A terrible resonance
The Daily Telegraph, which once was considered to be a quality newspaper, has carried a poisonous little story. It read:
The US has said it is ‘deeply concerned’ over Israel's plans to build hundreds of new homes in West Bank settlements. In response to an attack on a settler family over the weekend, Israel approved the construction of between 300 to 500 new homes in the West Bank.
The US Embassy called the Israeli settlements ‘illegitimate’ and an obstacle to resuming direct talks between Israel and the Palestinians. ‘They murder, we build,’ Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said on Sunday during a condolence call to the grieving family.
Palestinian militants are presumed to have carried out the assault, killing both parents and their three children. ‘We're deeply concerned by continuing Israeli actions on settlements in the West Bank,’ the statement from the U.S. Embassy said. ‘As we said before, we view these settlements as illegitimate and as running counter to efforts to resume direct negotiations.’ A senior Israeli official responded to the U.S. criticism by reasserting Israel's position that the major settlement blocs, where most of the 300,000 West Bank settlers live, will remain in Israeli hands under any final peace accord. (my emphasis).
This is how the Obama administration and the Telegraph view the significance of the massacre of Udi and Ruth Fogel and their three children, Yoav, 11, Elad, 4, and Hadas, three months old, at their house in Itamar in Samaria last Friday night.
The warped and degraded priorities embodied in this short Telegraph item have been echoed since the massacre throughout the media – on the BBC and Sky, on CNN and in the New York Times, and by both the Obama administration and the British government.
If they reported or acknowledged the terrible details of this atrocity at all, these were nevertheless given short shrift. It has become a given that that the most important aspect of the events at Itamar last Friday night was not the murder of the Fogels and their three young children but the subsequent decision by the Israel government to resume building homes for Jews in the disputed territories.
The western media and political class regard the latter as the ‘obstacle to peace’, while the slaughter of a Jewish family by Arab terrorists is apparently irrelevant to the achievement of peace. This even though if the atrocity turns out to have been committed, as has been speculated, by members of the Al Aqsa Martyrs’ Brigade, the armed wing of ‘moderate’ Mahmoud Abbas’s party Fatah, that would be a game changer for a ‘peace process’ predicated on the (ludicrous) assumption that Abbas/Fatah are legitimate ‘partners for peace’.
Such considerations are, it seems, quite irrelevant to Obama, the British government and the western media. All instead blame the ‘settlers’ for producing a ‘cycle of violence’ -- even though massacres of Jews by Arabs have been taking place in the land of Israel since the 1920s. And that's because the ‘settlement’ to which the Arabs react by mass murder is, as it always has been, the presence of Jews in any part of the land they currently occupy in the Middle East, including their own country.
This amoral response by the west is simply devastating. It means that it no longer possesses the capacity even to acknowledge Jewish victimisation at the hands of the Arabs – the actual cause of this nine-decade long conflict. Instead, Israelis have become literally dehumanised in the eyes of these British and American commentators. The murder of Israeli children is simply airbrushed out of the western media and political picture as just too inconvenient, because it gets in the way of what they have all persuaded themselves is an axiomatic fact: that this is merely a dispute over land between two rival peoples, and it is all Israel’s fault that it still isn’t resolved.
Indeed, some of the media couldn’t even bring themselves to call this atrocity an act of terrorism. But even ‘terrorism’ doesn’t accurately convey what happened in Itamar. Terrorism is when people murder the innocent to achieve a political end. Heaven knows, that’s bad enough. But this goes much further even than that. The Arabs who broke into the Fogels’ house and went from room to room murdering the family, slitting their throats while they slept, did so because they reach a psychotic state of ecstasy from murdering Jews.
We know that because the Arabs in Gaza handed out sweets and rejoiced at the slaughter. We know it because we have seen it before many times: Arab hands being dipped exultantly in the blood of the Israeli victims they have butchered. We know it because the Palestinian Authority-controlled media, mosques and educational materials tell their children that it is the greatest glory and a religious duty to kill Jews. We know it because the Palestinian Authority names squares and streets after such genocidal murders in order to honour their deeds.
This is not merely terrorism. This is a depraved death cult -- one adopted by the direct heirs to the Arabs of inter-war Palestine who formed Hitler’s Middle East legion. And their present-day descendants use the very same Nazi motifs and tactics of psychopathic dehumanisation of the Jews to incite their murder.
In other words, the Arab war against the Jews of Israel can be seen as the unfinished business of World War Two. The awful difference is that, whereas then it was ordinary Germans who looked the other way while the Jews were slaughtered, now it is ordinary Britons and other westerners who look the other way when a Jewish family is butchered – averting their gaze in order not to have to confront the terribly inconvenient fact that the genocide of the Jews, which they wish to obliterate from the collective western psyche, is still an active project.
So they tell themselves that the reason people slit the throats of children as they sleep is because Jews are building houses. Wickedly, these western fellow-travellers of genocide fail even to acknowledge publicly the open incitement to hatred and murder of Jews and Israelis that pours out of the Arab world and the Palestinian Authority (and that’s without even considering Hamas, whose genocidal aims are written for all to see.) Indeed, how can the west draw attention to this incitement: they help fund it.
Not only do they persist in this farcical analysis, not only do they then build upon this grotesque misrepresentation of the conflict to force Israel to compromise its security to these fanatics, but they also refuse to acknowledge the full depravity of what happened in Itamar because this shows up only too clearly the wicked falsehood of their assertion that it is Israel’s ‘settlements’ that prevent peace in the Middle East. And so, obscenely, they twist the presentation of this massacre to blame those who have been murdered for causing their own destruction.
Religious fascism as thus displayed by Arabs from Ramallah to Gaza City is bad enough. But it is the evil that now consumes Britain and the west which so completely chills the heart and prompts a terrible despair. For such moral blindness and worse means that, facing the heirs of the Nazis, the Jews once again find themselves abandoned, their victimisation once again dismissed and themselves once again blamed for their own persecution. Listen to the BBC, read the British newspapers or the New York Times, read the vicious readers’ comments on so many websites (including this one) and you will see that the blind eye to deranged racism and totalitarian mass murder that paved the way for so much slaughter under Nazism and Stalinism is rampant once again, showing us once more that civilisation is merely a thin veneer for barbarism.
In the face of this crisis of western civilisation and its chilling implications for the Jewish people, Israel itself is worse than useless. This is because -- contrary to the brutish power ascribed to it by its enemies -- Israel is pathologically timid. And so, even when faced with the terrifying consequences for its own security from the moral inversion of the west, it has chosen to stay silent.
It does not say what it should be shouting from the rooftops, that it is being forced by Britain, America and Europe to cut its own throat and that it refuses to do so; that it stands for truth, justice and international law while Britain, America and the EU stand for their negation; that it is not Israel but these western powers that are the cause of the Middle East impasse, because from the get-go the more the Arabs massacred the Jews the more Britain and the west rewarded them and punished their Jewish victims, a pattern which continues to this day.
Israel doesn’t say any of this because it fears that unless it goes along with the farce of the ‘peace process’ it will become delegitimised by a world that will take its revenge and abandon it to its fate at the hands of the billions in the Arab and Muslim world who want it destroyed. Which all goes to show that you can take the Jew out of the ghetto, but it is far harder to take the ghetto out of the Jew. And now we can see what the result of Israel’s brilliant strategy has been – that it has indeed become delegitimised by the so-called civilised world, and that Britain, America and the EU are not just abandoning it to its fate but effectively giving it a choice – slit your own throat, or we will do it for you.
The question now has to be asked of every person in Britain and the west who promotes the boycott of Israel, or wears the keffiyeh in solidarity with the ‘Palestinians’, or so obsessively demonises the ‘settlers’ or ‘apartheid’ Israel, or makes vicious comments at the dinner tables of the elite about the bloody Jews and shitty Israel, why these ‘enlightened’ folk turn a blind eye to the slaughter of infants as they sleep, and assist Jew-hating fanatics in their racist aim of destroying Israel and denying to the Jews alone the right to live in their own historic country – and all because Israel is reluctant to reward these fanatics by giving them the territory from where they can finally achieve their murderous aims. These ‘progressives’ need to be outed for what they are – the fellow-travellers of psychotic religious fascism.
Israel is the signature moral issue of our time. Which side people choose to be on in the Arab and Muslim war against Israel tells us whether they are on the side of truth, justice and basic humanity – or the side of evil. The sickening response to the slaughter of the Fogel family shows us all too horrifyingly which side the west is on.
Previous
Blogs: Martin Bright | Susan Hill | Alex Massie | Coffee House | Faith Based
Actions: Print this article | Email to a friend | Permalink | Comments (317)
Post this entry to: del.icio.us | Digg | Newsvine | NowPublic | Reddit
Advertisement
Popular Blog Posts
1 Yes campaign launch will cause problems — for the independence movement - Ysenda Maxtone Graham
2 Obama vs Balls - edited by Graham Storey, Margaret Brown and Kathle
3 Cameron's attack on Balls is strangely endearing - Lloyd Evans
4 Susie Squire to take over as Tory press chief - James Forsyth
5 What Farage's offer means for David Cameron - James Forsyth
Search this blog
Melanie Phillips is a Daily Mail columnist. She also writes for the Jewish Chronicle and is a panellist on BBC Radio Four's Moral Maze. Her most recent book is 'The World Turned Upside Down: The Global Battle over God, Truth and Power', published by Encounter.
For a complete set of Melanie's articles click here
Melanie Phillips blog archive
sponsored links
THE PRESENT FINDER
1,700 Unusual Christmas Presents Request Catalogue 01935 815 195 Quote SPEC10 for 10% discount www.presentfinder.co.uk
OLIVE BRANCH FLORISTS
Pimilco based Florist with online ordering Web: www.olivebranch.net Tel: 020 7630 1868 Fax: 020 7233 8844
RUFFS Bespoke Signet rings
62 Shore Road, Warsash, Southampton, SO31 9FT Telephone: 01489 578867 Web site: www.ruffs.co.uk
Apollo Magazine | Corporate | Advertising | Privacy | Terms
Spectator, 22 Old Queen Street, London, SW1H 9HP
All Articles and Content Copyright ©2012 by The Spectator | All Rights Reserved
Truthtriumphs
March 16th, 2011 1:03amYet there are decent people out there, like the Telegraph's Ben Brogan, and some on these very blogs, who do not have any direct interest, but nevertheless do see the truth of what is happening,and give Israel much needed support.
They should be thanked, and encouraged to spread the words of truth.
All is not lost.
hirsch dovid
March 16th, 2011 1:06amso basically,,if jews live somewhere that the arabs dont like,the west,lefty liberals,the uk,us and eu ,dont have a problem with these jews being killed.In affect they are saying that there are places in the world that should be jew free.I feel sick and ashamed that i live in the uk.
S Baker
March 16th, 2011 1:15amIt is obvious Melanie that you, like so many others, fail to understand the meaning behind the statement 'two wrongs do not make a right' and unfortunately, as long as there are so many people in the world that do not understand this, we are cursed by cycles of vengence and the brutality that this engenders.
Daniel
March 16th, 2011 2:01amWow! Exceptional writing Melanie. Thank you.
Jason from AZ
March 16th, 2011 2:19amLet's be realists for a second: This is a war that Israel cannot win. About 5 million Israeli Jews against most of the world, not just the Muslims that surround them. Like a chronic ailment that cannot be cured, terrorism, hatred, and incitement is something that Israel will have to live with as long as there are Muslims in their neighborhood - in other words, FOREVER.
Just like many people go on with their lives despite horrible incurable ailments, I think most Israelis realize that they will always be living under a cloud of terrorism, hatred, and threat of genecide, but go on with their lives trying to forget these problems.
The only solution is for Israelis to say that they've had enough and are moving out of their horrendous neighborhood, which, of course, will never happen. So expect acts of terorism such as baby murders, suicide bombings, and missle launches to plague the Jewish State in perpetuity. The world has shown it could care less.
Derek BLADES
March 16th, 2011 3:24amThe Western reaction to the massacre of the Fogel family is partly conditioned by the belief that the Fogels should not have been there in the first place.
The United States, United Kingdom, European Union, and all member states of the United Nations except Israel regard the settlements in the occupied territories as illegal. It was therefore entirely consistent with this view that the Obama administration should condemn the announcement of accelerated settlement in response to the massacre. And it would have been remiss of the Daily Telegraph not to have reported the US reaction to the announcement.
If, like me, you regard Palestinian Arabs as normal people with normal human sentiments you have to ask yourself what has driven them to a state where some of them actually revel in a brutal massacre of this kind. To what extent is it due to the actions of the settlers and the IDF?
Of course, if your starting point is that Arabs are savages, then this sort of question is not relevant.
Jan Cosgrove
March 16th, 2011 4:58amNo one sane and decent condones such murder. The Israelis say they build - on someone else's land where they have no legal or moral right to be. They share responsibility for all death and suffering. Whether this was the act of an individual or of a terrorist group. we simply have to ask whether it would have happened had the settlement not been where it should never have been built. These are called the Occupied Territories, even Israel hasn't declared them annexed. Instead they simply settle the land and think they just have to wait until the world comes round to their point of view based on force majeure. That is the dishonesty of their position. The murders may well be one of the consequences of this dishonesty - not remotely condonable but easily explained. As on every occasion. They don't want to accept someone else has the right to this land, and so it must continue, with a sullen and resentful occupied people under their control. France recognises the Libyan opposition when it has no structure or stable basis. The proper thing would be for an elected Palestinian Government to be recognised by other states and admitted to the UN. Israel would then have its answer to its territorial ambition which is unlawful annexation of Palestinian territory. In all other situations we would be saying to the Israeli settlers "if you want to live there, do so as Palestinian citizens or by agreement of its Government and pay for what you have taken". Israel has a right to exist but not on someone else's land. It is in their hands, they can remove the basis for such actions, they can replace desperation and hatred with hope and tolerance. They have not tried, the existence and deception about the settlements is illustration of their bad faith and unlawful intent. Rule of law - applies to measuring the action of Palestinians and Israelis alike. We forget what the Second World War was about.
Jerry
March 16th, 2011 6:43amBeing right does not help the Jews, Melanie. The best tactics will not suffice Israel in its fight for survival. Being good does not help either. I recall the accusations that Israel was trading in human organs of the Haitians it was treating subsequent to the earthquake in Haiti.
What will help is steadfastness in the face of threat. Survival in spite of opposition. An occasional military victory - mowing the lawn when the grass gets too long. Soft Socialism will soon implode the societies in which it is practiced. No one will have time to deal with anything other than survival issues for some time.
Thank you for telling the whole truth, Melanie.
Rob
March 16th, 2011 7:00amBrilliant, Melanie. Required reading for all people with clear eyes and level heads. One of your best and most masterful pieces.
Mike Stallard
March 16th, 2011 7:00amIt is very hard to stop being an imperial power. Just as an old man thinks he is still physically powerful when he is not, so Britain still considers that we are the rulers of the world when actually we are just a small, defenceless, broke little island with most people shirking.
Israel is our last outpost in the Levant. We abandon that at our peril.
Grumpy true Zionist
March 16th, 2011 7:03amMelanie - but you know only to well, that for many people..the only good Jew is a dead Jew
for these people, they like it best when the Jew just does what he is told (death camps) and lies down and dies
that is why every day of my life i bask in the glory of the young Israeli's who go proudly into the IDF (many are embarrassed if they do not make it into units like Golani etc) unlike the youth of limp europe and sad britan, who in the main, would do anything to avoid a conscription
Israel in the final analysis will always place its citizens security way above prevailing world opinion....after all i think it was our Golda who said after Munich, and in the planning of 'the sword of Gideon'....if we dont do for ourselves, then who will do for us'
NEVER AGAIN
elixelx
March 16th, 2011 7:06amAnd Reuters...don't forget the wonderfully tendentious, disingenuous "5 Israelis killed in West Bank"....as though the Fogel family were looking for the knife that slaughtered them....
DISCUSSED
255
Wisconsin Senate passes public-sector union ban
172
Americans feel country on wrong track: Reuters/Ipsos poll
48
Five Israelis killed in West Bank attack – Isreali military
Don't you just love it when an international news agency makes a spelling mistake...especially when the mistake is disrespectful...!
Miranda Rose Smith
March 16th, 2011 7:16amOff topic, but I wish all the religious Jews on this website an easy Fast of Esther and a joyous Purim.
tiki
March 16th, 2011 7:55amIt's 1939 all over again. The planet is in turmoil and the world is 'ganging up on the 'usual scapegoat, the Jews//Israel again. But......to JASON from AZ, who said "This is a war that Israel cannot win", I would say....learn about the history of the Jews....., they were ALWAYS in wars they couldn't win, but they ALWAYS did. The world was ALWAYS ganging up on them, trying to 'exterminate them, but they always came back, stronger than ever!
Jon_Boy
March 16th, 2011 8:12amOk, Derek on a cushy government pension,Blades you say that all Arabs are decent people and therfore the Israelis must have driven them to do this. So is that also true of the Germans? The Jews must have done something terrible to drive them to what they did. Also the Armenians must have done something truly terrible to the Turks.
In fact I know we should change our entire law system. When a savage assault takes place on the streets of the UK we should arrest the victim and interrogate the victim until they confess what they must have done to drive another reasonable human to an act of violence.Then we should punish the victim duly.
Derek what I think Melanie is trying to say is that not all Arabs are born savges. However we are all humans and given the right cultural savagery many of us can end end up doing quite savage and inhuman things. Arabs are not born savages but the Arab/Palastinian culture since the 1930s of Jihadism/ Pan ultra Nationalist/supremacist Arabism, anit semitism,suicide bombings, terrorism and baby throat slitting is extremely savage and through education and indoctrination creates a cult of savagery.
Robbo
March 16th, 2011 8:22amWell, I am one Briton who does not look the other way or avert my gaze.
Charlene
March 16th, 2011 8:32amMelanie brilliant insightful analysis. I am a mature student studying history and your pertinent analysis is historically spot on. It is disgraceful how the western media colludes with and empowers Hitler's heirs. The Fogel family were beautiful you could see they loved and celebrated life. I am a Christian Zionist and know that those who committed the murder and those who empower and collude will stand before the Creator and will be judged for thier wickedness. I stand with Israel, I read my Bible I can do no other. Look at all the turmoil in the middle east they can't live in peace with each other, let alone Israel. Of course the Christians risk death in Sharia states. People today even the intelligentsia choose ignorance over truth. There is a warining from the prophet 'Woe to those who call evil good and good evil'. Stephen Sizer should take note along with those who support those who wish to drive the Jews out of thier Biblical Promised Land. Shalom
Tintagel
March 16th, 2011 9:00am@ Derek BLADES
"If, like me, you regard Palestinian Arabs as normal people with normal human sentiments..."
Yes, I do, but normal people don't generally go around slitting the throats of children in their beds, no matter where they live and what their fellow citizens may have done.
"...you have to ask yourself what has driven them to a state where some of them actually revel in a brutal massacre of this kind."
Maybe it's because they've been indoctrinated with a hatred of Jews regardless of any political grievances. Maybe it's because suicide bombers who walk into Israeli restaurants are revered as heros. Maybe it's because even slaughter like this is celebrated and consequently it's seen by the up and coming generation of Palestinian Arabs as an acceptable and justified act.
Normal people with normal sentiments can be turned into anything their parents, teachers and mentors want to them to be.
M. Bennett
March 16th, 2011 9:07amBrilliant! (I don't need to add anything else. You've said it all.)
Terry in Oz
March 16th, 2011 9:15amVery good article, Mel.
I have been saying for many years that we are watching a re-run of 1930s Europe and its racist antisemitism, which ultimately hosted the Holocaust. Back then, it was the spectre of the Jews amongst us in western Europe, now it is the Jewish nation amongst us in the (dysfunctional) family of nations.
The western left has been at the forefront of this move back to fascism, and is itself now neo-fascist in nature. The fig leaf of being 'anti Zionist, not anti Jewish' withered many years ago.
And Mel, you are right. Now is the time for Israel to stand up for itself, the thousands of slaughtered innocent Jews that arab genocide has left in its trail, and for civilisation itself. The civilisation that the west itself has abandoned.
Shazza
March 16th, 2011 9:21amTruthtriumphs - yes there are decent people out there, but I fear the truth has no chance of being heard let alone understood. I really wish we had our own Glen Beck, he has highlighted this vicious murder on his show, and yes, he is right when he says there is a terrible evil among us.
Trumpeldor
March 16th, 2011 9:25amWe,Jews, are rightfully obsessed by justice and rights.
But the real balance of international power does not lie in truth but in oil,money,demographics and extorsion.
In all these fields ,we are clearly lame ducks.
RCE
March 16th, 2011 9:58amJon_Boy @ 8:12 AM
A devastating response to those who attribute barbarity to provocation.
One could also note that there was never any Jewish backlash against Germany post-WWII.
Lizzy
March 16th, 2011 10:03amSo true Melanie, and hirsch dovid. Poisonous, outrageous. The "progressives" are deranged, brainwashed - trying to get them to see the reality of such events as this mass murder is like talking to an alien from another universe, they refuse to engage in any discourse based on human decency, they only think within the boundaries of their ideology. Oh Orwell, if you could see them now.
claudio di giuseppe
March 16th, 2011 10:53amFour quick questions and answers:
1 - Would have this jewish family been killed if they were living elsewhere, let’s say: out of the infamous settlements area? - Yes, of course. Actually, it happens more often than not, to jewish people, in Israel itself.
2 – Are Europeans and Americans antisemites, sic et simpliciter? - No, maybe they just are scared and vile people taking the parts of the stronger (on the long therm) side: “The crocodile eating you up, can’t eat me at the same time”. But times changes.
3 - Are the Arabs savages? - Yes, of course. And moreover, as it gets, they take a sublime perverted pleasure out of killing jews, and infidel (read: us) in general. Evil people.
4 – If being an anti-semite is not an implicit form of racism, can I be an anti-arab as well? – No, because it’s a vicious form of racism. Gert Wilders teaches.
Derek Pasquill
March 16th, 2011 10:55amThe real obstacle to peace in the region has always been the congealed mass of liberal left apparatchiks in the West with its bleeding heart concern for Palistanis - a convenient excuse for the Jew hatred which is indelibly stamped on the forehead of the European body politic.
dizzi
March 16th, 2011 10:58amMelanie, you forget that it was not only ordinary Germans who looked the other way in WW2 but the West as well. Millions could have been saved had the doors been opened for them to leave occupied Europe. Therrefore,you shouldn't be surprised at the callousness of the West when innocent Jews are slaughtered.
Brendan Stack
March 16th, 2011 11:00amBrilliant piece Melanie,keep up the good work and never tire of telling the truth. I am also in complete agreement with Charlene
Carl
March 16th, 2011 11:25amThe Telegraph simply points out what is well known: The Settlements are a provocation and a continued obstacle to peace.
Erika
March 16th, 2011 11:54amBRILLIANT article! Jews of the world, listen well... it's time to pack your bags and move to Israel. Just do it!
Edgar Davidson
March 16th, 2011 12:39pmGreat analysis and you are correct to point out the timidity of the Israeli government as a factor in failing to alert the world to what is going on. But another factor is that Israel suffers from the same dominance of the media by left-wing ideologues. I was in Israel when the Itamar atrocity took place and several left-wing Israelis said to me, essentially, that the residents of Itamar 'had it coming to them'.
O-Dog
March 16th, 2011 12:45pm"Israel is the signature moral issue of our time. Which side people choose to be on in the Arab and Muslim war against Israel tells us whether they are on the side of truth, justice and basic humanity – or the side of evil."
To take such a partisan view on the Israel-Pal conflict makes people like Mel part of the problem not part of the solution. The we-right you-wrong view needs to be rejected by both sides. Only reconciliation and acknowledgement of the other's narrative will allow peace. Rejection of reconciliation will guarantee perpetual war, war being something that Israel can never afford to lose even once.
Stephen Rothbart
March 16th, 2011 1:10pmWell Derek, I am beginning to believe that many Palestinians are not normal people, and that many of them are indeed savages.
Take a look at the piece by Andrew McCarthy in the National Review.
This is an extract from what he wrote:
"Muslims are frequently found carrying out the Koranic directive to “strike terror into the hearts of the unbelievers.” Actually, make that the Koranic theme, so often is it reiterated in the scriptures devout Muslims take to be the verbatim commands of Allah. (See, e.g., Suras 3:151, 8:12–13, 8:60, 9:5, 33:25–27, 59:2–4, 59:13.) And that is beside the hadith, scriptures in which Mohammed, taken to be the perfect Muslim role model, boasts, “I have been made victorious with terror.” (Bukhari 4.52.220 — just scroll down from here, through the glories promised to Muslims who wage jihad against the infidels.)
“The prophet, prayer and peace be upon him, said, ‘The time [of judgment] will not come until Muslims will fight the Jews and kill them; until the Jews hide behind rocks and trees, which will cry: Oh, Muslim! There is a Jew hiding behind me, come and kill him!” That’s not something Osama bin Laden made up. It is right there in the hadith, the authoritative accounts of Mohammed’s words and deeds. As Robert Spencer has demonstrated, variations of this end of times scenario run through the hadith collections of Sahih Muslim (Book 41, nos. 6980-86) and Bukhari (4.52.176 & 177, and 4.56.791.) That is why the story is repeated in Article 7 of the Hamas charter, the document in which the Muslim Brotherhood explains that annihilating Israel is a religious duty. That is why the story is a favorite of Sheikh Qaradawi’s."
So the Palestinians in Gaza elected a body who believe it their sacred duty to destroy Israel and kill Jews. So did the followers of Hitler.
Hamas at least has the courage of its convictions to admit to this. The Fatah led West Bank leaders pretend they are moderates and kid the gullible that all they want is to live in Peace.
This has been my starting point all along in these blogs.
Thrre is no partner for Peace in the Arab world.
It is ingrained in their religion to kill Jews and not to share their land with the infidel.
Not reported on CNN and BBC was the fact that Mubarak and Ghadaffi have been denounced by those nice cuddly freedom fighters we should all support, as "Jews" or "Israeli spies."
The non-Jewish journalist stripped naked and sexually assaulted by 200 Egyptian freedom fighters was also called a Jew by them.
That is the Elephant in the Room that no one seems to acknowledge.
Palestinians hate Jews, celebrate their death, martyr anyone who kills even unarmed Jewish children, names football tournaments after mass murderers of women and children, celebrated 9/11, named public squares after murderers of women and children (yes I know, I said that about football tournaments, but I think it bears repeating), and so no, Derek, I do not think they are normal.
Do you?
If you do, then what does that say about your own values?
Has Israel been at war with Libya? Has it ever invaded Libya? Is Israel building settlements in Libya?
So why is the biggest insult the freedom fighters, while wishing to have US and British pilots risk their lives enforcing a no-fly zone to save their lives, can use against their leader the word "Jew?"
One of the nicest people I ever met was the son of the former Libyan foreign minister before Ghadaffi took over.
We became fast friends.
I am not against Arabs or Muslims.
But by God, they are surely against the Jews. Their religion tells them to be.
But may be you are right. The "normal" state of mind for people all over the world is to blame the Jew.
Perhaps it is "normal" to support a barabaric, mysoginist, racist, homophobic tribe in everyhting they do, just so long as the victim is a Jew.
Perhaps that is the point where "civilization" has arrived at again.
Peterborough Paul
March 16th, 2011 1:13pmSpot on Melanie. An article today by Jeff Jacoby at the Boston Globe also perfectly answers some of the the utterly deluded people here on this Comments section. Read it all but here is a taster...
The civilized mind struggles to make sense of such savagery.
There are those who believe passionately that all human beings are inherently good and rational creatures, essentially the same once you get beyond surface disagreements. Such people cannot accept the reality of a culture that extols death over life, that inculcates a vitriolic hatred of Jews, that induces children to idolize terrorists. Since they would never murder a family in its sleep without being driven to it by some overpowering horror, they imagine that nobody would. This is the mindset that sees a massacre of Jews and concludes that Jews must in some way have provoked it. It’s the mindset behind the narrative that continually blames Israel for the enmity of its neighbors and makes it Israel’s responsibility to end their violence.
The truth is simpler, and bleaker. Human goodness is not hard-wired. It takes sustained effort and healthy values to produce good people; in the absence of those values, cruelty and intolerance are far more likely to flourish.
http://www.boston.com/bostonglobe/editorial_opinion/oped/articles/2011/03/16/massacre_of_the_innocents/
Failed princess
March 16th, 2011 1:23pmJan Cosgrove
FYI, the moderate unelected Palestinian President Abbas has stated that no Jews will be allowed to live in the Islamic State of Palestine,
So much for your suggestion that the people living in the settlements become citizens of a Palestinian state.
Any other helpful suggestions?
Nigel Shaw
March 16th, 2011 1:28pmThe West`s response to the savage murder of Rabbi Fogel and four other members of his family is not amoral it indisputedly immoral.
daniel maris
March 16th, 2011 1:58pmI wholeheartedly condemn the terrorism against that family and the murder of civilians. However, Zionists have used terrorism before now, and as far as I know Israel honours those terrorists - so things are not as clear cut as you would like.
I think the imperative is to get on to a sensible two state solution, which will certainly necessitate Arabs giving up on their genocidal dreams towards the Jews. But that sensible solution is not aided by this absurd and unsustainable settlement policy. Any fule know that. The settlements will be pulled down, just like they were in Sinai and Gaza - by Israelis not Arabs.
VEBott
March 16th, 2011 2:03pm"This amoral response by the west is simply devastating. It means that it no longer possesses the capacity even to acknowledge Jewish victimisation at the hands of the Arabs "
Whilst one can claim that Israeli disproportionate response to Arab acts of terror is justified, it is quite another to claim that the strong, the one capable of exercising a disproportionate response. is being victimised by the weak. That statement, to me, suggests there's a magnet attached to the compass – and the magnet is the idea that one Israeli baby's death is more significant than any number of Arab babies dying. It also doesn't help to write the whole article without once acknowledging that the Al Aqsa Brigades have explicitly denied that they had anything to do with the atrocious murder of the Fogel family.
In your signature moral issue of our time, I am definitely on Israel's side against psychotic religious fascism. It's just such a pity that Israel has never tried to prevent the development of that mentality amongst the Palestinians – and has in fact encouraged it by the apparent hopelessness of all other solutions to the increasing loss of Palestinian homes and farms. It has rarely been truer that religion is the heart of a heartless world.
Velhos Fatos
March 16th, 2011 2:10pmDear Melanie,
Thank you for your courage to say the truth in this turned-upside-down world of ours. As an Israeli I can say that the problem is not only the 'west'. The Israeli media is nothing less than antisemitic. Many Jewish Israelis who consider themselves ‘enlightened’ as you say, are Jew-haters, and especially 'settler'-haters. This hatred is so deep that these people dismiss this murder and automatically blame the victims. It is one thing that other nations are against us, but this self-loathing is actually absurd, sad, and utterly sickening.
Myriam Israel
March 16th, 2011 2:21pmExactly what I think!What a failure,what a moral bankruptcy for the West!Thank you Melanie for saying the truth.
Rose
March 16th, 2011 2:37pmShazza @16th 9.21am.
Thanks for the great post
Shazza @16th. 9.21am
Completely agree with your post especially "I really wish we had our own Glen Beck "
Melanie's daily truths don't reach a big enough audience
Mark2
March 16th, 2011 2:39pm"Of course, if your starting point is that Arabs are savages, then this sort of question is not relevant."
I don' think this is mel's point. She is very clear about the root cause being propoganda in Arab countgries which is brutally anti-semitic. Lets say it astraight - they are taught to hate jews. As someone said above they would murder Jews if they could were they within the 1967 boundries of Israel. The settlements are rather softer targets, which says something - whatever you think of their politics and motives - for the bravery and committment of the settlers.
I need hardly add for the sake of Carl that it is ISRAEL (within ANY boundaries)therefore which in their eyes is the provocation. If you agree it is then you are probably topo far gone to be worth convincing otherwise - if not, then why not get down off the fence and say so?
Derek BLADES
March 16th, 2011 2:49pm@ Carl. "The Telegraph simply points out what is well known: The Settlements are a provocation and a continued obstacle to peace."
Spot on. There are none so blind as those that will not see.
O-Dog
March 16th, 2011 2:50pmHaving read the Telegraph article, it is bizarre to describe it as poisonous. The article was not opinionated and the story (US condemns settlement announcement) was widely reported.
The Telegraph reported the murders on Saturday here, shortly after the news broke.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/middleeast/israel/8378061/Israeli-settler-family-murdered-Palestinians-accused.html
Then on Monday the Telegraph reported on US reaction to Israel's announcement to expand the settlements.
What is wrong with that? Is the US supposed to maintain a period of grief when it must not comment on any Israeli policy, or was the Telegraph the sinner, by reporting on the US reaction to the settlement plan when it should be maintaining sympathetic silence for the bereaved family?
Perhaps the Israeli government was to blame by using the murders as an cynical opportunity to make such an announcement, believing that the world wouldn't be so insensitive as to critisise them?
George
March 16th, 2011 3:10pmCannot believe the Telegraph used the word "militant" to describe the terrorists and the word "assault" to describe the appalling murders.
Shocking use of language.
Truthtriumphs
March 16th, 2011 3:11pmJan Cosgrove.
"No one sane and decent condones such murder. The Israelis say they build - on someone else's land where they have no legal or moral right to be. They share responsibility for all death and suffering".
Is that so?
You really are very ignorant in these matters.
Someone else'e land?
Absolutely not!
If you haven't the time/attention span to read up on the legalities, look at M's previous post, where I summarised the legal situation that obtains.
What is Palestinian land?
It's a meaningless term, because the word, Palestine, only refers to a geographical entity...that is how it has always been.
When, for example, some 50 million Muslims, who have arrived in W. Europe during the last 30 years from diverse parts of the globe, very many, illegally, it has to be said, have settled here, do you complain that they are settled illegally on British/French/German/Dutch etc land, or do you consider that a non-sensical position to hold?
And another thing, there have been terrorist attacks against the Jews in the Holy land, long before Israel was re-created.
I suggest that to educate yourself in these matters, you could do no better than to read "The Seige"... a masterpiece and probably the best book ever written about Zionism.
Author...Conor Cruise O'Brien.
He was gentile, so he cannot be accused of bias (except by the regular cranks who blight this site).
It's been out of print for years, but should be obtainable second-hand.
In future, try to engage your brain before your mouth.
Ruth
March 16th, 2011 3:21pmDear Melanie,
Your words are very moving in their accuracy and once again I thank you for expressing what others fear to say.
Celato
March 16th, 2011 3:36pmStephen Rothbart:
I just don't get it. You meet an Arab Muslim and the two of you become friends. He's one of the "nicest people" you ever met, so presumably he neither hates Jews nor slavishly follows Koranic injunctions to slay them.
Yet in the next breath you revert to talking about Arabs and Muslims en masse as being "against Jews" and say this is because "their religion tells them to be".
Why is it impossible for you to see that there are millions of Arab Muslims like your Lybian friend who are quite capable of thinking for themselves and rejecting the bigotry of religious fundamentalism?
Herzen
March 16th, 2011 3:45pmDerek BLADES
March 16th, 2011 3:24am
Surely what drove the perpetrator to commit this crime, unless it disturbed the balance of his mind, should not condition anyone's response, whether Western governments, the media, or Palestinians in Gaza - the response should be outright condemnation without any qualification.
It is unfortunate that Netanyahu should try to make political capital by saying, "they kill, we build", inciting further illegal settlement.
Augustus
March 16th, 2011 3:46pmPeterborough Paul - You are quite right, the mind does indeed struggle to make sense of such savagery. Take the website of the al-Qassam Brigades, the armed wing of Hamas, as an example. On the English section there was a short statement denying any responsibility on the part of Hamas for the attack, but on the Arabic section of the website an article was published praising the attacker
as a 'mujahid' and deriding the slain Jews as 'Zionist usurpers'
and there were countless comments posted by readers all praising the attack and the attacker. And curiously, whilst the statement in English raised the possibility of the act being carried out by settlers
even, in the Arabic article there was no doubt that the attacker was a Palestinian
'mujihad'. And this is the same
Hamas that CAIR refuses to condemn.
Herzen
March 16th, 2011 4:25pmTruthtriumphs
March 16th, 2011 3:11pm
"If you haven't the time/attention span to read up on the legalities, look at M's previous post, where I summarised the legal situation that obtains."
There you go again!
just asking
March 16th, 2011 4:44pm".Hitler’s Middle East legion.."?
Is this some new historical discovery?
Nachman
March 16th, 2011 4:57pmAllow me to share this with you:
Ruth Fogel's father, Rabbi Yehuda Ben-Yishai in a radio interview the obviously in deep pain, yet he did not call for revenge and did not express hatred. Explaining to the astonished interviewer his lack of rancor, he said:
I have worked in education many years, and as an educator, I try to strengthen and teach people faith. I understand that I cannot be satisfied with words and that I also must implement the same principles on which I have educated others. This is a test of my faith, and therefore I agreed to be interviewed.
I believe in the country, in our strength and in the strength of the army, and I ask how did this strength not save our children?
... We will take upon ourselves the difficult task and pave for them the path so that life will be victorious.
Their mother and father will pray for them from the Heavens, their grandfathers and grandmothers will give them a lot of love, and the People of Israel will hug them and encourage them to grow and continue in the path of their parents.
All those who conemn the horrendous killing of five innocent souls while bleating some perverse moral equivalence between building homes and slaughtering babies should hang their heads in shame.
Nachman
March 16th, 2011 5:04pm@Herzen
Seems you will not accept any counter argument .
The core legal issue, according to Michael Newton, Professor of Law at Vanderbilt University and a leading expert in the field, is which nation-state had full sovereignty in this territory when Israel took military and political control.
Logically, since Jordan renounced its claim to Judea and Samaria in 1988, and signed a peace treaty with Israel in 1994, recognizing its current border, the only other possible valid legal claim, defined in the Mandate, is that of Israel; Palestinians have no claim because the area was never a Palestinian state.
Whether Israeli settlements are “unacceptable” and “unhelpful” is debatable. ICRC and kangaroo court rulings against Israel, like those of the International Court of Justice, however, have no basis in proper judicial procedures. They serve only to demonize and delegitimize Israel, and abrogate the meaning of just law.
The answer to the thuggery of the Arabs is the continued building of Jewish homes on Jewish lands and I am so pleased that makes you unhappy - maybe the Arabs will get it too!
Joshua
March 16th, 2011 5:49pm@Celato
You ask :"Why is it impossible for you to see that there are millions of Arab Muslims like your Lybian friend who are quite capable of thinking for themselves and rejecting the bigotry of religious fundamentalism?"
What you say is true. Many in a personal capacity concede the stupidity of this line of ruinous thinking. But I bear in mind a friend who was raised in Algeria and who told me how he was raised to believe that Jews grew horns, were not to be trusted and so on and warned that given the chance to kill Jews his people would have no hesitation whatsoever in wiping them out.
How does this comment square with your reasoning that there is no threat and one should ignore the "rhetoric"?
zelda
March 16th, 2011 6:43pmExcellent Melanine! Stay Courageous and safe.
Ann
March 16th, 2011 7:00pm"It is unfortunate that Netanyahu should try to make political capital by saying, "they kill, we build", inciting further illegal settlement."
Repeating the ignorant nonsense that they are 'illegal' won't make it so. There is no law anywhere that requires J&S to be Judenrein. They were Judenrein under the illegitimate Jordanian occupation. But anyone who claims that Jews living in J&S are doing so 'illegally' is simply regurgitating antisemitic propaganda.
While I agree that Israel is not putting its case across nearly emphatically enough (but will it really make any difference, given the visceral Jew-hatred worldwide and the short-sightedness and stupidity of Obama and the EU's apparatchiks?), fortunately Netanyahu's response is right on target: Jews will continue living in their own country, and if it makes the Jew-haters here choke on their bile as a result, why, that's a bonus.
Nathan Rapoport
March 16th, 2011 7:11pmThis article should be in every newspaper around the world. It truly encapsulates the futile situation that Israel deals with in the international community. Job well done!
Andre
March 16th, 2011 7:16pmjust asking Sadly this is well established fact. The Grand Mufti of Jerusalem, Amin al-Husayni, fled to Berlin on the outbreak of the second world war and became a good friend of Heinrich Himmler. He and Himmler recruited 1000s of Muslims - from the Balkans, the Indian sub-continent and the middle east to join the SS. Organisations in the SS included the SS Handzar Division, comprising 18,000 Bosnian Muslims and 300 Albanian Muslims, the SS Kama Division, an Arabisches Freiheitskorps and the 21st Waffen SS Scanderberg Ostmusselmanische regiment. In all over 100,000 Muslims served in the SS. In a little remarked quid-pro-quo Arab countries in the middle - east gave safe refuge to 100s of fleeing SS officers after the war. The Mufti himself died in Cairo in 1974 - he was never brought to justice.
Grumpy true Zionist
March 16th, 2011 7:49pmto the many posters here, the earnest sincere Jewish and more importantaly non Jewish voices, pleading for logic, setting out reams of information trying to justify the Jew/Israel existence in the world, against an 'agent provacateur' in its myriad anti-semite/Israel guise....
know this...the survivors of the camps, the people from the Exodus, the remnants of Ashkenazi europe, from France to Poland and beyond, are made from stuff, that you in your lefty/lofty universities/media/town councils/special pressure groups/palistinian boycott Israel campaigns whatever.....will never understand or in fact prevail over...ever
this is not a threat...this is a promise (nor is this a gungho bush type brag)
read the background on our military leadership including the new head of IDF - Benny Gantz
his mother arrived in our land - Eretz Yisrael, a survivor of the camps, weighing nothing, an amaciated soul, and her only vindication in life was having survived and later producing the child that would become the IDF chief
now, pause a moment, and reflect on this individual's predisposition, to succumb to the puffery/indignation and play play affrontery of the west ie un/eu/brit/us-oblama
not a chance in hell, when the chips are down or when the dice is loaded, this 'boychik' operates in a collective survival mode, far and away from the snide little insidious reposts and remarks made here...he does'nt bother with what is not on his radar ie protecting with all his determination the people from the Ha'Karmiel to Eilat and from Ceasarea to the hills and valleys of Judea and Samaria
everything else is just....details
N Smith
March 16th, 2011 7:53pmFantastic article- passionate, engaging and most importantly of all accurate.
There are those of us in Britain, few though we be, who still believe and desire to uphold truth and reason.
May Israel turn away from those of its "allies" who are no better than a "splintered reed of a staff, which pierces a man's hand and wounds him if he leans on it" and towards its only true hope and deliverer.
Herzen
March 16th, 2011 8:00pmNachman
March 16th, 2011 5:04pm
If I can wade through the venom and sift through the confusion.
A quick answer would be that Prof. Newton can be as distinguished as you like, it doesn't make him right. He does not trump the ICJ, whose opinion on this question was unanimous.
Those who make much of the definite article in Resolution 242 clearly forget that the UN has ruled on this question since 1967. In 1980, the Security Council issued an unconditional call on Israel to withdraw from the Gaza Strip and West Bank. "Reaffirming that acquisition of terriotry by force is inadmissable", it referred to "the overriding necessity to end the prolonged occupation of Arab territories occupied by Israel since 1967."
There have been a number of arguments for Israel's retention of the territories.
One is that a state taking territory in self-defence may lawfully annexe it. Since there is no law to that effect, and a clear denial of any such law in the UN Charter, this argument is not effective.
There is the argument that occupation of the West Bank and Gaza was necessary and proportional in relation to Israel's security needs. But any threat was eliminated in the war, and any pretext was removed by the peace treaties with Jordan and Egypt.
It has been said that Israel may lawfully retain the territories pending a peace agreement with the Arab states. This cannot be maintained against the clear resolution of the Security Council and unanimous opinion of the ICJ.
There is the argument that Israel may lawfully retain the territory because Jordan did not hold lawful title, and so there was no sovereign power to whom the territories could revert. Israel, it was argued, had better title than anyone else, particularly as it had acquired the territories in self-defence. However, it is generally accepted in international law that uncertainty over sovereignty provides no ground for retaining territory taken in hostilities. So even if Jordan held the West Bank only de facto, Israel could not thereby acquire title.
This argument in any event overlooks the fact that the Palestinian Arabs have a sound claim by right of self-determination.
The US Court of Appeal has indeed argued that the territory designated for an Arab state was under the control of other states (Israel, Egypt and Jordan) and this control negated Palestinian statehood. However, the Court misread how the international has treated Palestine. After 1948, the international community has continued to treat Palestine as a state. UN Charter Article 80 called for the preservation of rights of states and people under mandate arrangements. A state of Palestine had been provisionally recognized as independent by the League Covenant in Article 22(4), hence it held rights. By the UN Charter Article 80, the League provisional recognition in Article 22 remained valid.
You no doubt know that Jordan renounced its claim (which was in any event invalid, by the arguments above) in favour of the Palestinians: "Jordan is not Palestine...The independent Palestinian state will be established on the occupied Palestinian land after liberation..."
I suspect you have garbled Prof. Newton's arguments.
Victoria
March 16th, 2011 8:27pmOh here we go again. Type 'two killed in Israeli airstrike' in Google News and you'll see how hypocritical you are.
Of course the 'terrorists' are to blame. Let me ask you one thing: have they caught these alleged murderers yet? So how can you be so sure it was the Palestinians?
If in the UK, a whole family was slaughtered and the news reported next day 'culprit not found, but we are 99% sure it was the Lib Dems who did it', the weak would believe. The strong and just would question if justice had been served.
DJKuulA
March 16th, 2011 8:33pmJan Cosgrove, you were doing OK until you got to this:
" In all other situations we would be saying to the Israeli settlers "if you want to live there, do so as Palestinian citizens or by agreement of its Government and pay for what you have taken"."
If you think that Jews would EVER be allowed to live as citizens (or even semi-citizens) in a Palestinian Arab state, you are sorely mistaken.
So, back to the ol' drawing board. . .
david elder
March 16th, 2011 8:40pmBlades, you say the settlements are a provocation. To the Palestinian leadership ANY Israeli 'settlement' of ANY sort ANYWHERE is a 'provocation.' Stop trying to make feeble excuses for people who are their own worst enemies.
just asking
March 16th, 2011 8:46pmAndre, Thanks. I had heard of some of the groups you mention, and a few others, but never of the "Arabs of inter-war Palestine who formed Hitler's Middle East legion" mentioned in the original article. Do you think this is referring to the Mufti alone?
Tintagel
March 16th, 2011 8:46pm@ just asking
Andre (March 16th, 2011 7:16pm) is correct. Just google "grand mufti Amin al-Husayni". There is, among many other sources, testimony from the Nazis at the Nuremberg trials.
He was the great uncle of the PLO leader Yasser Arafat who described him as a hero and attended his funeral.
C.Gee
March 16th, 2011 8:47pm"Why is it impossible for you to see that there are millions of Arab Muslims like your Lybian friend who are quite capable of thinking for themselves and rejecting the bigotry of religious fundamentalism?"
Stephen Rothbart is very able to answer this question put to him, and I look forward to his answer.
I would like to say, though, that what Celato does not seem to get - on his own admission - is that while any individual is to be taken on his own terms and not assumed to represent or to be representative of his collective, that does not mean that the collective may not be thought to have collective characteristics or points of view. There does exist much evidence that the Arab collective hates Jews. Their collective voice and actions demonstrate that they regard Jews as culturally their mortal enemies. Most of the Arab world is still at war with Israel, most of the Arab world is Jew free. Whether Islamic or secular, whether national or tribal or the "Street", the collective Arab voice expresses hatred for Jews. Christian Arabs less so than Muslims, but the secular middle classes no less so than the Friday night after-mosque mob.
Is Celato trying to say that we should not make “generalizations”? Not think in “stereotypes”? Well, OK. But to think of nations is necessarily to think of groups of people, collectives. Further, a nation is assumed to have a right to self-determination. That suggests that there is a collective identity, a national character and a unified culture. It is pretty safe to say that even if there are “millions” of “non-fundamentalist” (actually a meaningless term applied to Islam) Arabs, they are culturally fundamentally against the Jews. Sure, some of them do not think that every individual Jew is a prophet-killing, morally depraved untermensch, but that does not mean that there are millions of Arabs supporting the Jews as a collective.
Question: What harm have the Jews as a collective (dispersed or as a nation on their own land) done to Europe or to Arabs? What have Jews as a people ever done to justify the demonizing, delegitimating, nasty ideas about them fostered by Europeans and Arabs before the State of Israel was declared? What has the Jewish state done that is so egregiously different from other states to warrant being smeared by the old blood-libels - baby-killing, depravity, rapaciousness, underhandedness, racism - re-phrased in the lingo of human rights activists, when it is at war with enemy collectives which actually exhibit those characteristics and exalt and exult in them? Being a Jew, being an Israeli, means giving offense. Taking offense is “normal” (the new norm has become a meme on these threads). Settlements of Jews are offensive and provocative so they must be illegal. Settlements of Jews are illegal because they are offensive and provocative. Dirt is matter out of place. Jews are humans out of place.
Ann
March 16th, 2011 8:47pm"He does not trump the ICJ, whose opinion on this question was unanimous"
So? They are a politically motivated bunch of ignoramuses, as has been shown repeatedly. Their blathering about the so-called "1967 borders" shows this conclusively.
The UN charter? The UN is not a law-making body. It has nil authority to pronounce on the matter.
michelle
March 16th, 2011 8:56pmMatan Ohayoun, aged 5, and Noam Ohayoun, aged 4 were Israeli children killed in their beds along with their mother in an attack that happened in 2002 that is similar to the Itamar terror attack.
They were not in a settlement that could be used as a justification for their murder by a Palestinian terrorist.
Derek BLADES
March 16th, 2011 9:13pmJon_Boy addresses me as "Derek on a cushy government pension,Blades"
Nothing could be further from the truth Old Chap. I am still at work. I do my work in several different parts of the world - including the Middle East. What I have learned is that all people are pretty much alike and all motivated by the usual humdrum issues of putting food on the table, bringing up kids, looking after old folks and whatever. There are some good and bad apples everywhere but not disproportionately so in any particular country.
What I have also learned is that the issues that so agitate the bloggers on this site rarely have any black and white answers - just different shades of grey. For what it's worth, where I come out on the Israel-Palestine dispute is that Israel has created a state which is recognised by the United Nations. The territorial integrity of this state is guaranteed by its massive advantage in conventional and nuclear weaponry and its alliances with the United States. Jewish people clearly have a right to live there if they so wish and many apparently enjoy doing so. That's fine by me but I think Palestinians have rights too. These include the right to live unmolested in the West Bank in their own state and ruled by whatever laws they prefer. Netanyahu and his cronies are determined to prevent that. I regard their double-dealing and hypocrisy as unacceptable and the support they receive from the Greater-Israel fans on this site as highly offensive bordering, as it often does, on racism.
Tell me Boyo. Does that sound whacky to you?
Augustus
March 16th, 2011 9:13pmDerek BLADES - So you (and Carl)
show solidarity with the Palestinians. But any just cause, any noble ideal, any moral quest for equality and human rights means absolutely nothing if it is based on obsessive dogma, rabid hatred,
and headstrong resentment of
allowing Jews their human rights
to live and flourish in your own state. Can't you see that,
Or are you too blind? It seems
to me perverse to want to support those who turn resentment into an ideal, and victory into banishment of others, purely on racial or religious grounds. Those are the
true 'obstacles to peace' not
villages or streets.
C.Gee
March 16th, 2011 9:31pm"It is unfortunate that Netanyahu should try to make political capital by saying, "they kill, we build", inciting further illegal settlement."
You seem delighted to have found in this horrible incident a way to put Jews in the wrong. Apparently it is distasteful for Netanyahu (or others here) to make "political capital" out of the murder, by defending settlement.
The murder, though, was a political act against settlers. That is a large part of what makes it so appalling. There are people saying that the settlements provoke Palestinians to kill - and that slitting the throat of settler children is a normal and expectable reaction to the policies of the Likud. That is making big splats of political capital, I would say, not to mention providing political justification for murder. Netanyahu is the politician responsible for the security of Israelis. His statement puts these people and their squalid politics to shame.
May Israel soon declare its borders - and let them contain as much of Judea and Samaria as it can defend, however offensive that may be to Palestinian Arab politicians.
JAmes Murphy
March 16th, 2011 10:12pmBlades and "Carl", so the possession of territory is sufficient provocation to cut a child's throat is it? What woeful individuals you are.
Nachman
March 16th, 2011 10:27pm@Herzen for your information one of the members of the ICJ which issued an advisory not a ruling (i.e. not binding in International Law) was Egyptian - he obviously had a conflict of interest but refused to recuse himself.
From what you write it would seem you have a difficulty when faced with facts of absorbing them and twist the facts and come up with unsupportable arguments. I have shown that the framers of Resolution 242 gave reasons why the definite article was left out as was the word "all". You can adopt the your position if you like but the leaked documents provided by the Guardian clearly show that even the Arabs accept that Israel will not be returning the 1949 Armistice Lines if a peace treaty is ever signed.
And now you come up with a novel concept: "This argument in any event overlooks the fact that the Palestinian Arabs have a sound claim by right of self-determination" This beggars belief please give your support for this supposed "fact" - self determination where? Nowhere in any UN resolution until the Arabs took over the UN and passed resolutions such as equating zionism with racism did the concept of a "Palestinian" people surface. In 1948 when resolution 194 was passed we do not see any reference to such a people as is well known until 1964 the only people who had ever referred to themselves as Palestinian were the Jews living in the Mandate before 1948. So what's with the myths and fairy tales?
As to the settlelemnts themselves since Israel did not "forcibly transfer" populations, prohibited in GC IV, condemning Israel lacked solid foundations. Therefore, in 2002, the Arab states at the Rome Statutes of the International Criminal Court added a new element to the law governing war crimes, making it a crime for an "occupying power" (i.e. Israel) to transfer its citizens into "occupied territory" not only forcibly, but indirectly as well – that is, providing any assistance – for example, mortgages and infrastructure. That is they attempted to make illegal what had previously been legal - and this is something you support?
This Rome treaty provision was specifically designed to declare Jews who built homes over the Armistice Lines of 1949 and Israel guilty of war crimes even though the mandate granted a lawful right of settlement to the jewish people. An extension of GC IV, it leads back to the ICRC which in 1971 arbitrarily declared that Israel's presence in "occupied territories" violated GC IV and was therefore illegal . Without the ability to examine the ICRC archives, however, it's a dead end. What is the ICRC hiding, and why? Considering it did not allow Magen David Adom to be a member for so many years until it adopted an alternate symbol to the Red Star of David leads one to an all too obvious conclusion.
Idan
March 16th, 2011 10:30pmI'm an Israeli guest here in this discussion board and I live only a few minut.e walk off the Passover Massace Park Hotel (Mar 27, 2002) and I'm socked to find smart Europeans like Mel and some other talkbackers.
beacuse Israel is such a timid, Europeans are unaware of their monsterous image among most reasonable Israelis: ignorant, naive to infinity, easily-fooled, bleeding hearts, and most importantly wretched double faced (what we Brits can do in Dresden you Israelis can never do in Gaza) hypocrites.
Like it or not Euros, but what matters is the impression we Israelis take from you.
My question to you Brits and please be honest: how many of you are indeed anti-Israel? (please try to relate some polls or so...)
AY
March 16th, 2011 11:04pm"IDF, settlers save Arab baby, mother in Itamar"
http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-4043536,00.html
Looks quite surreal.. but no - higher powers aren't involved. This is just a coincidence.
Jason from AZ
March 16th, 2011 11:12pmIn a poll recently taken taken throughout Europe, about 50% of Europeans agreed with the statement that "Israel is conducting a war of extermination against the Palestinians." With this impression of Isreali Jews, it is easy to see why the EU could care less if one Israeli family is slaughtered by Palestinians.
I'm still trying to decide if the Europeans who believe this nonsense are just "useful idiots" for the Palestinian cause, or are simply anti-semitic and will believe any negative propaganda about Jews no matter how crazy.
Andras
March 16th, 2011 11:22pmFantastic!
Martins
March 16th, 2011 11:32pmIf the Arabs war against the Jewish people is an unfinished business of the second world war then they should be ready for a real show down because the Jewish people will never close their eyes and fold their hands to give way for their enemies to destroy them. That is exactly what the big brothers want,but it will never be,otherwise the whole world shall quake.
Roger K
March 16th, 2011 11:40pmWell done Melanie.
You are not alone.
There are many of us Jewish and non-Jewish who follow Rabi Hillel direction, "Where there are no men, be thou a man."
Truthtriumphs
March 17th, 2011 1:48amI reprise this brilliant article by the distinguished Harold Evans, one-time editor of the Sunday Times, in response to those who make a moral equivalence between the victims and the perpetrators of the latest evil atrocity.
'We are all Hizbullah now.' Really?
Before we march and speak out in support of Hizbullah, we should remember exactly what they stand for and what they have done.
Harold Evans guardian.co.uk, Tuesday 8 August 2006 17.04 BST Article history "We are all Hizbullah now," proclaimed one of the banners at the Stop the War coalition's London march. Really? Is it possible that more than one person has taken leave of their senses?
It was a sign either of profound ignorance or a depraved indifference to human life. Either way, the moral idiocy of the sentiment betrayed the higher purpose of the march.
If we are all Hizbullah now, who are we?
Are we the violent hijackers of the state of Lebanon who started this war without provocation and without reference to the elected government? Are we the "democrats" who hold hostages for years and murder political opponents?
Are we the suicide bombers, Hizbullah's contribution to civilization, randomly murdering innocents in the thousands - Muslims, Jews, Christians, Buddhists, for this cause or that, it makes no difference?
Are we Hassan Nasrullah, the latest pin up boy of terrorism, who competes with Iran's mad Mahmoud Ahmadinejad as the most dedicated to kill Jews? He makes no secret of Hizbullah's genocidal ambitions. "If they [the Jews] all gather in Israel," he says, "it will save us the trouble of going after them on a world wide basis." Big joke. Are we the puppets of our paymasters in Iran?
Are we the cowards condemned as such by the UN humanitarian chief, Jan Egeland, for hiding our fighters and rocket launchers among women and children?
Are we not the cleverest of tacticians? If the human shield works, we are free to attack, and if it fails, Israel will bear the odium. What does it matter that our cruel deceit violates Article 58 of the Geneva Convention?
Are we the renegades who have for six years shown what we think of the Geneva Convention, international law (and UN resolution 1559) by regularly launching rockets across the border into Israel loaded with ball-bearings to shred human flesh. Yes, people died, six in a school bus, but they were only Jews and did you see the world take any notice? Nobody marched in London.
Are we the fiends who over two decades of Islamic terrorism have kidnapped, tortured and killed numerous peacekeepers?
Yes, we are all these things and we are Samir Kuntar.
Perhaps the London marchers do not know of Samir Kuntar. He is locked up in an Israeli prison. It was to secure his release by blackmail that Hizbullah guerillas crossed into Israel and kidnapped two Israelis, triggering the conflict. Samir Kuntar is emblematic of Hizbullah's values, their highest priority in any prisoner exchange, so let us hear about him from a woman who opposes his release. She is a social worker in Israel called Smadar Haran he met in 1979.
"It had been a peaceful Sabbath day. My husband Danny and I had picnicked with our little girls, Einat, 4, and Yael, 2, on the beach not far from our home in Naharyia, a city on the northern coast of Israel. Around midnight, we were asleep in our apartment when four terrorists from Lebanon landed in a rubber boat on the beach two blocks away.
"Gunfire and exploding grenades awakened us. Desperately we sought to hide. Danny helped our neighbour climb into a crawl space above our bedroom. I went in behind her with Yael in my arms. Then Danny grabbed Einat and was dashing out of the front door when the terrorists came crashing in. They held Danny and Einat while they searched for me and Yael.
"I will never forget the joy and the hatred in their voices as they swaggered about hunting for us, firing their guns and throwing grenades. I knew that if Yael cried out, the terrorists would toss a grenade into the crawl space, so I kept my hand over her mouth. As I lay there, I remembered my mother telling me how she had hidden from the Nazis during the Holocaust.
"The terrorists took Danny and Einat down to the beach. There, one of them shot Danny in front of Einat so that his death would be the last sight she would ever see. Then he smashed my little girl's skull in against a rocket with his rifle butt. That terrorist was Samir Kuntar. By the time we were rescued from the crawl space hours later, Yael, too, was dead. In trying to save all our lives I had smothered her"
We are all Hizbullah now.
NB. Since this article was written, Samir Kuntar (together with hundreds of other terrorists) was exchanged for the bodies of 2 dead Israeli soldiers, and is now a free man.
Rikal
March 17th, 2011 2:39amTo Derek BLADES:
Israel has very strong claim to the west bank in international law.
The world is misled by the media.
See
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=55GR84ITI6w
by international lawyer Dr Jacques P Gauthier
You are right that two wrongs don't make a right, but not always is retaliation wrong. And let's not equate building to killing.
Penny
March 17th, 2011 3:21am"The Settlements are a provocation and a continued obstacle to peace."
Wheras dressing year-old babies in military gear and mock suicide belts, providing an education system and TV programs which urges children and young adults to blow themselves up taking as many Jews with them as possible, hanging photos of those who have already carried out martyrdom operations in the streets to be hero-worshipped and naming town squares, youth centres and sporting events after suicide bombers is, without doubt, the most peaceful overture any group of people could make!
I cannot, for the life of me, understand why Israel is worried. The gestures of future peace from the Palestinians are so evident!
Get real. What country in the world would consider the Palestinians to be serious peace partners?
Almost 900,000 Jews lost their homes, their countries and pretty much the shirts on their backs when the Arabs threw them out. Ditto Indians, ditto Cypriots, ditto most refugees the world over. That's provocation, too, but somehow, they've managed to get by without strapping bombs to themselves or slitting the throats of babies.
Laura
March 17th, 2011 4:02amSo Derek Blades is essentially saying that the Fogels had it coming to them because they live where muslims say they should be forbidden. This is the moral depravity that represents "progressive" thought. BTW, the arabs view ALL of Israel as illegitimate.
Laura
March 17th, 2011 4:06amDerek Blades says: "If, like me, you regard Palestinian Arabs as normal people with normal human sentiments you have to ask yourself what has driven them to a state where some of them actually revel in a brutal massacre of this kind. To what extent is it due to the actions of the settlers and the IDF"?
..............................
Explain what drove muslims in Iraq to massacre Christians in church during Christmas time. This included the beheading of a baby. Explain what motivated the massacre at Mumbai and the tens of thousands of other massacres worldwide in the name of islam.
CD
March 17th, 2011 7:51amMelanie – a terrible resonance indeed.
But Derek Blades has a point – “If you regard Palestinian Arabs as normal people with normal human sentiments you have to ask yourself what has driven them to a state where some of them actually revel in a brutal massacre of this kind.”
It seems to me the following three could be reasons:
1) The developed world’s (read West predominantly) system such as lifestyle, predominance of the economic system, self-interest of democratically elected governments, etc. These have driven a policy towards the Middle East based mainly on oil to the detriment of the local population. The residents there see the West now as exploiters with Israel as their prime agent. They are not wrong. For example, Britain got an elected Iranian government led by Mosaddegh ousted in a coup in the early 1950s to preserve their oil interests. The West supports the repressive Saudi monarchy for the last 80 years. The West armed Saddam to fight Iran. The list goes on.
The developed world’s energy intensive lifestyle drives this. In an interview in the Spiegel Dennis Meadows talks about a fashion editor asking him what lifestyle changes are needed for a sustainable world. He replied by asking her how many pairs of shoes she had (answer 18) and whether she would be willing to cut down to 3. How much are you (Melanie, Derek Blades, and all)?
2) The belief system of the Islamic countries: I don’t want to say much about this, but I think everybody knows what I am talking of. Minds are bound by beliefs, and a clash of civilizations is a reality, making their reactions bizarre.
3) The manipulation or misuse of Christianity by the people in power in the West: In the name of fulfilling Biblical prophecies the West is acting in a most un-Christian like manner. The responsibility of Christians is to bring the Gospel of Jesus Christ to every nation and tribe – Arabs, Palestinians, Israelis and all included. It is not the responsibility of Christians to establish the physical kingdom of Israel – in fact the Bible says that no one can except God Himself (and that He will do it anyway).
But the people in power in the West are inciting a false religious jingoism for their self interest which is vitiating the Western response to the clash of the civilizations and upping the ante.
Andre
March 17th, 2011 8:28amIdan Good to hear you. I cannot reassure you or comfort you with polls and statistics. But know this: I and 1000s like me in Europe love and support Israel wholeheartedly. I am desperately ashamed of my government and our media - BBC, Daily Telegraph, for the lies they repeat. I am not a jew but a roman catholic. I once lived in Israel and its history and achievements fire my imagination to this day. I believe the struggle of Israel is part of a wider struggle against the forces of darkness typified by radical islamists like Hamas, Iran, Muslim Brotherhood and the many sharia-style courts and communities. Ours is a struggle for freedom and justice. I believe good always triumphs in the end. God bless you and all Israel.
sleeping dolls
March 17th, 2011 11:02amMost people on this site have already blamed the Palestinian people, Islam, psychotic religious fascism and the West for the multiple murder. Even the Israeli government has made up its mind - with no evidence.
Many are now talking about the need for "reprisals" - preumably some kind of collective punishment to make the Palestinian people suffer.
What if you're wrong?
What if this murder is not political?
Sam Armstrong
March 17th, 2011 11:32amAre there any organisations out there for non-Jewish English people to join, where we can show our support for Israel?
Or are the decent people of England forced to sit on the sidelines, and get mistaken for appeasers?
I can understand now, finally, how some Germans must have felt after the Wars. Blamed by nationality, or by implication of nationality.
Truthtriumphs
March 17th, 2011 11:46amsleeping dolls
March 17th, 2011 11:02am
Most people on this site have already blamed the Palestinian people, Islam, psychotic religious fascism and the West for the multiple murder. Even the Israeli government has made up its mind - with no evidence.
Many are now talking about the need for "reprisals" - preumably some kind of collective punishment to make the Palestinian people suffer.
What if you're wrong?
What if this murder is not political?
Go back to sleep.
No-one is talking reprisals.
Have you read the interview with the Father on the young mother, and what he had to say?
You can learn a thing or two from him and his humanity.
There is plenty of evidence that this was political.
Why were the Palestinians rejoicing?
You are a mischief maker par excellence.
Grumpy true Zionist
March 17th, 2011 11:58amthen we'll do as the PA does....issue our regrets
now back to sleep
Matthew Rostron
March 17th, 2011 1:00pmUtter drivel
The killing of a jewish family is not acceptable by any means but the bigger picture of persecution, imprisonment and human rights abuse by Israel on Palestinians is the real story that should be told to the world.
Is it any wonder the international community is moving away from Isreal...
Angharad
March 17th, 2011 1:10pmNothing can excuse or explain away or justify that horrifying murder of parents and their children. Whoever did it and for whatever imaginary reason, they are barbarians, probably psychopaths, and should be condemned unequivocally.
But what use are horror and condemnation if we cannot do anything to help? What can ordinary people do to support Israel, other than offering goodwill and prayers?
daniel maris
March 17th, 2011 1:25pmNachman -
You seem to excel at introducing irrelevancies. No ever called themselves British much before 1750. Does that mean that the British people don't exist and that they can't have a country of that name if they wish. Same goes for arguments over Macedonians and what on earth we are supposd to refer to the South Sudanese as (yet to be decided). Are you sayign that becuase the South Sudanese have no agreed name, they have no right to form a state?
Absurd!
Everyone knows that if there is to be peace it will involve some compromises. Your supremacist arguments are certanily not part of the peace process.
Derek BLADES
March 17th, 2011 2:18pmCarl said (and I agreed with him):
"The Telegraph simply points out what is well known: The Settlements are a provocation and a continued obstacle to peace."
JAmes Murphy, March 16th, replied:
"Blades and 'Carl', so the possession of territory is sufficient provocation to cut a child's throat is it?"
English comprehension is clearly not Mr Murphy's strong point.
sleeping dolls
March 17th, 2011 2:34pmTruthTriumphs: I asked for evidence.
If "why else were the Palestinians rejoicing" is your idea of evidence, then it goes a long way towards explaining some of your equally extraordinary conclusions on other matters.
Jon_Boy
March 17th, 2011 2:49pmDaniel Maris if you are truly worried about people with supremacist opinions then you should be most concerned about the Palastinians.
Most Israelis would make all the necessary concessions if it meant peace without the threat of genocide and constant incitement to genocide.
However the majority of Palastinians and Arabs are going along with and supportive of the current policy of war of attrition with the supremacist aim of annihilating the Jewsih state and its Jewish inhabitants.
Many Arabs and Palastinians are also sympathetic to the view that the Islamic populations in the Uk and other European nations should takeover and dominate the UK too. In the future they are also likely to give material help to just such a project too, when it actually gets fully and undeniably underway.
These are the spremacist ideologies that you should truly fear. The supremacist ideoloy that has millions and millions of followers and has already caused the deaths of huge numbers of people this century.
But no you are selectively worried about the relatively benighn views of a small group of Jews who wish to build houses and raise families on area of empty, dusty desert land.
If Jewsih settlers in the West bank are evil then every non native European migrant to Europe in the past 100 years is also an evil settler too. Jews were moving to resettle the west bank and other areas of Israel over 100 hundred years ago. that was longer back than the recent large Anglo Saxon migrations to New Zealand and Australia. Maybe all the ten pound Poms and New Zealanders and all their descendents should be hence forth returned to the UK as they are nothing more than evil settlers as they settled Mauri and Aborigne land. And by the way the genocide of those people by your nation was real compared to the phantom genocide of Arabs we hear about today.
Derek BLADES
March 17th, 2011 2:49pmI have systematically described the Israeli settlements as illegal. My authority for doing so is the following excerpt from the Wikipedia pages on the Israeli settlements.
"An Israeli settlement is an Israeli civilian community on land that was captured by Israel during the 1967 Six-Day War and is considered occupied territory.[1] Such settlements currently exist in the West Bank. Israeli neighborhoods in East Jerusalem and communities in the Golan Heights, areas which have been annexed by Israel, are considered settlements by the international community, which refused to recognize Israel's annexations of these territories.[2] Settlements also existed in the Sinai and Gaza Strip before Israel evacuated them.
The International Court of Justice and the international community say these settlements are illegal,[3][4] Israel disputes this.[5] The United Nations has repeatedly upheld the view that Israel's construction of settlements constitutes violation of the Fourth Geneva Convention.[6] Israel dismantled 18 settlements in the Sinai Peninsula in 1982, and all 21 in the Gaza Strip and 4 in the West bank in 2005.[7]"
The footnotes are detailed and clearlyly drafted. Could I ask the likes of Tuttitrumps and other paranoid nutters promoting the Greater Israel project to stop wasting their time in writing tortuous and absurd claims that the settlements are legal.
Israeli Settlements are illegal because the ICJ and the international community as represented by the United Nations have so decided.
Sean Coster
March 17th, 2011 3:05pmMr Blades: this is not a question of regarding Arabs as "savages". Melanie Phillips's reaction to the Fogel murders is a wholly reasonable and legitimate reaction to a vile crime ... whatever the nature of the perpetrators. Shame on you for your apologetics - people "driven" to such acts, indeed! And speak for yourself when you say that the UK regards the Isreali settlements as illegal. The most basic knowledge of the history of all this demonstrates no such thing. The fact that our present Government, in its fascination with pleasing the modish and wrong-headed, chooses to take the position it has reflects nothing but its own foolishness.
Nina
March 17th, 2011 3:37pmStephen Rothbart, You have said it all for me. I could not say it any better. Thanks.
Ann
March 17th, 2011 3:46pm"I have systematically described the Israeli settlements as illegal. My authority for doing so is the following excerpt from the Wikipedia pages"
LOL. Yes, Wiki as an authority on a legal issue. Oh, dear.
Whoever wrote that is as ignorant and unable to read a fairly simple legal text (Geneva, if it can even be regarded as a legal text, which is highly doubtful) as Hague, you, assorted Guardian and BBC idiots who don't like Jews very much, inexperienced legal trainees appointed as 'judges', and so on.
The issue is simple, to anyone not blinded by visceral hatred:
Israel has not 'transferred' anyone.
All the rest is drivel.
Ann
March 17th, 2011 3:50pm"Israeli Settlements are illegal because the ICJ and the international community as represented by the United Nations have so decided"
Neither the 'international community' nor the UN are legal bodies, never mind legal authorities. They spout hot air, which is not the same thing.
ICJ talks a lot of ignorant drivel, e.g. that the Green Line was legally an international border. That is monumental ignorance and stupidity.
Blades has been spouting this stuff for years. One may begin to wonder from where his psychological obsession with Israel derives. Answers on a postcard to the usual address.
Margalit Shinar
March 17th, 2011 4:14pmDear Tintagel
What you describe is called, in plain language: brain washing.
Leo
March 17th, 2011 4:29pmTo Truthtriumphs:
So now you claim "No-one is talking reprisals" for the murders.
The settler price tag attacks started almost immediately following news of the murders and this has been widely reported throughout Israel. Here are just two of the numerous reports from Ynetnews and other mainstream Israeli media outlets:
Attack aftermath: Settlers block roads, hurl stones
http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-4041280,00.html
Palestinian workers attacked in settlement
http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-4043664,00.html
Truthtriumphs, where on earth did you come up with your online alias? You are disseminating anything but the truth on this site. You need to accept that people around the world can now get almost immediate access to the news coming out of both Israel and the Palestinian Territories. Gone are the days when it could all be conveniently covered up.
I am not going to waste any more energy on someone so demonstrably mendacious.
Richard
March 17th, 2011 4:30pmThere seem to be those here who are more knowledgeable about the circumstances of this atrocity and the recent history of the area where it was committed. I have to confess I am mainly ignorant - more information would be appreciated.
The authorities have detained all the Thai workers in the settlement, and all the young men of the neighbouring village and "locked down" the village (nothing in and nothing out). Have they any leads on who committed this hideous act and why?
Is there any information on how the settlement's security was breached (if it was)?
It doesn't bear thinking about that the perpetrator might get off scot-free.
I have been told that Abbas condemned the murders and professed himself horrified, and that Netanyahu challenged him to repeat his condemnation, which he did. What sites can one find such information on?
Is there any information on whether the PA's security systems failed (given that the PA's main job is to protect Israeli settlers from Palestinians)?
I hadn't realised that two young Palestinians from the village were killed recently by the IDF or possibly settlers (I didn't see it in the media). Does anyone know the details?
I hadn't realised that the Palestinian villagers have alleged over the months and years that they have been repeatedly harassed by the settlers.
I also hadn't been aware of the concept of a "price tag". Apparently, when the settlers feel a "price tag" to be appropriate, they extract payment from the villagers. Has anyone heard of "price tags"?
Where is the best place to find out about the behaviour of settlers and villagers? It sounds as if some speedy arbitration and a peace agreement is urgent.
Even if there were tensions, surely it has to be some psychopath, perhaps with his head stuffed full of political or "freedom fighter" nonsense - in a way like the man who perpetrated the murders recently in the US, when he shot the congresswoman.
Idan
March 17th, 2011 4:31pmFor Andre,
It's good to know that all is not lost and not all Europeans are alien freaks like we Israelis fairly get the impression from you.
However, it's also desperate to repaeat "The truth may not necessarily win, but it's always out there" to the already- convinced.
JOHN ROOSEVELT
March 17th, 2011 5:11pmDerek Blades:"If, like me, you regard Palestinian Arabs as normal people with normal human sentiments you have to ask yourself what has driven them to a state where some of them actually revel in a brutal massacre of this kind. To what extent is it due to the actions of the settlers and the IDF?"
No doubt, Derek Blades, perceptions of Israel and the IDF play a part in motivating the slitting of you children's throats and the "I told you so" response of so many in the "civilised" world.
No doubt, also, it is likely that there are many other perceptions that motivates moslems to kill Jews, and has been the case way before there was an Israel or an IDF.......and, nowadays, the likes of you would also (though not say so till pushed) hold the "I told you so" position in response to this truth.
My point is, Derek, that Palestinians and moslems dont need the IDF or Israel as an excuse for killing Jews or demonising them.
Come to that, too many Arabs and moslems dont need the IDF and Israel as an excuse to kill Christians, kill each other, kill gays, stone women or snuff out dissent with the gun....
You, Derek, are a paradigm of the apologist for racism and bigotry and, like the rest of those who fill the fetid ranks of that mish mash of so-called liberal leftists, you have become the measure of the extent to which the West's policy compass has been affected the fall out of cant and moralism - the hallmark of opinion holders re foreign policy in the age of Facebook - that wonderful Jewish invention.
To put it bluntly, though mildly, Derek, what you write stinks.
JOHN ROOSEVELT
March 17th, 2011 5:26pmJan Cosgrove:"Whether this was the act of an individual or of a terrorist group. we simply have to ask whether it would have happened had the settlement not been where it should never have been built."
Of course it would. Read a little history and stop this b**lsh0t narrative.
Moreover, they throw each other off buildings, kill each other's children, slaughter their own protestors..Who are trying to kid?
Coockoo land, folks. Where do they find 'em...Sorry, sorry..in Ireland, I know...
Roderick Graciano
March 17th, 2011 6:03pmDear Melanie, I'm grieving with you and all good people over the massacre in Itimar. I also want to THANK YOU for "World Turned Upside Down." I'm buying copies and passing them around! Thank you for your power analysis of our world in trouble.
Augustus
March 17th, 2011 7:05pmSpeaking of illegalities and guilty parties, a special kind of definition of 'refugee' was devized for Palestinians by UNWRA and the Arab world: Nationality played no role, all that was needed to become a Palestinian refugee was to have lived for two years in Israeli territory before 1948, and then
you and your descendants in perpetuity could become a Palestinian refugee. So those
who perpetuate this twisted
abnormal definition of refugee status are guilty of much more
international legal abuse than
any Jewish settlers occupying
the same land their forefathers did for 30 centuries.
Grumpy true Zionist
March 17th, 2011 7:10pmto al the lovers of 'Eretz Yirael' come and visit, keep tourism arrive , be with us,come to our kibbutzim, break bread with us on shabbos,walk with us through archeoligical history, be dzin habn - we love your support, we love that you share our peaceful shared experience
in the end good (people), people of conscience will prevail over the dark cloud that blinds those that have thrown their lot in with the devil (funny i'm not particularly religious) but i believe that Israel is forever and Yerushaliam is Golden
Victoria
March 17th, 2011 7:49pmI'd like to make the right-wing, pro-Israel lobby aware of a story running in Ma'an News:
"A torrent of settler violence was unleashed when Israeli officials accused Palestinian militants of being behind the grisly murder of five settlers from the Fogel family in the Itamar settlement on Friday night. Among the slain were two children and an infant.
Settlers have torched cars, broken windows, opened fire on passing Palestinian vehicles, spray painted homes, thrown rocks and bottles at Palestinian homes and cars, and attacked civilians across the West Bank in an apparent response to the killings, for which suspects have yet to be identified."
And so it goes. A family is killed callously in their beds. Israeli authorities automatically blame it on Palestinian 'terrorists', without evidence. So, settlers are already carrying out large-scale revenge-attacks against innocent Palestinians who have largely have come out condemning this attack.
Most of these settlers will get away with it, as usual. And you wonder why Palestinians sometimes act out - you expect them to abide by laws that give them no basic rights. Not even in law, justice.
Is this democracy? I thought Israel is a supposed 'light unto the nations'. I think not.
Victoria
March 17th, 2011 9:10pmJohn Roosevelt.
You write:
"My point is, Derek, that Palestinians and moslems dont need the IDF or Israel as an excuse for killing Jews or demonising them.
Come to that, too many Arabs and moslems dont need the IDF and Israel as an excuse to kill Christians, kill each other, kill gays, stone women or snuff out dissent with the gun...."
I'd kindly like to ask how much you think you know about Islam? From
the above I would say, very little. I presume you watch the news and think you know?
Well here:
Did you know that in Islam women were given rights to own property, rights to vote, rights to choose her own husband (as opposed to being forced) hundreds of years before women in the West got the same privileges?
Did you know that in the first Surah al-Baqarah God (or Allah or Yahweh) tells of Jews and the Promise Land?
Did you know that in the same Surah God also unites Jews, Christians and Muslims as fellow 'people of the book'?
Did you know that in the Qur'an God lays out very specific rules for combat, stating the rules for a just war, including that civilians must not be harmed? Or that if your enemy calls for peace, one must accept it?
Did you know that the hijab is not mentioned in the Qur'an and that it is a personal choice? God advises both men and women for modesty.
If Islam was such a nasty religion as you make it, then why do Muslims practice Ramadan (fasting)? It is so that they may, no matter how successful they are, or how much material wealth they have, they know how it is to to feel hunger, go without food or the things they enjoy.
If Islam is such a bad religion then why would one of the five 'pillars' of Islam be to pay 'zakat', 2.5% of your earnings and wealth to charity annually to help those in need?
Or how about that the Arabic word for 'Salam' is the same as the Hebrew 'Shalom'?
So you see my friend, there is a very clear line between where culture ends and Islam begins.
The stoning of women in Afghanistan is not in Islam. It is cultural.
The forced wearing of niqab in Afghanistan is cultural too.
The only thing I will advise is that Islam is against homosexuality, as is the Torah and the Bible. I think that is right. If God (or nature even) meant for a two men to have intercourse, they'd have been able to reproduce too.
Please do not spread vicious lies that really, I think, are based on ignorance and your own prejudices. The wrong actions of any Palestinian are nothing to do with Islam, but culture. Thank you.
Edward in the USA
March 17th, 2011 9:38pmVictoria, do you still claim you wrote "most" orthodox Jews rather than "many" orthodox Jews?
Below is a link to educate yourself on your opponents:
http://dover.idf.il/IDF/English/
John Richardson
March 17th, 2011 10:03pm"Wickedly, these western fellow-travellers of genocide fail even to acknowledge publicly the open incitement to hatred and murder of [innocents].... Indeed, how can the west draw attention to this incitement: they help fund it."
M.Philips.
The truth as usual.
However, M.Philips still chooses to fund the BBC herself.
Worse than hypocracy.
As usual.
Maya
March 17th, 2011 11:26pmVictoria
"Please do not spread vicious lies that really, I think, are based on ignorance and your own prejudices."
LOL!
I cannot believe that you wrote that, seeing as you made up a vicious lie yourself, about a Palestinian baby being murdered by the IDF last weekend.
How can you look yourself in the face?
Hypocricy personified.
Adam B.
March 17th, 2011 11:58pmsleeping dolls - the pictures and references are freely available online - if you care to look.
Yvonne, Australia
March 18th, 2011 12:19amJason from NZ: Please recall that for the last 2000 years Jews have been been living in situations where they had no hope of survival: exiled in Europe and in Arab lands; living in small communities surrounded by people who hated them, who humiliated them, who made laws against them, and often attacked and murdered them. Yet by the grace of G the eternal Jew still stands, now in his own country, still hated, still attacked and still contributing to the betterment of the world. The Jew cannot afford to be rational in the same way as other nations because that is what actually spells his doom.
Truthtriumphs
March 18th, 2011 1:29amLeo.
"You need to accept that people around the world can now get almost immediate access to the news coming out of both Israel and the Palestinian Territories. Gone are the days when it could all be conveniently covered up".
Is that so?
The oracle who decides what is true and what is false has just spoken!
Has it ever occured to you that much of what you hear/read in the newspapers/internet/TV is fabricated?
Here are some examples:---
1)The "massacre" in Jenin... reported in the Guardian a gross exaggeration of numbers killed. It finally apologised for its dishonest reports, but, as we all know, it's what the Guardian does best.
The final toll was 52, killed...23 Israelis and the rest Palestinian terrorists.
2)The al Dura fake "killing" of a young boy sheltering in his father's arms, staged to incriminate the death of the boy, (who subsequently was resurrected), which was deliberately used to set off an intifada which cost the lives of more than 1,000 innocent Israelis.
A French court ruled France2 and Charles Enderlin had concocted a set-up to incriminate the IDF.
3)The Gaza beach "massacre".
Pallywood: German Expose of Palestinian media hi-jinx in Gaza beach tragedy
19.06. 2006
The German Suedduetche Zeitung ran the following article with a detailed examination of the evidence in the Gaza Beach shooting. It clarifies many of the problems with the story disseminated by the Palestinians and media.
The Middle East: The war of images
Seven casualties in a Gaza beach: Was it a shelling attack by Israel? Or an exploding Palestinian land mine? An example of how Palestinians sometimes bend the truth.
by Thorsten Schmitz
Source (in German, with photos: http://www.sueddeutsche.de/ausland/artikel/315/78237/5/
4)The Qana "massacre" in the 2006 Lebanese war.
The Christian Lebanese (French-language) website LIBANOSCOPIE has charged that Hizbullah staged the entire incident in order to stimulate calls for a ceasefire, thereby staving off its destruction by Israel and Lebanese plans to rid themselves of this terrorist plague.
An independent American journalist concluded--"Americans and Westerners are not used to dealing with carefully orchestrated and large-scale deception of this kind. It is time that it be recognized as a weapon of warfare, and an extremely potent one at that."
5)The widely distributed video of a Palestinian boy being hurled onto the bonnet of a car driven by the head of the settler movement, who swerved to avoid the boy, and then drove off without stopping.
Silwan..October 2010.
Another proven set-up. Further video footage taken by other sources, showed more than 5 photographers conveniently positioned waiting to take footage of the about-to-be drama, and as the car passed, a massive hole in the rear windscreen, where a huge rock, which could easily have killed a passenger, had been hurled at the car.
In further footage, the boy was seen struggling with an adult, who had "rescued" him, and who was trying to force him into a conveniently situated ambulance, against his wishes.
So, Leo, welcome to Pallywood, where you will only hear the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth. (You wish).
You see, in these days of the internet and worldwide news coverage, gone are the days when these kind of fake productions can be covered up.
And, btw, have you had any more communications with the dead?
Since you told us the thoughts of Martin Luther King, projected into the future, perhaps you could entertain us with the likely thoughts of other deceased personalities, say Churchill?
"I am not going to waste any more energy on someone so demonstrably mendacious".
Is that a threat or a promise?"
Truthtriumphs
March 18th, 2011 2:10amVictoria.
March 17th, 2011 7:49pm
"I'd like to make the right-wing, pro-Israel lobby aware of a story running in Ma'an News":
"A torrent of settler violence was unleashed when Israeli officials accused Palestinian militants of being behind the grisly murder of five settlers from the Fogel family in the Itamar settlement on Friday night".
Now what is Ma'an news?
"Launched in 2005, Ma'an News Agency (MNA) publishes news around the clock in Arabic and English, and is among the most browsed websites in the Palestinian territories, with over 3 million visits per month. Considered the main source of independent news from Palestine, MNA has become the first choice for online information for many Palestinians, and is also attracting a growing international readership and interest from prominent international news organizations and agencies".
So there we have it... an unbiased source of news, or, more likely, a Pallywood production unit?
Funny, isn't it, that this hasn't been reported in the MSM anywhere?
Victoria, you really have a staggeringly high embarrassment threshold, haven't you?
Having been caught out with your pants down, telling a whopping lie on this blog, one would have thought you would have crawled away, to lie low for a while.
Victoria, go and do something useful, like improving the lot of the "poor Palestinians" with practical help.
No-one is paying any attention to your incoherent ramblings.
Truthtriumphs
March 18th, 2011 2:25amAugustus.
March 17th, 2011 7:05pm
"Speaking of illegalities and guilty parties, a special kind of definition of 'refugee' was devized for Palestinians by UNWRA and the Arab world: Nationality played no role, all that was needed to become a Palestinian refugee was to have lived for two years in Israeli territory before 1948",
...or just passing through as a transient worker for 2 years.
It was a definition unique to the Palestinians, worldwide.
A Fatah Web site states:
To us, the refugees issue is the winning card which means the end of the Israeli state. (http://www.fateh.net/e_public/refugees.htm)
To this end, Arab governments and Palestinian groups have acted in bad faith to prevent a solution to the problem.
Ralph Galloway, formerly head of UNWRA and director of UN aid to the Palestinians in Jordan, stated:
"The Arab states do not want to solve the refugee problem. They want to keep it as an open sore, as an affront to the United Nations and as a weapon against Israel. Arab leaders don’t give a damn whether the refugees live or die". (Ralph Galloway, UNRWA, as quoted by Terence Prittie in The Palestinians: People, History, Politics, p 71
Derek BLADES
March 18th, 2011 5:43am@ Herzen
You wrote to me as follows: "what drove the perpetrator to commit this crime.....should not condition anyone's response.... [which] should be outright condemnation without any qualification."
Asking why it happened does not "condition" or any way "qualify" my own, or anybody else's, condemnation of these brutal murders. But not to pose the question is just plain silly.
A large number of posters apparently agree with me that this question needs to be asked although, almost without exception, they have answered it in terms that display the bigotry, Islamaphobia, and anti-Arab racial prejudice that we have come to expect on this blog.
Grumpy true Zionist
March 18th, 2011 6:11amwell then Victoria (or should there be an arabic /muslim name we should be using), if this is the fairytale 'religion of peace' you are trying so desperately to convey.....then show please, one area of the world -outside of the middle east -where muslims are happily co-existing with their neighbours
just of the top of my head - south east asia -where your good muslim compadres, are causing all sorts of strife in the south of Thailand
oh, and what about another tropical paradise (un-fortunately without the required virgins) -Bali - where the good imam abu bakir bashir spewed out enough religious hatred, that a bunch of his devotees went out on a killing spree that left 50 foreign holidaymakers (most of them just aussie surfer dudes -so no political/religious/settler problem here) dead
wait oh, how could i let this one slip through.....wtf did tube/bus loads of brit commuters do to gain death and destruction on 7/7
i could go on and on.....but i don't have to
people know the reality and effect of having the 'r of p' practised in their neighbourhoods
Derek BLADES
March 18th, 2011 6:18amIn one of his more spittle-flecked posts JOHN ROOSEVELT describes me as "....a paradigm of the apologist for racism and bigotry and, like the rest of those who fill the fetid ranks of that mish mash of so-called liberal leftists ...blah, blah, blah"
Oddly enough, my views on Israel and on the illegal settlements in the occupied territories seem to coincide almost exactly with those of the governments of the United States and of the United Kingdom and other member states of the European Union. Efforts to paint me as left-wing extremist are misguided. It is JOHN ROOSEVELT and like-minded posters who are advocating an extremist position. And one that is not even in the long-term interests of Israel.
nikki peel
March 18th, 2011 6:46amI can barely comment anymore on this, I'm so angry at Obama and those that side against Israel. I know God will punish them, but I want to witness this retribution. Can't help it, evil deserves it.
Shimon
March 18th, 2011 7:26amVictoria,
Still waiting (and many others)for your reference on ..8 month palestinian child killed by IDF.
Ann
March 18th, 2011 8:29amBlades, the very epitome of the Israel obsessive (I am still waiting to know where his obsession with Israel springs from, although I can easily guess), calls those who challenge his fabrications 'spittle-flecked' ... LOL. Do buy yourself a mirror, Blades.
You can claim that the moon is made of camembert and that the settlements are 'illegal'. Both are, nevertheless, nonsensical statements.
Whenever challenged to produce an actual law that says they are 'illegal', Blades simply ignores this inconvenient challenge. Vilifying Israel and Jews is so much more satisfying than finding out the truth, eh, Blades?
There is no law that says so. Care to cite an actual chapter and verse of an actual law that says so, Blades?
Victoria, meanwhile, thinks that by lazily calling Israel supporters 'right wing' she has somehow proved something. She has not. Some may be right wing (and what's wrong with that, pray?), some like me are not. Supporting Israel is supporting national self-definition and liberty for historically oppressed small nations. That is not being 'right wing'.
Trumpeldor
March 18th, 2011 9:10am"Derek BLADES
March 16th, 2011 2:49pm
@ Carl. "The Telegraph simply points out what is well known: The Settlements are a provocation and a continued obstacle to peace."
Spot on. There are none so blind as those that will not see."
Those great pundits should explain the endless arab acts of terror againt Israel prior to 1967 war since there was no "occupation" !
JOHN ROOSEVELT
March 18th, 2011 9:24amVictoria: "The only thing I will advise is that Islam is against homosexuality, as is the Torah and the Bible. I think that is right. If God (or nature even) meant for a two men to have intercourse, they'd have been able to reproduce too.
Please do not spread vicious lies that really, I think, are based on ignorance and your own prejudices. The wrong actions of any Palestinian are nothing to do with Islam, but culture. Thank you."
Are you one of these anti Zionists who are not anti semitic? well, I am one of these anti Islamists who is not anti Islam..so stick that in you disingenuous gob and ululate, for true God's sake!
Derek Blades: Stop hiding behind the petticoat of the US etc when it suits you. You're running scared, as usual...
Some advice: keep running.
Maya
March 18th, 2011 9:28amDerek BLADES
"Oddly enough, my views on Israel and on the illegal settlements in the occupied territories seem to coincide almost exactly with those of the governments of the United States and of the United Kingdom and other member states of the European Union"
Actually, they don't.
But your views do seem to agree with the BBC view of the world, which is where, presumably, you get your information.
Have you ever visited Israel, spoken to Palestinian Arabs(when polled the majority of Palestinian Jerusalemites stated that, given the choice, they would prefer to live in the state of Israel, rather than Palestine), real Israelis etc to see what it's all about, or is all your information gleaned from the MSM? For someone so interested in the subject, it would be apposite for you to see the country for yourself.
Were you aware that before 1967 the country was 9 miles wide at its narrowest point. 9 miles from the Jordanian border to the Med. sea. A distance which you can drive in 10 minutes.The country could be cut in half by an invading army in less time than it takes for you to have your tea.
The Israelis are not paranoid for nothing.
Miranda Rose Smith
March 18th, 2011 9:36amThese ‘progressives’ need to be outed for what they are – the fellow-travellers of psychotic religious fascism.
All brilliant and all true, Ms. Phillips. Lately, I've been making myself pray that the fellow travellers will wise up, come to realize that Israel is fighting their battle. The alternative is to think "Well, if they ever get their wish and Israel is destroyed, G-d forbid, the Islamofascists, as I've pointed out before, on this site, will be free to concentrate on Europe; the European Union Army, as I've said before, couldn't fight off a Brownie troop armed with plastic baseball bats; the Arabs will rampage through Europe-and get ahold of a lot of the fellow travellers. And we know what they'll do to them.
Gershon
March 18th, 2011 10:38am@Victoria
You say: "The only thing I will advise is that Islam is against homosexuality, as is the Torah and the Bible."
I'm not an expert on Muslim and Christian theology, but as an Orthodox Jew and Israeli, I think that I understand a fair amount about the Torah. There is absolutely nothing in the Torah against homosexuality per se. All that is forbidden is anal intercourse between two men. There are no acts forbidden between two women.
Until you can prove otherwise, I will assume that you are equally ignorant about all other subjects you make pronouncements about and treat them accordingly.
Herzen
March 18th, 2011 10:51amDerek BLADES
March 18th, 2011 5:43am
It just seemed to me the time to consider the reasons for this atrocity would be when we know who committed it. We're all jumpihg to conclusions.
Joe De Mocritus
March 18th, 2011 1:25pmExcellent article.
Antisemitism is alive and prospering in the BBC, Guardian and other so-called liberal media.
Derek BLADES
March 18th, 2011 1:31pm@ Herzen
You wrote "It just seemed to me the time to consider the reasons for this atrocity would be when we know who committed it. We're all jumpihg to conclusions."
That is a good point. As of now all is speculation. I spoke too soon.
pterodactyl
March 18th, 2011 1:32pmMelanie Phillips is right at the end to say we have to choose between 'truth, justice and basic humanity' on the one side and 'evil' on the other side. She is also right to point out that our press and TV tend to support evil (but watch Niall Ferguson part 2 on watch again www.Channel4/od Civilisations Part 2 re science & referring to Israel - for once not as the villains).
But I wish to make some points regarding Melanie Phillips' remark: “averting their gaze in order not to have to confront the terribly inconvenient fact that the genocide of the Jews, which they wish to obliterate from the collective western psyche, is still an active project.”
It seems to me there are two groups behind the hatred of Israel. The first is arabs who are seeking the glory of conquest for their religion through war. The second are the Left in Britain and elsewhere who hate Israel not because they are Jewish but because they represent civilised values, which the haters of civilised values on the Left feel are their enemy. Those who should be objecting, such as journalists, say nothing about the evil because they are sheep going with the crowd and are led by the likes of the BBC. They simply cannot think for themselves, or they can think but say nothing, much as teachers who are aware that bullying is going on in their school, also do nothing.
Evidence that the Left hate Israel for being civilised (for being run according to s*p*r*or values and codes) is that they hated S.Rhodesia with the same passion, and they waged a similar international campaign against them, and yet this was not a Jewish issue. As soon as white rule was ended, the hate campaigns of the Left ended abruptly - their work was done and they could focus their hate elsewhere. If it is any consolation to the Israelis, these haters also hate their own country, Britain, and also aim to give their own country the good kicking that they are currently hoping to inflict on Israel. A bigger prey is harder to bring down. For some of them, bringing down N.Rhodesia was the happiest day of their lives, and if they can bring down Israel they can relive that joy. And in a couple of generations the haters hope to experience the same joy again - the destruction of their own country’s culture as Britain becomes Islamic.
Leo
March 18th, 2011 1:40pmTo Truthtriumphs:
You're outraged, I know. Outraged that all your hasbara efforts amount to nothing nowadays and that you have to resort to preaching among the converted on this site.
Even Netanyahu - Israel's extreme right wing prime minister - publicly acknowledges the settler violence (although unfortunately his feigned outrage does not translate into enforcing the law where these settlers are concerned):
Netanyahu: Settler harassment of Arabs would have shocked Begin
http://www.haaretz.com/news/national/netanyahu-settler-harassment-of-arabs-would-have-shocked-begin-1.348177
So deny the earth is flat all you like - the public is not listening anymore. No matter how much it grates with you, there's nothing you or any other Israel apologist can do to stop the truth getting out there now. The game is over.
No, I haven't had any more thoughts about deceased personalities - although I'm wondering if you'd care to quote a few long deaad personalities who said the earth is flat. Then you can present it as definitive evidence that the earth is indeed flat, and we can all go home knowing that Truthtriumphs has yet again presented us with the truth.
Bye and good luck in coming to grips with the new reality.
Derek BLADES
March 18th, 2011 1:44pmI wrote this:
"Oddly enough, my views on Israel and on the illegal settlements in the occupied territories seem to coincide almost exactly with those of the governments of the United States and of the United Kingdom and other member states of the European Union"
Something calling itself "Maya" replied: "Actually, they don't" and then went on to tell me (a) that Arabs like living in Israel and (b) that part of Israel's border is close to the sea. Neither point is remotely relevant to my assertion.
Could she, he or it tell me the grounds for saying "Actually they don't".
Derek BLADES
March 18th, 2011 1:59pmCould I ask those who still believe that the Israeli settlements in the occupied territories are legal to refer to my post of March 17th above.
Better still, google "Israeli settlements" and click on Wikipedia. True, Old Testament claims are not cited there but you will find references to more recent legal rulings that show conclusively that the settlements are illegal.
There is really nothing more to be said on the topic. And I certainly won't do so.
Margalit Shinar
March 18th, 2011 2:17pmFor Melanie and all you bloggers out there --
"This is not merely terrorism. This is a depraved death cult -- one adopted by the direct heirs to the Arabs of inter-war Palestine who formed Hitler’s Middle East legion. And their present-day descendants use the very same Nazi motifs and tactics of psychopathic dehumanisation of the Jews to incite their murder."
As usual Melanie reaches out to the heart of the matter. Because, has no one ever considered the following thought: IF the sole source of Palestinian and Arab terrorism was only their "oppression" at our hands and their deep desire for liberty and independence, ALL they would have to do, actually, is simply DESIST and lay down their swords. I would bet the lives of my children and all I hold dear that the moment the Pals declare an end to terrorism, the Israelis would hand over to them all their demands and more at the bat of an eye. So clearly (this is the only rational conclusion) terrorism is motivated by other things -- what these other things might be are brilliantly dissected by Melanie.
This thought is brought to you by an Israeli, a patriot, and politically a liberal hawk.
Merlyn
March 18th, 2011 4:02pmSam Armstrong, you ask if there are any organizations for non Jews to join and show their support for Israel.
I have just come across this one;
Council of Christians and Jews'
I hope it will be helpful.
Edward in the USA
March 18th, 2011 4:07pmLet us not forget that the "president" of the islamist republic of iran stated at Columbia University that there are no homosexuals in his islamist republic.
The audience laughed in his face.
celato
March 18th, 2011 4:26pmC. Gee:
Yes, we cannot help seeing people outside our immediate purview as "collectives". (During times of war it is almost impossible to picture the enemy in anything but these terms.)
But to think this is an ACCURATE picture is a mistake, and to continue to hold it in the teeth of knowledge and experience is what ultimately makes us racists, anti-Semites, Islamophobes, etc.
"Arabs" are no more a monolithic bloc with a "national and cultural character" than "Anglo Saxons" are. A visitor from Mars would be totally bemused by the rich-poor-urban-rural jumble on a journey from London to Liverpool via the Cotswolds, never mind taking Scots, Welsh, Irish, European, American and Australian variables into account. In just the same way he would be bemused by a trip across North Africa and the Middle East.
You ask what harm the Jews "as a collective" ever did to justify their demonization before the state of Israel was declared. The answer is that they did nothing then - and nothing now. The "Jews" (just like "Arabs" and "Anglo-Saxons") do not comprise an internationally identifiable collective (and neither do "Christians" or "Muslims" or "blacks" or "whites"). Sure, they may share certain noticeable characteristics, but the differences are far more significant than the similarities.
Singling out any group for demonization works through stereotyping - selectively focusing on shared characteristics, placing negative connotations on these traits, and then blanking out everything which breaks the selectively-established "norm". Having done so, it is then very easy to IMPOSE uniformity on the group in question - either by forcing them to live in readily identifiable clusters (eg ghettoes with stars of David pinned to their chests) or obliging them to huddle together for company and self-protection.
But why single them out in the first place? Ironically, I think, it's a way fragmented societies achieve cohesion among those OTHER than the demonized group - transforming "Us* into a collective rather than disparate rabbles; calling a halt on in-fighting for wealth, land, status, etc, by unifying "Us" against an external (or externalised) foe.
Jews provided a handy means to this end in many countries owing to the demographics of the diaspora, but in their absence plenty of other groups have served just as well. To see Jews as somehow uniquely more subject to demonization is just plain wrong.
One of the worst mistakes I believe you and other Zionists make by furiously dismissing all critics of Israel as anti-Semites is that you fuel the "Jew" stereotype for those who gladly exploit it. Rather than the Israel-Palestine conflict being cast (as it should) as a dispute over land, it is transformed into a seismic quasi-religious battle to which millions of people who would otherwise not care a whit can relate: "The JEWS are bombing OUR people!" goes up the cry five thousand miles away ... and just in case this message gets diluted by voices reminding them this is about Israel, not Jews, Palestinians, not Muslims, whose voice comes thundering out loud and clear? It's yours, C.Gee - proclaiming that if anyone attacks Israel it's a declaration of war on international Jewry!
If you really can't see how great the "cultural and national" gulfs are between a secular Jew in Sussex, an Orthodox rabbi in Lithuania and a tough young Sabra in Israel, how on earth can you expect a non-Jew's stereotypical image to collapse?
And how, for that matter, can you stop stereotypically demonizing "Arabs" and "Muslims" effectively enough ever to talk peace?
Grumpy true Zionist
March 18th, 2011 4:26pmThere is really nothing more to be said on the topic. And I certainly won't do so.
pwomise, pleez pwomise!
Edward in the USA
March 18th, 2011 4:57pmDEREK blades, Considering all the time you spend sniffing out what is "illegal", any rational person would expect that you would declare the illegality of plane hijackings, tanker hijackings, olympics hijacking, beheadings of bound captives, stoning women to death, hanging of gay teens, WMD poison gassing of the Kurds of Halabja Iraq, plane bombing like that of Pan Am 103, bus and underground bombing, Mumbai India massacre,...
But for some odd reason, the above illegal acts don't warrant your self-righteous indignation.
Victoria, "most" and "many"? GOTCHA!
Truthtriumphs
March 18th, 2011 5:01pmTo those who blame the "Settlements".
The first arab sponsored terrorist attack upon Jews occurred in 1920, long before the establishment of Israel and long before there were any so-called palestinians. In 1929 arab mobs massacred over 100 Jews, 67 of them in 1929 Hebron massacre alone, an ancient community where Jews lived peacefully for centuries. Many of the corpses were mutilated by arabs.
Eighty years later, the death toll from arab terrorism in Israel continues to grow.
The information contained here comes from Israel's Ministry of Foreign Affairs, but sadly, the various listings available there do not include all terrorist attacks in Israel. Additional attacks have been added to original list and there are many more to be added.
The following statistics were provided by the National Insurance Institute and recently posted by Israel's Ministry of Foreign Affairs:
Year Number killed
1920 9
1921 24
1922 5
1923 0
1924 4
1925 1
1926 1
1927 1
1928 0
1929 119
1920s total = 164
Year Number killed
1930 0
1931 2
1932 4
1933 0
1934 0
1935 1
1936 44
1937 10
1938 94
1939 26
1930s total = 181
Year Number killed
1940 137
1941 14
1942 4
1943 1
1944 3
1945 1
1946 28
1947 152
1948 379
1949 37
1940s total = 756
Year Number killed
1950 52
1951 41
1952 40
1953 46
1954 41
1955 30
1956 53
1957 19
1958 15
1959 10
1950s total = 347
Truthtriumphs
March 18th, 2011 5:06pmAdam B.
March 18th, 2011 6:31pmMr Blades, is China's occupation of Tibet legal? Just interested, in light of the fact that you worked with the Communist tyranny.
Tilly
March 18th, 2011 7:55pmEdward in the USA
Perhaps all of us participating here should be encouraged to catalogue every crime ever committed by the entire human race as a preface to our remarks. Then we could compete to produce even more riveting lists than the one supplied by Truthtriumphs.
She/he hasn't even got to the 1960s yet - can't wait for the next thrilling episode(s)...
Lynette Gautier
March 18th, 2011 8:32pmA brilliant piece of truth, thank you Melanie. To negative commentators I ask: Palestinians are normal people? Normal want a whole race destroyed? Normal people dance in the streets and rejoice when Jews are murdered? Dip their fists in their victims' blood and raise them in a salute? An interesting perspective. Let's remember, every one of us, that Israel is the only democracy in the Middle East, the only bastion that stands between the west and the jihadists crazies. The only bastion against sharia law and it's vile punishment of raped women; its cruel suppression of freedom; it's determination to force Islam on the entire world. If that's what Israel detractors want, well, good luck to them.
Ann
March 18th, 2011 9:08pmYes, I am sure to Tilly this is just an amusing pastime. I mean, it's only Israel ...
Herzen
March 18th, 2011 9:36pmSomeone earlier asked for information on children killed by the IDF. I tried to provide it, without success (the list of dead was presumably too long). I refer you to an organization called "Remember the Children" which tries to record every death of a child, Israeli or Palestinian, as a result of the conflict.
Derek BLADES
March 18th, 2011 9:56pmEdward in the USA wrote "Considering all the time you [i.e. me]spend sniffing out what is 'illegal',..."
Took no time at all Eddie. Just click on wikipedia and you too can learn why the settlements are illegal. Takes about five minutes.
To your list of nasty things done by foreigners you might want to append some done by your compatriots - waterboarding, judicial murder, syphilis experiments on Latinos, strange fruit, Abu Ghraib...
Nasty things happen wherever there are nasty people. But actually I think most Americans are decent people and so are Arabs.
Read Celato's latest post Eddie and lay off the stereotyping.
sleeping dolls
March 18th, 2011 10:01pmTruthlimpsoff:
The Qibya Massacre, also known as the Qibya incident, occurred in October 1953 when Israeli troops under Ariel Sharon attacked the village of Qibya in the West Bank. Sixty-nine Arabs were killed. Forty-five houses, a school, and a mosque were destroyed. Bullet-riddled bodies near the doorways and multiple bullet hits on the doors of the demolished houses indicated that the inhabitants had been forced to remain inside until their homes were blown up over them.
And original documents of the time showed that Sharon personally ordered his troops to achieve "maximal killing and damage to property". Post-operational reports speak of breaking into houses and clearing them with grenades and shooting.
And what, you might ask, was the justification for this act of terror? Attacks on the settlers of course.
Why were these savages never tried as terrorists? Oh, one of them became prime Minister, didn't he?
pot kettle black
Augustus
March 18th, 2011 10:03pmDerek - Yes, I too have read many of your posts about illegal
settlements. But there are a couple of things which strike me as rather odd: One is that if peace depended on disputed land, why is it that after giving away about 97% of what the Palestinians demanded, they rejected it and still launched the 2nd Intifada? And secondly,
why was there no peace when Jordan was in control of the West Bank, or before Israel had begun to build settlements
there?
It seems that the more one studies the historical facts of the dispute, the less pity anyone can possibly muster for the Palestinians. It seems that
Golda Meir was right when she said: "If the Arabs lower there weapons there would be peace. If
Israel lowers its weapons, there would be no Israel."
Adam B.
March 18th, 2011 11:37pmVictoria, the utter insensitivity aside, let's look at your track record here. You claimed that most orthodox rabbis were against settlements. When challenged on this point, you claimed you said "many". When confronted with the evidence that you did indeed claim it was "most", you disappeared. You then claimed that no imam had ever called for the murder of Jews or Christians. This is demonstrably untrue, and even the most cursory research would show your claim to be bunkum. You have refused, repeatedly, to engage with the point that there is a difference between the deliberate premeditated murder of innocents, and the loss of innocent life, which is tragically inevitable, through legitimate acts of self-defence in war - especially in circumstances where terrorists surround themselves with civilians and operate in densely populated civilian centres. In other words, you dispense with context.
It may interest you that, according to the Pew Research Centre, 97% of Palestinians hold antisemitic views. This is shocking, and it is disgusting. This racist hatred is what spurs such acts of violence as seen against the Fogel family, and no amount of writhing and avoidance on your part hides that fact.
And your source for your claim about an 8 year old?
GaryL
March 19th, 2011 2:11amDerek Blades wrote "Israeli Settlements are illegal because the ICJ and the international community as represented by the United Nations have so decided."
On the ICJ's website the only case listed which involved Israel was an aerial incident in 1957 involving Bulgaria.
In 2003 the ICJ issued an opinion about the legal consequences of the fence built by Israel, but that wasn't a legal case being tried by the ICJ, and wasn't about where Israelis can live.
That's all. There have been no cases before the ICJ to determine whether Israel's towns in Judea and Samaria are legal or not.
The General Assembly of the UN is not a court. Neither is "world opinion", nor Wikipedia.
Derek BLADES
March 19th, 2011 5:00amAugustus
Wow. I see you do not dispute my stateùment that the settlements are illegal. Wow! I count that as a success.
Now I need to convince you about the entirely different issue that you raise - namely whether or not the settlements are an obstacle to peace. On the face of it, that looks like child's play but as I have earlier remarked there are none so blind as those that will not see.
Derek BLADES
March 19th, 2011 5:50am@ Hershen
I think the site you are referring to is www.rememberthesechidren.org
For those too busy to log on, here are some recent figures. Each child’s death is documented – name, age, place, and circumstances.
‘08 ‘09 ‘10
Isr. 4 1 0
Pal. 160 295 15
Eugene
March 19th, 2011 9:38amFor all us who love England it's sad to see the Neville Chamberlaine phenomenon coming back, this time to doom her for good. But people deserve their rulers.
C.Gee
March 19th, 2011 10:08amCelato:
I have no idea what you are trying to say, or how it is responsive to my post. There appears to be a confusion among ideas of “national character and culture”, collective policies expressing them, national stereotyping and demonization.
You are wrong in certain statements. You say we cannot help seeing people outside our immediate purview as “collectives”. We see the entire world in groups, including the people within our immediate purview (whatever that is). The group “we” refer to as ourselves probably determines what we regard as our “immediate purview”. States are the collective groupings most germane to the discussion. States express their own “national character and culture”, in their laws, policies and actions. States acting as states act as a bloc. Their citizens may have more (Israel) or less (any Arab state) diversity (ethnic, racial, political, religious, country-of-origin, linguistic...) Some states may value diversity more than others. A state’s values also express a “national character and culture.”
You are wrong when you say that the Jews have not been uniquely singled out for more demonization than any other people. They have, and over a longer period of time.
I do not know which stereotype of the Jews you are alluding to when you say that “Zionists”, by their “furious dismissal of criticism of Israel as anti-semitic” fuel the stereotype of Jews. The paranoid Jew? The whining Jew? The not-quite-cricket Jew? Is there an angry Jew stereotype? Or has “Zionist” become the stereotype of the furious Jew?
“If you really can't see how great the "cultural and national" gulfs are between a secular Jew in Sussex, an Orthodox rabbi in Lithuania and a tough young Sabra in Israel, how on earth can you expect a non-Jew's stereotypical image to collapse?”
What? If Zionists like me cannot see the great “gulfs” among Jews, then how can we expect gentiles to revise their stereotypical image of Jews? So it is Jewish blindness - to their own divisive diversity - that causes gentile stereotyping of Jews? But as what? All being all the same? Same as what? The Lithuanian Rabbi, the “tough” young Sabra - or perhaps something spawned in an Antwerp estaminet? Had we “Zionists” known that all the gentile world needed in order to drop their stereotyping of Jews was a public proclamation that we could make a nation out of divisive diversity, we would have insisted on Jews from all over the world (is that whom you mean by "International Jewry"?) being eligible for ingathering in Israel.
I am not able to thunder when I am confused. But I can feel some rumblings stirring within...
JOHN ROOSEVELT
March 19th, 2011 10:21amDerek Blades: So, you think there will a peace Israel should trust if it returns to the Green Line?
Or, you think there will only be peace if Israel accepts the 4-7 million claimed Palestinian refugees from the '48 War should back to live within boarders that cooincide with the Green Line?
Or ...the last, but within the lines defined in Partition Plan of 1947?
Do you believe the jihadi Palestinian groups, Hizbollah, Iran, The Moslem Brotherhood, Syria - will accept this peace?
If so, what makes you feel so confident - the Saudi Plan by a regime which the Spring Revoultuionaries, Iran and the lib-left lovelies in Notting Hill want destroyed? Or is it something else only you are privy to, in which case, spread the love, please!
If Israel decides to abandon its statehood, and live in Dihmmitude under some sharia state..do you envisage peace, then i.e. amongst the Palestinians? What makes you think Hamas will not immitate Hizbollah and seek to take over that state, if it had not done so before?
If the new Palestine is a secular state, what makes you think it will be left in Peace by the arab and non arab Islamists? Has Hamas told you so?
I do suspect you are either a liar or a looney or an unholy mixture of the two.
I also believe this Victoria, Herzen, Celato, Tilly, are all from the same duplicitous dna.
..but happy to be convinced otherwise.
pterodactyl
March 19th, 2011 10:58amLynette Gautier asks ‘…if that’s what Israeli detractors want…’
- yes, It seems to me that it is what the detractors of Israel want. Or at least those leading the sheep, because those pushing these policies, such as the BBC, are people of hate. Those such as Hague who are not people of hate, but nevertheless go with the flow, must at some point be hugely troubled by their consciences for what they have done.
The Left hate countries run on moral principles, like Israel, just as much as they hate moral people, and this hate is demonstrated by the corresponding love they show towards criminals and the criminal underclass. It is all part of their way of thinking.
Shame on those journalists and politicians who allow themselves to be led by these people. And these people of hate also want the same for the rest of the West as they want for Israel, including their own country, Britain. Their aim is to destroy civilised culture, and they do not care if it is achieved by Islam or communism, and neither do they care that they too will obviously suffer if they get what they want. To their great disappointment they have had to abandon hopes of communism, but now they are pretty hopeful that they can destroy us through Islam within a few generations. And they are right to be hopeful, as the voters just keep on voting for MPs who arrange for mass immigration from muslim countries. People are actually voting for their own national suicide. The extent of people’s stupidity is amazing.
Re the Palestinians – they have an average age of 15, have been well fed by Western aid all their lives (no wonder the Left insist that foreign aid is ring-fenced), and they have been taught all their lives that that their role in life is to bring great glory to their religion and people by driving the Jews into the sea, ie genocide. They are well aware that the rest of the arab world is cheering them on, although it must puzzle them occasionally why the West is sponsoring them.
I am not sure which is the greater evil, those whose life’s ambition is to be part of a planned genocide, or those in the West who egg them on and pay them to prepare for their evil deeds. Possibly those in the West who sponsor them are the worse of these two groups, because at least the Palestininas are honest about their aim to drive the Jews into the sea for the glory of their religion, whereas those in the West who sponsor them are being deceitful and are pretending that their only concern is for land justice. But you have to credit the Left with an amazing inversion of the definition of what land justice is. Credit where credit is due – they have managed to sell the idea that those who already own 99.5% of the Middle East are hard done by.
cyllan
March 19th, 2011 1:10pmtrue , true , but where is the jewish combined response to this travesty( in and out of israel...)?
nowhere, zero , zilch, nada...
if you wont fight for your rights who is going to?
zeitgoose
March 19th, 2011 2:08pmsleeping dolls
when your enemy is coming to kill you in the morning you may just have to get up even earlier and go and kill HIM.
anti-semites hold that it's the israeli realiations that are to blame for the continuation of the conflict - as though the attacks would stop if they didn't defend themselves.
first, palestinians have to rid themselves of the shadow of evil that is driving them on - and then I'll be willing to listen to your defence of their crimes against jews and your complaints about their treatment at the hands of the israelis.
Denis Cooper
March 19th, 2011 2:28pmTo repeat what I've just said on the Coffee House blog -
I hope Melanie Philips will understand if I say that I very much hope she is prosecuted.
Not that I believe she has done anything at all which should lay her open to criminal charges, but because it's only through a high profile case with a well-funded defence that the government may feel compelled to ask Parliament to legislate to finally bring this decades-old nonsense to an end, so restoring proper freedom of speech to the rest of us who are far less able to defend ourselves.
I'm not demanding the right to provoke public disorder or incite crime or reveal state secrets, longstanding and justified legal restrictions on our freedom of speech, just the right to say what I think, and maybe make what is obviously intended as a joke, without having to fear a visit from the plod.
I don't see this as an essentially party political issue: the Tories had plenty of opportunity to repeal Section 70 of Labour's 1976 Race Relations Act:
http://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/1976/74/pdfs/ukpga_19760074_en.pdf
which kicked it all off by creating the crime of "incitement of racial hatred", even though racial hatred is not itself a crime, and even though it violated the age-old principle of mens rea - a guilty mind, an intention to do wrong - but instead the Tories were gutless and careless of our civil liberties and chose to go along with it.
Derek
March 19th, 2011 2:54pmDerek Blades
you write, passim, of "illegal settlements in the occupied territories".
Rather than invite readers to click on Wikipedia, would you care to state which towns you are talking about and which laws are being broken?
To those who wish to abbreviate his name, may I ask you to use Derek Blade's surname. When I see him addressed by my Christian name, I am embarrassed that other readers may think it is I who hold Blade's obsessive and pernicious views.
May I again call on people to sign the petition to King Abdullah asking him to declare Jordan as the national home of all Palestinians, so that the artificially maintained "refugee camps" can be torn down?
I
Ann
March 19th, 2011 4:46pm"Just click on wikipedia and you too can learn why the settlements are illegal."
No: you only learn that Blades keeps quoting ignoramuses and Jew-haters who CLAIM, with no foundations whatsoever, that they are 'illegal'.
Whenever I challenge him to quote an actual law - not from an unreliable mishmash of half-truths and deliberate distortions, but an actual law - one that prohibits Jews from living in their own ancient homeland, one that decrees and promulgates the racist doctrine that J&S must be Judenrein; he runs a mile. And keeps running. And keeps running.
His silent is a clear admission that there is no such law, and that the settlements are perfectly legal.
Ann
March 19th, 2011 4:51pm"And what, you might ask, was the justification for this act of terror? Attacks on the settlers of course"
What drivel. There were no 'settlers' in 1953. Unless you mean that ALL Jews living ANYWHERE in Israel are 'illegal settlers'. And we know what to call people who think like that, don't we?
Finzi Holst
March 19th, 2011 5:18pmI realize my posts get censored. Why I don't know, but I would like to say that Mr. Blades refers to Wikipedia as if it is some cast-iron source. It is often highly suspect and spurious. Frequently it's information is inaccurate, and merely a partisan and sophistic vehicle and hardly objective and factual.
justalondoner
March 19th, 2011 7:13pmAs a muslim, i would like to express my shock and horror at the horific killings. I for one do not support such murderous acts and nor do the overwhelming majority of Muslims.
But we must be balanced and unfortunately your column is loaded with bias and fails to provide a balanced contextualised account of the narrative that is unfolding. I can only hope your future posts will include reference to the murder, killing and brutal treatment of the palestinians which will no doubt follow.
Augustus
March 19th, 2011 8:15pmDerek Blades - The first thing to get straight is why Israel occupies territories. It does so because instead of having made peace with Israel after 1949 the Arabs attacked Israel
in 1967 in a further attempt at
genocidal extermination and they lost. Surely even you must realize that instead of the Arab aggression and terrorism all the Arabs had to do for the West Bank and Gaza to have remained under Arab hegemony and
to have erected a state of their own was to have made peace. But the truth is that the
Middle East conflict is still stuck in the same groove it has always been in, because it is based on historic opposition to
Jewish self-determination. That
is the single cause of the conflict, even if that cause is often buried beneath an avalanche of hype designed to
obfuscate and confuse.
The Arab world simply refuses to come to terms with Israel's existence within any set of borders whatsoever. The conflict is not about Palestinians not having the right of self-determination as
'Palestinian Arabs, it's about
the Arabs rejection of self-determination for Israeli Jews.
And the proof of that is in the historial pudding. For nigh on a century Arabs have attempted to block Jewish self-dtermination, and they have chosen to do so using violence.
Adam B.
March 19th, 2011 10:07pmjustalondoner, haven't we covered the moral relativism argument which you employ? There is nothing "balanced" about it - just the demeaning of any logic or morality.
And please look up the meaning of "murder".
Derek
March 19th, 2011 10:33pmjustalondoner
This is just another typical exercise in crocodile tears and moral equivalence. When we see you out on the streets with thousands of like-minded muslims expressing support of Israel, we will perhaps begin to take you seriously.
benjamin
March 19th, 2011 10:37pmIts perfectly understandable to be outraged by such despicable and horrifying murders. Melanie's blogs reminds me of headlines in the Daily Mail (or Express?) during the IRA bombing campaign "Irish Bastrds". It lets off steam but doesn't really bring anything to the debate in terms of how to resolve it. Taking the moral high ground might make you feel good, but it doesn’t resolve the problem on the ground.
The problem in these types of intractable conflicts is that both sides are convinced they are in the right, both sides feel themselves to be victims, both sides have more or less contempt and hatred for the other. Logical arguments propounding ad infinitum about Balfour and San Remo and the history of the area and who did what when are a waste of time, because the problem is the perception of historical and contemporary events, and not any historical reality. How to solve it, without one or the wiping their enemy out? No matter how much they might desire it, neither can really win - Israel is too strong, but there are too many Palestinian arabs. Forced "transfer" or deportation is not on. Specialist negotiators with training in conflict resolution can help. Apparently, the contours of an agreement are well known to both sides and has been hammered out between 1993 and 2000. On neither side have the leaders simultaneously shown the political courage necessary to bring their people with them.
The skill of the negotiators is to bring both sides to realize that finding and implementing agreement will bring benefits that outweigh the continuation of the misery of the status quo. Debate that goes in this direction is useful – all the rest is waste of time - in my humble opinion.
Anil Bhatt
March 19th, 2011 10:40pmTo all the defenders of Israel here, may I just put one question, out of sheer curiosity:
What do you think the Palestinians SHOULD do? Accept unlimited Jewish right to settle in the West Bank while not claiming any such right in Israel for themselves?
Is that it?
Please tell me. I am curious.
human
March 19th, 2011 11:45pmWe humans are a single species, but we have been divided into groups; whether religious, racial, political, national, cultural or otherwise. The divisions are FALSE, they are merely products of thought, yet these divisions breed fear, distrust and ultimately, killing and war. If you want a better world without murder or war then start with yourself - don't identify yourself with any group and just be a human being that is not attatched to any nation/religion/culture etc, etc. Otherwise there is no future for humanity. We really are a single species, but you'd never guess that from reading the media. Hate makes money. Fear makes money. War makes money.
Let's wake up before it is too late.
zeitgoose
March 20th, 2011 12:09am@ benjamin
"...the problem is the perception of historical and contemporary events, and not any historical reality."
it is here, at the heart of your argument, that you are mistaken. the historical reality facing the israelis is their enemies' desperate need for their destruction. it's bound up with their culture and what they have been brainwashed into believing about their destiny.
what the leaks have shown beyond doubt is that the palestinians will never be allowed to make peace based on any realistic compromise with israel.
@ Anil Bhatt
there is your answer. what the palestinians SHOULD do is fight to free themselves - not from the israelis - but from the troublemakers in iran, syria, lebanon and the people the piss poor guardian is by and for, and all the other shits who want to fight the jews to the last palestinian.
AY
March 20th, 2011 12:13amIf the matter is purely territorial ("settlements") - then why only this one among many others, is raised that high on the scale of inhumanity.
For example, Russia and Japan have territorial dispute over Kurils, - and still Russia sends help to Japan after recent disasters.
On the other hand, Japanese don't try to kill any Russian babies to promote their cause.
It is named, to be civilized.
Want it or not, this is the root cause.
Truthtriumphs
March 20th, 2011 1:00amBlades.
Good at changing the subject, aren't you?
Could you take a break from your obsessive/compulsive disorder, and tell us why you think that the BBC, which you consider to be a paradigm of honest reportage, refuses to publish the findings of the Balen Report?
For the uninitiated or naive, it should be explained that this was a report which BBC itself commissioned, to discover whether there was institutional bias against Israel, in its reportage of the Israel/Palestine conflict.
When the report was published, the BBC then spent hundreds of thousands of pounds of taxpayers money ,taking out injunctions, to prevent its publication.
You have repeatedly and tellingly remained silent on this issue.
Why?
Unless you come up with a sensible answer, we will have proof positive of your malign intent.
Derek BLADES
March 20th, 2011 2:54amFinzi Holst, March 19th, writes "Mr. Blades refers to Wikipedia as if it is some cast-iron source. It is often highly suspect and spurious."
I don't think anyone would claim that Wikipedia articles are cast in iron - or even in lead come to that. Currently I am trying to get a better article into Wikipedia on a rather obscure statistical matter. What is there now is not wrong but I think it needs more work on it and Wikipedia provides a carefully designed path for people who want to make what they consider to be improvements to any page in Wikipedia.
The article I referred you to does not concern an obscure issue that only interests a few pedants. Given the heat surrounding the issue of Israeli settlements you may be sure that it has been challenged, debated and refined many times over. The short excerpt I gave you on the settlements contains no fewer than seven footnotes. Every statement in there is supported by detailed references.
If you really want something that is, in your words, "inaccurate...partisan...sophistic... hardly objective and factual" you should browse the contributions from Ann, John Roosevelt, Tuttitrumps, Dopey True Zionist and their chums.
JOHN ROOSEVELT
March 20th, 2011 3:06amBenjamin: you seem to think just because both sides in this conflict feels they are right, both are...
You also seem to imply that both sides, because they have their own view of history, both views are equally right or wrong...
Have YOU an idea of what is right and what is wong, is nothing?
Is Hhistory all bunk - just the detritus of of a viewpoint that serves no purpose apart from pleasing the person holding the view?
Is it all just relative for you, Benjamin?
What should we opt for peace if some want war equally strongly, in your view? Dont tell me you think Peace is RIGHT?
Oi vey...you're one heck of a confused kid...
Derek BLADES
March 20th, 2011 3:15amAugustus writes:
"Derek Blades - The first thing to get straight is why Israel occupies territories."
Stop right there Augustus. You just made your first mistake. Settlers occupy territories not Israel.
They do so for a variety of unedifying motives chief of which is the desire to grab as much land as they can from the Arabs they defeated in war. They can do so because the settlers know that the IDF will protect them from the wrath of the Arabs whose land they are taking, and because they have tacit if not open approval from a weak and mendacious government in the grip of religious nutters.
Now go back and redraft your comment please. Bearing the above in mind your revised version might begin to make sense.
Roy
March 20th, 2011 4:57amMargalit Shinar: Well said.
GaryL
March 20th, 2011 4:59amMonsewer Blades wrote -
"Now I need to convince you about the entirely different issue that you raise - namely whether or not the settlements are an obstacle to peace. On the face of it, that looks like child's play but as I have earlier remarked there are none so blind as those that will not see."
"On the face of it", or for a paraphrase, say "superficially". No Palestinian leader or leader of the Arab states at war with Israel have stated that they will sign a peace treaty if Israel removes the towns from Judea and Samaria. They have recently become the chosen excuse by Palestinians to not hold direct negotiations with Israel. After umpteen decades of negotiations which haven't resulted in peace it's drawing a long bow to suggest that the reason for one party to refuse negotiations is a blockage to peace when there are so many other unresolved issues.
So now we know that Mr Blade's "illegal settlements" have never been tried in a court, and that his superficial (or 'on the face of it') "settlements are an obstacle to peace" have no real foundation.
Paul Rooney
March 20th, 2011 6:09amSpot on. The idea that is often put about, that Palestinians are driven to terrorist acts by desperation, is ludicrous beyond belief. And this brutal incident has been woefully under-reported in Britain.
gareth
March 20th, 2011 7:24amOh the DT has a full spectrum of blogs - Peter Oborne for Israel Demonisation, Mary Riddell for Marxism, Damian Thompson and Christina Odone for the Vatican, Bryony Gordon for Twaddle, Robert Webb for low calorie Lefty Comedy - they don't have a blogger promoting Islam but I'm sure they're working on it.
Veracity
March 20th, 2011 10:02amSo a Muslim organisation has reported Melanie for this blog and she is being investigated by the police... says it all doesn't it . I think 'hoist by their own petard' may be our expression for this . The Guardian is cheering of course. Well Melanie , you represnt the majority in the UK. We are behind you
Truthtriumphs
March 20th, 2011 10:27amLeo
To Truthtriumphs:
"You're outraged, I know. Outraged that all your hasbara efforts amount to nothing nowadays and that you have to resort to preaching among the converted on this site".
Nothing of the kind.
A persistent habit of yours, isn't it, substituting your own thoughts into the minds of others?
You obviously haven't paid attention to the lessons of Jewish history, otherwise you would know that the festival of Purim----celebrated this very weekend---has an eternal lesson for all mankind, namely, that when all seems hopeless, providence can bring a reversal of fortunes.
There he was, the arch villain Haman, celebrating his presumed success in his plot to destroy the Jews, when, lo and behold, the very fate he ordained for the Jews of Persia, was ultimately visited upon himself and his descendants.
I surmise that you are one of those "as a Jew, Jews", but may I, nevertheless, take this opportunity of wishing you a very happy Purim?
(And may you take on board its enduring message!)
Gai
March 20th, 2011 11:08amDear Melanie, thank you for standing up for the truth. Some people comments show they don't see this as the truth, but we Israelis couldn't care less!!
We already noticed, a while back, that the world is against us (for many reasons), but we can also see an uproar of good, of honest people that had enough with the lies. Here in Israel the situation isn't much brighter, with our "oh-so-against-everything-that-is-right wing-or-even-close" Media poisoning our minds for nearly 20 years. But lately the good people of Israel are waking up from this horrible dream and finally realizing what we are up against (and if you don't believe me, come to our "Apartheid state" to see!). I also want to thank all the good people that I read here, thank you for being there. The world will definitely need you soon....
paul allen
March 20th, 2011 11:10amGood writing wasted on a subject that will never be concluded. No murder can be justified, not even the British army at the hands of Israeli freedom fighters.Seeking peace is the only way forward for Israel.I also feel ashamed that Dovid Hirsch lives in the UK and urge him to leave.
Richard
March 20th, 2011 11:42amThere has been talk of celebrations in the streets of Gaza. Yet all I can find as evidence is a few pictures reproduced again and again of a rather solemn policeman offering seets to the odd passer-by while aroung him people get on with their daily lives. Is this the evidence on which the righteous indignation is based?
Ogier the Dane
March 20th, 2011 12:44pmBrilliant and incisive writing as usual Melanie.
What surprises me, as evidenced by some of the responses to this piece, is how many of those currently living comfortable lives in the west are willing to abandon the only secular democracy in the Middle East in favour of misogynistic, homophobic, and at its heart xenophobic death cult whose origins lie in the recorded wisdoms of a murderous 7th century warlord with a penchant for banditry and very young girls.
We in the west will one day have to face exactly the same menace which Israel faces - it is a historical fact that every land which has at some point accommodated a muslim population of any significant size has had to face up to it, or submit to the malign influence of its ideology.
Our leaders in the west are disgracefully complicit in bringing this about in our own countries through their current policy of appeasement. It is as though they have had no education in history whatsoever.
Or they are working to a plan.
Andre
March 20th, 2011 12:57pmAnil Bhatt Arabs living in the West bank are eligible for Jordanian citizenship. Jordan should once again assume control of part of the West Bank. Gaza is and always has been Egyptian - the Arabs there speak arabic with Egyptian accent Forget the two-state solution.
Augustus
March 20th, 2011 1:14pmDerek Blades - I find your argument very weak. You make it sound as if this Arab Palestinian 'homeland' which so
enrages the Arabs because it's
been stolen from them by this
alien community of Jews has some measurable element that's been set in stone. If that is the case then why didn't any Arab Palestinians demand any of their'homeland' before 1967? And why did they demand that the Jews be stripped of theirs? The answer must lie in the fact that Palestinians are not a specific people attached historically to a specific territory. Again, the proof is in the historical pudding: When the European Powers detached Palestine from Syria in 1920, the very same Palestinians whose territory you say has been stolen, and in fact
rioted violently against this
ostracism. In fact, the very term 'Nakba' (catastrophe in Arabic) was first coined to refer to that outrage when Palestinians were seperated from their homeland (Syria). The sudden need for a Palestinian state wasn't fabricated until many years later by the Arab world as a gimmick to force Israel back to its pre-1967 borders in the hope
of it being nicely vulnerable for the next wave of Arab assault of annihilation and genocide.
Ann
March 20th, 2011 1:17pmI see that Blades has mentioned me in passing, only (of course) to vilify me.
Naturally, he is still running scared of actually addressing the content of my posts, because he cannot meet the challenge of arguing factually and rationally.
GaryL
March 20th, 2011 2:40pmAnil Bhatt asks whether "Accept unlimited Jewish right to settle in the West Bank while not claiming any such right in Israel for themselves?"
Roughly 20% of the Israeli population are Arabs - Muslim & Christian who call themselves Palestinian. The proportion of Israelis in Samaria and Judea is far less than 20%. Palestinians should accept at least an equivalent exchange of populations.
Truthtriumphs
March 20th, 2011 3:18pmAnil Bhatt
March 19th, 2011 10:40pm
"To all the defenders of Israel here, may I just put one question, out of sheer curiosity:
What do you think the Palestinians SHOULD do? Accept unlimited Jewish right to settle in the West Bank while not claiming any such right in Israel for themselves?
Is that it?"
Simple.
In case you hadn't noticed, there are 1.5 million Palestinians (20% of Israel's total population) living in Israel, which covers just 23% of historic Palestine.
There are NO jews living in Jordan, which covers77% of historic Palestine.
They are forbidden to live there, as in almost all the other Arab states.
Israel's land mass is 1/6 of 1% of Arabia.
Does that answer your question?
Martin
March 20th, 2011 3:43pm'They murder, we build'.
ace. there is no resonance on either side of this disgusting ongoing childlike squabble with what people would regard as 'civilised'.
Pathetic. As attempts the attempts to characterise this as a key 'moral' issue. Where are the morals in the approaches of the sides involved whereupon we are meant to take a position?
Behaving like kids in a sweetshop and I dearly wish in a utopian world we could just get on with the rest of our lives whilst these spotty teenagers continue brutalising each other.
Stephen Rothbart
March 20th, 2011 4:20pm"Nasty things happen wherever there are nasty people. But actually I think most Americans are decent people and so are Arabs." says Derek Blades.
Note the "dog that did not bark," ie. by blatant ommission, no chance that Israelis are decent people.
Atrocities happen, but Arabs and Americans are decent people.
I guess when an atrocity happens in Israeli context it's just because they are basically not decent people, eh Derek?
Speaking of decent people, your claim to having the same views as the US and UK government on Israel and for some reason unknown to man - Wikipedia, as if that was an official publication with unblemished veracity, shows how you are completely missing the point of what Melanie Phillips and people that share her views are saying.
Obama and Cameron's hypocricy along with most Western European government and EU/UN opinion.
Here are the US and the British governments, fighting in two wars aginst terrorist organizations in sovereign states, Afghanistan and Iraq, and who have just sent their military into harm's way defending the lives of anti-Ghaddafi Libyans, castigating Israel for defending herself against exactly the same kind of terrorism.
However, in order for these operations in Afghnistan and Iraq to succeed, NATO troops have been an occupying force in Muslim countries for almost 10 years. Innocent civilians have been killed in both countries. Use of modern weaponry has been employed against primitive makeshift guerillas, just like in Gaza, and yet these two buffoons and possibly you, think that somehow there is a difference. As do many of the people "blogging" here.
Well, actually there is a slight difference.
In Gaza, the Hamas run leadership, voted in overwhelmingly by its people, we are told, is dedicated to destroy Israel and kill every Jew living there. There is a good chance that the West Bank may go the same way, if Hamas can ever rid themselves of the Fatah element, which is immensely unpopular there.
So Israel has a casus belli for its actions against Hamas.
Is Afghanistan, Iraq or Libya at war with any of the countries currently with its troops involved in military operations there? Who exactly invited them in?
So which country has legitimacy for its actions?
If you support the actions of NATO in supressing terrorism (as I do incidentally,)but like the British government and Obama, think Israel is the one who has no case, then you too must be a hypocrite.
If on the on the other hand you oppose the actions of Obama and Cameron, which from your love of all things Arab, you probably do, then let us hear you say it loud and clear, that while you support your government on Israel, you oppose them on everything else. You would at least be more consistent than your "evidence" that you are right, ie. British government opinion.
Truthtriumphs
March 20th, 2011 4:29pmAnil Bhatt.
March 19th, 2011 10:40pm
"To all the defenders of Israel here, may I just put one question, out of sheer curiosity:
What do you think the Palestinians SHOULD do? Accept unlimited Jewish right to settle in the West Bank while not claiming any such right in Israel for themselves?
Is that it?"
Simple.
In case you hadn't noticed, there are 1.5 million Palestinians (20% of Israel's total population) living in Israel, which covers just 23% of historic Palestine.
There are NO jews living in Jordan, which covers77% of historic Palestine.
They are forbidden to live there, as in almost all the other Arab states.
Israel's land mass is 1/6 of 1% of Arabia.
Does that answer your question?
Ann
March 20th, 2011 4:49pm"there is no resonance on either side of this disgusting ongoing childlike squabble with what people would regard as 'civilised'"
You don't actually know the first thing about Israel, do you?
Adam B.
March 20th, 2011 5:00pmBlades makes the classic mistake of saying that the land on which settlets live is "Arab". I would like the source for this claim, as settled land was neither Arab in the sense of ever belonging to an independent Arab entity, nor was it in private Arab ownership.
It may be claimed by the Arabs, but it was not, nor has it ever been, Arab land.
Dizzy Ringo
March 20th, 2011 5:02pmAn excellent and objective article Melanie - you have the right to be heard.
Herzen
March 20th, 2011 5:38pmAugustus
March 20th, 2011 1:14pm
In your comments here and earlier to Derek Blades you again repeat falsifications of history that have been dealt with in earlier threads. Before repeating them, did you even consider the arguments tending to the conclusion that you need to study the history properly rather than simply repeating propaganda slogans?
Martin
March 20th, 2011 5:41pmOoooo I don't think so Ann, I know a bit, here and there.
I just can't quite see where a viable moral barometer exists in this vile conflict, nor indeed can I countenance the idea that by supporting one side or the other offers either soulful moral vindication or else makes you a fascist.
And saying stuff like 'you don't know the first think about Israel, do you?' isn't much likely to change my mind.
In fact, it just offers further fuel to the idea that the narrative driving this nonsense boils down to something akin to spoilt brats squabbling over dropped sweets.
For example, there is little I would consider 'civilised' in the behaviour of either the IDF or their opponents in Hamas and elsewhere. They all deserve each other.
Noah Aaron Bashi
March 20th, 2011 5:50pmDerek BLADES, just get a grip!.
This people killed little children and you think it is okay? Savage is not that bad word, sorry they are worst then that.
Martin
March 20th, 2011 6:14pmDaniele Conversi wrote: 'If morality only condemns the violence exercised by one side and justifies the other side's actions on the basis of order and authority, it loses its character of moderating social value and shows the reality of its ideological content at the service of specific interests.'
I'd say that pretty much sums up what this article is really offering.
Herzen
March 20th, 2011 7:44pmAdam B.
March 20th, 2011 5:00pm
This is a good example of history mistakenly used to justify current behaviour. The League of Nations provisionally recognized the state of Palestine, in which its inhabitants, surprisingly enough, were sovereign, and the Mandatory Power trustee only. As your fellow in mutual admiration, Truthtriumphs, has pointed out, the League's recognition was inherited by the UN. So, if it is law you are relying on here, you are mistaken. This land is the Palestinians'.
Tibor
March 20th, 2011 8:04pm"OCCUPIED TERRITORIES" is a ususal term that's being used by the world and its press when referring to these places in Israel. But wait. In 1967 Israel was suddenly attacked by ALL its Arab neighbours in what it was to become the 6 Day War. After a week it was all over and thankfully Israel has won, impossible as it may seem! One tiny country against all the GIANTS surrounding it. The one thing no one seems to realise, that if it's war, then let it be war. In a war, as it was an unplanned one, it will possibly happen that one side will take over some territory from another. Fair enough, isn't it? In the 1967 war this was done by Israel, partly to widen its borders, in order to try to avert another manic, Arab attempt on its annihilation. To keep them further away. These territories therefore were forfeited by the Arabs at the time, when they may have destroyed Israel and ended up on its land as the new owners! Israel therefore has ALL the right to these territories and should only hand them back when it's safe to do so. Until then it is entirely up to them what they want to do with it, including populating it with their own kind!
Lynn Johnston
March 20th, 2011 8:31pmI hope you are still posting despite Bedfordshire Police. Fraser Nelson's post seems to be off as well. What is going on?
Augustus
March 20th, 2011 8:44pmHerzen - I don't know much about studying history properly,
as you put it. You either study it, or you don't. No doubt your view of more than eighty years of Arab violence is because of
the grasping foreign intruder and greedy Jew. I would say that
that was more an interpretation
of propaganda than the very obvious historical facts of the
deep-seated hatred of the Arabs
for the Jews.
daniel maris
March 20th, 2011 9:41pmJon Boy -
I wasn't born yesterday.
Quarter of a million people with a high birth rate is not a few families.
Augustus -
Your viewpoint seems to be that all peoples are non-peoples? After all, no tribe on this planet has been here forever. Are the Libyans a "people". A 100 years ago, there were no Libyans. Does that mean they can be dispossessed?
And it what sense were the Israelis a people? Yes, there were Jews connected by religion, but then Catholics are connected by religion. But these Jews had no idea of each others' lives, did not speak the same language and had different social customs. There were no Israelis in 1917 speaking Hebrew and enjoying a shared national life.
But I am happy to say there are now Israelis and there are now Palestinians.
Truthtriumphs
March 20th, 2011 10:10pmHerzen
March 20th, 2011 7:44pm
Adam B.
March 20th, 2011 5:00pm
"This is a good example of history mistakenly used to justify current behaviour. The League of Nations provisionally recognized the state of Palestine, in which its inhabitants, surprisingly enough, were sovereign, and the Mandatory Power trustee only. This land is the Palestinians".
And the Jews WERE the Palestinians until 1948....
Palestine Post, Palestine Symphony Orchestra,Joint Palestine Appeal etc.etc....
"let me state this plainly and clearly: the Jews in Israel took no-one's land".
Joseph Farah, Arab-American journalist,23/04/02.
The good thing, Herzen, is that it really doesn't matter what you think,
or, for that matter, what anyone here thinks.
Fortunately, Israel is a sovereign state, and you can stand on your soapbox till kingdom come, and it won't make a blind bit of difference.
There's not a thing you can do about it!
I further hope that Jews will continue to reclaim the land that is rightfully theirs, and if it makes you even more of an ASHamed Jew than you are already, so much the better.
If you carry on with this pointless discussion, you will rightly be regarded as a crank.
Truthtriumphs
March 20th, 2011 11:20pmTilly
"Perhaps all of us participating here should be encouraged to catalogue every crime ever committed by the entire human race as a preface to our remarks. Then we could compete to produce even more riveting lists than the one supplied by Truthtriumphs".
She/he hasn't even got to the 1960s yet - can't wait for the next thrilling episode(s)..."
So that's the value you place on the lives of murdered Jewish innocents, including babies, is it?
A depraved indifference to human life!
Augustus
March 20th, 2011 11:25pmdaniel maris - You misinterpret.
It's not about Arab peoples, or
non-peoples (whatever that's supposed to mean), it's about the Palestinan Arabs not making a fuss about a homeland when Egypt and Jordan occupied pieces of Palestine, but after
1967 decided to do so when Israel suddenly gets accused of colonialism and illegal occupation of this 'homeland'
the Arabs previously hadn't made any demands about at all.
It's an odd way of claiming
possession, but then it's an odd
form of zealotry that drives that possessiveness.
Truthtriumphs
March 20th, 2011 11:29pmsleeping dolls
March 18th, 2011 10:01pm
Truthlimpsoff:
"The Qibya Massacre, also known as the Qibya incident, occurred in October 1953 when Israeli troops under Ariel Sharon attacked the village of Qibya in the West Bank"
Would that be like the other "massacres", you know.. Jenin "massacre", the Gaza beach "massacres etc. which, on investigation, proved to be nothing of the kind?
What's your source?
Is it the Pallywood production unit?
Go back to sleep!
Jill Yolen
March 21st, 2011 1:19amI read your column whenever a new one is posted. I appreciate and am encouraged by your sane insights.
Derek BLADES
March 21st, 2011 3:16amStephen Rothfart (too windy by half again) wants my views on Obama and Cameron. I am not sure why I deserve this honour, but here we go.
I think Barack Obama has got it just about right on Iraq (get out soonest), on Afghanistan (one last push but if the Afghans don't get their act together we leave), on Israel (don't let's go into that) and on Libya. This last was a difficult choice for Obama since there is no clear end in sight. But Obama has shown great wisdom in foreign policy so far and I am inclined to trust him on this one too.
David Cameron seems to be following wiser heads - Sarkozy and Obama - and that makes sense as he is short on international experience.
I can't think that any of the above is of much interest to you or to anyone else visiting this blog but, since you asked, I felt obliged to answer. Let me return the compliment. What are your views on President Obama and Prime Minister Cameroon? Are they doing the right thing for Israel? And were they right to attack Libya? Please try to keep your answer to one screen size or I will not read it. Cheers.
C.Gee
March 21st, 2011 3:27amAnil Bhatt
March 19th, 2011 10:40pm
“What do you think the Palestinians SHOULD do? Accept unlimited Jewish right to settle in the West Bank while not claiming any such right in Israel for themselves?”
The Palestinians should take to the streets of Ramallah and Gaza City to demand freedom from their despotic leaders. Join the Jasmine Revolution. They should demand meaningful elections, a new constitution (throw out the PLO and Hamas charters) and civil rights. They should set up the institutions that protect individual liberty and free markets. They should create an economy independent of aid or UNWRA. They should behave as if they were a state within unspecified borders. They should stop militant factions from killing Israelis. Their new civilian proto-government should call an immediate and unconditional ceasefire and outlaw terrorism.
If Jews are in the midst of what they regard ought to be Palestinian territory, they can treat them as people with full civil rights and hope they will choose to be citizens of the Palestinian state.
Having done all this, they should offer to sign a peace treaty within borders offered by Israel.
Stephen Rothbart
March 21st, 2011 8:43amWell, Derek, since you find me too windy, I will keep it as short as possible.
"But apart from that, Mrs. Lincoln, did you enjoy the play?"
A famous joke, showing how someone can entirely miss the point.
Sadly, you Derek, always miss the point. Perhaps you suffer from a short attention span.
My comment, windy or not, was not a analysis of Obama and Cameron's thought process, but of yours.
I already stated that in behaving the way they do they are hypocritical, and since neither took their countries into Afghanistan or Iraq, their judgement on those issues is rather irrelevant.
However, since neither have taken thei troops out of either country, but continue to use "disproportionate" (the anti-Israel mot du jour) weaponry on terrorist armies, I find it a bit rich that they cannot see how much their actions continue to mirror those of Israel.
Now however, they have gone into Libya, which actually is non-defensive for either Britain or the US unless you consider it protecting oil and trade, and I find that a lot worse than what Israel, in fighting a defensive war, is doing.
So I asked you, Derek, what was your standpoint, and you answered that you think they both got it about right.
So that makes them hypocrites, and, since you seem to agree with them, I think - as you never really ever answer a question put to you clearly, that maks you a hypocrite too.
Richard
March 21st, 2011 11:15amTruthtriumphs
March 20th, 2011 10:10pm
In the course of some distinctly unimpressive responses to other contributors you say that the Jews were the Palestinians. You mean surely that half of them had taken Palestinian citizenship, while the other half by 1947 were still citizens of other states.
I trust for your sake that "ASHamed" was simply a keyboard mishap.
And if you want to find out about Qibya you could consult the Israeli investigation - a whitewash of course, but the facts are there.
You seem to have two responses to evidence of IDF slaughter - either the victims were human shields OR they weren't slaughtered - yet the graveyards keep filling up.
Truthtriumphs
March 21st, 2011 12:07pmRichard
March 21st, 2011 11:15am
Truthtriumphs
March 20th, 2011 10:10pm
"In the course of some distinctly unimpressive responses to other contributors you say that the Jews were the Palestinians. You mean surely that half of them had taken Palestinian citizenship, while the other half by 1947 were still citizens of other states".
Thus you betray your monumental ignorance.
There was no such thing as Palestinian citizenship, because no such country/state ever existed.
If you think it did, give us evidence of it...dates, rulers, borders, language, currency etc.
And no, my reference to ASHamed Jew was not a typo, but a reference to the type of Jew that Howard Jacobson so eloquently based his Booker prize-winning novel, The Finkler Question, on.
Read it.
Ann
March 21st, 2011 12:15pm"while the other half by 1947 were still citizens of other states"
You HAVE heard of the Diaspora and the Holocaust, right? No? Oh, all right, that does explain it.
Ann
March 21st, 2011 12:18pm"Yes, there were Jews connected by religion"
How and why someone who is so spectacularly ignorant of the 3000-year history of the Jewish NATION, thinks he is in a position to comment on anything connected with Jews and Israel, shall remain one of those insoluble mysteries.
Celato
March 21st, 2011 12:41pmC.Gee:
I have tried to respond to your March 19th post (10.08) twice now. For whatever reason, no luck in getting them through. Sorry - can't face another fruitless effort.
Richard
March 21st, 2011 12:48pmTruthtriumphs
March 21st, 2011 12:07pm
Oh dear, do read the Mandate. And do read the League of Nations Covenant, which "provisionally recognizes" Palestine.
You see I read the replies you insist on ignoring.
And "ASHamed" is grotesquely inappropriate.
Daniel Hennessy
March 21st, 2011 12:55pmGod bless you Ms. Philips. As a Messianic believer and a Holocaust educator/activist, I pray that you continue to expose the truth everywhere and at all times... Thank you for your stand for truth.
Herzen
March 21st, 2011 1:31pmStephen Rothbart
March 21st, 2011 8:43am
The answer is straightforward.
The US and UK had no business to be in Iraq. They have no business to be in Afghanistan. They went to the trouble of getting a UN Resolution for their attack on Libya. The rest of the world (well, Russia, China, Brazil, the Arab state etc.) appear to think they have already exceeded their mandate.
And the "defensive" "war" you talk of is what in common parlance is called a land grab and consequent mop-up and annexation.
Robert Randall
March 21st, 2011 1:35pmI can only look at this depravity of Britain's once decent moral outlook and the degradation of truth represented by the portrayal of Israel as the problem and weep.
I weep for truth and justice and long for the day when "justice rolls down like waters, and righteousness like an ever-flowing stream." Amos 5:24
God help us
Maurice
March 21st, 2011 1:51pmThe west bank of the Jordan River was conceded to Israel by Jordan defacto as part of their peace agreement. Likewise, Gaza was conceded to Israel by Egypt defacto as part of their peace agreement. Israel hoped that the Arab residents in those areas would become good citizens and those who wanted to be were issued Israeli passports. Those who remained brainwashed by their previous leaders to hate Jews remain separate in those areas and continue to attack Jews. There is no "apartheid" for Arabs living inside Israel and they live freely as they want to just as normally as Israelis do. The difference is for those who chose to live as terrorists against Israel who have found themselves literally on the other side of the fence as this is the only way to prevent their barbaric attackers from reaching innocents. A word about the USA and the UK: Perhaps the USA should give back California to the Mexicans and the UK should give back Scotland Wales and Nothern Ireland, as all these occupations were obtained by war.
Tilly
March 21st, 2011 2:19pmTruthtriumphs
Your list was not a catalogue of "innocents including babies". It was a death toll of unidentified Israelis killed during several decades of conflict in which Palestinians were also killed. No indication is given of the circumstances of the deaths - whether the casualties were civilians or soldiers, singled out or involved in battle, pro-active or retaliatory - so it's impossible to draw any INFERENCES from it.
The only classification given is "terrorism" but since this term is applied to ALL politically-motivated violence by those who do not belong to an internationally recognised army, it's become virtually meaningless in the Israel-Palestine context. The Palestinians do not have an army because they do not have a state; therefore any military action in which they engage - including firefights with invading troops or missile attacks on hovering bombers - are categorised as "terrorist".
How easy is it then to view (as you so seamlessly slide into doing) all Israelis killed as "murder" victims and all Palestinians killed as "war" casualties. It's a wrong view - simplistic, dehumanising and manipulative.
Perhaps if you appreciated this, you might one day earn that name you wear so arrogantly as a badge.
Truthtriumphs
March 21st, 2011 2:24pmRichard
March 21st, 2011 12:48pm
Truthtriumphs
"Oh dear, do read the Mandate. And do read the League of Nations Covenant, which "provisionally recognizes" Palestine.
You see I read the replies you insist on ignoring."
I have read it....many times, but have you?
I think you will find that it states that Palestine is merely a description of a geographical area...nothing more.
And why do you ignore my request for details of any Palestinian state that ever existed? The obvious answer is that one never existed.
It's for you to prove otherwise.
And, no, I disagree about ASH Jews being "grotesquely inappropriate".
What it grotesquely inappropriate is the manipulation of the truth to fit a certain agenda, by people such as yourself.
Leon
March 21st, 2011 2:37pmWhy some people on this forum still pay attention to Dreck Blades posts is beyond me.
“Thought thrives on conflict” ancients said. Does anybody expect anything new produced by this.... remarkable and soooo obliviously brilliant thinker?
Stephen Rothbart
March 21st, 2011 2:54pmOh Herzen! Now you have given Derek Blades another excuse not to answer a question!
I am so pleased to find that someone thinks the answer to any subject concerning the Middle East is straightforward.
Good for you.
So it's OK to let Saddam Hussein butcher Shias and Kurds in their tens of thousands, invade Kuuwait, tell everyone he has WMD, and do nothing for years, while the Arabs in the Security Council, Russia and China, those bulwarks of free speech and tolerance, block any attemptto stop him, but it's OK to try to kill Ghadaffi after weeks of bumbling after about 200 people were killed in Libya?
Well glad that you find that straightforward.
Just as long as the UN (short for Useless Nobodies I suppose) rubber stamps it first, that's OK?
Does not matter how many Bosnian Muslims die, or Kurds, or Shias, let's get the UN which voted, and please correct me if I am wrong, Herzen, none other than Libya onto its Human Rights Comission - as Chairman!
Well clearly the UN is a body of upright citizens with an enormous sense of humour and absolutely no sense of irony.
China, Russia, Brazil and the Arab League "already think they have exceeded their mandate."
Well by Jove! Do they? Gosh.
You know, Herzen, you and I have been at opposite sides of an argument on the Israeli/Palestine problem, but I have respected you for trying to argue your case with history and a reference to facts, even if they are used, as lawyers will do, selectively, by both sides, because actually the Middle East in not straightforward and you can make a case for almost anything if you look hard eneough.
But sadly, I fear that you have morphed into the Derek Blades camp of selective reasoning.
You admit to basing your case on endorsement by the UN, which elected Libya as Chairman of the Human Rights Commission along with other ne'er do well states from Africa and the Middle East, and then back it up by including the moral rectitude of Chechnya-bashing, Putin-led Russia, Tibet and Mongolia occupying China, and the Arab League, an organisation which as we can see all too well now, is run by despots, dicators and religious bigots.
This, then is your moral compass, is it? A rubber stamp by the most corrupt governments in the world, operating in one of the most corrupt organizations.
This is your alternative to Israel's moral imperative to defend her subjects against just the kind of tyrants that Cameron and Obama are trying to destroy in Libya, Iraq and Afghanistan.
Think I will stick with the Zionists - sorry.
Joachim
March 21st, 2011 3:17pmExceptional writing!
Couldn't agree more. And it's so depressing. How will it end?
C.Gee
March 21st, 2011 3:43pmCelato:
Do not worry - I never suppose that I have the last word or that silence means I have changed minds. I, too, often have posts that do not appear. I'll take it you do not agree. There will be other opportunities cross words.
Richard
March 21st, 2011 4:29pmC.Gee
March 21st, 2011 3:27am
I think there is a lot of good sense in what you say. I do have some questions though.
You say the people should overturn their corrupt rulers. Surely it is not clear whether those who keep their corrupt rulers in power i.e. the US will play along. In Egypt, they tried to resist the popular will. In Libya, they have taken sides in a civil war and bombed the bejeezus out of the government side. In Saudi Arabia and Bahrain they have whimpered quietly about rights and democracy while letting the corrupt rulers get on with their work. Israel needs a PA to maintain the fiction that all those a-rabs are none of its responsibility (demographic time bombs the lot of them). So the US does not want the PA to fail. If it does fail, as in Egypt, it will try hijacking.
You say the Palestinians should create an economy. I get the impression here that no-one has bothered to study how Israel dealt with the Palestinians of Galilee, not just taking their land, but obstructing the recovery of civil society, and any chance of accumulating any significant economic capital, or effective political representation. The methods created for Galilee etc. have been applied to the occupied territories, and refined, particularly since Israel found it could do without an Arab workforce. You expect them to build an economy out of what is left? Are you an expert on developmental economics? Do you have serious proposals?
You suggest they set up institutions to defend free markets - which sounds very neo-liberal and panacea-like. Great Britain and the US only became keen on free markets once they had cornered them. The free markets they impose on others are not out of altruism. No people has been lifted out of poverty by following the precepts of the neo-liberals.
"If Jews are in the midst of what they regard ought to be Palestinian territory, they can treat them as people with full civil rights and hope they will choose to be citizens of the Palestinian state."
This surely is disingenuous. I am sure you don't think Israeli settlers would settle for any such thing and nor would the Israeli government. And the idea that the cuckoo should be welcomed into the nest...
"...they should offer to sign a peace treaty within borders offered by Israel."
I have seen what Israel is prepared to leave the Palestinians called ghettoes - with some justice. You say the Palestinians should sign a bit of paper saying they agree to their imprisonmnet in ghettoes and are grateful for the opportunity to call their ghettoes a "state".
This surely is disingenuous, or the unattractive not to say vindictive glorying of the victor over the vanquished.
Richard
March 21st, 2011 5:20pmTruthtriumphs
March 21st, 2011 2:24pm
IMPORTANT NOTICE: Here is a HEALTH WARNING: do NOT believe Truthtriumphs.
Mandate for Palestine
Article. 7. The Administration of Palestine shall be responsible for enacting a nationality law. There shall be included in this law provisions framed so as to facilitate the acquisition of Palestinian citizenship by Jews who take up their permanent residence in Palestine.
League of Nations Covenant
Article 22 paragraph 4
Certain communities formerly belonging to the Turkish Empire have reached a stage of development where their existence as independent nations can be provisionally recognized subject to the rendering of administrative advice and assistance by a Mandatory until such time as they are able to stand alone. The wishes of these communities must be a principal consideration in the selection of the Mandatory.
And still you refuse to consider anything that calls your prejudices into question.
Herzen
March 21st, 2011 6:00pmStephen Rothbart
March 21st, 2011 2:54pm
Righteous indignation tends to cloud the judgement. You should bear that in mind.
Saddam killed Kurds while the ally of the US. I do not recall offhand who supplied him with the poison gas. I do know that Rumsfeld saw fit to visit him afterwards and propose still closer ties.
Saddam killed Marsh Arabs afer Bush pere encouraged them to rise against him, before deciding that Saddam was better than no strongman at all, and stood aside (despite complete dominance of land, sea and air) to let Saddam's forces slaughter them.
We still do not know why Saddam miscalculated on Kuwait. There seems nothing untoward in Ambassador Glaspie's message to him (I may have her name wrong). But Saddam had outlived his usefulness and was getting disobedient, and the US had a detailed plan for invading Iraq which it had been fortuitously practising. My guess is he simply over-reached.
Who helped him develop his nuclear, chemical and biological weapons programmes?
In the absence of an alternative strongman, what was done after the first Gulf war, WITH the authorization of the UN? Sanctions that were imposed in the knowledge that they would kill civilians - hundreds of thousands of civilians, mostly the young and the old. "A price worth paying" according to Albright.
Does any of this provide a pretext in international law to attack a sovereign state? No.
And Afghanistan. The Taliban and al qaeda were hardly best of friends by the turn of the millenium. The Taliban had learnt for themselves why Sudan preferred to do without Bin Ladin. After 9/11 they offered extradition if the US provided evidence. This may have been a ploy. We won't ever know, because the US ignored it. (It may not have been a ploy - it was no part of the Taliban's plans to be vapourized for the sake of al qaeda.) If the Taliban had refused to close al qaeda bases, then the US could have sought international agreement to destroy them. What did it do instead? Bomb. Fund and arm warlords and drugs traffickers. Intervene in a civil war.
Does it matter how many Bosnian Muslims die? I think you will have to re-visit the history of the Balkan wars. The US armed islamist fighters there, as in so many other parts of the world over the decades. The Serbs were the target. Disobedient, again. The peace deal finally done was very similar to the one the EU hammered out with the parties before most of the bloodshed - but the US had to be seen to bring peace and those who defied it had to be seen to pay.
Kurds? The US is only interested in Kurds when it suits. It armed the Turks at the height of their atrocities against the Kurds. They armed Saddam at the height of his atrocities against the Kurds.
Shias? It is touching, this sudden concern for Muslims.
You seem to have faith that US=good, while Russia, China, Brazil, the Arab states=evil.
Modern-day Russia and China are pussycats beside the US. (And I say that as someone who campaigns actively for a free Tibet and who protested against our government's aquiescence in the atrocities of Chechnya.) And what do you have against Brazil, now that it has freed itself from the generals who were such friends of the US? And the Arab tyrants of the Arab League...you mean the staunch allies of the US?
The opinion of the US and its NATO "allies" need not be taken as the final word in moral activism and humanitarian intervention (killing civilians for their own good).
I am still not clear how you think international law works. Is it that the beneficent and disinterested US decrees what is right and everyone else obeys or gets bombed to oblivion?
This certainly suits Israel, providing just the moral compass it needs for its continued depredations.
Matt Pryor
March 21st, 2011 6:57pmVery true Melanie. You are indeed a light in the darkness. The last paragraph is absolutely key to this whole affair.
Stephen Rothbart
March 21st, 2011 7:52pmHerzen, thanks for getting back with an informed and reasoned argument.
What you have demonstrated by this is exactly what we Zionists have been arguing about.
Which is basically "Pot calling the kettle black."
Here you have identified a tangled web of misdeeds and shady deals carried out by national and sovereign governments from every side of the political and ethnic divide including Britain's and the USA's. Neither of us mentioned the French, but they should not be forgotten.
In my opinion what determines to which of these nations one can take sides with over another, is whether or not there are regular free elections and a limit on how long a specific leader can remain in power.
In the UK, we have elections every 5 years or so, and that means no Government can expect to behave so badly towards it citzens and yet still remain in power.
The second is a free and independent Press and Media.
In the UK and the USA and most of Western Europe, we have both of these.
Real politik mmeans that nations and organizations have to make deals and set up relationships with some pretty nasty people. The West supported Iraq and Saddam Hussein because he was a buffer to the Islamic Republic of Iran, and the West needed to keep the oil away from these religious bigots. Yes, those same bigots that support Hamas and Hezbollah, Syria and now Lebanon.
But the media and the Press in the United States were brutal in their condemantion of Bush, Cheney et al as the British Press were of Blair and his acolytes.
In the end both Bush and Blair were removed.
The other practioners of Real Politik, Russia, China, The Arab League, for that matter the Arab world,Africa etc. have no honest elections, have no free Press, and for example Russia has killed more of its journalists than is healthy for that profession.
So in a dark, dark world, full of nefarious deeds, I will stick with people who hold elections and have a free press, and that, Herzen, includes Israel.
We saw what happened to journalists in Gaza this last week. They were beaten up by Hamas. But the liberals around the world and their show-biz luvvies are 'all Hamas now!"
And so it gets down to the final point, that when there are so many dark deeds in the world, past and present, by the good the bad and the downright ugly, why is Israel the one nation that is regularly held in contempt? Why does the UN spend so much time calling out sanctions against Israel?
In a sense, Herzen, by your own descriptions about the activities of the world's great and not so great nations, you have proven the Zionist point.
Compared to what you have described in your blog, Israel's transgressions are as tiny as is their small toe hold in the Arab world, and which everyone is so angry about.
In the past you have argued well with your point of view as have others who oppose you.
I am not asking you to love Israel and nor is Ms. Phillips, I am sure.
All of us that take the side of Israel though have just one main point.
Why Israel? Why, out of a global family that includes some of the most odious dictatorships, despots, genocidal maniacs, homophobic, misogynist societies, religious bigots who kill each other over a simple interpretation of their own imaginations, and democratic governments trying to secure their wealth and influence, does the world's and the UN's attention focus on this tiny state of 4,500,000 Jews, calling them vile epithets like Nazis, apartheid government, and child killers.
What kind of twisted logic turns good to bad, logic to fantasy as soon as the name Israel is mentioned?
Well, we think we know, and that why we are so determined to defend ourselves and our fellow Jews.
Anil Bhatt
March 21st, 2011 9:02pmTruthtriumphs:
A reply of mine did not get through, for no obvious reason.
Judging by your message, it appears that you believe Jews have the right to settle anywhere in "historic Palestine", by which you presumably mean Israel, the West Bank, Gaza AND Jordan....A far more extreme position than even most ISRAELIS would take. It is curious to see how popular it is here.
Where does that leave the Arabs, then? Do they have the right to settle in Israel? Judging by your message it appears you think Israel has already allowed as many Arabs as it would be just to allow within its borders since they are about 20 per cent of the Israeli population. Further new settlements in "historic Palestine" will need to be only Jewish, we are to conclude.
Very fine.
The only trouble is, the Arab population in Israel is not there by leave of the Jews. It is a native population with as much right to be there as the English in England. Besides, they are only the remnant of the native majority until the 1940s. What about the Palestinian exiles? Israel does not accept their right to return to their homes in Israel. Why then should the Arabs accept the right of Jews to settle in the West Bank - the only, small, part of Palestine where they have any hopes of achieving sovereignty?
The argument here leps into the real;ms of the surreal. Has it ever occurred to you to try and put yopurself in Arab shoes? Is there no such thing as even elementary fairness? The World conceded the Jews the unique right to establish a state in Palestine due to the Holocaust; it did not and could not deprive the native Arab majority of all claim to sovereignity anywhere in the land.
What will Israelis do after the next two decades when Arabs will be the MAJORITY in Israel plus the West Bank?
daniel maris
March 21st, 2011 9:50pmAnn -
If people insist on publishing stupid comments about Palestinian Arabs, I can at least be allowed to post some sense about Jews. There was no "Jewish nation" between the fall of the Roman Empire and 1917. In fact "nations" only become a way of analysing population groups in the late 18th century. The concept of a nation is normally held to involve features like territorial contiguity, a common language, a common culture and practical organisational arrangements to create a common political entity.
None of these applied to Jews for the best part of two thousands years. You can fantasise all you. All they had was - in large part - a common religious tradition and persecution to define them.
On your approach you could say that there is a Hindi nation that has a right to return to Pakistan.
Israel is a modern creation, by people motivated by an idea or dream of nationhood. Liberia could also be said to have
been created in similar fashion. Both are perfectly legal states. But being a legal state is not the same thing as saying that you can browbeat people into accepting every claim to legal title you make.
Other states are or have been of quite recent date and based on rather tenuous ideas e.g.the Soviet Union, Pakistan and Saudi Arabia.
If you are not a blinkered partisan, so much is pretty obvious.
C.Gee
March 21st, 2011 10:23pmRichard:
“You expect them to build an economy out of what is left? Are you an expert on developmental economics? Do you have serious proposals?”
Yes.
Yes.
Stop fighting. Establish legal framework for encouraging economic activity. Allow entrepreneurship. Reward innovation. Prevent mafioso extortion. Allow Jews to participate in the economy.
Herzen
March 21st, 2011 10:36pmStephen Rothbart
March 21st, 2011 7:52pm
I will read your comments more carefully tomorrow. I just want to make clear now that I think in the grand scheme of things Israel is no worse in intention than any other wielder of power and in effect much less damaging than many, including Great Britain in its time, and the US for the last many decades. It is hypocrisy to condemn Israel in isolation.
Valerie
March 22nd, 2011 2:02amJan... the West Bank was actually part of Jordan and the non-Jews who live there are Jordanians, not Palestinians. Jordan refuses to reintegrate them.
It bears mentioning that only a couple of days after the Fogel family was massacred, a taxi carrying a pregnant Arab woman in distress arrived at the IDF medical clinic at the Itamar settlement (the same settlement where the Fogels lived). Her baby had the umbilical cord wrapped around its neck and had turned grey. The IDF paramedic saved the baby and the woman.
The article pointed out that Arabs frequently come to the Itamar clinic for medical treatment and they are never turned away. They have even given medical treatment to a man who attempted a terrorist attack. Ask yourself where the billions and billions of dollars in aid money to the "Palestinians" have gone. Why doesn't the PA look after its people? Why don't they provide medical treatment to their own people? Don't you think it takes a lot of chutzpah to set off fireworks to celebrate the murders of 5 people and then show up on their doorstep to have them save your baby?
Truthtriumphs
March 22nd, 2011 2:29amRichard
March 21st, 2011 5:20pm
Truthtriumphs
March 21st, 2011 2:24pm
"IMPORTANT NOTICE: Here is a HEALTH WARNING: do NOT believe Truthtriumphs."
No..they shouldn't.
They should look up the relevant documents and read them for themselves.
And they shouldn't be fooled by luminaries, such as you, who resort tp the trickery of quoting selectively, out of context.
Here's a quote from someone who is a bit more knowledgeable on the subject than you:--
"Never in history was there a Palestinian state.
We never wanted a Palestinian state--even today the Palestinians do not want a Palestinian state.
They want the destruction of he Jews.
It's a religious holy war.
It's in the culture, the tradition".
Walid Shoebat, former PlO terrorist. 27/1/04
And:---
"There is no language known as Palestinian.
There is no distinct Palestinian culture. There has never been a land known as Palestine governed by Palestinians".
Joseph Farah. American Arab journalist, January 2002.
Richard
March 22nd, 2011 10:02amTruthtriumphs
March 22nd, 2011 2:29am
I don't know which is the more appropriate epithet, shameless or shameful.
You said you had read the Mandate and there is nothing in it about Palestinian citizenship. I quoted you the relevant Article.
You said Palestine was not a state. I quoted you the Article in the League of Nations Covenant that recognized it.
And still you refuse to admit your mistake. This is no longer just blinkered. This is dishonest.
Richard
March 22nd, 2011 10:10amC.Gee
March 21st, 2011 10:23pm
Is the second "Yes" Yes, you are an expert in developmental economics? (I'm just being nosey.)
A legal framework. Encouragement for entrepreneurship. All good. Allow Jewish settlers to contribute. Disingenuous in current circumstances. One day, closer economic cooperation between Israel and Palestine would surely be a Good Thing (possibly even for Israel, although I'm not sure studies of Italy and Germany would bear that out). Stop the extortion by gangsters. We are back to the problem that the gangsters are the allies or proxies of Israel and the US.
Herzen
March 22nd, 2011 1:34pmStephen Rothbart
March 21st, 2011 7:52pm
We can agree the world is a nasty place, and states, Israel among them, have to defend their citizens, and make the alliances they think fit.
We can agree it is better to live in a liberal democracy. The outcome of elections makes little difference to domestic policy and none to foreign policy. A corporate capitalist free press is not all it seems. But the difference between elections and no elections, and a free press and no free press, is huge. Tyrannies do awful things to their people. Liberal democracies tend not to.
Liberal democracies are not less prone to do nasty things to others. States do nasty things to others in the name of their citizens interests, or the national interest (i.e. the interests of the currently successful coalition of lobbies). Sovereign states are not easily dissuaded from doing what they want. International law and its institutions do however exert some restraint, even on the US. So I think international law should be upheld.
Why is Israel subject to criticism? The same reason as the US. It treats international law, as it applies to relations between states, with a contempt that few other states can get away with.
Why does Israel do so? because it has proved successful in the past. Its leaders were in the past blunt about it. Israel is a land grab (something we Europeans should recognize from not so distant history). Success requires aggression. Israel has been unlucky in that such aggression has been explicitly outlawed since the founding of the UN. Israel has achieved its ends in defiance of international law, and has done so only with the help of an imperial ally that likes to think it either makes the law or can ignore it. The occupied territories are just the latest, as yet incomplete, stage in this process.
I can't think of another obvious example except China in Tibet and the regions to the north of Tibet. (No doubt there are occupations in the chaos in Central Africa,and elsewhere - I'm showing my ignorance). So it seems obvious why Israel should be subject to criticism. Also, China is immovable. Israel's success depends on its alliance with the US and with Europe. It is “one of us”, and like the rest of “us” should abide by the principles it claims to observe. Open hypocrisy does not persuade anyone else to behave.
The few who criticise Israel on this blog do not do so from anti-Semitism (the few, the very few instances appear to be buffoons or provocateurs). This blog retails the propaganda of the MFA. Propaganda by intention obscures the truth. It seems to me legitimate to criticise propaganda.
(There is no doubt that the Palestinian cause is fashionable among those who like to feel warm and ethical, just as Israel's cause attracts those who like to think of themselves as tough realists and righteous, defending core values whatever the cost. It is also no doubt true that there are anti-Semites. Despite the best efforts of this blog, it is not obvious that they have any influence on anything much.)
Adam B.
March 22nd, 2011 2:01pmRichard, Palestine was NOT a state, and reference to it (as a Mandate territory between 1917-1948) never referred to it as an exclusively Arab entity.
Palestine has never, at any time, been an Arab state, or an independent entity of any kind. Indeed, a distictly "Palestinian" Arab nationalism was invented in the 1960's. Thus there were no calls for a state of "Palestine" when Jordan occupied the West Bank and Ehypt occupied Gaza between 1948-67.
Truthtriumphs
March 22nd, 2011 4:46pmRichard
March 22nd, 2011 10:02am
Truthtriumphs
You said you had read the Mandate and there is nothing in it about Palestinian citizenship. I quoted you the relevant Article.
You said Palestine was not a state. I quoted you the Article in the League of Nations Covenant that recognized it".
The fact is that NO Palestinian state EVER materialised, as you well know, no matter what the League said.
If you think differently, then give proof.
What was its language, currency, borders,instruments of government, dates of existence.
Name a prime minister, or king or any head of state.
You can't, can you, so your arguments are absurd?
An again, it was the the Jews who were referred to as Palestinians until 1948, not Arabs.
Palestine has only ever existed as a geographical area, never as an independent state.
C.Gee
March 22nd, 2011 5:29pmRichard:
It is disingenuous to ask in the first place what the Palestinians should do. The political calculation for continuing war with Israel has economic consequences. According to their political calculations, the economic plight of the Palestinian people is not merely an outcome of, but a necessary justification for, the war. The uncertainties of a police state, “taxes” levied by gangs, filching of material to repair sewers and other infrastructure, jobs for the boys, monopolies to the powerful, fees paid to officials, boycotts of Jews, embezzlement or misapplication of aid monies - all justified by war. (Actually, there has been recent improvement in corruption and hence economic performance in the West Bank.)
If the Palestinian people do not decide to rebel against their leaders, then their acquiescence in the status quo - on the promise of better life when Israel is gone - is the major impediment to political and economic sanity.
So what do you think the Palestinians do?
Truthtriumphs
March 22nd, 2011 5:32pmAnil Bhatt
March 21st, 2011 9:02pm
Truthtriumphs:
"Judging by your message, it appears that you believe Jews have the right to settle anywhere in "historic Palestine", by which you presumably mean Israel, the West Bank, Gaza AND Jordan....A far more extreme position than even most ISRAELIS would take. It is curious to see how popular it is here."
And
"The only trouble is, the Arab population in Israel is not there by leave of the Jews. It is a native population with as much right to be there as the English in England. Besides, they are only the remnant of the native majority until the 1940s. What about the Palestinian exiles? Israel does not accept their right to return to their homes in Israel."
You are completely distorting my words.... I have NEVER said that the Jews should be able to settle anywhere in historic Palestine, of which Jordan comprises 77%.
I said that legally, historically and morally Jews are entitled to the West Bank, and should be able to live freely there, wherever they choose. (as they are, btw in Gaza and the Golan).
There is no interest in Jordan, in which, I pointed out, they are forbidden to reside.
Israel offered to give 95% of the West Bank for a Palestinian state, with additional land swaps, for the cause of peace, but even this was rejected on the grounds that the Arabs do not accept a Jewish state, however small,in the region.
What you conveniently omit to say, is that more than 800,000 Jews were brutally evicted from THEIR homes in many Arab countries, where they had lived for more than a thousand years, and forced to leave penniless.(Iraq, Egypt, Syria, lebanon, to name but a few).
It's estimated that they left behind land they owned more than 4 times the size of present-day Israel.
Where is their right of return, or compensation?
They were absorbed by Israel, and made full citizens, unlike the Arab refugees, many of whom left after the Arab countries waged a war of extermination against the fledgling country of Israel.
Why don't the numerous Arab nations take them in?
As to your historical revisionism, the Arabs are NOT indigenous to Israel and the West Bank or Jordan.
They migrated in huge numbers form mainly Egypt and Syria, when Jewish immigration at he end of the 19th.century, created economic opportunities for them.
There were very few inhabitants in the Holy land until the beginning of the 20th. century, because of the hostile terrain, etc.
This is well documented by American, British, Dutch and other explorers to the region in the 19th.century.
Indeed, since the middle of the 19th.century, Jews constituted a majority in Jerusalem, except between 1948 and 1967, when the Jordanians chased them out of East Jerusalem.
So, you are unhappy that even though most of the Arab/Muslim countries have been ethnically cleansed of their Jews, you would like the only Jewish state, to take in millions of Arabs, and so end the Jewish nature of the state?
It seems that for you 22 Arab nations, and 57 Muslim nations worldwide are not enough for you, yet the ONE Jewish state, on a sliver of land 1/6th. of 1% of the Arab lands, is too much.
As Hannan Ashrawi once said, "we are an all or nothing people", meaning that to them everything, and to the other,(meaning the infidel Jew) nothing.
The Arabs are not the victims....they are the masters of their own destiny.
Anil Bhatt
March 22nd, 2011 5:41pmTruthtriumphs, Adam B.:
I am puzzled why you should make such triumphant glory about Palestine having no history as a state.
So what?
Did Israel have a history as a state for close on 2000 years until 1948? Did the Jews fulfill conventional criteria for being seen as a "nation"?
Whether the Arabs of Palestine want a state or not is surely THEIR choice.
The question at issue is whether native Arabs are to be deprived of their land and self-determination by outsiders or not.
Incidentally, NOT EVEN the Israeli state now contests the right of Palestinians to be seen as a nation. So The Spectator blog will seem as a bit extreme even by most Israelis.
Any answers to my last post?
Richard
March 22nd, 2011 6:53pmTruthtriumphs
March 22nd, 2011 4:46pm
Richard
March 22nd, 2011 10:02am
Truthtriumphs
You said you had read the Mandate and there is nothing in it about Palestinian citizenship. I quoted you the relevant Article.
You said Palestine was not a state. I quoted you the Article in the League of Nations Covenant that recognized it".
IT IS VERY SIMPLE. ALL THAT IS REQUIRED IS THAT YOU ADMIT YOUR ERROR AND LEARN FROM IT.
Whatever you wish to believe, the League of Nations provisionally recognized a state of Palestine and the Mandate instructed the Mandatory Power to ensure that Jewish immigrants could acquire Palestinian citizenship. Read the relevant articles. Set your propagandizing to one side for the briefest of moments and accept what the historical record says.
Richard
March 22nd, 2011 6:58pmC.Gee
March 22nd, 2011 5:29pm
At war?
To repeat, the thugs you disapprove of are the agents of Israel and the US. They are constrained to some extent by public opinion in the West Bank. Tehy are constrained even more by those who bankroll them and who organise and lead their "security" forces - security for Israeli settlers, not for Palestinians. I am not sure who has taken over from Gen. Dayton. I am not sure who, if anyone, has oversight of the CIA's forces in the West Bank. It is not easy for the people to throw off the yoke and it is not in Israel's interest that they do. Who is disingenuous here?
Richard
March 22nd, 2011 7:03pmTruthtriumphs
"There were very few inhabitants in the Holy land until the beginning of the 20th. century, because of the hostile terrain, etc.
This is well documented by American, British, Dutch and other explorers to the region in the 19th.century."
I am ASTONISHED that you repeat these falsehoods even after you have been corrected more than once and quoted chapter and verse.
After your drivelling dishonesty about the Mandate, I suppose my astonishment is misplaced.
Telling lies does your cause no good. Why do it?
"Explorers" indeed!
Elana
March 22nd, 2011 8:00pmMelanie, I salute you. One of the few honest brokers out there, who is willing to tell the truth!!!
The West don't hold the Palestinians accountable for their intransigence, Israel has given up peace for land to no avail, we haven't made friends in the process, but just more demands to cede more land, with no peace in sight. Just yesterday Hamas bombarded civilian areas in Israel with 50 rockets, where was the outcry from the West, only when Israel retaliates do we hear cries for "restraint". It seems that Jewish lives are expendable.
What is difficult for me to fathom is that Israel has a much stronger historical case for sovereignty over the Judai and Sameria than the Palestinians. However the Palestinians are proposing an apartheid Palestinian state without Jewish inhabitants and this outlandish proposal is being encouraged and insisted upon by the West. There are 1.5 million Arabs residing in Israel with full citizenship, nobody says that they are illegal, but when a Jew purchases land legally and builds a home in their historical and biblical home they are considered "illegal".
Why can't Jews live in Judai just like they live in New York, London and Paris. If the Palestinians really wanted peace, than a few Jewish citizens should not be a problem.
Both Ehud Barak and Olmert offered the Palestinians 97% of Judai and Samaria and they turned it down, most Israelis are willing to compromise, however the Palestinians are not prepared to budge an inch. Their demand is the return of millions of Palestinians that are residing in refugee camps(the only refugees in the world since WW2) in Lebanon and Jordan to swamp Israel and thereby annilate us by their numbers. The PA and Hamas to this day has not changed their charter to illiminate Israel in stages.
I thank you from the bottom of my heart for your honest reporting. G-d bless, from a proud Israeli.
Adam B.
March 23rd, 2011 12:49amAnil Bhatt, you are missing the point. "Palestinian" nationalism is a tool - to destroy Israel. Arafat was quite open about the project to destroy Israel in stages (as attampts to destroy i in one fell swoop had repeatedly failed). Thus inventing the myth of a Palestinian nation, which would, gradually, be in recepit of more and more land, was part of this project. That is why there were no calls for a distinctly "Palestinian" Arab state between 1948-67 in the Jordanian occupied West Bank and Egyptian occupied Gaza:
"The Palestinian people does not exist. The creation of a Palestinian state is only a means for continuing our struggle against the state of Israel for our Arab unity. In reality today there is no difference between Jordanians, Palestinians, Syrians and Lebanese. Only for political and tactical reasons do we speak today about the existence of a Palestinian people, since Arab national interests demand that we posit the existence of a distinct 'Palestinian people' to oppose Zionism...
For tactical reasons, Jordan, which is a sovereign state with defined borders, cannot raise claims to Haifa and Jaffa. While as a Palestinian, I can undoubtedly demand Haifa, Jaffa, Beer-Sheva and Jerusalem. However, the moment we reclaim our right to all of Palestine, we will not wait even a minute to unite Palestine and Jordan." - PLO executive committee member Zahir Muhsein, March 31, 1977, interview with the Dutch newspaper Trouw
Richard
March 23rd, 2011 10:17amAdam B.
March 22nd, 2011 2:01pm
"Richard, Palestine was NOT a state, and reference to it (as a Mandate territory between 1917-1948) never referred to it as an exclusively Arab entity."
You struggle to fit this new information into your propaganda templates, like a toddler hammering the star shape into the triangle shape hole.
"never referred to it as an exclusively Arab entity" - Phew! Just as well I never said it was.
"Palestine was NOT a state" - oh, dear, and I gave you the reference to the relevant Article, too. I can go through some of the legal cases as well if you are unable to do it for yourself.
I see in your comments to Anil Bhatt you are happily banging away on another of your propaganda templates, oblivious to the mass of historical evidence that makes it a nonsense.
Adam B.
March 23rd, 2011 12:50pmRichard, are you, in all seriousness, trying to pretend that the League of Nations (which is defunct and carries no legal relevance)recognized "Palestine" as an independent, self-governing, Arab state?
I so, you are a fantasist. If not, what is your point?
Adam B.
March 23rd, 2011 12:56pmFurthermore Richard, in reference to Palestinian nationalism being a recent invention in order to simply delegitimize Israel, you may wish to ponder this:
"It is common knowledge that Palestine is nothing but southern Syria". - said to the UN Security Council in 1956 by Ahmed Shukeiry, who later founded the PLO - the Palestine Liberation Organization.
Richard
March 23rd, 2011 1:56pmAdam B.
You appear to share some unfortunate traits with Truthtriumphs.
"'never referred to it as an exclusively Arab entity' - Phew! Just as well I never said it was."
Pay attention, now: I NEVER SAID IT WAS.
What the League recognized was a state of Palestine, temporarily held in trust by the Mandatory Power, a state in which sovereignty would ultimately vest in its population (when the civilised nations(!) condescended to determine that the population were ready to look after themselves). That is the legal position. (Of course, the political position was that the Great Powers were dressing up their imperial interests in the niceties of law - but, nevertheless, it was the law.)
I am sure you know that the fact that the League was dissolved does not of itself cause its rulings to lapse (Truthtriumphs will be able to refer you to the relevant UN Resolutions.) Indeed, many of your fellow propagandists rest their case on legal commitments allegedly made by the League.
And please make the effort to do some research on who the people of Palestine were in the 19th century, at the time of the Mandate, at the time the Mandate was abandoned by Britain; and on the legal rights of these people. Repeating quotes from your propaganda pack cannot be accepted as a substitute for proper research, which requires us all to try to set aside our prejudices.
Richard
March 23rd, 2011 4:07pmAdam B.
March 23rd, 2011 12:50pm
The doings of the League are certainly "relevant".
If by "legal relevance" you mean that its doings no longer have legal force, you are wrong.
I said nothing about an "Arab state". I don't know where you got that.
Your remarks to other contributors are equally astray. Take the time to study the history of the people of Palestine before, during, and after the Mandate, and their legal rights recognized by the League. Do not simply quote little gobbets fed you by the propagandists.
C.Gee
March 23rd, 2011 4:46pmAdam B.
Please continue your work in batting back the nonsense.
The idea that Article 22 of the League of Nation’s Covenant established a state of Palestine, has become a founding tenet of the dogma delegitimating Israel. Not only is there a State of Palestine, but it is an Arab state, because of (!) reference to “citizenship” for Jews.
This is a continuation of the perverse black-is-really-white readings of documents.
The Balfour Declaration has now been interpreted to mean the exact opposite of its intended meaning. Insisting that because “civil” rights include “political” rights, and “political” rights mean rights to a national sovereignty, the anti-Israelites assert that a Jewish sovereignty “prejudices” these Arab national rights so that not only could there not be a Jewish sovereignty, but the Jewish “national home” would have to be subject to Arab national rights. So in effect, the Balfour declaration was a founding document for an Arab sovereignty which excludes a Jewish one!
The Palestine Mandate, therefore, was a trust for the benefit of the Arabs, not the Jews.
So: The Balfour Declaration was actually recognition of an Arab national home. The League of Nations Covenant created an Arab sovereign state of Palestine. The Mandate administered Palestine on behalf of the Arabs until they could settle on a ruler. The UN partition resolution illegally divided an Arab sovereign state. Arabs, therefore, are entirely within their legal rights to murder Jews, who can point to no international law giving them sovereign rights over Arab soil.
I think this sort of thing is called The Big Lie. If it is big enough - people will believe it.
Anil Bhatt
March 23rd, 2011 5:38pmAdam B:
For some reason one of my replies again did not get through.
For what reason are the Jews entitled to claim a state, but not the Palestinians?
I'm just curious about that.
By the way, I hope you realise EVEN the Israeli government does recognise the Palestinians as a nation?
Richard
March 23rd, 2011 6:40pmC.Gee
March 23rd, 2011 4:46pm
You appear to misunderstand.
The League did not, as far as I know, recognize an "Arab" state. It provisionally recognized a state (tout court) in Palestine. Who has said otherwise?
The Mandate was not "a trust for the benefit of the Arabs". It was a trust for the benefit of the people of Palestine. It incorporated an undertaking on a Jewish National Home. Who has said otherwise?
"...'political' rights mean rights to a national sovereignty". Why the scare quotes? Political rights do not necessarily equate to national rights (whatever national rights might be). Who has said otherwise?
I have not seen anyone say that Balfour's letter to Rothschild was a "founding document" for an "Arab sovereignty". It was a founding document for a Jewish National Home. Who has said otherwise?
It is almost as if this is not simply a misunderstanding but deliberate distortion. You do indeed seem happy to keep company with Adam B.
Steve
March 23rd, 2011 8:31pmRichard,
"It is almost as if this is not simply a misunderstanding but deliberate distortion."
Oh really. You seriously suggest that you have not been claiming that the arabs have a mandated right to all of this piddlingly small bit of land and the jews have none.
Will you explain why, even if your claim to arab supremacy is true, what objection you have to jews buying land and building homes?
Do you have similar objetcions to Muslim home ownership in Bradford? If not then please explain the difference.
Richard
March 23rd, 2011 8:35pmC.Gee
March 23rd, 2011 4:46pm
You appear entirely certain there is no "Arab" right to sovereignty. Could you tell me what is the "Jewish" right to sovereignty? And why there is a "Jewish" right but no "Arab" right?
"Not only is there a State of Palestine, but it is an Arab state, because of (!) reference to “citizenship” for Jews". Again, who is it said this?
"...the anti-Israelites assert that a Jewish sovereignty “prejudices” these Arab national rights so that not only could there not be a Jewish sovereignty, but the Jewish “national home” would have to be subject to Arab national rights..." If I could just get a word in, if I may, if you could just pause for breath, take a time out...are you shadow boxing with someone else here? Perhaps someone who bested you in a previous round? Not with me anyway.
"Arabs, therefore, are entirely within their legal rights to murder Jews..."
...I suspect you value yourself on your powers of ratiocination and skill in advocacy. Does frothing like this not demean yourself in your own eyes? It should.
C.Gee
March 23rd, 2011 8:48pmRichard:
Out of habits of courtesy, I always give people the benefit of the doubt of mental capacity. If the choice is between their not understanding a text or their deliberately distorting it, I always assume the latter. In your case, I will make an exception.
Richard
March 23rd, 2011 8:57pmC. Gee
I have just discovered who you were shadow boxing with and yes you were bested. Your opponent provided cogent arguments for his proposition. You failed to rebut those arguments. And you evaded his request that you provide arguments for your own proposition, which appears to be that the Zionists as representatives of world Jewry had a legal right to claim sovereignty over Palestine and the inhabitants had no such right. I can see how it could be argued that the Zionists needed no right other than the fiat of the great powers. Is that all you are saying? I take you to want to be able to say something a bit less arbitrary. I am sure you think you have good arguments. Why do you avoid giving them while getting heatedly indignant with anyone who does not accept them implicitly sight unseen? Very odd.
Anil Bhatt
March 23rd, 2011 8:57pmTruthtriumphs:
You say:
"I said that legally, historically and morally Jews are entitled to the West Bank, and should be able to live freely there, wherever they choose."
I take it you therefore concede the right of Palestinians to settle in Israel, where the majority of them had homes as recently as 1948? Surely this is a better basis for settlement in Israel than the unproven claim that one is descended from Jews who were exiled from Palestine as far back as 2000 years ago? (Some Israeli authorities indeed suggest that it is the PALESTINIANS of today who are the most likely descendants of the Ancient Jews.)
Adam B.
March 23rd, 2011 11:38pmRichard, this is abject nonsense. You keep repeating that it has nothing to do with an Arab entity - but then go on to allude to a Palestinian nation - whatever that is supposed to be. There is, as I have repeatedly pointed out to you, no such thing - especially the context in which you use the term - where, at the time of writing by the League of Nations, "Palestinian" would mean Jews and Arabs (indeed, at the time "Palestinian" normally referred to Jews, whilst Arabs in Palestine were referred to, surprisingly, as "Arab"). In any case, any such view of the League of Nations is meaningless when it was superceded by the United Nations' partition plan - a plan, may I remind you, which the Arabs rejected, and the Jews accepted.
Adam B.
March 23rd, 2011 11:44pmAnil Bhatt, for one thing, the Jewish nation was not invented in 1967 - unlike a distinct "Palestinian" nationalism (did you even read the quotes above? What do you make of them?) For another, the partition plan was rejected by the Palestinian Arabs and wider Arab world, who launched several wars of aggression and genocide against Israel, which, to their surprise, they lost. Thirdly, a Palestinian Arab state has been offered several times since the 1930's (in addition to the first Palestinian state which already exists - called Jordan). It has been rebuffed every single time.
This is because the aim is not the creation of a new Arab state, but the destruction of the Jewish one.
Richard
March 24th, 2011 10:00amSteve
March 23rd, 2011 8:31pm
It is odd. None of you bothers to explain or defend the Zionist claim to a right to sovereignty over Palestine (we're talking history here). It is enough to say they have such a claim. It is enough to say the inhabitants of the country have no such claim and should have accepted the Zionist claim without demur (otherwise be convicted of evil anti-Semitism).
Adam B. and Truthtriumphs are unable to provide anything but nuggets of pre-digested propagand. C. Gee does not deign to show if he can provide an argument. You merely attack anyone who dares criticise.
To repeat, the League provisionally recognized a state in what was called Palestine. The Mandatory Power held it in trust for its population. The Mandatory Power undertook to help establish a Jewish National Home in Palestine. This is simply what the League and Britain said in the covanants and treaties
I don't know at all where you get the idea I said anything about Jewish immigrants buying land.
Richard
March 24th, 2011 10:09amAdam B.
you appear to be buoyed up by C. Gee's masterclass in wilful distortion and intellectul dishonesty to persevere with your blank incomprehension.
At the time of the Mandate, they unfortunately called the place Palestine. I'm sorry, it's just a fact. They "provisionally recognized" it as a state. For legal purposes (courts of law etc) they treated it as a state. The UN (legally or not was never tested) recommended splitting Palestine in two. This recommendation was a dead letter by the time of Israel's declaration of independence. The UN was working on a new trusteeship. The recognition by the League was NOT superseded.
And you continue with your unthinking regurgitation of pre-digested gobbets for Anil Bhatt. Do some work. Think for yourself.
Steve
March 24th, 2011 1:22pmRichard,
Ignoring my questions and mis-representing the jist of my comment in one single sentence? And you accuse others of dishonesty. Great, now I can see precisely what we are dealing with.
I suggest you look at a map of the Ottoman ruled palestinian mandate and draw over it the current boundaries in the region; pay particular attention to Jordan but also check out Syria and Egypt. I think you will then find that the arabs have several times over been granted their 'Palestinan' state.
A tiny bit for the Jews still too much for you is it?
Steve
March 24th, 2011 1:52pmRichard,
As you are not too clever I'll help you out.
Here you can see a 1920 map of the British Mandate for Palestine http://www.prophets-cry.com/support-files/1920pm.pdf
Here yo can see a map of the 1922 partition plan http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/History/mandate2.html
Here you can see the 1947 UN partition plan http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:UN_Partition_Plan_For_Palestine_1947.svg
On this evidence you would have to be pretty ridiculous to deny the decreasing size of the areas deemed suitable for Jewish government and utterly stupid not to admit that Jordan is Palestine.
Richard
March 24th, 2011 3:50pmSteve
March 24th, 2011 1:22pm
What questions did I ignore and what gist misrepresent?
If you give me some clues, it may help me discern the point of your latest comments.
Richard
March 24th, 2011 3:57pmSteve
I'm sorry, I also meant to ask: who are these "Arabs" you speak of and who are these "Jews". It sets a Scotsman's teeth on edge to hear addresssed to him "You English". We don't generalise airily about these Europeans and what's good for them. I suppose we used to talk about your native johnnies, now! and such like terms of endearment. Churchill was pareticularly fond of vilifying "Hindoos" and "Negroes" (and "Arabs" and Jews"!). So the A-rabs, now. Who are they? Are you saying that the inhabitants of Palestine all came from the Arabian Peninsula? Or is it just a term to refer to the inhabitants of Palestine that conveniently lumps them in with all the other inhabitants of the region whose interests were paramount but to be ignored? And these "Jews". Do you mean the Jewish inhabitants of Palestine? The diaspora in Europe and/or Africa and/or...or do you mean the Zionists as representatives of all the above? Again, it would help me understand what ou are trying to say about this Tiny Sliver of Land.
Adam B.
March 24th, 2011 11:16pmRichard, this is beyond surreal. It was NOT a state, never HAD been a state, was not recognized as a state by any other state (can you name one state that recognized this "state"?)- at any time in history. It was never independent, never came into being, and is utterly irrelevant to any discussion of ths subject. Is this some roundabout way of arguing for a bi-national land? If so, youre about 60 years late.
If you wish to go back to the 1920's to try to solve the problem, please enjoy talking to yourself. You are anyway.
Truthtriumphs
March 25th, 2011 1:30amC.Gee
March 23rd, 2011 8:48pm
Richard:
"Out of habits of courtesy, I always give people the benefit of the doubt of mental capacity. If the choice is between their not understanding a text or their deliberately distorting it, I always assume the latter. In your case, I will make an exception."
Brilliant!
A perfect response to the delusional.
There are other candidates on this blog to whom this would equally apply.
Truthtriumphs
March 25th, 2011 1:43amAnil Bhatt.
"I take it you therefore concede the right of Palestinians to settle in Israel, where the majority of them had homes as recently as 1948?"
You really have a vivid imagination, as well as a real talent for invention.
The majority of the so-called Palestinians were not even thought of in 1948.
Here is the real essence of your anger...so eloquently and cogently summarised by Steve...
"I suggest you look at a map of the Ottoman ruled palestinian mandate and draw over it the current boundaries in the region; pay particular attention to Jordan but also check out Syria and Egypt. I think you will then find that the arabs have several times over been granted their 'Palestinan' state.
A tiny bit for the Jews still too much for you is it?"
Oh, and please desist from asking me questions in that faux naive manner of yours, and then wilfully distorting my answers my answers.
Herzen
March 25th, 2011 10:51amSteve
March 24th, 2011 1:52pm
You direct Richard to some maps to prove that what is now Jordan was artificially separated from what is now ISrael.
Can I in turn direct you to some maps from the period under review drawn up by HM Government and now in the National Archives.
The first is of "Pre-War Turkish Administrative Districts comprised in Syria and Palestine". In particular look at the Sanjaks of Hauran and of Maan over against the Sanjaks of Acre, of Baloa and of Jerusalem.
Next, look at the map of the Sykes-Picot arrangement. In particular look at where British territory ends (on the eastern bank of the Jordan).
Finally, look at a "Map illustrating possible redistribution of Ottoman and arab territory on the Principle of Self-Determination". In particular, look closely at the delineation of something called "Palestine".
Herzen
March 25th, 2011 11:00amTruthtriumphs
March 25th, 2011 1:30am
Truthtriumphs
March 25th, 2011 1:43am
I'm surprised even now that you have the gall to reappear after your humiliation at the hands of Richard. It appears to be simple brute insensibility keeps you going when caught out in ignorance or repeated falsehood.
I too realised that C. Gee was in one of his "I am a goatherd" phases. I suppose if you smirk along with him, it will keep him in countenance.
He is very strange. On the previous thread he sustained a long conversation with me, in which his contributions were lucid and very shrewd. Here he reverts to wilful distortion. Very strange.
I'm still astonished that you seek to deny the documented truth about who lived where in 1948. The Zionists before and the Israelis after UDI were very careful to compile a detailed record.
Do you assert that the majority of current Israelis lived in there before 1948?
Richard
March 25th, 2011 11:53amAdam B.
March 24th, 2011 11:16pm
You get one thing right. It was not independent. It was recognized "provisionally". It would only gain its full independence when the Great Powers divested themselves of their self-appointed sacred trust (yes, they were hypocrites with the interests of none of the affected populations at heart).
Palestinian provisional statehood is as relevant as the incorporation of the Balfour formula in the Mandate - to which Zionists frequently make reference.
The wording from the Balfour Declaration is a masterpiece of ambiguity. "A Jewish National Home" - I believe the Zionists used this term to mean a Jewish state (I may be wrong); "National Home" sounds very like "nation" as in "nation state" (and "nation" was used for "state"); Balfour and Weizman took it that the Declaration gave British support to a Jewish state (although Balfour's wording was studiously more ambiguous than Weizman's preferred draft); senior British politicians continued to say a Jewish state "may well eventuate" even when the treaties and legal judgements said otherwise, as did they in public in their official capacity (cf Churchill in Parliament and in private). The Zionists could reasonably think they had what they wanted.
Yet the League's founding document and its treaty with Britain used the formula to mean no such thing, as those who drew up the documents said in no uncertain terms. The League was very clear in recognizing a state. Legal judgements of the time make very clear that at independence its people would be sovereign (look back at the thread before this one).
Diplomatic ambiguity is all very well, and the diplomats no doubt felt very smug, but such ambiguity, which appears to offer both sides what they want, causes conflict and death.
Put your prior strongly held beliefs to one side long enough to take a look at the diplomatic and legal history.
C.Gee
March 25th, 2011 5:37pmIf the Covenant created a provisional State of Palestine it was to be a Jewish State:
“...the Treaty fo Sevres should make it obvious that Palestine was created as a separate state or territory for one reason only by the Supreme Council of the Principal Allied Powers: to put into effect the Balfour Declaration in order to satisfy Jewish Zionist aspirations which would eventually make Palestine into an independent Jewish State, in accordance with the general provisions and principles of Article 22 of the Covenant of the League of Nations, rather than the specific provisions of that same Article as found in paragraphs 4 to 6 thereof which applied to all other mandated territories that formerly were either included in the Ottoman Empire or were German colonies in Central Africa, South -West Africa and certain of the Pacific Ocean islands, both north and south of the Equator. Palestine, when it was created as a mandated territory on April 24-25, 1920 at the San Remo Peace Conference, was never meant to satisfy Arab national aspirations in any part of the country, either east of west of the Jordan. These aspirations were to be satisfied under the Mandates System in Syria and Mesopotamia. The Arab peoples destined for independence under the Mandates System were referred to as “certain communities in paragraphs 4 of Article 22 of the Covenant and were specifically identified as Syria and Mesopotamia in Article 94 of the Treaty of Sevres. By way of contrast, Article 95 of the Treaty of Sevres, in providing for the administration of Palestine, deliberately refrained from expressly mentioning paragraph 4 of Article 22 of the Covenant or any other particular paragraph of that article, but simply alluded to the provisions of Article 22 in general, which constitutes ample proof as to what the Principal Allied Powers intended to do. Syria and Mesopotamia were reserved fro the Arabs, as provided for by paragraph 4, while the whole of Palestine was exclusively allocated to the Jewish People, as provided for by the general provisions of Article 22 without anyone then ever imagining that it would one day be further partitioned into Jewish and Arab parts. The two Arab-populated mandated territories (Syria and Mesopotamia) were provisionally recognized as independent states, while Palestine, even thought it too had a preponderant majority Arab population, was set aside in favour of the establishment of a national home for the Jewish People. It was expected, before Britain introduced illegal restrictions, that the home would over the course of time evolve into an independent Jewish State through the anticipated influx of millions of Jewish immigrants and their close settlement on the land under the auspices of a Mandatory appointed for this purpose.” (Howard Grief, The Legal Foundation and Borders of Israel Under International Law.)
Note: The fourth paragraph of Article 22 of the Covenant does not apply to Palestine. It is only in the selection of the Mandatory that the wishes of the (other) communities must be a principal consideration.
Anil Bhatt
March 25th, 2011 5:43pmTruthtriumphs:
You comment about me:
"You really have a vivid imagination, as well as a real talent for invention.
The majority of the so-called Palestinians were not even thought of in 1948."
Not thought of by whom? Not even themselves?
Are you saying the majority population of Mandate Palestine for some strange reason had no thought about themselves nor even anyone else about them?
Just read the newspaper records and the records of the UN for the period. You would seem to be contradicted. The UN thought enough about the Palestinians to partition Palestine and set aside a part of it for them.
You further say:
"Here is the real essence of your anger...so eloquently and cogently summarised by Steve...
"I suggest you look at a map of the Ottoman ruled palestinian mandate and draw over it the current boundaries in the region; pay particular attention to Jordan but also check out Syria and Egypt. I think you will then find that the arabs have several times over been granted their 'Palestinan' state." "
Have the Palestinians in the West Bank - the small bit of Mandate Palestine left to them - got the rights of sovereignty Israel clams for itself? Have they the right to restrict Jewish settlement when the Jews do not allow Arabs even to return to their homes in Israel?
Just curious.
I suppose you realise that EVEN most Israelis would find your positions very extreme.
Adam B.
March 25th, 2011 11:52pmAnil Bhatt, you deliberately misconstrue. The Arabs of Palestine did not regard themselves as a separate and distinct national entity than, say Jordanians, in 1948. That came about after 1967 in order to delegitimize Israel.
"Palestinian" nationalism has no roots - and its primary function, as admitted by Arafat, is to destroy Israel, not build a new country.
Adam B.
March 25th, 2011 11:53pm" There is no Palestinian nation! There is an Arab nation, but no Palestinian nation. This was invented by the colonial powers. When are the Palestinians mentioned in history? Never." - Azmi Bishara, former Arab Knesset member, on Israel television
Anil Bhatt
March 26th, 2011 2:51amC.Gee:
You approvingly quote a writer as claiming:
"The two Arab-populated mandated territories (Syria and Mesopotamia) were provisionally recognized as independent states, while Palestine, even thought it too had a preponderant majority Arab population, was set aside in favour of the establishment of a national home for the Jewish People."
The reference is to the Treaty of Sevres.
A question out of sheer curiousity: how can it be just to dismiss the majority Arab population in this way, in their natve land? Unless one is sold on the concept of ethnic expropriation?
The pretext that there are other Arab areas is acceptabloe if one is being humorous. As well might one set aside England for the Gipsies on the pretext that there are other English speaking nations, like the US, Canada and Australia - where, moreover, British sovereignty existed in the past.
If it is treaties we are interested in, how about the UN partition plan for Palestine?
There are treaties and treaties. However they are interpreted, one must use the principle of natural justice if they are to be taken seriously. The deprivation of the Arabs of Palestine of all share of sovereignty in their native land on the pretext of supporting settlement by people claiming to have been there 2000 years ago will always be an extravagant idea. Would the Jews have accepted the idea, had they been the Palestinians?
The Jews were given a share of Palestine as one very unique concession in recognition of the Holocaust. But that could never be a justification for expropriating the existing Arab majority. How could it? If one believes in justice?
May I note that the Israeli government, for its part, does not now make such extreme claims? Nor most Israelis today?
Richard
March 26th, 2011 9:47amAdam B.
You refuse to look beyond your propaganda websites. How then can you be so sure of your "facts"?
Adam B.
March 26th, 2011 11:46amBhatt, the re-establishment of Israel has nothing to do with the Holocaust.
Nothing. It exists as the homeland of the Jewish people - not as a concession for 6 million dead.
Indeed, how insulting to claim that it is.
Herzen
March 27th, 2011 10:34amC.Gee
March 25th, 2011 5:37pm
My thoughts, in no particular order, on Mr. Grief's argument.
We agree that the League recognized a state in Palestine. We agree that the commitment to a Jewish National Home in Palestine put the League under an obligation to the Jews as represented by the Zionists. Where we disagree is on the nature of both this obligation and the obligation to the inhabitants of Palestine.
I looked, and I looked in vain: Where in the Covenant is there anything about “Arab national aspirations” or about Palestine as a “Jewish State”? Where is it said that Article 22 applied to all former Turkish lands, except Palestine? Where is it stated that sovereignty vested in the Jewish diaspora as represented by the Zionists? (And why has every court ever required to make a judgement on this question been unaware of this statement?) Where, in the Covenant, San Remo, Sevres, Lausanne, the Mandates, is the justification for “the expectation” that millions of Jewish immigrants would arrive in Palestine? Where the justification for the claim that the rights of the inhabitants were null as regards self-determination and those of potential immigrants paramount? I had to check again that Palestine was a Class A. Mandate, with all that such a designation entailed. It was.
Too much reliance is placed here on what Mr. Grief thinks two Articles in the Treaty of Sevres tell us about the intentions of the Principal Allied Powers and about the constraints they placed on themselves by their wish to be seen to act in accordance with international law. Palestine is given a separate Article in San Remo and Sevres. Why? Each Mandate had different arrangements. Palestine is a Class A Mandate, but in addition has to accommodate a Jewish National Home. So the Article for Palestine has to differ materially from that for Syria and Mesopotamia. Palestine is still a Class A Mandate. Article 22 still applies. Does this equate to a commitment to a Jewish State at the expense of the inhabitants? Not according to what the treaties say. Not according to what those who drafted the treaties say. Not even according to what Balfour himself said. (He said that governance of Palestine cannot be wholly a question for self-determination – otherwise the Zionists wouldn't get a look in. And he agreed with Curzon that his Declaration conferred no legal right on the Zionists.)
In other words, Mr. Grief's case continues to depend solely on his contention that the tacit understanding between Weizman and Balfour that the term National Home was code for sovereign state necessarily carried over to all subsequent uses. This is simply not true. The British, French and Italian drafters were entirely clear on this question. The British Cabinet was kept informed. Even Balfour himself conceded the point.
In private, many politicians continued to say that a Jewish state would eventuate and that the Mandate made it possible. The Zionists considered the Mandate and the White Paper a disappointment, but they were shrewd enough to realise that it gave them enough to proceed with their project.
The League recognized Palestine as a state awaiting independence. The law of the time recognized the population of such a state as sovereign. The inclusion of the Balfour Declaration introduced competing claims. It did not override the claims of the population in favour of the immigrants.
Sovereignty vested in the citizens of the state. The inhabitants of the newly “provisionally” recognized states became citizens of that state. Only a third of Jewish immigrants were citizens by 1947. It took a special dispensation of the Allied Powers to allow the Zionists to interfere at all with the normal legal position. To allow them to override it entirely would have required something more explicit and unambiguous.
The Jewish diaspora had no legal connection with Palestine. They acquired such a connection through the Mandate. Their claim to exercise self-determination by establishing Palestine as their sovereign state only has substance if the connection acquired through the Mandate was a legal right that overrode the rights of the inhabitants, that gave them a right over the whole of Palestine, and was a legal right to sovereignty. Those who drafted and signed the Mandate Treaty were clear that the Mandate bestowed or recognized no such legal right.
The official record left by the Allied Powers should be studied objectively, the record of proceedings at Versailles, San Remo, Sevres, Lausanne, the Mandate Treaty itself, the debates in the House of Commons and the Lords, and memos written for HMG by its officials, and the rulings in subsequent court cases. What is to Mr. Grief self-evident is nowhere to be found. He will have to do more than say that these documents “should make it obvious” or that these private comments determine what the public documents really mean. He will have to do more than cherry-pick.
Adam B.
March 27th, 2011 12:12pmRichard, I fear it is you who has been indoctrinated through selective reading material.
Anil Bhatt
March 27th, 2011 4:30pmHerzen:
Your kind of legalistic wrangling over the intentions of the League of Nations is, frankly, laughable.
In those days it was the custom to disregard the natural rights of non-Europesan peoples. No-one worth taking seriously today would base his claims on such a reduntant outlook.
The UN partition plan for Palestine is more to the point. At that time the Jewish claim had a semblance of crdibility due to the emotional response to the Holocaust. The memoirs of Jewish leaders who were the leading advocates of the Jewish cause at the UN like Abba Eban make this abundantly clear.
Herzen
March 27th, 2011 8:07pmAnil Bhatt
March 27th, 2011 4:30pm
You are of course quite right that the League of Nations was a legal fig leaf for otherwise naked imperialism.
The heartfelt anti-imperialism of the US proved very useful to it in allowing it to establish its own hegemony after 1945. The UN played much the same role for the US as the League for Britain and France.
The League and the UN are nevertheless fundamental to international law. As the Irishman said when asked for directions, "Well, I wouldn't start from here". We cannot build an ideal international law from scratch without reference to history or politics.
The UN is successor to the League and inherited its obligations.
Partition was a recommendation only. It did not take effect. It was a dead letter by the time of Israel's UDI.
The legal status of Palestine therefore remained as determined by the Mandate. Israel only claim to sovereignty control of the territory achieved by military force.
Before anyone starts huffing and puffing again, Israel's existence is beyond dispute, in much the same way as the existence of the USA. Even the native Americans have no notion of turning back history. The point of a careful effort to establish the historical facts is that Zionists have continued to use an erroneous version of history to justify the behaviour of Israel towards the Palestinians. If it became general knowledge that their claims are without foundation, they may finally be persuaded to negotiate in good faith to share the land of Palestine.
(As a footnote, the Holocaust did indeed create somewhat belated sympathy for the Jews of Europe. Not enough to allow them to emigrate to their preferred destinations, the US and Britain and its Dominions.)
Adam B.
March 28th, 2011 12:26amBhatt, it is utterly insulting to Jews everywhere that you keep linking, falsely, the Holocaust with the re-establishment of Israel.
One has nothing to do with the other.
C.Gee
March 28th, 2011 2:41am“In other words, Mr. Grief's case continues to depend solely on his contention that the tacit understanding between Weizman and Balfour that the term National Home was code for sovereign state necessarily carried over to all subsequent uses.”
No. Grief’s case brings much other evidence to bear. He will also show you what you have been looking for, but have been unable to find concerning Article 22 , Class “A” Mandates etc.
See Grief on sovereignty, what “inhabitants” meant (including future Jewish immigrants).
“The official record left by the Allied Powers should be studied objectively, the record of proceedings at Versailles, San Remo, Sevres, Lausanne, the Mandate Treaty itself, the debates in the House of Commons and the Lords, and memos written for HMG by its officials, and the rulings in subsequent court cases.”
This is exactly what Grief does - voluminously. By no means does he cherry pick. He addressed counter-arguments head-on. Do read the book and not Wiki summaries.
Herzen
March 28th, 2011 11:08amC.Gee
March 28th, 2011 2:41am
I am re-reading Mr. Grief's book. I find it as I describe (the quote you provided is representative). I think anyone not already persuaded by his case would find it tendentious.
I am sure the same could be said on the other side.
I came to this some years ago from an interest in British imperial history, as a neutral, if anything with a prejudice in favour of Israel. I have tried to read both sides. I find that bit by bit I get a better understanding that way (it requires the difficult, rarely successful,I admit, effort to set prejudices aside, if only temporarily).
I have been surprised by how the Zionist/Israeli account and arguments, which I had taken for granted, fail to stand up to scrutiny. It is difficult to convey to someone passionately partisan how very odd the whole project looks from the outside.
I think a viable peace would be more likely if Israel understood how unpersuasive are its arguments and justifications for its maximalist approach.
To repeat, Israel exists as a state like any other. This is not in dispute here. I have questioned its founding myths (what state's myths stand up to scrutiny?). I have questioned its policy towards the Palestinians. I think Britain and the US were criminal in Iraq. It does not follow that I want them to cease to exist.
Herzen
March 28th, 2011 12:13pmC. Gee,
I should have said that, although I have presumed to critize Mr. Grief in this and the previous thread, I do recognize his book as a serious and substantial work of scholarship, which I will continue to study. These threads are confrontational and, I find, make it too easy to dismiss opposing views without due consideration.
Thomas
March 28th, 2011 4:43pmI've come back to this thread very late so I probably won't get an answer.
As I understand it, there's no dispute that Balfour intended his letter to convey to the Zionists that Britain would help them establish a state.
There's no dispute that his letter didn't have the force of law in any sense - Britain wasn't in a position to dispose of bits of someone else's empire. (I am not sure what status a letter to a private individual has relative to the likes of McMahon's correspondence or Sykes-Picot.)
Balfour and Wiezman used Zionist "code" presumably in acknowledgement that Britain was in no position to make the gift of a state and that any presumption that it could would be unpopular with those it had given prior undertakings to (and whose cooperation it still needed). I take it this is also not in dispute. So the Declaration didn't say in terms that Britain promised the Zionists Palestine as a state. It promised to help them establish a National Home in Palestine - which on the face of it isn't the same thing (if it were there'd be no point in the use of "National Home" instead of the unambiguous "sovereign state").
The Balfour Declaration only acquired legal force in the post-war settlement between the allied Powers, at Versailles, San Remo, Sevres etc. If I've got my chronology right, the League Covenant came first, then San Remo, Sevres, the Mandate Treaties, and finally Lausanne. San Remo was where the allied Powers did their "carving up" within the legal framework set out in the League Covenant. The Mandates were all different (and all fiercely opposed by the people living in the relevant territories). Britain insisted against French opposition that Balfour's Declaration had to be included in the Mandate for Palestine. As I understand it, Balfour was quite explicit in discussions within the British government that self-determination for the population of Palestine would have to be disregarded entirely if his Declaration were to be implemented. On his and Weizman's understanding of his Declaration, this may well have been true. But since then, the League Covenant has been drawn up and the negotiations were taking place within a legal framework set out there. Surely it was not within Mr. Balfour's power to have the rights of the people of Palestine set at nought? This is surely what the French objected to at the negotiations and Lord Curzon in cabinet. What Curzon said, quoted above I believe, was accepted by cabinet, by Balfour, by the French - the Mandate would give the Zionists no legal right to claim sovereignty over Palestine, and the rights of the non-Jewish population would be safeguarded. As far as I can see, this is consistently made clear by British politicians, officials, lawyers, historians throughout the Mandate from even before its inception.
It seems then that Howard Grief relies on saying that the meaning intended by Balfour, representing the views of the British government but nevertheless in a communication to a private individual, and through him to what someone here aptly called a "fringe group" (Grief is evasive on this point), takes precedent over the meaning intended by the governments that ratified a treaty between states, because the governments adopted his form of words, and his interpretation of them was prior to theirs.
My question is this - is there any legal principle that helps decide whether Balfour and Weizman's meaning is to be adhered to or the meaning attached to the words by the governments who signed the treaties giving the words legal force? Some international agreement on the interpretation of treaties or something like that?
Thomas
March 28th, 2011 5:01pmOops! I had one other question. - Why should people think the Balfour Declaration takes precedence over the Anglo-French Declaration of 1918? - it called for "the complete and definite emancipation of the peoples so long oppressed by the Turks and the establishment of national governments and administrations deriving their authority from the initiative and free choice of the indigenous populations." I don't believe the European Jews were long oppressed by the Turks, but rather by Russia, Germany...
This is consistent as well with the British government's explanation to the Sherif of Mecca ("no people shall be subject to another" and Britain would allow Jewish settlement in Palestine "in so far as is compatible with the freedom of teh existing population both economic and political.")
Surely this is all very clear and prior to the League of Nations Covenenant San Remo and so on - it gives a clear account of what the British and French were willing to say they were up to - that is what would appear in public legally binding treaties - I don't think there is any dispute that they may well have had private plans as well, but that's not what was being discussed here.
Anil Bhatt
March 29th, 2011 12:50amTHOMAS, HERZEN:
So what if the British and the French DID intend to give the soveregnty of Palestine (including even what is now Jordan) to the Jews?
So what if Grief is right and even understating his valid case?
I fali to see why the case he is making worries you. Or why it should worry anybody.
The British and the French, like everyone else, are entitled to their views.
None of that can take away the natural right of the Arab majority of Palestine to their native land.
It is quite simple, no?
C.Gee
March 29th, 2011 5:46amThomas:
Read Grief's book - or more of it.
(He also mentions the Turkish oppression of Jews in the course of a discussion comparing the Allied occupiers of Germany who nullified Nazi anti-Jew laws, with the British who kept the Ottoman anti-Jew laws in their administration of Palestine.)
Herzen:
“I think a viable peace would be more likely if Israel understood how unpersuasive are its arguments and justifications for its maximalist approach.”
Had to laugh. Reading Grief should, if nothing else, make clear what a “maximalist” approach is, and how Zionist history - since Balfour - is one of giving in, acquiescing, placating, compromising, accepting ever less...
Israel perfectly well understands that its arguments and justifications are “unpersuasive” to the Arabs and a large number of Europeans. But then, Israel is unpersuaded by the Arab Peace Initiative - the latest political solution on offer by the Arabs. It is far more persuaded by past and ongoing violence. That is why there is war. It is a “viable” war for Israel, because it is less costly than making peace upon Palestinian terms. And it is most certainly a viable war for the Palestinians: the war against Israel is the key constitutive element in Palestinian self-determination, as their charters evidence.
I would say that a fair reading of history should find that Israel has now a minimal approach: recognition of Israel as a Jewish state; defensible borders; cessation of hostilities; no return of Arab refugees, but compensation for their property loss. All of these positions are consistent with what you concede: Israel’s existence. If you concede Israel’s existence, then you also concede the state’s prerogative to determine its own defense. By constraining those prerogatives more than the law of war requires (and the Arabs pay no attention to the law of war), through specious “proportionality” arguments, “collective punishment” accusations etc., the concession of Israel’s existence is not worth a lot. It sounds a lot like the “de facto” recognition - for purposes of war - offered by Abu Mazen.
“The point of a careful effort to establish the historical facts is that Zionists have continued to use an erroneous version of history to justify the behaviour of Israel towards the Palestinians.”
You have several times stated this rationale for your purposes in posting here. Too many assumptions and non sequiturs. Historical facts are the discoveries of versions of history. Even if Israel’s version of history were wrong and the scales were to fall from its eyes, would it stop doing what it is doing to the Palestinians? Do you think that it is the Israeli perception of reality - and not reality, or the Arab perception of reality - that needs to be changed for the Palestinians to have better lives? Is having better lives compatible with getting what they want politically (And what do they want? How do you know ? ). Is what they want politically, peace with Israel - or do they want Israel?
I fear that your “careful effort” - once you have conceded Israel’s existence - is in fact an effort to prove that what the Arabs call justice requires Israel’s surrender to the Arab Peace Initiative - or whatever the gambit is calling itself. Otherwise, you would see the current Plight of the Palestinians - a term that has gained an emotive political significance beyond the actual condition of the people - has more to do with Arab behavior than Israel’s (self-preserving) determination not to bring in a hostile population and to keep its enemies at bay.
We shall see what happens to the Plight when the State of Palestine is declared over Judea, Samaria and Gaza.
Herzen
March 29th, 2011 11:00amC.Gee
March 29th, 2011 5:46am
"Historical facts are the discoveries of versions of history."
This is too glib by far. It implies there is no work need be done to separate the plausible from the implausible. It implies Mr. Grief has wasted twenty five years of his life.
It is distinctly odd to claim that Israel deserves the credit for its failure to conquer or keep the whole of what some like to call Greater Israel. It has only been deterred, from 1948 until today, by its great power sponsors or by its calculation of what is feasible or worth the cost.
It is by no means minimalist to insist on keeping the best bits of the West Bank and millions of people in ghettoes or exile.
"the war against Israel is the key constitutive element in Palestinian self-determination, as their charters evidence."
This is just plain silly, as decades of concessions to reality by the Palestinians demonstrate.
"Do you think that it is the Israeli perception of reality - and not reality, or the Arab perception of reality - that needs to be changed for the Palestinians to have better lives?"
Again, this is surely too glib. We are all agents, and our perceptions inform our actions.
"By constraining those prerogatives more than the law of war requires (and the Arabs pay no attention to the law of war), through specious “proportionality” arguments, “collective punishment” accusations etc., the concession of Israel’s existence is not worth a lot."
You are wrong that Israel is required to meet standards beyond what the law stipulates.
I see no evidence that you even try to understand any version of this conflict other than the Zionist/Israeli. Perhaps your curious notion of history absolves you from trying.
I thought Thomas asked a reasonable question, and I have not yet found the answer in Grief's book (it may well be there, but it would help if you could point it out): is there a generally recognised rule that says the understanding between Balfour and the Zionists of the meaning of the terms of Balfour's letter trumps the understanding of the governments of the terms of their treaties?
Mike
March 29th, 2011 12:29pmMelanie you are a beacon of light. Carry on the good work of exposing the slanderers of Israel and the enemies of western civilisation. If Israel goes down so do we all
Anil Bhatt
March 29th, 2011 3:03pmC>Gee:
People who do not have a case whose obvious justice can convince ordinary people often take refuge behind legalistic pettifogging and haggling.
It is not easy to convince the world that Arabs living on thier native soil for centuries deserve to be expropriated.
So those who want to suggest this wrangle over what the pin-sripe suited old White gentlemen of Sevres or Lausanne might or might not have meant between two soirees....
This is a rather ridiculous story.
C.Gee
March 30th, 2011 9:28amHerzen:
“[I]s there a generally recognised rule that says the understanding between Balfour and the Zionists of the meaning of the terms of Balfour's letter trumps the understanding of the governments of the terms of their treaties?”
This is a legally meaningless question. The British government began almost immediately to reinterpret the language of the Balfour Declaration and Mandate to suit their changing policies in the Mideast. And Zionists went along with it. According to their interpretations, so the British executed policy. Executed policy trumps all. Policy is executed frequently under no color of legal authority.
There is a legal principle that the grant of rights to third party beneficiaries under a treaty does not expire or change with the treaty. Thousands of Jews acted in reliance upon an understanding of the Declaration (as incorporated into the Mandate) as a grant of national rights by immigrating to Palestine to build their National Home there. But the power of states - especially Great Power states - to move populations, accord or deny civil rights, install minority governments, draw boundaries etc., to change policies, to make up law as they go along, is not to be deterred by appeals to principle.
Grief most certainly has not wasted a single moment of his life in giving the legal history of Jewish claims to Palestine. It establishes why the current situation is a legal chaos. What we have now is the tangled web resulting from Britain’s practice to deceive. It also establishes what should have been - but was not - national justice for the Jews.
“I see no evidence that you even try to understand any version of this conflict other than the Zionist/Israeli. Perhaps your curious notion of history absolves you from trying.”
No. I am sorry to see you resort to this. What would constitute evidence in your eyes that I have “tried” to understand the Palestinian version of the conflict? My agreeing with it? Or my posing as objective and fair because I say both sides are to blame ? I read histories and legal analyses of the conflict for insights into the conflict itself. Understanding the claims of rights and wrongs on both sides is the essential work of understanding the conflict. I understand the Palestinian narrative very well. I understand how and why it was constructed. I understand how they perceive themselves and how they perceive the Israelis. I understand them so well that I can see that peace between the Palestinian powers and the state of Israel is not going to happen because it is not what the Palestinian powers want or can deliver. Thanks to reading Grief, among others, I understand that there is no political solution for Jews possible based on consent of the Arab Palestinians - and this is as it always has been since long before Balfour tried to give national justice to the Jews. Arab understanding of their own “national” rights is that Jews are subordinate under them: a Jewish state, or Jews in any position other than a subordinate one - is forbidden, a deep offense to their culture and self-identity. Any jurisdiction that provide for Jews to be equal to Arabs is against nature. (So far, their culture and self-identity have manifested themselves in largely Jew-free despotisms holding together tribal and sectarian factions at the point of a gun, with no civil rights or freedoms, severe suppression of dissent and frequent massacre of their own people and war upon their brother Arabs).
What the conflict is about is hatred of Jews. In choosing sides, one must decide whether hatred of Jews is a legitimate basis for the Arabs to object to a Jewish state - to Jews establishing a jurisdiction in which Arabs are equal citizens - within boundaries drawn by the same powers which drew boundaries for Arab states. The fact that there was a majority of Jew-haters within certain boundaries does not add legitimacy to Jew-hatred. And certainly the fact that there is a present majority of Jew-haters could not be a just basis for disallowing a majority of Jews to form in the future within the boundaries of a territory marked out geo-politically for them to settle in.
I have yet to have explained to me why Jew-hatred is a legitimate basis for national justice for the Arabs. In place of that explanation, what I do see are more or less careful efforts to make Jews hate-worthy - to justify the Jew hatred. That is what the anti-Israel bloc is engaged in. That is what many versions of history are engaged in. You are amongst the many - possibly majority - of Europeans who, while acknowledging that Israel exists, are making the case that it should not, because it is a dangerous criminal state. I suppose the hope is that Israel will plead guilty under threat of the power of international righteousness: blockade, arms embargo, arrest warrants for its leaders, bombs under R2P (as recently proposed by Norway’s far left party), UN peacekeepers allowing Arab arms build-up, boycotts, expulsion from international trade associations... The American veto is not the protection it once was.
C.Gee
March 30th, 2011 9:32amAnil Bhatt:
“None of that can take away the natural right of the Arab majority of Palestine to their native land.”
I ask you, as I have asked others, to develop this theory of a natural national rights. Whence do they emanate? Would it apply to the Jews? Or is it an Arab natural right? And if an Arab natural right only, why?
“People who do not have a case whose obvious justice can convince ordinary people often take refuge behind legalistic pettifogging and haggling.”
Who is to enforce “obvious justice”? What makes justice “obvious”. Who are the “people” and the “ordinary people”?
“It is not easy to convince the world that Arabs living on thier native soil for centuries deserve to be expropriated.”
It is hard to convince the world that Arabs have not had their land expropriated and that they do not deserve it back.
“So those who want to suggest this wrangle over what the pin-sripe suited old White gentlemen of Sevres or Lausanne might or might not have meant between two soirees....”
The White gentlemen put in play the geo-political wrangle we are discussing. The wrangle is about who may claim what on the land of former empires, White empires and Tan empires.
“This is a rather ridiculous story.”
Then do not bother with it.
Herzen
March 30th, 2011 11:21amC.Gee
March 30th, 2011 9:28am
Since Grief's argument is that the Allied Powers were bound by the Balfour Declaration, as interpreted by Balfour and Weizman, your willingness to concede that the Allied Powers' interpretation had changed before the Declaration was incorporated in a treaty somewhat weakens his position. The treaty did not give the Zionists a legal right to claim Palestine as their sovereign state.
"Executed policy trumps all. Policy is executed frequently under no color of legal authority." Britain executed its policy under the legal authority of the League of Nations and international law of the time. Of course, it also facilitated the Zionist project, knowing what the Zionists intended. Whether or not in so doing they exceeded their legal authority is open to question.
As to the grant of rights to third party beneficiaries, the Mandatory Power was not responsible for how others chose to interpret its powers or purpose. You again equivocate over national rights and national homes. The Mandatory Power was instructed to facilitate a National Home in Palestine, not a soveriegn state.
"But the power of states - especially Great Power states - to move populations, accord or deny civil rights, install minority governments, draw boundaries etc., to change policies, to make up law as they go along, is not to be deterred by appeals to principle." We agree on this, although I think that even Great Powers are constrained to some extent by law and by the constraints placed on them by their peers. I take you to be saying that Britain betrayed its avowed principles in hindering the Zionists. The Palestinians could (with greater reason, I think), complain that Britain rode roughshod over the principles it subscribed to in the League of Nations Covenant and in its Mandate Treaty with the League.
"Grief most certainly has not wasted a single moment of his life in giving the legal history of Jewish claims to Palestine." You miss the point. I do not think Grief wasted his time at all. It is you who said, "Historical facts are the discoveries of versions of history" - which at the very least appears to imply that Grief, having once decided what his story would be, could simply mine the data for supporting evidence, and at worst appears to imply that facts are merely theoretical constructs.
"What we have now is the tangled web resulting from Britain’s practice to deceive." I agree entirely.
"It also establishes what should have been - but was not - national justice for the Jews." The whole point of our discussion is whether or not it establishes any such thing. I am also not clear what you intend by the term "national justice". Would this be a legal term or a moral imperative or what?
"No. I am sorry to see you resort to this." I fear I am going to descend even further to the level of the playground and say, You started it!
"What would constitute evidence in your eyes that I have “tried” to understand the Palestinian version of the conflict? My agreeing with it? Or my posing as objective and fair because I say both sides are to blame ?" No and No. what would constitute evidence of some understanding of how things looked from their perspective? -
"What the conflict is about is hatred of Jews."
The Palestinians were faced first with the threat and then with the fact of having their land taken over by immigrants who were Zionist Jews. Jewish communities had lived in the Muslim world for centuries. They had second class status. There were well known instances of persecution and communal strife. That is not the whole story, as many Jewish scholars and scholars of Jewish history have attested. Relations between Muslims and Jews were close and mutually beneficial. The idea that the Palestinians resisted Zionism simply because they hated Jews and not because they were fearful for their land and livelihood is laughable. Once the conflict had flared up, it was unsurprising that some Palestinians resorted to the anti-semitism that was certainly already present and that most have ended up by now equating Zionism and Israel with the Jews (after all, Israel and the Zionists encourage such an equation). There is no question that anti-semitism is now rampant among those who make this false equation. Can I refer you to Gilbert Achcar's book on the subject of Arab anti-semitism.
"...what I do see are more or less careful efforts to make Jews hate-worthy - to justify the Jew hatred. That is what the anti-Israel bloc is engaged in. That is what many versions of history are engaged in. You are amongst the many - possibly majority - of Europeans who, while acknowledging that Israel exists, are making the case that it should not, because it is a dangerous criminal state."
I am sorry to see you stoop to this. I have said nothing about "the Jews". I have said nothing to suggest that Israel should cease to exist. This is to resort to lies and slander. What I have said is that Israel should negotiate with the Palestinians, who are willing to settle for much less than justice. But of course they are not to be believed because their Jew-hatred makes them prefer to live in danger and squalor. That you think this is prima facie evidence that your attempt to understand the conflict from their perspective has not been a success.
Anil Bhatt
March 30th, 2011 7:27pmC.Gee:
I agree that trying to convince those who reject the obvious is a difficult business.
To most people the fact that Arab Palestinians were the majority population in Palestine as late as 1948 and had been so for many centuries certainly would entitle them to the place. By the same standard one would apply to the English, the French or the Russians, etc.
The idea that people claiming descent from a population that had been expelled from the area as long ago as two THOUSAND years should claim Palestine would seem to most a pteposterous idea: where would other countries be if that principle were generally applied?
Nevertheless the UN accepted the creation of Israel in 1948. It was a time following the Holocaust, and understandable in view of that. But this could not, if one was inclined to be even modestly fair-minded, mean the complete loss to Palestinians of sovereignty in their native land. It certainly did not mean Jews had the right to encroach on even the small bit of Palestine left to the Arabs while denying Arabs the right to return to their homes in Israel.
All this is but common sense. Many Israelis would accept it. The US government accepts it.
Why the right of Jewish encroachment on Arab land is defended on "The Spectator" blog remains a matter of some surprise.
What makes the whole thing downright ludicrous is that it is Israel that stands to lose everything if it continues to try and rule over Arab lands. Because in a very few decades Arabs will be the MAJORITY in Palestine plus Israel. What then happens to the idea of a Jewish state?
Demographics are against Israel.
Israel has every right to security guarantees from Arabs before withdrawing from the West Bank. To my mind this might include a continued Israeli military presence in the area. It cannot include the right of Jewish settlement there and loss of Arab lands.
C.Gee
March 31st, 2011 10:52pmAnil Baht:
There is no natural right to a state. The astonishing aspect of the Middle East, is that a right to a state has been created for the Arabs of Palestine by a process of appropriation of Jewish rights legally bestowed.
Once again, pointing to a population "majority" as the source of emanation of a natural rights to sovereignty over land is not a theory. It is a fallacy, inspired by the Marxist collectivism of soixante-huitards. It is the hygienic expression legitimating the anti-Jewish racism of the Arabs - for being more numerous is the only claim of theirs that cannot be trumped by Jews' on legal, moral, or historical grounds. It is a pernicious idea, which has poisoned justice against the Jews, and the Jews only.
I recommend that you read Howard Grief, too. His book will demonstrate that your "common sense" is based on illegitimate and illegal assumptions. The earth actually orbits the sun, not the other way round, although from mankind's point of view both orbitings look the same.
In Europe, the intellectual overlay of communism on the cultural attitudes of ambivalence (to put it mildly) against Jews provides the idiom for political anti-Semiticism (anti-Zionism). That idiom is now the ubiquitous newspeak: the language of the UN, and of its adopted creature, the PLO. The Arabs have learned to speak it very well, having been taught by it by deracinated Jews, among others, when speaking to the West. When they speak to each other, they speak in their own religio-political idiom - developed throughout the years of Islamic dominance over Jews, the expropriation of whose religion and the physical slaughter and ethnic cleansing of whom were founding acts of their cultural identity - their "nationhood". We are exhorted to understand the Arabs, yet we will not grasp these fundamental facts about their cultural self-perception.
Grief's book is excellent on how the term "Palestinian" was expropriated from the Jews. He traces the use of that term from meaning the legal place of Jewish sovereignty to the rightful location of Arab nationality. He describes how it came to be that most of the world takes it for granted that there was an Arab state of Palestine which was usurped by Jewish foreigners.
You might find the book helps you to discover your own assumptions. But do not fear. Most unconscious totalitarians - people who have been brought up to think as collectivists with an historicist view of the inevitably, desirability and morality of world "democratic" revolution - when informed of the provenance of their world view, simply become cynical ones. The lovely utopian ends must not modified, but cruel and unjust means to achieving them are developed and implemented. Most totalitarians are able to stand with the Arabs in their policide of the Jewish state (and killings of actual Jews.) All self-respecting totalitarian states or institutions have learned that Jews are an obstacle and have developed rules to deal with the problem.
Anil Bhatt
April 1st, 2011 12:46amC.Gee:
Frankly, I am startled by your response. It involves a level of obscure dogmatism not readily found in mainline newspapers.
Note what I stated above about national rights to a given territory:
"To most people the fact that Arab Palestinians were the majority population in Palestine as late as 1948 and had been so for many centuries certainly would entitle them to the place. By the same standard one would apply to the English, the French or the Russians, etc."
So it is not only the Palestinian /Jewish case I referred to. I was talking about the basis on which any people with a country justifies its claim: that it is the longstanding majority in the area. What other basis IS there? If you know of one, could you kindly let me know?
How does it make me a totalitarian if I question the claim that people coming from 10000 miles or more away from Palestine are the rightful owners of it but not the vast majority of the population living there for many centuries? Because these chaps from 10000 miles away claim descent from people who are supposed to have been expelled from the area about 2000 years ago?
Does one HAVE to be a totalitarian to doubt that rather unexpected basis for owning Palestine?
Incidentally, how about answering my point that in a couple of decades the Arabs will in any case be a MAJORITY in Israel plus Palestine and that for that reason alone Israel's keeping the West Bank would end the possibility of a Jewish state?