very different from the agriculturally rooted Palestinians.

Of course it suits Zionists to lump Arabs together because that makes it easier for them to lay claim to the plum real estate while shoving those hapless people that happened to be established - for centuries – on land they coveted into the boondocks.

I don’t want to go down the Balfour Declaration and the League of Nations Mandate route as I have been there in previous posts. Leave aside the dubious legitimacy of the whole exercise in that the arrangements were made by imperial powers without consulting the indigenous inhabitants which runs counter to all human rights legislation introduced since the Second World War. The Fourth Geneva Convention (to which Israel is a signatory) is quite explicit about the ‘squatter’ rights of settled civilian populations irrespective of any other claims there may be to the territory. As Israel is in a minority of one in claiming it has any claim at all to what the rest of the world deems ‘Occupied Territories’ it is amazing that you still persist in maintaining that they do.

Linda Smith

Alanadale: Parties to the Arab/Israeli dispute cannot pick and choose which UN Resolutions to respect. That includes respecting UN Resolution 181 setting up a Jewish State. Either the UN is respected or it isn't.

Israel is a Jewish Sovereign State set up by the UN, As Iran a member State of the UN does not recognise Israel as a Sovereign State, then Iran is in contempt of the UN.

I think the UN is an absurdity as it is constructed at present. See my previous post re the "Human Rights Council" under which system the criminals are the judges.

alanadale

Truthtriumphs

Your language is intemperate and childish. Most of what I have to say about your post is made in my reply to Linda Smith.

If you actually read the minutes to the League of Nations Mandate you would see it simply endorses the Balfour Declaration. It doesn't have anything to say about political rights.

But as I have said repeatedly it's all academic as the rest of the world sees the Occupied Territories as Palestinian - everyone in fact but Israel and its faithful standard bearers on this blog.

alanadale

Linda, what do you mean by Iran 'doesn't recognize Israel’? The US doesn't recognize Iran and other countries it wants to be huffy with and turn its back on. What is your point?

As to the Arabs failing to accept Resolution 181. That would have been a disastrous outcome for you and everyone else on this blog as Israel would have been left with only half of Palestine which I should imagine most of you would have found an anathema and utterly intolerable,and to be rectified by fair means or foul.

You rather confirm my observation that Israel picks and mixes the international law it chooses to adhere to.

In the light of international law as it pertains today Resolution 181 could not have been passed without a plebiscite of the indigenous population. I refer you to my earlier post.

The UN is an imperfect organization, the world a messy place but certain things emerge incontrovertibly from the morass and Israel’s refusal to give up the Occupied Territories is one of them. One dodgy General Assembly Resolution cannot be equated with over a hundred Security Council Resolutions and a unanimous World Court Opinion. Wait the day when the US fails to wield its veto; then you will have cause for concern.

phil

alanadale for some reason you are attracting Linda and TT to your web of twisted untruths ,and I am aware that you cannot answer me because I get you where it hurts -i,e THE FACTS so I will not dignify your distortions by any more answers as I deal in the truth and nothing less..our two inveterate triers waste their time on you -you tell these lies with gay abandon and refuse to answer the questions posed to you ,obviously because you cannot -you serve no useful purpose and you probably know that -I just wish we could address you as Chamberlain was addressed in 1940,and that man at least was trying to do something useful -sadly our etiquette is that you must be made welcome ..no matter how rude and ignorant you have become -TT is a respected and knowledgeable poster here and does not deserve the rudeness that is your trademark when you are unable to debate .Perhaps you have learned at the feet of the incredible david irving ,your grasp of history certainly bears his trademark style

Linda Smith

Alanadale,

You are clearly obssessed with the Israeli/Arab dispute. I am not. I am not going to waste my time to responding to your "web of twisted untruths" as Phil so aptly describes them.

Byeee! The parade's moved on.....

alanadale

Phil writes: ‘sadly our etiquette is that you must be made welcome .no matter how rude and ignorant you have become.’,

How rich is that! Provide one instance where I have been anything but the acme of courtesy with all my interlocutors despite on occasions being sorely tried. I have provided chapter and verse rebuttals of all the ad hominen attacks and insults you have hurled at me.

Little did I realise when I started contributing to this blog that I had stumbled into the coven of a Flat Earth society engaged in its own solipsistic debate. I would have thought better of the Spectator and its readership. However, I appreciate that I have been allowed to have my say.

With the possible exception of Linda who has admitted that she personally supports a two state solution it is evident that none of you are interested in any sort of resolution of this conflict that does not give Israel 100% of Palestine, and I suspect that most of you would support the transfer of Palestinian populations. Not once have any of you elicited the slightest scintilla of acknowledgement that there might be another point of view, another side to the story, another set of interests. The offer of 78% of the territory is studiously ignored

Your argument is built on an 'a priori' assumption of entitlement to the whole of Palestine. It is the only way any of your arguments stack up. You use this blog to pick at knits using every ruse and weasely interpretation of largely Zionist propaganda to further your argument without any concern for or interest in enlightenment, because you have closed minds.

I will just pick up on one idiocy in the reams of your vituperative invective. You write:

‘Further, the idea that any person should be disqualified from living where they choose on account of their ethnicity is nothing but racism in its purest form.’

Have you thought this through? If indeed ‘any person should be disqualified from living where they choose on account of their ethnicity is nothing but racism’ then why are not ALL Palestinians allowed the Right of Return and why shouldn’t the Arab oil sheikhs be allowed to buy up the whole of Jerusalem and Te Aviv? Have you ever reflected on the oxymoron of a democratic Jewish state?

I shall be back to challenge your more egregious allegations.

alanadale

One final point

Truthtriumphs writes:

Just to remind you and others, the whole of historic Palestine, which the British emphasised was only ever an administrative area and never an independent state, was allocated in its entirety in 1920 to the future Jewish state.

Can you provide evidence to back up the assertion ‘the whole of historic Palestine…was allocated in its entirety in 1920 to the future Jewish state’ was ever part of official British policy, because I can’t?

Wagner

Phil
'I get you where it hurts-the truth'
Really?
Your only answer was some nonsense about 'arrow up the toches'. When you disagree with someone, you get personal every time. You certainly don't bother with FACTS, or debate; just emotions, insults, and CAPiTals. I find truthtriumphs and Linda Smith's 'truth' to be selective and biased, but at least they provide food for thought. You just provide amusement.

Si, N

Well done alanadale

Si, N

Wagner, well said - the man's a clown of Alan Dershowitz proportions.

Polly Gamma

To: Menachem Chazan @ 9.34 17/3

Thanks for that, interesting post nestling in between the other debate.

phil

Wagner I am happy to serve some purpose .at least I give a smile to otherwise useless idiots -it saves a little pain also when removing the arrow from your collective toches,s ,and whilst I am at it may I say thanks to the gorgeous sin for flattering me by my comparison to Alan Dershowitz---

Your childish attempts to insult give me much pleasure and amusement so please feel entirely free to continue them -WAGNER YOU LIKE TO WRITE SO DO SO TO THE BARD OF SHERWOOD FOREST AND TELL HIM TO TAKE HIS THUMB OUT OF HIS MOUTH ,DRY HIS TEARS,AND RELIEVE THE ARROW STUCK IN HIS TOCHES ,THEN HE CAN READ HOW MANY TIMES I HAVE MADE PLEAS FOR A JUST PEACE FOR BOTH PEOPLES -you can now see how considerate I have been to you too by writing in the capitals that you so love to see

phil

well we can all see during the eleventh hour it is the return of the three stooges -I do wish this site allowed the moving cartoons I use in my emails -I have a beauty ,of a mouse shaking with laughter and then disappearing in a puff of smoke -it would be most appropriate

Truthtriumphs

Alanadale.
Facts which you find disagreeable, (no matter how well verified or accepted) and which contradict your carefully nurtured fantasies constitute "Zionist propaganda" in your book.

You have amply demonstrated your delusional mindset on this blog.

Any further comments to you are a waste of time.

Wagner

Truthtriumphs,
Facts which you find disagreeable, (no matter how well verified or accepted) and which contradict your carefully nurtured fantasies constitute "Liberal? propaganda" in your book.

You have amply demonstrated your delusional mindset on this blog.

Any further comments to you are a waste of time.

phil

Truthtriumphs looks like we have aquired a parrot here -I have seen an advert for a missing green called wagner in the staines reporter-there is also one called otis blue on the exit thread too -they often suffer from a special disease ,its called Psittacosis,although the African grey parrots are usually better informed than this type . they are possibly macaws and are rarely seen in sherwood forest ,but an arrow up the toches can bring on strange events .

alanadale

Phil. Ref Wagner. Isn't it a question of mirror, mirror on the wall? Don’t imagine you do introspection though.

Still waiting for Truthtriumphs to live up to his name and explain how if 'any person ... disqualified from living where they choose on account of their ethnicity is nothing but racism’ Palestinians should not be allowed the Right of Return to Israel.

Also waiting for chapter and verse on your bald assertion that ‘the whole of historic Palestine…was allocated in its entirety in 1920 to the future Jewish state’. You can't of course because it never was.

Suggest you both pipe down before you dig youselves into a deeper hole.

Truthtriumphs

alanadale.
"Still waiting for chapter and verse that to disqualify a person from living where he chooses on account of his ethnicity is racism."
Easy.
First, the term Palestinian was used to describe the Jewish inhabitants and institutions of Palestine pre 1948----
Palestine Post, Palestine symphony orchestra etc. etc.
Sorry, but the Arabs living in Palestine were and are not a separate ethnic group. They say so themselves.
As Walid Shoebat (former PLO terrorist remarked) "how come that before 1948 I was described as Jordanian and afterwards as Palestinian?"
Can you name any Palestinian head of state, or Palestinian language or distinguishing characteristics distinct from the Arab umma?
No, of course you can't because there aren't any.
This phoney invention was contrived as a way of displacing the original indigenous people, the Jews, from the Holy Land.
As Ahmed Shuquary (who later founded the PLO in 1964)said when he addressed the UN Security Council in 1958 "everyone knows that Palestine is nothing but Southern Syria".
You ignore the fact that 20% of Israel's population is Arab (1.5 million) whereas NO Jews are permitted to live in any Arab country.
Indeed, some 750,000 Jews were brutally evicted from the Arab countries where they had resided for more than 1000 years, stripped of all their possessions, in 1948. Why haven't they been given the right of return?
Every country has an immigration policy to preserve its national character.
Of coure, you are quite untroubled by the fact that 57 Arab/Muslim countries are wholly Islamic, but you can't stomach the existence of one Jewish state.
Why would a few Jews living in a future Palestinian state pose a threat?
They wouldn't, so that exposes your argument as a pure racist creed.

By the way, we are all STILL waiting the answer to the admirable Linda Smith as to why no Palestinian state was formed between 1948 and 1967 when there was no "occupation" and the WB and Gaza strip was under Arab control.
Or, indeed, why there was NEVER a Palestinian state recorded in the whole of history.
Doesn't your silence on this issue expose your malevolent hypocrisy?

Wagner

Whatever Phil. Are you going to start making sense anytime soon?

Linda Smith

Why is no-one campaigning for the "right of return" of the Sudetenland Germans or the Hindus removed from the territory now known as Pakistan after the partition of India? Why do only Arabs have a "right of return"?

alanadale

Truthtrimphs.

Whether or not a state of Palestine has ever existed which until now it hasn’t been allowed to (nor by the way did scores of other nations until they exercised the right of self determination) or whether ‘Palestinians’ exist, Israel chooses to recognize their political or ‘ethnic’ identity in refusing them leave to return to the homes they were driven out of in 1948 and now uses every ruse of Israeli sovereign (not international) law to continue that ethnic cleansing in prising them out of the West Bank and Jerusalem.

Israeli practice could not be more racist, for if indeed ‘Palestinian’ refers to ALL the inhabitants of traditional Palestine, the West Bank Palestinians should be allowed to settle in Israel.

The notion is of course complete nonsense because the goal of Zionism is to create an independent Jewish state in all of Palestine. Palestinian Jews now see themselves as Israelis and the non Jewish population of Palestine see themselves as Palestinians. My point is that political identities evolve.

So to argue as you do elsewhere that Palestinians have forfeited rights to the land because a foreign dynasty the Hashemites, put there by the imperial powers, coveted their land and failed to defend their rights is absolutely crass. In this respect it is worth noting that Schweble’s 1970 Opinion favouring Israel’s claim to run the Occupied Territories was over Jordan’s and NOT the Palestinians. The Territories were and still are held in trust for the Palestinians.

I will just deal with a couple of your analogies most of which are preposterous. You quote Ahmed Shuquary at the UN Security Council in 1958 observing that Palestine is ‘nothing but Southern Syria’ which traditionally it was. However he had obviously changed his mind in 1964 when he helped found the PLO. political identities evolve.

Forget the ‘20% of Israel's population that is Arab, these were the ones Israel couldn’t expel. As to your allegation that ‘NO Jews are permitted to live in any Arab country’: What arrant nonsense. There are still Jewish communities in Morocco, Tunisia, Egypt, Syria, Iraq and Iran. And don’t forget most of the Jewish refugees resulted from the convulsion caused by the creation of Israel and the expulsion of the Palestinians. And another extremely important point about the Jewish minorities in many of these Arab countries; they were part of the colonial elite and would have moved on anyway as the colonial powers left. They will be given Right of Return once Israel honours its international obligations, relinquishes the Occupied Territories and makes peace.

You fail (or don’t want) to appreciate the importance of the development since World War II of human rights legislation which in many instances gives individual rights primacy over any other body of existing law. This is enshrined in the Fourth Geneva Convention to which Israel is a signatory and which I suggest you read.

Israel’s claim to the whole of Palestine is based on an alleged legal compact cooked up by the imperial powers after the World War I. The indigenous populations were never consulted which would make the pact today null and void.

Nevertheless a compact was made, a Mandate established under the auspices of the League of Nations which incorporated nothing more or less than the Balfour Declaration which called for the establishment of a Jewish National Home in Palestine. Nowhere is there mention that this should be in the whole of Palestine; nowhere is there mention of the establishment of a Jewish state although this might be read as implicit. A great fuss is made of the fact that the Mandate dealt with the Jewish Agency, a political entity, whereas the ‘Arab’ interest was still administered by the Mandate. Such an arrangement in no way jeopardised ‘Arab’ read Palestinian national rights.

.So we come to the keystone Resolution 242 which resolved to settle the competing claims once and for all by taking into account the facts on the ground after Israel’s victory in the Six Day War. It recognized the state of Israel within its 1967 borders and allocated the Occupied Territories to be a future Palestinian state established within the framework of a comprehensive peace settlement; the classic land for peace bargain. It took the Palestinians a generation to accept this formula (not surprising as they were ones thrown out of their homes to make way for the Jewish state) but when they came to negotiate under the Oslo Process they found the goal posts moved and that they were being expected to ‘negotiate’ away their land in return for a settlement.

Israel of course has never accepted that 242 requires it to withdraw to the 1967 borders even though Lord Caradon explained in a note I quoted that the wording was aimed at avoiding tying down the border negotiators to an impracticable Green Line and stressed the overwhelming principle of the ‘inadmissibility of the acquisition of territory by war’. There was a very good reason for this because the UN was founded to prevent a repeat of the Nazi rise to power.

The more stout hearted of Israel’s defenders maintain it fought a ‘defensive’ conflict and is thus entitled to hold onto the spoils of war. However, the international community has always begged to differ having ruled in over 100 Security Resolutions and a unanimous World Court Opinion that Israel’s settlement of Palestinian lands is illegal.

Since 2002 the whole of the Arab world has stepped up to the plate and accepted Resolution 242. When will Israel?

To forestall your inevitable protest there are extremists on the Arab side who will never accept such a compact, there are Israeli extremists to – do we count you among them? However moderates must stand up and be counted.

This is the reason why I have expended so much effort in trying to debate with you. Quite honestly, unless you are prepared to address substantive issues raised by this posting, we ought to draw proceedings to a close.

phil

wagner not with you son ,its rather like Osmosis- Osmosis is the passage of water from a region of high water concentration through a semi-permeable membrane to a region of low water concentration---

.Just substitute our better brains and your lesser ones in the sentence and all will be become clear .You can find all the definitions in the parrots dictionary under O .

alanadale

Linda Smith writes: Why is no-one campaigning for the "right of return" of the Sudetenland Germans or the Hindus removed from the territory now known as Pakistan after the partition of India? Why do only Arabs have a "right of return"?

I’m sure the Sudetenland Germans have the right of return under EU law which anyway has made it rather academic. Of course India Pakistan (or north and south Cyprus) are different. But in both cases the refugees had a politically identified safe haven. The Palestinians have never had that as the Israelis are disputing control of all the land. As I have already noted your use of ‘Arab’ to denote Palestinians is unacceptably racist. As to the Palestinians’ Right of Return it is infinitely more credible (having identifiable genealogical roots and documentation etc) than that of Jews which is based on ancestral rights that can only in the most tenuous way relate to biological ancestors given the high level of conversion to Judaism over the ages.

A more general point, Linda. Couldn’t you be a little more constructive in your posts instead of forever knit picking?

Linda Smith

When discussing Israel, Alanadale bleats on about "racism" .

A nation State has the right to decide who it allows onto its territory.

No State in the world allows free entry to all and sundry.

If Alanadale wants to lobby on behalf of the Arab "Palestinians" right of return to Israel, then he must demonstrate that he supports the general principle of "right of return" by lobbying on behalf of the Sudetenland Germans, the Hindus expelled on the creation of Pakistan, the Kenyan Ugandans.

The circa 800,000 Jews expelled from Moslem countries had their considerable assets confiscated by those countries. Will Alanadale please campaign on behalf of those displaced persons for compensation. Not forgetting all the Jews persecuted and murdered by those regimes.

As for "racism", I suggest Alanadale scrutinizes the Moslem States. If he does so he will discover that Moslems are privileged over non-moslems who are subordinated as Dhimmis. Semantics over race and religion is irrelevant. Discrimination is the name of the game.

I note that Alanadale has still not come up with a plausible explanation for why a Palestinian State was not created before 1967 when Gaza and the West Bank were under Arab control.

I do not wish to be addressed directly by Alanadale because, as he deliberately makes assertions based on false assumptions, I will not waste my time countering each bit of drivel in his lengthy posts.

Linda Smith

I have just seen Alanadale's post of 23 Mar 11.38 am.
This blog is not my life's work, although it appears to be his.

Briefly,. setting up Pakistan as a Moslem State and removing its Hindu population is as "racist" as what Alanadale accuses Israel of doing.

He wrote "..in both cases the refugees had a politically identified safe haven. The Palestinians have never had that."

Wrong. between 1948 and 1967 Gaza and the West Bank were under Arab control.

I have another life even if Alanadale hasn't. I must away. Can't waste my time countering all his twisted lies - what he calls "knit picking". I suppose that's what he relies on. Why is he so obssessed? Is he a "Palestinian"?

alanadale

Linda Smith hereafter referred to as LS has acquired the unfortunate American and Israeli habit of not addressing people she doesn’t approve of directly.

LS says: When discussing Israel, Alanadale [hereafter referred to as AD] bleats on about "racism”.

The only time AD has raised racism is in relation to your [the coven’s] use of ‘Arab’ to conveniently sweep Palestinians into a cultural melting pot and in response to Truthtriumphs’ rather intemperate accusation of racism against Jews.

LS says :‘No State in the world allows free entry to all and sundry.’

AD’s point absolutely. He was responding to the irony of Truthriumphs getting carried away with his own self righteousness in claiming ‘the idea that any person should be disqualified from living where they choose on account of their ethnicity is nothing but racism in its purest form,’ because if this is the case Palestinians should be entitled to settle anywhere in Palestine too. But as LS says states set limits on who may or may not enter their territory. Except Palestinians evicted from lands they had been living on for centuries are hardly indigent economic refugees polling up from the Third World. Funny how ‘general principles’ somehow become inverted once one’s got ones hands on the real estate and a seat at the UN! Then you can tell the UN go hang etc etc etc.

AD is not lobbying for the Palestinians absolute Right of Return because it is impracticable. Rather he is just trying to illustrate how two faced your [the coven’s] argument is when it arrogates to Jews the Right of Return to anywhere in Palestine without allowing Palestinians to do the same. However if LS thinks lobbying would be a good idea AD would be happy to lobby for everyone else on her list - once the Palestinians have their Right of Return. One step at a time.

AD would be quite happy to lobby for expropriated Jewish assets in Arab countries if LS would lobby for the restitution of all Palestinian property. The eviction of Palestinians came first. Remember too the Germans paid handsome restitution for the Holocaust, why not the Israelis? Then let’s deal with Jewish restitution.

AD has researched ‘dhimmitude’ in the Moslem world but before he gets on to it he would just like to make a general observation.

Why is it that Jews like LS (and he assumes she is Jewish) but thank God not all Jews like to portray themselves as victims? The Jews and especially the Israelis are the most privileged and spoilt group of people on earth. Uncle Sam provides them with more tax dollars than he does his own. A nice Jewish boy from Brooklyn can take a holiday on US tax breaks in a West Bank settlement and if he chooses settle there. Very many Israelis have two passports, some three. The vast majority of Palestinians have none.

Now for dhimmitude. AD would like to draw attention to the case of Bat Ye’or. Bat Yeor was born and bred in Egypt but she had to leave Egypt in a hurry after the Suez adventure. It must have been traumatic but hardly comparable to the experience of Palestinians who so fecklessly abandoned their homes on the advice of the Mufti - even forgetting to change out of their night garments or garner coats. Like them but only briefly she became stateless. The experience so marked her that she decided to dedicate the rest of her academic career to the study of ‘dhimmitude’. Dhimmitude she defines as the ‘specific social condition that resulted from jihad,’ and as the ‘state of fear and insecurity’ of ‘infidels’ who are required to ‘accept a condition of humiliation.’ However, it’s hard to see her drawing on her experience of life in Egypt judging by her Wikepedia entry in which she describes being witness to ‘the destruction, in a few short years, of a vibrant Jewish community living in Egypt for over 2,600 years and which had existed from the time of Jeremiah the Prophet.’ If the Jewish community was indeed that ‘vibrant’ it is difficult to see how it could have existed in the ‘state of fear and insecurity’ necessary for ‘dhimmitude’.

The humbug in all this talk of discrimination is that it portrays Jews as persecuted, demonizes the Muslims and somehow reduces the flack on their ethnic cleansing of the Palestinians. It is meretricious to compare contemporary attitudes with even a century ago let alone with the Middle Ages which is the kind of false analogies students of dhimmitude tend to make. Allowing for the times Jews had in general a far, far better deal under the Muslims than they did in Christendom. That is not to commend ‘dhimmitude’ let alone Christian anti Semitism which was utterly pernicious, but to put it in the context of the ‘nasty brutish and short’ lives most people lived until recent times. Anyway the conditions Gazans currently endure equate to a level of dhimmitude Jews have rarely been subjected to in the Middle East.

LS writes that AD has still not come up with a plausible explanation for why a Palestinian State was not created before 1967 when Gaza and the West Bank were under Arab control. AD concedes that indeed there was no initiative to establish a Palestinian state between 1948 and 1967 but he can not see how this advances Israel’s case to lay claim to the West Bank now. Is it that the ‘Arabs’ had their chance and blew it? AD would refer LS to his previous post to Truthtriumphs:

‘So to argue as you do elsewhere that Palestinians have forfeited rights to the land because a foreign dynasty the Hashemites, put there by the imperial powers, coveted their land and failed to defend their rights is absolutely crass. In this respect it is worth noting that Schweble’s 1970 Opinion favouring Israel’s claim to run the Occupied Territories was over Jordan’s and NOT the Palestinians. The Territories were and still are held in trust for the Palestinians.’

AD is still bemused that amongst all these elaborate smokescreens – there is absolutely no mention of the Arab Peace Plan.

phil

lINDA save yourself for more important discussion the sheriff is publishing lie after lie and we should not dignify those lies with a response just for instance his nonsense of Jews in Arab lands ,they are the tiny remnants of elderly people who are irellevant to those countries -many of the populations were murdered and or robbed and then expelled -I well remember being at school with kids that had just been thrown out of Iraq and first eating falafel and kibbies in the home of a girlfriend who had been forcibly ejected from Egypt -the man cherry picks wherever he can to twist words about Ben Gurion ,Shimon Peres et al -you will never deter him and why should we ,you do not really care what he thinks do you ? but answering these fools is like eating peanuts -it gets compulsive unless you control yourself .

Wagner

Always have to have the last word eh Phil?

phil

Wagner-love it son -you haters keep me going .I would miss you if you went -I am usually too serious but not with you, dont want to overtax the brain -yours

Linda Smith

Alanadale posted

"..AD would be happy to lobby for everyone else on her list - once the Palestinians have their Right of Return.."

What's so special about "Palestinians" for Alanadale that their "rights" trump those of every other displaced people's?

Ah, maybe it's because those Jews are involved.....Alanadale gives his game away when he writes:

"The Jews and especially the Israelis are the most privileged and spoilt group of people on earth."

Now we have the truth about Alanadale. He is an antisemite full of envy of "privileged and spoilt" Jews that he disguises in his obssessional fight for "Palestinian rights".

Phil and TruthTriumphs - we got him in the end; he betrayed himself.

Truthtriumphs

Alanadale.

The word that springs to mind when reading through your tortuous "analyses", is crank.

Linda Smith

Alanadale posted

"..AD would be happy to lobby for everyone else on her list - once the Palestinians have their Right of Return.."

What's so special about "Palestinians" for Alanadale that their "rights" trump those of every other displaced people's?

Ah, maybe it's because those Jews are involved.....Alanadale gives his game away when he writes:

"The Jews and especially the Israelis are the most privileged and spoilt group of people on earth."

Now we have the truth about Alanadale revealed in his antisemitic remarks full of envy of "privileged and spoilt" Jews that he disguises in his obssessional fight for "Palestinian" rights.

Phil and TruthTriumphs - in the end Alanadale betrayed his true agenda.

phil

Linda sadly for "ad" only LS AND TT and me actually read his ravings and I assure I only do it for amusement and to see whether he has taken the arrow out of his toches so that he can sit on his galloway - whilst keyboarding his jokes.sorry wagner I forgot you are perched on his shoulder

truthtriumphs

Linda Smith.
Alanadale's agenda was always obvious to those who know anything about the ME.
That goes for Si,N, Carl, Wm.Hazlitt and the whole malevolent crew.
It is so important, though, to expose their lies to the majority who are not so well versed as to the true agenda in the ME.
For that I thank you for your excellent posts and look forward to more.
And a special thanks also to Adam B, wherever he is !
(And thanks also to all the others who lend their weight to our arguments.)

alanadale

Linda Smith. You are absolutely shameless. To allege that I am anti Semitic because I assert that Jews and especially the Israelis are the most spoilt and privileged people on earth is outrageous. I was making this point not because I am ‘envious’ but to put into context the miasma of victimhood you wear around you like a cloak. It is a FACT that many, many Israelis have dual passports and are subsidised more by the US Treasury than ordinary Americans. You would have thought from this highly privileged position it might be possible to elicit just the slightest glimmer of compassion for the stateless Palestinian, but not a bit of it. I mentioned Bat Ye’or because here was a woman quite prepared to regale the world about the trauma of her own very temporary statelessness (she wasn’t in fact stateless because she had throughout the Right of Return to Israel) so as to devote her life to ‘dhimmitude’ which as I revealed was a load of old cobblers.

You talk about my ‘obsessional’ interest in Palestinian rights, not half as obsessional or as effective as the army of researchers employed by Zionist think tanks (all given anodyne names like Middle East Media Research Institute) which trawl through every Arabic newspaper they can lay their hands on to publish highly selective translations which people like you dutifully trot out as fact on blogs like this. Or the American Enterprise Institute and other neocon operations that purport to put out ‘objective’ research and analysis on Middle Eastern affairs - not to mention the fearsome reach of the Aipac lobby whose bang for buck makes it the most formidable lobby in American politics.

Against such a propaganda machine the Palestinians are to use a military analogy uncomfortably close to their physical predicament facing up to tanks and F16s and indeed Stealth bombers with AK47s.

You write: ‘What's so special about "Palestinians" for Alanadale that their "rights" trump those of every other displaced people's?’

I don’t quite get your point. Are you asking what’s so special about Palestinians’ rights (and don’t forget they are only asking for 22% of land their forefathers tilled for centuries) that they trump the rights of Jews (who are immigrants and want the lot)? If so I rest me case. However if you are making some ad hominem statement about dispossessed peoples, that there are plenty of them in the world so what’s so special about the Palestinians, I have this to say. Firstly I don’t think many other people have had such a raw deal as the Palestinians. But it is a false argument in any case: that there are many dispossessed people in the world does not justify Israel’s dispossession of the Palestinians. Secondly I feel as an Englishman a personal responsibility for the plight of the Palestinians because my forbears got them into this mess and our present politicians lack the moral courage to recognize this fact and do something about it.

Instead of engaging in childish name calling, you might start addressing these issues.

Truthtriumphs

Alanadale.
"The Jews are the most privileged and spoilt group of people on earth".

If spoilt and privileged means suffering 2000 years of persecution, ethnic cleansing, expulsion, forced conversion, genocide, torture, dhimmitude, humiliation etc. etc. by people of your ilk, then I'm sure they would have preferred/prefer to do without it.

Truthtriumphs

Alanadale.
Instead of wasting time writing about the poor, dispossessed "Palestinians" who have supposedly tilled the soil for centuries, might I suggest that you read Joan Peters' excellent historical account of the Arab/Israel conflict, "FROM TIME IMMEMORIAL".
Like you, she had sympathy for the "Palestinian" cause, but unlike you, she was open minded, and went to the trouble of making a proper academic study based on painstaking research (all fully researched and documented from source), instead of bigotry.
It took her 7 years to produce this excellent historical analysis, which, I'm sorry to disappoint you, utterly demolishes the case of the Palestinians "rights",that you so assiduously promote.

Wagner

Hold on, Grandad has something to say, and its going to be hilarious:

alanadale

Truthtriumphs

Let’s say you have an infelicitous penchant for dodgy sources.

One of the kinder reviews of Joan Peters' 'From Time Immemorial' came from Yoshua Porath in the New York Review of Books who wrote that ‘Peters made 'highly tendentious use — or neglect — of the available source material'. But more crucial, he wrote, "is her misunderstanding of basic historical processes and her failure to appreciate the central importance of natural population increase as compared to migratory movements."

Apart from a few glowing reviews from the ‘usual suspects’ the book got slammed for sloppy research and plagiarism.

Linda Smith

Alanadale: As a patriotic Englishman with obsessive talents and oodles of spare time to devote to blogging, I would suggest there is a problem closer to home than the West Bank which requires your urgent attention - the Islamification of Britain.

While Nero fiddled, Rome burned.

alanadale

The problem is Linda, we can’t fix Islamification until we get a fair deal for the Palestinians. Your purblind attempts to talk about anything but the issue at hand - which is why you and the others have taken up with the sainted Melanie - and your adamantine refusal to recognize that for all the claims and counter claims of both sides in the Israel Palestine conflict a deal that gives Israel 78% of the real estate leaving 22% to the Palestinians is an extremely generous one for the Israelis is not only incredibly selfish, it is actually harming everyone’s interests.

For someone who apparently ‘has another life’ you seem to be spending an inordinate amount of time following this blog. It is about time there was someone with the time and the firepower to stand up to the great Zionist propaganda machine I have already described.

The difference between the Israel Palestine dispute and other conflicts around the world is that this one happened in our patch. It is home-grown but it affects others so it is beholden on us to fix it. Darfur is appalling, so is Tibet but we were not directly responsible for them. We can’t lecture other people on human rights etc until we put our own house in order. And what is happening in Gaza and the West Bank with our (the West’s) complaisance utterly undercuts our moral position.

Linda Smith

Alanadale you clearly have no understanding of Islam. A "fair deal for the Palestinians" is irrelevant.

My son-in-law, born and educated in Iraq, tells me that the Koran instructs every moslem to do jihad and spread Islam by the sword. He says Europe is asking for trouble by allowing Moslem immigration.

Interestingly, he also says that the Shia and Sunnis hate each other on doctrinal grounds more than they hate Jews, so I wonder if we are going to have Sunni/Shia internecine warfare played out in Europe.

As to my "spending an inordinate amount of time following this blog", it takes me far less time to read than it has taken you to investigate and report the minutiae of "historical" detail you use to mount your obstruse arguments here, I'm neither Arab nor Israeli. I'm English. The sun is shining and I've got more interesting things to do than argue about foreign affairs all day which do not directly concern me.

Linda Smith

India/Pakistan happened on our home ground. Much more dangerous situation that directly affects Uk with Pakistani population. Muslim population second largest religious group in UK.

Better fix that Alanadale because UK government warning about nuclear/biological/chemical attacks in UK. Nothing to with Israel, but everything to do with Pakistan/India. UK had total responsibility for partition of India whereas UN partitioned Mandated Palestine.

alanadale

Linda Smith:

If the sun is shining and you’ve got more interesting things to do than argue with me. Why are you doing so? I note you say you are English but disguise your Jewish roots.

You have been able to refute not one of my assertions of fact apart from a slip I made regarding the Palestinians never having had a politically identified safe haven which as you rightly pointed out they did under Jordanian rule - before the Israelis contested their right to all the land after 1967.

Your son in law may or not have been born and educated in Iraq but may I respectfully aver that he doesn’t know what he is talking about when he asserts ‘the Koran instructs every moslem to do jihad and spread Islam by the sword’. He may be on slightly firmer ground when he says ‘Shia and Sunnis hate each other on doctrinal grounds more than they hate Jews,’ although ‘hate’ may be a little OTT. Why does ‘hate’ feature so shrilly in your lexicon? But I wonder whether these differences are any different from doctrinal disputes in Christianity or Judaism. Anyway I would have thought that if they were happier scrapping with each other than with anyone else it was rather dumb to give them the juicy bone of Palestine to gnaw on.

I do absolutely agree with you about Pakistan. But don’t underestimate the importance of Palestine as a ‘cause celebre’ in the militants’ political armoury.

alanadale

Linda Smith

If the sun is shining and you’ve got more interesting things to do than argue with me. Why are you doing so? I note you say you are English but disguise your Jewish roots.

You have been able to refute not one of my assertions of fact apart from a slip I made regarding the Palestinians never having had a politically identified safe haven which as you rightly pointed out they did under Jordanian rule - before the Israelis contested their right to all the land after 1967.

Your son in law may or not have been born and educated in Iraq but may I respectfully aver that he doesn’t know what he is talking about when he asserts ‘the Koran instructs every moslem to do jihad and spread Islam by the sword’. He may be on slightly firmer ground when he says ‘Shia and Sunnis hate each other on doctrinal grounds more than they hate Jews,’ although ‘hate’ may be a little OTT. Why does ‘hate’ feature so shrilly in your lexicon? But I wonder whether these differences are any different from doctrinal disputes in Christianity or Judaism. Anyway I would have thought that if they were happier scrapping with each other than with anyone else it was rather dumb to give them the juicy bone of Palestine to gnaw on.

I do absolutely agree with you about Pakistan. But don’t underestimate the importance of Palestine as a ‘cause celebre’ in the militants’ political armoury. Yes Britain was responsible for India Pakistan Partition and yes we made a disgraceful hash of it but no group has been left stranded like the Palestinians, except perhaps Kashmir but that’s another story. True Britain shovelled the mess of the Palestine Mandate into the lap of the UN but the plight of the Palestinians was very much part of that bundle ordure and the problem was very much Made in Britain.

Wagner

Hey, get a room.

Wm. Hazlitt

"Truth"triumphs,

The name you have chosen is ironic, isn't it? I have just chanced upon your comments here. You do know that Joan Peters' Magnum opus is a fraud and has been exposed as such by scholars who actually have spent the years studying the evidence.

Si, N

LS, 'Phil and TruthTriumphs - we got him in the end; he betrayed himself.'

Despicable behaviour.

And TruthTriumphs playing Joan Peters as you might a trump card? Please. Is that a wind-up or what?

Norman Finkelstein ‘painstakingly’ demolished ‘From Time Immemorial’; likewise the ridiculous Alan Dershowitz’ regurgitation of it.

Read ‘Image and Reality of the Israel-Palestine Conflict’, and ‘Beyond Chutzpah: On the Misuse of Anti-semitism and the Abuse of History’ , then reflect upon your silly assertion that Joan Peters offers an 'excellent historical account of the Arab/Israel conflict.’

Truthtriumphs

Alanadale.
Jordan a safe haven for the Palestinians?
I think not. Your selective memory has screened out Black September. Don't you remember how the Jordanians got fed up with them and killed some, was it 10,000? Rather more than the Israelis wouldn't you say?
You STILL haven't answered Linda Smith as to why there was no Palestinian state created between 1948 and 1967, when nothing and no one stopped it.

Further, you seem unable to read as map, and your grasp of pecentages is very shaky.
Look at the map of the British mandate for Palestine, and you will see that it includes present day Jordan.
So the land mass of Israel is a mere 17% or thereabouts of the administrative area known as Palestine.
You might also be interested to know that Israel occupies 1/6 of one per cent of Arabia, but even that is too much for the likes of you.

Truthtriumphs

Not as ironic as someone who calls himself/herself Wm. Hazlitt and has a questionable grasp of English grammar.
If your contention is that "Peters' magnum opus is a fraud and has been exposed as such by scholars----", and you have in mind obsessive fanatics like Chomsky and Finkelstein, then we can discount your considered view.

I suggest that you read the sober reviews by Daniel Pipes, inter alia, who said that despite the faults in the book, neither Porath nor any other reviewer has so far succeeded in refuting the central tenets of her theory.
In fact, the central plank of her book (namely, that the present day Arabs in the Holy Land are there because of the massive inward immigration from other Arab countries, attracted by the economic opportunities arising from Jewish immigration),
was corroborated by writers/explorers like Mark Twain, and others in the 19th.C who observed that the Holy Land was all but deserted, except for small numbers of Jews and Bedouin.
You could also try reading books by the renowned, pre eminent scholar in the subject of Arabia, Bernard Lewis, or are his books also fraudulent?

Linda Smith

Alanadale: Better start studying up your Koran (Arabic version) for when the Islamists take over the UK. It won't make an ounce of difference if the "Palestinian" problem and the Kashmir problem have been solved. They're just red herrings for the Jihadis. And you're just a Useful Idiot if you believe that they can be appeased by solving their "causes celebre". Islamic world domination is the name of their game.

alanadale

Oh dear Truthtriumphs, you don’t give up. We keep squashing you down and you keep popping up again.

For once though I concede you have a point. The Palestinians did not have safe haven under the Jordanians which actually makes my point that they had NOONE defending their interests.

Now the reason for this was they were a nuisance for all the regional players in the game. But it was the Jews pushing them out to create their state that caused the problem in the first place. Thank you for helping to ‘firm up’ my underlying point.

I’ve dealt with your specious argument about percentages but here goes for a second time.

Leaving aside the fact in modern law Britain’s decision to cede away territory without consulting the wishes of the indigenous population would be deemed illegal; the Mandate was promulgated though it did NOT as you mendaciously contend grant the Jews political control of the whole of Mandatory Palestine. It simply incorporated the Balfour Declaration’s call for a Jewish Home in Palestine. Resolution 242 which sought to draw a line under the competing claims allocated 78% of the territory to the Jews. By any measure this is an extremely generous offer which the Arab world and the Palestinians have since 2002 accepted.

This doesn’t seem to be sufficient for the likes of Truthtriumphs. Now we are all aware of the tragic history of the Jews for which Europeans are deeply culpable. But you are pushing your luck and your greed to continue claiming all the territory.

Your claim that Israel had a raw deal because it only got ‘a mere 17% or thereabouts of the administrative area known as Palestine’ is utterly meretricious and borders on sharp practice. Why not make your claim as a proportion of all the Middle East territories Britain came to control after World War 1 or indeed a proportion of the whole of the British Empire? Regions were loosely designated at that time. As one of you has pointed out the area at one time was considered part of Syria.

The real issue in law as it has developed since World War II - which is so different from the Imperial dispensations that Zionists seek so cleverly to exploit - are the ‘squatter rights’ of indigenous populations. In that context the Palestinians have inalienable rights to the lands they have occupied for many centuries. The Fourth Geneva Convention, to which Israel is a signatory, is quite explicit about these rights.

Now to your contemptible claim to paraphrase Golda Meir there is no such thing as a Palestinian. Well for a group to identify themselves as Palestinians is sufficient for them to be considered Palestinians and to deny them that right, to pretend they do not exist especially when they have been living on ancestral land for many centuries is to quote Raphael Lemkin’s definition of the word he coined ‘genocide’. The international community does not recognize every group’s right of self determination but if there is a clear collective will for self determination it is very difficult to withstand. The international community has recognized the Palestinians’ right of self determination.

I will nail the lie to just one of the myriad calumnies that industrious hive of Zionist propagandists disseminates. Yasser Arafat was NOT related to Haj Husseini. You might say so what? But damn by association nudge, nudge wink, wink. Nor was he Egyptian. His father remarried an Egyptian and settled in Cairo. His mother was an Abou Saoud whose family home adjoined the Wailing Wall. The Abu Saouds had lived in the area since the middle of the 16th century.

I really think Truthtriumps you should pipe down, get a heart, engage in a little introspection and start looking outside the box. You are not the only pebble on the beach.

May I have my two hapenorths on Peters et al? Well said Si,N. Alan Dershowitz is a clown, a dangerous clown and not a particularly funny one either.

alanadale

Truthtriumphs. Let’s say the Peters’ book is ‘controversial’.

As to Mark Twaine’s Innocents Abroad – again selective quotation. A contemporary reviewer described ‘the greater part of his book is in the vein of irony’. Twaine sought to puncture the contemporary American illusion that mindlessly lionised the Holy Land registering ‘his dismay in finding that the nations described in the Old Testament [could] easily have fit inside many American states and territories, and that the kings of those nations might very well have ruled over fewer people than could be found in some small towns.’ Populations were smaller in those days. That said Keats was appalled at the desolate and deserted aspect of Scotland crossing the border at Gretna Green in 1818 on his great northern walking tour. Was Scotland too a land without a people? Anyway Twaine certainly didn’t inspect the land registry or the population census.

Least said about Bernard Lewis other than he was the mentor for George Bush and his noecon cronies, so what a pickle he helped land us in.

Let’s put to bed your silly canard about why a Palestinian state was not created between 1948 and 1967. Jordan had its own imperial designs on the West Bank which it annexed in 1948. No country apart from Britain recognized its claim which was an important reason why Justice Steven Schwebel ruled in 1970 that Israel had a superior claim. He was not making a judgement on a Palestinian claim which international legal opinion since has unanimously ruled takes precedence.

Linda Smith. Yes I will reread the Koran in Arabic which is more I bet than you can. Yes there are dangerous bigots out there perverting Islam. But the Muslim world by no means has a monopoly of dangerous bigots. Meanwhile stop trying to distract attention from Israel’s grubby little genocide of the Palestinians.

stanley Jerusalem

alanadale
"Linda Smith. Yes I will reread the Koran in Arabic which is more I bet than you can.
Meanwhile stop trying to distract attention from Israel’s grubby little genocide of the Palestinians."
Talk about the pot calling the kettle black. Believe me. Linda is no-one's kettle either.

alanadale

stanley Jerusalem

Which pot and which kettle are we talking about?

phil

stanley Jerusalem- the sheriff is becoming more and bitter .note his words now descending to "grubby" it could be the arrow festering in the toches or tasting the bitter herbs ahead of pesach -he digs bigger holes for himself with every essay he sends ,and for what purpose except possibly to amuse -offen yam you know the beginning

alanadale

Phil

When it comes to lurid language, we are talking about the pot calling the kettle black.

phil

alanadale the cap fits and you are wearing it -you are a good cut and paste man but banter is not for you -you have to be clever for that and have a sense of humour -I have a friend who could tutor you called gay cacken -lives somewhere near stanley in offen yam -need a map ?

Linda Smith

Stanley and Phil: never mind pot and kettle, I think "pots" is the expression you were looking for.

Wagner

Game set and match to Phil I think. The verbal dexterity, the wit! Where does he find the time. You'd think that there must be ten guys called phil paTrolling this blog but then his writing style is so... unique.

alanadale

Phil speaks truth to power in warning his troop of monkeys to go slow on the peanuts. It’s not just the nuts that are addictive; it’s the shelling of them and the knit picking and the gossip - all food for nimble fingers and idle minds.

They sit there preening on their patch and should anyone dare to intrude they shoo them away with shrieks and imprecations. They take to the trees, chattering furiously, making the odd darting sally but avoiding at all costs confrontation on open ground.

phil

Wagner thank you, I see you have finally woken up ,and btw I will always find the time to deal with what Linda rightly calls potz-it is a duty incumbent on all those with brains and souls -oh and something to say of value -but of course that necessity has never bothered you .

phil

alanadale I must compliment you for the first time -that was the first post worth reading sent in by you -I really do not mind a little humour directed at me ,particularly as I dish it out where I think fit ,and to be a man one has to take it as well as give it ,so my compliments to you ,it was funny, unlike your batman wagner who is merely bitter and not too smart either .My only objection is that I prefer cashews and pecans ,I think it is Sin who likes monkey nuts,or even wagner who is nuts :).

alanadale

Phil. I’m sorry you have such a low opinion of my contributions. But you can’t really be promoting Truthtriumphs as the fount of all wisdom can you?

He’s a dodgy property developer waving a fraudulent deed of title to legitimise his hijacking of a prime piece of real estate. The Russian mafia would approve. No one ever gave the whole of Mandatory Palestine to the Jews, either the British or the League of Nations. The first article to the 1920 San Remo Resolution actually stresses that the establishment of a Mandatory Power would only be acceptable provided that ‘this would not involve the surrender of the rights hitherto enjoyed by the non-Jewish communities in Palestine.’

The function of the Mandate as defined in Article 22 of the League of Nations Charter was to safeguard the interests of indigenous populations at different stages of development until such time as they were ready and able to govern themselves. It speaks only of promoting ‘a Jewish home in Palestine’. There is absolutely no mention in the San Remo Resolution or the Mandate document to suggest that the ‘Jewish home’ was to have political control of the whole of Mandatory Palestine. Can we at least agree on that?

Truthtriumphs

Alanadale.
"Israel's grubby little genocide of the Palestinians".
Something ,at last, that Jews are hopeless at---genocide--- how is it that the Palestinian population in the WB has increased from some 700,000 to almost 2 million since 1967, and the population of Gaza to 1.5 million?
Some genocide!
Do you and George Laird reside in the same home for the delusional in Glasgow?

phil

alanadale what difference who said what one hundred years ago -I am a pragmatic person and I want to see peace in the here and now -Both sides need to sit down and find a solution as to how human beings can live in peace and harmony with full bellies and having education and health care - I am not interested in the niceties of bits of paper,nor the nuances of a comma -we have had this war since 1948 and it is enough -I believe Jerusalem must be open to all religions and it certainly was not when the Arabs controlled it by force .I do not believe that the Arabs should return to live in what is now Israel .for me it is like getting a girl friend back who dumped you .10 minutes later you do not want her.its just stupid pride---------.

Israel does not want Gaza or the golan heights ,it just wants these areas not to be a launching pad for trouble. Read Sharon,s books ,you will see why he wanted outposts away from the population centres -it was not for conquest it was to buy precious time when attacked ,and attack is what the yishuv lived with constantly -These discussions we have are useless as you well know ,we will achieve nothing ,and every bitter argument that is produced sets our cause further back .Israel will continue to exist those people will never go back to the ovens ,so may I suggest you formulate an agenda that will help resolve the problems rather than deepen them ,then you will be of service to the Palestinians and per se the rest of this unfortunate world .

Linda Smith

Alanadale: I am interested in the Middle East as it plays out in the global battle against Islamo fascism. My view on the Jewish State of Israel is this.

The Jews accepted the UN Partition Plan in 1947. The Arabs refused on religious ideological grounds - a Jewish state was anathema to Moslems.

Between 1948 and 1967 there was no international call, as far as I know, for a Palestinian Arab state to be set up in Gaza and the West Bank to implement the UN Partition Plan, although those territories were 100% under Arab control., Therefore it is irrational to blame Israel for denying the Palestinian Arabs a state of their own.

Between 1948 and 1967 the old city of Jerusalem was also under Arab control despite the UN Resolution 181 calling for it to be international.. There was no international call to grant Jews access to the old city of Jerusalem from which they were denied access by the Arabs.

Around 800,000 Jews have been expelled from Arab countries since 1948, stripped of their assets, with no right of return.

Egypt made peace with Israel because it realised that it could not be beaten in traditional warfare.

A cold peace exists between Israel and some of the Arab States because they have a common interest in fighting Islamo fascism.

With the rise of global Islamo fascism, in my view Israel would be daft to allow Gaza and West Bank to now become an independent State as such a State would fall under the control of Islamo fascist Hamas. Netanyahu has said he wants to build up the West Bank economically and give them autonomy (sort of like Wales and Scotland in the UK I suppose).

Although they can be dismantled and the Jewish population removed as it was in Gaza, I think under the present circumstances the Jewish Settlements on the West Bank are a pragmatic necessity to stop Islamist takeover.

Israel does not want to swallow up Gaza and the West Bank because their Arab populations would outnumber the Jewish population. I understand that Lieberman's view is that the border line can be jiggled so that a village that is at present on the West Bank and a village that is presently in Israel are in effect swapped. Good idea.

The majority of the "Palestinians" did not live in "Palestine" for centuries, they were recent immigrants - just like the UK second generation Moslems who are advocating supplanting our British Judao/Christian traditions by Sharia law. You do not appear to have considered the hypocrisy that the Moslems who scream that the Jews have no right to immigrate into Israel at the same time advocate that Muslims have the duty to colonise the UK and to subjugate it under Sharia law.

The world is full of displaced people, people who have been forcibly resettled, (eg Sudetenland Germans; Hindus after Partition of India) refugees who have resettled, redrawn borders. Have a look at the map of Iraq etc. Some British official got a ruler and divided up the Ottoman Empire into neat rectangles. The people of Kurdistan want self determination and their own state, as do the Corsicans. and the Basques, It all boils down to power battles.

Your anglo armchair bleating about international law blah blah blah is of no consequence to Jews who have a history of genocide being perpetrated against them. Based on their history, the Jews of Israel will do whatever it takes to protect themselves from genocide.

Appeasement will not deter the Islamo fascists from their religious ideology of world domination. You are a Useful Idiot, so lost in the trees of Palestine, that you cannot see the wood - or the islamofascist elephant. Or maybe you are hoping that you will be the last to be eaten by the crocodile.

alanadale

Truthtriumphs.
I refer you to Raphael Lemkin’s definition of genocide.
"Generally speaking, genocide does not necessarily mean the immediate destruction of a nation, except when accomplished by mass killings of all members of a nation. It is intended rather to signify a coordinated plan of different actions aiming at the destruction of essential foundations of the life of national groups, with the aim of annihilating the groups themselves.’

I think declaring there is no such thing as a Palestinian and doing everything in your power to deny their existence is genocide of the Palestinian people.

alanadale

Blah, blah, blah as you so rightly say Linda. I note how you neatly elide your concerns with Islamofascism with a view of the Palestinian issue as being a case of finders’ keepers and the Palestinians a kind of stateless riff raff who should run away and play.

Thank you for putting your cards on the table. It's evident that you are not interested in a solution based on Resolution 242 so there is nothing really to talk about and each must draw their own conclusions as to who wants peace.

I wonder though where you'll stand when the Obama administration comes to an accommodation with Iran, I should imagine twisting in the wind with your fellow travellers.

alanadale

Phil. We may or not be about to engage in a conversation. I commend your pragmatism. But it really is disingenuous to suggest that you can sit down and talk with someone who is sitting on you in such a way that you can hardly draw breath. As the Mafia will tell you, possession is ten tenths of the law. That’s the time to make offers that can’t be refused, that’s the time to talk.
So what is it precisely we are supposed to discuss? The framework of a deal has been on the table for nearly half a decade endorsed by everyone but Israel. The Oslo peace process was supposed to have ushered in a period of jaw jaw not war war. But it was a case of Israel being cast as Marvell’s coy mistress who ‘should, if you please, refuse until the conversion of the Jews’. In the nine years of the Oslo peace process Israel doubled the number of settlers on the West Bank.
Successive Israeli governments have made it crystal clear that are not willing to settle on the basis of 242. Sadat went to Jerusalem in 1977 and told the Knesset they wouldn’t have peace unless there was a comprehensive settlement. Begin said ‘thank you very much, you’ve shown courage. But Judea and Samaria are not on the agenda.’ And they’ve never been which is why you have Gaza and Golan ‘used as a launching pad for trouble’.
It is not useless to put the record straight on past events any more than it is useless to pass over the Holocaust as water under the bridge. There has to be an understanding of the past and the other sides’ point of view. It is precisely this lack of recognition of the other’s point of view that I have found depressing about this blog.
Sharon may have been seeking strategic depth but he also coveted the land. However, as the lengthening range of Hizbollah and Hamas rockets testifies, Israel is going to have to redefine its security in different ways than simply having the ability to knock the stuffing out the opposition if it is to survive. Israel can’t complain if the Golan and Gaza remaining ‘launching pads for trouble’ if it continues to occupy their lands

alanadale

Linda FIY

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/03/23/opinion/l23cohen.html?scp=4&sq=roger%20cohen&st=cse

Linda Smith

Alanadale you posted: "it's evident that you are not interested in a solution based on Resolution 242 so there is nothing really to talk about and each must draw their own conclusions as to who wants peace."

I have no idea who the "who" is that you are referring to. Nobody in the Middle East gives a damn about what you or I want. You are playing silly schoolboy games.

Your advocation of "a solution based on Resolution 242" is inconsistent with your earlier arguments that it was unreasonable to expect the Arabs to accept the 1947 Partition Plan.

You posted to Phil: "The framework of a deal has been on the table for nearly half a decade endorsed by everyone but Israel"

Hamas do not want peace, ever. It is against their Islamo fascist ideology. Any truces they agree to are only temporary to allow them to regroup and re-arm. Ditto Hezbollah who are trying to take over Lebanon. Israel's problem is being held in a pincer between Hamas in Gaza and Hezbollah in Lebanon.

You also posted to Phil: "However, as the lengthening range of Hizbollah and Hamas rockets testifies, Israel is going to have to redefine its security in different ways than simply having the ability to knock the stuffing out the opposition if it is to survive"

You have hit the nail on the head re the lengthening range of Hizbollah and Hamas rockets. How about adding on some chemical/biological/nuclear warheads supplied by Islamofascist Iran.

"Israel can't complain if the Golan and Gaza remaining 'launching pads for trouble' if it continues to occupy their lands."

For Hizbollah and Hamas, all of Israel is occupied land and they are not interested in Resolution 242. Their only interest is the complete destruction of Israel as a Jewish State and the murder of the Jews.

But you knew that all the time.

Linda Smith

Here's a little conundrum for you to ponder, Alanadale.

The Palestinian Arabs never declared statehood on any territory when the UN asked them to in 1947. They chose to go to war to win all the territory awarded to the Jewish State (Israel) under the Partition Plan (and "to throw all the Jews into the sea") with the help of their Arab brethren.

If in your view it is illegal for Israel to keep territory gained in battle, would it have also been illegal for the Arabs to have kept any Israeli territory they gained in battle should they have won.

Would you now be sitting wringing your hands over the treatment meted out to the Jews? Methinks not. Durban II is right up your street.

alanadale

Well at least we’ve smoked one of the monkeys out of the trees.

Linda you and the neo neocons you consort with are almost as dangerous as the Islamofascists you seek to eradicate. This is all Iraq Mark 2 and we know where Mark 1 got us. The WMDs were there we were told: FACT, nuclear weapons able to hit Cyprus in 45 minutes etc etc etc and we all dutifully trooped off to war.

You conveniently overlook the fact that Israel has created the demons it now confronts by its intransigent racist attitudes to its indigenous populations. You conveniently forget that Israel initially encouraged Hamas as a way to undermine Fatah and make it more amenable to the kind of imposed solution it wanted for the Palestinians – living in a series of Bantustans. That should I would have thought have alerted you to the fatuity of this approach.

I find your reprise of A land without a people, a people without a land refrain chilling. Unlike you and Truthtriumphs I do not pretend to be an expert on anthropology, sociology or demography but Peters’ research into population movements in 19th century Palestine is deeply controversial and the charges of plagiarism and shoddy methodology have not been satisfactorily refuted. An interesting fact though is that American academia (with the notable exception of Norman Finkelstein) has been far more favourable to it and its conclusions than have Europeans. Could this be an innate sympathy with the concept of Manifest Destiny? Your description of Zionist settlement in the Promised Land could equally be taken for the early Pilgrim Fathers….. as could by the way the pattern of your argument of later American settlement, of using the failure of the natives to seize inequitable offers as an excuse to grab more land.

In any case your argument to justify Jewish title, that 19th century Palestine was depopulated and only revived by Jewish immigration and ‘Palestine’ therefore was an a posteriori confection flies in the face of common sense. A settled community of farmers and merchants had existed for centuries. They were predominantly Muslim. Jerusalem was an international city in the 1850s (which it should remain) in which roughly half the households were Muslim and a quarter each Jewish and Christian. The only other Jewish community in Palestine was in Hebron. Economic immigration into Palestine at the beginning of the 20th century is quite in keeping with regional demographic developments. Some of it would indeed have been inspired by Jewish settlement but by no means all. But I don’t see how this affects the essentially ‘Palestinian’ nature of the society. Ireland was severely depopulated in the middle of the 19th century; I don’t think anyone would seriously suggest British settlement gave London a stronger claim to Ireland ‘because it was depopulated’.

However, I find your likening these economic immigrants from surrounding countries to ‘the UK second generation Moslems …advocating supplanting our British Judao/Christian traditions’ quite breathtaking. What were the Jewish immigrants doing for God’s sake if not importing a totally alien culture into the Middle East? Weren’t they in fact ‘like the UK second generation Moslems’ supplanting the traditions and way of life of the existing society? There is a deep ethnocentricity in your reasoning that is as unpleasant and fascistic as the Islamofascism you helped create and are now so hell bent on destroying.

There is a huge problem with ‘Islamofascisim’ – the call of some Muslim extremists to introduce Sharia Law in the UK is totally unacceptable - but you and the neocons are part of the problem in dealing with them and not part of the solution. If we continue down the path you advocate we are condemned to perdition. Never forget that Israel has real WMDs. If though we give moderates (who constitute the vast majority of the Middle East populations) something substantial to work with instead of undermining them – like accepting that the West has no place in the Middle East occupying other peoples’ lands and Israel renouncing claims to territories it occupied in the 1967 in return for a comprehensive peace - we might get somewhere. But gone are the days when Israel could dictate the terms of its own security and go hang everyone else; other people’s security interests will have to be considered and mutual security interdependence created.

You refer to my post to Phil and say: ‘You have hit the nail on the head re the lengthening range of Hizbollah and Hamas rockets. But I then went on to say if Israel is to survive it ‘is going to have to redefine its security in different ways than simply having the ability to knock the stuffing out of the opposition.’ This should be the focus of the debate.

PS You say my ‘advocation of "a solution based on Resolution 242" is inconsistent with your earlier arguments that it was unreasonable to expect the Arabs to accept the 1947 Partition Plan.’

You miss my point. I said the Arabs did not accept it because at the time it was inter alia fundamentally inequitable apportioning over 50% of the territory to the Jews when they made up some 30% of the population. The fact in Resolution 242 they have accepted a deal that is even more disadvantageous is a measure of the ground they have conceded to clinch a settlement. Israel should show similar flexibility.

phil

alandale .one thing I am aware of is every time Israel try to make peace or cede territory they are attacked -half of Jerusalem ,97 percent of arafats wish etc etc etc ad infinitum -you hear it here from me regularly ,the Jews want peace and justice for all ,the crazies want war and every so often they get it -death and destruction by the truckload and yet you still think it is the fault of Israel ------
-You take your plan to nasrullah, and the nutters in hamas and come back with a sensible plan ,but until, then can I ask you to stop haranguing us .we have replied to you until we are blue in the face and so far you haven't come up with anything apart from old stories and outdated numbers which achieve nothing .Those people on the ground need some pragmatism not quotations from every court that has no jurisdiction or purpose -so no I do not want to continue talking like this it will not save one life nor give one child a chance to live a life that they deserve ----

.One day if this does not stop and you continue to encourage the lunatics to continue this fight ,the whole world will explode and you will be consumed in the flames along with us .your fine words will not protect you ,nor will your throat be immune to the sword of militant Islam ,they hate you as much as us -you will succumb along with the rest of us muttering ,but, but ,but !!!-wake up .the mullahs are getting ready and the only survivors will be the beetles .

Wagner

How about invading Gaza and killing 1300 people? Is that solution pragmatic enough for you Phil?

Linda Smith

Alanadale, I am not "an expert on anthropology, sociology or demography". I am a psychologist with a special interest in psychodynamics.

Why do you say "There is a deep ethnocentricity in your reasoning that is as unpleasant and fascistic as the Islamofascism YOU helped create and are now so hell bent on destroying" (my capitals).

How did I, Linda Smith, born and bred in England, help create Islamofascism?

Linda Smith

Alanadale: you won't appease the Islamofascists by offering them up Israel, like Czeckoslavakis was offered up to Hitler in the '30s.

The Islamofascists want the whole world. Are you going to give them Pakistan, Kashmir... India sees itself on a par with Israel fighting off the Islamists. Algeria's been fighting a civil war with Islamists for years, nothing to do with Israel.,,,

Dream on.

alanadale

You’re wrong Wagner. The death toll in Gaza was 1,400 of which over two thirds were civilian and just under half of those were children.

One possible explanation for the high civilian casualty rate may be found in this witness statement from an Israeli conscript quoted in the New York Times.

“From above they [the Israeli military establishment] said it was permissible, because anyone who remained in the sector and inside Gaza City was in effect condemned, a terrorist, because they hadn’t fled. I didn’t really understand. On one hand they don’t really have anywhere to flee to, but on the other hand they’re telling us they hadn’t fled so it’s their fault.”

alanadale

Professor, doctor or plain Ms Smith, you may well be ‘a psychologist with a special interest in psychodynamics’ but you sure produced a lousy theory to explain why Jews have a right to the whole of Palestine.
I concede I got carried away with the eloquence of my own verbosity. I should have been a little more concise in the use of the collective ‘you’. You didn’t ‘help create Islamofascisim’ but you are certainly doing your best to swell the ranks of the disaffected with your lurid comparisons of Islamofascisim with the Nazis war machine – where’s the 200 plus divisions and the economic backing of a superpower?

LS posts: ‘a little conundrum’ for Alanadale to ponder: ‘The Palestinian Arabs never declared statehood on any territory when the UN asked them to in 1947’ (and thus by inference Israel had a perfect right to claim the lot).

Linda you are gnawing on a bone with very little marrow left in it. There have been bad things done on both sides. But I really don’t see where your line of argument is getting us.

Of course the Arabs would have repulsed the Jews if they could as would anyone threatened with a foreign incursion, and especially one conducted with the help of an alien imperial power.

Your whole argument seems to be predicated on the fact that because the Arabs didn’t welcome the Jews with open arms, the Jews were entitled to what they could get. Well, yes up to a point but then they have to live with their neighbours and that requires compromise and a dangerous difficult transition, a gesture of real and disarming generosity… and I’m afraid Ehud Barak’s mealy mouthed offer in 2000 which came with an insistence the Palestinians recognize the sufferings of the Jews without mention of the traumas the Palestinians have been put through with the creation of a Jewish state doesn’t cut the mustard.

phil

Linda I think we are done now with this man -he is only interested in his own novels ,fact is not relevant ,care is not on his agenda .leave him in his little room ,he will soon find something else to do -he can talk to the musical impersonator ,its more his mark .See you on another thread .

alanadale

Wagner and anyone else who might be interested.

I can report the monkeys have retreated to the trees, muttering furiously, chewing leaves and scratching their bottoms.

alanadale

Phil writes: ‘One day if this does not stop and you continue to encourage the lunatics to continue this fight, the whole world will explode and you will be consumed in the flames along with us.’

I have no intention of encouraging lunatics – on either side of the divide. But Nasrallah is not a lunatic, nor Hanneya and certainly not Khamenei. Ahmadenijad Iran’s answer to GWB unlike the former US president doesn’t have his finger on the nuclear button.

I don’t really know what you mean by ‘encouraging the nutters’? What’s the alternative - to encourage Israel to go on taking out southern Lebanon and Gaza? That’s certainly encouraging nutters. One comes back time and again to the question: ‘Why is Israel occupying Palestinian land?’ That’s what feeds the extremists’ cause and if you can’t recognize that you are disingenuous or dangerous. Saying the Palestinians won’t be content with 22% wears thin when you haven’t even tried. And if you say Israel has no intention of committing suicide all I can say is that if it pursues its present policies it most certainly will.

Thank God we have an administration in Washington now that won’t be hijacked by the neocons. Iran has to be recognized as a regional power with the right to an independent foreign policy free of US tutelage, for which read overtly anti Zionist. This is necessary because Iran is the only state resisting the US/Israeli nexus which a huge slab of the Arab, Muslim and indeed developing world feels inimical to their interests. A rebalancing of power if you like. Iran will be recognized and that’s going to change a lot of things. Perhaps then we can begin to address the real threat to world stability (in addition to Israel’s refusal to clear out of the Occupied Territories and accept 242) which is instability in Pakistan.

I’ll do a deal with you Phil. I’ll stop haranguing you if you can persuade Melanie to lay off haranguing us each week about the dangers and iniquities of Islamofascism while continuing to give cover to Israel’s lunatic right. It encourages intransigence and extremism.

I’ll leave the final word to the other Arch Priestess of Paranoia, Barbara Amiel who has written: ‘if we Jews cannot have the sliver of land for which we never wished to hurt anyone, if we must be pushed into the sea either literally or by demographics and attrition, we owe it to the memory of our forefathers to extract the highest price and not to go alone.’ Well, we all know Samson was the first suicide bomber and Israel today has WMDs.

Linda Smith

Alanadale posted "you sure produced a lousy theory to explain why Jews have a right to the whole of Palestine".

I have never said that I believe Jews have a right to the whole of "Palestine." I believe in a two State solution as do many Israelis and "Palestinian" Arabs.

Trouble is many other Arabs, Moslems, Islamists, Antisemites etc. believe that the Arabs have a right to the whole of the British Mandate of Palestine. Hamas have stated categorically that they will never recognise Israel. They also state their intention to murder all the Jews.

Therefore, as implementation of Resolution 242 requires recognition of Israel's right to exist as a precondition of Israel vacating territories gained in 1967, implementation is not going to happen any time soon.

It's pointless to discuss this matter further on this thread until Hamas, Iran, etc say they will recognise Israel's right to exist as a Sovereign State - no strings attached.

Bye - See you on another thread no doubt.

alanadale

At last Linda we finally agree on the need to implement 242. The Arab Pace Plan has been on the table for five years. Why hasn't Israel responded and why does it continue building settlements?

Shalom and Salemu Alekum

Truthtriumphs

Creating a Palestinian state would make it a 23 state solution instead of a 22 state solution which obtains at the present time. 22 Arab, 1 miniscule Jewish one.
Considering that Jordan is an entirely artificial entity, AND its populace comprises 70% Palestinian Arabs, I'd like to have an answer from our resident sage, alanadale, why that country is not called Palestine.
Methinks, I know the answer.
As a prominent MAB member articulated on the BBC, (btw MAB is the British outpost of the Muslim Brotherhood), on the subject of a Palestinian state---- we do not need another Islamic state, we just don't want a Jewish state in our midst.
So there you have it!

Linda Smith

Truthtriumphs: I was so impressed with your comment at 11.43 to Alanadale that I have taken the liberty of quoting it to Henry Sidgwick on the thread Claims and Facts, with due attribution to you of course.

Truthtriumphs

Linda Smith.
Compliments reciprocated!
I always enjoy your posts.
The malevolents need to be comprehensively routed--- intellectually speaking.

alanadale

The monkeys are busy at their morning toilet. It's not a pretty sight having to witness their indecorous preening.

'we do not need another Islamic state,' avers Truthtriumphs.

Who the hell are you or anyone else to dictate how others conduct their affairs?

Israel has been offered a peace deal within its 1967 borders. May I suggest it takes it and that you pipe down.

Linda Smith

Alanadale posted to Truthtriumphs "Who the hell are you or anyone else to dictate how others conduct their affairs?"

Delicious. Dictating how others conduct their affairs is what Alanadale obsessively (and insultingly) does on this blog!!!

Truthtriumphs

alanadale.
You seem to have trouble with comprehension.
I was quoting a leading member of the Muslim Association of Britain, who said on Radio 4 that "we don't need another Islamic state-----"
That is the whole point. Get it?
So direct your fury at him for blowing the whistle.
Your last post makes you look rather stupid.

alanadale

Truthtriumphs

My comment applies as much to your friend in the MAB whoever he may be as it does to anyone else.

He isn't as far as I can gather even a Palestinian. Over 60% of Palestinians want to resolve the conflict on the basis of the Arab Peace Plan. So do pretty much the rest of humankind including a lot of Israelis apart from nutters in the MAB and apparently on this blog (Linda excepted). Why give these peripheral players more prominence than they deserve? It’s playing into the hands of the extremists.

Wagner

This whole forum is driven by a terror of Islamic Fundamentalism, which is admittedly terrifying. I think the fear of Islam taking over the UK, as the implied narrative has it, is completely blown out of proportion. The Muslim world has more to fear from Islamic fundamentalism than we do.
Western adventurism gives them their legitimacy among muslims. I think the choice is stark between a just international system or WWIII

alanadale

I hope I have created enough counterweight to allow Wagner to be the still small voice of truth