Britain's anti-Israel frenzy deepens

Michael B

"But as a country whose opinion forming classes rank among the most hostile to Israel in the Western world, the move has provoked a particularly hysterical reaction."

Yes, though to help throw additional light on some aspects of the analysis it may help to cite a recent Pew Research Center poll, dated Sept '08, regarding anti-Jewish attitudes.

In Spain, to cite the worst example in the western orb, while 21% of the population viewed Jews unfavorably in 2004, by 2008 48% had unfavorable views. In France, during the same period, it moved from 11% to 20%.

In Arab countries polled (Egypt, Jordan and Lebanon, ironically enough) the figures remained in the 95% and higher range.

By contrast, in the U.S., Britain and Australia, in 2008 it was 7%, 9% and 11% respectively.

Iow, the "opinion forming classes" are perhaps to be sharply distinguished from the general population, at least in Britain. That assumes the Pew Research poll is accurate, but it appears to have been conducted in a statistically sound manner.

As to Miliband and his leftist bona fides together with his Marxist heritage, recall that Marx himself was not only anti-religious and anti-Judaic, but was among the earlier popularizers of "the Jewish question" theme, so that's an interesting if often unexplored lineage of its own.

Eric

Whether you believe in God or not, whether you believe the Israeli's are God's people are not is irrelevant.What is relevant is; Genesis 12:3 God said to Abraham, I will bless them that bless you, and curse him that curses you, and in you shall all the families of the earth be blessed.

Countries, nations, and people would be wise to keep their hatred to themselves.

C. Gee

"Since the Palestinians have made it clear that they have no intention of recognizing Israel as a Jewish state, British opponents of Israel have been forced to choose between accepting that Palestinian rejectionism forms the real root cause of the conflict or themselves rejecting the Jewish character of Israel and the whole Zionist enterprise to boot."
Most of the British left long ago rejected the idea of a Jewish state, by the logic of Zionism = Racism. By definition, they are absolved of bigotry. This is the ideological ratchet that tightens the screw against Israel.

Jerry

It is not merely cognitive dissonance that needs to be resolved. May I suggest other sources for opposition to Israel by the "opinion forming classes" of Britain.

Israel constantly expresses its pride in being able to pull itself together from essentially nothing. Class based upon birth privilege or knowing one's place produces a loathing among those people for the self-fulfilled.

Israeli society is an amalgam of social responsibility (socialism) and hedonism (libertarianism) that does not match the British balance in these areas. The small differences cause anger, while the large differences between British society and Arab mores is not worth the energy of thoughtfull consideration.

Oil, thus, power and control: Israel's constant demand for recognition of its legitimacy ruins British plans for modified hegemony in the Middle East.

British scientists are bright, but Israeli scientists and businessmen are bright and hungry. It must be very annoying to have Israel companies, food, and products appearing in the British marketplace.

Like Toynbee, the opinion making classes view Israel and the Jews as anachronisms. Values other than the application of quantum chaos to real-life is abhorent and speaks of particularism, something to be hated to the point of wishing and working for the annihilation of those holding different values.

The ability to hate people you have not even met is a flawed human throwback to cave dwellers. This point in regard to Britain must be seen in the light of the British tribes emerging from caves and tribal conflicts much after the Jews were engaging in intellectual pursuits for their own sake. The inability to gain the intellectual and moral high ground because history cannot be replayed differently appears to be quite upsetting to those who hold themselves to be elite. "Me too" is inadequate for the purposes of self-aggrandizement.

Dave B

Ms Phillips, you are consistently the most thought provoking writer. Keep up the good work!

Biff Larkin

My guess is that the imminently failed presidency of Obama will prove to be the high water mark of Western Jew-hating.

I don't know how it works in the UK, but here in the States, we Americans who are not totalitarian bigots hold our Jewish compatriots in the highest esteem and support Israel without reserve.

GeoffM

I can't see why the British givernment has no difficulty with establishing, and promoting, Islamic States like Iraq, Pakistan, Saudi and yet baulks not only at a Jewsih state but also a christians British state.

Netanyahu is playing a blinder.

He could expose the cant of western nations and the bigotry of mislamic ones.

Zionism = Land, people and religion.

The same goes for Palestein and other islamic states. Whats the difference.

Sounds like BNP policy as well.

terence patrick hewett

Britain is not in the centre of an anti-Israel frenzy, but the progressive left is. Afraid of electoral destruction they are calling the faithful to prayer. The main stream media is now full of articles by Anti-Israelis, Anti-Monarchists, Republicans, Peter Tatchells, Atheists, anti-clerical head bangers of all descriptions, Ken Livingstones; in fact upon every subject known to man that is dear to the heart of labour party activists. Judaism, Catholicism and Freemasonry have always been hated by the Left, because their organisational structure renders these institutions impervious to Entryism; which is why both the Catholic Adoption Agencies, and Jewish schools, have both been under attack. Freemasonry appears to have gone out of fashion. The Left, using Entryism, have corrupted the integrity of the judiciary, civil service, local government, councils, social services and police; they have even made a start on the armed forces. This corruption has been justified in the name of a spurious ethic of equality; a rag-bag of single issues assembled to replace the morality, roughly Christian in character, which served us so well. One of the first tasks of a Tory administration will be to restore this integrity. This may be achieved by removing the vast army of enforcers from the public payroll and the stripping out all offending legislation. The days of authoritarian government are drawing to a close; failure to recognise this fact, will in future, render those political parties unelectable.

Jez

I think that the present mood in Britain (from a white working class perspective) is one of solidarity with the situation Israel is in.

There are so many parallels it is quite staggering.... and it stems from one source;

Liberal Left media bias.

When the slanted media reports from Cast Lead hit our TV screens and the Left-Wing/Islamic mobs stormed areas of London.... only for the British public to be denied visual access to what was going on- by the same liberal left media (that had coincidently whipped up these rioters into a frenzy in the first place.)

All of a sudden we are in the same cycle of;

The Left picks 'their' side.

The Left demonises the 'other' side.

The Left ignores any factual information and manipulates events to isolate positive public opinion against the 'other' side.

The 'other' side is then pushed back- to an extent that is then simply reported to 'confirm' the Lefts original overall standpoint.

The Left unites the majority of people exposed to their bombardment of daily bias against the 'others' the liberal left have decided they 'don't like'.

It's been used constantly to desabilise the traditional working class of Great Britain for the last 40-50 years.

If you now have the liberal left dogma in every major organization e.g;

1. Education- major swathes of slanted teaching of the UK social & now Israel situation (recently anyway- especially in more urban centres like East End, Bradford, Dewsbury, Birmingham etc)

2. Mainstream Media; 100%

3. Public Sector

4. The Police; How much ‘touchy touchy’, ‘feely feely’ can you get with 2 or 3 thousand anti-Israeli rioters running around the capital city, we saw back in January?

The liberal Left’s stance is;

come around to our way of thinking- or we will come and get you.

Terry

I recall when Edward Heath, probably Britain's worst ever Prime Minister, cast Israel adrift in the Yom Kippur War. Israel, attacked without provocation, had a lot of British armaments, including tanks. Heath placed an arms embargo on all involved in the war, knowing that it wouldn't affect the Soviet armed arab protagonists but would compromise Israel's ability to defend itself.

Over 30 years later, nothing has changed, except that left leaning racists now play the same game.

Hitler must be smiling from Hell, knowing that those who supposedly defeated him are now prosecuting his genocide for him.

Appease extremism and it is the Jews who are the canary. We are always thrown to the wolves first, but the wolves will come back for another feed. They always do.

Maurice, MD

Britain will never forgive the Jews for British treachery on the Mandate, and its brutality toward Jews during and after the Holocaust.

(Even the US State Department was uneasy when the elegent FM Anthony Eden said "Nothing should be done to help Jews to escape because nobody wants them.")

It is not unusual for some kinds of people to hate those they have injured more than they hate those who have injured them.

And to add to that -- Israel today thrives, and teems with creativity. That only inflames the deathbed spite of Britain and the EU in general.

Celina Marshall

Thank you Melanie, without your blog bringing all this to our attention... a lot of us would be none the wiser.
I can't understand with the wealth of legal brains at Jewish disposal how the government/press gets away with it.
The Muslim pressure groups only have to whisper "sue the government" and they all quake in their boots!

Shaun Harbord

There are over a million non-Jews in Israel. How can they be expected to be happy with Israel as a 'Jewish' state? No more than non-Christians, believers or otherwise, can be happy with GB as a 'Christian' state or non-Muslims happy living in an 'Islamic' state. Religious belief should be solely a matter of private conscience not state policy. If Israel goes down the road of strengthening it's already existing identity as a 'Jewish' state, it is simply storing up lots of trouble for the future.

Olaf Rye

I am quite ashamed of the quiet European dislike for Israel and the Jews. Apart from the obvious repulsiveness of that sort of bigotry, often disguised as a concern for the Arabs, there is just the sense of complete betrayal: Israel has always been a reliable ally of the west, and for us to make common cause with groups that despise us and seek our destruction, to put two fingers up to Jews is just absurd and disgusting.

Israel, like all states, is not beyond criticism and has mishandled affairs on some occasions. The punishment for this is often meted out by the Israeli electorate. But one thing that Israel has consistently handled well is her own security, probably because the people of Israel see clearly the threat that they face. We turned a blind eye to it in Europe and North America until 9/11, and in much of Europe, we still think that this was caused by Israeli policy and holding hands with the terrorists and giving them money will make them go away. Perhaps we ought to send Milliband and his Marxist confederates to Afghanistan to point out to the remnants of Al Qa'eda and the Taleban that the true cause of their problems is western capitalism and that by espousing the creed of the European left all would be solved.

Neville Stern

Sadly, Melanie, it's probable that the truth is that Britain - and many British Jews - believe indeed that Israel should never have been brought into existence, let alone supported and recognized.

I have sincere friends here in Australia - orthodox, observant, nebbuch - who think the same thing.

In effect, Netanyahu's challenge is to a global politicised audience. Recognise Israel or .. or else. And from Obama to the UN to the EU reply "Else!"

Miranda Rose Smith

Dear Mr. Harbord: The million non-Jews in Israel practice their religions freely, proselytize freely (I've been mistaken for a missionary myself) and have their holy sites protected. Denmark was, and unless its been totally inundated by Moslems is, a Lutheran state. Italy is a Catholic state. Greece is an Orthodox Christian state. Saudi Arabia is a Moslem state, with a lot less freedom of religion than Israel. Why can't Israel be a Jewish state and why can't Baha'is, Buddhists, Moslems and Christians be happy there?

Vision Aforethought

@terence patrick hewett: Brilliant and I so hope so!

Margaret Muller-Johansson

Shaun Harbord you are one of those leftie who been brain washed to believe political correctness and things like that, Israel belongs to the Hebrew people and that means Israel is the land of the Jewish people it was before it is now and will be forever and I am sure other people who are not Jewish are welcome to live there it doesn't matter if they are a million or more but first they have to respect the culture and the religion of the native people

Ros

Miranda Rose Smith at 11.19. Absolutely right! What's the problem about there being ONE Jewish state? I think that you also left out The Islamic Republic of Iran as well as Indonesia, Pakistan and another fifty-four or so countries where the state religion is Muslim.

And did anyone notice that Jordan is advocating that 'Palestinian' Jordainians have their citizenships rescinded?

Augustus

I agree very much with Mr Hewett
that it is the 'progressive left' in Britain which exhibits double standards and clear political bias in their approach to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. It is rooted in a post-colonialist paradigm which defines Palestinians as victims,
and views Israel as a perennial agressor. The same is true of reports by NGOs whose disproportionate focus on Israel
conveniently ignores serious human rights violations in many other countries often enough if Israel happens to be in the spotlight. The officials in theses organizations, as do the leftist politicians, distort international legal terminology and repeat false analyses of international law in order to promote, for their own biased ends, their political views of the conflict in the Middle East.

As Melanie correctly states, they will be forced to confront their own bigotry simply because otherwise they will not be in a position to salvage any legitimate conclusion to the conflict.

gary

The word and the idea "religion" short-changes Jews. Atheist Jews take part in Jewish affairs. They make up the numbers in the Synagogue. They get buried as Jews. Their sons and daughters marry Jews. Jews are a nation, and a religion, and a civilisation, and ... there isn't a single word in English to define the collective of Jews. The word "religion" doesn't define what a Jew is. Israel as a Jewish state does not define the state as a religious state.

Pounce_Uk

The biggest tool against Jews in the UK is the bBC. Everyday it airs a negative anti-jewish story. The Middle-East has a population of around 300 million people, Israel has a population of 7 million yet the bBC devotes a good 1/3rd of its Middle-Eastern News coverage on how bad Israel is. Wow the only semi-democratic country int he region which is affords more rights to its citizens than any other in the region and according to the likes of the bBC, it is Nazis Germany remade with non-jews as the victims.
It is this steady drip-driping of hate from the bBC which had lead to the growth of anti-Semitism in the UK today.

Michael B

Shaun Harbord,

There's an enormity you're either unaware of or apathetic toward, a vast irony.

Not a single Arab state in the Middle East allows "Palestinians" to become citizens, not even via marriage or circumstance of birth. If there's a single exception to that rule, I'm not aware of it and have read various summaries over the years, all confirming this pan-Arab exclusionary policy against Palestinian Arabs. The Kingdom of Jordan did so, but very recently Jordan has begun revoking the citizenship of even extant Palestinian Arab citizens. In general, so-called "Palestinians" (they are tribal, Sunni Arabs) have long been among the underclass within Arab society. Politically, they are used as pawns by Arab potentates, against Israel and otherwise.

Where is the concern over the exclusion and oppression of "Palestinians" within Arab society? Do you hear it, in the MSM, from tranzi orgs, from NGOs ... the SILENCE?

(The Kingdom of Jordan, btw, is formally Judenrein and has been so since its early days as TransJordan, similar to other Arab states, albeit with marginal exceptions. I.e. another reason for Israel to be recognized as a formal Jewish state. Though again, Israel is roughly 22% Arab and 14% Muslim and, unlike Jordan, has no plans to retroactively revoke the citizenship of its Arabs or Muslims. Another irony; and from the MSM and from the halls of power and other centers of influence? More SILENCE.)

Chris N

Just out of curiousity, what does Ms Phillips and her friends in the comments feel should happen to the 1948 Arabs remaining within the borders of Israel and who hold Israeli citizenship? In recognising Israel as a 'Jewish State' does that mean they automatically become the second class citizens various organisations and commissions (such as the Or Commission) consider them to be?

Ignoring the fact that the UK has an established church and is 'Christian' from an historical perspective, I'm not sure how comfortable I'd feel if Britain decided to define itself according to one creed.

Chris N

@gary.

You seem to be defining Jews as a race (something that many of my Jewish friends dislike).

So taking the analogy further, would it be ok for Britain to define itself as a country for the 'Caucasian race and all races emanating out of that race'?

I'm sure I've seen a political party that supports that view.

Original Tony

Michael B...well said, I think the average person in the UK supports Israel. It's the political elite that seem to hate them.

As a private citizen I wholly support Israel and do all I can to buy their produce, goods and services.

In fact, if a product 'made in Britain' lies alongside a product 'made in Israel' I will support Israel any day, even though decent British people who support Israel may work in the company that produces said goods. I'll do it to deny our cretinous government the taxes from that purchase, which may be used to harm Israel

Marcel Ladenheim

The Guardian is a typical example of anti-Israel fetish.
Any anti Israel news is glorified but any similar reaction to Sri-Lanka etc.? Why is that?

thehoneybeesdream

You'll think this unworkable unpaletable or both. Give the muslims palistine and all the european muslims can go live thier. we'll take all the jews back in europe, or specifically scotland my home. and william blakes profecy will be fullfiled. we can import the wailling wall. we have got to come up with something where both parties feel they are the victors. lets face it the jews contribution to european culture has been pretty good. we won't have pogroms or hallocosts anymore i promise

KanuckAmg

Pounce_UK....Could you define
semi-democratic? Just curious.

George

Don't forget that Israel's Declaration of Independence defined the country as a Jewish state from it's very inception: "hereby declare the establishment of a Jewish state in the land of Israel to be known as the State of Israel..."
And yes, I know the continuation of the document: "it will foster the development of the country for the benefit of all its inhabitants; it will be based on freedom, justice and peace as envisaged by the prophets of Israel; it will ensure complete equality of social and political rights to all its inhabitants irrespective of religion, race or sex; it will guarantee freedom of religion, conscience, language, education and culture; it will safeguard the Holy Places of all religions; and it will be faithful to the principles of the Charter of the United Nations." All things being considered, Israel has not done a bad job of fulfilling these aims, although there is always room for improvement.

Andre

Chris N raises the question of what to do with 1948 Arabs and their descendants. Their return to Israel and parity with Israelis is frankly unrealistic. However political equality with their current hosts - usually Islamic, Arab and linguistically similar - is a first step. Arab countries need to absorb these poor people and give them a fair chance at entry to education and the professions rather than keep them imprisoned in camps as a bargaining chip. In Israel itself only those who served in the military should have the vote. I believe this is Lieberman's point and is aimed as much as disenfranchising the Hasidim who do not recognize the state of Israel because it was not set up by the Messiah as much as anti-Israeli Arabs. Druse arabs and Christians already serve in the IDF -often with distinction and bravery along with innumerable British, South Africans, Americans and other goyim.
Israel must always remain Jewish. I lived there as an atheist at the time. Now as a Christian I remember very fondly Jewish culture and customs- I still light a candle on shabat and start every Mass by praying, next year in Jerusalem. Maybe this sounds confused but not to me. I love my country and I love Israel but the kingdom I'm aiming for is not of this world.

davod

"Just out of curiousity, what does Ms Phillips and her friends in the comments feel should happen to the 1948 Arabs remaining within the borders of Israel and who hold Israeli citizenship? In recognising Israel as a 'Jewish State' does that mean they automatically become the second class citizens..."

Israel is a already a Jewish state and nothing has happened to the non-Jewish citizens.

Note the Jordanians are revoking the citizenship of Palestinians as I write this.

Peter Thomas

To Chris N.
Are you not aware that Jordan - created on 77% of the Mandate land in 1922 by UK - has always never permitted residence by Jews? In Saudi, non-Muslims cannot even enter the city of Mecca.

You also need to distinguish between Jews as an ethnic entity and Judaism as a faith. There are many secular Jews, both in and outside Israel. There are also a significant minority who believe in Yeshua (Hebrew for Jesus) - Messianic Jews.

Chris N

@ Andre

Sorry, by 1948 Arabs I referred to the 20% of the Israeli population that is Arab (Muslim and Christian) by virtue of the fact that they stayed in 'Palestine' in 1948 and were granted Israeli citizenship. There is a fairly persuasive argument that they suffer discrimination in the Israeli state. Though I of course agree that their situation and freedom can be favourably compared with Arabs in Saudi/Egypt etc

@ davod

Ignoratio elenchi? 'Nothing has happened to the non-Jewish citizens'? You mean despite suffering discimination (read the Or Commission report) and being in a situation where their elected foreign minister wishes to revoke their citizenship? Is that nothing?

@ Peter

Again, I agree wholeheartedly that other Arab countries behave reprehensibly to Jews and Israel. Are you saying that justifies questionable actions by Israel. Israel considers itself a First World democratic state. Do you know of another one where one religion group/ethnic group (your words) is so foregrounded? I don't.

I repeat the question. If Israel is a state for the Jews (religious and secular (however defined)) what happens to Arab Muslims and Christians with Israeli passports? They accept that they are less important than Jews? They leave the country voluntarily? Involuntarily?

I'm slightly surprised that the answer to my question thus far seems to be "but Arab states are worse". My response to that: "I agree, so what?"

YA

Chris N: "..what happens to Arab Muslims and Christians with Israeli passports?"

Nothing happens, as hasn't happen until now. Israel is SECULAR state. It gives full civil rights to all citizen. It ASLO gives some preferential rights to Jews (i.e. right of return), in particular because there are enough reasons to believe - basing on both historical, and today's reality - that Jews might need protection as persecuted ethnic group.
And BTW, there is nothing unusual in that. Britain, Germany, Poland and other national states have similar "ancestry" rules for citizenship.

Michael B

Original Tony,

Yes, though I strongly doubt that's the end of the story, which is why I couched everything in very tentative terms. I suspect, for example, that a country such as Wales has a very low rate of such sentiment, while England proper, especially in urban centers, a markedly higher rate, with still more heightened concentrations in urban centers, most notably around Muslim immigrant areas. Given the current political climate, there are likely strong ebbs and flows as well (the poll cited was concluded in Sept, '08).

I recall, for example, watching a documentary within the last two or three years titled "Anti-Semitism in Britain," wherein Richard Littlejohn reports and narrates. The documentary is available on youTube.

Likewise, from a number of civic leaders, both within and outside of Jewish communities, there have been numerous warnings about a resurgence of anti-Semitic violence and incidences in general.

Of course there's Melanie Phillip's "Londonistan" as well, highly accessible and telling of policy and demographic directions that should be, without exaggeration imo, profoundly worrisome.

So, again, that's why I couched everything in tentative terms as there's a great amount of contrary evidence, at least within some critical concentrations of the population. By contrast, the Pew Research poll is a single poll only. I believe it is suggestive of something, but what that something is more specifically is not so readily apparent, given the amount and degree of contrary evidence.

C. Gee

Chris N:
I am afraid that you too have bought into the Zionism=Racism propaganda.
1. Can you point to any Israeli law that discriminates against its Arab citizens? With respect to enlistment, out of respect to their feelings (divided loyalty), Arabs are not required to serve.
Do Arabs form the greater part of the "underclass"? Yes. Large families, Muslim culture, illiteracy, help to suppress the Arabs economically.(Compare to similar classes in all developed countries). Add to this local Arab leaders (municipalities) who refuse offered modernization on political grounds. (Compare with Arab nations' refusal to better the lot of Palestinian refugees.) Are there Jews who have contempt for Arabs? Yes, and vice versa with knobs on.

2. There is a state religion in Britain. C of E. The Queen is head of church and state. Until recently, Catholics were discriminated against. I will not rehearse British treatment of Jews here. Israel from its founding has granted the right of free religious practice.

3. When it suits you, when considering a Jewish state, Jew connotes a religion (which, by the Z = R equation, is inimical to other religions), a nationality (by Z=R, like Nazism), or a race (by Z=R, like Nazism), This is simply to project European excesses onto Jews, and has absolutely nothing to do with the State of Israel.
Gary in these comments has it right. There is a Jewish religion, nationality, civilization and now, again, a Jewish state. The Israeli state is democratic, pluralistic and for the realities of political life, secular with a Jewish identity. Certain concessions are made to the religious - as in European countries (marriage, Sabbath rules).
4. Your answer to Davod is obtuse. A large percentage of Arab Israeli citizens are hostile to Israel and sympathize with Israel's enemies in a state of war. All states have a right to revoke citizenship for sedition and treason. Israel has not instituted internment camps. Nor is mass deportation considered a serious political option, even in a state of war.

5. Your answer to Peter is ludicrous. Every single nation "foregrounds" its identity. Once again, you are thinking of the Jewish State under the Z=R equation which denies that there is a Jewish identity that is not based on exclusionary principles of religion, nationality, or race. It is you who are "foregrounding" race and religion. The Jewish State has the same self-identity characteristics which bind any people as a people. Israel is for the Jews in the sense France is for the French, Germany is for the Germans - or, most aptly, America is for Americans. It is also a country for all its citizens, whatever their religious or former national affiliation. No one is "less important" by virtue of religious affiliation. What a silly way of putting it, anyway. Israel is not a schoolroom.
And yes, if an Israeli national doesn't like it, they can leave. Many French nationals are leaving for Israel because they feel, ahem, less important than other Frenchmen. Or should I say that they are being "foregrounded" in a rather unpleasant way.

Jeremy

There were a few references to Arab refugees from the 1948 war of independence.

Why does no one mention the similar number of Jewish refugees who were expelled from Arab countries at the time of the creation of Israel. The refugees from Arab countries were fully integrated into Israel as compared to Palestinian Arab refugees, urged to flee by the invading Arab armies and who have languished in refugee camps ever since in order to keep the conflict alive.

Michael B

Precisely so, Jeremy. Not to mention other incidences still, such as Jordan's "Black September," referring to events begun in Sept, 1970 and resulting in thousands killed and tens of thousands of Palestinians driven out of Jordan and ending up in Lebanon, therein precipitating Lebanon's own ghastly internal erosion. Beiruit, Lebanon, once renown as the Paris of the Levant, the Paris of the M.E. Lebanon, multi-culti and naively open and receptive to "the other."

Hence, still again, another set of particularly telling, particularly illuminating events - enormities - yet all placed in the memory hole in order that the demonizing anti-Israel narrative might continue apace.

Probative depth and applied intelligence are systematically curtailed - are obfuscated and virtually censored - while the politically correct and Islamicist/Left narrative continues apace. It's then edited and produced, and labeled as "news."

Colonel Madd

Just popped by to see if everybody on here was as terminally deranged as I remembered.

Good to see my recollection remains 100% accurate

Stefano - Brazil

Dear Mrs. Phillips

I'm a regular reader of yours, from Brazil. I would like to call your attention, if I can, for the bizarre situation in Honduras: there was no coup at all, as the hole world knows but the massmedia won't show; Zelaya's had already the results of the 'referendum" that never happened - because it's inconstitutional in that country - in wich he won, naturally; Chávez and Ortega, Barack Hussein's new partners, are sending to Honduras their thugs and terrorists in order to create kaos and death. And the whole world is quiet. I guess this maybe the first time in modern history a country is fighting all alone for it's democracy, surrounded by a group of marxist proto-dictators while the once Leader of The Free World stands aside the most primitive and anachronic ideologists. What a nightmare.

Miranda Rose Smith

Dear Ros: I didn't have the time or space to point out the countries you cited, nor to cite the Church of England.
The strain-out-a-gnat-while-you-swallow-a-camel world media will certainly ignore it if Jordan rescinds the citizenship of "Palestinian" Jordanians, who are who? Half the country?

gary

Chris N

I didn't and I don't define Jews as a race. I explicitely stated there isn't a single word in English to define the collective of Jews. Please don't drag me along when you choose to get lost on your own detour.

Sheila

And here comes the bombshell we've been waiting for from the US:

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/asia/article6723037.ece

The Left have an unprecedented grip on power in the UK and US and boy are they using it.

david elder

I an Australian protestant could not care less if Israelis build 'settlements' like the present ones near Jerusalem which make next to no difference to the border between Israel and a possible Palestinian state. That seems to be the case for most of them, and the remainder seem to get pulled down by the Israeli authorities. Mutual exchange of territories along the presumptive border also need not be so difficult. So why is Obama carrying on about this issue as if it were central to peace in the region? And why hasn't he taken on board the Gaza experience, where Israel forcefully cleared the territory of her own people, only to be greeted by a hail of rockets aimed at civilians, followed by a vicious Hamas-Fatah civil war? When anything like this happens in Iraq it is a quagmire; when it happens in Gaza it does not even register with chatterers until someone whinges about how the IDF allegedly misbehaved in the course of trying to clean up this mess. Obama can be an impressive centrist at times, as for example his recent straight talk to Afro-American fathers about their responsibilities. All honour to him for words like that. But at other times Obama seems to lurch into the excessive leftism of the 1960s and 70s. One of its trademarks is compulsive victimology. The Palestinians will not benefit from overindulgence in it and are less not more likely to get their own state if they do so.

stanley Jerusalem

Chris N
July 21st, 2009 2:49pm
Do you imagine I and my family were second-class citizens in the UK because HM The Queen is the Supreme Governor of the CHurch of England? Your logic is faulty and dangerously misleading, Sir.

stanley Jerusalem

Andre
July 21st, 2009 4:43pm
"Chris N raises the question of what to do with 1948 Arabs and their descendants.Arab countries need to absorb these poor people and give them a fair chance."
They do? It's now 61 years since the Arab countries surrounding the new State of Israel rejected the UN proposals and I have seen no glimmer of an example of this 'need' which you so blithely throw out for our consumption. They don't give a tinker's cuss for them.They are stooges and cannon fodder for their own intransigence and God forbid that they be accused of 'losing' any of the wars they have started and lose face as a consequence. They would rather perish than lose face. You ask anyone you know who comes from that region who isn't Jewish.

alanadale

stanley Jerusalem writes: ‘It's now 61 years since the Arab countries surrounding the new State of Israel rejected the UN proposals.’

That’s rich considering Israel is in breach of hundreds of UN resolutions, a World Court Ruling and the Fourth Geneva Convention.

More to the point Israel refuses to accept Resolution 242 requires it to withdraw to its 1967 borders with minor and reciprocal border adjustments in return for peace instead interpreting it to allow territorial changes. It also overlooks the fact that the Arab Peace Plan based on Resolution 242 has been on the table, studiously ignored by Israel these past six years. In fact it is Israel with its insatiable greed for land that is the stumbling block to peace.

Margaret Muller-Johansson

Welcome Back stanley Jerusalem!

George

Alanadale,

You have it so wrong. You state: "That’s rich considering Israel is in breach of hundreds of UN resolutions, a World Court Ruling and the Fourth Geneva Convention." The World Court ruling is an advisory ruling. You can't be in breach of advice and you are under no obligation to accept it. The Fourth Geneva Convention refers to occupied territory. Judea and Samaria are disputed territory.
You then continue by saying: "More to the point Israel refuses to accept Resolution 242 requires it to withdraw to its 1967 borders with minor and reciprocal border adjustments in return for peace instead interpreting it to allow territorial changes." Please explain to me how and where Reolution 242 requires Israel to withdraw to the 1967 borders (sic). Both the definite article and the word "all" were deliberately omitted before the word territories in the resolution. The final location of the borders was to be a subject of negotiations and the resolution did not seek to impose a solution.

Carl

Read more about the "Ethical" IDF:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/middle_east/8164582.stm

A young girl's life ruined - by Israeli "soldiers".

Sheila

'Stefano - Brazil' - yes.

I am waiting for Olavo de Carvalho to talk about Honduras on his blog.

He may have already covered the subject on his radio show and so may not put anything on his blog because once he has pronounced his view on a subject that's sometimes all he wishes to say. He is fairly loose with the platform he chooses to go on the record so there's not a full archive on the blog necessarily.

If you want to put Obama's politics in a nutshell, de Carvalho crystallised it thus:

"To weaken the American State abroad and to strengthen it internally are the two pillars of Obama's politics."

http://www.olavodecarvalho.org/english/articles/081118lf_en.html

That's why Israel can only lose from this president - that's if it even survives him.

George

Carl,

If any party to what happened in gaza last winter was unethical, it wasn't the IDF. Or do you consider firing rockets into another country from the midst of a civilian population that doesn't have bomb shelters to be ethical behaviour?

alanadale

George writes: ’The World Court ruling is an advisory ruling. You can't be in breach of advice and you are under no obligation to accept it. The Fourth Geneva Convention refers to occupied territory. Judea and Samaria are disputed territory.’

Then Israel proper is disputed territory too. Stop playing games. The fact is the whole body of law is pretty unanimously against Israel; the only think stopping it having a Chapter VII UN Security Council resolution is the US veto and how much longer can Israel rely on that?

The fact is that the Arabs have put an offer on the table which EVERYONE considers a fair and reasonable settlement and Israel studiously ignores. One can’t avoid concluding that Israel is author of its own security problems.

alanadale

George writes: ‘Or do you consider firing rockets into another country from the midst of a civilian population that doesn't have bomb shelters to be ethical behaviour?’

For a start they do have bomb shelters which work far better against Katyusha rockets than any shelter (which his no shelter) the Gazans have against one tonne bombs. Your attempt to draw any sort of equivalence or to talk of ‘ethical behavious’ is beneath contempt.

Alan Stoddart

Israel was created as a Jewish homeland just as Pakistan was created for Muslims.
If '...the 'one-state solution' is impractical or equals the 'destruction' of Israel is poorly concealed code for defending the indefensible and a recipe for continual conflict in a land it is impossible to partition.' ... then shouldn't the partition of India be annulled and the sikhs and Hindus cleansed from 'Pakistan' have the right of return?

When will British Pakistanis and Muslims put their own house in order before criticising Israel?

Cameron

@ thehoneybeesdream

That's quite a case of dyslexia you've inlicted on us. Quite an interesting 'comments' section, a bunch of people agreeing with each other, a sure road to the extremism you've all already developed.

Linda Smith

Alanadale posted: "The fact is that the Arabs have put an offer on the table which EVERYONE considers a fair and reasonable settlement and Israel studiously ignores. One can’t avoid concluding that Israel is author of its own security problems."

Apart from anything else, the Arabs insist on the Old City of Jerusalem for the capital of the putative Palestinian state, and a resolution of the "refugee" problem. ie destroy Israel by demographics.

I'm not suprised "Israel studiously ignores" the so-called Arab Peace Plan.

Furthermore, India and Pakistan have been at loggerheads for 60 years since Muslim Pakistan was created. So I see no reason to suppose that the creation of a Muslim Palestinian State now would create peaceful relations between a new Muslim state and Israel.

badile

"Judea and Samaria" are properly regarded as occupied territory.

The 2001 Conference of the High Contracting Parties explicitly declared:

"2. In accordance with a number of resolutions adopted by the United Nations General Assembly and Security Council and by the International Conference of the Red Cross and Red Crescent, which reflect the view of the international community, the ICRC has always affirmed the de jure applicability of the Fourth Geneva Convention to the territories occupied since 1967 by the State of Israel, including East Jerusalem. This Convention, ratified by Israel in 1951, remains fully applicable and relevant in the current context of violence. As an Occupying Power, Israel is also bound by other customary rules relating to occupation, expressed in the Regulations annexed to the Hague Convention respecting the Laws and Customs of War on Land of 18 October 1907."

George can "dispute" anything he wants but that does not make it true.

Andre

alanadale what rubbish you talk - you speak of an anti-Israel consensus as if that somehow validates your anti-Semitic rhetoric. Israel is here to stay. If the Arabs really wanted peace they would accept its right to exist, make peace and live with it. Instead we see nightly tirades with mullahs spewing hate and violence against Jews and Christians. The behavior of Hamas in Gaza is disgraceful and shows no respect for human life on either side. Iran seeks nuclear weapons with the express intention of wiping Israel out. I remember Menachem Begin pointing out that when Hitler quite early on said he would kill Europe's Jews no one believed him. Now, said Begin, when someone repeats this we in Israel, take it very seriously.
Stanley: I don't understand what point you are making. The need for those in the camps is for a decent life not the living hell their leaders have bequeathed them.

alanadale

Andre writes: 'alanadale what rubbish you talk - you speak of an anti-Israel consensus as if that somehow validates your anti-Semitic rhetoric. Israel is here to stay.'

That is precisely the point. Israel is here to stay and the Arab League all 22 members have endorsed a plan based on Resolution 242 which recognizes Israel within its 1967 border with minor and reciprocal adjustments. So what on earth are you talking about?

I think the moderators should redact your over liberal recourse to ‘anti-Semitic rhetoric’. It debases the term. Such language would never be allowed on the other side of the debate.

Andre

Oh dear. Let us return to the original point - the Palestinians have made it clear they will not recognize a Jewish state - Israel - they do not subscribe to the two state solution; by 'they' I mean the current leadership - Fatah, Hamas, etc. Look at countries like Iran and Yemen, Syria and Libya and you see the idea of a holy jihad to rid the world of Jews and Israel openly proclaimed. Consider the actions of the Taliban, Al Quaeda and Hezbollah and you will understand proxy armies intent on Israel's annihilation have already taken the field. Don't take my word for it look at tv footage from these countries and web sites run by 100s of Islamic fundamentalists. We need to stand with Israel in her defense of freedom - freedom to elect your government, to say what you like in the press, ultimately to live without fear. We - in the west - need to be consistent in our support for Israel, not seek to make peace with homicidal theocrats in Teheran and Damascus - still less to inflict their madness on the Israels. Hiding behind a lot of rational UN resolutions and Guardianesque hyperbole won't do. Israel it is claimed has had a nuclear bomb for many years - we don't know because shes' never used it. Iran, when it has one, will. Wise up, West www.youtube.com/watch?v=23GJPbl1NIM

Augustus

In one of his frenzied attack posts, Alanadale, like some gauleiter, insists on quoting (yet again) the 1967 borders issue.

Please kindly explain how the West Bank was ever Palestinian territory? I would have thought that Judaea and Samaria should certainly belong to the land of Israel, and 19 years of occupation by Jordan (1948-67)
can't change that.

stanley Jerusalem

alanadale
July 23rd, 2009 2:04pm
I took a rest from this blog because of folk like you who never let the truth get in the way of a good myth.I really don't like getting into invective 'cos it proves nothing. Just get your neighbour or a real friend to read what you have written and find out how far your imagination has led you astray.
There has to be a limit to the extent to which you distort the truth to fit your fantasies. But then again perhaps not. If you have any lingering doubts as to what the established Arab countried think of the 'poor downtrodden palestinians' have a look at what the Kingdom of Jordan did this week, and no-one can accuse them of being friends with Israel.Just intelligent enough not to be at war.

Jerry

Chris N:

1) Jews can never be defined as a race since anyone can join.

2) Jews can never be defined as practitioners of Judaism's percepts because Judaism does not permit the excommunication of people who disagree with it. Only if one chooses to destroy Judaism does the tribe become more self-protective.

Jews cannot be defined as a culture because people define themselves as Jews without a common cuisine, family mores, or a set of goals.

Jews share a common history even if one joins the tribe voluntarily at an arbitrary date in that history. Jews make their history by participating in the tribe's activities in the present. Good deeds count as Jewish as do nasty acts such as support of the enemy during times of war. It is by the destructive deeds that we define the good ones. Jews know altruism when they see it and its opposite.

stanley Jerusalem

The possibly unintentional but completely appropriately named Alanadale was ,according to legend, Robin Hood's treacherous half-brother who betrayed him to the Sheriff of Nottingham and ultimately brought about his death. Or was that another alanadale?

Penny

Might this link (below) be instructive?

http://www.tzemachdovid.org/Facts/islegal1.shtml

It is an article written by Eugene Rostow, who helped prepare Resolution 242.

As Rostow points out, this resolution has been frequently misinterpreted but, as one of its authors, he should surely be considered an authority?

Penny

Sorry to post links but I'm a little short of time:-)

The link below is to an article written by a Palestinian whose views on the conflict closely resemble mine.

Too often those who consider themselves 'pro' Palestinian have no real interest in the people themselves.

http://thisongoingwar.blogspot.com/2009/03/26-mar-09-unmasking-hatred-behind.html

GeoffM

On the subject of anti-semitism I have just caught up with the trial in France over the torture and murder of a jewish guy.

The government, legal system and media has turned themselves inside out to avoid the anti-semitic and islamic nature of the crime.

What is going on ?

http://www.brusselsjournal.com/node/4021

Marcus from the USA

Miranda, Denmark, Italy, Ireland, England, etc. have been Christian nations/lands for centuries.

Arabia, Syria, Egypt, Malaysia, etc. have been Moslem nations/lands for centuries aswell.

Less than a century ago the Holy Land was an Arab Muslim land with a large Arab Christian minority. The Jews are for the most part recent newcomers to the area.

This is exactly why Israel being a Jewish state is soo vulgar to non-Jews.

jose garcia

jez said"I think that the present mood in Britain (from a white working class perspective) is one of solidarity with the situation Israel is in."

i wish that was true,unfortunately the media coverage is so biased and has been for so long that virtually everybody in england is aganist israel, like with the americans 9-11 people think they deserve it( the bombims etc)

you really have to comb the media for any balance reporting.

in fact the lies are so deep that i heard a lot of people who think BBc is pro israel,

no joke

Jez

jose garcia;

Trust me. They're not.

Especially those that live in or adjacent to UK Islamic urban centres.

And luckily they'll tell you to your face about it- unlike many of the middle class.

stanley Jerusalem

Marcus from the USA
July 24th, 2009 8:30am
"Miranda, Denmark, Italy, Ireland, England, etc. have been Christian nations/lands for centuries.Arabia, Syria, Egypt, Malaysia, etc. have been Moslem nations/lands for centuries as well.Less than a century ago the Holy Land was an Arab Muslim land with a large Arab Christian minority. The Jews are for the most part recent newcomers to the area.This is exactly why Israel being a Jewish state is soo vulgar to non-Jews."
Please don't let the facts get in the way of your sweeping over-generalisations. Jews have lived continuously in what you term 'The Holy Land' since 1300 years before Jesus.Many were exiled after Nebuchadnezzar's conquest in 586 B.C.E. More were exiled after the Roman's conquest in the year 135 put down an insurrection by Bar Kochba.But there remained a small remnant of Jews till the first Aliyas in the late 19th Century. The efforts of these Olim to make the desert bloom attracted migrant Arab workers from the surrounding countries and these thrived with their Jewish employers until the ministrations of the British Mandate and the declarations of the UN ended in a war of survival in 1948.While we're at it Marcus from the USA, on the subject of expropriation of territory from indigenous populations, do tell me all about the American Indians and their place in American Society during the 18th, 19th and early 20th Centuries please.

alanadale

@ Augustus

In one of his frenzied attack posts, Alanadale, like some gauleiter, insists on quoting (yet again) the 1967 borders issue.

My reasoning has never been ‘frenzied’ and I would like to know what kind of response I would provoke if I described you or any of your confreres as a ‘gauleiter’.

@ stanley Jerusalem ‘Just get your neighbour or a real friend to read what you have written and find out how far your imagination has led you astray. There has to be a limit to the extent to which you distort the truth to fit your fantasies.’

One has to question the moderator’s impartiality in allowing such intemperate language - always it seems on one side of the debate and not the other. It certianly clouds it.

I thought we were supposed to be having a rational discussion about the UK’s alleged anti Israeli bias. It really is delusional to dismiss hundreds of UN resolutions, a World Court ruling and the Fourth Geneva Convention as the ‘fevered’ work of anti Semites.

Nannette

Marcus from the USA
"Less than a century ago the Holy Land was an Arab Muslim land with a large Arab Christian minority. The Jews are for the most part recent newcomers to the area."

Where on earth did you learn your history?

100 years ago, the Ottoman Empire ruled the middle east. They also kept records of the populations living in their dominion. Those records are still around and prove that Jerusalem was a majority Jewish city, also that much of the land now called Israel was then majority Jewish.

The Ottomans also SOLD large tracts of land to the Jews, to be used for Jewish homes and developments.

Only when the British won the war, and mandated the area known as Palestine, that the majority of religious conflicts arose. This was also due to British antisemitism, which encouraged Muslim antisemitism, and hence the massacres and expulsions of hundreds of thousands of Jews from their homes in Jerusalem, Hebron, etc.

Vision Aforethought

People like those involved in this massive corruption scandal in New Jersey do the Jewish cause no good. Why don't they think of the consequences of their actions on the law abiding members of the community?

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/americas/8165607.stm

alanadale

Penny writes: ‘As [Eugene] Rostow points out, this resolution [242] has been frequently misinterpreted but, as one of its authors, he should surely be considered an authority?’

I refer you to what Lord Caradon had to say about the drafting of Resolution 242 and Caradon unlike Rostow – who was hardly an impartial observer - was the sponsor of the resolution.

Caradon wrote this regarding the lack of a definite article in the wording requiring Israel to ‘withdraw from territories occupied in the recent conflict’

‘Knowing ….the unsatisfactory nature of the 1967 line, I wasn’t prepared to use wording …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.’

stanley Jerusalem

Vision Aforethought
July 24th, 2009 11:39am
Jews have an expression for this kind of behaviour. They call it Chillul Hashem beFarhesya which translates as Bringing God's name into Public disrepute. The penalties proscribed for this heinous crime in the Jewish religion fall just short of total excommunication but the culprit invariably experiences the same journey to Coventry that those glittering examples of extreme anti-Israeli orthodoxy, the Neturei Carta, experienced recently after their tete-a-tete with the Iranian premier in Teheran. They say that 'God loves a sinner' because unlike a saint, the sinner has the potential to repent and receive Divine forgiveness. That being so, there must be a few out there working on their Yom Kippur supplications as we speak.

stanley Jerusalem

Vision Aforethough
July 24th, 2009 11:39am
P.S.
The higher your set of ethical standards, the further is your potential to fall and the greater the extent of schadenfreude from your detractors.

Jez

Vision Aforethought;

Why don't they think of the consequences of their actions on the law abiding members of the community?

Think abaout it from a sensible perspective.

If whoever is getting caught and sentenced (e.g. Bernie Madhoff- 150 years) then this blows out of the water any argument that their is a conspiracy, this to people who may be guilible to buy into that.

That's why all sectors of society should be shown to be reading from the same rule book.

Which it is being, with yours and my instances.

Marcus

Alanadale - I think you may be a bit optimistic about the level of debate on these pages. But keep on trying! As for the moderator's impartiality or otherwise, I do think it would be good if he were to state the ground rules here, both in terms of the level of abuse permitted, and grounds he uses to filter comments out.

Penny

The Arab nations have not supported the Palestinian people. Quite the reverse; by refusing them citizenship they have perpetuated their on-going refugee status which in turn ensures their existance as nothing more than a tool to be used against Israel.

The link below is to an article in which Nonie Darwish, (one-time resident of Gaza and daughter of the man who was the leader of the fedayeen) speaks of this dire situation.

If any single measure could restore sanity to the conflict, it has to be the lifting of the refugee status. The Palestinians would then have the opportunity to become productive in the same way that Israel became productive. If you care about the people, surely what you wish to see is an independant people, thriving in their own state? Not a group of people serving as little more than war proxies for other Arab nations.

Saddaam, for example, channelled money into West Bank, not to support health, education or productivity but to pay the families of suicide bombers $25,000 each. Arafat had wealth enough to afford a private plane, a Casino (built with money that should have provided a hospital for the people) and his wife's legendary spending sprees.

That Iran has supported both Hamas and Hizb'Allah in their war aims is well known. What do any of them really care about the actual people?

http://zionism-israel.com/israel_news/2009/03/urgent-solve-palestinian-refugee.html

stanley Jerusalem

As a further afterthought a number of ultra-orthodox Jews were tried and convicted of diverting Local Authority housing allocations to members of their own community about 15 years ago in North london. In response to a comment by a member of his congregation that the behaviour of such orthodox Jews was a Chillul hashem, the man's rabbi said " They aren't orthodox Jews, they're just dressed like orthodox jews."

Jez

Nannette;

"This was also due to British antisemitism, which encouraged Muslim antisemitism,"

This is a link to a little known fact:

http://www1.yadvashem.org/about_HOLocaust/studies/vol35/Mallmann-Cuppers2.pdf

The only thing that stopped this from happening was the British 7th Armored Division ‘The Desert Rats’…. and loyal Indian Empire troops (that subsequently were teetering on the edge of being ordered to place down their weapons *if* Ghandi’s ‘Quit India Campaign’ had taken hold- thus opening the gates for the Empire of Japan to pour through India’s north eastern corridor).

I feel that the angle you are coming from is wrong.

martin

Anti Israel feelings are promoted by the BBC on a daily basis, but not specifically anti Jewish feelings
Both today & yesterday the Today programme had anti Israel features, & the Israeli ambassador defended Israel very well.
I'm a gentile secularist & am 100% behind Israel & believe its capital should be Jerusalem.

Although "media liberals" encourage anti semitism, in my middle class, very varied circle of acquaintance I have met possibly 3 mild anti semites, & 4 persons hostile to Israel.
Everyone else I know who discusses such things sees Israel as a legitimate state on the front line
against islamist terror.

Israel needs better rebuttal techniques against the BBC but also strong action against any Israelis who do knowingly attack innocent Palestinians.

alanadale

Nannette writes: ‘100 years ago, the Ottoman Empire ruled the middle east. They also kept records of the populations living in their dominion. Those records are still around and prove that Jerusalem was a majority Jewish city, also that much of the land now called Israel was then majority Jewish.’

To say that that ‘much of the land now called Israel was then majority Jewish,’ (whatever that means) is utter rubbish. It is well known that the Jewish population of Palestine was less than 8% at the time of the Balfour Declaration, the overwhelming majority of whom lived in Jerusalem and Hebron.

It is symptomatic of this blog that assertions such as this (and that Resolution 242 permits Israel to requisition Palestinian lands) are bandied around and on the assumption that if done so sufficiently will become mythologized as ‘facts’. It makes it impossible to conduct a serious debate.

David M

I have read quite a few scary comments here... "Hitler must be smiling from Hell"?! "...the deathbed spite of Britain and the EU.."?!

I humbly (and seriously) propose that there are a more than a few commenters to Melanie's post that really need to have a lie down in a darkened room.

Peter Colledge

It's all very well for Speccie intellectuals to pontificate about the status of Israel ans its neighbours. My neighbour has just come back from Hebron where armed Israeli gangs roam freely to vent their wrath on their opponents.

Michael B

David M,

At least in general terms, the "Hitler must be smiling from Hell" comment is entirely apropos. It was the Mufti of Jerusalem, Mohammad Amin al-Husayni (also spelled al-Husseini) who worked directly and explicitly for Hitler/Himmler in Berlin during WWII and who exported Hitler's twisted, anti-Semitic hatred to the Arab and Persian Muslim world via nightly radio transmissions (Radio Zeesun), from Berlin into the Middle East. See, for example, Matthias Kuntzel's article Hitler's Legacy: Islamic Antisemitism in the Middle East.

Hence, it's not an absurd or overly exciteable theme in the least. To the contrary as the Hitler/Himmler influence, via the Mufti, was profound and remains so to this day (e.g., Mein Kampf continues to sell in Cairo, in Tehran, etc). There is a set of anti-Israel leftists who are attempting historical revisionism in order to diminish this influence, but that too is telling of the times and not the actual history.

David Blackburn

Alanadale, thanks for flagging up those racist generalisations; they should have been noticed earlier, my fault. Continue the fascinating debate.

Michael B

alanadale,

There has been a Jewish presence in the area for 3,000+ years. That presence was diminished via the Muslim imperial conquest (the Great Jihad, c. 635 and following) and via other incursions, oppressions, pogroms, aspects of the Crusades, etc., but the presence has been there continuously, for millenia, without a lone exception. Further, you did not rebutt what had been said. Jerusalem, Hebron and other centers did contain majority Jewish populations. One of the reasons Jerusalem and other centers are significant is because much of the surrounding area was, in substantial part, populated with nomads who did not root themselves in the land.

Finally, a correction to my earlier closing graph. It should have read as follows:

Hence, it's not an absurd or overly exciteable theme in the least. To the contrary as the Hitler/Himmler influence, via the Mufti, was profound and remains so to this day (e.g., Mein Kampf continues to sell in Cairo, in Tehran, etc). There is a set of anti-Israel leftists who are attempting historical revisionism in order to play down this influence, but that too is telling of the times and not the actual history.

Marcus from the USA

Stanley and Nannette;

Even by May 1948, with massive amounts of illegal immigration to Palestine the Jewish population only amounted to 600,000. By contrast the Arab population at the time was 1.3 million.

In 1917, Lord Balfour himself stated the Arab population of Palestine to be 700,000.

And Stanley, America is a secular nation with no official state religion. Infact the First Amendment to the US Constitution forbids the establishment of a state church/religion.

Augustus

From the fact that the Palestinians have maps which don't even mention Israel at all and that they use these maps in schools, to the fact that they are still firing Kassam rockets over the border into Sderot, makes it very hard for any promises of peace, and any permanent cease-fire, to be
believable. Fatah has recently stated that it not only will never recognize Israel, but that it will not allow anyone else to recognize it. So, with all due respect for people who, for one reason or another, empathise with a just Palestinian cause, I simply ask them if they think that there is any point in negotiating for peace with people like Hamas and Fatah and Islamic Jihad continuing their offensive with Israel, and continuing to smuggle more arms and hardware to assemble rockets with which to harass the citizens of Israel? How could the Israeli government broker a deal with Egypt, or anyone else, with these fanatical groups around?
As Colonel Kemp recently said, it is these terrorist organizations who purposefully reject and defy international law. And that is the truth that no amount of bigoted Western Israel bashing can alter.

alanadale

Michael B writes: ‘There has been a Jewish presence in the area for 3,000+ years.’

It is difficult see your point Huguenots have lived in London continuously for centuries. So what?

No one seriously contests that Jews have roots in the Holy Land; what is contested is that their claim is an exclusive one, either to the Holy Land or Jerusalem. Greater longevity does not in itself make the claim more valid than those of other people who have passed through in the meantime and certainly not the Palestinians who had been settled in Palestine for centuries and formed by far the major part of its population. I absolutely rebut your contention propagated by the fraudulent writings of Joan Peters that Palestine was a land with out a people waiting for a people without a land.

As for your comment that Mein Kampf ‘continues to be sold in Cairo and Tehran’. Likewise in London, New York and Paris.

Why don’t you shed the victim’s garb and focus more on contemporary events? For example Israel’s border policies after Independence which make Hamas’s attacks on Sderot look like child’s play or the 1970 war of attrition when Israel regularly bombarded the west bank of the Suez Canal just to keep the Egyptians on their toes killing scores of civilians.

alanadale

@Augustus

May I pick you up on the following points:

1/ ‘The fact that the Palestinians have maps which don't even mention Israel at all and that they use these maps in schools’,

The Israeli tourist board had recently to withdraw maps from the London Underground purporting to show the whole of the West Bank and Gaza as part of Israel.

2/ ‘the fact that they are still firing Kassam rockets over the border into Sderot, makes it very hard for any promises of peace.’

In my previous post I’ve mentioned how Israel in its war of attrition with Egypt in 1970 would regularly bombard the west bank of the Suez Canal to the keep the front ‘hot’ and killed scores of civilians.

3/ ‘Fatah has recently stated that it not only will never recognize Israel.’

Not true. It has signed up to the Arab Peace Plan which recognizes Israel within its 1967 borders. What it will not do is recognize Israel as a Jewish state which is a racist legal confection dreamed up by Netanyahu to paint the Palestinians as a stumbling block to peace. It has no precedent in constitutional law.

A little bit more introspection and a little less righteous indignation might be in order.

Michael B

alanadale,

Exclusive?!?!? What planet do you live on? Israel consists of roughly 0.166% of the land in the Middle East, though that particular percentage includes the Maghreb.

But even in terms of the Mandate specifically, their land mass was greatly diminished when one reviews the history since WWII, as applied to TransJordan, etc. At its narrowest point, presently, Israel is less than ten (10) miles wide.

As to the Huguenots, 1) four or five centuries is still not millenia, 2) I wasn't hi-lighting that continuity (millenia) alone, I was doing so within other critical contexts and 3) the Huguenots continue to live in the area and do not have actors such as Hamas, Hezbollah, Palestinian Islamic Jihad, sponsors such as Iran, Syria and others still, all who are seeking to eliminate them. England's food is not the greatest, but I doubt it can be conceived as a plot directed against the Huguenots.

As to Mein Kampf, you are profoundly and contentedly incurious. Excepting for some extremely fringe elements, it continues to sell on occasion in the west for academic purposes and for curiosity's sake. By contrast, it continues to sell in Cairo, Tehran and elsewhere on a mass scale and for purposes of ideological/political consumption. Or perhaps you're being more than incurious and are indulging a willful and obtuse quality since I'm not wearing any "victim's garb," I'm more simply addressing some rather salient and pivotal facts.

Comprenez vous?

Linda Smith

Alanadale wrote "What it will not do is recognize Israel as a Jewish state which is a racist legal confection dreamed up by Netanyahu to paint the Palestinians as a stumbling block to peace. It has no precedent in constitutional law."

Alanadale is writing his porkies again!! As he knows perfectly well - it has been posted on these threads often enough - UN General Assembly Resolution 181 called for the partition of the British-ruled Palestine Mandate into a JEWISH state and an Arab state. It was approved on November 29, 1947. Here is an extract:

"Independent Arab and Jewish States and the Special International Regime for the City of Jerusalem, set forth in part III of this plan, shall come into existence in Palestine two months after the evacuation of the armed forces of the mandatory Power has been completed but in any case not later than 1 October 1948."

Interestingly, when Alanadale wrote "It is symptomatic of this blog that assertions such as this....are bandied around and on the assumption that if done so sufficiently will become mythologized as 'facts' he was describing his own mendacity, and,. as Alanadale also affirmed, "it makes it impossible to conduct a serious debate."

I am not suprised David Blackburn posted "Alanadale....Continue the fascinating debate." He must find Alanadale's fraudulent revisionist history mindbogglingly fascinating.

Penny

Alanadale

I'm afraid I don't follow your reasoning regarding Eugene Rostow. He was one of the three who drafted 242 - the other two being Caradon and Goldberg. Why is Caradon's input any less 'impartial' than Roscow's?

Still - moving on and dealing with Lord Caradon:

"On October 29, 1969, for example, the British Foreign Secretary told the House of Commons the withdrawal envisaged by the resolution would not be from "all the territories." When asked to explain the British position later, Lord Caradon said: "It would have been wrong to demand that Israel return to its positions of June 4, 1967, because those positions were undesirable and artificial."

And:

Lord Caradon, interviewed on Kol Israel in February 1973:
Question: "This matter of the (definite) article which is there in French and is missing in English, is that really significant?"
Answer: "the purposes are perfectly clear, the principle is stated in the preamble, the necessity for withdrawal is stated in the operative section. And then the essential phrase which is not sufficiently recognized is that withdrawal should take place to secure and recognized boundaries, and these words were very carefully chosen: they have to be secure and they have to be recognized. They will not be secure unless they are recognized. And that is why one has to work for agreement. This is essential. I would defend absolutely what we did. It was not for us to lay down exactly where the border should be. I know the 1967 border very well. It is not a satisfactory border, it is where troops had to stop in 1967, just where they happened to be that night, that is not a permanent boundary . . . "

This is stated endlessley, Alan. It is in the interests of the stability of the region that the borders are defensible and recognised.

I believe Caradon et al's inclusion of an item regarding the retention of territory through war was borrowed from an earlier resolution regarding the US and Soviet Union - which one can only agree with given the situation of the time. That said, Alan, in 242, withdrawl is contingent upon an end to belligerence from the Arab sides and a peace deal being agreed which includes this term 'recognition'. This is wholly logical. Taking post-WWII as an example, would the occupying forces have withdrawn if Germany had refused to recognise, say, France, as an independant, self-determining nation?

Israel did not stage an act of war, Alan. It was attacked and occupied territory as a result. As the peace agreements have not been met, remaining within those territories is not illegal.

When Israel has withdrawn from a previously occupied territory, the attacks have gone on regardless, so their reluctance to continue down this same path is understandable.

Out of interest, how do you regard Jordan's annexation of West Bank/East Jerusalem from 1950 - 1967 - which of course, included the land designated for Palestinian Arabs in the 1947 UN plan? Does it not strike you as inconsistant that the Palestinians were not calling for self-determination then? Even though they were an occupied and disenfranchised people who had UN rights to that land?

Penny

Just a little further clarification, Alanadale:

Professor Julius Stone, one of the twentieth century's leading authorities on the Law of Nations concurred with Rostow that the Jewish right of settlement in the territories is equivalent in every way to the right of the existing Palestinian population to live there.

In his work "Israel and Palestine - Assault on the Law of Nations" Stone wrote

"International law forbids acquisition by unlawful force, but not where, as in the case of Israel's self-defence in 1967, the entry on the territory was lawful. It does not so forbid it, in particular, when the force is used to stop an aggressor, for the effect of such prohibition would be to guarantee to all potential aggressors that, even if their aggression failed, all territory lost in the attempt would be automatically returned to them. Such a rule would be absurd to the point of lunacy. There is no such rule".

alanadale

Michael B writes: 'Israel consists of roughly 0.166% of the land in the Middle East, though that particular percentage includes the Maghreb. But even in terms of the Mandate specifically, their land mass was greatly diminished when one reviews the history since WWII, as applied to TransJordan, etc. At its narrowest point, presently, Israel is less than ten (10) miles wide'

How disingenuous can you get? To lump the Palestinians together with all the inhabitants of the Middle East conveniently ignores the fact that they have settled and cherished for centuries a particular patch of land. If it were a question of being given any old land why weren’t the Jews happy with setting up shop in Uganda?

The argument about the Jews being given title to the whole of the Mandate including TransJordan is equally meretricious. – as if the early Zionists were engaged in bidding for a territorial job lot (someone else’s land mind you) and put in the most preposterous bid to bolster their claims for what they really wanted.

However, even if the ‘gift of Palestine’ hadn’t been an imperial stitch up, the advent of human rights legislation - ironically in response to the Nazi Holocaust - has moved law on from the cosy deal making that produced the Balfour Declaration. Inconveniently for Israel it gives indigenous populations primordial rights that override any territorial deals struck between nations.

It is in any case a fiction that either the Balfour Declaration or the League of Nations Mandate gave the Jews title to the whole of Mandatory Palestine. The first article of the 1920 San Remo Conference Resolution, which prepared the ground for the Mandate, stressed that it would only be acceptable provided ‘the rights hitherto enjoyed by the non-Jewish communities in Palestine’ were not surrendered. The principle that Arab land was to be held in trust as prescribed by Article 22 of the League of Nations Charter (which outlines the Mandate’s mission to safeguard the interests of native populations until such time as they were ready and able to govern themselves) remained paramount. And that is the position today and why with the emergence of a national political identity the Palestinians lay claim to the birthright kept in trust for them by the League of Nations Mandate and the UN and implemented by Resolution 242.

As to Israel being only 10 miles wide at its narrowest point I have quoted in previous posts the doyen of Israeli military historians Martin van Crefeld noting the new military technology makes the occupation of territory per se irrelevant to issues of security.

Now as to Mein Kampf. I’m not knowledgeable about Tehran but I am a little about Cairo. I haven’t observed copies of Mein Kampf walking off the shelves of Cairo bookstalls whether in Arabic, English or German. Perhaps you could explain what you mean by being sold on ‘a mass scale’?

Finally I wonder whether Mein Kampf isn’t a little passé when we have more contemporary proponents of population transfers and ‘final solutions’ in the likes of Rehavam Ze’evi and Avigdor Lieberman.

Augustus

Penny- Well said! You are a girl after my own heart! If Alanadale is a history teacher I wouldn't like to be in his shoes if his headmaster ever reads this blog.

alanadale

Michael B writes: Israel consists of roughly 0.166% of the land in the Middle East, though that particular percentage includes the Maghreb. But even in terms of the Mandate specifically, their land mass was greatly diminished when one reviews the history since WWII, as applied to TransJordan, etc. At its narrowest point, presently, Israel is less than ten (10) miles wide
How disingenuous can you get? To lump the Palestinians together with all the inhabitants of the Middle East conveniently ignores the fact that they have settled and cherished for centuries a particular patch of land. If it were a question of being given any old land why weren’t the Jews happy with setting up shop in Uganda?

The argument about the Jews being given title to the whole of the Mandate including TransJordan is equally meretricious. – as if the early Zionists were engaged in bidding for a territorial job lot (someone else’s land mind you) and putting in the most preposterous bid to bolster their claims for what they really wanted.

However, even if the ‘gift of Palestine’ hadn’t been an imperial stitch up, the advent of human rights legislation - ironically in response to the Nazi Holocaust - has moved law on from the cosy deal making that produced the Balfour Declaration. Inconveniently for Israel it gives indigenous populations primordial rights that override any territorial deals struck between nations.

It is in any case a fiction that either the Balfour Declaration or the League of Nations Mandate gave the Jews title to the whole of Mandatory Palestine. The first article of the 1920 San Remo Conference Resolution, which prepared the ground for the Mandate, stressed that it would only be acceptable provided ‘the rights hitherto enjoyed by the non-Jewish communities in Palestine’ were not surrendered. The principle that Arab land was to be held in trust as prescribed by Article 22 of the League of Nations Charter (which outlines the Mandate’s mission to safeguard the interests of native populations until such time as they were ready and able to govern themselves) remained paramount. And that is the position today and why with the emergence of a national political identity the Palestinians lay claim to the birthright kept in trust for them by the League of Nations Mandate and the UN and implemented by Resolution 242.

As to Israel being only 10 miles wide at its narrowest point I have quoted in previous posts the doyen of Israeli military historians Martin van Crefeld noting the new military technology makes the occupation of territory per se irrelevant to issues of security.

Now as to Mein Kampf. I’m not knowledgeable about Tehran but I am a little about Cairo. I haven’t observed copies of Mein Kampf walking off the shelves of Cairo bookstalls whether in Arabic, English or German. Perhaps you could explain what you mean by being sold on ‘a mass scale’?

alanadale

Penny writes: ‘This is stated endlessley, Alan. It is in the interests of the stability of the region that the borders are defensible and recognised.’

I agree that many things have been written that give different and often contradictory interpretations of Resolution 242 usually because quotations are taken out of context.

I gave that particular quote because there is absolutely no ambiguity as to its meaning; it also jibes with the actual wording of the resolution and its preamble and indeed with spirit of the UN Charter. Further it was made by the diplomat in whose name the resolution was sponsored.

If there was any further ambiguities as to the intention of Resolution 242 – and bear in mind that virtually all the counter interpretations were made by Zionists in the international legal establishment - Dean Rusk disabused Abba Eban soon after its acceptance that it did not mean territorial changes which is at the heart of the debate as to whether Israel has ever been entitled to use Resolution 242 as a springboard for further territorial expansion.

Hundreds of subsequent UN resolutions and a World Court ruling, not to mention the Geneva Convention have endorsed the ‘consensus’ view.

As to Israel being entitled to defensible borders I would refer you to military historian Martin van Crefeld mentioned in an earlier post who asserts that modern technology – where Israel’s edge is growing by the day – makes holding land per se immaterial to issues of security.

As to your reference to the end of belligerence; the Arabs have been moving to accept resolution 242 since the early 1970s. The PLO did in 1988. The Arab Peace Plan effectively endorsing Resolution 242 with further concessions on the Right of Return has been on the table since 2002. One has to ask which side is dragging its feet on ending the state of belligerency.

Finally, it is infelicitous to quote Professor Julius Stone. I will simply quote from an estimable blogging colleague Henry Sidgwick who contributed this on another blog:

‘I have read Lauterpacht's pamphlet and an article summarising Stone's opinion.

A polite reviewer said of one that a first class legal mind was clearly at work, but at work on a brief for the Israeli government. A less polite reviewer said of one that he is betraying a life of scholarship to peddle a political position.’

And anyway Israel’s narrative on its ‘defensive’ war in 1967 is now under serious challenge and is due for revision much as the story of the war of Independence has been substantially rewritten by Israel’s ‘new’ historians. The untold story is the state of belligerence Israel intentionally maintained on its borders after Independence (when the threat to it was at its lowest) simply to facilitate ‘border creep’.

The main issue for the Israeli establishment in 1967 was not the threat posed by the Arab armies (though the story disseminated to the Israeli public was very different) but whether the US would be on side if they were to attack Egypt. They could not afford a repeat of 1956 when Israel mounted an unprovoked attack on Egypt in collusion with the French and English and was forced by the Americans to retreat ignominiously. In the week before Israel’s ‘pre-emptive strike the Israeli and American military dissected every aspect of the impending conflict in Washington and found a coincidence of interest: Washington wanted Nasser neutered because he was a threat to Middle East oil and Israel wanted Nasser neutered because he was a threat to its regional hegemony. By trouncing Nasser Israel resolved America’s Middle East problem – or so it seemed – and became a strategic ally. The rest as they say is history.

Augustus

Alanadale- If anyone is being disingenuous, as you put it, it is you who give the Palestinians a false appearance of being successful settlers and subsequent hapless objects of assault by predatory Zionists
who in some way came and dispossessed them. The fact is that, before the state of Israel
even existed, inflows of Jewish immigrants and capital after WW1 revived the area from its hitherto static condition and raised the standard of living of its Arab inhabitants well above that of neighbouring Arab states. Arab industry and agriculture expanded, particularly in the field of citrus growing; all financed by Jewish capital and know-how. In the two decades between the wars Arab owned citrus plantations grew sixfold,
as did vegetable growing land, while the number of olive groves
quadrupled.

No less remarkable were the advances in social welfare. Life expectancy rose from 37.5 years in 1926 to 50 in 1942 (compared to 33 in Egypt). Nothing remotely akin to this was taking place in neighbouring
(British ruled) Arab countries.
Lord Peel even headed a commission which acknowledged this. All this was in fact an age old Zionist hope: That the material progress resulting from Jewish settlement of Palestine would ease the path of reconciliation with the local Arab population, and to the project of national self-determination which the Jews so dearly wished for. And all you can come up with is a continual stream of remarks like
'primordial rights' and
'territorial deals'. When will you, and others like you, learn that it was the Arab leaders, and not Jews, who, from the word 'go', and very much against their own peoples wishes, launched a relentless campaign to obliterate the Jewish revival, culminating in all the wars and misery that thus ensued, and which led to the situation the world and the ME still faces today?

badile

Article 49 of The Fourth Geneva Convention states:

-- Individual or mass forcible transfers, as well as deportations of protected persons from occupied territory to the territory of the Occupying Power or to that of any other country, occupied or not, are prohibited, regardless of their motive.

-- Nevertheless, the Occupying Power may undertake total or partial evacuation of a given area if the security of the population or imperative military reasons so demand. Such evacuations may not involve the displacement of protected persons outside the bounds of the occupied territory except when for material reasons it is impossible to avoid such displacement. Persons thus evacuated shall be transferred back to their homes as soon as hostilities in the area in question have ceased.

-- The Occupying Power undertaking such transfers or evacuations shall ensure, to the greatest practicable extent, that proper accommodation is provided to receive the protected persons, that the removals are effected in satisfactory conditions of hygiene, health, safety and nutrition, and that members of the same family are not separated.

-- The Protecting Power shall be informed of any transfers and evacuations as soon as they have taken place.

-- The Occupying Power shall not detain protected persons in an area particularly exposed to the dangers of war unless the security of the population or imperative military reasons so demand.

-- The Occupying Power shall not deport or transfer parts of its own civilian population into the territory it occupies.

As I pointed out in an earlier post, The Conference of High Contracting Parties to the Fourth Geneva Convention in 2001 "affirmed the de jure applicability of the Fourth Geneva Convention to the territories occupied since 1967 by the State of Israel, including East Jerusalem."

Consequently, the civilian settlement by Israel of the Occupied Palestinian Territories is a violation of the Fourth Geneva Convention. It is a horrendous war crime, sustained and supported for decades by those who raise nationalism above morality.

alanadale

@Augustus.

Your argument appears to be. ‘They opposed our settling in their country; therefore we are entitled to what we can lay our hands on.’

The reaction of the Palestinian Arabs to Jewish settlement was perfectly understandable. They feared they were going to be overrun and that is precisely what happened. It is therefore disingenuous of you to maintain that it was their failure to welcome the Jews with open arms that led to all this suffering. Ben Gurion at least had the honesty to say that he would have done exactly what the Palestinians did if he had been in their position.

The Peel Commission did note the economic contribution of the Jews. Certainly their access to capital was welcome but surely a similar sort of economic development was taking place in Kenya and White South Africa which could plug into the same financial nexus. And anyway it is not unreasonable to assume that the Palestinians would have been considerably more successful economically than their Arab peers. They already had a a citrus fruit industry, olives and plenty of fertile agricultural land as well as the rudiments of industry and they were a small country.

Anyway if you use the argument that ‘he who makes the desert bloom is entitled to it’, the whites should have continued to run South Africa and the Chinese should have let the British continue to run Hong Kong.

Resolution 242 seeks to draw a line under the past. Israel has a state which everyone recognises - within its 1967 borders. It, is not about to be wiped off the face of the earth despite all the alarums about Ahmadinejad, Hizbollah, Hamas et al. The Arabs have accepted it on 78% of the contested territory but this is still not enough for Israel’s greedy political establishment.

As I have got Linda Smith to admit, albeit tacitly, on another blog, Israel wants the land and if necessary the peace can wait. Convince me you are not of the same persuasion.

John

Also check out Shepherd's blog at:
http://www.robinshepherdonline.com/

It is regularly updated with extremely interesting and original comment and news.

alanadale

Linda Smith writes with reference to UNGA Resolution 181

"Independent Arab and Jewish States and the Special International Regime for the City of Jerusalem, set forth in part III of this plan, shall come into existence in Palestine two months after the evacuation of the armed forces of the mandatory Power has been completed but in any case not later than 1 October 1948."

Do you accept this in its entirety – Jerusalem as an internationalised city - or are you cherry picking again? Why not throw in UNGA Resolution 194 regarding the refugees while you are about it which has been endorsed by the General Assembly every year since it adoption in 1948?

Unlike the Israelis who have given absolutely no ground on anything, the Arab League has made significant concession on UNGA 194.

The wording of UNGA Resolution 181 was clearly to distinguish the two states as one being predominantly Jewish and the other Arab. It did not imply the connotation of defining Israel as ‘a state of the Jewish people’ instead of ‘a state of all its citizens’ which is the standard definition of a liberal democracy. For reasons enumerated ad nauseam this is completely unacceptable as a precondition as it asks Palestinians to renounce their birthright in advance and it also severely undermines Palestinian Arabs rights in Israel – at a time when Likud is in alliance with some very dodgy partners.

I should just add before you come back and say it’s not fair; Jews have no right of settlement (in international law not of course in practice) in the West Bank. Israelis have 78% of the territory so it is equitable that they should continue to house the Palestinian minority who remained put when the rest were driven out and that migration of West Bank Palestinians to Israel and Jews to the West Bank be curtailed until the situation has settled down.

Michael B

alanadale,

You are uncomprehending and seemingly willful in the extreme. I didn't state Israel should have been given the entirety of the Mandate nor did I conflate the Sunni Arab population in Gaza and the West Bank with "all the inhabitants of the Middle East," I more simply stated a fact as applied to the M.E. in general and as applied to Israel's geography and strategic situation. But I'll let Penny's and others' commentary stand in for my own, you fail to more conscientiously engage and, in effect, that results in flim-flamming the subject matter endlessly. I will however reply to the "Mein Kampf" subject. Several sources can be cited, the following is an excerpt from a JPost article titled "Reading 'Mein Kampf' in Cairo":

"Hitler's Mein Kampf is on sale in Cairo, both in well-known bookstores and on the streets around Midan Tahrir, the city's chaotic main square. The Arabic translation sits beside the reams of religious books, as well as works on Saddam Hussein, al-Qaida in Iraq mastermind Abu Musab Al-Zarqawi, and Osama bin Laden ..."

In an excerpt from a BBC report dated 18 March, 2005 and titled "Hitler book bestseller in Turkey," a bookstore owner states "... Mein Kampf had always been 'a sleeper, a secret bestseller'."

According to a '99 MEMRI report, "Mein Kampf is being distributed by Al-Shurouq, a Ramallah [Wesst Bank] based book distributor, to East Jerusalem and territories controlled by the PA ... and is 6th on the Palestinian best-seller list. Bisan publishers in Lebanon first published this edition in 1963 and again in 1995. The book costs about $10."

As to Tehran, I was thinking of an article (I have bookmarked) by Anne Applebaum titled "Reading Mein Kampf in Tehran," though the article's focus is on Ahmadinejad's Dec., 2006 Holocaust denial conference that featured both international and local Holocaust deniers, so I need to back off my statement as applied to Tehran and "Mein Kampf" more specifically.

As to what it means, I don't know as I suspect the motivations run the gamut, but those are the type of reports I was considering. Also, I didn't simply cite the publishing and selling of "Mein Kampf" in the M.E., I placed it within the additional context of the Mufti of Jerusalem, Amin al Husseini (my July 24, 6:27pm comment) and his alliance with Hitler/Himmler in Berlin during WWII.

Linda Smith

I just turned on my computer to find Alanadale lying again:

"As I have got Linda Smith to admit, albeit tacitly, on another blog, Israel wants the land and if necessary the peace can wait."

I admitted no such thing. Wash your mouth out with soap, Alanadale.

KeithM

Melanie. The article you site quotes Miliband and The Grauniad.

Trust me, this is not representative of the UK.

From same...

"Those of us who follow such matters are always in danger of getting too close to our subject."

Most Brits stand by helplessly while Israel and Palestine slag each other off like football fans. Don't blame the British public, the Israelies and Palestinians have to grow up.

alanadale

Michael B wrote: ‘You are uncomprehending and seemingly willful in the extreme. I didn't state Israel should have been given the entirety of the Mandate nor did I conflate the Sunni Arab population in Gaza and the West Bank with "all the inhabitants of the Middle East,"’

I will own that I am guilty of conflating your comment; it is just that it is an argument so regularly trotted out to justify Israel’s claim to such a small sliver of land where the Arabs have so much that the response tends to become Pavlovian. If this is not what you meant to say I apologise.

As to the dissemination of Mein Kampf; I note that all your references are anecdotal. Do we have any figures as to how many copies have been sold in the Middle East?

Now I haven’t the time to scour the bookshops of London but a cursory look on Amazon’s website reveals at least a score of editions of Mein Kampf many still in print. So I don’t quite see what’s so special about Mein Kampf being available in Arab countries. Indeed in the name of free speech one would expect it to be.

I only have two observations to make. The first I have already alluded to. Why this constant harping back to the Nazi Holocaust and Mein Kampf when it is self evident Israel, with the fourth most powerful military in the world - and the Jews – with their wealth and powerful influence in many walks of Western life - are not in danger of another holocaust any time in the foreseeable future? What would be more instructive is to focus on contemporary events and the mini Holocaust in Gaza - in passing the Select Foreign Affairs Committee is to be commended for taking such a tough line on Israel’s continuing blockade - and the vile fascist invective of men like the late Rehavam Ze’evi and Avigdor Lieberman who were and are able to disseminate their bile under the cloak of parliamentary privilege. It is also worth noting anyone with Lieberman’s political profile being appointed foreign minster in a Western democracy would have the Anti Defamation League down on them like a ton of bricks. The ADL actually tried to get a former British ambassador to Tel Aviv recalled for having the temerity to describe Gaza as a concentration camp. He had the last laugh when it emerged his Dutch great uncle had been executed by the Nazis for harbouring Jews in the Second World War.

Which brings me on to my second observation: the lengths Zionist organisations like the ADL will go to close down debate on controversial issues. I have in mind the utterly disgraceful attempt to get the US publishing industry to blackball Beyond Chutzpah, a book by Norman Finkelstein who blew the gaffe on the scandal of the Holocaust industry.

alanadale

Linda Smith writes: 'I just turned on my computer to find Alanadale lying again…'

You would have to withdraw that comment in the House of Commons and perhaps a similar level of courtesy might be in place here.

After a long debate on another blog in which I had tried to pin Linda Smith down as to precisely what she wanted, I responded to this assertion:

'You ignore the fact that the "Palestinians" refuse to recognise Israel as a Jewish State. You ignore the fact that Israel will not give the Old City to a Palestinian State.
You ignore the topic of the "refugees" You ignore the fact that Israel is not going to return to its pre June 1967 borders which leave it to open to attack.'

in a four point reply which to my mind dealt with all her concerns in a concise and comprehensive fashion I concluded: ‘I asked in an earlier post what you wanted: land or peace. I think we can safely assume it’s land.’

As she did not respond I concluded she had thrown in the towel which is why I wrote: "As I have got Linda Smith to admit, albeit tacitly, on another blog, Israel wants the land and if necessary the peace can wait."

I apologise if I jumped the gun and you were simply taking a breather. But perhaps you might challenge my conclusion that in a choice between land or peace ‘we can safely assume it’s land.’

Augustus

Alanadale- Now that you have taken it upon yourself to commandeer, as if by some sort of obligation to a Palestinian crusade, Melanie's blog, Let me assure you that with every comment you make you only become less convincing. Before I respond to your post of 24/7,
11.20pm, however, I would just like to say that it is was no laughing matter to have a relative shot by the Nazis for harbouring Jews in WW2. My wife's parents hid a Jewish family from Rotterdam on their farm in Friesland throughout the war, and although in their case they survived until liberated by the Canadians, I can assure you every day was one of trepidation to avoid the feared 'knock on the door'.

Now, you completely misunderstood the point I was making, which was that from the early days, i.e. during the years following WW1, the Zionist movement had always been
amenable to the existence in a, then as yet future, Jewish state
of a substantial Arab minority that would participate on an equal footing, and throughout all sections of public life. That was also the position of David Ben-Gurion, and it is futile to try and quote him as some sort of Palestinian mouthpiece, his actual aim was to try and dispel distrust within the Arab community and build a bridge to a Semitic Jewish-Arab alliance.

Today, 1.2 million Arabs of Israeli nationality live and work there. Little is ever mentioned of how they live, and what they really think about life in Israel. They have full voting rights, choose their own Arab representatives in the Knesset, enjoy the same social and public amenities as Jews such as medical welfare, education, hospitals, run their own organizations, and can voice their opinions about any matter to do with the state of Israel. They would not, I think, like to swap their lives for a life in Palestinian quarters in the West Bank or Gaza, or in any other Arab country in the ME.

The whole world only hears about the injustices of the Palestinian Arabs, but hardly anything is ever mentioned about the catastrophic injustice under which the Jews suffered when they were banished from Egypt, Syria, Iraq, and Saudi-Arabia. If you compare the numbers mentioned of Palestinian refugees in 1948
of 650,000, it is a lot lower than the number of Jewish refugees from the Arab lands. That figure was 900,000. The International Court in The Hague documented all the property, both private as well as community property, which they had to leave behind, and it was much higher than what the Palestinians had left behind in Israel. So, Jews have indeed been the victims of 'ethnic cleansing' by Arabs, and only a small handful are in these lands now. The figures I have for Egypt are: 90,000 in 1948, and 38 now. On the other hand the Arabs (who prefer to call themselves Palestinians) now living in Israel amount to 20% of the population. It would help matters considerably to explain these facts first, before coming to such haughty conclusions as to honesty, justice, and truth.

Wm. Hazlitt

Alanadale, You are to be commended on continuing polite and reasonable in your responses to your adversaries. You will notice that they repeat, unabashed and regardless, the same canards and insults week after week. I am not to tell you how to spend your time, but do you not on occasion feel the futility in trying to persuade your adversaries, not necessarily that you are right, but that they possibly may be wrong?

Derek BLADES

Michael B (24 July) wrote "Israel consists of roughly 0.166% of the land in the Middle East...." and later "At its narrowest point, presently, Israel is less than ten (10) miles wide"

What has any of this got do with anything? Both Thailand and Kazakhstan are less than 10 miles wide at their narrowest point but I have never met anyone who thought this had the slightest significance. Furthermore the question of how much of the Middle East is taken up by Israel is totally irrelevant. It would be slightly more informative - though still irrelevant - to ask how much of the fertile, cultivable land of the Middle East is occupied by the Israelis. To come back to my main point though, could Michael B tell us why he raises these issues in the first place. I really am puzzled.

Derek BLADES

Alanadale put a very sensible question to Linda Smith which for reasons best known to herself she did not answer. I have often tried to get Ms Smith and others who think like her to answer what seems to me a rather simple question. Does she have an alternative to the current status quo or is she happy to see an indefinite conflict between the Israelis and Arabs in the Middle East.

The Obama/Mitchell/Clinton peace plan is now well known in broad outline. If she doesn't like it what does she propose instead?

Linda Smith

Derek Blades asked me: The Obama/Mitchell/Clinton peace plan is now well known in broad outline. If she doesn't like it what does she propose instead?

I am not a party to the negotiations. If you want to know the current Israeli position on peace with the Arabs, I suggest you read Mr Netanyahu's speech of 14 June 2009, available on line.

The key points are:

"The greatest danger confronting Israel, the Middle East, the entire world and human race, is the nexus between radical Islam and nuclear weapons."

"the root of the conflict was, and remains, the refusal to recognize the right of the Jewish people to a state of their own, in their historic homeland."

"The closer we get to an agreement with [the Palestinians], the further they retreat and raise demands that are inconsistent with a true desire to end the conflict."

"The claim that territorial withdrawals will bring peace with the Palestinians, or at least advance peace, has up till now not stood the test of reality."

"Palestinian moderates are not yet ready to say the simple words: Israel is the nation-state of the Jewish people, and it will stay that way."

"a fundamental prerequisite for ending the conflict is a public, binding and unequivocal Palestinian recognition of Israel as the nation state of the Jewish people."

"there must also be a clear understanding that the Palestinian refugee problem will be resolved outside Israel's borders."

The principles that guide his government's policy: "Palestinians must clearly and unambiguously recognize Israel as the state of the Jewish people" and "The territory under Palestinian control must be demilitarized with ironclad security provisions for Israel."

Other commentators have recommended that the Israeli govenment should also require, at the least:
1. A complete overhaul of messages coming from textbooks, classrooms, media, sermons, political rhetoric, and the other areas of public Palestinian discourse, eliminating the anti-Semitism, the anti-Zionism, and the incitement while condemning terrorism and other acts of "resistance" (muqawama).

2. A protracted era in which Palestinians do not engage in violence against Israelis.

3. Normal relations in such areas as trade, tourism, sports, and scholarly exchanges.

4. A good-neighborly foreign policy.

alanadale

Wm. Hazlitt. ‘I am not to tell you how to spend your time, but do you not on occasion feel the futility in trying to persuade your adversaries, not necessarily that you are right, but that they possibly may be wrong?’

Thank you and Marcus for your moral support. I persevere in the name of what Linda Smith calls ‘the truth’.

gary

alandale - "The reaction of the Palestinian Arabs to Jewish settlement was perfectly understandable. They feared they were going to be overrun and that is precisely what happened."

The Arab attacks on Jews in 1908 was due to Jews (not the newcomers) taking over defence of a few their own towns instead of contracting Arab protection squads. The attacks in 1919 and the 1920s, after the Balfour Declaration, were inspired by false accusations that Jews were going to demolish the Jerusalem Mosque, and objections that Jews should not hold gatherings in Jerusalem. Settlement by Jews wasn't a hot issue for Arabs. The slaughter of their long term Jewish neighbours in Hebron in 1929 was not a defence against being "overrun" by Jewish immigrants. None of these are understandable as "reactions of the Palestinian Arabs to Jewish settlement" except by someone who falsely retrofits current mistaken ideas about the Palestinian-Israeli conflict onto the past.

alandale - "The Peel Commission did note the economic contribution of the Jews. Certainly their access to capital was welcome but surely a similar sort of economic development was taking place in Kenya and White South Africa which could plug into the same financial nexus."

The Peel Commission Report notes that Jewish training of Arabs improved Arab agriculture in Palestine. It notes that due to training and influence of Jews the number of Arab agricultural workers was able to decrease while their output increased. This didn't happen in Kenya and South Africa. Your comparison of the situations is rubbish.

alandale - "And anyway it is not unreasonable to assume that the Palestinians would have been considerably more successful economically than their Arab peers. They already had a a citrus fruit industry, olives and plenty of fertile agricultural land as well as the rudiments of industry and they were a small country."

Their main economic success was in leaving their villages for labouring work on British construction of ports, oil pipelines, telegraph, railways, roads, supplemented by improved agricultural output and marketing, assisted by Jews. That's also noted in the Peel Commission Report. It's the same economic reason why so many Arabs from surrounding states migrated into Palestine. Arab pashas complained that fit young men had left their villages and lost their alegiance to the "old ways", and newcomers had no connection to the local traditional heirarchies. Palestine was the nerve centre of British involvement in the whole Middle East, and it was work on that which caused a major disruption of Palestinian Arab traditional structures.

Your history of the land is bunkum, along with your misrepresentation and mis-interpretations of the conclusions of the Peel Commission Report. I don't believe you've read it.

Linda Smith

Alanadale posted: "The wording of UNGA Resolution 181 was clearly to distinguish the two states as one being predominantly Jewish and the other Arab. It did not imply the connotation of defining Israel as ‘a state of the Jewish people’ instead of ‘a state of all its citizens’ which is the standard definition of a liberal democracy. For reasons enumerated ad nauseam this is completely unacceptable as a precondition as it asks Palestinians to renounce their birthright in advance and it also severely undermines Palestinian Arabs rights in Israel – at a time when Likud is in alliance with some very dodgy partners."

UN Resolution 181 of 29 November 1947 prescribed the creation of Jewish and Arab states with equal rights for non-Jewish and non-Arab citizens in each state respectively.

Accordingly, Muslim and Christian Arab Israelis have equal rights under Israel's Declaration of Independence and the law with Israeli Jews (some of whom are Jewish Arabs).

The UK is a Christian Protestant country - the Queen was crowned in a Christian Protestant ceremony. A Catholic cannot ascend the throne. The UK is, nevertheless, a state of all its citizens - as is Israel.

I don't know why Alanadale persists in calling Arab Israelis "Palestinians" - they are Israeli citizens.

Augustus

Alanadale- Isn't 'the truth' which you so importantly wish to convey, as Melanie says; the fact that Palestinian rejectionism forms the real root cause of the conflict, and has done so for the best part of a century? The fact that you
and many others in the Western world are so hopelessly biased towards Palestinians and their demands does not alter that position. May I remind you of what Avigdor lieberman said, a man you describe on this page as 'a vile fascist',(and it is you who complain of being called a bossy official, which is all gauleiter means). The Israeli Foreign Minister said that peace cannot be imposed. He is right. If there is a solution it is not going to be achieved by your methods of imposing dictats on Israel. It will only be successful when Arabs supporting Israel (Yes, they do exist) convince (a tall order, I grant you) those dangerous and fanatical Arab leaders controlling the forces of anti-Zionism, with their rockets, suicide bombers, child martyrs et al, that they are on a train to nowhere, and that they will effectively have to make peace on reasonable terms. and that simply means a secure and safe Israeli state with a complete suspension of spiteful and terrorist violence against it. The present terrorist leaders are not capable of normal relations with Israel. They are only intent upon continuing their resistance to peace. They are the losers, and they are betraying their own people in the process.

alanadale

Augustus writes: ‘Today, 1.2 million Arabs of Israeli nationality live and work there….[who] would not, I think, like to swap their lives for a life in Palestinian quarters in the West Bank or Gaza, or in any other Arab country in the ME.’

I hope you appreciate the unintended irony of this statement vis-à-vis the West Bank and Gaza; as to living in any other Arab country, I suppose it would depend which one. What is certain is that their rights in Israel, political and social are slowly being whittled away. Always second class citizens (understandably) they are becoming more so.

With respect I don’t think I misunderstand your point. There were undoubtedly well intentioned Zionists in the early days who sought to cooperate with the local Arab population to build a state as equals. There were others like Weizmann whose contempt for the Palestinian Arabs was as bad as the worst kind of racism displayed by the British in Africa and India. More to the point the levels of immigration necessary to create ‘the Jewish home in Palestine’ were so high that it was inevitable there would eventually be conflict. Whatever you might say Ben Gurion realised this. He might on one side of his brain have wished Arabs to cooperate in the building of a Jewish state in Palestine but he knew this was a pious hope. No society would be prepared to standby and be taken over by another. And that when push came to shove was what was involved. On the other hand he always intended, as he expressed in a letter to his son, that Israel should eventually expand to embrace the whole of Palestine. Accepting the Partition Plan in 1947 was always a tactical retreat – reculer pour sauter.

I don’t believe people have forgotten the Jews evicted from Arab countries; they are certainly an important element in this tragedy. But let it also not be forgotten that if Israel had not come into being in the way it did involving the ethnic cleansing of some 750,000 Palestinians these Jews would never have been displaced. By the way if you include the number of Palestinians displaced in 1967 the total of Palestinian refugees comes to over 1 million. Putting a monetary value on their loss, however, vis-à-vis the Palestinians displays a gross insensitivity. Does losing a hotel in Alexandria for instance count more in the equation than the loss of a village community cherished over generations? It smacks of a Leona Helmsley mindset and her notorious comment: ‘Only the little people pay taxes.’

I don’t know by the way why I have to 'explain these facts'. The history is pretty well known. The Arabs have offered 78% of the land – well beyond on a population basis Israel was entitled to – but Israel is still not satisfied. That’s what you need to address and explain.

alanadale

Linda Smith writes: ‘The UK is a Christian Protestant country - the Queen was crowned in a Christian Protestant ceremony. A Catholic cannot ascend the throne. The UK is, nevertheless, a state of all its citizens - as is Israel.’

Yes but we don’t have an Avigdor Lieberman as Foreign Secretary.

Israel’s security is assured by its military clout; what it lacks is a political settlement with its Arab neighbours. Without it there will always be terrorism for the reasons I have enumerated many times and the legal issues as regards it occupying Palestinians lands will not go away.

A political settlement will require it to withdraw to its 1967 borders. Behind its 1967 borders Israel will not be under any sort of demographic threat. The only practical reason for insisting now that Israel be recognised as a Jewish state is if it intends to expand its borders to such a degree that it will have to absorb a lot more Palestinians that could at some future point upset the demographic balance. Being constituted as an exclusively Jewish state would then make it easier to expel Palestinians.

You have still seem reluctant to responded to my call for you to challenge my conclusion that in a choice between land or peace ‘we can safely assume it’s land.’

Michael B

Derek BLADES,

As with alanadale, you are voluptuous with incomprehension and accompanying conceits, reflecting a seemingly willful self-blinkered and self-blinded quality. For every fact and descriptive element mentioned, you're capable of throwing out a multitude of kneejerk questions, doubts, "puzzlements" and artifice and circumlocutions in general, virtually all of which is designed to evade probative depth rather than more truly and sincerely explore that depth and breadth and give it its measure, its due.

Firstly - and now adding a single fact as applied to Israel's strategic setting - what I've stated in terms of Israel's geography is said to describe it only in macro, in very general terms: 1) it comprises roughly 0.166% of the land mass in the M.E., 2) it is less than ten miles in width at its narrowest point and 3) is roughly eighty miles in width at its widest point. Such a general or "macro" description is forwarded only to hint at more specific and more detailed strategic factors (e.g., the strategic high ground represented in the Golan Heights, necessitated as a result of the '67 war, a war of aggression initiated by Syria, Jordan and Egypt and other Arab states and a war that essentially reflected the pan-Arab anti-Israel campaign of that era).

It was alanadale who brought up the Huguenots in England. Now you bring up Thailand and Kazakhstan. Several things could be noted to hi-light your incomprehensions, but I'll again limit myself given the forum we're commenting in. Firstly, Thailand is more than twenty (20) times the size of Israel while Kazakhstan is more than one hundred (100) times the size of Israel.

Secondly, due to the murderous and rather vile Islamicist insurgency in the south (beheadings and other forms of systematic terror), Thailand is building a protective barrier, an extensive wall, in order to cordon off the larger Muslim population in the south, a barrier that is both higher and longer than the protective wall Israel has been forced to construct. Were you even aware of that fact? If not, it's no wonder as it doesn't make the "news" cum propaganda machine, it's not endlessly worried over by tranzi orgs and NGOs, EU and UN and ICJ styled moralizers don't endlessly furrow their collective brow over the subject, etc., etc., etc. So if you and others aren't aware of Thailand's protective wall, it's no surprise.

Thirdly, Kazakhstan is an equally ironic choice as it 1) is now central to both U.S. and Russian strategic interests in the region (central Asia) and 2) faces a multitude of Islamicist militancies which it has been forced to deal with in a very elaborate and strategic fashion - at times rather brutally - of its own.

Derek, you and alanadale, together with Wm. Hazlitt and a few others, make quite the team, reminiscent of the Keystone Cops or the Three Stooges. To be as specious and studiously uninformed as you are requires either a great amount of effort or, perhaps, requires no effort whatsoever, requires a certain prescriptive dullity of incomprehension, a certain incurious quality coupled with an enormous conceit.

C. Gee

Alanadale:

You say:"if Israel had not come into being in the way it did involving the ethnic cleansing of some 750,000 Palestinians these Jews would never have been displaced."
The expulsion (not "displacement") of Jews - it was true ethnic cleansing - was not in retaliation for the flight from war (encouraged by the belligerent Arab powers), war-displacement and some opportunistic (against policy) expulsion of Arabs from Israel. It was sheer spite, venting their disgust at the formation of a Jewish state. The Arabs despised the Arab refugees. The Jews settled their own. There was a large population of Arabs remaining in Israel (evidence that there was no policy of ethnic cleansing), but no Jews, or a mere handful, left in the Arab nations (most of which came into being as nations by Western fiat after the Ottoman collapse). Some of the Jewish communities predated the Arabization and Islamification of the territories they inhabited. The Jews had in fact been a presence throughout the middle east, from a time "immemorial" as no Arab could have been. Time "immemorial" is in fact remembered well by Jews and it predates the conquest of the middle east by the Arabs who were indigenous to the Arabian peninsula.

You say about Israel:"Accepting the Partition Plan in 1947 was always a tactical retreat – reculer pour sauter."
Accepting the territory allotted was hardly a tactical retreat - it was a strategic necessity, and huge leap forward! Holding out for more territory in the face of growing sentiment against the formation of a Jewish state would have been a foolish policy. It is the sort of policy one might expect from "Palestinian" Arabs, who have never accepted any territory, always holding out for all of it. Ironically, the strategy of Phases or Stages - accept a little now, whence to grab more - is how the Palestinian leaders try to justify any putative concession, which they are never able actually to make.If only they had accepted Barak's offer on the basis of a tactical retreat...

You say:"I don’t know by the way why I have to 'explain these facts'. The history is pretty well known. The Arabs have offered 78% of the land – well beyond on a population basis Israel was entitled to – but Israel is still not satisfied."

You do not have to explain what you regard as the "facts", except insofar as they bear no relation to "well-known" history. The Arabs are in no position to offer any percentage of what might have been Arab territory under the Partition Plan. They refused it. As for your idea that land allocation should be according to population size - some kind of geographic equity - it is, quite simply, stupid.
Israel is entitled to precisely that territory it can defend. The Palestinians are precisely not entitled to the territory. They demand it, but that does not give them title to it, nor sovereignty over it.

You are profoundly confused as to the legal distinctions between state, nation, sovereignty and property ownership; the political distinctions between democracy and despotism, and the moral distinctions between self-defense and murder.

Please spare us more of your explanations.

alanadale

Gary. Thank you for your thoughtful post.

There is a zero sum game with the kind of settlement the Zionists were embarked upon for despite the best intentions in the world. I dispute your contention that Jewish settlement of Palestine was different from white settler development in South Africa, Southern Rhodesia or Kenya and I think Cairo and Alexandria (for much the same reasons) would have disputed that .’Palestine was the nerve centre of British involvement in the whole Middle East’.

All this doesn’t get away from the fact that people want to run their own affairs no matter how incompetently and the Palestinians were no different.

It’s worth noting what the Peel Commission itself had to say about this. It said: ‘The underlying causes’ of Arab-Jewish hostilities were ‘first the Arabs’ desire for national independence; secondly their antagonism to the establishment of a National Jewish Home in Palestine quickened by their fear of Jewish domination’. It continued: ‘Nor is the conflict in its essence a racial antipathy of Arab towards Jew. There was little or no friction… between Arab and Jew in the rest of the Arab world until the strife in Palestine engendered it’.

Similar kinds of sectarian tension attended economic immigrations into other countries ie the Protestants in Northern Ireland, the Tamils in Sri Lanka, the Chinese in Malaysia and more recently the migration of the Han Chinese into Tibet and Xingjian.

What I can’t get my mind round is your (and others) failure to appreciate that the sectarian tensions between Palestinians and Jews follow a standard pattern (as the Peel Commission report spells out) but instead you (collectively) take the view it has deeper existential roots in Muslim anti-Semitism. You don’t seem to have the intellectual imagination or honesty? to grasp the enormity of the disaster that attended the Palestinians with the ‘naqba’, nor that it was an unavoidable but necessary tragedy if Israel was to survive.

It took them (the Palestinians) a generation to come round to the realisation that Israel was here to stay. The Arab world had been moving to accept Resolution 242 since the early 1970s, the Palestinians bit the bullet in 1989. It’s the Israelis who have been the obstacle to peace since because they have not been satisfied with the consensus view of Resolution 242 that gives them only 78% of the land.

Linda Smith

Alanadale makes great play with the term "Palestinian" to enhance the Arab propaganda lie that only Arab "Palestinians" have a "birthright" and a legitimate claim to dwell in all corners of the land of the British Mandate of Palestine. But the Jews, not the Arabs, were the "Palestinians" of the Mandate:

".....There's a reason why the partition of 1947 calls for the creation of a Jewish state and an Arab state, not a Palestinian state. The term Palestinian, before 1948, referred almost exclusively to Jews. The Palestine exhibit at the 1930 World Fair in New York was a Zionist exhibit, not an Arab exhibit. You could have gotten great Palestinian schnitzel. A genuine Palestinian meal you could have had there - schnitzel." (Michael Oren).

Linda Smith

Alanadale: "It's the Israelies who have been the obstacle to peace since because they have not been satisfied with the consensus view of Resolution 242 that given them only 78% of the land."

I quote briefly from Palestinian Media Watch:

“The Palestinian Authority makes no attempt to educate its people towards peace and coexistence with Israel. On the contrary, from every possible platform it repeatedly rejects Israel’s right to exist, presents the conflict as a religious battle for Islam, depicts the establishment of Israel as an act of imperialism, and perpetuates a picture of the Middle East, both verbally and visually, in which Israel does not exist at all. Israel’s destruction is said to be both inevitable and a Palestinian obligation.”

“The PA promises its people that in the future, the State of Israel will be completely erased and replaced by a State of Palestine. A Fatah member of Palestinian parliament, Najat Abu Bakr, told PA TV in 2008 that the PA’s public position is the old “stages plan”: i.e., to proclaim that what the Palestinians seek is the West Bank and Gaza Strip, while in fact the goal is all of Israel:

“It doesn’t mean that we don’t want the 1948 borders, but in our current political program we say we want a state on the 1967 borders.”

The newest PA schoolbooks teach: “Palestine will be liberated by its men, its women, its young ones and its elderly.” [Arabic Language and the Science of Language, grade 12, p. 44]

A music video playing on PA TV (Fatah) from 2007 – 2009 promises the liberation of “Palestine”, specifying numerous Israeli cities:

“We will liberate the Land of the religions … Palestine is Arab in history and identity… From Jerusalem and Acre, from Haifa and Jericho and Gaza and Ramallah, from Bethlehem and Jaffa, Beer Sheba and Ramle, and from Nablus to the Galilee, from Tiberias to Hebron.” (2007 – 2009)

Najat Abu-Bakr, Fatah Member of Parliament:
“It doesn’t mean that we don’t want the 1948 borders… but our current political program is to say that we want the 1967 borders.” (Source: Palestinian TV (Fatah) 25 August 2008)

plenty more on PMW’s website:http://www.palwatch.org/main.aspx?fi=449

I think it's time you quit lying Alanadale. And purleese don't pull your usual stunt of shooting the messenger by claiming that the link is to a Zionist website.

alanadale

@ C. Gee

Not being an expert on international law (nor I suspect are you) I defer to the experts who are in virtually unanimous agreement as to what Israel under international law is required to do which is quit the occupied territories as part of a negotiated peace.

I must say your claim that ‘Israel is entitled to precisely that territory it can defend. The Palestinians are precisely not entitled to the territory. They demand it, but that does not give them title to it, nor sovereignty over it’ raises eyebrows. It would seem to give the nod to any tin pot dictator to grab what territory he can and drives a coach and horses through the UN Charter.

You add; ‘You are profoundly confused as to …the moral distinctions between self-defense and murder.’

I have alluded in previous posts to Israel’s border wars in the two decades after independence where it purposely kept tensions high as part of a policy of ‘border creep’. These involved raids and bombardments that make Hamas’s shelling of Sderot or Hizbollah’s of the northern front (and leave aside the grotesquely disproportionate response in both cases) seem like a vicarage tea party.

I refer to an account taken from court documents and witness statements of an atrocity that took place in the border village of Kafr Kassim on the eve of Israel’s unprovoked attack on the Suez Canal on the night of October 29 1956 in which 49 Palestinian villagers were murdered by Israeli irregular forces in cold blood for breaking a curfew they had no way of knowing was in force. It was by no means the only or worst atrocity committed against the Palestinians in the decade after Israel’s independence but shows how Israel used terror as a conscious tool of policy to drive Palestinians out of the borders areas.

The unit commander in charge of implementing the curfew, Major Meliki, discussed with his fellow officers the fact that only half an hour’s notice had been given and farmers were returning home from working in the fields. Nevertheless, Meliki gave the order to shoot to kill anyone caught outside once the curfew had come into force. 'There were to be no arrests and if a number of people were killed …. this would facilitate the imposition of the curfew during succeeding nights', one of the witnesses reported him as saying.

The account of the sole survivor of one incident 16-year-old, Hanna Soliman Amer, was particularly harrowing. 'The soldiers brought our car to a halt at the entrance of the village and ordered the two workers and the driver to step down’, she said. ‘Then they told them they were going to be killed. On hearing that the women started crying and screaming, begging the soldiers to spare those poor workers' lives.

‘The soldiers stared at the women for a few moments, as if waiting for their officer to give the order. Then I heard the officer talk over the wireless set, apparently asking his headquarters for instructions regarding the women. The minute the wireless conversation was over, the soldiers took aim at the women and girls, who were 13 in number, and who included pregnant one (in her eighth month of pregnancy) as well as an old woman of sixty and two thirteen-year old girls.’

The complicity of the Israeli establishment in this racist genocidal policy was revealed in the way it dealt with the incident - which only came to light thanks to the courageous investigative work of Uri Avneri - and the utter contempt the judicial process showed for the rule of law in jailing the three main perpetrators to a maximum of three years in detention spent in a sanatorium and the censoring of the brigadier in overall charge to a one piaster fine.

Bear in mind this incident and others like it happened at a time when Israel was not under any particular threat from its neighbours.

Is it any wonder why as one commentator complained: ‘Palestinian culture has become one of hate and murder, egged on by victim mentality’? But it also shows how Israel has created this psychological template to justify its own aggression.

Finally I don’t think any apologist for Israel has the right to lecture anyone about ‘the moral distinctions between self-defense and murder.’

alanadale

Linda Smith writes: ‘Alanadale makes great play with the term "Palestinian" to enhance the Arab propaganda lie that only Arab "Palestinians" have a "birthright" and a legitimate claim to dwell in all corners of the land of the British Mandate of Palestine. But the Jews, not the Arabs, were the "Palestinians" of the Mandate:’

You are profoundly mistaken. I have never ever denied the Jews’ roots in the holy land. The trouble is that there are two competing claims and the question has been for the international community how to reconcile them. Resolution 242 is I have termed it the international community’s Judgement of Solomon but Israel has consistently maintained it doesn’t give it enough. By the way I note your quaint and highly original justification for Israel holding on to East Jerusalem. I don’t think anyone outside the Zionist bunker would begin to take it seriously.

As to quoting from Palestine Media Watch I’m afraid I am going to suggest ‘shooting the messenger’ as you put it. May I humbly suggest you take a break from the depressing tunnel vision of these Zionist websites? The Palestinians are radicalised because very nasty things have happened to them over decades - I would refer you to my penultimate post for a flavour of how nasty. Since the start of the second intifada they have been in a state of belligerence with Israel. When you are in a state of belligerence you say nasty intemperate things about your adversary (you have said some pretty intemperate things about me on this blog) viz British propaganda against the Germans in the First and Second World Wars and indeed some of the fascist and racist things said in the Israeli Knesset under parliamentary privilege. When it comes to inciting genocide you can’t really beat the former chief rabbi Ovadia Yosef’s invocation to God to ‘annihilate’ the Arabs.

Palestinians harbour evil thoughts of Israelis because of the relentlessness, implacability, injustice and downright cruelty of the occupation. End that and you can begin to mend fences.

Derek BLADES

Augustus ( 26 July) wrote "Alanadale- Isn't 'the truth' which you so importantly wish to convey, as Melanie says; the fact that Palestinian rejectionism forms the real root cause of the conflict, and has done so for the best part of a century?” (Augustus’ grammar and punctuation are a bit shaky but I think I understand what he is driving at.)

I suppose that by "Palestinian rejectionism" Augustus is referring to the anger of a people whose homes and farms were seized by Zionist Jews in 1948 and who have since lived in refugee camps where they are continuously humiliated and harassed by settlers and the Israeli Defence Forces and who are periodically bombed and shelled by the latter.

Augustus might be the kind of person who, in that situation, would roll over, lick the victors’ boots and agree to any terms they decide to impose. Personally I hope that I would have the courage to side with what he thinks of as the rejectionist camp. And I believe that most British people would do the same.

Michael B

You've turned into self-caricature and self-parody, alanadale; it's as if you've stepped out of a Yosemite Sam or Wile E. Coyote cartoon feature.

Derek BLADES

In his courteous, if long-winded, reply to me Michael B, (26 July) concludes that "To be as specious and studiously uninformed as you are requires either a great amount of effort or, perhaps, requires no effort whatsoever, requires a certain prescriptive dullity of incomprehension, a certain incurious quality coupled with an enormous conceit."
I am nervous in crossing swords with someone who has an almost Shakespearean command of the English language. But here goes anyway.
My views on the Middle East, like my views on many other trouble spots in the world, are based on visits and conversations with those on both sides of the various disputes. These visits were mostly paid for by international agencies - including some United Nations for which I have the highest regard. Travel is said to broaden the mind and this may be so but it is certainly unsettling. What seems so black and white viewed from afar turns out to have all kinds of graduations when looked at up close. Try some travel yourself Michael B - but start with an open mind and keep your eyes open.

George

@Derek BLADES July 27th, 2009 1:10pm

By Palestinian rejectionism, Augustus is probably referring to such things as the rejection of the 1947 UN partition plan, the three Nos of the Khartoum Resolution of 1967 and Arafat's rejection of Barak's offer at Camp David in 2000.

alanadale

@Derek Blades

Well said of Michael B: a case of being carried away with the exuberance of one’s own verbosity methinks.

alanadale

George writes; ‘By Palestinian rejectionism, Augustus is probably referring to such things as the rejection of the 1947 UN partition plan, the three Nos of the Khartoum Resolution of 1967 and Arafat's rejection of Barak's offer at Camp David in 2000.’

Well what about the more contemporary and relevant seven year ‘No’ to the Arab Peace Plan?

A point that Zionist fail to twig is that none of the Occupied Territories is Israel’s to trade. So while Barak’s offer came close (but not as close as it was made out to be) to a straight land for peace deal and was a deal he was hardly in a position politically to deliver, it still breached the principle and that principle is the only one on which the Arabs will deal.

Linda Smith

In case you missed it on the other thread Obama in Cairo, this is my response to your point on Jerusalem

Alanadale : 2/ ‘Israel will not give the Old City to a Palestinian State’. UN expressly forbids ‘the acquisition of territory by war’. It is by most people’s understanding of the word ‘stolen’.

Resolution 181 decreed Jerusalem to be a corpus separatum under the control of the UN. The Arabs "stole" Jerusalem in 1948, in military conquest and ethnically cleansed its Jews, and then barred worldwide Jewry from visiting the Old City. The Arabs have no legal claim to Jerusalem. The Jews will not allow Jerusalem to fall under the control of Muslims again.

As for your own laboured citations of international law where and when it suits your Israel bashing purposes, the law is an ass. International law is a political football, fabricated and kicked about by politically motivated players for their own self interested ends. Law is an everchanging political human convention. It is no more objective, just or fair than any other human activity. Ask the victims of Nuremberg laws for their opinion of the justice, fairness, or objectivity of "law".

Linda Smith

Alanadale: "when it comes to inciting genocide you can't really beat the former chief rabbi Ovadia Yosef's invocation to God to 'annihilate' the Arabs.

False. The Hamas, Fatah, and Hezbollah Charters, not to mention the exhortations of Ahmedinajad, knock the rabbi's invocation into a cocked hat.

If God was going to intervene in the world, he would have saved the Jews from the Holocaust. But, the Iranians, and their proxies Hamas and Hezbollah do not need God's aid to carry out their threats.

Alanadale, your lack of logic never ceases to amaze me.

gary

allandale - "All this doesn’t get away from the fact that people want to run their own affairs no matter how incompetently and the Palestinians were no different."

After a three eyear enquiry the UN decided in the 1970s that cultural groups who want indendence have no natural right to sovereign statehood. The main votes against cultural group sovereignty were the Soviets and the Arab/Muslim states. There is no legal or moral basis for Palestinians to claim they have a natural right to statehood. If there is, then why don't they just go ahead and be done with it.

allandale - "... but instead you (collectively) take the view it has deeper existential roots in Muslim anti-Semitism."

I didn't mention or imply anything related to antisemitism, but seeing you wish to persue that - The natural order of the cosmos in Muslim view is that Muslims naturally dominate Jews and others. A Jewish state with Muslim subjects, and a Jewish state which thrashes Muslims in war is a cosmic travesty, an obvious sign that the world is upside-down and evil has gained the upper hand on earth. That's a theology about how the universe works that places Jews in league with the ultimate evil. That's quite simply antisemitic.

Now ... do you want to get back to history so you can pretend to keep a limit on how foolish your ideas appear. Or do you want to attempt a philosophical angle.

Down under, here in Australia, the indigeneous people prove their right to land by displaying their continuing traditions and tales related to the area. Similar in Canada. It's become our contemporary western way of accepting and legally acknowledgeing prior cultural ties to land. Palestinians and Arabs use Jewish texts and borrowed tales to do the same. They say Jesus (the Jew) was a Palestinian. They speak about Noah and other biblical characters as though they didn't pinched them from Jewish traditions. The indigeneous tales and traditions of The Land are the Jewish traditions. Both Christians and Muslims acknowledge the Jewish relationship with The Land by imagining they have usurped the Jewish traditions to give foundation to their own religious cultures.

Al Quods = ha Kadash. Their name for Jerusalem is the Arab version of one of the many Hebrew names. The dreamtime horse Barak = Baruch, the blessed, in Hebrew of course, taking Mohammed to visit all those Jewish people of The Book. Can you tell any tale from Muslim traditions that relates Muslims to The Land of Palestine which has no prior association in Jewish traditions? That's a challange that most with your type of attitude to Jews and Arabs in Palestine reckon is not worth persuing, probably because it wrecks your point of view.

gary

allandale - "A point that Zionist fail to twig is that none of the Occupied Territories is Israel’s to trade."

If Israel has no right to it, and Palestinians have an indisputable right, then why don't they just declare it their state, and claim that Israelis are invaders.

Your attempt at a simplistic view doesn't correlate with the real world too well. Try to invent another legal fantasy. This one doesn't work.

alanadale

@Linda Smith

If as you say ‘the law is an ass. International law is a political football, fabricated and kicked about by politically motivated players for their own self interested ends’ you seem to be joining in the game with gusto labouring so mightily to inform us that Resolution 181’s reference to the creation of an Arab and a Jewish state in Palestine sanctifies Israel describing itself as a state of the Jewish people while conveniently glossing over its extraordinarily generous allocation of 52% of the territory to the Jews which looks embarrassingly modest in the light of the 78% eventually awarded and which is considered so inadequate now. And what are we to make if we go back to a 1948 legal template of pesky UNGA 194 and its talk of granting refugees the right of return?

But do I detect a chink of light? In magisterially declaring that: ‘The Arabs have no legal claim to Jerusalem’, and: ‘’The Jews will not allow Jerusalem to fall under the control of Muslims again,’ you reveal an unwonted respect for UNGA 181 (its division of Palestine into Arab and Jewish states excepted) decreeing ‘Jerusalem to be a corpus separatum under the control of the UN’. Does this mean Israel would accept a UN administered Jerusalem? That would be progress indeed.

Michael B

Derek BLADES,

You didn't "cross swords" with me, you avoided doing so, while admiring yourself in the process.

alanadale

@gary

I apologise for attributing to you views on anti Semitism that you subsequently have been quite content to own.

I simply quoted the Peel Commission to show that from a practical quotidian perspective (as opposed to high theology which I’m not qualified to discuss and dare I presume neither are you) there was no animus between Arab and Jews until Jewish immigration to Palestine accelerated.

As to your claim for Jewish cultural seniority to justify a superior claim to the land I’m left flummoxed and speechless. Preposterous is the only word that comes to mind.

Now to the sensible part of your post. You write ‘There is no legal or moral basis for Palestinians to claim they have a natural right to statehood. If there is, then why don't they just go ahead and be done with it.’

Well, they have and a fair number of countries have recognised Palestine. But against the implacable opposition of the US and its Security Council veto the Palestinians very quickly came up against a brick wall.

As to the Palestinians’ right to their own state I refer you to my July 25th post at 10.39 am.

‘The first article of the 1920 San Remo Conference Resolution, which prepared the ground for the Mandate, stressed that it would only be acceptable provided ‘the rights hitherto enjoyed by the non-Jewish communities in Palestine’ were not surrendered. The principle that Arab land was to be held in trust as prescribed by Article 22 of the League of Nations Charter (which outlines the Mandate’s mission to safeguard the interests of native populations until such time as they were ready and able to govern themselves) remained paramount. And that is the position today and why with the emergence of a national political identity the Palestinians lay claim to the birthright kept in trust for them by the League of Nations Mandate and the UN and implemented by Resolution 242.’

Augustus

From Wikipedia:-
"Moral equivalence: The purveyors of the device usually start by believing their side is by definition morally superior by who they are, not by what they do. they then use selective history to cast the situation as a big-picture struggle against an evil power. This evil could be totalitarianism, or genocidal policies, or some other ostentatious villainy. They then justify the atrocities of their own side by claiming it to be a lesser evil compared to
allowing the evil power to have its own way - usually culminating in genocide or mass enslavement. These atrocities in this way become acts of good,
not evil."

Israel, as a democracy surrounded by rogue regimes, has to balance its inherent abhorrence of violence with the violent zeal of the rogue regimes it is surrounded by. Israel cannot be expected to act like Sweden when its neighbours are neither Norway or Finland. Every Palestinian innocent life lost is a tragic undesired outcome for the Israeli side, whereas the loss of Israeli civilian life is the aim rather than an incidental outcome for Hamas. In the conflict between Hamas and Israel there is simply no moral equivalence. To suggest that there is is only doublespeak.
"Democracies don't attack each other", while rogue regimes use war as a mechanism to maintain their illegitimate hold on power.

alanadale

Augustus writes: ‘Israel, as a democracy surrounded by rogue regimes, has to balance its inherent abhorrence of violence with the violent zeal of the rogue regimes it is surrounded by.

You clearly haven’t read my account of the massacre at Kafr Kassim in which 49 Palestinians were murdered in cold blood and the Israeli judiciary’s response to it which bore all the hallmarks of the actions of a racist gangster state.

It simply will not wash to keep presenting Israel as the hapless victim of the violence of neighbouring rogue regimes.

Linda Smith

I am posting this statement made by Ben-Gurion in an article published in 1918 in the Yiddish-language newspaper "Yiddishe Kemper" to quash Alanadale's anti-Zionist lies:

"Eretz Israel is not an empty country ... West of Jordan alone houses three quarter of a million people. On no account must we injure the rights of the inhabitants. Only "Ghetto Dreamers" like Zangwill can imagine that Eretz Israel will be given to the Jews with the added right of dispossessing the current inhabitants of the country. This is not the mission of Zionism. Had Zionism to aspire to inherit the place of these inhabitants—it would be nothing but a dangerous utopia and an empty, damaging and reactionary dream … Not to take from others—but to build the ruins. [We claim] no rights on our past—but on our future. Not the preservation of historic inheritance—but the creation of new national assets—this is the core claim and right of the Hebrew nation in its country. "

Linda Smith

For Alanadale who never seizes to slander Zionists as thieves:

Chaim Weizmann in Ha'aretz (Tel Aviv) 15 Dec 1919 as reprinted in Devarim, vol.1,p.129:

"If indeed there is among the Arabs a national movement, we must relate to it with the utmost seriousness ... The Arabs are concerned about two issues: 1. The Jews will soon come in their millions and conquer the country and chase out the Arabs ... Responsible Zionists never said and never wished such things. 2. There is no place in Eretz Israel for a large number of inhabitants. This is total ignorance. It is enough to notice what is happening now in Tunis, Tangier, and California to realize that there is a vast space here for a great work of many Jews, without touching even one Arab."

gary

allandale - "I apologise for attributing to you views on anti Semitism that you subsequently have been quite content to own."

That's a slight-handed way to discount numerous Muslim statements about their theological status with respect to other creeds. May I compliment you on your sophistry in constructing a grammaticaly confusing sentence.

allandale - "I simply quoted the Peel Commission to show that from a practical quotidian perspective (as opposed to high theology which I’m not qualified to discuss and dare I presume neither are you) there was no animus between Arab and Jews until Jewish immigration to Palestine accelerated."

Utter rubbish. As one example, the British trade delegate in Jerusalem reported in the 1860s a successful case where Muslims in court declared they had always had the right to chuck rocks at Jews. There is a long recorded history of Jewish sufferance under Muslim rule in Palestine and all other Arab/Muslim territories.

allandale - "As to your claim for Jewish cultural seniority to justify a superior claim to the land I’m left flummoxed and speechless. Preposterous is the only word that comes to mind."

Perhaps you don't live in a country where indigeneous land rights are on the public agenda and take part in discussions about national identity. I have no problem in accepting your being "left flummoxed and speechless" as an expression of ignorance about these sort of issues.

allandale - "Now to the sensible part of your post. You write ‘There is no legal or moral basis for Palestinians to claim they have a natural right to statehood. If there is, then why don't they just go ahead and be done with it.’ Well, they have and a fair number of countries have recognised Palestine."

Sensible? - I guess that means you may have found something where you believe you've discovered a counter argument. The Olympic Games has accepted Palestinians. I don't know if that strange political song festival called Eurovision has accepted them. The World Cup is possibly the most important international organisation which has accepted Palestine as a country. The Arab League hasn't accepted them as a sovereign state. That's odd.

allandale - "But against the implacable opposition of the US and its Security Council veto the Palestinians very quickly came up against a brick wall."

The UN Charter is very specific about the absence of its jurisdiction to create or dismantle states. All they can do is accept or not an existant state as a member of the UN. They haven't accepted Taiwan, and the Vatican hasn't applied. Switzerland wasn't a member until a few years ago. None of these states' membership or not with the UN determined whether they were a real sovereign state or not.

allandale - "‘The first article of the 1920 San Remo Conference Resolution, which prepared the ground for the Mandate, stressed that it would only be acceptable provided ‘the rights hitherto enjoyed by the non-Jewish communities in Palestine’ were not surrendered."

The population of Palestine, including Christian, Jews, Muslims, etc, had no state rights before 1920. They were a few small provinces of Syria governed from Damascus. Non-Jews have continued their absence of sovereign rights just as the San Remo Conference insisted they should.

allandale -"The principle that Arab land was to be held in trust as prescribed by Article 22 of the League of Nations Charter (which outlines the Mandate’s mission to safeguard the interests of native populations until such time as they were ready and able to govern themselves) remained paramount."

.... with an explicit exception for the Jewish relationship with Palestine. And Jews are a native population of Palestine.

allandale -"And that is the position today and why with the emergence of a national political identity the Palestinians lay claim to the birthright kept in trust for them by the League of Nations Mandate and the UN and implemented by Resolution 242.’"

Whoops - Missed again. There's no mention of Palestinians by name, nor Arabs in that territory, in UN Resolution 242.

alanadale

Linda Smith writes: ‘For Alanadale who never seizes to slander Zionists as thieves.’

I have never denied that Zionism has a benign side and that there have been Zionists who sincerely believed it was possible to build the New Jerusalem in Israel through the cooperation of Arab and Jew. The problem is as I have already explained this view does not correspond with human nature. Israelis would defend their country from interlopers no matter how well meaning and inclusive intent on installing an alien culture.

Israel could not have been created without fighting for it. But it’s what Israelis have done since acquiring their state that is the point of contention. Their failure to accept a settlement that by an objective standard is extremely generous demeans the sacrifice of the dispossessed.

We have heard far too much about the benign side of Zionism and not enough about its dark side. That dark side was necessary for the creation of the state. It has never been properly owned up to and consequently continues to inform too many aspects of Israel’s political life as it does the thoroughly malign power of the Zionist propaganda machine.

If you wish to take this debate further you might address some of the issues raised in the Kafr Kassim massacre I have recounted. Because it has much to do with how Israel conducts it affairs with its subject Palestinians today and there is much, much worse where it came from.

George

Alanadale,

Why the obsession with the Kafr Kassim massacre? Nobody in Israel would deny that it is a huge blot on Israel's history and that Israel tried to make amends far too late. However, it is an isolated incident and it could never happen in the Israel of 2009. Israel has moved on, to the extent that an Arab-Israeli soccer player born in Kafr Kassim (Walid Badir) played 74 times for the Israeli national team.

Wm. Hazlitt

Linda Smith, You have repeated some assertions (again) which appear to be inconsistent. You say that there is no such thing as right and wrong in international affairs: the strong dictate what is law and what is not. You also say that Israel/Zionists are right and Arabs/anti-Zionists are wrong. In other words, if the tables were turned and the Palestinian Arabs were the strong who dictate the law, they would still be wrong and the Zionists right. Have I misrepresented what you have said? If not, how do you square the two assertions?

alanadale

@Gary

Thank you again for your interesting response, but I must take issue that my ‘attributing to you views on anti Semitism that you subsequently have been quite content to own." is grammatically confusing. I think it’s rather elegant. May I also respectfully observe that at times you seem to stray from the main point (as I see it) of my post which was your challenge to the right of the Palestinians to a state.

1/ The Peel Commission and ‘dhimmitude’.

May I say first that you seem to have picked up Linda Smith’s bad habits and started cherry picking, taking bits of the Peel Commission that suit your case and dismissing those bits that don’t? Perhaps the authors were rabid anti Semites or just culturally tone deaf. It’s possible and if so I have to concede but that would compromise the whole of the report.

Now to the vexed question of ‘dhimmitude’. No one doubts that in Muslim societies Christians and Jews were second class citizens. But then blacks have been second class citizens in the US until very recently and Arab Israelis continue to be in Israel today. But at no time did Muslim discrimination of the Jews begin to approach the rabid ‘Christ killers’ anti Semitism Jews experienced in Western Christendom. The doyen of Muslim anti Semitism (are rather overblown term) Bernard Lewis has admitted as much.

But may I refer you to the generally acknowledged queen of ‘dhimmitude’, Bat Ye’or who has made it her life’s work to chronicle the persecution of the Jews in Muslim countries.

In her Wikipidia profile she is quoted as saying of her expulsion from Egypt after the Suez Campaign that she ‘had witnessed the destruction, in a few short years, of a vibrant Jewish community living in Egypt for over 2,600 years’.

Now if the persecution of the Jews had been as bad as she paints – dhimmitude comes from the Arabic word dhimm meaning oppression – the Jewish community in Egypt would not have been ‘vibrant’.

2/ As to recognition of the state of Palestine.

After the declaration of Palestinian independence in Algiers on November 15 1988 UNGA adopted a resolution backed by 104 states and opposed by two (the usual suspects) with 44 abstentions led by the European powers which in Mitterand’s words considered there were significant degrees between recognition and non recognition.

Subsequently 89 states, including of course all members of the Arab League and Brazil (they have ambassadors), Russia, India and China, recognized the ‘State of Palestine’. I’m slightly bemused by your reference to the Arab League not accepting Palestine as a ‘sovereign state’.

As you say the UN Charter is very specific about the absence of its jurisdiction to create or dismantle states. Palestine has not been accepted into the UN because of the US veto in the same way Taiwan hasn’t been because of the Chinese veto.

In your discussion on San Remo et al you appear to misunderstand the concept of a Mandate which is to hold territory in trust until the indigenous population is competent to run its own affairs. The San Remo preamble was made in the context of the earlier and separate commitment made in the Balfour Declaration to establish ‘a Jewish home in Palestine’ and the danger this posed to the rights of the indigenous populations. The fact that those rights were recognized from the outset in the way they were gives the lie to the idea that the Palestinians were not regarded as a national group in the same way as the Lebanese or the Syrians and that they would not in time acquire a state of their own.

alanadale

George writes: Why the obsession with the Kafr Kassim massacre? Nobody in Israel would deny that it is a huge blot on Israel's history and that Israel tried to make amends far too late. However, it is an isolated incident..’

No, George, it was not. There are several other examples of how in the decade after Israel’s independence the Israelis being under very little threat themselves used terror as a tool of policy to clear the Palestinians from the borders and expand their frontiers. If you wish me to go into further details I’d be quite happy to.

But back to Kafr Kassim. The real issue is not that it took place appalling as it was by any stretch of the imagination – it was for instance far worse than the Maalot school massacre in 1974 because the Jewish irregulars were under no threat, had total control of the situation, actually rang back to base to confirm their orders, and murdered women and children in cold blood basicaly 'pour encourager les autres' – but the official response to the massacre was far more disgraceful than space permitted to relate.

Now this has real relevance to what is happening today. Kafr Kassim happened at a time when Israel’s propaganda machine was still very wet behind the ears and the truth came out with relative ease, thanks to courageous reporting by Uri Avneri. It’s learnt a thing or two since, like barring foreign journalists from entering Gaza to provide independence evidence of Israeli atrocities, for if independent evidence can not be provided who is to say those atrocities occurred?

I would just point you to the battle the parents of Timothy Hurndall had in getting justice for their son. How many Palestinian Timothy Hurndalls have there been without recourse to the most rudimentary justice? And there is the disgusting suggestion bruited that the IDF only delivered up the Israeli scout, who killed Hurndall - finally- because he was Arab. Had he been Jewish they would have stood their ground.

Linda Smith

Alanadale: you write absolute tosh and expect to be taken seriously.

The Jews did not seek to build a New Jerusalem, that is a Christian concept. The Jews want perpetual and unrestricted access to their Old City of Jerusalem.

"Israelies would defend their country from interlopers no matter how well meaning and inclusive intent on installing an alien culture".

"Palestine" was not a country. Jews were not interlopers in the middle East. Judaism is not an alien culture in the middle East.

"Israel could not have been created without fighting for it."
Your statement acknowledges that you know the truth is that Islamic ideology and law forbids the surrender of land conquered in jihad to the infidel Jews, or to give them equal status with Muslims. It's all explained in the Hamas Charter, the PLO/Fatah Charter, the Cairo Declaration of Human Rights in Islam, etc.

"Their failure to accept a settlement that by an objective standard is extremely generous demeans the sacrifice of the dispossessed."

Are you expecting readers hear to believe you are "objective"! Pull the other one, its got bells on it!

Making the Old City of Jerusalem the capital of a Palestinian State demeans the sacrifice of all those evicted by the Arabs in 1948 and all those massacred by the Arabs trying to defend the it. Your so-called "generous settlement" ignores the sacrifice of the 850,000 Jewish refugees from Arab lands, dispossessed of land 4 times the area of Israel.

"We have heard far to much about the benign side of Zionism and not enough about its dark side."

We hear nothing from you about the dark side of Islam - only your lies that the "Palestinian" Muslims in power will trade land for peace. Like all Muslim/Arab propagandists you invert the truth, but you go even further and delete the history and tenets of Islam from your arguments. Islam was an alien culture foisted on the people of the middle East by invading Arabs who subjugated and persecuted the Jews and all non-Muslims as a religious Islamic imperative. That is the crux of the Muslim Arab/Jewish Israeli conflict.

Linda Smith

Wm Hazlitt falsely wrote of me:
"You also say that Israel/Zionists are right and Arabs/Anti-Zionists are wrong."

Yes, Wm Hazlitt, you certainly misrepresent what I say. I do not argue in terms of right and wrong. I argue in terms of truth.

I say that to discuss the Jewish/Arab conflict omitting discussion of the Islamic religious component is intellectually bankrupt, dishonest and futile.

Linda Smith

Wm Hazlitt: wrote "You have repeated some assertions (again) which appear to be inconsistent."

Your comment of 28 July 12:43 (deliberately?) misquotes me and as a result is conceptually confused. To add to your (deliberate?) confusion, you incorrectly substituted the moral terms "right" and "wrong" for the words "true" and "false" which apply to statements of fact.

Right and wrong are moral concepts. A statement of fact is either true or false.

Your statement "You also say that Israel/Zionists are right Arab/anti-Zionists are wrong.", is false.

The Zionist quotes I posted establish that the antiZionist accusations that Zionist Jews intended to "dispossess" Arabs - that are frequently posted on these threads by Arab apologists - are false.

Linda Smith

Alanadale defends dhimmitude by misrepresenting Bat Ye'or's work. Alanadale wrote:

"Now if the persecution of the Jews had been as bad as she paints – dhimmitude comes from the Arabic word dhimm meaning oppression – the Jewish community in Egypt would not have been ‘vibrant’."

The Jewish communities in the Middle East who were fortunate to live in countries enjoying European "imperialism" were protected from their Muslim/Arab oppressors until the Arabs kicked out the Europeans and the Jews with them in the 1950's and 60's.
These are Bat Ye'or's words quoted from her book Islam and Dhimmitude which can be read online:

"It would be superfluous here to describe in detail the wave of violence which swept through the whole Near East and Maghreb. Xenophobia revived the old traditions of the dhimma, camouflaged by terms such as Arab nationalism and socialism. The Arab dhimma replaced the Islamic dhimma. The Arab-Israeli conflict released a latent hatred, formerly held in check by the Western colonial administration. Sporadic, like a recurrent fever, it worsened in the 1950s and the 1960s awakening the tradition among the populace to plunder and kill the dhimmis with impunity. Some governments - in Tunisia and Morocco - strove to control popular fanaticism, but in Libya, Syria, Egypt, and Iraq it was the authorities who tolerated, even encouraged, the violence against innocent civilians by mobs inflamed with widespread calls to murder. The Arab nationalists who released these collective passions spoke the same language of hatred and contempt as in past centuries."

"The self-appointed apologists for this oppressive system might themselves be taxed with anti-Jewish and anti-Christian racism or bias."

Wm. Hazlitt

Linda Smith, I am confused by your response and would appreciate clarification.

I have read your comments over a number of months. I have tried here to summarize a couple of recurrent themes.

You have chided me and others for talking about international law and told us that the law is simply what the strong say it is (a plausible enough doctrine).

You have also been an advocate of Zionism and the state of Israel. On every topic relating to Zionism and Israel you have defended the position that the Zionists/supporters of Israel are right in what they assert and what they do and the anti-Zionists/critics of Israel are wrong. (Not obviously an unreasonable position to take.)

This is not, I grant you, a verbatim quote from any one comment, but still I am not clear how it misrepresents you.

If I say, for example, that you think Israel right to assert that the settlements in Judea and Samaria are not illegal, what difference does it make if you insist instead that what you think is that Israel asserts that the settlements are not illegal and what Israel asserts is true? - The same question arises: what makes Israel right in its assertion, or what is it that makes its assertion true?

If we then turn back to your dictum about the law, and apply it to this case, then the answer is that Israel is right in what it asserts/ Israel's assertion is true because Israel is strong.

I have the distinct impression from what you say and the moral fervour with which you say it that you want Israel's right/truth to come to something more than brute force - which again is perfectly reasonable. So, as I said, I detect an inconsistency or tension between two of your recurrent themes.

Things are not made clearer by your comments on truth.

You have said in earlier discussions that there is only "True within a given frame of reference". Yet you have also proclaimed that what you seek is Truth (which seems to require something less relative if it is to be worthwhile).

Is what Israel asserts "true within a given frame of reference" (perhaps the frame of reference of someone who believes that what Israel asserts is true by definition). Or is what Israel asserts true absolutely? If true absolutely, the question still arises, What makes it true? Why is it true that the settlements are not illegal?

alanadale

@Linda Smith

It is becoming difficult to take your mealy mouthed solipsism seriously. You aren’t interested in establishing a sense of proportion to get to the truth. Instead you chase the ‘truth’ in arguments that have as much merit as determining how many angels you can fit on the tip of a pin, usually to show that Jews have a God given right to the whole of Palestine and especially Jerusalem and lamenting their persecution by those who would stand in their way.

I’m sorry Linda but I think most people would consider it ‘unnatural’ to expect people to give up their homes without resistance. In fact the UN Charter gives them express permission to defend themselves. Now I don’t think most people are so thick as not to appreciate and sometimes sympathise with the Zionists’ point of view; they just think it’s one sided. Zionists seem to have a congenital inability to put themselves into anyone else’s shoes. So, many of your positions seem to boil down to accusing those who do not see the world through the prism of Zionist interests of anti Semitism.

1/ ‘Your statement acknowledges that you know the truth is that Islamic ideology and law forbids the surrender of land conquered in jihad to the infidel Jews, or to give them equal status with Muslims.’

Muslims have retreated from Christian lands from Spain and the Balkans. It’s nonsense to suggest that they can’t give up land; it’s the Zionists who are incapable of giving up land they have acquired by fair means or foul. To that extent they are in good company with Osama bin Laden who wants to re-establish the Caliphate.

2/ ‘Making the Old City of Jerusalem the capital of a Palestinian State demeans the sacrifice of all those evicted by the Arabs in 1948 and all those massacred by the Arabs trying to defend the it. Your so-called "generous settlement" ignores the sacrifice of the 850,000 Jewish refugees from Arab lands, dispossessed of land 4 times the area of Israel.

I have absolutely no idea how you arrived at this tortured analysis. My personal preference is for Jerusalem to be internationalised; you seem to consider it a cultural crime for Muslims to have anything to do with it. As for your grotesque characterisation of ‘those massacred by the Arabs trying to defend it’ if you consider body counts, the number of Jewish civilians killed in 1948 was a fraction of the Arab civilians killed.

The 1947 Partition Plan allocating 52% (some say 56%) of Mandatory Palestine to the Jews was inequitably generous given they made up a third of population

I pass over your ‘Your so-called "generous settlement" ignores the sacrifice of the 850,000 Jewish refugees from Arab lands, dispossessed of land 4 times the area of Israel’ as unworthy of comment beyond noting for all the traumas Bat Ye’or and her fellow refugees experienced being thrown out of Egypt in 1956 it was as nothing to what the Palestinians went through in losing loved ones killed in the ‘naqba’. And I have this to say of Bat Ye’or ‘witness[ing] the destruction, in a few short years, of a vibrant Jewish community living in Egypt for over 2,600 years’ that if she meant it had only enjoyed a brief flowering after millennia of oppression it is not what she wrote.

3/ ‘We hear nothing from you about the dark side of Islam - only your lies that the "Palestinian" Muslims in power will trade land for peace.’

I do talk about the dark side of Islam. It is just that this blog is so obsessed with it that the real stumbling block to resolving the Israel Palestine conflict - the dark side of Zionism and its quest for land - is conveniently obscured. Palestinian terrorism did not emerge out of a vacuum. It emerged out of the institutionalised terrorism Israel adopted to expand its borders in the decade after independence. It is why I ask you to address the issues raised in the Kafr Kassim massacre. It equates the Jewish irregulars with the Jan Jawid, worse than the Jan Jawid who are no more than ignorant thugs because the nice Jewish boys who shot defenceless Palestinian women and children were not supposed to be thugs. And what of the Jewish officer, who gave the order to shoot to kill to facilitate the future management of the curfew, couldn’t he have stepped out of the Waffen SS? Or of the Israeli judicial system that knowingly failed to administer the most rudimentary justice? Kafr Kassim was no aberration.

Why will you not talk about the dark side of Zionism and its insatiable lust for land?

George

Alanadale,

Would it be correct and fair to sum up your long posts to say that you believe that Israel has an unquenchable, almost colonial, thirst for land and one of her major tools to achieving this aim is the use of state-authorised terrorism?

Wm. Hazlitt

Linda Smith, On your latest re-run of one of the historical disputes: It is true that many Jewish settlers wanted to live in peace with the local population, and many others wanted to live in peaceful segregation from the local population. It is also true that there were Zionists who advocated a unitary, truly democratic, secular state, and Zionists who acknowledged that the local population had the same rights as anyone else. However, it is also true that many of the main figures in Zionism, those who influenced what actually happened, at one time or another, more often in private than in public, said that the local population was a problem best solved by "transfer" - Herzl, Weizman, Zangwill, Jabotinsky, Ben Gurion, and many more. Ben Gurion is a good example. He can be quoted as espousing just about every possible position on how to treat the local population. It is possible to trace the evolution of his views over time, although it is also clear that he said different things to different audiences, and different things in private and in public. He was a skilled politician - he could persuade an audience that they had heard what they wanted to hear; he could produce formulations that were not lies but not ingenuous; he could obfuscate; he could be a tactical pragmatist, while maintaining a long-term strategy to achieve a long-term goal. He clearly and repeatedly advocated "transfer".

Linda Smith

No time to respond to all your comments now. Just to say again, as I have said before, that the BRITISH advocated Arab transfer in the Peel Report of 1937. Transfer, which may not appeal to Wm Hazlitt's politically correct modern ears was de rigeur in the 20th century. Transfer of population was carried out to resolve the Greek/Turkish problem in the 1920s. The Germans were transferred out of the Sudetenland in the 1940s. ditto Hindu transfer out of Muslim Pakistan in 1948. Cyprus remains partitioned between the Greek Christians and Turkish Muslims of Cyprus.

Partition and population transfer of the Arabs was advocated by the British as the only way to protect the Jews from the Arab murderous attacks.

Wm Hazlitt, arch distorter and antiZionist, seeks to put the cart before the horse in order to villify Zionists.

Linda Smith

Alanadale: dhimmification is legalised discrimination. It is practised in Arab states today, Saudi Arabia springs to mind. Why do you defend the principle of dhimmification instead of condemning it out of hand?

Back soon. Alanadale's hypocrisy is giving me a headache.

Linda Smith

Just noticed another of Wm Hazlitt's

However, it is also true that many of the main figures in Zionism, those who influenced what actually happened, at one time or another, more often in private than in public, said that the local population was a problem best solved by "transfer".

If this was said "more often in private" how do you know it was said? Were you were a fly on the wall?

Trying to decipher Wm Hazlitt's earlier philosophical? quagmire was headbanging enough, but, for stupidity, this one really takes the biscuit.

I really must go and have a lie down with a cold flannel over my forehead.

Wm. Hazlitt

Linda Smith, Doh! Private correspondance, pivate memoranda, private diaries, records of private conversations...You know, the sort of things historians use all the time.

Wm. Hazlitt

Linda Smith, I am not sure what you are saying: is it that "Transfer" was quite the thing last century, so it was quite alright for Zionists to advocate it, and indeed to put it into practice?

alanadale

George writes; ‘Would it be correct and fair to sum up your long posts to say that you believe that Israel has an unquenchable, almost colonial, thirst for land and one of her major tools to achieving this aim is the use of state-authorised terrorism?’

My aim throughout has been to shift the focus of the debate and to redress the balance of righteous and moral indignation whipped up by Melanie Philipps and her neo conservative Zionist fellow travellers against the ‘existential threat’ of Islamo-Fascisim in order to paint Israel as the innocent victim of terrorism and thereby obscure its theft of Palestinian lands. It should be noted she starts from the presumption of Israel’s God given right to Palestine so ‘theft’ is not a word in her lexicon, rather, anyone who resists by violent means Israel’s reclamation of its birthright is itself guilty of terrorism. I also wished to illustrate that when it comes to dishing out terror the Zionists could and can be every bit as ruthless as the next man, indeed more so, so it would be advisable for apologists for Zion to curb their moral indignation and desist from moral lectures.

Now Ben Gurion had the intellectual honesty to admit (and I believe so did Dayan) that if they had been in the Palestinians’ position they would have done the same. Equally most people understand the Zionists’ position even if they don’t necessarily agree with it. The question is how to reconcile the competing claims.

The 1947 Partition Plan allocating at least 52% of Mandatory Palestine to the Jews was inequitably generous to them given they made up a third of population. It follows that if 52% was inequitably generous 78% was outrageously so - although tempered in fairness by the absorption of a million Arabs. But nearly four fifths of Palestine doesn’t seem to satisfy hard core Zionists, who seem to hold the balance of power in Israel, because they keep on expanding settlements. It therefore makes one wonder if Israel does indeed have ‘an unquenchable, almost colonial, thirst for land’ and in acquiring and holding it has had to adopt ‘state-authorised terrorism’.

George

Alanadale,

You should run for parliament. I asked you a question which required an answer of one word, either "yes" or "no". Instead I got a lecture replete with inaccuracies and at the end of it, you still hadn't answered the question. Indeed, the stuff of which politicians are made!

Augustus

alanadale writes: "My aim has throughout has been to shift the focus of the debate and to redress the balance of righteous and moral indignation whipped up by Melanie Philipps".

Why?????

The only task you seem to be setting yourself is to strengthen the link between the radical Western left and the representatives of Islamic fundamentalism. Perhaps for people like you Israel is just in the way.

alanadale

@George

I purposely included the steps by which I arrived at the conclusion yes, Israel through its actions appears to have ‘an unquenchable, almost colonial, thirst for land’ and in acquiring and holding it has adopted ‘state-authorised terrorism’ to forestall precisely the kind of response you have made.

If you think the reasoning behind my conclusion is faulty, by all means put me straight.

alanadale

Augustus writes: The only task you seem to be setting yourself is to strengthen the link between the radical Western left and the representatives of Islamic fundamentalism. Perhaps for people like you Israel is just in the way.

Oh come on Augustus. You can do better than that: Israel in the way of what? It’s just that its behaviour vis a vis failing to give up the settlements deeply undermines the fight against Islamic extremism.

By the way you guys don’t seem to have heeded Jonathan Sachs’ admonition for Jews to stop feeling victimised.

Augustus

alanadale- You talk about Israel failing to give up the settlements. You surely must know that all this talk about a two-state solution involving Palestinian refugees living on the settlements land is nonsense. Those settlements continue to grow. Where there is empty land one day, the next day you see buildings. And if the Palestinian contractors pulled out, the Israeli contractors (who pay three times as much), if they can't get Palestinian workers, will simply employ workers from Thailand, or China, or Turkey, or wherever. Things have moved on since the first Intifada, and colonization issues by political groups plays second fiddle to bread on the table for Palestinians in the West Bank.

Linda Smith

Wm Hazlitt: you appear to be semantically challenged. You persistently entreat me to make moral judgements, asking me is such and such an action morally "right" or "wrong".

I have told you that my purpose here is to seek the truth. I cannot find truth in statements that are logically false and/or built on false or insufficient premises. Let us take, for example. Alanadale's statement:

"My personal preference is for Jerusalem to be internationalised; you seem to consider it a cultural crime for Muslims to have anything to do with it."

Alanadale's statement "you seem to consider it a cultural crime for Muslims to have anything to do with it" is inconsistent with what I have said. I have stated the Israeli position that Jews will not allow Muslims to control the Jewish religious sites of the Old City of Jerusalem, the reasons being that in 1948 Muslims evicted the Jewish residents from East Jerusalem and barred worldwide Jewry from visiting East Jerusalem during the period it was under Muslim control until 1967. Jewish religious sites have been damaged and destroyed under Muslim control. I would add that under Israeli rule, all Muslim and Christian sites have been preserved and made accessible to all faiths.

The Arab Peace Plan requires the Old City of Jerusalem to become the capital of a Palestinian state.
Alanadale repeatedly asserts that the Arab Peace Plan is fair and equitable and generous to Israel. Why should Alanadale prefer Jerusalem to be internationalised if he believes the Arab Peace Plan is fair to Israel? Is Alanadale being honest when he asserts the Arab Peace Plan is fair to Israel and berates Israel for not accepting it?

What is Alanadale's motive for dishonesty? He now admits: "my aim has throughout has been to shift the focus of the debate " (sic) He admits his agenda is to prove "Israel through its actions appears to have 'an unquenchable, almost colonial, thirst for land' and in acquiring and holding it has adopted 'state-authorized terrorism'

Alanadale finds excuses for every Muslim Arab action and atrocity against Jews and Israel. He falsely asserts "I do talk about the dark side of Islam" If Alanadale finds himself able to prosecute his agenda only by omitting the context of Islam and dhimmification, and by distorting the truth and lying, then clearly his thesis is false.

alanadale

Augustus writes:. ‘Things have moved on since the first Intifada, and colonization issues by political groups plays second fiddle to bread on the table for Palestinians in the West Bank.’

You should point out too that a lot of the bread on Israeli tables is provided by ever indulgent ever over indulgent Uncle Sam.

You could not be more profoundly wrong. The only deal on the table is Resolution 242 and everyone but the US and Israel agrees; and now the US which is going to be under extreme economic stress in the coming five years is cracking.

You can’t or don’t want to get it into your head that the settlements, ALL the settlements are illegal. That is the starting point of the negotiations. Without Uncle Sam shielding it from the cold winds of this reality; Israel is going to experience a rude awakening.

alanadale

Linda Smith writes: ‘What is Alanadale's motive for dishonesty? He now admits: "my aim has throughout has been to shift the focus of the debate " (sic) He admits his agenda is to prove "Israel through its actions appears to have 'an unquenchable, almost colonial, thirst for land' and in acquiring and holding it has adopted 'state-authorized terrorism'’

Linda you are going beyond the pale. It is not my agenda ‘to prove "Israel through its actions appears to have 'an unquenchable, almost colonial, thirst for land' and in acquiring and holding it has adopted 'state-authorized terrorism'’’.

I actually wrote in reply to George’s question I had reached the conclusion Israel through its actions appears to have ‘an unquenchable, almost colonial, thirst for land’ and in acquiring and holding it has adopted ‘state-authorised terrorism’ and took the precaution of explaining my reasons.

George disagrees with me so I said ‘If you think the reasoning behind my conclusion is faulty, by all means put me straight.’

I am awaiting a reply. Meantime if you can not offer anything more than ad hominem invective may I respectively ask that you pipe down?

Linda Smith

Alanadale is at it again! Dissimulation must run through his veins. He wrote "The only deal on the table is Resolution and everyone but the US and Israel agrees". Netanyahu's deal in his speech of 14 June 2009 is on the table. Why on earth Alanadale thinks that when one party to a negotiation makes an offer, the other party is duty bound to accept it beats me. He obviously knows nothing about negotiating, particularly with enemies who have a sworn religious imperative to destroy you.

Why does Alanadale shill for Islamists?

Linda Smith

In his comment to Augustus at 7.02pm Alanadale (falsely) wrote, ceasely plugging the "justness" of Resolution 242:: "The only deal on the table is Resolution 242 and everyone but the US and Israel agrees."
Resolution 242 requires Israel to withdraw from East Jerusalem, ie The Old City.

The paragraph I wrote in my comment at 6.34pm on the Arab Peace Plan applies to Resolution 242. I wrote:

"The Arab Peace Plan requires the Old City of Jerusalem to become the capital of a Palestinian state.
Alanadale repeatedly asserts that the Arab Peace Plan is fair and equitable and generous to Israel. Why should Alanadale prefer Jerusalem to be internationalised if he believes the Arab Peace Plan is fair to Israel? Is Alanadale being honest when he asserts the Arab Peace Plan is fair to Israel and berates Israel for not accepting it?"

At 8:12 alanadale addresssed me thus:
"if you can not offer anything more than ad hominem invective may I respectively ask that you pipe down."

I am not surprised he wants me to "pipe down". I keep exposing his perfidy.

PS for the semantically challenged: Dictionary definition of Perfidy: treachery

Wm. Hazlitt

Linda Smith, I know that I should have left it to Alanadale to continue this discussion. He has remained lucid and patient throughout. One does not need to agree with everything he says to appreciate his civilized approach to debate.

You have made two points that can be challenged: "You persistently entreat me to make moral judgements, asking me is such and such an action morally "right" or "wrong".

I have told you that my purpose here is to seek the truth. I cannot find truth in statements that are logically false and/or built on false or insufficient premises."

You regularly insist that you are not interested in making moral judgements and that you are interested only in facts and the Truth.

Am I wrong in my understanding that you have asserted or strongly implied: that Israel has a "right" to exist; that the settlements in Judea and Samaria/the Occupied Territories are not "illegal"; that political Islamism is abhorrent; that anti-Semitism is abhorrent; that "Arab apologists" are to be deprecated...The list is very long.

You pick up Alanadale and others on what you consider points of logic. Can I pick up one of your own logical faults. You repeatedly make the mistake known as the "fallacy of equivocation". It is a form of ducking and weaving. You equivocate on the meaning of "true" and its cognates. You seek the True, but your opponents can be dismissed because truth is a social construct relative to a conceptual scheme or framework and so their assertions or demands for ethics or laws to be observed have no leverage on you or on Israel.

As an example, you have extolled Israel's Basic Laws as a noble edifice that distinguishes Israel from the despicable Islamist Arabs and conclusively concludes any dispute on their relative merits in Israel's favour. This is not a direct quote but it does accurately represent your sentiments).

And yet..."the law is an ass. International law is a political football, fabricated and kicked about by politically motivated players for their own self interested ends. Law is an everchanging political human convention. It is no more objective, just or fair than any other human activity."

alanadale

1/ Linda Smith writes: ‘In his comment to Augustus at 7.02pm Alanadale (falsely) wrote, ceasely plugging the "justness" of Resolution 242:: "The only deal on the table is Resolution 242 and everyone but the US and Israel agrees."’

The reason for saying that ‘everyone else but the US and Israel agrees’ is the following. There have been quite literally scores of UN resolutions condemning Israel’s refusal to withdraw from the territories it occupied in 1967. Without the protection of the UN veto it is very probable Israel would have been forced under Chapter VII rules to disgorge the spoils of war.

(And before we go down that blind alley, that Israel was fighting a defensive war in 1967 and was thus entitled to hold on to what it seized, I would simply point out that the Security Council never condemned Egypt and the other Arab states for attacking Israel and as for the subsequent creation of the myth of Israel being forced into an ‘existential’ conflict I would refer you to the Guardian’s recent obituary of Meir Amit http://www.guardian.co.uk/global/2009/jul/28/obituary-major-general-meir-amit for a cooler assessment of how the Israeli establishment viewed the situation on the eve of war.)

Without the US veto Palestine would have become a UN member state in Novemeber 1988. UNGA unanimously passed a resolution recognizing Palestine’s declaration of independence in Algiers with 44 abstentions and two rejections. Guess who? Israel and the US which put paid to further talk of UN recognition. I think that pretty well covers ‘everyone but the US and Israel’ don’t you?

2/ I have explained on numerous occasions why Netanyahu’s ‘plan’ is no plan because you can not offer to negotiate with stolen goods.

The situation is simple in international law: Israel’s settlement of any lands in the Occupied Territories and East Jerusalem is illegal. That is why Netanyahu in seeking to negotiate with expropriated lands is ‘out of court’ and why his ‘plan’ is a non starter.

Now you may challenge the validity of my claim of illegality. I refer you back (yawn) to the countless resolutions passed, the World Court ruling and the Fourth Geneva Convention.

I would particularly draw your attention to UNSCR 465, adopted unanimously in March 1980. Inter alia it

*. Determines that all measures taken by Israel to change the physical character, demographic composition, institutional structure or status of the Palestinian and other Arab territories occupied since 1967, including Jerusalem, or any part thereof, have no legal validity and that Israel's policy and practices of settling parts of its population and new immigrants in those territories constitute a flagrant violation of the Fourth Geneva Convention relative to the Protection of Civilian Persons in Time of War and also constitute a serious obstruction to achieving a comprehensive, just and lasting peace in the Middle East.

3/ Now to the question of East Jerusalem.

Linda Smtih writes: ‘Alanadale repeatedly asserts that the Arab Peace Plan is fair and equitable and generous to Israel. Why should Alanadale prefer Jerusalem to be internationalised if he believes the Arab Peace Plan is fair to Israel? Is Alanadale being honest when he asserts the Arab Peace Plan is fair to Israel and berates Israel for not accepting it?"

I find it hard to follow your convoluted reasoning. However, yes, according to the Arab Peace Plan and Resolution 242 East Jerusalem should become the capital of a Palestinian state.

If there be any ambiguity about this I refer you to UNSCR 298 adopted unanimously in September 1971 which inter alia:

* Deplores the failure of Israel to respect the previous resolutions adopted by the UN concerning measures and actions by Israel purporting to affect the status of the City of Jerusalem; and

* Confirms in the clearest possible terms that all legislative and administrative actions taken by Israel to change the status of the City of Jerusalem, including expropriation of land and properties, transfer of population and legislation aimed at the incorporation of the occupied section are totally invalid and cannot change that status.

In suggesting Jerusalem be internationalised I was simply expressing a personal opinion as a practical compromise in the interests of bridge building. However there’s no question as to Israel’s LEGAL obligations in this regard.

I hope this puts to bed conclusively the legal situation. If on the other hand you are suggesting that because Israel has the power it has the right we are in a different ballgame, one Wm Hazlett is better able to play with you.

I’d be happy to respond to any reasonable case you might make but your increasing recourse to bombast suggests you are running out of ammunition.

Wm. Hazlitt

Linda Smith, I know that I should have left it to Alanadale to continue this discussion. He has remained lucid and patient throughout. One does not need to agree with everything he says to appreciate his civilized approach to debate.

You have made two points that are open to challenged: "You persistently entreat me to make moral judgements, asking me is such and such an action morally "right" or "wrong". I have told you that my purpose here is to seek the truth. I cannot find truth in statements that are logically false and/or built on false or insufficient premises."

You do indeed regularly insist that you are not interested in making moral judgements and that you are interested only in facts and the Truth.

Am I wrong in my understanding that you have asserted or strongly implied: that Israel has a "right" to exist; that the settlements in Judea and Samaria/the Occupied Territories are not "illegal"; that political Islamism is abhorrent; that "Arab apologists" are to be deprecated; that anti-Semitism is abhorrent; that the Holocaust was an abomination that must not happen again...The list is very long.

You pick up Alanadale and others on what you consider points of logic. Can I pick up one of your own logical faults. You repeatedly make the mistake known as the "fallacy of equivocation". It is a form of ducking and weaving. You equivocate on the meaning of "true" and its cognates. You seek the True, but your opponents can be dismissed because truth is a social construct relative to some particular conceptual scheme, and so their assertions and their demands that ethics and the rule of law be observed have no leverage on you or on Israel.

As an example, you have extolled Israel's Basic Laws as a noble edifice that distinguishes Israel from the despicable Islamist Arabs. In any dispute over their relative merits, the Basic Laws provide a knock-down argument in favour of Israel. (This is not a direct quote but it does accurately represent your sentiments).

And yet..."the law is an ass. International law is a political football, fabricated and kicked about by politically motivated players for their own self interested ends. Law is an everchanging political human convention. It is no more objective, just or fair than any other human activity." (There are plenty of other occasions when you say similar things.)

If you reflect on your contributions over the months you will recognize that this is a gambit you use again and again, or rather a fallacy you commit.

Linda Smith

Wm Hazlitt, When I describe someone as an "Arab apologist" it is a factual description of their activity. If you disagree with my assertion, then argue on the basis of factual accuracy.

In my comments I state facts and make logical arguments based on those facts. Presumably a non-Muslim will draw his own moral conclusions based on those facts, ie that political Islamism is morally abhorrent. A political Islamist does not think political Islamism is morally abhorrent.

It is up to you to decide for yourself if you prefer Israel's Jewish egalitarian values laid down in their Declaration of Independence and their Basic Law or if you prefer the Islamic Sharia Basic laws of Islamic States.

"This is not a direct quote but it does accurately represent your sentiments"

If you want to debate seriously, then I would appreciate it if you would directly quote my words instead of misrepresenting them in order to persue your anti-Zionist agenda.

Linda Smith

Alanadale responded to my comments exposing his duplicity: "However, yes, according to the Arab Peace Plan and Resolution 242 East Jerusalem should become the capital of a Palestinian state......In suggesting Jerusalem be internationalised I was simply expressing a personal opinion as a practical compromise in the interests of bridge building. However there’s no question as to Israel’s LEGAL obligations in this regard. "

This is my response to Alandale:
Alanadale's latest excuse that he was "simply" expressing a personal preference for the internationalisation of Jerusalem as "a practical compromise in the interests of bridge building" further exposes further his duplicity.

The Muslim Arab holy war against the Jews in the Middle East has been in progress for 1400 years, since the Muslim Arabs conquered the Middle East , but Alanadale steadfastly eliminates the tenets of Islam from his polemics. Under Islamic rule Jews and Christians were dhimmified, reduced to the status of a slave without equal rights to his Muslim overlord, spared death only by the payment of a tax, jizya, depicted as apes and pigs in the koran. The worst vilification and hatred reserved for Jews.

In Islam, all land conquered in jihad belongs to Muslims in perpetuity. Israel, a state founded and governed on egalitarian Jewish values, stands on land previously conquered in holy jihad for Islam, and must be restored to Muslim rule. Hence the Muslim mantra that Israel stands on "stolen" land. The aberration of a Jewish flag flying over “Muslim” land previously conquered in jihad is the reason why Muslim states (including the PA whose national religion is Islam and whose Basic Law is Shari’a) do not recognise Israel, destroy Jewish religious sites, and barred Jews from Jerusalem from 1948 until 1967 when it was under Muslim control.

Britain recognised Jordan's "illegal" annexation of the West Bank and Jerusalem. The UN was silent on the question of worldwide Jewry being barred from Jerusalem.

Alanadale argues by cherrypicking and decontextualisation. He omits the role of Islam from his polemics and pretends that International Law and the UN are politically neutral. Who does he think he's kidding?

Wm. Hazlitt

Linda Smith, I know that I should have left it to Alanadale to continue this discussion. He has remained lucid and patient throughout. One does not need to agree with everything he says to appreciate his civilized approach to debate.

You have made two points that are open to challenge: "You persistently entreat me to make moral judgements, asking me is such and such an action morally "right" or "wrong". I have told you that my purpose here is to seek the truth. I cannot find truth in statements that are logically false and/or built on false or insufficient premises."

You do indeed regularly insist that you are not interested in making moral judgements and that you are interested only in facts and the Truth.

Am I wrong in my understanding that you have asserted or strongly implied: that Israel has a "right" to exist; that the settlements in Judea and Samaria/the Occupied Territories are not "illegal"; that political Islamism is abhorrent; that "Arab apologists" are to be deprecated; that anti-Semitism is abhorrent; that the Holocaust was an abomination that must not happen again...The list is very long.

You pick up Alanadale and others on what you consider points of logic. Can I pick up one of your own logical faults. You repeatedly make the mistake known as the "fallacy of equivocation". It is a form of ducking and weaving. You equivocate on the meaning of "true" and its cognates. You seek the True, but your opponents can be dismissed because truth is a social construct relative to some particular conceptual scheme, and so their assertions and their demands that ethics and the rule of law be observed have no leverage on you or on Israel.

As an example, you have extolled Israel's Basic Laws as a noble edifice that distinguishes Israel from the despicable Islamist Arabs. In any dispute over their relative merits, the Basic Laws provide a knock-down argument in favour of Israel. (This is not a direct quote but it does accurately represent your sentiments).

And yet..."the law is an ass. International law is a political football, fabricated and kicked about by politically motivated players for their own self interested ends. Law is an everchanging political human convention. It is no more objective, just or fair than any other human activity." (There are plenty of other occasions when you say similar things.)

If you reflect on your contributions over the months you will recognize that this is a gambit you use again and again, or rather a fallacy you commit.

Augustus

Wm. Hazlitt- You talk of civilized approaches, and truth, but do you realize that Israel's enemies are sorely lacking in those elements? You, alanadale, and others who have posted here are too easily enticed by false prophets who promise peace. But withdrawal from settlements and compromise on Israel's part will not bring an end to the Arabs' war against Israel. In fact, the exact opposite, it will only increase it. Now it might be argued that all nations reached their achievements through wars and victories. However, unlike in other cultures, the principle of compromise is unacceptable to Islamic thought, especially a compromise over land. Therefore, even if Israel's enemies lack the power to defeat them, they remain unwilling to accept a compromise. If they agree to a cease-fire, it is in their view only a recess which they then utilize to prepare for the next stage of the war. In the meantime, if possible they will strive to weaken their opponent with terrorist attacks and so forth. If this is not possible, they attempt to hoodwink him with lies until they are able to attack once again. This fundamental principle causes them never to lay down their arms, and to always be ready for war. Moderate Muslims there may be, and some Muslims, as in all faiths, are more religious than others. But the debate regarding the state of Israel has been either, whether it is necessary to implement agreements with Israel in order to cause its ultimate collapse, or whether extended terrorist and guerilla warfare will crush it. The real goal, the dismantling of the state of Israel, and the conquering of the entire land of Israel, none of its enemies are really prepared to concede. There are a number of Muslims who, in their wish to highlight the positve side of Islamic culture,
are themselves worried about the rise of the negative aspects of the conflict, and are desperate to caution about the dangers. But not many appear to be listening to them.

Linda Smith

Wm Hazlitt, why are you unable to quote me directly. Is there something wrong with your scroll back button?
If you wish to conduct an honest debate, please quote me directly and refain from distorting what I say.

I would also point out that ethics are not universal; they are human conventions relative to the value system and the law devolving from it. Islam's ethics laid down in Sharia differ from Judeo/Christian/Secular ethics.

It is for you to decide if you prefer the discriminatory dhimmifying ethics of Islam to Judeo/Christian/secular ones and which system you prefer to live under, and then for you to decide how you will achieve/maintain your choice. Ditto for the Israelis. That is how the world works. Note this is a statement of fact, not morality.

By the way, as I recall Lord Haw Haw presented his arguments in a lucid, civilized manner. He was hanged for treason.

Wm. Hazlitt

Linda Smith, Your first point is a good one. I did not quote verbatim because I was summarising several months worth of contributions - to quote all the relevant passages would take too much space. I limited myself to one quote and some paraphrase. I would be interested to know how the pharaphrase distorts what you say.

Your other points are not so good. You resolutely refuse to acknowledge what the argument is about. I doubt it is a failure to understand.

Your envoi is I am afraid risible.

Linda Smith

Wm Hazlitt. Your first point is a bad one. It is for you to show that your paraphrase is accurate by providing supporting evidence. It is not necessary to quote all the relevant passages. You chose to quote not one example in support of your "paraphrase".The one quote you made is the one with which you assert that the others you have "paraphrased" are inconsistent.

You have made assertions about my comments but refuse to provide supporting evidence.

Don't waste my time.

Wm. Hazlitt

Augustus, Can I make just two comments on what you said.

I believe Spain perceives no threat to its sovereignty from its former Islamic rulers.

Extremists thrive on conflict. Israel has made a habit of ignoring moderates as a matter of policy. A compromise has been available for several decades now.

Wm. Hazlitt

Linda Smith, You are quite right to pull me up for not quoting verbatim. I will supply a few quotes. But first I would like to know (out of genuine interest) whether you would really consider saying: "Israel has a right to exist" is true, but need not be unless you are Judeo-Christian; "Anti-semitism is despicable" is true, but need not be unless you are Judeo-Christian; "The Holocaust was an abomination and must not be repeated" is true, but need not be unless you are Judeo-Christian etc.?

As for quotes, you are indeed very consistent: for the most part you stick to asserting the extreme Zionist version, providing evidence (rarely from anything other than extreme Zionist sources), and accusing your interlocutors of lying, of being illogical, ignorant, or malicious, or just not intelligent enough to realise the truth of relativism and of Zionism.

Here are some quotes:

"...you ask "what it is about the notion of international law you find troubling." I find all law troubling. No law, in common with any other human endeavour including science, is value free. In your comments you throw out notions such as "normal" and "justice" and "lawful and acceptable behaviour". Although you opine "nor would I endorse the extreme relativism your comments imply", all the notions you bandy about are relative to the worldview (value systems) in which they are embedded."

"...the law is an ass. International law is a political football, fabricated and kicked about by politically motivated players for their own self interested ends. Law is an everchanging political human convention. It is no more objective, just or fair than any other human activity."

"...your depiction of the relationship of the Jews with the land of Israel typifies the arguments of the anti-Zionist, Arab apologist. Your contention that Israel is an "artificial" state exemplifies my statement above: Until it was conquered by invaders, Israel was a sovereign Jewish State, the Kingdom of Israel. The Palestinian Arabs whose "rights" to the land you champion so vigorously are descendants of invading Arab conquerors who stole the land. The Jews, expelled, hated, persecuted, and murdered throughout their forced dispersion by Europeans and Muslims alike, had every right to resettle their erstwhile territory. Their right is not "because their holy book told them the land was theirs" as you assert; their right is based in historical fact."

"The Jewish doctrine that all human beings are created in the image of God provides Jews with an absolute mandate and imperative for universal human rights."

"I do not read only "the avowed propagandists for one side in a dispute" as you assert. I reach my own conclusions from FACTS, not opinions. After examination of the FACTS, I agree with the opinions of the people I quote."

"...the Arabs had declared War on the Jews immediately after the UN voted in favour of the Partition Plan on 29 November 1947 following a legal process. Therefore The Jews were fully justified in taking whatever pre-emptive measures they considered necessary to defend themselves from the Arabs who the Report confirms were committed to killing Jews."

This is just a sample. If you take the trouble to review your contributions of the last several months you will find many more. As you have shown, total relativism is difficult to sustain.

Equivocation is certainly one of the faults of your contributions.

Linda Smith

Err, what moderates were those Mr Hazlitt, the PLO, Hamas?

Wm. Hazlitt

Linda Smith, Of course, one evil Islamist is much the same as another, so there is no point making the effort to understand these (several million) Arabs who call themselves "Palestinians", is there? Nevertheless, you will have heard of Shehadeh pere et fils, of Hanan Ashrawi (and others of the negotiators at Madrid betrayed by Arafat and Abbas in their folly at Oslo)...but your not really interested, are you? It was a rhetorical question.

Linda Smith

Wm Hazlitt: Your studious attempt to confine the Israeli/Arab conflict to a modern secular legalist battle ignoring both history and the Islamic religious dimension is as pointless as ignoring the religious dimension of all the wars between Catholics and Protestants in European history.

I suggest you read Resolution 181, available online. The Partition Plan proposed a Jewish State and an Arab State, existing residents in each were to be given citizenship rights therein. (Jerusalem apart). The Plan divided the territory between Arabs and Jews according to existing population density. There was a window of one year to relocate to the other State if wished, ie Jew to Jewish state, Arabs to Arab state. The two states were to have an economic union and other shared services. The rights of citizenship did not preclude visiting and working between states, it importantly barred VOTING rights in the other state. Although set up as egalitarian democracies, with freedom of religion and equal rights, Western style, the Plan signalled British withdrawal in August 1948, after which time there would be nothing to prevent a Muslim dominant State voting in discriminatory Sharia law. Note that the PA's legal framework is discriminatory Sharia.

The reason the Muslim Arabs refused the Plan was because equality with Jews transgresses Sharia. A Jewish flag flying over land previously conquered in holy jihad is the ultimate insult to Islam. See also the Cairo Declaration of Human Rights in Islam.

The PA's natonal religion is
Islam; the PA's legal framework is Sharia.
Israel's Prime Minister recently stated: "If the Palestinians recognize Israel as the Jewish state, we are ready to agree to a real peace agreement, a demilitarized Palestinian state side by side with the Jewish state."
Don't expect it to happen anytime soon unless the PA ceases to identify itself as a Muslim State and renounces Sharia Law and the Cairo Declaration of Human Rights in Islam.

Regarding Hanan Ashrawi - Wiki: "Like her parents, Ashrawi self-identifies as a devout Christian as well as a feminist. Her faith lead to criticism of her by Palestinan Islamic fundamentalists, claiming that it keeps her from functioning as a proper spokesperson."
Christian Hanan Ashrawi can no more speak for the Muslim Arabs than she can for the Jews.

George

When I was a student in the 1970s, one of the recommended additional books was Herb Cohen's "You Can Negotiate Anything". Mr. Cohen discussed the standard Western negotiating model whereby both sides state their opening position and the end result is defined by those opening positions. It will be somewhere in the mid range of the two opening positions. For example, if I am selling a car for 1,000 pounds and somebody offers me 900 pounds, we both know that the final result will be between 940 - 960 pounds. He then discussed the Soviet model of negotiation, where the opening position is never moved from, especially when the other side is perceived as more anxious to reach an agreement. In such a model, where the buyer was more anxious to buy the car than the seller was to sell it, the car would be sold for 1,000 pounds.
The Palestinians have adopted this Soviet negotiating model, which is not surprising considering who their patrons were (and to some extent, still are). Until they change their negotiating model, there is no point in Israel sitting down to negotiate with them or with Syria, who were also taught by the Soviets.

alanadale

Linda Smith writes: ‘Wm Hazlitt: Your studious attempt to confine the Israeli/Arab conflict to a modern secular legalist battle ignoring both history and the Islamic religious dimension is as pointless as ignoring the religious dimension of all the wars between Catholics and Protestants in European history.’

Of course ‘history and the Islamic religious dimension’ inform the current conflict as does the Jewish religious dimension which makes it a sectarian one. But times change and it is as misguided as it is self serving to maintain that religious extremism (on both sides) is the core of the problem.

It is equally pointless to keep harking back to Resolution 181 which might have been a nice idea but it manipulated the territorial allocations to give the Jews the maximum land areas consonant with the barest of majorities, the Jewish populations being preponderantly concentrated in the towns while the Palestinians were more rural. For this and other reasons not least the idea of population transfers which affected the Arab population much more than Jews it didn’t work which was the final nail in the coffin to the Balfour Declaration and its mutually exclusive aim to establish a Jewish home without harming the interests of the native Palestinians.

The concept of a federated state was thus a non starter and Israel fought two wars to establish borders that were internationally recognized in a new dispensation. That remains the dispensation that Israel is now seeking to change.

Israel has every right to live in peace and security behind its 1967 borders. But provided peace is established (and no one anticipates full withdrawal until that happens) how Palestinians organise themselves democratically is not strictly the business of Israel or anyone else. Israel has an avowedly racist Foreign Minister. Does anyone pick up the Israeli government for its fascist tendencies in the way David Cameron has been attacked for merely linking the Conservative Party to a Polish politician Michal Kaminsky who is accused of anti Semitism?

Like Wm. Hazlitt I weary of ad hominem attacks and having to repeat myself because certain facts are too inconvenient to acknowledge. Your attempts to conflate all Muslims under the banner of militant Islam is as absurd as lumping all Jews behind the Gush Emunim, as is your continued assertion ‘In Islam, all land conquered in jihad belongs to Muslims in perpetuity’ despite the examples of Spain and the Balkans illustrating they are not and India, for good measure, which for several centuries was Muslim controlled and like Israel now retains a sizeable Muslim minority. However, this allows you to conflate my perfectly reasonable assertion that Israel seeks to trade with ‘stolen lands’ – ie the Occupied Territories as defined by a World Court ruling and UN resolutions etc – into a claim ALL Muslims regard ALL of Palestine as stolen. They may well do in a moral sense but that is not what we were talking about.

And so the debate goes on, round in circles. Perhaps the moderator should put it out of its misery.

Linda Smith

Addendum to my previous post:
I do not claim "All Muslims regard All of Palestine as stolen". It's the ones with the power that count. The others are the pawns, particularly the ones kept stateless in "refugee" camps for 60 years, while all the other "refugees" of the world, including 850,000+ Jews from Arab lands, have picked up their lives and moved on.

And so the debate goes on, round in circles, because you've got nothing new to say, just the same old false polemic

Linda Smith

Alanadale, short on logic.

The Partition Plan says Britain withdrawing in August 1948. Therefore the Jews and Arabs had no choice but to fight it out. And the best side won.

That's the way of the world. Winner takes all. If the Jews had lost they'd all have been massacred. The Mufti was still in charge.

There was no alternative to the creation of Israel. Time to quit the fantasies, Alanadale. Remember the Handzers. Remember the Armenians, Remember the Israeli Athletes. Jews aren't suicide bombers.

Wm. Hazlitt

Linda Smith, My goodness me! A "Palestinian" Arab who is not an Islamist...Does this mean, can it mean, that all "Palestinian" Arabs are not necessarily fanatics bent on slaughter? Well done. Now you know that "Palestinian" moderates do exist (have done for a very very long time). Well done again. This is at least progress. (One small point to bear in mind, however: to be moderate, a "Palestinian" does not need to be a Christian - this may be difficult to grasp so soon after discovering that there are moderates at all, but there are moderate "Palestinians" who are...MUSLIMS.)

I have noticed that those who try to discuss an equitable settlement of the Palestinian/Israeli dispute with you tend to give up in the end. Not because they are defeated by your arguments, but by your wearisome insults and your resolute refusal to engage with the arguments put to you. It reminds me of the US/Israeli "peace process" - perhaps you take it as your model. They stonewall and indignantly condemn terrorism while relentlessly bombing the bejeesus out of civilians and terrorists alike (well more civilians actually) and appropriating territory and resources.

I hope you take the opportunity to build on the success you have had here in coming to some understanding of the fact that not all "Palestinians" are evil fanatics. The day may come when you realise that the "Palestinians" are a human community, with the same rights and responsibilities as any other.

I wish you well.

Wm. Hazlitt

George, Given the affronts the Palestinians have already accepted, and the resolution with which the US and Israel have refused to countenance the settlement approved by the international consensus, I do not think Israel's negotiating technique can be called "Western" (as described by you) or the Palestinians' as "Soviet" (again as described by you) - if anything it is the other way round. By the way, you or your source should look more closely at the history of Soviet-US negotiations. (Just as an anecdote, Gromyko when Soviet ambassador to the UN was dubbed Mr. Nyet by the US to distract attention from the fact that it was the US that used its veto most in the UN, by a very large margin.)

Linda Smith

Wm Hazlitt, short on logic: the moderate Arabs have no power. They are whistling in the wind. The Christians in the West Bank are persecuted by the Muslims and are afraid to speak out. Most have emigrated. See Video: Muslim Persecution of Christians.
It happens all over the "Muslim World".
http://media1.terrorismawareness.org/files/MPAC.swf

alanadale

Linda Smith writes: ‘Remember the Israeli Athletes. Jews aren't suicide bombers.’

And remember Kafr Kassim, Kibya, Deir Yassin, Qalqilya, Gaza, USS Liberty and the 5,000 mainly social and economic infiltrators killed between 1949-56 etc etc etc

Israelis may well become suicide bombers if pushed too hard, why the need otherwise for 100 plus nuclear bombs? At present they hold all the cards so can afford to take the high moral ground.

But will they continue to? Israel has won battles but not the war. It’s truly the stuff of fantasies to imagine the Palestinian problem can be sorted by toughing it out with the rest of the Arab world. At some point Israel is going to have to make peace with its neighbours.

‘Winner takes all’ will turn out to be a pyrrhic victory if, and this is the real nightmare of Iran acquiring the bomb - not that it will use it but that Israel will lose overall hegemony of the region and Israelis start emigrating in droves. It’s not so far fetched. Read Roger Cohen in the New York Times. http://www.nytimes.com/2009/08/02/magazine/02Iran-t.html?th&emc=th

Linda Smith

Wm Hazlitt, the settlements are a red herring, a side-show, a distraction from the fundamental pinciple of NO JEWS IN POWER ON "MUSLIM" land. Israel vacated Gaza lock, stock and barrel and it didn't make a blind bit of difference.

Arafat, an Egyptian, is recorded as saying to the UN Security Council on 31 May 1956: “It is common knowledge that Palestine is nothing but Southern Syria.”

Arafat was Chairman of the PLO formed in 1964: Article 24 of the PLO Charter:

“This Organization does not exercise any territorial sovereignty over the West Bank in the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan, (or) on the Gaza Strip….”

If the “occupation” of the West Bank and Gaza by Israel is the obstacle to peace, as is endlessly proclaimed by Arafat and others, what was the motivation to create the PLO to strike at Israel at a time when Israel had no role in those territories? Why did the PLO and other Arab terrorist groups continually attack Israel at that time? If Jerusalem is so important to the Arabs, why is it that the the Palestinian National Covenant of 1964, does not even once mention Jerusalem?
Answer: the global jihad for world domination of Islam, in progress for 1400 years with brief intermissions while under imposed restraint. Remember the gates of Vienna.

Linda Smith

Alanadale assertion "At some point Israel is going to have to make peace with its neighbours" is somewhat bizarre. Israel has been at peace for years with both Jordan and Egypt. Egypt is not concerned about Israel, it is concerned about the infiltration of Hamas and Hezbollah, and their joint enemy Iran. Hence, Egypt has been content to see the presence of Israel military shipping in the Suez Canal recently.

Never letting facts get in the way of his Israel demonizing agenda, Alanadale opines:
"Israelis may well become suicide bombers if pushed too hard.....so can afford to take the moral high ground".

As Alanadale knows, suicide bombing is the preserve of those who take their ideology from the Koran. Suicide bombers in the pursuit of jihad believe they will get their reward in the next world. Their mothers are proud their children are martyrs for Allah. Islam revels in death.
Judaism reveres life, desecration of one's body is taboo in Judaism. Ever heard of Jews amputating the limbs of thieves? That is an Islamic treat, abhorrent to Jews and Christians. And that is why suicide bombing is permanently off the menu for Jews (and Christians). Being a rational religion however, Judaism does not prohibit the killing of self-declared enemies in times of war. The present Jewish/Muslim war has been in progress since 1947, if one overlooks the preceeding Arab massacres of Jews, Hebron, etc in the run up and the Mufti's genocidal efforts assisting Hitler.

In couching his arguments in terms of "moral high ground" Alanadale displays further his utter contempt for facts and his ignorance of Islam.

Islam and Sharia law are morally and ethically different from Judeo/Christian morals and law. In Judeo/Christianity all human beings are equal so moral behaviour of groups can be compared and judged, one group against another..
For believing Muslims, however, only Muslims can have moral high ground. The Koran depicts Jews and Christians as monkeys and apes who are relegated to the status of slaves, dhimmified, under the protection of Muslims. Why protection? Who are they to be protected from? Their Muslim masters. Thus the payment of the Jizya, a mafia protection racket. Groups of Muslims are now being reported as eliciting the Jizya from Christians in the West Bank.

When alanadale asserts about Iran's nuclear bomb(s) "not that it will use it.." it is patently evident that his knowledge of Islam is dangerously deficient. The acopalypse and the return of the hidden imam is eagerly awaited by Ahmadinejad and his Supreme Leader.

alanadale

Linda Smith writes: ‘Israel vacated Gaza lock, stock and barrel and it didn't make a blind bit of difference.

Of course it didn’t make a blind bit of difference because Gaza was very low on the list of Sharon’s settlement priorities and all the while he was relocating the Gaza settlers and more on the West Bank and carving it up further with roads and checkpoints the better to intern and suffocate the Palestinians and hopefully get them to move on and out.

It’s impossible to keep up with your lies and innuendos that get ever more lurid and egregious. I don’t quite get the drift of your peddling the idea that Arafat was an Egyptian – perhaps it’s just another piece of distracting nonsense propagated on Zionist websites to sow confusion. He had an Egyptian grandmother on his mother’s side. His father’s family were from the Fakhriyya district of Jerusalem where they had lived since the middle of the sixteenth century. The family home was in the shadow of the Al Aqsa Mosque and adjoined the Wailing Wall. His mother came from a well established Gazan merchant family.

May I suggest you put your ‘NO JEWS IN POWER ON "MUSLIM" land’ on a placard and give it a whirl on Oxford Street where it belongs? You are not interested in a negotiated settlement and the moderators have been overindulgent with some of your more scurrilous aspersions and tendentious conclusions – which would never have been allowed on the other side of the debate.

Augustus

The strategy of seeming to be moderate and engaging in a diplomatic process while continuing to embrace violence is a common theme expressed by PA leaders, past and present.
In an interview with Muhammed Dahlan, a senior Fatah MP, he said, after being asked about the continued violence against Israel: "This is our right, a legal right. The international community affirms it for us. But it is the responsibility of the leadership to use it when it wants, in the proper place and at the proper time. We cannot leave it in the hands of youth who use their own judgement. This is the difference between PA using this right, and anyone using it. I lived with Chairman Arafat for years. Arafat would condemn terror operations by day, while at night he would do honorable things. I don't want to say any more about this."

Also, for years Palestinian Media Watch has documented the duplicity of the PA leadership,
which sends peaceful messages to the world's media whilst sending hate and terror messages
to its own people in Arabic. You won't get them, or any other
Arab nation, to think of Israel in any other way than a thieving
enemy Zionist entity. And neither will you convert alanadale and Wm.Hazlitt from taking that view either. It is, no more and no less, than the politics of propaganda and hate:
'Be gone you Israelis. Live wherever you like, but don't live amongst us. We have, and must always have, the past and the future. So leave our land, and die wherever you like, but don't die amongst us.'

Linda Smith

It's high time Alanadale and his merry man Wm Hazlitt put aside their personal delusions and acknowledged the facts on the ground. It is immaterial if Alanadale personally thinks Jerusalem should be internationalised or that the "right of return" will be a financial arrangement. He has no power to affect the "peace process."

The following are excerpts from an address delivered by Tawfiq Tirawi, security advisor to PA President Abu Mazen, which aired on Al-Filistiniya TV on July 23, 2009.

Tawfiq Tirawi, Security Advisor to PA President Abu Mazen:

"Jerusalem Cannot Be Regained Without Thousands of Martyrs
Tawfiq Tirawi: I am saying these things so that we understand that words are ineffective. Action is effective. Today, you have chosen to call [your course] “The Return [of the Refugees] and Jerusalem.” Believe me, brothers, whoever thinks that Israel will give us anything is deluding himself. And why would they give us anything? The Palestinians are divided, and the Arabs are weak. Any negotiations that are not based on a position of strength will not get you anything from the enemy. Indeed, why would they give us our rights as long as we are weak, divided, and dispersed?
Therefore, action [is what we need]. We do not have a position of strength on which negotiations can be based. However, as [former Israeli PM] Shamir said in 1993, if we want negotiations for the sake of negotiations, it can go on for decades.

But let me tell you, Jerusalem needs thousands of martyrs. If we live to see the day, and you become the leaders of the future, mark my words: It is impossible for Jerusalem to be restored to us without thousands of martyrs. Anyone who thinks that America will restore Jerusalem to us is mistaken. It will never restore Jerusalem to us. And if it does not give us Jerusalem, how can it possibly give us the Right of Return?

These are the two symbols that you have chosen as the title of this course. These two symbols require blood, action, efforts, resistance, and Palestinian unity."

alanadale

Linda Smith writes: ‘Judaism does not prohibit the killing of self-declared enemies in times of war.’

Was the philo-Semite UN peace mediator Count Folke Bernadotte who was assassinated in 1948 by a gang led by a future prime minister of Israel for proposing Palestinians be allowed to return to their homes as soon as possible qualify as ‘a self declared enemy’ who was fair game to kill?

alanadale

The fruits of Linda Smith’s latest trawl through the internet for any Tom, Dick, Harry or Abdul who can supposedly further her case has produced Tawfiq Tirawi an adviser to PA president Abu Mazen whose florid thoughts evoking Churchill’s ‘blood, tears and sweat’ is taken as evidence of the Palestinians, given half a chance, unleashing hordes of martyrs to rid Islam’s holy lands of the interloper Jews. So justifying Israel (one assumes although the reasoning behind posting these lurid accounts is never actually spelt out) in not only holding on to lands it has seized but ridding them of the revolting inhabitants who do not accept the new order

Rather than regurgitating all this rhetoric it would be more useful to concentrate on the intentions of those who really influence events. Take Ariel Sharon who once boasted:

‘We’ll make a pastrami sandwich out of them [the Palestinians] … [we’ll] insert a strip of Jewish settlements in between the Palestinians, and then another strip of Jewish settlements right across the West Bank, so that in twenty-five years’ time, neither the United Nations nor the United States, nobody, will be able to tear it apart.’

Now that is an intention to be taken very seriously. It happens incidentally to run totally counter to international law and raises the question whether Israel has the means in the long term to impose its solution in spite of international law.

On the Arab side the Saudis are to be taken seriously. There is already an accommodation on the law of return in the Arab Plan. Practically Israel’s right to exist as a Jewish state (with an unassailable Jewish majority) will not be compromised (that after all is one of the tenets of 242) but Israel is going to have to be more accommodating and accept some responsibility for those who were displaced. Jerusalem is problematic; but I would bet money that the Arabs would accept the internationalisation of the city if that brought a lasting settlement. Will the Israelis?

Linda Smith

Alanadale posted "I would bet money that the Arabs would accept the internationalisation of the city if that brought a lasting settlement".

Then why haven't they? They are intransigent in demanding Jerusalem be the capital of the proposed Palestinian State.

Alanadale. If you want to make a bet, go down to the bookies and stop hallucinating here.

As for accepting responsibility for displaced people and stolen land - the Arabs have got a big bill to pay.

Linda Smith

For Alanadale, who denies that Islam and antisemitism is the crux of the Arab's refusal to recognise Israel as a Jewish State, here is a brief history lesson on Al-Husseini, the genocidal Mufti of Jerusalem:

1943 Amin Al-Husseini creates the Hanzar Division of Nazi Muslim Soldiers in Bosnia. It becomes the largest division of Third Reich and participates actively in the genocide of Serbian, Gypsy, and Jewish populations. Over three hundred thousand men, women and children murdered. Amin Al-Husseini refers to them as the ‘Cream of Islam’.

Amin Al-Husseini is made Prime Minister of Pan-Arab Government by Nazi regime. His headquarters are in Berlin.
He plans construction of concentration camp in Nablus (Palestine) to implement the “final solution” in Palestine to exterminate the Jews there, as an extension of Hitler’s plan.

Al Husseini is one of the founders of the Arab League

1948 Arab League (Amin Al Husseini) immediately declares Jihad (Holy War) against Israel. Egypt, Iraq, Syria, Saudi Arabia and Jordan immediately declare war on the new Jewish state and invade Israel.

Secretary General of Arab League Azzam Pasha: “This will be a war of extermination and momentous massacre.”

Amin Al-Husseini: “I declare a Holy War, My Muslim Brothers! Murder the Jews! Murder them all!”
Yasser Arafat was interviewed by Al Sharq Al Awsat (London Arabic Daily) and reprinted in Palestinian daily Al Quds on August 2, 2002:
“We are not Afghanistan… We are the mighty people. Were they able to replace our hero Hajj Amin Al-Husseini?… There were a number of attempts to get rid of Hajj Amin, when they considered him an ally of the Nazis. But even so, he lived in Cairo, and participated in the 1948 War and I was one of his troops.”
1948. Yasser Arafat becomes member of the Muslim Brotherhood and devotes his life to fulfilling Husseini’s vision of ridding Palestine of its Jewish population.

Radical Islamic Jihad and pan-Arabism in its violent form find a common root in Amin Al Husseini, the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem. He is the vector of European fascism into the modern Islamic world, both religious and secular. One cannot understand today's turbulent world without this information.

alanadale

Linda Smith writes: ‘Then why haven't they [accepted the internationalisation of the city]? They are intransigent in demanding Jerusalem be the capital of the proposed Palestinian State.’

The reason for the Arabs’ intransigence is well expressed in this recent leader in the Financial Times.

‘Despite intense US diplomacy, Saudi Arabia, Washington’s closest Arab ally, has brushed aside efforts to extract Arab concessions – such as the opening of Israeli trade delegations in Arab countries – in exchange for a settlements freeze. On the face of it, it would seem reasonable for Arabs to gradually “normalise” relations with Israel, to help pave the way towards peace with the Palestinians. But their experience of the peace process has ensured that is not how most Arabs see it.

‘Prince Saud al-Faisal, the veteran Saudi foreign minister, is echoing widespread sentiments when he called for a “comprehensive approach” to peace that “defines the final outcome at the outset and launches into negotiations over final status issues: borders, Jerusalem, water, refugees and security”.

‘This is not just because Saudi Arabia is behind a comprehensive Arab-Israeli peace plan, spurned by Israel since it was endorsed by the Arab League in 2002. It is not just because gradualist processes such as Oslo failed because there was no agreement on the final destination, enabling the extremists on each side to exercise a veto. Nor is it just because many Arab leaders cynically use the situation of “no war, no peace” as an alibi to monopolise power and resources.

‘In 1992-96, at the height of the peace process, Israel reaped a peace dividend without concluding a peace. Diplomatic recognition of Israel doubled, from 85 to 161 countries, exports doubled and foreign investment increased sixfold. Per capita income in the occupied territories fell in the same period by more than a third, while the number of settlers expanded by half. A broad-looking avenue led quickly to a road-block. The Arabs have not forgotten, and Mr Obama will have to get more than a settlement freeze out of Israel to lure them down that road again.’

In short Israel reaps a whopping peace dividend while being left free, to paraphrase the wooing of Marvell’s Coy Mistress, to ‘refuse until the conversion of the Jews’.

Linda Smith writes: ‘As for accepting responsibility for displaced people and stolen land - the Arabs have got a big bill to pay.’

I think the Israelis will have a much, much bigger bill to pay in kind.

Henry Sidgwick

Linda Smith, I have come to this debate late, and I have not read it all the way through, but I have a question for you. Why do you insist that an agreement between the peoples living in Israel/Palestine should be contingent on agreements between Israel and Iraq, Egypt etc. on compensation for the Jews evicted from those states?

Linda Smith

Henry Sidgwick, you haven't read the thread? Then I suggest you do your homework before wasting my time.

Linda Smith

Last word on Alanadale's Islamic wooing,

"In short Israel reaps a whopping peace dividend while being left free..to "refuse until the conversion of the Jews".

But, of course, Saladin, you really knew that all the time, didn't you. Problem is the Jews don't want be Muslims, or dhimmis either.

As you undoubtedly know, the real agenda is, as it has always been, the islamification of the world. You gave yourself away in the end, Alanadale, like they all do.

alanadale

Linda Smith writes: ‘For Alanadale, who denies that Islam and antisemitism is the crux of the Arab's refusal to recognise Israel as a Jewish State, here is a brief history lesson on Al-Husseini, the genocidal Mufti of Jerusalem:’

In her obsessive efforts to tar all Arabs with the brush of Hajj Al-Husseini’s rabid anti-Semitism Linda Smith overlooks the Jabotinsky movement’s flirtations with National Socialism with which it shared a common interest in racial purity and the desirability of encouraging Jewish emigration to Palestine.

Previous mention has been made of approaches in 1941 when the tide of war was working in the Nazis favour by Avraham Stern and Yitzhak Shamir to clinch a deal with the Nazis to facilitate Jewish emigration to Palestine with a view to establishing a Jewish state there.

But long before that in the 1930s the Revisionist Zionists had created with the help of Mussolini their own Hanzar division, the Betar youth movement, whose brown shirts Menachem Begin changed to black when he became its leader to reflect his preference for the Hitler Youth Movement and its hand-fisted salutes.

In fact Jabotinsky was Zionism’s own Hajj Al-Husseini. He teamed up with the Ukrainian fascist Simon Petilura, who had personally directed the killing of 28,000 Jews in nearly 900 pogroms, to create a Jewish police force to assist the counter-revolutionary fight against the Red Army and Bolshevism - a process that involved the murder of peasants, workers and intellectuals.

Nor should one overlook the Zionist Federation of Germany’s overwhelming endorsement of the Nazis’ rise to power in 1933 when it applauded ‘a rebirth of national life’ on the foundation of a state based on the principle of race into which ‘we wish so to fit our community.’

On its recommendation the World Zionist Organization broke the Jewish boycott of Germany and became the principal distributor of Nazi goods in the Middle East and Northern Europe. A bank was even established in Palestine to receive funds from the German-Jewish bourgeoisie to purchase Nazi goods

Goebbels so approved this Zionist cooperation he ordered a medallion struck with the Swastika on one side and the Star of David on the other; SS Security Chief Reinhardt Heydrich averred there were two sorts of Jews and the Zionists were the good sort.

However by 1942 these Zionist fanatics had changed their tune rebuffing an offer by Hitler to grant safe passage to all Jews out of Europe for a few million dollars on the grounds that many Jews had to die to hasten the creation of a Jewish state after the war.

The purpose of all this is not to tar all Zionists with the Jabotinsky brush which would be ludicrous, (although the fact that Israelis subsequently elected prime minister three Revisionist Zionists – Begin, Shamir and Sharon – with credible war crimes charges hanging over them speaks volumes for the state of their democracy) but to point up the meretriciousness of Linda Smith’s line of attack.

This seems to be to demonise Hajj Al-Husseini as ‘the vector of European fascism into the modern Islamic world, both religious and secular’ when in fact his anti Semitism was an unpleasant manifestation of his nationalism and his flirtation with the Nazis was, well, no different from that of any other self respecting fascist/nationalist of the time – the Revisionist Zionists included.

Life is just a little more complex than Linda Smith's stark, millenarian (and self serving) prescriptions would have us believe. On the subject of which and her belief in the superior morality of Judaism, I eagerly await a comment on whether Count Bernadotte’s assassination by Yitzhak Shamir’s Stern Gang in 1948 was justified under the Judaic injunction allowing ‘the killing of self-declared enemies in times of war’ – or was it just plain murder?

Linda Smith

Real life calls Alanadale. You'll have to wait awhile for my response.

Suffice to say immediately, the Mufti was a religious leader. His antisemitism was a manifestation of his Islamic faith.

Linda Smith

My mind is boggling. Alanadale defends his hero Al Husseini as merely a "nationalist". Yes he certainly was, an Islamic genocidal nationalist:

A Greater Pan-Islamic State was advocated by the Albanian Bedri Pejani, the Muslim leader of the Albanian National Committee, who presented a plan to the Grand Mufti calling for the extermination of the Serbian population of Kosovo-Metohija and a union of Greater Albania, consisting of Kosovo-Metohija, Western Macedonia, and southern Montenegro, Bosnia-Hercegovina, and the Rashka (Sandzak) region of Serbia into a Greater Islamic State, a Pan-Islamic State in the Balkans. The Grand Mufti approved the Pejani plan as being in the interest of Islam, but the Germans rejected the plan.

Does Alanadale also apologise for Hitler?

Henry Sidgwick

Linda Smith, I have now read the whole "thread". Nothing in it justifies your brusque refusal to answer a precise question about your comments.

I will ask again, on the assumption that you have some justification for what you say:

Why do you insist that an agreement between the peoples living in Israel/Palestine should be contingent on agreements between Israel and Iraq, Egypt etc. on compensation for the Jews evicted from those states?