Obama's achievement: the mouse that roared

Truthtriumphs

It was a masterly performance by Netanyahu, although the terrible reality is that it was too little, too late.
The billions of petro dollars the Arabs ivested in propaganda (instead of looking after the "poor Palestinians")
has paid dividends, whilst Israel and diaspora Jewry refused to grasp the reality of what was happening in the unrelenting effort to de-legitimise Jewry's legal, moral and historic rights to its homeland.

In 1967, when the three noes declaration came forth from Khartum, Israel would have had every right to annexe the West Bank, which, legally was/is hers anyway.
The opportunity was lost, and Moshe Dayan's magnanimity towards the Arab nations that did their best to destroy Israel, was repaid in the manner to which we have become accustomed.
What a tragic error of judgement, for which Israel pays the price every day.
Which other country would, or has, relinquished territory won in a defensive war against genocidal enemies for nothimg in return?
Answer---none.
Israel is too decent for her own good.

JOHN ROOSEVELT

The sad truth is that neither the US nor Britain and Europe care as much about an Israeli-Palestinian peace as they do securing other strategic interests in the region...and, certainly, neither are convinced that a serious push for peace will necessarily serve those interests, particularly in the light of the Hamas-Fatah deal and the Egyptian Spring-like junta's new policy towards Hamas and the Muslim Brotherhood. They know what Mel is saying is true and always have done. They are not that stupid.

In other words, Peace is only meaningful to them to the extent that it supports other interests they may have. This goes, of course for the Arab and muslim actors in the region, too.

The reality, therefore, is that any protestations re the '67 lines etc is all smoke up the proverbial. Soundbites. meaningless.

Hamas, to its credit, couldn't be bothered to pretend and has, anyway, wisely developed its core political support on open hatred of Jews. Good political move. Fatah has been caught napping in that regard, which is why it has to lie all the time..one thing in English; another in arabic.

Noone, then, cares a flying fig for the Palestinians.Not even, it sems, the Palestinians. They remain, as they always have been, mere cannon fodder. It has truly become a culture of victimhood and nakba in this sense. They are to blame. Everyone is to blame.

I guess it's no surprise racist totalitarianism remains the ideological predilection du jour amongst the arabs and muslims in the ME.. Given the true colour of the aims of the great Powers vis a vis the region, nothing will change this any time soon.

Killing Bin laden will also have little lasting effect.

Perhaps when the bombs go off once again in the US and UK, there may be some degree of awakening. After all, few of those who normally think the Israelis are nazis for their taste for extrajuridical killings seemed to have berated Obama and the US for despatching Osama. Noone has asked if the Navy Seals had cloned passports when they entered Pakistan (hehe).

Obama sounded like a good Israeli when he said he would go into Pakistan again to kill anyone threatening the US. Good on 'im, but the significance of this seems to have been lost on most, not least the Guardian journalists and no doubt readers, also.

David Taylor

Interesting view of the politics of the Middle East Melanie (and that's all they are politics).
Every President since Jimmy Carter has proposed the 1967 situation as the basis for a solution to this problem.
Are you saying that every American President for the last forty five years is wrong and that you and the current Israeli President are right?

Kevin Sekel

Obama says that borders will be finalised by negotiations between Israel & the Palestinians, but he also said that Israel can NOT be expected to negotiate with Hamas. Huh?

pterodactyl

How angry the BBC must be that they have had to broadcast the other side for once. It goes to show that a few minutes of the truth can easily cancel out hours and hours of Biased Broadcasting Corporation's hard work in distoring the truth. It takes a lot of bias to argue that Israel is the agressor surrounded as it is by millions of oil rich and land rich arabs who want to drive them into the sea and have even more land.
And the Left are not helped in their message when the people they are trying to help cheer for Bin Laden. The Left certainly have a challenge there.

And they are well aware that if the viewers hear both sides and see the map of the tiny Israeli lands surrounded by vast arab lands, they will side with Israel.

Ian

Good for you Melanie, and good for Bibi. And shame on the post-war establishment, still outraged to find that Jews can fight back.

Tas

Yes, "Netanyahu did well last Friday."

Frank P

Welcome back Melanie, it was worth waiting for. Will the Spectator please have this post reproduced in an illuminated scroll and a copy sent to the Prime Ministers of the UK and Israel and handed to the POTUS when he arrives here later in the week. It should also be engraved in stone on a tablet beside the Magna Carta in the memorial at Runnymede.

Mark the words well, you duplicitous, stupid dissemblers. The fate of the West rests upon you heeding Melanie's message.

Roy

"stopped and offered the casualty a sip of water; the British, however, proceeded to kick the injured party’s head in."
How appropriately put.

gary ashton

brilliant melanie, you are absolutely correct in your concluding paragraph. it is time for netanyahu to speak.

Mladen Andrijasevic

I do not understand American Jews at all. How can 10000 American Jews at AIPAC humiliate themselves and listen to Obama essentially repeat the same nonsense he said Thursday? Have they no spine?

RoMo

Succint and to the point but you know what, American 'liberal' Jews will continue to stand up and vote for this foolish man. Therein lies the problem.

GaryL

Do the Palestinians need Israel's approval and/or assistance to establish their state? If the answer is "no", then why haven't they already done it. If the answer is "yes" then what are they doing to gain Israel's goodwill. Someone should translate into Arabic for them the fable about the wind and sun competing to remove the man's jacket.

Aaron Greenberg

I wish Netanyahu would read your words. Israel too should continue to stop payments to the Palestinians.

Bob From Virginia

Tragically Obama will get away with it. He's the teflon President, nothing sticks to the guy.
Oh well, as any addict knows one has to reach rock bottom before change takes place. Obama will be useful for the US in that respect.

Louis Berk

Melanie, I am glad you have highlighted Netanyahu's address in your blog.

It was one of the most accomplished speaches I have seen from any politician in my life time. Perhaps because it was entirely truthful and without guile (not something one expects of a politician).

Obama, an accomplished speaker himself looked by turns both gob-smacked and uncomfortable. I think even he was humbled to discover how little he understood about the middle east as Bibi demolished the current distorted perception of the 'Arab spring' with reality and truth.

Perhaps the greatest point made by Bibi was to remind the world of the Jewish refugee issue: the expulsion of Jews by Arab states after Israel was formed.

Even today, Jews cannot return to recently democratised Iraq even though their homes, businesses and wealth were sequesterd by the state.

I particularly liked the was he finessed the Palestinian refugee problem by reminding the world that we are dealing with the grandchildren and great-grandchildren of Palestinians who left Israel over 60 years ago. How long are a people to remain as refugees? Why haven't Arab states with their enormous wealth absorbed and integrated these people the way Israel did with their refugees?

Santorum

Frank P

"[the article] should also be engraved in stone on a tablet beside the Magna Carta in the memorial at Runnymede....The fate of the West rests upon you heeding Melanie's message"

Very funny if you meant this to be tongue in cheek.

If not, among very stiff competition this now stands as the most hyperbolic fawning over a Melanie article in the Speccie yet. Congratulations!

Obama's speech is of course, as David Taylor calls it, a continuation of longstanding Us foreighn Policy.

JohNW

Netanyahu shredded Obama.

Netanyahu is a brilliant politician, and an example of the straight-talking leader with balls that we in the UK so desperately need to fight the moral corrosion in our society.

Teresa

//These lines were referred to as the ‘Auschwitz borders’ because within them no country could possibly defend itself against its enemies//

But it was from this position that Israel conquered and occupied the West Bank in 67. Hardly @auschwitz borders.

charlene

What can I say, Netanyahu is brilliant. Frankly Obama, Cameron, Hague and co are when compared to him like dumber and dumber. Netanyahu is clearly the most intelligent and he told the truth. Would the craven Western leaders would truly listen and stop empowering evil. Brilliant analysis Melanie.

teresa

//I particularly liked the was he finessed the Palestinian refugee problem by reminding the world that we are dealing with the grandchildren and great-grandchildren of Palestinians who left Israel over 60 years ago. How long are a people to remain as refugees?// About 2,000 years, perhaps?

raymond douglas

Just what has gone wrong with William Hague ? Used to really admire this able and intelligent man. But now ? On the other hand, Netanyahu , came across as a man of integrity. He clearly felt ill at ease having to spell out home truths in front of a Obama that seems as out of touch as our Foreign secretary. God bless Israel and protect prime minister Netanyahu. And may God forgive us for what we are trying to do to his people Israel.

Victoria

Teresa writes: '//I particularly liked the was he finessed the Palestinian refugee problem by reminding the world that we are dealing with the grandchildren and great-grandchildren of Palestinians who left Israel over 60 years ago. How long are a people to remain as refugees?// About 2,000 years, perhaps?'

Ask the Israelis that. Most of them are descendants of people who have been refugees for longer than that.

Trefor Jones

I agree with you about Andrew Marr, I think the word sycophant was devised especially for him and Huw Edwards.

Jane Williams

How can 'this murderous impasse ' be America and Britain's fault? Both Hague and Obama are right to put pressure on Israel to recognise that peace is the best and only option for both them and the Palestinians, not forgetting the rest of the Middle East. Netanyahu's references to demographics and 'changes on the ground' are all well and good but you need to remember that many of these changes have taken place during the protracted period during which Israel has dodged any progress towards peace. In the absence of any progress or even signs of progress the Palestinains are right to pursue their goal for recognition of their state at the UN and as things look right now they should get it. Israel seems incapable of recognising that much of what they have done over the past decades has stoked the fire of those seeking its destruction. Netanyahu's stubborn refusal to move an inch towards reconciliation is compounding Israel's problems and not helping anyone except his extreme constituency. Obama and Hague are both right to have the courage to face up to Aipac and other bodies that seek to engender confrontation rather than peace. Perhaps for Netanyahu's supporters the price of peace is just too great to contemplate. If that is true then Israel needs a new leader.

Matt Pryor

I wholeheartedly agree Melanie.

I followed the link to the Telegraph article that you included and was dismayed by the comments section. I wonder if this is reflective of the views of the Telegraph's readership these days, or just the usual Jew-hating internet pond-life that swarm towards any article relating to this topic that provides them an open platform to spew their predictable, nonsensical poison (a bit like this blog).

Anyway, good for Netanyahu. He's at his best when he tells the the truth, and the rest of the world needs to hear it.

aelle

" The Israeli reality that Obama doesn't understand "

An article by Merav Michaeli in Haaretz today provides an interesting Israeli perspective on an alternative way forward - I think its known as peace.

The triumphalists might try opening their minds and reading it.

But I'm not counting on it.

Gershon

Interesting to see that President Obama is finally adopting Avigdor Leiberman's proposal from seven years ago.

Reuven

Obama may have changed his stance slightly, but the damage has already been done. The geo-politics in this region are far too fragile for Israel to bear such body blows.

Frank P

Santorum

http://www.spreadingsantorum.com/

Yes, indeedy. Unashamedly fawning and in awe. And there will probably be more and better in the future, so hold on to that award and watch this space!
Thanks anyway. Nice to be appreciated.

Augustus

aelle - As you're quoting left-wing Haaretz,
let me quote from the same source: Ari Shavit. "But in one important respect Obama's speech was very bad for Israel. And very bad for the United States. The US President made an egregious error in the way he introduced the principle of 1967 into his vision of peace. Instead of presenting the 1967 borders as the end of the process, he made them its start. Instead of tying them to the end of demands
and the end of the conflict, they were tied to greater demands and continued conflict.
Without intending any harm, Obama presented Israel with a suicidal proposition: An interim agreement based on the 1967 borders.
It's a proposal that runs along the same lines as the Hamas offer of a hudna - a long
term cease-fire. It's a proposal that will result in certain conflict in Jerusalem and in the inundation of Israel with refugees.
It's a proposition that spells an end to peace, an end to stability and an end to the state of Israel."

teresa

//About 2,000 years, perhaps?//

//Ask the Israelis that. Most of them are descendants of people who have been refugees for longer than that//

Which was my point. I don't understand how a person can be so myopic as to consider people still refugees after 60 years exile a bit of an overreaction whilst upholding the rights of the descendents of people exiled 2,000 years ago to restitution of the land they left two millennia ago.

just Louise

Melanie, yours is the best analysis of this entire subject I've read.

Truthtriumphs

teresa
May 23rd, 2011 1:39pm

"Which was my point. I don't understand how a person can be so myopic as to consider people still refugees after 60 years exile a bit of an overreaction whilst upholding the rights of the descendents of people exiled 2,000 years ago to restitution of the land they left two millennia ago".

Which Arab website did you pick up that standard fare propaganda?
There has been a continuous, if small Jewish presence in the Holy land since that time.
By contrast, most of the so-called Palestinian refugees are no such thing.
The head of UNWRA, Ralph Galloway, said in 1952, that the Arab countries will never allow a resolution of the refugee problem, because it will always be a convenient stick with which to beat Israel.
Furthermore, unlike the Jewish refugees from Arab lands who were evicted from lands they lived in for up to 2,000 years, they Palestinian Arabs became refugees because a genocidal campaign was waged against the fledgling Jewish state, and the Arabs lost.
It's what happens.
You should ask yourself why the Jewish refugees were absorbed in one generation into Israel, without any aid fron the UN etc. and today the number of so-called Palestinian refugees is some 6 times the 1948 numbers.
Ask yourself why the Arab refugee problem is unique in its perpetuation worldwide.
Is that the normal course of events?

Augustus

teresa - It is simply a fact that without a solution to the Arab 'refugee' problem, created
and kept ongoing by their own Arab 'brothers', no territorial concessions whatsoever will bring peace.

In 2004, the US President was promised and written down in black and white that Israel would never have to return any
suicide borders (Aushwitz Borders) of 1967. The reason being, and historically proven,
that those borders were indefensible, and to return to them would be suicidal. Just as
all territorial concessions in the past have not led to ultimate peace, but even more aggression, more rockets, more
attacks, more warring and bloodshed, so Obama's 'moment of opportunity' was in reality
only a moment of betrayal. One thing's for sure, though, Israel is not about to perform a neat little dance on its own grave.

aem

The Palestinians are to accept the "demographic changes".

This is held up for our admiration, presumably of its chutzpah.

What is it but dishonesty in defence of theft?

Louis Berk

Teresa, you make a good point. Why is the right of Palestinian exiles not the same as Jewish exiles? I suppose my reasoning is based on the fact that throughout their exile the world repeatedly made it clear that it did not want Jews to live in their midst. It was a constant refrain that they should either go back where they came from or better still be annihilated.

In my thinking I've made the assumption that in a world of 356 million muslims, absorbing 4.4 million refugee Palestinians would be something that could be accomplished after 60 years.

Especially as there are many statements made in defence of the humanity of Islam versus perfidy of the Jews. I would have thought such humanity would have relieved the suffering of the Palestinians much sooner than the 2,000 or so years it took the world in the case of the Jews.

By contrast, 40% of Israel's current population is composed of or descended from Jews expelled from other countries. Interestingly, 1.5 million of Israeli citizens are Arabs (the first in the middle east to enjoy equal rights, democracy and the protection of the Supreme Court).

Maybe my method of accounting for the difference between the treatment of Palestinian and Jewish refugees is unfair, so please point out to me the flaws in my thinking.

Janet S

Not to ask a stupid question, but when Obama talks about land swaps, can we remind ourselves just who Israel is supposed to be swapping land with? Does he refer to the "Palestinians," who have never given up one iota of land (or anything else) for peace? Because if that is that case, the idea of swapping land is a fool's errand - you can't negotiate with people whose idea of peace is Israel's destruction, period. To suggest otherwise is to be dangerously naive, treacherous, or all of the above. Seriously, President Obama, don't pee on my leg (or AIPAC's, for that matter) and tell me it's raining.

Truthtriumphs

aem
May 23rd, 2011 2:46pm

"The Palestinians are to accept the "demographic changes.
This is held up for our admiration, presumably of its chutzpah.
What is it but dishonesty in defence of theft?"

On what do you base your remarks?

steve

"He seized the moment, and used the presence of the icily immobilised President to speak electrifyingly over his head to the American people ... about the likely terrible consequences for Israel of the President’s policy."

That's certainly one view. Another might be that the leader of the country that is the largest recipient of American foreign aid in the world was lecturing and showing up the head of the United States.

Raymond in DC

Teresa writes, "But it was from this position that Israel conquered and occupied the West Bank in 67. Hardly @auschwitz borders." Israel then was contending with regular army forces, not insurgents operating from within "civilian" areas. And it still cost them some 700 lives over those six days.

And in response to another's question about Palestinians who left Israel over 60 years ago, asking "How long are a people to remain as refugees?" Teresa replies,"About 2,000 years, perhaps?"

In contrast to the Jews (who never fully abandoned the land), the Palestinians were *never* sovereign in that land. Heck, until the mid-1960s they didn't even call themselves "Palestinians".

GaryL

The English meaning of Naqba is "bungle". Palestinians commemorate it every year, and sometimes daily, by repetition.

aem

Truthtriumphs
May 23rd, 2011 2:18pm

"There has been a continuous, if small Jewish presence in the Holy land since that time..."

Indeed, historians point out (as did Zionists like Ben Gurion) that many of them probably converted to Islam. The descendants of some of these would be among those ethnically cleansed from 1947 onwards.

Truthtriumphs

aelle
May 23rd, 2011 12:38pm

"An article by Merav Michaeli in Haaretz today provides an interesting Israeli perspective on an alternative way forward - I think its known as peace".

We all know about Ha'aretz, and its contribution to undermining Israel's security.
We can all read it for ourselves without your "help".
Rather, you should focus on the marvel of a country that allows a newspaper to print the stuff it does, day after day, a situation that does not exist in a single Arab country.

Now, just to remind you, you conveniently "forgot" to answer my points of May 20th. on a previous thread.
So, here's part of that post, just so that no-one is in any doubt as to what you are about.

"As you are so clever, perhaps you would like to posit the reason why the UN accorded refugee status to those Palestinians who had been in the country for just two years, a status accorded uniquely to the Palestinians....a bit odd, don't you think, if they had been there for generations?
We all know the answer, so I'm really anticipating your ingenious copout, although I have the feeling it may be awhile coming.
Just a word in conclusion, and I'm sure my feelings will resonate with others on this blog....
I don't mind that Jews are are not your cup of tea and I don't mind that you find their presence in your "nice area of North london" a tad unwelcome, turning it into "occupied territory", as they do, but what really disgusts me is the phoney window dressing of the pretentious anti-semite that you truly are, posing as someone who cares about racism, when your real agenda is to use this space to indulge your bigotry and intolerance".

Truthtriumphs

Teresa
May 23rd, 2011 9:56am

"These lines were referred to as the ‘Auschwitz borders’ because within them no country could possibly defend itself against its enemies
But it was from this position that Israel conquered and occupied the West Bank in 67. Hardly @auschwitz borders".

You demonstrate your profound ignorance of the dynamics of that war....and much else besides.
The six day war was won DESPITE the Auschwitz borders, because of the master stroke of taking Nasser by surprise by destroying his air fleet on the ground at the start of the war.
Otherwise, the outcome would likely have been very different.
Israel's victory was little short of a miracle.

Go and learn some history!

GaryL

"Why is the right of Palestinian exiles not the same as Jewish exiles?"

Can the shared cultural history of one people that runs back over 3,000 years be compared to the shared cultural history of another which runs back only a handful of decades. If this is disputed, please give us some examples of Palestinian cultural history of the 19th, 18th, 17th or 16th centuries. Who are the heroes and what are the events from the past they memorialise from past centuries? Who from previous centuries do they name their streets after? Do they have legends as long in memory as Robin Hood or even the shorter term Australian memory of Ned Kelly, or describe events in comparison to their Eureka Stockade from the mid 1800s? These are what makes a nation out of a people with a shared memorialised culture.

Can anyone name one Palestinian folk hero remembered in their ballads who wasn't a fighter against Jews? That's their only shared cultural experience.

There is no argument against the fact that many of them lived in the land called Palestine, but having an address in a particular neighborhood in the past isn't a basis to create a nation.

In Australia we judge the validity of Aboriginal relationship with their rights to land by the continuous knowledge of traditions about place. Jews can easily demonstrate this about Palestine. Palestinians have nothing.

"Why is the right of Palestinian exiles not the same as Jewish exiles?"

That's why.

Truthtriumphs

aem
May 23rd, 2011 4:05pm
Truthtriumphs
May 23rd, 2011 2:18pm

"Indeed, historians point out (as did Zionists like Ben Gurion) that many of them probably converted to Islam. The descendants of some of these would be among those ethnically cleansed from 1947 onwards."

Palestinian "refugees" now number 4.5 million plus another 1.5 million Arabs within the same territory.
That means that the number in the same piece of territory has increased by a factor of at least six.
Ethnic cleansing means a drastic diminution of numbers, based on their ethnicity.
The exact opposite has happpened.
Evidently, the Jews aren't much good at ethnic cleansing.

An American

Obama's latest speech on Israel was just another campaign speech for 2012, courting the left who have always supported with rhetoric and money the 'poor' misunderstood Palestinians. The last thing these progressives would admit is that they are Jew haters.

Obama is in the throes of believing he is invincible after the Bin Ladin killing. He actually went up several points in the polls and that is the all consuming reason for all of his latest pronouncements. In reality, he could care less about what happens to Israel...Its all about him.

Did you watch Obama's body language while Netanyahu lectured him. He had his hand over most of his face to cover his hatred...even his eyes were watering, he was so furious.

Finally, someone put this egotistical, destructive man-child in his place.

I wish we had a Netanyahu to run for US President.

Truthtriumphs

steve
May 23rd, 2011 3:44pm

"That's certainly one view. Another might be that the leader of the country that is the largest recipient of American foreign aid in the world...."

And paid for very handsomely in kind!
I think you will find that Egypt receives just as much...with little to show for it.
And btw, these sums are dwarfed by the amounts the USA currently spends in its military adventures in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Augustus

Steve - And another view might be that no American president should develop the naive sense that the only stable country in the region should surrender dutifully and dance to his drums, no matter how hostile the beat.

aem

Truthtriumphs
May 23rd, 2011 3:31pm
Calling it "demographics", as if some natural process whereby the population evolves, does not change what is going on. Israel has transferred Palestinians out and Israelis in to territory illegally acquired.

Truthtriumphs
May 23rd, 2011 4:38pm
"Ethnic cleansing" refers to the process of forcibly removing a population. The Palestinians were forcibly removed from what is now Israel. Hence the use of the term "ethnic cleansing". The population cleansed (estimates vary, but about 700-800k) has grown in the usual way (which is not mysterious to most adults familiar with the mechanics of birth and death). Similarly, the population unavoidably (despite best efforts) left in situ.

Your point is? Simply to ignore the fact that Palestinian exiles are likely to have as much right to claim ancient antecedents in Palestine?

Augustus

An American - Quite right! And now, after half a century of riding his 'color', Obama has the overwhelming desire, apparently, to reconnect with his Irish forefathers. It seems the proud Kenyan spiritual leader of the Muslim world is now wearing the green a sprouting shamrocks out the back of his trousers. His name can now take on an apostrophe and become O'bama (perhaps Seamus O'reilly O'bama?), He has the ability to become anyone
with his ghost writers, after all. Perhaps Ayers can now write 'Green Dreams of my Irishness'?

Truthtriumphs

Jane Williams
May 23rd, 2011 12:30pm

"Both Hague and Obama are right to put pressure on Israel to recognise that peace is the best and only option for both them.
Perhaps for Netanyahu's supporters the price of peace is just too great to contemplate. If that is true then Israel needs a new leader."

So, Hague and Obama are right to
force "peace partners" upon Israel who openly avow that their goal is "Palestine from the river to the sea", and who daily pour out the vilest propaganda about Israel and Jews in their media, school and university curricula and who venerate and honour the murderers of Jews and Israelis.
Is that the "peace" that you would have Israel embrace?
Missing from your prescription for peace is any mention of putting pressure upon the Palestinians to seek peace.
The peace you advocate, would result in the peace of the grave for Israel, and the certain demise of the Jewish state.
Is that what you would like to see.... not so much a solution as a "final solution"?

Truthtriumphs

aem
May 23rd, 2011 5:14pm
Truthtriumphs
May 23rd, 2011 3:31pm

"Calling it "demographics", as if some natural process whereby the population evolves, does not change what is going on. Israel has transferred Palestinians out and Israelis in to territory illegally acquired."

That is a lie wilfully promoted by those for whom Jewish sovereignty is anathema.

If you wish to believe that the league of nations 51 members, ratifying the re-constitution of the Jewish state in its Jewish homeland in its "Mandate for Palestine" document was illegal, that's your choice.
If you wish to believe that its calling for the "close settlement of Jews" there was illegal, again, feel free.
It doesn't change a thing.

As Martin luther King observed, "know this, anti-Zionism is anti-semitism, and ever will be so".

Santiago Macquarrie

Read Spengler's article in today's Asia Times.He assumes that If Israel mnanages to get through the next couple of years, which will be terribly dangerous, thanks to its demographic and cultural advantages it will become by far the most powerful nation in the Middle East.

Truthtriumphs

aem
May 23rd, 2011 4:38pm

"Ethnic cleansing" refers to the process of forcibly removing a population. The Palestinians were forcibly removed from what is now Israel. Hence the use of the term "ethnic cleansing".

"let me state this plainly and clearly: the Jews in Israel took no-one's land".
Joseph Farah, Arab- journalist, American. 23/4/02

"The Arabs would not submit to a truce, but they rather preferred to leave their homes in the town....and leave the town, which they did."
Jamal Husseini of the Arab Higher Committee, to the UN Security Council 23/4/48.

"The fact that there are these refugees is the direct consequence of the action of Arab states in opposing partition and the Jewish state."
Emil Khoury, Secretary of the Arab Higher Committee, September 1948.

"The Arab High Command asked us to leave the country for 2 weeks to make the battle easier for them. They told us "a cnnon cannot tell the difference between a Jew and an Arab; leave the country for 2 weeks, and you will come back victorious." I heard the Haganah microphones asking the Arabs to remain and live in peace with their Jewish brethren".
Salim Joubran, an Arab citizen of Israel, to American audiences Feb.1962.

"the Arab armies entered Palestine to protect the Palestinians....but instead, abandoned them, forced them to emigrate and to leave their homeland, imposed upon them a political and ideological blockade, and threw them into prisons similar to the ghettos in which the Jews used to live in Europe".
Abu Mazen, member of the PlO, in "al Thaura" (official publication of the PlO, March 1976.)

So, they're all lying, are they?
Rather, aren't you a cheap propagandist for a revisionist narrative, designed to put the Jews in the worst possible light?

Herzen

Truthtriumphs
May 23rd, 2011 5:55pm
It was only a matter of time before the old Martin Luther King quote was dusted down.

There is no "lie", no doubt or ambiguity. Israel acquired the West Bank by military conquest and thus illegally. The Mandate was legal. The legality of the Mandate does not make Israel's acquisition of the West Bank anything but illegal. What aem says is correct.

James Murphy

Truthtriumphs - "it was a masterly performance by Netanyahu" - Indeed, given the pressure he was under: media, lights, world-centre-stage, Obama gazing on like some grand inquisitor ready with the auto-da-fe, it was nothing short of miraculous! Hats - and everything else - off to the man! Long live Israel: beacon in middle-East darkness!

Dan

From Andrew Sullivan -
http://www.mfa.gov.il/MFA/Government/Communiques/2010/Joint_statement_PM_Netanyahu_US_Sec_Clinton_11-Nov-2010.htm

Bibi and Clinton agree to 67 borders with landswaps - The Prime Minister and the Secretary agreed on the importance of continuing direct negotiations to achieve our goals. The Secretary reiterated that "the United States believes that through good-faith negotiations, the parties can mutually agree on an outcome which ends the conflict and reconciles the Palestinian goal of an independent and viable state, based on the 1967 lines, with agreed swaps, and the Israeli goal of a Jewish state with secure and recognized borders that reflect subsequent developments and meet Israeli security requirements."

C.Gee

“Not to ask a stupid question, but when Obama talks about land swaps, can we remind ourselves just who Israel is supposed to be swapping land with?”

Not stupid, Janet S. That is the question, and the only question that matters for political purposes.

Let us remind ourselves who the Palestinians are; how a gang of thugs got to speak for them; and how the gang bosses were empowered to “cede” land over which they have no de facto nor de jure sovereignty. Then let’s put a stop to the farce of negotiation, land swaps, refugee return. Whatever autonomies emerge around Ramallah and other towns and cities in the West Bank and in Gaza, they should not be governed by Fatah and Hamas, or anything resembling them. How many times does the west want to make the same mistakes in the Middle East? Were the lessons of Syria, Lebanon, Iraq and Jordan not learned?

“Both Hague and Obama are right to put pressure on Israel to recognise that peace is the best and only option for both them and the Palestinians, not forgetting the rest of the Middle East.”

Please rethink this, Jane Williams, in light of reality. Peace might be the best outcome for the Israeli and Arab people, but for several reasons it is not an option at all, let alone the “only” option. Not forgetting the rest of the Middle East, when Obama says the current situation is “not sustainable”, that is an error. For Israel it is sustainable, and is the least costly and only option. For the Palestinian bosses, Israel gone is the best outcome, so peace is not an option, though the pretense at peace negotiation is good cover for continued “resistance”. And it costs them nothing, except Arab lives, which they value more in pursuit of martyrdom than of happiness.

Egypt Steve

You moron: read this:

http://www.mfa.gov.il/MFA/Government/Communiques/2010/Joint_statement_PM_Netanyahu_US_Sec_Clinton_11-Nov-2010.htm

Terrence McCloy

Right on, Melanie! One of your best columns to date. Terrence, Los Angeles, CA.

Kevin

America should return to its 1767 borders, and give the Indians their own state.

Penny

Steve

You write:

"That's certainly one view. Another might be that the leader of the country that is the largest recipient of American foreign aid in the world was lecturing and showing up the head of the United States."

Are you really unaware of the Israeli contribution to techonology, agriculture, science, compute science and medicine?!!

I would hazard a guess that you own at least one thing that you use most days that has either been developed or invented in Israel.

I had a quick google for you (incidentally, the algorithm for Google is another Israeli development)

There are plenty of sites to choose from but I just went for one which I felt listed the inventions and developments in an easy to read fashion.

You can google for yourself and perhaps see that, unlike some who receive foreign aid, Israel hasn't sat around on its backside. It has made huge contributions to the world.

http://www.methodistfriendsofisrael.com/so-you-want-to-boycott-israel/

Nerf

What about when Bibi said last November that they would be using the 67 borders and land swaps to get peace? Ohhh yeah he's a liar.
http://www.mfa.gov.il/MFA/Government/Communiques/2010/Joint_statement_PM_Netanyahu_US_Sec_Clinton_11-Nov-2010.htm

Truthtriumphs

Herzen
May 23rd, 2011 7:19pm
Truthtriumphs

"There is no "lie", no doubt or ambiguity. Israel acquired the West Bank by military conquest and thus illegally. The Mandate was legal. The legality of the Mandate does not make Israel's acquisition of the West Bank anything but illegal. What aem says is correct."

Wrong.
The "Mandate for Palestine" document included the West Bank, and called for its "close settlement" by Jews.
Stephen Schwebel, one time presiding judge on the International Court of Justice ruled in Israel's favour.
There is the small matter of the rights of victor over vanquished in a war of aggression, launched without provocation.
The universal rule is that the vanquished aggressor cedes territory.
If you don't agree, then you have your work cut out to fight for lands "stolen" from their owners, like the Sudetenland, swathes of Poland, the Kurile islands etc etc.
Of course, we haven't even begun to discuss the whole of North Africa, lands invaded by Arabs in bloody conquest.
What about the theft of the entire continent of North America from the indigenous natives...in fact, most of the countries we see today are the result of invasion and conquest.
Perhaps nearer to home you should campaign for the return of Gibraltar to Spain, and Northern Ireland to the mainland.
Oh, I forgot, it's only Jewish conquest that bugs you, conquest of land that actually belongs to Jews.
Quite frankly, you're a bore, and you clearly haven't moved on from your common room Trots days.
C.Gee majestically and comprehensively put you in your place.
Stay there.

Jonathan

One favor, please, from the author:

Take a look around Israel at the unpredictable transformations occurring before our eyes in Egypt, Syria, Tunisia, Libya, etc.

Now: deign to look a few meters down the road, would you? Think about the demographics. Think about US resource priorities. Sketch the endgame. How do you think this ends up for Israel and the US?

Obama is - truly - the best friend Israel has right now. In seeking to wake up a Likud-dominated polity that has, so far, done nothing but seek to embarrass him, he is getting Israel to look down the road as well and confront a situation that solid belligerence and sabre-rattling simply cannot cope with. It's time for Israel to get smart and play the cards it can play while it can play them to best advantage, something it's doing the opposite of right now.

teresa

truthtriumphs wrote,

//Which Arab website did you pick up that standard fare propaganda?//

Haha - start with a smear and go downhill from there. Which of the numbers I gave wasn't widely known and which wasn't true?

//There has been a continuous, if small Jewish presence in the Holy land since that time//

Not disputing that.

//The head of UNWRA, Ralph Galloway, said in 1952, that the Arab countries will never allow a resolution of the refugee problem, because it will always be a convenient stick with which to beat Israel//

also agreed.

//Furthermore, unlike the Jewish refugees from Arab lands who were evicted from lands they lived in for up to 2,000 years, the Palestinian Arabs became refugees because a genocidal campaign was waged against the fledgling Jewish state, and the Arabs lost//

If the land you lived on was to be partitioned against your will and a huge chunk given to recent migrants I doubt you'd be pleased and might wish to resist also.

//You should ask yourself why the Jewish refugees were absorbed in one generation into Israel, without any aid fron the UN etc. and today the number of so-called Palestinian refugees is some 6 times the 1948 numbers//

It's obvious why. 700,000 additional Jews were very welcome at a time the nation was being built, whereas the maintenance of a Palestinian refugee problem suited the Arab nations very well. There will also have been refugees who simply didn't want to give up on their old homes. Who can blame them?

//Ask yourself why the Arab refugee problem is unique in its perpetuation worldwide.
Is that the normal course of events?//

Not sure that's relevant. The recreation of a long abandoned homeland after a period of 2,000 years is also a unique occurrence, I think, but you wouldn't call that unique occurrence wrong.

david elder

In Australia the TV news of Bibi's statement was voiced by some British idiot who thought the Palestinians lost the West Bank to Israel in 1967. They actually lost it in 1948 to Jordan. When Israel got it in 1967 she offered it back to Jordan as a peace move. Mel, I suggest you repeat these facts endlessly as most journalists are clearly totally ignorant of them.

teresa

Louis Berk wrote,

//Why is the right of Palestinian exiles not the same as Jewish exiles? I suppose my reasoning is based on the fact that throughout their exile the world repeatedly made it clear that it did not want Jews to live in their midst. It was a constant refrain that they should either go back where they came from or better still be annihilated//

Can't condone that at all - actually don't understand why such hostility against Jews unless it was religious in origin and even then.......

//In my thinking I've made the assumption that in a world of 356 million muslims, absorbing 4.4 million refugee Palestinians would be something that could be accomplished after 60 years//

Of course it could - but there has to be the will. Palestinians haven't been popular guests in many Arab countries. For whatever reason they've not received much of welcome. And then there are the Pals themselves. Perhaps those that remain unsettled do not wish to move on. Plenty have, of course.

//Especially as there are many statements made in defence of the humanity of Islam versus perfidy of the Jews. I would have thought such humanity would have relieved the suffering of the Palestinians much sooner than the 2,000 or so years it took the world in the case of the Jews//

I'm no admirer of Islam and no believer in its claims - the major religion least attractive to me.

//By contrast, 40% of Israel's current population is composed of or descended from Jews expelled from other countries//

In as much as they were expelled from Arab and Muslim countries I believe these Jewish refugees underpin the legitimacy of the Jewish state. There was a de facto swap of populations.

//Interestingly, 1.5 million of Israeli citizens are Arabs (the first in the middle east to enjoy equal rights, democracy and the protection of the Supreme Court)//

True, the Arabs didn't all leave but I doubt that many Jewish Israelis positively welcome their presence in the Jewish state. They are discriminated against, of course - why wouldn't they be given the circumstances?

//Maybe my method of accounting for the difference between the treatment of Palestinian and Jewish refugees is unfair, so please point out to me the flaws in my thinking//

No - your account is perfectly fair. Not sure it is any jstification for favouring the claim to land of a community 2,000 years in diaspora in favour of one just 60 years into their exile, though.

Ehoop

Herzen, nothing whatsoever that's illegal about Israel's occupation of the West Bank. It was captured in a defensive war against Jordan which attacked Israel in Jerusalem. And, since Jordan was in illegal occupation of the territory, since the Arabs had previously rejected the partition of the Palstine Mandate's territory, which would have given them a state there, and since the prime purpose of the Mandate was to bring about the creation of a Jewish homeland in the territory and the terms of all League of Nations mandates had been adopted by the UNO, Israel has a better claim to sovereignty over the West Bank than any other state.
Moving on, the main problem with the idea of "1967 lines with mutually agreed swaps" as the principle guiding the definition of borders is what happens in the absence of mutually agreed swaps when the Palestinians, as usual, refuse to negotiate unless all their demands are conceded at the outset. The question is what is the default outcome in the absence of negotiations. Obama's formulation leaves open the possibility of recognition of 1967 lines, without adjustment, as borders, with the PLO's recent diplomatic initiative in South America extended to Europe as Abbas' likely strategy. AIPAC are as gullible today as when they cheered Obama's promise, pre-election, not to divide Jerusalem. Just a few months later he was demanding a cessation of construction there. Israel should declare its borders without delay.

Ice

"although he reverted to his original formulation he did so to cover his tracks..."

although
reverted
original
formulation
did so
cover his tracks

All choices. All richly, vividly, inescapably devious. And that's just one point.

vile work. Vile.

Bibi deserves what he gets: vicious, circularly deceptive support from people who think he's going to hell; offhanded assistance in damaging his own country from reptilian American conservatives who are perfectly happy to damage their own country just to satisfy their own chorus of dupes and bigots; and the admiring bleats of chest-beating cowards and Cheneyesque chickenhawks who imagine that the Mossad would welcome them with flowers.

Vile.

Ice9

teresa

Truthtriumphs wrote,

//You demonstrate your profound ignorance of the dynamics of[the six day] war....and much else besides.
The six day war was won DESPITE the Auschwitz borders, because of the master stroke of taking Nasser by surprise by destroying his air fleet on the ground at the start of the war.
Otherwise, the outcome would likely have been very different//

Matters little how the war was won - it was won, from within your so-called 'Auschwitz borders'. Such a war could be won again, but - of course - the same war would not be fought today. Military technology has moved on somewhat. Israel is militarily secure - a nuclear power - and enjoys the patronage of the United States, which would not stand by in the event of an existential threat.

//Israel's victory was little short of a miracle//

Well, no. It wasn't. A pre-emptive strike was a bold move and one that left the Arab forces on the back foot. No sign at all of Israel's Arab neighbours planning a rerun any time in the future - troubles of their own closer to home.

//Go and learn some history!//

I have - and very interesting it has been, too.

PS The expression 'Auschwitz borders' is new to me. I find it objectionable, actually, and wonder if it is in general usage in Israel. In what possible way can the situation of those confined and murdered in Auschwitz be compared to that of Israel, which has succeeded for over 60 years in defending itself and expanding its territory in the process?

teresa

//There is no argument against the fact that many of them lived in the land called Palestine, but having an address in a particular neighborhood in the past isn't a basis to create a nation//

Are you saying that not constituting a 'nation' as you put it gives people no rights over the land they inhabit?

Herzen

Truthtriumphs
May 23rd, 2011 9:13pm

"C.Gee majestically and comprehensively put you in your place."

I have read his stuff with more care and attention than it deserves. Could you point me to the relevants bits?

(And could you also confirm that you are applying post-1945 international law to the Arab conquest of North Africa in what century? but not to Israel now.

And the Zionist travesty of the Mandate in preference to the interpretation of the League of Nations, the UN, the ICJ...)

Gilbert Belwether

Sure, the 1967 borders are indefensible. A world-class military superpower with nuclear weapons would be in constant peril of destruction at the hands of a Palestinian state without an army.

Even putting aside this absurdity, the "indefensible borders" argument is a transparent canard: as a glance at the map will show, annexing the parts of the West Bank that Israel says it's holding out for - Ariel, Maale Adumim, etc. - would not move the border one inch further from the main Israeli population centers. In fact it would make the border more convoluted and therefore more difficult to defend, not less. "Security", as usual, is just a pretext for more land grabbing.

Gilbert Belwether

The chief threat to Israel's survival as a Jewish state is precisely the policies of Netanyahu's government, which Melanie so fervently supports. There are only two possible formulas for resolving this conflict: a two-state solution or a one-state solution. Opposing the former means supporting the latter. In a single binational state, Jews would at present form a slight majority, but before too long the Arab population would overtake them, and then bye-bye Jewish state. Anyone concerned with Israel's survival as a Jewish state should see Netanyahu and his supporters as their worst enemy, and should be pushing the two-state solution day and night rather than doing their best to kill it.

Mark

Smart lady...let's hope somebody on Bibi's staff reads Ms. Phillips.

Truthtriumphs

Herzen
May 23rd, 2011 10:26pm
Truthtriumphs
May 23rd, 2011 9:13pm

"C.Gee majestically and comprehensively put you in your place."

"I have read his stuff with more care and attention than it deserves. Could you point me to the relevants bits?"

It's all relevant.

I refuse to engage with you any further...it's a waste of time.

Adam B.

teresa, it is profoundly stupid and reckless to claim that because Israel won in 1967, there is no problem returning to those lines (they were never borders) because, well, Israel could win again if attacked. Israel won despite the odds stacked against her, through a brilliant pre-emptive strike which wiped out the Egyptian airforce in the first three hours of the war. Without that, and the consequent air superiority, the ground war may have looked very different (as it did in '73). Counting on such a miraculous occurrence again - well, would you accept such a risk for you and your family's survival?

Incidentally. regarding those lines, what do you think should happen to the Old City of Jerusalem, including the Jewish and Armenian Quarters? After all, they were taken from Jordan in 1967 - Jordan which had ethnically cleansed or killed every last Jew in the ancient Jewish Quarter, and throughout all territory they grabbed in 1948. Jordan then systematically dynamited every ancient synagogue, and desecrated the Jewish cemetery on the Mount of Olives. During the 20 years they had Jerusalem, no Jew was given access to worship in their holiest sites (unlike today, when there is free access for all faiths under Israeli sovereignty), and in 20 years not one single Arab leader went to see Jerusalem - obviously because it was so important to them. So why should the Jews give up their holiest sites?

In addition, one wonders why you think aggressors should be rewarded with getting back what they lost through their aggression. Do you campaign for the return of all German lands to Germany, post -world war 2 - and the return of those refugees? If not, why not?

Truthtriumphs

Gilbert Belwether
May 23rd, 2011 10:37pm

"The chief threat to Israel's survival as a Jewish state is precisely the policies of Netanyahu's government, which Melanie so fervently supports. There are only two possible formulas for resolving this conflict: a two-state solution or a one-state solution. Opposing the former means supporting the latter. In a single binational state, Jews would at present form a slight majority, but before too long the Arab population would overtake them, and then bye-bye Jewish state."

Problem is that the Pals want their own state, but they also demand that Israel takes in all 4.5 million "refugees" and their descendants, so the two state solution is no solution.
Thought you would know that.

Truthtriumphs

May 23rd, 2011 10:19pm

"There is no argument against the fact that many of them lived in the land called Palestine, but having an address in a particular neighborhood in the past isn't a basis to create a nation".

That perfectly describes the situation vis a vis the Palestinians in the geographical area known as Palestine.

Truthtriumphs

Gilbert Belwether
May 23rd, 2011 10:27pm

"Sure, the 1967 borders are indefensible. A world-class military superpower with nuclear weapons would be in constant peril of destruction at the hands of a Palestinian state without an army".

And you know well that Israel would never use them, no matter what the provocation from the nation ruled by thugs and bandits.

John Edwards

Obama did not go far enough but the restatement of what was American policy at the time of Resolution 242 is welcome. The basis of a peace deal remains what it has been for some years. A two state settlement based on the 1967 borders with reciprocal and mutually agreed land swaps. The original American position referred to "minor and mutual" changes which is preferable to the disingenuous reference to demographic changes on the ground (as if the colonisation of East Jerusalem and the West Bank wasn't deliberate).

Plus a just resolution to the refugee question. In practice this is likely to be a financial settlement.

Of course the Palestinian State will need to be contiguous and this is where land swaps in exchange for Israel keeping SOME of the settlements will be necessary.

Obama specifically did not mention the question of East Jerusalem which is of course part of the Occupied Palestinian Territories nor did he set out a timetable for negotiations.

But at least the reference to a two state settlement based on the 1967 gives some sense of reality to the discussion.

It needs to be remembered that having secure and recognised frontiers applies to all the states in the region including the putative Palestinian state not just Israel.

GaryL

teresa

This was the question -
"Why is the right of Palestinian exiles not the same as Jewish exiles?"

The answer is that there is no equivalence between their historic relationship with the land. If you think that implies they have no rights at all, that's your own business. It's not what I wrote. The question was only asking why their rights are different.

Truthtriumphs

teresa
May 23rd, 2011 10:02pm
Truthtriumphs wrote,

"The six day war was won DESPITE the Auschwitz borders, because of the master stroke of taking Nasser by surprise by destroying his air fleet on the ground at the start of the war.
Otherwise, the outcome would likely have been very different".

"Matters little how the war was won - it was won, from within your so-called 'Auschwitz borders'."

No military historian would agree with that risible comment.

"PS The expression 'Auschwitz borders' is new to me. I find it objectionable, actually, and wonder if it is in general usage in Israel. In what possible way can the situation of those confined and murdered in Auschwitz be compared to that of Israel, which has succeeded for over 60 years in defending itself and expanding its territory in the process?"

Then you are out of touch....it's been around a long time.
Here's your answer...you clearly need to study much more history before you sound off from your position of ignorance.

When Abba Eban, appeared at the United Nations following the Six Day war, Israel's foreign minister, he described the fragility of Israel's 1949-1967 map as Israel's "Auschwitz" lines.

Abba Eban, who died on November 17, 2002, will forever be remembered as Israel's most articulate foreign minister

The following statement by Abba Eban was cited in the Jerusalem Post of August 18, 1995 by Jerusalem Post columnist Moshe Kohn:

"We have openly said that the map will never again be the same as on June 4, 1967. For us, this is a matter of security and of principles. The June map is for us equivalent to insecurity and danger. I do not exaggerate when I say that it has for us something of a memory of Auschwitz. We shudder when we think of what would have awaited us in the circumstances of June, 1967, if we had been defeated; with Syrians on the mountain and we in the valley, with the Jordanian army in sight of the sea, with the Egyptians who hold our throat in their hands in Gaza. This is a situation which will never be repeated in history."

I should have thought the analogy obvious...Israel is a sliver of land surrounded by genocidal enemies.
Any lapse in her vigilance would result in another holocaust of the Jewish people.
As Nasrallah, head of Hezbollah so chillingly put it:--
It's good that the Jews all gather in one place...saves us the trouble of going after them worldwide.

Truthtriumphs

Teresa@9.41pm

"True, the Arabs didn't all leave but I doubt that many Jewish Israelis positively welcome their presence in the Jewish state. They are discriminated against, of course - why wouldn't they be given the circumstances?"

Which is why the Israeli Arabs enjoy positions in every walk of Israeli life....including the Arab judge who headed the team in the Supreme Court which found the Israeli President, Moshe Katsav, guilty of rape.
Imagine an equivalent scenario in an Arab country.
You know nothing about Israeli treatment of Arabs, but just repeat the mantras you hear which you find so appealing.

"Not sure it is any jstification for favouring the claim to land of a community 2,000 years in diaspora in favour of one just 60 years into their exile, though."

Except that, as you well know, there has been a continuous Jewish presence in the Holy land for 2,000 years.
Your wilful distortion of history is a manifestation of your thinly veiled real agenda, which your dislike of Jewish self-determination in the Jews' ancient homeland exposes.

Gilbert Belwether

Truthtriumphs, if the "two state solution is no solution", do you support the one-state solution? If not, what is your alternative?

It's quite true that the refugee question is the hardest part of the conflict, more so than borders or Jerusalem. But a broadly acceptable compromise could almost certainly be found. (In the Olmert-Abbas talks, by the way, the PA negotiators did not in fact demand the return of all 4.5 million refugees and their descendants.) Israel took in a million Russians in the 1990s, most of whom had just as little in common linguistically or culturally with Israeli Jews as the refugees would have. It could easily absorb several hundred thousand Palestinians, especially with international help which would certainly be forthcoming. Such a compromise as part of a final status agreement could well receive broad support on both sides. It's worth a try in preference to perpetual war, don't you think?

As for the nukes, I certainly hope that Israel will never use them, but the point is that it is in about as much danger of being annihilated by a demilitarized Palestine as the UK is of being annihilated by Jersey. The "indefensible 1967 borders" canard can't be taken seriously.

C.Gee

“Obama is - truly - the best friend Israel has right now. In seeking to wake up a Likud-dominated polity that has, so far, done nothing but seek to embarrass him, he is getting Israel to look down the road as well and confront a situation that solid belligerence and sabre-rattling simply cannot cope with. It's time for Israel to get smart and play the cards it can play while it can play them to best advantage, something it's doing the opposite of right now.”

Obama shook his friend’s shoulder. “Wake up, Likud. It’s coming down the road.”
“Thanks, Bama. You’re a good friend. Hand me them sabres.”
“No, Lik, sabres are no damn good. Not for what is coming down that road.”
“Hand me my boxing gloves, Bama.”
“No, Lik, solid belligerence is no damn good. Not for what is coming down that road.”
“What I got to do then, Bama?”
“You gotta play cards, Lik. You gotta play them cards smart and you gotta play them fast. Before what’s coming down the road get’s here.”
“Right now, Bama?”
“Right now.”
“Who’s playing?“
“Me, myself, I, One, Bama and you, Lik.
“Bama, you think you’ll win this time?”
“You ain’t never gonna embarrass me again, Lik. Deal.”

william

"Netanyahu for once started to tell the west a few home truths about what it was doing", says Melanie.

But what exactly is "the west" doing? Nothing as far as I can see. Except not wholeheartedly supporting Israel (which has set itself up in the middle east and not "the west") and telling the Palestinians to piss off.

JohNW

"The peace you advocate, would result in the peace of the grave for Israel, and the certain demise of the Jewish state.
Is that what you would like to see.... not so much a solution as a "final solution"?

Well said, Truthtriumphs. I note that not one of the apologists for the Palimurderers ever confronts this inconvenient truth - the Palis' declared aim of the destruction of Israel. They dance and parse eloquently around all the issues, arguing the semantics between the respective meanings of "lines, borders and refugees" without ever acknowledging the crux of the matter - the Islamofascists' ceaseless demands that Israel shall be destroyed.

teresa

Gilbert Belwether wrote,

//There are only two possible formulas for resolving this conflict: a two-state solution or a one-state solution. Opposing the former means supporting the latter//

You'd think that, wouldn't you. But I've seen it seriously suggested that Arabs from Israel and the West Bank should be transferred to Jordan.

I agree that anyone challenging a two-state solution should state what they would prefer in its place.

aem

Truthtriumphs
May 23rd, 2011 6:46pm

I am staggered that you pretend no Palestinians were forced from their homes by the IDF and fired at if they tried to return; and that you think a careful selection of quotes and assiduous ignorance of others could possibly justify such denial. Your vaunted scientific education has clearly not fitted you for the task of trying to arrive at an accurate history of Israel's founding.

I also note that you have chosen a prudent silence rather than answer the questions put to you on a previous thread by one "Thomas" about your repeated reference to the size of the population of Palestine before the Mandate as if a justification for a Zionist state, and to the fact of Arab immigration. You have used these facts so very often that it ought not to be too much for you to explain yourself.

aem

It would appear C. Gee thinks his gifts extend beyond chopped logic and smears to..."humour". This is the "heavenly" champion the less gifted so rely on to answer the questions they can't.

Truthtriumphs

Gilbert Belwether
May 24th, 2011 1:45am

"As for the nukes, I certainly hope that Israel will never use them, but the point is that it is in about as much danger of being annihilated by a demilitarized Palestine as the
UK is of being annihilated by Jersey. The "indefensible 1967 borders" canard can't be taken seriously".

Your thought processes are somewhat wanting.
Are you really positing the idea that short of nucear weapons, Israel has nothing to fear from conventional weapons.
Do you know anything about today's conventional warfare?
People like you were screaming about the "devastation" that Israel brought to bear on Gaza, and that was when she carefully targeted ordnance.
Increasingly sophisticated weaponry is being smuggled into Gaza, from Iran, which will be, already is, enabling Tel Aviv, to be in range.
A combat aircraft can cross Israel today in two minutes from the Jordan river to the Mediterranean sea.

Are you really saying that Israel has nothing to fear from conventional warfare, that normal life could continue under the sort of bombardment that, say, Iraq experienced from the US and UK?
The Arabs would have it in their power to bring normal life to an end, as, indeed, they have in Sderot....a situation untroubled by the likes of you.

I have a suggestion for you.
Instead of hectoring Israel from the safety of your keyboard, take yourself off to Gaza, or the "moderate" powerbrokers in the West Bank, and ask them why, if they really want a peaceful resolution to the conflict, they pump out the vilest, crude propaganda about Jews and Israel in their media, why they have cartoon characters for toddlers advocating the destruction of Israel, why they teach children in schools that they will soon conquer Israel, and take back Tel Aviv, Haifa etc. and show maps without Israel, why they laud suicide bombers and terrorists for their martydom, and have ceremonies naming town squares after them, why they lie about the historic connection of Judaism to the Holy land and why they do nothing but instil hatred into the hearts of their citizens, not just for Isarel, but Jews generally.
Then ask them what they mean when they talk of peace with Israel, is it a real peace or the peace of the grave.....for Israel, that is.

My advice to Netanyahu, would be that until such time as the Palestinians and their supporters behave as though they genuinely mean peace, and clear up the ordure in their backyard, he should say ariverderci to "peace talks" and secure Israel's future by not ceding another inch of territory, and strengthening Israel militarily.
Israel needs to have the military edge in order to survive.
And I wouldn't care what Obama thinks....Israel is a very useful all to the West.

Steve

It pains me to hear pro-Palestinian individual's banter on about how Israeli soldiers forced Palestinians from their hones in 1948 in a war which was started by several nations intent in destroying the newly formed state. Had this war not been started the story on the ground might be very different today. I am not here to justify aggression on either side but to simply state a few facts. When Britian left the land, Israel declared independence. Several neighbouring countries launched an attack on the newly formed state and lost. Many people were displaced as a result of the Arab launched war. In 1967 they lost again. It is the story of David & Goliath. Israel won.

teresa

Truthtriumphs,

Always keen to learn something new I followed up your explanation of the expression 'Auschwitz borders' and, true enough, Abba Eban coined the phrase. A google found me this article as well, which was very interesting. I had an idea that 'Auschwitz borders' might be a right-wing dog-whistle expression and so it seems. But the article explains clearly why holding on to the occupied territories is no way forward for Israel if it wishes to remain a democratic Jewish state. Can't argue with the stats.
uphttp://www.haaretz.com/print-edition/opinion/auschwitz-borders-are-here-1.328550

Steve

Teresa,

"...But I've seen it seriously suggested that Arabs from Israel and the West Bank should be transferred to Jordan..."

If this troubles you, then please explain why the fact that no Jew will be allowed to remain in Palestine apparently doesn't.

Can you really not see your double standards at work here?

Herzen

Truthtriumphs
May 23rd, 2011 11:29pm
How easy you make it for yourself. You make absurd and false assertions. You insult those who point out that your assertions are absurd and false. And when the questioning gets too much for you, you retreat into prudent silence or threaten to unleash the school bully. And who do you threaten us with? C. Gee, a (marginally) more sophisticated version of yourself, who, when his sophistry and insults prove insufficient to divert attention from the absurdity of his claims, resorts to what he clearly thinks the ultimate in school bullies - he tells us to read Howard Grief, who is custodian of ultimate truth. It would be so much simpler, if your case was strong, to answer the questions put to you.

Truthtriumphs

teresa
May 24th, 2011 12:02pm
Truthtriumphs,

"Always keen to learn something new I followed up your explanation of the expression 'Auschwitz borders' and, true enough, Abba Eban coined the phrase. A google found me this article as well, which was very interesting. I had an idea that 'Auschwitz borders' might be a right-wing dog-whistle expression and so it seems. But the article explains clearly why holding on to the occupied territories is no way forward for Israel if it wishes to remain a democratic Jewish state. Can't argue with the stats.
uphttp://www.haaretz.com/print-edition/opinion/auschwitz-borders-are-here-1.328550"

As a rule of thumb, any advice forthcoming from the pages of Ha'aretz, is the path to Israel committing national suicide, and best avoided.
That's why it is so beloved of the Israel/Jew hating fraternity.
It's Israel's very own Guardian.

aem

If Israel's military men ever use the phrase "Auschwitz border", they must do so with a private smirk. The idea that Israel's defence depends on this small bit of territory, which takes a missile how long to traverse?

No, the strategic military necessity is to have land to build settlements on, grow vines and olive groves etc. The strategic military necessity is to siphon off the water from the aquifers. The strategic military necessity is to imprison the Palestinians while colonising Palestine.

"Auschwitz border" epitomizes all that is obnoxious in Israeli propaganda.

Augustus

"I don’t know what strategic purpose Obama had in mind for addressing the Middle East impasse..."

Because didn't this president promote the concept of Democracy
in the ME? And won't he always be promoted as an outstanding orator and statesman by the state directed media? and the emptiness and naivete of his blathering will be hailed with awe and wonder, only to be forgotten after all the absurdity and illogical logic is used for as much advantage and leverage as possible by his propaganda bureau.

teresa

Steve

If you can refer to any statement I've made proposing or supporting a Jew-free Palestinian state, then please do. I object to Jewish settlements in occupied territory as this is a slow process of annexation by the back door. Were negotiations to result in a Palestinian state in the West Bank I would support the right of Jews to stay there as Palestinian citizens with all the rights that Arabs have in Israel. Illegal settlements can become legal.

teresa

Truth......

//As a rule of thumb, any advice forthcoming from the pages of Ha'aretz, is the path to Israel committing national suicide, and best avoided//

Haha - as I thought - peeeeeeeep!

//That's why it is so beloved of the Israel/Jew hating fraternity//

Is it? Had no idea. Is it published by non-Jews or Arabs or something? I aways thought it a Jewish publication.

//It's Israel's very own Guardian//

And why not. Israel must still have some people of the Left, after all the founding fathers of the nation were sort of socialists, weren't they?

Penny

Gilbert Belwether

You are assuming that Israel's only concern is a border between itself and a future Palestinian state.

Israel is either surrounded by, or in the vicinity of, states hostile to her existence. These are the states that have already attacked her more than once, and to which we might now reasonably add Iran.

Let us not forget that since the departure of the Mubarak, Iran has been allowed access to the Suez canal. That Iran subsequently sent a vessel through was not because it needed to, but because it was sending a message to Israel - and perhaps us, too.

Whilst the peace treaty with Jordan still holds, the 'Strong Horse' politics of the region coupled with the current unrest may change the status quo.

Similarly, the departure of Mubarak may jeopardise the peace treaty between Egypt and Israel.

I have provided a link to a short video which illustrates Israel's concerns regarding borders based on 1967 lines.

The video also illustrates how very easy it would be for any Palestinian, armed with the simplest of rockets, to reach Ben-Gurion airport.

Given Israel's past experience, the ever-present hostility and the fragility of the two peace treaties that it currently has,'67 borders leave Israel very vulnerable in a region in turmoil and where contenders will be vying for the position of 'strong horse'.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ytWmPqY8TE0

aem

This "Jew free" is another great propaganda wheeze. Israel has settled its citizens on land taken in war, which since the UN was founded is explicitly disallowed. Israel is required to remove its citizens from this land. It sets up a plaint about its opponents demanding to make the land "Jew free" (Juden frei, for those slow on the uptake).

Does Israel insist that, having taken all the prime land, it should keep it? Or is it willing to share some of it with the Palestinians? Or, perish the thought, leave not just isolated settlements but settlement "blocs" (another jolly wheeze)? Is it going to continue to divert the water supply to Israel or share it equitably with the Palestinians?

Perhaps the US should insist on a guarantee from the Palestinians that Jewish settlers will be permitted to become citizens of Palestine and permitted to continue to live in the settlements, where the properties of those who choose not to stay will be inhabited by Palestinians. Palestine would benefit from such a guarantee.

Then there would be none of this "Jew free" business, and the beginnings of an economic union that would make lasting peace possible.

aem

Steve
May 24th, 2011 11:35am
Ethnic cleansing is not a matter for banter.

Denial founded in ignorance that could easily be put right is not excusable.

Penny

Jonathan,

I think it was Bin Laden who first coined the phrase 'Strong Horse' and it is one which the West has to take on board.

I completely understand how, in your view, Obama is giving Israel the correct advice. But Obama is not used to Middle Eastern politics and by all he says and does, it shows.

'Strong Horse' politics is the way of things in the region and certain countries are jostling for the title. In my view these are Iran, Turkey and possibly Egypt. None of whom have a love affair with Israel.

The ME respects only strength and has left Israel alone only because she has clearly shown her strength in the past.

To any nation, or a brief unity of nations, wishing to prove their 'Strong Horse' credentials and in doing so, become the regional leader, Israel will be a temptation. An Israel, weakened by indefensible borders will be an even greater temptation.

None of us are privy to behind-scenes discussions between the West and the ME, but, bearing in mind our national interests, which include the Suez canal, I am at a loss to understand why we seek to weaken our only ally in the region.

As I said, Bin Laden was the first to condense the political style of the region into the two words 'Strong Horse', but Western authors have written about it. Once such author, who I think you may also be able to listen to on YouTube, is Lee Smith.

teresa

Doesn't look as if a couple of my posts today will be appearing. Apologies to Truth et al if not all your posts to me have received a reply - don't have the time or inclination to try and reproduce previous posts. That's the problem with moderated boards [not that my postings were anything but polite and to the point].

Thomas

Here is an apt description by Meron Benvenisti of what Netanyahu intends for the Palestinian state: "scattered, lacking any cohesive physical infrastructure, with no direct connection to the outside world, and limited to the height of its residential buildings and the depth of its graves. The airspace and the water resources will remain under Israeli control..."

And here is a summary by Neve Gordon (boo, hiss) of the principles on which a peace settlement has been available to the two sides for forty years or more (see also Uri Avinery, and any number of others):

1. Israel's full withdrawal to the 1967 border, with possible one-for-one land swaps so that ultimately the total amount of land that was occupied will be returned.

2. Jerusalem's division according to the 1967 borders, with certain land swaps to guarantee that each side has control over its own religious sites and large neighbourhoods.

Both these clauses entail the dismantling of Israeli settlements and the return of the Jewish settlers to Israel.

3. The acknowledgement of the right of return of all Palestinians, but with the following stipulation: while all Palestinians will be able to return to the fledgling Palestinian state, only a limited number agreed upon by the two sides will be allowed to return to Israel; those who cannot exercise this right or, alternatively, choose not to, will receive full compensation. (This compromise has been available for many years. See the Palestine Papers for a recent version.)

Netanyahu appears to be unable and unwilling (as a dyed-in-the-wool advocate of a Greater Israel, just like his father) to offer the Palestinians a two-state settlement as summarized and as required in UN Resolution 242. (Of course, Netanyahu is not alone. It has been Israeli policy since 1967.)

Creeping annexation is going to leave him with in effect a one-state solution.

How long then will Israel be able to sustain a democracy in which Israeli Jews are privileged, Israeli Arabs are second-class citizens, and the people of the occupied territories are effectively prisoners in their own land?

Netanyahu's answer appears to be, Indefinitely. So far, the US appears willing to continue to go along with Israel as it has since 1967. While this remains the case, Netanyahu is probably right.

All the noise here and elsewhere in Hasbara-land is just to ensure that the US stays in line (which it will as long as its strategists think it needs the military base in the region Israel in effect provides).

Penny

aem

"No, the strategic military necessity is to have land to build settlements on, grow vines and olive groves etc. The strategic military necessity is to siphon off the water from the aquifers. The strategic military necessity is to imprison the Palestinians while colonising Palestine".

This is a patently ridiculous and rather immature argument.

Do you seriously think Israel and its citizens are willing to see their husbands, sons and brothers die in military action simply to enable the planting of a few olive trees??

Do you seriously think the ordinary men, women and children of Israel are happy to put themselves at risk of war and suicide bombing to grow a few vines or build a few houses?

Israel's main source of water is not in the Palestinian territories either.

As Israel has given back territory won in war - some of which contained oil fields that provided a goodly portion of its energy needs, I would suggets that your 'colonising' argument doesn't hold up either.

Please, if you want to have a genuine understanding of what 'indefensible border' means and how this is NOT specific to a future state of Palestine, watch the video I have recommended in my post to Gilbert.

teresa

Thomas - When I look at the situation in Israel and the occupied territories I see it much as you do. If Netanyahu and his supporters here have a vision for the future I think they should spell it out. How do they see Israel in 50 years time? For my part I don't see how the policy they are pursuing could possibly lead to a positive outcome either for Israel or for the Palestinians.

C.Gee

“No, the strategic military necessity is to have land to build settlements on, grow vines and olive groves etc. The strategic military necessity is to siphon off the water from the aquifers. The strategic military necessity is to imprison the Palestinians while colonising Palestine.”

aem is in the process of writing Palestinian Studies for Dummies. The above quotation come from Chapter 2: Big Bad Wolf v. Red Riding Hood. It covers Israeli militarism and colonial exploitation of the indigenous people. Chapter 1, covering the war of independence, is entitled: Big Bad Wolf Huffs and Puffs. The Preface explains that the light-hearted bantering tone is merely to encourage the reader to enter into critical examination of the issues: identifying Bad (Israel) and Good (the reader). The author takes the reader through the thickets of lies, propaganda and disguises, so that by the time the reader has finished the book, he will be able to recognize Israel as Bad Wolf, even when Bad appears as Grandmother Palestine (having first eaten her.) Simple, but meaningful, aem’s book cuts through the fogs of controversy with a laser beam.

Herzen will be quoted on the back cover: “ ‘Palestinian Studies for Dummies’ is all you need to bash schoolyard bullies like Howard Grief. Big Bad Wolf’s days are numbered!”

JOHN ROOSEVELT

JohnEdwards: "Obama specifically did not mention the question of East Jerusalem which is of course part of the Occupied Palestinian Territories"

You may as well say that Jeddah is part of "Occupied Israeli teritory" becaus ethe Saudis occuppy it and Israel now claims it as theirs.

Jerusalem and the West Bank as you well know was land occupied by and annexed by Jordan, when Israel defeated that state in the War of '67. That Jordan, once ousted from it, alowed the Palestinians to start the trope that it was now theirs is all fine and dandy but not anything we should be compelled to buy in just because it is repeated by the anti Zionists ad nauseam.

The Jews have alwasy been a majority in jeruslaem.

The notion that there is some moral or legal obligation on the Jews to cede it, is therefore a nonsense.

The arabs desecrated the city when they ethnically cleansed it of Jews after the ceasefire in 1949. They should not only never be given it back, but they should be hed to account at the Hague for their actions - anyway.

aem

C.Gee
May 24th, 2011 4:31pm

Ooh, look! C. Gee still thinks himself something of a humourist.

If he can be so wrong about this, what chance he's right about things less silly?

aem

Penny
May 24th, 2011 4:00pm
If it is purely about the defence of the rest of Israel, why put Israeli citizens at risk by settling them there?

C. Gee

“Netanyahu appears to be unable and unwilling (as a dyed-in-the-wool advocate of a Greater Israel, just like his father) to offer the Palestinians a two-state settlement as summarized and as required in UN Resolution 242. (Of course, Netanyahu is not alone. It has been Israeli policy since 1967.)”

Netanyahu in his speech to Congress today has just reaffirmed the goal of a two-state settlement. He has also explained why peace has been so elusive.

Resolution 242 does not require a Palestinian state. Palestine is not mentioned at all. That was the reason why the “Palestinians” rejected it.

The territories from which Israeli forces were to withdraw bordered Syria, Lebanon, Jordan and Egypt. These were the States, together with Israel, which were to live in secure and recognized boundaries according to the Resolution.

"Secure and recognized" means something, though it hardly matters. I think that any rational politician or lawyer would recognize that Resolution 242 should be rescinded, as it is no longer relevant or valid.

Simon

Miss Philips appears to believe that Israel should, in effect, annex at least some of the territory occupied in 1067. She does not however explain what should happen to the Arab population of any territory annexed by Israel. As far as I can see there would be only three options. First, to grant them full and equal status as Israeli citizens. Secondly, to deny them citizenship which would effectively be a form of apartheid. Thirdly, to simply expel them. Which course of action does Miss Philips support?

Truthtriumphs

In honour of Bob Dylan's 70th birthday, I thought I'd reprise the "Neighborhood Bully".

I especially dedicate it to all the lovers of justice, fairness, integrity and decency on this blog, particularly Blades, Herzen, sleeping dolls, aem (aka aelle), Rick, Edwards, Tilly, teresa and anyone else for whom the cap fits, for whom the existence of Israel and the Jews remains the one outstanding obstacle to peace and harmony on the planet.

It remains as true and potent today as when Dylan wrote it in 1983.

Enjoy!

Well, the neighborhood bully, he’s just one man
His enemies say he’s on their land
They got him outnumbered about a million to one
He got no place to escape to, no place to run
He’s the neighborhood bully

The neighborhood bully just lives to survive
He’s criticized and condemned for being alive
He’s not supposed to fight back, he’s supposed to have thick skin
He’s supposed to lay down and die when his door is kicked in
He’s the neighborhood bully

The neighborhood bully been driven out of every land
He’s wandered the earth an exiled man
Seen his family scattered, his people hounded and torn
He’s always on trial for just being born
He’s the neighborhood bully

Well, he knocked out a lynch mob, he was criticized
Old women condemned him, said he should apologize.
Then he destroyed a bomb factory, nobody was glad
The bombs were meant for him. He was supposed to feel bad
He’s the neighborhood bully

Well, the chances are against it and the odds are slim
That he’ll live by the rules that the world makes for him
’Cause there’s a noose at his neck and a gun at his back
And a license to kill him is given out to every maniac
He’s the neighborhood bully

He got no allies to really speak of
What he gets he must pay for, he don’t get it out of love
He buys obsolete weapons and he won’t be denied
But no one sends flesh and blood to fight by his side
He’s the neighborhood bully

Well, he’s surrounded by pacifists who all want peace
They pray for it nightly that the bloodshed must cease
Now, they wouldn’t hurt a fly. To hurt one they would weep
They lay and they wait for this bully to fall asleep
He’s the neighborhood bully

Every empire that’s enslaved him is gone
Egypt and Rome, even the great Babylon
He’s made a garden of paradise in the desert sand
In bed with nobody, under no one’s command
He’s the neighborhood bully

Now his holiest books have been trampled upon
No contract he signed was worth what it was written on
He took the crumbs of the world and he turned it into wealth
Took sickness and disease and he turned it into health
He’s the neighborhood bully

What’s anybody indebted to him for?
Nothin’, they say. He just likes to cause war
Pride and prejudice and superstition indeed
They wait for this bully like a dog waits to feed
He’s the neighborhood bully

What has he done to wear so many scars?
Does he change the course of rivers? Does he pollute the moon and stars?
Neighborhood bully, standing on the hill
Running out the clock, time standing still
Neighborhood bully

Truthtriumphs

teresa
May 24th, 2011 4:12pm

"Thomas - When I look at the situation in Israel and the occupied territories I see it much as you do. If Netanyahu and his supporters here have a vision for the future I think they should spell it out. How do they see Israel in 50 years time? For my part I don't see how the policy they are pursuing could possibly lead to a positive outcome either for Israel or for the Palestinians."

Your comment above would be more pertinent and relevant were you to change it slightly to:--
"If Abbas/Hamas and their supporters here have a vision for the future I think they should spell it out. How do they see Israel in 50 years time? For my part I don't see how the policy they are pursuing could possibly lead to a positive outcome either for Israel or for the Palestinians."

Now it makes more sense, in the light of the jihadist, genocidal and hateful sentiments they express towards the Jewish state, I'm sure you'll agree.

C.Gee

“...all Palestinians will be able to return to the fledgling Palestinian state, only a limited number agreed upon by the two sides will be allowed to return to Israel; those who cannot exercise this right or, alternatively, choose not to, will receive full compensation. (This compromise has been available for many years. See the Palestine Papers for a recent version.)”

What is meant by “has been available”? Of course it has. It is fundamental to a negotiated “two-state solution” - or why bother with such a thing? But what those Palestine Papers do not show is that the details of the compromise (what is the “limited number” to return ?) were agreed upon and the Israelis turned it down. The Palestinian equivocations extend from the peace discussions themselves into their discussions about the discussions. I relish the attempts by Palestinians and their western apologists to turn the “generous offer” into something of Palestinian making, and to blame the lack of a peace agreement upon Israeli refusal of it. It is a reprise of the usual pattern of inversion: whatever is good PR for Israel, appropriate it for the Palestinians. What is amusing is that the Palestinians want to receive both the sympathy given to sacrificial victims, and the admiration and respect given to winners. This leads invariably to ridiculous contortions. “We gave away our inviolable rights. Got nothing in return, and the Israelis walked away. We will never again give away our inviolable rights. We will fight on.” So they appropriate the David/Goliath myth. But they seem unaware that David won - with one stone. After thousands of stones, bombs, rockets, screams of “No fair”, calling in help from other Davids, when will the Palestinian David give up? When the last photo has been taken.

You ask, “How long then will Israel be able to sustain a democracy in which Israeli Jews are privileged, Israeli Arabs are second-class citizens, and the people of the occupied territories are effectively prisoners in their own land?”

The question itself can only be asked by someone living under a delusion (the word “effectively” is a give-away) that the proper arrangement should be an Arab state sustaining a dictatorship in which Arabs are privileged, Jews are second-class citizens, or banned, and the people of the police state are effectively subject to the whims of their government. And so the short answer is: For as long as the Palestinian Arabs continue in their delusions that they are the true Jews.

Truthtriumphs

Simon
May 24th, 2011 6:38pm

"Miss Philips appears to believe that Israel should, in effect, annex at least some of the territory occupied in 1067. She does not however explain what should happen to the Arab population of any territory annexed by Israel. As far as I can see there would be only three options. First, to grant them full and equal status as Israeli citizens. Secondly, to deny them citizenship which would effectively be a form of apartheid. Thirdly, to simply expel them. Which course of action does Miss Philips support?"

Could you and your supporters on this blog tell us which course of action Abbas/Hamas should take towards any Jewish inhabitants of the future state of Palestine?
As far as I can see there would be only three options. First, to grant them full and equal status as Palestinian citizens. Secondly, to deny them citizenship which would effectively be a form of apartheid. Thirdly, to simply expel them. Which course of action do you advocate?

Can't wait to hear your solution!

aem

Truthtriumphs
May 24th, 2011 6:54pm

And what is that resounding silence?

It is Truthtriumphs carefully avoiding answering any questions. Bravely done. Heart of a lion; intellect of a ...

Penny

aem

I am open to perhaps misunderstanding the gist of your comment but it seems to me that in asking this question, you reveal perhaps more about what you don't know about the conflict than what you do know.

Do you know where the vast majority of settlements are located? Do you understand the overall picture vis a vis indefensible borders and the temptation they pose in a Strong Horse politically- inclined region?

There is a narrow and immediate picture of the targets available to a future Palestinian state that does not recognise Israel. Such as the ability of a relatively primitive rocket to target not only civilians but also Ben Gurion airport.

But in my view, there is a much wider picture, and that is the risk that an even slightly weakened Israel may well prove a temptation not only to the Palestinians but also to those who attacked her before.

You also use the word 'settled' in a context that I am not sure I quite understand.

If I took your comment as it stood I rather think it is as disadvantageous to your argument as you believe it is to mine.

teresa

Trth.... wrote

//Your comment above would be more pertinent and relevant were you to change it slightly to........et al//

No it would not. There is no mystery about what Palestinians want and no mystery about why they aren't getting what they want. But I don't see where present Israeli policy is supposed to be leading the nation in the long term. You're a supporter of the government, I presume. What do you think might be the government's vision of Israel in 50 years time?

Thomas

We have the great humourist now trying to make capital out of the fact that everyone in 1967 was happy to pretend that there were no Palestinians whose state had been divided up by Israel, Jordan, and Egypt, with the blessing of the US and Britain.

Now everyone, except Israel and the US, is able to recognize belatedly that the people of Palestine do indeed have the right to self-government.

And everyone except Israel, supported as ever by the US, has given back the territory illegally acquired from Palestine.

Israel won't, of course, give back what it took in 1947. It won't even give back what it took in 1967 and was in principle willing to give back to Jordan. (It might concede a few stirrings of civic government around Ramallah, or wherever.)

And we are to take seriously Mr. Netanyahu's commitment to a two-state solution (as delineated by Meron Benvenisti, or - if you prefer the thuggish version - by Avigdor).

And our great humourist attempts to make capital out of this? Better stick to trying to crack the humour thing - (slightly) more chance of success.

teresa

Simon asked,

//Which course of action does Miss Philips support?//

Might I extend that question to any one of Mel's sizeable fan club. Plenty of rejectionism on offer on these threads but precious little vision. And yet I'm sure most have a narrative in mind.

Gilbert Belwether

The oft-repeated "no Jews will be allowed in Palestine" claim is just one more canard. The PA negotiators themselves proposed to Olmert's team that settlers would be allowed to remain in Hebron and elsewhere under Palestinian sovereignty. They are not demanding a Judenrein Palestine. Check your facts before spreading more disinformation, everyone.

Truthtriumphs

teresa
May 24th, 2011 7:32pm
Trth.... wrote

"//Your comment above would be more pertinent and relevant were you to change it slightly to........et al//

No it would not. There is no mystery about what Palestinians want and no mystery about why they aren't getting what they want"

Quite so....they want it all...they're very honest about it.
Abbas is on record as saying that any peace agreement will only be temporary, and that the future state of Palestine will run from the river to the sea.
That's why the map of the ME is shown without Israel.
They are not getting what they want because post-holocaust Jews now refuse to oblige their tormentors, and expire on demand.

I suspect that's the reason for your angry tone...oh, those damned Jews again, why don't they just.....?

Gilbert Belwether

Penny, the neighboring hostile countries you mention have not attacked Israel since 1973. Israel's military is generations ahead of any other country in the region and is backed up by nuclear weapons. Israel has never been in less danger of a conventional attack by Arab armies. Such an attack would be suicidal and the Arab leaders know this very well. In any case the border between Israel and a demilitarized Palestine has no bearing on the supposed threats from Egypt or Syria.

I've watched the rather apocalyptic video you link to and can only conclude that you're opposed to any Palestinian state, '67 borders or not. If Israel is to keep the Jordan Valley and the mountain ridge, as well as (presumably) Greater Jerusalem, Ariel, Maale Adumim, etc., there's simply nowhere left to put a Palestinian state. The only way to ensure Ben Gurion airport is out of range of rockets from Palestine is not to have a Palestine: if rockets from Gaza will soon be able to reach Tel Aviv, as we're told, then they'll also be able to reach BG airport from Ramallah, no matter where you put the border.

Adam B.

Gilbert Belwether, you want facts? Try this one: any Palestinian selling land or any property to a Jew is subject to the death penalty under Palestinian Authority law.

Yet you contend that the Jews would be welcome to stay. In addition, how does this tally with the new Hamas-Fatah partnership? (Hamas, may I remind you, has in its charter a call to commit genocide against every last Jew on earth). But they'd be welcome to stay? When the Jews left Gaza, the first thing the Palestinians did was destroy the synagogue and smash up all the greenhouses (bought for Palestinian use by a naive Jewish philanthropist), which could have provided the basis for an economy. They hate Jews so much, even their greenhouses need to be smashed.

But they'd be welcome to stay.

Pro-Palestinian, antisemitic activists are kidnapped and murdered by Palestinians. But the Jews would be welcome to stay?

What planet are you on?

Gilbert Belwether

Truthtriumphs, it's rather rich to be accused by you of "hectoring from the safety of my keyboard", I must say.

"Are you really saying that Israel has nothing to fear from conventional warfare" - yes, see my reply to Penny.

If you think that any Arab country has the capacity to bombard Israel in the way the US/UK bombarded Iraq, or that this is comparable to the rocket attacks on Sderot (!), well, you're living in an alternate universe, that's all. The only country in the region capable of carrying out such bombardments (and which actually does so) is Israel.

Adam B.

Teresa, perhaps you would respond to my question about Jerusalem? What do you think should happen to the Jewish quarter and Judaism's holiest sites? And what about the ethnic Germans of the Sudetenland and Prussia? And what about the Auschwitz borders, making Israel nine miles wide, (you may wish to revise your ignorant statement that Abba Eban being right-wing)whilst Nato planners talk of having 300 km strategic depth?

I look forward to your replies.

C.Gee

Gilbert Belwether:

Ahmed Qureia, speaking in the context of land swap negotiation with Livni, did say that the Jews in certain settlements around Jerusalem could stay as dual citizens of Palestine and Israel - but not those in the “heart of the territories”. In other words, he will not accept the annexation of large settlements around Jerusalem by Israel, but, given the difficulty of evacuating the Jews from such sites, he will accept them as citizens of Palestine. See http://www.haaretz.com/print-edition/features/pa-settlers-can-become-palestinian-citizens-1.276727

But Abbas has more recently denied that any Jews would be entitled to live in Palestine.

Please cite your source that shows a Jew-free Palestine to be a “canard”.

Truthtriumphs

aem, also known as aelle,
May 24th, 2011 12:48pm

"If Israel's military men ever use the phrase "Auschwitz border", they must do so with a private smirk. The idea that Israel's defence depends on this small bit of territory, which takes a missile how long to traverse?"

So you admit that Israel's territory is small...that's progress in the right direction.
'Miniscule' might better describe it.

"No, the strategic military necessity is to have land to build settlements on, grow vines and olive groves etc. The strategic military necessity is to siphon off the water from the aquifers."

You forgot to mention that Israel is controlling US foreign policy, sorry, the whole world's foreign policy, that it poisons the Pals' water, that it kills Pal children for their blood for the Passover ritual, and much else besides.
There's quite a bit of the Protocols of the Elders of Zion that you haven't yet copied and pasted for our benefit.

'"Auschwitz border" epitomizes all that is obnoxious in Israeli propaganda'.

For you, because you'd rather forget it, Auschwitz, that is.

"The strategic military necessity is to imprison the Palestinians while colonising Palestine."

Funny that, if they're being imprisoned and maltreated by those wicked Israelis, why would they want to stay under Israeli jurisdiction?
Curious, isn't it, that the Darfurian (Muslim) refugees spurn all the 57 Muslim states and trek 1,000 miles over harsh terrain, often to be used as taget practice by Egyptian soldiers at the border, just to enter Israel?
aelle, why don't you take yourself off from your comfortable pile in the Hampstead Garden Suburb, and disabuse those naive Pals, and Darfurians and a whole host of other would-be African immigrants, of those wicked Israelis?
You might be doing Israel a favour, eh, what?

Truthtriumphs

Thomas
May 24th, 2011 3:44pm

"And here is a summary by Neve Gordon (boo, hiss) of the principles on which a peace settlement has been available to the two sides for forty years or more (see also Uri Avinery, and any number of others):"
There's a few more luminaries you could quote who want to see the end of the Jewish state...Gilad Atzmon, Noam Chomsky, Shlomo Sands, Ilan Pappe...spoilt for choice, aren't you?

Truthtriumphs

Penny
May 24th, 2011 7:29pm
aem/aelle

"I am open to perhaps misunderstanding the gist of your comment but it seems to me that in asking this question, you reveal perhaps more about what you don't know about the conflict than what you do know."

Ah, Penny, you're such a decent person!
You might understand aem/aelle better were you to be aware of a previous post of his.
He feels that his 'nice area of north london' is 'occupied territory' in rather the same way as Israel 'occupies' Palestine, ie the area of Israel-proper.

So now do you understand that it isn't what he does or doesn't know, rather, it is to do with his weltanschauung?

Truthtriumphs

aem/aelle
May 24th, 2011 7:24pm
Truthtriumphs
May 24th, 2011 6:54pm

"And what is that resounding silence?"

Didn't you enjoy Dylan's little ditty?
You could introduce it to one of the Suburb's genteel reading groups....maybe the Quakers up at Central Square.
It would go down a treat...try it!

Truthtriumphs

Gilbert Belwether
May 24th, 2011 7:44pm

"The oft-repeated "no Jews will be allowed in Palestine" claim is just one more canard. The PA negotiators themselves proposed to Olmert's team that settlers would be allowed to remain in Hebron and elsewhere under Palestinian sovereignty. They are not demanding a Judenrein Palestine. Check your facts before spreading more disinformation, everyone."

Oh dear, who hasn't checked his facts?

Abbas vows: No room for Israelis in Palestinian state
By KHALED ABU TOAMEH
12/25/2010 17:33

Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas announced on Saturday that when a Palestinian state is established, it will have no Israelis in it.
“We have frankly said, and always will say: If there is an independent Palestinian state with Jerusalem as its capital, we won’t agree to the presence of one Israeli in it,” Abbas told reporters in Ramallah.

GaryL

Whatever happened to the idea that a solution for Palestinians should be part of a comprehensive peace that includes all Arab/Muslim states at war with Israel. That's the main theme of UN resolution 242.

Okey

Let's remember, too, that the operative UN Security Council Resolution 242, which was carried shortly after the 1967 war, makes no mention at all of either the 1949 or 1967 lines. [The Arab world and its leftist collaborators constantly invoke UN resolutions, but forget 242, or, at best, misrepresent it egregiously, and are not challenged]. 242 declares that Israel's negotiated borders must be "secure and recognised."
The 1949 armistice lines were neither: the Arabs constantly harassed Israel by shelling civilian communities and by despatching murder squads called "Arab freedom fighters."
And the Arab world persisted in its refusal to recognise not only lines on a map, but Israel's very right to exist.
It was only by a superhuman effort, which cost precious lives, that Israel managed to stave off the aggressors in 1967.
In any case, the international law regarding the Land, that was codified in the 1922 Mandate
should still constitute the starting point of any negotiations. Let us call these "the 1922 lines." Has President Obama ever heard of them?

Kermack

42,000 missles in the hands of Hizbolah alone Gilbert, stored in Towns & Villages. laser guided anti-missles with Hamas (now used against school buses because of 'Windbreaker') need I go on?

teresa

Truth.....

//I suspect that's the reason for your angry tone...oh, those damned Jews again, why don't they just.....?//

Kick up as much dust as you like to obscure the truth. You must think people can't read. Fact is, that anyone who cares to look will see that none of my messages are angry. Clearly you don't agree with them but that's another matter.

And all that huffing and puffing from you about the Pals. Is that to avoid sharing with us your own vision for Israel, which was my question? Still waiting for an answer.

teresa

//Teresa, perhaps you would respond to my question about Jerusalem?//

I'll give it a try, although the status of Jerusalem isn't the issue that most interests me as it's essentially a religious question.

//What do you think should happen to the Jewish quarter and Judaism's holiest sites?//

I see the status of Jerusalem as a matter for Jews and Arabs [Muslim and Christian] to negotiate for themselves - especially in the matter of religious sites. I'm not keen to see any city divided so would prefer it to be acknowledged as a unique world city, sacred to three faiths. I suppose an international status like the Vatican might be possible. Alone, amongst us here - I expect - I don't support Jerusalem as the capital city either of Israel or a future Palestine - again as recognition of its unique religious status.

//And what about the ethnic Germans of the Sudetenland and Prussia?//

What about them?

//And what about the Auschwitz borders, making Israel nine miles wide//

Been very well dealt with by others on this thread.

//(you may wish to revise your ignorant statement that Abba Eban being right-wing)//

Didn't say that. Not that ignorant - but you hope. I acknowledged the expression 'Auschwitz borders' was coined by him. I went on to say that the expression has been taken up by the right wing as a 'dog-whistle'. I did not say Eban was right wing himself. In fact, I seem to recall that he did not support the continuation of Israel's occupation of land conquered in 67.

//Whilst Nato planners talk of having 300 km strategic depth?//

Would hanging on to the West Bank achieve this? Don't think so.

aem

Truthtriumphs
May 25th, 2011 1:48am
Can we take it your ignominious silence on the questions you were asked will ensure that you do not again raise Palestine's population before the Mandate or immigration during the Mandate, since you are at a loss to explain why you raise them at all? Or does pusillanimous the flip side of shameless?

aem

C.Gee
May 24th, 2011 7:21pm
Our resident comedian might inadvertently and indirectly have touched on a serious point. This is not a bilateral matter. Israel is in breach of international law. It is for the international community to insist it observe the law, and, if it refuses, impose sanctions. Once Israel is in compliance with the law i.e. has withdrawn from the territory acquired by force in 1967 (no-one now expects it to comply with the law on territory acquired in 1947-8), then as a separate matter the question of Palestine can be negotiated. The Palestinians appear willing to accept that they will be reduced to 22% of Palestine. Israel does not appear willing to be content with 78%.

aem

Penny
May 24th, 2011 7:29pm
I do not understand what you are saying.

I said that, even if Israel's miltary position is precarious, the West Bank makes no difference. Perhaps it did in the days of chariots and infantry. Not in the days of supersonic jets and missiles.

If Israel's military position is indeed precarious, then it is hopeless and the West Bank is neither here nor there. Israel is the fourth or fifth strongest military power in the world and is supported to the hilt by the US. It is surrounded by military weaklings. If this is not sufficient to ensure its survival, the West Bank is not going to help. Making peace might help. It would shore up Israel's paltry miltary power. -Peace as set out by the UN, the Arab League, the Muslim states, the rest of the world, the Palestinians. Peace that would require Israel to withdraw from the West Bank, which it holds illegally.

You said that holding the West Bank had nothing to do with settlements, or agriculture, or exploiting resources, but was entirely a matter of military security. The West Bank, I took you to say, is necessary to the defence of Israel. Without this buffer, Israel would be in danger.

My question was, If the West Bank is a military buffer, to bear the brunt of any attack, why has Israel built settlements for its citizens in the West Bank, provided large subsidies to entice its citizens to live in the West Bank?

I think it is you should look at a map of the West Bank, the curious expansion of East Jerusalem (how long before it reaches the Jordan?), the settlement blocs, the settlers' agricultural land, the "military" areas where houses surprisingly spring up, the Palestinian-frei zones, the Palestinian-frei roads, the permanent roadblocks, the occupation of the Jordan Valley (purely military, but, look, there is prime agricultrual land, it would be a shame to let it go to waste).

aem

Truthtriumphs
May 25th, 2011 1:17am
What a tawdry little offering.

"So you admit that Israel's territory is small...that's progress in the right direction.
'Miniscule' might better describe it."

The territory we are discussing is the West Bank. I think we are all aware of Israel's geography. I am curious how far you wish to push your implied argument: Israel is small, so deserves the West Bank; Israel plus the West Bank is small, so deserves?...Palestine is a few miniscule enclaves, so Palestine deserves...?

Israel has an economic interest in keeping the West Bank. From this, you get to the Protocols - which is reaching for your dialectical pepper spray rather precipitately. Defending the obscenity of "Auschwitz borders" with the obscenity of accusing me of drawing on the Protocols is of course ridiculous but also distasteful.

But you can manage worse, can't you: "For you, because you'd rather forget it, Auschwitz, that is." This is grotesque.

You make one attempt to address what was said to you: "if they're being imprisoned and maltreated by those wicked Israelis, why would they want to stay under Israeli jurisdiction?" To remind you, we were discussing the West Bank. I was not aware that the Palestinians of the West Bank are clamouring to remain under Israeli jurisdiction.

You delude yourself if you think your vaunted "scientific education" equips you to invest your contributions with any intellectual content. You appear to have a mind better suited to work in the gutter press, where it is always worth hurling an insult, because some of the slime will stick.

teresa

aem
May 25th, 2011 11:43am

Very well said.

If it looks like a duck........

Me? I'm waiting for Netanyahu's fan club to share with us their vision for a future Israel.

Augustus

In a recent article in The New York Times, Mahmoud Abbas, besides the usual lies and half-truths, gave the reader a glimpse of what he has in store for Israel should a peace agreement between Israel and the PA
materialize: "Palestines's admission to the United Nations would pave the way for the internationalization of the conflict as a legal matter, not only a political one. It
would also pave the way for us to pursue claims against Israel at the United Nations,
human rights treaty bodies, and the Internation Court of Justice."

So that is what Israel can expect from making peace with the Palestinians. Hamas has already indicated that it won't recognize the Jewish state, and reserves the right for itself to continue its
'resistance'. And Fatah, through Abbas, has indicated contemplating abnormal relations
with Israel. the Palestinians have therefore
lied about lasting peace. What the Palestinian government wants in effect is a Hudna (a cease-fire tactic, aimed at re-grouping while tricking an enemy into lowering its guard). They simply want to destroy Israel and ultimatey wipe it from the Map. And the International community is
furthering this process of annihilation by
giving in to the Palestinians absurd demands.

Adam B.

Teresa,

Thanks for admitting that you don't actually believe in a return to the 1948 armistice lines, as you concede that giving the holiest sites in Judaism to the Arabs is not realistic. Having now conceded that Israel does not need to leave its holiest sites (the question may not interest you, but the Palestinians have been demanding the Old City in negotiations) the principle of going back to the precise lines of 1948 has been broken. Why this should be run as an "international" zone of some kind remains a mystery. Surely the point is that there should be access to all faiths, which is currently the situation under Israeli sovereignty. This was not the case when the Arabs took control, as you well know, and Jews were barred from their holiest sites, which were desecrated or destroyed.

My question about the ethnic Germans was to ascertain whether you are consistent with your principle that no land should ever been won through war, even when the party gaining land is the party which suffered an act of aggression. Do you believe that Poland should return its entire western area to Germany, and that the Czechs should give the Sudetenland to Germany? If not, why not? (The difference here, of course, is that these lands were taken from Germany, whilst the West Bank was not taken from a "Palestine", which did not exist nor had ever existed, but from Jordan).

You say the "Auschwitz borders" is a phrase adopted by the right, and not the left. Do you have some evidence for this, in light of the fact that it was a Labour politician who coined the phrase?

I spoke of Nato's strategic thinking. But your utterly illogical reply seems to imply that no extra strategic depth is important, because it can't be 300km deep. ANY depth is helpful in a war - don't you understand that? And faced with an enemy which has not accepted a Jewish state in the Middle East, and shows no sign of accepting a Jewish state, whatever its borders, why would Israel make itself weaker, especially as there is no moral imperative to do so? Your thinking is entirely black and white.

Adam B.

For teresa, Thomas, Belwether and the other obsessive Israel bashers, a reply to all your false assumptions and false history is seen here, which utterly destroys them all - by the erudite Dr Denis MacEoin in a letter to Dr Liam Fox:
http://mid-eastplus.blogspot.com/

aelle

As diplomacy goes, Mr Netanyahu's performance in front of the President of the United States would have made a pretty good declaration of war.

Obama had of course denied Netanyahu the opportunity to pose as the peacemaker in chief in the Middle East, and Bibi was clearly bent on revenge. No opportunity was missed to deliver slights and re-inforce popular Israeli myths : Israel and America as a David and Goliath analogy; the four thousand year old Jewish people versus the upstart, new kid on the block, United States. The whole lecture delivered in a tone of assumed reasonableness and good humour, as if the benign Headmaster were reproving a recalcitrant first former who had not done his homework.

And we had the moving commitment to "peace", except that this was not so much "peace in our time" as "peace on our terms", with the unspoken threat "or else" hanging heavily in the air.

Obama is however a trained lawyer, not an unintelligent man, and his body language suggested he was listening to the words and the meaning rather than the syrupy tone of voice : Netanyahu promised "a long-term military presence along the Jordan" and rejected 1967 "lines" as "indefensible".

What Obama, and indeed the whole international community finds indefensible is the continuing occupation by the Israeli military of areas never considered by the United Nations in their proposals for partition of Palestine as constituting part of the State of Israel.

And the otherwise bold and outspoken Israeli leader became oddly coy when alluding to "certain changes that have taken place...demographic changes". Curious that these "demographic changes" are deemed to have " taken place " as if by some outside agency. But then God - or should that be the settler movement - moves in mysterious ways. As Topsy said " I s'pect I growed. Don't think nobody never made me."

Now Netanyahu may calculate that with AIPAC as his fifth column he may have a sufficient hold on Obama's political undercarriage to ensure the desired direction of his heart and mind, and he may believe the end of Obama's tenure of office to be in sight, but, if he is mistaken, it would seem that Israel, not desperately over-supplied with friends as it is, runs the risk of alienating the leader of the most powerful nation in the world, and a nation that has consistently stood, at times in splendid isolation, full square behind the State it did so much to create.

Who, in reality, I wonder, is the Headmaster,with all the power, and who the truculent schoolboy?

And ,though all his classmates are cheering wildly, is it not the case that tomorrow it's school as usual?

Kermack

teresa
Don't ask them, ask me. I'm an Israeli a Jew I live in Israel.

Netanyahu's vision is mine, if the Arabs don't like it, well what to do....you can't please all the people all of the time...

Thomas

I can recommend Dr Denis MacEoin's letter to Dr Liam Fox as a clear and concise summary of standard hasbara debating points. They do not stand up to scrutiny. However, his civilised and measured tone is infintely to be preferred to what we get here. He is clearly,as advertised, "erudite", and would be a much more fitting candidate to expound the Zionist credo than the incumbent on this blog.

teresa

Kermack, you continue to baffle me. You say your vision is Netanyahu's vision without stating what that vision is. From what I read the short term policy is 'carry on with what we're doing'. My question is, what is the goal of this policy - how does it envisage Israel looking like in 50 years time?

teresa

Adam wrote,

//My question about the ethnic Germans was to ascertain whether you are consistent with your principle that no land should ever been won through war, even when the party gaining land is the party which suffered an act of aggression//

That's not my unbending position, although it's almost the case. I've no problem with Israel holding on to land conquered until such time a negotiated settlement is reached. I do have a problem with the wholescale settlement building that has followed the military occupation. Each new house and each new length of road is a further obstacle to a peace settlement.

//Do you believe that Poland should return its entire western area to Germany, and that the Czechs should give the Sudetenland to Germany?//

On the first question - Poland - the transfer of territory was part of a more general settlement which also ceded Polish territory to the Soviet Union. Stalin was unwilling to return the parts of Poland it had invaded and occupied in 1939 to Poland, so Poland was compensated with territory in the West at Germany's expense. Literally, Poland shifted westwards. So the territorial gain was the Soviet Union's and not Poland's. Consider the kind of character Stalin was and you have an answer to your question. Both Germany and Poland lost in the deal, each having to transfer large populations westwards.

On the Sudetenland, this had been Czechoslovak territory before the Germans marched in so it was right to restore the territory to Czechoslovakia after the war. No territorial gain.

A closer parallel to the situation in Israel/Palestine in post war Europe is surely the border which divided East Germany from West Germany - essentially the line where Soviet and Western troops met as they occupied Germany. Note that Germany is now reunited.

teresa

Oh, and Adam

//ANY depth is helpful in a war - don't you understand that?//

No I don't. Depth has to be significant to offer protection. How can a few miles extra depth offer protection to Israel's eastern flank against missiles and war planes? You may not have noticed but wars are no longer fought by massed infantry. Besides, Israel has one of the biggest and most advanced armies in the world and any Palestinian state would be demilitarised. I think security in this case is a hge red herring. Israel has plenty of more plausible reasons for wanting to hang on to the land as has been mentioned already on this thread.

Adam B.

Teresa, that is incorrect. The Sudetenland was only part of a newly created Czechoslovakia for a short time. Another example would be Alsace, which had been part of Germany, but was taken by France at the end of WW1. Or the southern area of Denmark, also lopped off from Germany after WW1.

I know Poland shifted westwards, but you avoided answering the point. Do you now think that these borders should be revised back to what they were, and that the ethnic Germans should be allowed back into both the Sudetenland (whence they were expelled) and Poland? You seem to have shifted your view, and that you consequently, in principle, don't believe that Israel needs to withdraw from lands captured in 1967, and your only problem are "settlements", because these are an "obstacle to peace"). Why are they an obstacle to peace? Are no Jews permitted to live in the area, whoever ends up governing it? (Israel has dismantled settlements in he past, both in the Sinia and in Gaza, for the sake of the so-called "peace process" - hasn't worked out so well, has it? So why do it again?)

I was wondering about your contention that the term Auschwitz borders is an exclusive term of the right - have you revised this assertion?

And what about the faulty logic which pretends there is no such thing as strategic depth?

Augustus

aelle - Your post is laughable. The pre-1967
borders would leave Israel liable to annihilation, and giving away land in the past only provided the Palestinians with staging areas to continue their war against Israel. Netanyahu, one of the world's foremost statesmen, stood in front of Congress and offered to give part of the occupied territories to the PA, and accept
the Palestinians as a nation of peace. But what did they do? They promptly declared his speech an act of war, leaving Obama, incidentally, looking like a fool for representing and lobbying on their behalf.

Obama is on the ropes and staggering, by showing his hand with his sympathy with the Palestnians he is in danger of losing the Jewish vote in Florida and Ohio. He can't win without the votes of the people he wants to throw to the wolves. His answer, limit free speech by crushing all negative reporting on the internet and by having Debbie Wasserman-Shultz, the Chairwoman of the Democratic National Committee, make an appeal at the AIPAC that Republicans would not use the Israeli/Palestine conflict as a campaign issue. These are pathetic attempts to hide the mess, and staunch the hemorrhaging of support for Obama. Desperate measures for a desperate man.

Adam B.

Thomas, is that really the best you can do? Simply to casually and vacuously dismiss Dr MacEoin's excellent writing, without providing a single scrap of substance to counter it, is hardly going to convince anyone of anything.

And maybe he was polite because he was not addressing an obsessive hater.

aem

"My question about the ethnic Germans was to ascertain whether you are consistent with your principle that no land should ever been won through war, even when the party gaining land is the party which suffered an act of aggression"

A small point: Since the UN was established, it has been a principle of international law that territory cannot be acquired by force.

Thomas

This strategic concept of "depth" which we are all suddenly so expert on courtesy of Gen. Amidror would seem to imply that Lebanon, Syria, Jordan, and Egypt would each be justified in an illegal occupation of Israel. Curious.

af

I think Bibi did, his speech to congress was Historic. Can't wait to read what you thought.

Penny

Aem

It is not so much that you and I hold different opinions. It is not that we are merely on different pages and can catch up. The fact of the matter is that we are not even reading from the same book.

The moment you resort to words like ‘frei’ – language best associated with Nazi Germany as well you know - you immediately tell most people all they need to know about the quality of your argument, your motivation and, I’m afraid, your underlying prejudice.

It seems to me that in order to understand the conflict it is necessary to get your information from sources a little more academic in nature than some faux- Middle East version of a lesser-quality ‘Daily Star' (if that is possible)

You fail to cite any sources when you argue your points – and those points reveal a tendency towards sensationalism. Yet you keep coming back expecting either a serious discussion and/or other people to spend their spare time doing your research for you.

I have already provided you with the link to a video which outlines the necessity of defensible borders in West Bank to PREVENT war. I have already provided you with one credible author of the Strong Horse politics of the region. By your continued reference to the same West Bank issue it is clear that you either cannot understand the argument or have not even attempted to understand it.

As this is the case I can only respond to the more simple of you points.

You state that Israel has the military might to defend itself from all and any takers. I will make the point again:’ defensible borders’ is a strategy to PREVENT war. It was their previous indefensibility that proved such a temptation to those earlier invading armies.

If you are disinclined to agree with a strategy that seeks to prevent war and point to Israel’s military capabilities as a solution, then it seems to me that what you are saying is that rather than look for preventative measures, Israel should see high-technology warfare as a first resort.

And if Israel did then those of your opinion would be the first to hoist the placard, don the keffiyah and take to the streets screaming 'war criminal'.

Yet by your own recommendation Israel would only have been acting according to what you deem to be logical. Fortunately Israel is not foolish enough to listen to such arguments.

I feel you should show some logic and consistency when you argue. One minute you are saying that Israel wants West Bank for its resources and that its presence is colonialist. The next you're saying that it is one of the mightiest militaries in the world. One must then wonder why, if it is colonialist in nature and after resources only, it simply doesn't stamp its might on the whole West Bank and Gaza and have done with it.

If resources are the driving force, one must also wonder why Israel gave up Sinai, losing – and this is not a definitive list - over 60,000 sq. km of land, uprooting 7,000 Israeli citizens, leaving 170 strategic installations and – more importantly – handing over the Alma oil field valued in excess of $100 billion. How can the West Bank possibly compare to that?

You cite the UN et al, because these are poorly understood institutions. Being poorly understood they have become the fast-food of the lazy propagandist. No need to really understand them or the difference between the types of resolution. No need to understand which UN body called for them and the nature, region or politics of the committee in question. Just fling them about in the hope that no one else understands them either.

I’d agree that it sometimes works. Who has the time to research UN resolutions or all your other claims? Why, you could easily make them all up as you go along! But it doesn’t advance anything of substance – only your own sophistry.

Incidentally, the territory you declare as ‘illegal’ is in fact ‘disputed’. It is ‘extra-territorial’. To remind you; the Arabs rejected the partition. In doing so they must logically have rejected all and any borders. The area was immediately annexed by Jordan who remained in control for 19yrs, losing it only when it joined others to attack Israel.

International law states that captured land may not be held by an aggressor – but Israel was not the aggressor. Any more than were the allied forces who occupied post-war Europe.

Had the Nazis not surrendered, had they continually stated their intention to resume hostilities, had they implemented education systems designed to indoctrinate their children against every other nation or encouraged them to kill, had they named their streets Hitlerstrasse, Mengelestrasse, Ribbontrop Weg or Gobbels Platz then international law would NOT have been brought to bear on the allied forces to withdraw from their positions in Europe or to declare their presence illegal. Not because the allied forces were colonialists but because they were not the aggressors and as common sense would dictate, such unilateral withdrawal without a peace deal in place would have been a sure way to continued German hostility.

As for your Palestine-frei road, you are referring to Route 443, closed to West Bank traffic following incidents in which people were killed in drive-by attacks and explosive devices. This is known as ‘duty of care’ to civilians who may have been from all and any areas.

It is a concept that applies to Western nations. It applies here in the UK – I trust you are happy to accept its existence or do you believe that our local, regional and national governments should do nothing to protect its citizens should active and current terrorist attacks occur on, say, the A1?

Under ‘duty of care’ to employees, the large company providing bus services to my own small town ceased to run a vital service following a group of children throwing stones at it.

Route 443, incidentally, has since re-opened.

Perhaps you are less acquainted with the PA-controlled areas in West Bank in which Israelis may not travel freely? My friend, for example, has to veer off on a ring road by Jericho as she may not enter the area because she holds an Israeli passport.

Before I depart this thread, I notice that many Israel bashers rather like to be the ones asking the questions.
I would therefore like to reverse this situation for a change

What is your view on the phenomenon known as ‘Pallywood’? Not a term I particularly like as it has something of the comic about it and I find this matter to be very serious. However, I didn’t invent the name.

Pallywood refers to filmed conflict scenes which are presented to news agencies as real , but which subsequent analysis points to as being staged by Palestinian factions pretending to be in conflict with Israeli forces.

These staged scenes are fed to the Western world as fact, distorting the realities on the ground and misleading the general public. The trouble is that by the time the full footage has been obtained and the discrepancies pointed out, the public has already been fed the earlier bites.

You will find the relevant information all over the internet. I will not do your research for you as I suspect you will not look at it and I have no wish to continue wasting my time.

Adam B.

aem, really? Is that why the UN has never uttered a single condemnation of China's occupation of Tibet - not one, in a situation where Tibet posed no threat at all to China?

Seems the UN is as selective as you.

C.Gee

“My question is, what is the goal of this policy - how does it envisage Israel looking like in 50 years time?”

Not a hard question.

The goal for Israel in 50 years’ time is still to be. That is: still to be Israel, to be the Jewish State with Jerusalem as its undivided capital, to be a state for all its people, to be free and prosperous, to see a future of another 50 years, and yet another, unto the last generation. It will still look like a nation, whether at war or at peace: an enlightened and civilized polity.

Quite unexceptionable, I think. The main threats to achieving that goal are the ideologies promoting gangster government, not just for the Middle East - but for the world.

aelle

Augustus

Interesting notion that AIPAC and its lobby are by your own admission attempting to bring Israeli/Zionist issues to bear on the democratic US political process,

Are these people citizens of the United States of America or of the State of Israel?

Was it not Jesus Christ in the sermon on the mount who observed that a man cannot serve two masters?

C.Gee

“A small point: Since the UN was established, it has been a principle of international law that territory cannot be acquired by force.”

A bigger point: the UN has no power to abrogate the principle that a nation may defend itself for as long as war is waged against it.

A longer legal point: the UN is not a super-legislature, nor is its charter a super-constitution, nor is its court a super supreme court. Its articulated principles of international law do not supersede national law, and even where they are incorporated into national law national courts are the authoritative interpreters of the international law and deciders of questions of conflict of laws.

A pointed point: the UN has not yet managed to criminalize war, despite its effort to do so with respect only to Israel.

Kermack

I am heartened by the eloquence of the Israel supporters who post here, I'm a man of few words myself so thank you …..
Teresa, you ask me for my vision of Israel in 50 years time, right now all I ask for is that there still is a democratic Jewish state called Israel in 50 years time. Not much is it, I have no Peres style Mid East EU dreams, I’m not even sure if we can reach a mutually agreeable resolution anymore. So far the only thing this peace process has brought us is more terror and more death.
But we still try, so I think Prime Minister Netanyahu’s starting position is the correct one, we are supposed to be negotiating after all…

JOHN ROOSEVELT

aem: "What is it but dishonesty in defence of theft?"

I guarantee you, aem, that the overwhelming majority of arabs and muslims in the world, let alone the Middle East, would say that about any land occupied by Jews in the region.

This is why the whimpering of the people like ypu about the West bank etc is redundant, at best. In reality, of course, it is the fundamental lie which is the Arab and muslim position in the conflict.

They dont want Peace with the Jew in the Holy Land. period.

Okey

There's an old Yiddish saying which, translated, means something like, "They'd drown us in a tablespoonful of water if they could."

Reading the anti-Zionist ravings on this blog has given me an even clearer awareness of the visceral, blind, primitive, irrational hatred that motivates anti-Zionists.
It's the sort of hatred that, when mobilised in the Europe of the 1930's and 1940's, murdered Jews by the millions.

Stephen Rothbart

Obama Hague and Cameron want Israel to make Peace with the Palestinians and make further concessions to achieve it.

The pact between Hamas and Fatah, which will probably be last as long as the one with Hitler and Stalin, puts for the moment, Abbas as the leader, according to the Palestinian spokesman commenting last night on Netanyahu's speech to Congress.

However he also mentioned that there will be elections in one year's time, so it is entirely possible, indeed probable, that Hamas could end up ruling the Palestinian state that Hague is so terribly excited about.

So for all of those who think that Obama and Hague are on to a good solution here with someone else's lives at stake, here is a little reminder of the true nature of Palestinian aspirations.

Of course the aelle's Blades, Herzens et al will just say this is a negotiating position, but people whose very lives depend on getting it right may disagree.

Cleric Yunis Al-Astal told Al-Aqsa TV that "the Jews were brought to Palestine for the 'Great Massacre'."

He said: "All the predators, all the birds of prey, all the dangerous reptiles and insects, and all the lethal bacteria are far less dangerous than the Jews."

"The [Jews] are brought in droves to Palestine so that the Palestinians - and the Islamic nation behind them - will have the honor of annihilating the evil of this gang."

"In just a few years, all the Zionists and the settlers will realize that their arrival in Palestine was for the purpose of the great massacre, by means of which Allah wants to relieve humanity of their evil."

Well, he seems like the sort of guy you would want to have playing around your kids, so why not?

I am sorry, but people who try to excuse and sympathise with these kind of people should be thoroughly ashamed of themselves.

teresa

Adam - Since you insisted, I shared with you my opinion on post-war Poland and Czecho [both sideshows in the context of this discussion] but forgive me if I don't follow you to Alsace, which has a different history yet again.

//I know Poland shifted westwards, but you avoided answering the point//

Not intentionally.

//Do you now think that these borders should be revised back to what they were, and that the ethnic Germans should be allowed back into both the Sudetenland (whence they were expelled) and Poland?//

Is Germany asking for this? My recollection is that after the Iron Curtain fell the German government made it quite clear to Poland [and probably Czecho too] that any claims Silesian Germans might still entertain on - now - Polish land and property would not be taken up and pursued by the government.

//You seem to have shifted your view//

I'm a new poster here so you can't be blamed for misreading where I'm coming from. My view has not shifted - it is simply a nuanced view.

//in principle, [you] don't believe that Israel needs to withdraw from lands captured in 1967, and your only problem are "settlements", because these are an "obstacle to peace")//

Withdrawal should follow a settlement - yes.

//Why are they an obstacle to peace?//

Because the declaration if Israel's independence in 48 left only half the work in the area done. The process needs to be completed. The expansion of Israel cannot be acceptable at the expense of a population which has still to reach first base re their self-determination.

//Are no Jews permitted to live in the area, whoever ends up governing it?//

I think they should, just as Arabs live in Israel. Don't have aq problem with that. My problem is with Israeli settlements in the West Bank set up as and treated as integral parts of Israel, whilst local Arabs suffer all the dislocation and obstruction of an occupied population.

//(Israel has dismantled settlements in he past, both in the Sinia and in Gaza, for the sake of the so-called "peace process" - hasn't worked out so well, has it? So why do it again?)//

The withdrawals of small populations of Jews from land of relatively scant interest cannot be compared to the situation in the West Bank and around Jerusalem.

//I was wondering about your contention that the term Auschwitz borders is an exclusive term of the right - have you revised this assertion?//

I didn't say it was exclusive - I said it had been taken up by the right. I continue to believe that.

//And what about the faulty logic which pretends there is no such thing as strategic depth//

Didn't say that either. I said that the distances in question were not significant in the context of modern warfare. Clearly there is such a thing as strategic depth but the distances we are talking about here do not come into that category.

teresa

Thanks for having a go, C.Gee. Could you take a step further and suggest how settling more and more Israelis on occupied territory supports that long-term aim. If the land is to be returned to the Pals and is not intended as part of a future Israel, how does the present policy of expansion promote that aim? If the land is intended to be part of a future Israel then what are Israel's intentions for the Arabs who live there, whose incorporation into a greater Israel would result in an Arab majority in the Jewish state.

Stephen Rothbart

Penny, masterful as usual. But I see some of the aggression we "veterans" have developed when dealing with people who seem intelligent and reasonable, but come to reach such outrageous conclusions developing now in your own contributions!

You obviously know the region and geography well, and most of them don't. That is why they sound so silly when they make remarks about the Army and defence.

God, the British Army and the US Army combined could not even beat the Taliban.

I remember being a "dove" myself until I visited Israel and was driven the length and breadth of Israel. I was soon turned into a "hawk."

Being warned by Avis Rent a Car which cities, in Israel, it was best to avoid when driving during the first intifadah. Making the wrong turn in a street in Jericho and hearing the Arabs there voicing their anger at my green and white tourist plates.

Seeing the tunnels built under the highways for cars to shelter from because Jordanian artillery used to randomly shell the area (even after peace was signed), all these leave an indelible memory. The wells created by Israelis to help grow and cultivate the barren fields, now covered with wire to prevent the Arabs from poisoning the water.

No one likes the idea of apartheid or segregation.

But if you have two children in school that hate each other and fight all the time, no teacher in the world would insist they sit at the same desk as each other until they kiss and make up.

Yet the world seems to think you can force Arabs to love the Jews in their midst, if only the Jews were nice to them.

Of course there are Jews who hate the Arabs for the same racist reasons as Arabs hate Jews, but they are a minority. But the polling of Arab populations by recognized pollsters, has shown the high levels of anti-Semitism in all Arab societies to be a truth.

No amount of "trained lawyer" experience can ever deal with that.

As Truthtriumphs contribution of Bob Dylan's song showed, the man who also wrote the anti-war "Blowin' in the Wind" feels the plight of Israeli Jews to be terrible.

Damned for whatever the country does.

No wonder they have circled the wagons, and have told the great "trained lawyer" to go to hell.

Adam B.

teresa, I appreciate that you have replied to my points. I disagree with their substance for the following reasons:

1. You base your contention on Polish-German and Czech-German (why did you leave out Alsace? I am aware there is a different historical background, but the principle is the same - France took it through force of arms) on the fact that Germany has dropped its claim to them. This begs two questions. If Germany did not drop its claim, presumably you would be supporting these lands' immediate return? And what about the ethnic Germans from these lands? Did anyone consult them on the German government's position? For the record, my own view is that it would be absurd for these lands to be returned. Germany inflicted a genocide on the Poles, killing a sixth of the population, inflicted 20 million deaths on the Russians and carried out aggression and mass brutality against the Czechs. The idea that there is so consequence for these acts is simply moral confusion. You don't commit genocide and acts of aggression and then expect eveything to go back to how it was previously. This is also a lesson for the despotic and antisemitic Arab regimes who attempted genocide against the Jews of Israel - several times. It doesn't go back to how it was. It seems, from your replies about Europe post WW2, that you think it should - but only in Israel's case.

2. Who would Israel be giving the West Bank to? As you know, it was not captured from the Palestinian Arabs, but from Jordan. This land was not part of Jordan, and was not part of a sovereign nation called "Palestine". It never belonged to anyone other than the Jews as part of an independent nation. What you are asking for is for Israel to withdraw in circumstances where there is no prospect of peace, where the hatred and genocidal intentions against Israel's Jews remain, and create a new entity in the area, one that has never existed previously - to a Palestinian entity which has made clear it would never accept Israel as a Jewish state, and presumably includes the genocidal and Iranian proxy Hamas. Why on earth would Israel weaken itself, when all the evidence shows that Israeli withdrawals lead to MORE violence, not less (witness Gaza), simply weakining Israel, who gets nothing yet more violence in return. I don't believe there is any moral impertaive for Israel to withdraw, and in circumstances of war, it is simply suicidal.
3. You claim the idstances involved make no difference to israel's defence. This is simply untrue, and I would like you to show me a credible military source which would make such a bizarre claim. It isn't simpy distance teresa - it is also the lie of the land, who has the high ground, the valleys, etc. To say that strategic depth makes no difference is simply nonsense. If you wish to argue for Palestinian Arab nationalism, fine. But don't pretend it comes at no expense, and no threat, to the Jews.
4. You say you have no problem with Jews living in the West Bank. Great. Only one problem - the Palestinians, for whom you argue, do. Abbas, the "moderate" Holocaust denier, has made it clear that he expects no Jews to remain in any area administered by the Palestinian Authority, whilst Hamas, Abbas' new "partners", openly advocate the extermination of every last Jew on earth. Palestinian society is endemically racist and antisemitic (the Pew Research Centre found that 97% of Palestinians hold antisemitic views), whilst TV and the official Palestinian press propagate the most disgusting antisemitism and racism on a daily basis. Children are taught to glorify terrorism against Jews, and encouraged to aspire to kill. Surely this must be addressed if there is to be any hope of two peoples living in peace?

Adam B.

aelle, who previously called north London "occupied territory" now plays the "dual loyalty" canard against America's Jews, then finishes off with quoting Jesus at them.

aelle, this is appalling.

aem

C.Gee
May 26th, 2011 4:42am

It appears to be the small but crucial points you overlook or ignore.

The UN has not "abrogated" the right to self-defence. Curiously enough, no-one here has said it has. Whether or not Israel's war in 1967 was self-defence (a stretch to put it mildly), territory cannot be acquired by force - if you are a member of the UN and have undertaken to abide by its rules.

Your "legal" point is that a state can choose to ignore international law when it chooses. I take it you are saying that this is precisely what Israel is doing. I do not disagree. It can do so without sanction because its patron is the US, which unashamedly does likewise. When the US talks of states not under its patronage who feel emboldened to follow its example, it calls them "rogue states".

As for your "pointed point" (presumably the one you think there is a point to): The UN has not tried to "criminalise" war. This is silly rhetoric. It has attempted to hold those to account who have committed crimes under cover of war. And it has not directed its efforts only at Israel. This again is silly rhetoric.

aem

Penny
May 25th, 2011 10:16pm
I will have to leave what you say to those who can follow it (as apparently Mr. Rothbart can).

You say you are an intermittent visitor to this blog. You appear also to be an intermittent visitor to this particular thread. Great play has been made of the notion of "Jew-free" (i.e. "judenfrei"). The reference and associations were not introduced by me. I don't know what you think it tells you immediately about the quality of argument, motivation and underlying prejudice of those who did introduce them.

On a minor related point, I am glad to hear that all roads in the West Bank are now open to Palestinians, who are now free to travel where they wish, as they are to live where they wish. I regret that your friend has to take the by-pass at Jericho.

Your belief that secure borders require Israel to keep territory acquired by force still leaves me puzzled. This is Gen. Amidror's "depth", isn't it?

You are taken with "Strong Horses" as an explanation of what goes on in the Middle East. I suspect military might has some bearing on who can prance about being "strong" (As also who is prancing along with you.) I suppose the US is the ultimate example of the prancing Strong Horse - it requires world dominance otherwise it will be perceived to be weak. The price we must pay is lots of dead civilians decade after decade.

Also, I am not sure about your understanding of the use of Israel's overwhelming preponderance of power to "prevent" war. It has always been Israel's military doctrine to employ its preponderance of power first to get what it wants (by provocation and overwhelming force) and then to deter resistance to it keeping what it wants. (See the comments of various generals after the assault on Lebanon in 2006, for one example from any number.) Indeed, this doctrine pre-dates the state of Israel. Jabotinsky was one of the more clear-sighted about what the imposition of a Zionist state on Palestine would entail.

"Incidentally, the territory you declare as ‘illegal’ is in fact ‘disputed’. It is ‘extra-territorial’". I am not sure whose legal expertise I should bow to, yours or the ICJ's. Perhaps our resident comic will come in and set me right. But, if the West Bank is indeed "extra teritorial" then I suppose there is nothing more to say.

"International law states that captured land may not be held by an aggressor – but Israel was not the aggressor." - Er...No and No...as I understand it - but then I suppose you are the legal expert and the historian here.

Oh dear, nad then you draw an analogy with the Nazis.

You say you are leaving this thread. I will have to hope that Mr. Rothbart can explain your words to me.

teresa

Adam,

You argue for Israel to keep the West Bank. That could only happen if all living there were absorbed into Israel. That would destroy Israel as a Jewish state.

In a world where Colonel Ghaddafi's threats against Benghazi has British and French jets roaring overhead, the idea that millions of Palestinian Arabs could be forcibly moved out of a Greater Israel to heaven knows where is a pipe dream.

It's a tough call, I agree, but a Greater Israel would be a less Jewish Israel. I think most Israelis would, surely, opt for the Jewish character of Israel to continue and so the West Bank has to remain in Arab hands and Israel will have to withdraw.

JOHN ROOSEVELT

aem: would you have counseled the arabs to go to war with the Jews in 1947, after the General Assembly Resolution 181 was passed?

Do you think they had no choice but to go to war against the Jews?

What do you think their war aims were?

What do you think the Jewish response should have been?

What do you think the Jews should have done once the Armistice had been signed?

Do you think the Arabs - and the Palestinian leadership as it was - had no better choice than to plan for another war with the Jews in 1967? Was Nasser right?

And what should Israel have done, in the circumstances, once the threat of war was clear for all to see?

And what should have been Israel's response to the Arabs once that war had been won?

..etc..etc..I hope you get my point.

Rightly or worngly, the Arabs have been the ones to wage war against the Jews and have lost lamentably each time. I know you now feel that the victor should beg forgiveness and ..well, who quite knows what..but isn't it just a little beyond the wildest imaginings about the real world to expect this?

I find your attitude of dogged righteous indignation very curious. You should either be planning for war - and ultimately execute it a little more smartly - or accept that, as the vanquished, you have to pay a price for your repeated ineptitude of truly historic proportions. A catastrophe indeed but I am not convinced it was your only viable course of action and, therefore, not of your own making.

That is the real world...whoever is right or wrong. Time you took responsibility for your catastrophes, no?

C.Gee

“Could you take a step further and suggest how settling more and more Israelis on occupied territory supports that long-term aim.”

Life goes on. Lives are lived, house built, businesses created, children born. The nation continues. L’Chaim!

“If the land is to be returned to the Pals and is not intended as part of a future Israel, how does the present policy of expansion promote that aim?”

That aim is dead. They had their chance - many, many times. Time to stop all that nonsense.

“If the land is intended to be part of a future Israel then what are Israel's intentions for the Arabs who live there, whose incorporation into a greater Israel would result in an Arab majority in the Jewish state.”

Kick out the Palestinian bosses - those would-be Saddam Husseins or Ayatollahs. Give autonomy to various cities in tune with Arab tribalism: the ten-state solution. See frontpagemagazine.com

The land-for-peace formula is old hat. Land is for using. Peace is not negotiable. Peace will come when the Arabs stop fighting.

Augustus

aem - You appear mockingly puzzled that Israel should want to defend herself. A right given to her incidentally under Art.51
of the UN Charter. And even if that was not so, modern Hamas rockets (Katyushas instead of Kassams) have a much greater range and can reach larger urban areas. It is their stated aim to use these until Israel is wiped from the map. Such attacks would not
just be like previous attacks but serious acts of war. Must Israel just sit and wait until the deaths mount up before doing anything? It's said that Israel should act 'proportionally'. How can you act proportionally against an enemy who is after your life and will do anything in his power to destroy you, and has obtained the
weapons to carry out that threat? Proportionality should be defined against the threat, not against the damage hitherto
caused. For example, Hezbollah has even threatened to employ chemical and biological weapons. Must Israel just do nothing until hit with such a weapon before
doing anything? I'd really like to know.

Truthtriumphs

aem/aelle
May 25th, 2011 12:18pm
Truthtriumphs

First, an acknowledgement to Penny for the way in which she demolished your "arguments", one by one, and delivered her put-down to you with such grace and courtesy.

May 25th, 2011 1:17am
"What a tawdry little offering.
Israel has an economic interest in keeping the West Bank. From this, you get to the Protocols - which is reaching for your dialectical pepper spray rather precipitately".

Not exactly, rather for your delivery of all the old anti-semitic tropes dressed up as righteous indignation for the treatment of the "poor Palestinians", with which we have all become so familiar.

"Defending the obscenity of "Auschwitz borders" with the obscenity of accusing me of drawing on the Protocols is of course ridiculous but also distasteful."

There is no obscenity about that, except a reflexive guilty reaction on your part.
BTW, as I've already posted, the term was coined by Israel's most distinguished and respected foreign minister (by diplomats worldwide), Abba Eban, who would never have resorted to the contumely to describe Israel's enemies, that you have used here to describe the Jewish state and her supporters.

"But you can manage worse, can't you: "For you, because you'd rather forget it, Auschwitz, that is." This is grotesque."

It is....and true!

"You make one attempt to address what was said to you: "if they're being imprisoned and maltreated by those wicked Israelis, why would they want to stay under Israeli jurisdiction?" To remind you, we were discussing the West Bank. I was not aware that the Palestinians of the West Bank are clamouring to remain under Israeli jurisdiction".

Two points here:-

1)You accused me of never answering the points put to me.
The evidence to the contrary is in this blog for anyone to read.
I have answered all your and Thomas's contentious assertions, but you dislike the answers, so for you they are non-responses.
Of course, you do not say why they are untrue, you just repeat your mantras endlessly, like someone with Tourettes.
You go on about the supposed illegallity of settlements, but you cannot quote chapter and verse as to why they are illegal.
You demand answers to the questions you pose, but think it's not incumbent upon you to respond to our questions.
I have asked you now three times why you think the UN gave refugee status to Palestinians after just two years' residency, if they were indigenous, as you claim. You have never answered because you are blind to your own arrogance.

2)The problem is that you are not "aware" of very much pertaining the facts on the ground, and neither are you interested, driven, as you are, by hatred of Jewish self-determination in the ancient homeland.
One particular incident springs to mind, where the mukhtar of a village in the West Bank collected 10,000 signatures from the villagers protesting against the proposal to put his village under PA jurisdiction.
This is what happened:--

Friday, November 23, 2001 -- Six weeks after the attempted assassination of the mukhtar of the Jerusalem neighborhood of Sur Bahir, Zohair Hamdan, the outspoken critic of the Palestinian Authority and its chairman Yasser Arafat vowed yesterday that he will continue his struggle for peaceful coexistence between Arabs and Jews.
"If anything the attempt on my life has only strengthened my view, and has made me more determined than ever to fight for my beliefs," the 48-year-old Hamdan said..."

There have been other more recent protests by Arab villages who rebelled at the idea of coming under PA jurisdiction.
Doesn't quite fit your narrative, does it?

"You delude yourself if you think your vaunted "scientific education" equips you to invest your contributions with any intellectual content. You appear to have a mind better suited to work in the gutter press, where it is always worth hurling an insult, because some of the slime will stick."

Charming, and you've just demonstrated your own lack of "intellectual content".
Others here will judge the veracity of your statement.

Truthtriumphs

teresa
May 26th, 2011 9:59am

"I'm a new poster here so you can't be blamed for misreading where I'm coming from. My view has not shifted - it is simply a nuanced view."

Oh, come off it, Tilly has morphed into you!
What is it with you, aelle and others that you need multiple user names?
That was a rhetorical question, of course, the answer being obvious.

As to your mis-use of the buzz word favoured by the left..'nuanced', there is nothing remotely nuanced about your views, which, if adopted by Israel, would spell the demise of the Jewish state.
The difference between life and death is not something that one would describe as nuanced.

Now to your oft-repeated demand that we, on our side of the argument, should spell out our vision for Israel in 50 years time.
I asked you many times how Israel can make peace with those who openly declare that their aim is her destructon.
People who are not ashamed to venerate and exalt terrorists, and who poison their childrens' minds with vile propaganda?
Surely the answer to that question must come before any visions of peace?
Why don't you pose that question to the Palestinians, and their cheer-leaders?
Too hard, is it?
Much easier to hold Israel accountable for the failure of "peace negotiations", isn't it?

aem

Truthtriumphs
May 26th, 2011 4:35pm

"I note that you have chosen to persist in a prudent silence rather than answer the questions put to you on a previous thread by one "Thomas" about your repeated reference to the size of the population of Palestine before the Mandate as if a justification for a Zionist state, and to the fact of Arab immigration. You have used these facts so very often that it ought not to be too much for you to explain yourself."

- A prudent silence instead of an answer; and a whole lot of noise and bluster about anything irrelevant that passes before you, presumably to divert attention away from your failure to answer.

"Of course, you do not say why they are untrue, you just repeat your mantras endlessly...". This is particularly lame and pathetic, since you must know that "Thomas" told you precisely why your assertions were wrong, and several others have done likewise before him.

If you have an answer, give it now. If you think you have already answered, tell us where.

This is beyond dishonesty.

P.S. I think you should look more closely into just who this "mukhtar", Mr. Hamdan, is, and also into the recent history of Sur Bahir, including house demolitions (which make the inhabitants all the more keen on Israeli occupation). I would of course be interested in details of the more recent protests you mention (if it were me, I would prefer my family live as third class citizens in Israel rather than Israel's prisoners in the West Bank kept down by PA thugs, financed and trained by...).

aem

Augustus
May 26th, 2011 4:28pm
This seems to happen surprisingly often to those who criticise Israel here - they are berated for something they did not in fact say. Israel has the same right to self-defence as any other state.

aem

"Rightly or worngly, the Arabs have been the ones to wage war against the Jews..."

?

Truthtriumphs

aelle
May 26th, 2011 3:39am
Augustus

"Interesting notion that AIPAC and its lobby are by your own admission attempting to bring Israeli/Zionist issues to bear on the democratic US political process,
Are these people citizens of the United States of America or of the State of Israel?"

It didn't take long, for the trope of Jewish 'dual loyalty' to rear its ugly head, did it?
Aside from the fact that there are hundreds of lobbying groups in the US, and many more Arab than Jewish/Israel ones (yes, we all know, AIPAC is the all-powerful one), let's see what you mean in the context of your earlier remarks.

You object to the fact that Jews live in your area of london, turning it into "occupied territory".
Extrapolating, you object to the fact that they live in the US and any civilised Western country, because, as stated above, they 'don't belong', are disloyal citizens, and their loyalty is first and foremost to Israel, a country which you have said experienced a parallel occupation over the same period of time to your own area of london, because, according to you, Israel is an illegitimte construct, the Zionist Jews having stolen the land from the indigenous Palestinians, and created a state by force.

So, here's the dilemma....you demand exclusive loyalty from citizens whom you deem should't be there, because their residency constitutes an "occupation", ie, is illegal.
You have not said where you think Jews belong, and I have asked you that question before.

"Was it not Jesus Christ in the sermon on the mount who observed that a man cannot serve two masters?"

That is another reason why Jews don't believe in Jesus.
I suggest that you open the obituaries column of the Times or Telegraph any day of the week...there is usually one, very often two Jews in them, who have made enormous contributions to every walk of life in their country of birth/adoption.
Many were Zionists, the most obvious example being the families who gave us Marks and Spencer, Great Universal Stores, ICI etc. etc.

The remarkable impact Jewish refugees alone have made in every walk of life, could fill weighty tomes.
I suggest you read "Hitler's Gift"by Medawar and Pike, about the contribution of some of Europe's refugee Jewish scientists to the betterment of life in the UK.

It what way were any of them disloyal citizens?
And I would hazard a guess that they have contributed much more to the UK than you have, or ever will.

The sad truth is that you are poisoned by jealousy.
It is too bitter a pill for you to swallow that a people for whom you have no great affection, has risen like a phoenix to do great things, that most aspects of your every day life has been enhanced by Jewish ingenuity and discovery.
Here a link to more recent discoveries developed in Israel which affects us all, and it isn't even a comprehensive list.

http://www.methodistfriendsofisrael.com/so-you-want-to-boycott-israel/

As a matter of interest, do you think that UK
Muslims have dual loyalty to their countries of origin, such as Pakistan, or are they exclusively loyal to this country?
Do you know that in a poll taken of views of British Muslims, 30% agreed that the 7/7 bombings were a good thing?
How do you feel about that?

teresa

A bit of a rant from truth, there. And why not.

No idea who tilly is but she's not me. I've only ever posted under this name.

Much more interesting post from C.Gee. Not heard of the ten state solution and will check it out. I knew present Israeli policy was no part of any peace process but wondered what Israel had in store for the Arabs of the occupied territories in the event of its hanging on to the land since it's not much talked about in the mainstream media.

Truthtriumphs

aelle
May 26th, 2011 3:39am
Augustus

"Interesting notion that AIPAC and its lobby are by your own admission attempting to bring Israeli/Zionist issues to bear on the democratic US political process,
Are these people citizens of the United States of America or of the State of Israel?"

It didn't take long, for the trope of Jewish 'dual loyalty' to rear its ugly head, did it?
Aside from the fact that there are hundreds of lobbying groups in the US, and many more Arab than Jewish/Israel ones (yes, we all know, AIPAC is the all-powerful one), let's see what you mean in the context of your earlier remarks.
You object to the fact that Jews live in your area of london, turning it into "occupied territory".
Extrapolating, you object to the fact that they live in the US and any civilised Western country, because, as stated above, they 'don't belong', are disloyal citizens, and their loyalty is first and foremost to Israel, a country which you have said experienced a parallel occupation over the same period of time to your own area of london, because, according to you, Israel is an illegitimte construct, the Zionist Jews having stolen the land from the indigenous Palestinians, and created a state by force.

So, here's the dilemma....you demand exclusive loyalty from citizens whom you deem should't be there, because their residency constitutes an "occupation", ie, is illegal.
You have not said where you think Jews belong, and I have asked you that question before.

"Was it not Jesus Christ in the sermon on the mount who observed that a man cannot serve two masters?"

Jews don't believe in Jesus.

I suggest that you open the obituaries column of the Times or Telegraph any day of the week...there is usually one, very often two Jews in them, who have made enormous contributions to every walk of life in their country of birth/adoption.
Many were Zionists, the most obvious example being the families who gave us Marks and Spencer, Great Universal Stores, ICI etc. etc.
The remarkable impact Jewish refugees alone have made in every walk of life, could fill weighty tomes.
I suggest you read "Hitler's Gift" by Medawar and Pike, about the contribution of some of Europe's refugee Jewish scientists to the betterment of life in the UK.
It what way were any of them disloyal citizens?
And I would hazard a guess that they have contributed much more to the UK than you have, or ever will.

The sad truth is that you are poisoned by jealousy.
It is too bitter a pill for you to swallow that a people for whom you have no great affection, has risen like a phoenix to do great things, that most aspects of your every day life has been enhanced by Jewish ingenuity and discovery.
Here a link to more recent discoveries developed in Israel which affects us all, and it isn't even a comprehensive list.

http://www.methodistfriendsofisrael.com/so-you-want-to-boycott-israel/

As a matter of interest, do you think that UK
Muslims have dual loyalty to their countries of origin, such as Pakistan, or are they exclusively loyal to this country?
Do you know that in a poll taken of views of British Muslims, 30% agreed that the 7/7 bombings were a good thing?
How do you feel about that?

Truthriumphs

aem
May 26th, 2011 5:12pm
Truthtriumphs
May 26th, 2011 4:35pm

"I note that you have chosen to persist in a prudent silence rather than answer the questions put to you on a previous thread by one "Thomas" about your repeated reference to the size of the population of Palestine before the Mandate as if a justification for a Zionist state, and to the fact of Arab immigration. You have used these facts so very often that it ought not to be too much for you to explain yourself."

- A prudent silence instead of an answer; and a whole lot of noise and bluster about anything irrelevant that passes before you, presumably to divert attention away from your failure to answer."

Unlike you,I have a life, other than sitting in front of a computer (made possible by those iniquitous Israelis!)all day, dispensing hatred and lies.

As you have so much time on your hands, I suggest you look back on previous threads, and you will see my answers to Thomas.
As an "Oxford First", I don't expect it should prove too difficult for you.

C.Gee

aem:

I gave you four points. Think of them as “dots” and join them to understand the argument that: the UN is not the exclusive maker of international law, nor did its establishment nullify or supersede existing customary international law or principles of law; for any given general principle of international law another may be found to balance it and which principle weighs more heavily in any given real-life conflict will be decided by the authority charged with and able to enforce resolution of the conflict ; the UN does not have that authority in the case of Israel and the Arab states, despite the efforts of the Arab bloc to give it such authority, as witnessed by the paper mountains of anti-Israel resolutions and investigations - among which lie “Zionism is racism” and the Goldstone Report. The UN is not a universal law-making or judicial body - a government of man. It is a political power-grouping institution. It enshrines and continues the Great Power game: the Security Council big five are the heirs of the Great Powers of the World Wars. They are still competing for geo-political dominance under the auspices of the UN. The veto accorded to the big five ( especially to Russia and China) should shatter any claims that the UN is a representative congress of nations endowed with the moral authority of a democratically elected legislature expressing the will of the people. And so should the one-state-one-vote system which places autocracies on a par with democracies. When you cite UN law against Israel, you are merely citing a political opinion poll - whether from the general assembly, security council (where the opinion of one of five counts for more than all the others) or the ICJ. Israel dissents from opinion polls. Where it matters her dissent has been endorsed by the US in the security council, though that may not always be the case. She has not broken the law. And she has no choice but to dissent, as to agree would be policide.

I presume you are able to distinguish between North Korea and Israel and to understand why one is rogue in fact and the other rogue by resolution.

Michael Mark

@Teresa --

"But it was from this position that Israel conquered and occupied the West Bank in 67. Hardly @auschwitz borders."

Yes, but the surrounding countries are now better armed than 44 years ago. Please attempt to picture a half-wide NJ defending itself from the rest of the USA. The 20,000+ rockets, missiles, and mortars on the borders will certainly take a toll -- and remember, Scuds can fly in from great distance, ala Iraq's attack on Israeli cities.

Additionally, Teresa, the rest of the world historically "urges" Israel to quit while it's ahead.

And then there's Iran, a country itching for a fight.

Kermack

aem

why do you insist on calling the Arab population of Israel third class citizens?

Isolde

Thank you Melanie for speaking the truth, Best regards from spain.

MarioR

Your article is a masterpiece of writing, as was the Netanyahu speech in the American Congress, I hope politicians all over the world will read and learn from it.

Archie

What a splendid performance by Prime Minister Netanyahu, you will agree, Miss Phillips. He is that rare - not to sat extinct - creature, a straight-talking politician! Might it be possible to swap him for that lily-livered creep currently infesting Number 10? On second thoughts, the good people of Israel wouldn't give Cameron the time of day.

Thomas

The Strong Horse Theory.

Discovered by an American journalist (no doubt soon to be Nobel laureate or some such).

Explains why Arabs hate the US - it has nothing to do with what the US does - it has everything to do with the peculiarly atavistic barbaric psyche of the Arab.

All Arab behaviour becomes comprehensible by application of the Discovery of said American journalist -

The Strong Horse Theory:

Lemma 1: Given the choice of a Strong Horse or a Weak Horse, your Arab will always choose a Strong Horse.

(It is not a Theorem because said Nobel prize-winner to be does not attempt anything in the nature of a Proof or much in the way of evidence that a historian - as opposed to a Daniel Pipes - would recognize.)

This Lemma allows us to distnguish your Arab from the rest of humanity. - When presented with the choice of backing a strong horse or a weak horse, your Arab tends to choose the strong horse. A veritable fiend, your Arab. The paradigm of perverse irrationality.

...And this we are required to take seriously as a reason why Israel cannot give up territory illegally acquired. It all has to do with Strong Horses, you understand. And your Arab's atavistic tribal mentality.

The sort of thing our resident C. Gee might lap up from his favourite comic-books like Front Page Magazine.

aem

Truthriumphs
May 26th, 2011 6:13pm
Time enough to make the erroneous statements.

Time enough to bully and bluster when anyone challenges you.

Just no time to provide answers.

aem

C.Gee
May 26th, 2011 6:33pm
Orotund obfuscation rather than plain dots.

When the fog lifts, momentarily, we see that you agree:

Yes, Israel decides for itself what parts of international law it will observe and what parts disregard.

Yes, it gets away with this roguish insouciance with the law because the US lets it.

It is not often you so readily confirm what your opponents have said (even if you felt the need for the Sir Lawyerly Would-be obfuscations).

Adam B.

teresa, I have not argued for moving anyone anywhere. What I am saying is that it is unrealistic, and indeed, irresponsible for Israel to cede land to those bent on destroying her and committing genocide against her people (or at least the Jewish ones). No other country in the world would do it. You lay all the responsibility at Israel's door, but I hear nothing from you about the hate taught in Palestinian schools, the racism spewed out day and night by Palestinian media and the antisemitism and uncompromising and rejectionist stance of the Palestinian leadership. Without those issues being adddressed, simply calling for Israel to give more, whilst the Arabs give nothing, is just an invitation for more violence against the Jews. Why on earth would Israel make yet more concessions in such circumstances?

Truthtriumphs

aelle/aem

Truthtriumphs
May 26th, 2011 6:13pm
aem
May 26th, 2011 5:12pm
Truthtriumphs
May 26th, 2011 4:35pm

"I note that you have chosen to persist in a prudent silence rather than answer the questions put to you on a previous thread by one "Thomas" about your repeated reference to the size of the population of Palestine before the Mandate as if a justification for a Zionist state, and to the fact of Arab immigration. You have used these facts so very often that it ought not to be too much for you to explain yourself."

Just as a PS, I have never conflated the numbers of Jews and Arabs in the mandated area of Palestine with the justification of the re-establishment of the Jewish state.
I have made it clear innumerable times that that was predicated on decisions made at the San Remo conference, and on the legally-binding "Mandate for Palestine" document, ratified by all 51 members of the league of Nations, calling for the RE establishment of the Jewish national home in it's ancient homeland, and calling for the "close settlement" of Jews there.
It emphasised the continuous link for 2,000 years of the Jews to their homeland.
Further, there is the small matter of UN Resolution 181 in 1947.
Are all these figments of my imagination?

You and Thomas remind me of the Vatican and the flat earth theory that the Catholic church insisted was right.
It took them more than 300 years to admit Galileo's findings were correct. In fact, they only reluctantly admitted that they were wrong, fairly recently.
Carry on deluding yourselves....no one cares.

C.Gee

Thomas!

Whoa, there, Quickdraw McGraw!

Let’s go to the horse’s mouth, shall we? Not some journalist-philosopher, but the mentally perverse Arab stallion himself:

In his own words at his celebration dinner, bin Laden laid out bluntly his theory of power: "When people see a strong horse and a weak horse, by nature they will like the strong horse." http://www.time.com/time/nation/article/0,8599,188329,00.html#ixzz1NVMCaLuV

Trot on!

C.Gee

aem:

First I placed the dots. Then a joined them up for you. Do I have to color-in as well?

Israel is not breaking any international law, whether the US deploys a veto on her behalf or not. (All that is carmine.)

Don’t forget background. Outside our join-the-dot picture, beyond the walls of the UN, the Powers’ great game is still afoot. China has just declared that an attack on Pakistan will be construed as an attack on China. (Yellow, I think? A good color choice for you. It’s the cover-color for the “Dummies” publications and the telephone directory.)

Running gags can be sods to tie on, don't you find?

Truthtriumphs

aelle
May 26th, 2011 3:39am
Augustus

"Are these people citizens of the United States of America or of the State of Israel?"

Have you ever questioned the loyalty of Irish Americans, for example, to the USA, given their lobbying for the IRA?
Indeed, have you ever questioned the loyalty of Italian Americans, Mexican Americans and a whole host of other Americans, or is it only the Jewish Americans for whom that privilege is reserved?

"Was it not Jesus Christ in the sermon on the mount who observed that a man cannot serve two masters?".

Interesting that you should bring up Jesus 'The King of the Jews', and the Sermon on the Mount.
Just curious to see how knowledgeable our resident 'Oxford First' is on the realities that prevailed at that time.
Where was the Mount?
Was it in Palestine, or in the country of Judah, sovereign country of the Jews?
Answer... the Romans hadn't named it Palestine yet..that happened in AD 70.
Who were the inhabitants of the sovereign country of Judah at that time.
Answer... the Jews, and Jesus was a Jew of course.
There were no Palestinians there then.
When did the Palestinian identity manifest itself as a separate identity for the Arabs who arrived in the Holy land, hundreds of years after the Roman Conquest?
Answer...1964.

So you see aem/aelle, or whatever you call yourself, the Jews are the indigenous inhabitants of the Holy land, and have had a continuous presence there for 2,000 years.
Futher, they are the only people throughout history who have held sovereignty there, as opposed to those transient powers who indulged their appetites for colonial adventures.
Jesus would have been the first to agree, being the 'King of the Jews', don't you think?
Therefore, it is the Palestinians who are occupying Jewish territory, rather than the other way round.

teresa

Well, I've looked at this ten state solution and it's clearly a wind up. It appears courtesy of a website which is otherwise full of barking conspiracy theory. Pity, because we need some new thinking from all sides.

Thomas

C.Gee
May 27th, 2011 12:57am
Smart arse! We all know what bin Laden said. And, if we didn't, Penny reminded us. It is said US journalist who took bin Laden's profound insight and presented it as the key to understanding your Arab, who, given the choice between a strong horse and a weak horse will back the strong horse. Is there no end to the irrational perversity of your Arab?

Stephen Rothbart

aem writes at 3.08 pm to Penny that "International law states that captured land may not be held by an aggressor – but Israel was not the aggressor." - Er...No and No...as I understand it - but then I suppose you are the legal expert and the historian here.

Oh dear, nad then you draw an analogy with the Nazis.

You say you are leaving this thread. I will have to hope that Mr. Rothbart can explain your words to me."

I doubt that I can, because I rather think, aem, that you are not open for explanations.

In these matters, your mind is closed.

Let me try to put your fixation with law into context.

The British law system has two streams of judgement. The usual fact based, Common Law, and then, because of the subsequent wisdom of her judges, Equitable Law.

Equitable law was set up because the interpretation of Common Law often led to injustice, as it did not take into account the intentions and the circumstances surrounding a case.

Equitable Law allowed a Judge to take into account things that would normally have been excluded by a strict adherence to Common Law.

International Law has no version of "Equitable Law."

International Law is presided over by the kinds of judges that issue arrest warrants on Israeli leaders for war crimes, but not Hamas leaders, Iranian leaders, or Syrian leaders.

If Israel followed Internantional Law as you would like it to, Israel may well have ceased to exist years ago. Perhaps that is what you would like, but Israel is not an inanimate object. It is 6 million people, women, children, Arabs, Christians. They would be dead.

Think about that when you ask Israelis to obey the skewered versions of International Law.

Your other assertion seems to be based upon the assumption that Israel is, and has always has been the ones to start a war with the Arabs.

I am sure Sadat will be very upset to hear that. He was a self-acclaimed super hero to his people after he instigated the Yom Kippur war that almost swept Israel away.

Nasser was also proclaimed a hero for starting the 1967 war, until he lost it, that is.

Given that this misconception of yours appears to be your default position on Israel, it makes trying to make you see anyone else's point of view but your own rather pointless.

It would be like trying to fix a computer that had been set up with the wrong program. Whatever you did the answer would always be wrong.

Oh! taking about set up wrong, let me also remind you about your second favorite fall-back situation, the much misunderstood United Nations.

This has China and Russia on its Security Council. (Tip: Don't try to be a journalist in either of these two countries), and the Human Rights Commission has previously voted Libya as its Chair and was seriously considering adding Syria to its vaunted chambers.

Most serious commentators would dismiss anything coming out of the UN as a joke, but you obviously see merit in it, and good luck to you.

Hope Santa brings you something nice down that chimney come Christmas.

You see aem, when it comes to protecting your citizens' very lives, any government that relies on the corrupted institutions like the UN, the EU, the ICC, and for now, it seems, the current POTUS, would be insane.

The difference between what you write and what Penny writes is clear.

You cloak yourself in high handed legalese, based on one factual error that is crucial to anyone's understanding of the Middle Eastern conflict, and Penny's comments are based on real life and real experience. Her empathy with the plight of the ordinary Palestinian puts your cold-bloodied and erroneous assertions to shame.

Thomas

C. Gee
You are inconsistent when it comes to international law. When the League of Nations establishes the Mandates, it enters into legally binding commitments. In particular, a legally binding commitment to act on the Zionists' interpretation of Balfour. With the UN and ICJ on the other hand we are talking about nothing more than opinion polls and Great Power diplomacy (which the Mandates so clearly weren't!). International law since 1945 does not bind Israel. International law circa 1920 as misinterpreted by Zionists is binding in perpetuity on everyone else.

Thomas

Truthtriumphs
May 27th, 2011 12:20am
I've read through this exchange. It is bizarre.

Why do you insist on telling all and sundry that Palestine was a sparsely populated desert before the Zionists took it in hand? And why that there were Arab immigrants during the Mandate?

It is very simple. The questions are not hard. Why do you keep telling us? You must have had a reason. What do you think follows?

Your misinterpretation of the Mandate and 181 is not relevant to the question. The question is what motivates you to tell us again and again that Palestine was a desert and there were Arab immigrants during the Mandate?

Are you capable finally of stopping the ducking and weaving and blustering and abuse, and simply answer?

Truthtriumphs

teresa
May 27th, 2011 9:42am

"Well, I've looked at this ten state solution and it's clearly a wind up. It appears courtesy of a website which is otherwise full of barking conspiracy theory. Pity, because we need some new thinking from all sides".

Both Adam and myself have repeatedly asked you how you would deal with the hatred pouring out from the PA, because until that is resolved there is not a cat in hell's chance of peace.
You remain conspicuously silent about this.
Why?
Is it only the Israelis who have any responsibility to make peace?

aem

C.Gee
May 27th, 2011 1:27am
You do genuinely believe you are witty, don't you? And you do think of yourself as lawyerly (perhaps, who knows, you are even lawyer). But once the hilarity has died down, and the thickets of obfuscation are behind us, what are we left with? The bare assertion of a falsehood.

Let us put your hypocrisy to the test.

In some parallel universe, Lebanon gets fed up being attacked by Israel every few years, and by some miracle has the military might to do something about it finally. It occupies, say, Galilee. It needs it to defend its borders apparently. Depth, you understand. And, to strengthen its defences, it settles Lebanese in Galilee. It is all perfectly legal, it insists. Galilee was long part of Syria and Syria is just another part of Lebanon. And Galilee was illegally annexed by Israel in 1947-8. So Lebanon is not an occupier. It has returned the land to its rightful owner.

What would our lawyer say to that? Lebanon in taking Galilee from Israel by miltary force has broken no law. It acted in self-defence. Lebanon in occupying Galilee and settling its citizens in Galilee has broken no law. Galilee did not rightfully belong to anyone else.

Let us test your hypocrisy further.

Lebanon confines the Israeli inhabitants of Galilee in ever smaller cantons. Foul propagandists say that they are herding Israelis into ghettoes.

Lebanon insists that it cannot give up territory because the Israelis are Jews who only understand the Strong Horse.

Truthtriumphs

Thomas
May 27th, 2011 10:26am
Truthtriumphs
May 27th, 2011 12:20am

"I've read through this exchange. It is bizarre.
Why do you insist on telling all and sundry that Palestine was a sparsely populated desert before the Zionists took it in hand? And why that there were Arab immigrants during the Mandate?
It is very simple. The questions are not hard. Why do you keep telling us? You must have had a reason. What do you think follows?"

Your absurd question is a classic case of reversal of causality.
Time and again, you and aelle/aem, the tweedle dum and tweedle dee double act, tell us that the creation of Israel usurped the harmonious existence of the millions of Palestinians who had lived in harmony for generation upon generation tilling the fertile uplands of Palestine, until the Zionists came along, kicked them out, and illegally declared their state.
I, and others here, are determined that people like you propogating the lies, distortions and revisionism about the Jews/Israel that you habitually do, shall be answered at every turn, that you shall be shown up by going to sources, and quoting respected people, so that your lies shall not gain currency on a blog that is widely read, both here and overseas....that's the point.

Who are you to throw out accusations, and then take umbrage when you are answered?
Who are you to demand answers from others, but ignore requests of you to do the same?

You have the attitude of the old-school FO, that the Jews should be eternally grateful to the British that they exist in Palestine, they should shut up and put up with their lot.

"What do you think follows?"

What follows is that you will unable to get away with your propaganda with the ease you had hoped for, you will be challenged at every turn, and when you refuse to answer questions put to you, you incriminate yourselves even further, for all to see.

That's what follows.

aem

Stephen Rothbart
May 27th, 2011 10:17am
You say Israel disregards international law. You say it is right to do so, because international law is a dangerous sham. Before you dismiss one of the few partially civilising forces on the Great Power game (and, come to that, the Little Power game), I would scan through a textbook to find out just what international law is about and how it works (to the extent that it does).

I have not yet found where it is I said that Israel always starts wars (Egypt famously did in the Yom Kippur war). Again, however, I would study more closely the record of Israel's aggressive actions over decades before getting too righteously indignant with me.

As for the rest, I find it as clear as Penny's own contributions - humane admittedly (which is half the battle), but on substantive questions you lose me.

Adam B.

teresa, your silence is what usually follows when one presents a rational, and realistic, discussion in front of idealogues.

At least be honest with yourself, even if you can't admit it openly.

Adam B.

Thomas, you have to admit that your lack of a substantive response to the points made by Dr MacEoin was rather pathetic.

Indeed, the grand assertion" all can be discredited" demonstrates someone who is not a truthseeker. Was EVEYTHING Dr MacEoin wrote wrong? To assert that it was, as you did, shows that you are not debating in good faith. It is not truth, or a real solution you are after, it is dogma and propaganda.

In short, you are not debating in good faith.

Thomas

Truthtriumphs
May 27th, 2011 11:57am

"...the creation of Israel usurped the harmonious existence of the millions of Palestinians who had lived in harmony for generation upon generation tilling the fertile uplands of Palestine..."

Am I to take it that this is a Churchillian statement - false, but intended to convey your point by "hyperbole"?

You do really struggle to understand.

Whether there were "millions" (which I for one have never alleged) or 700k Muslims in Palestine before the Mandate (as Churchill's officials would hae informed him), many of whom had lived in Palestine for generations - what do you think follows?

I have said repeatedly what I think follows - that the rights of the inhabitants were to be protected by the Mandate Power as well as the interests of the Zionists. That much is clear from the treaties you like to refer to.

What is it you are trying to establish? That there were too few inhabitants to bother about? That they could be ignored?

Similarly with Arab immigration during the Mandate. Why do you bring it up?

You tell us that Churchill alleged there were millions of them (hyperbole, of course). We know from the sorts of estimates available to him that net immigration over the period must have been fairly small. So what? Why do you mention Arab immigration?

I have never said that Jewish immigration was not allowed by the Mandate. Indeed, I have repeatedly acknowledged that the Mandate required the Mandate Power to help establish a Jewish National Home in Palestine in part by allowing immigration. The fact of immigration is irrelevant to the crucial question, which is why the Zionists thought that they were entitled to a state, contrary to what the treaties actually say, and in total disregard of the population of Palestine.

Why you think your account of the population before the Mandate and immigration after the Mandate has any bearing on the answer to this question we have still to learn. You are quite astonishingly unwilling to tell us.

Stephen Rothbart

aem, like those in British Society who think law can be arbitrarily applied (Sharia law for certain citizens is OK), you seem to think that if a system is set up by the great and good, that is all that matters no matter how that system is administered

I feel, on the other hand, rather like Mr. Bumble in Oliver Twist "the law is an ass." If you remember, Mr. Bumble is informed that "the law supposes that your wife acts under your direction". Mr. Bumble replies "If the law supposes that ... the law is a ass — a idiot. If that's the eye of the law, the law is a bachelor; and the worst I wish the law is that his eye may be opened by experience — by experience."

The experience of international law is that the people administering it are politically motivated and biased.

Here is a good example of what happens when you rely on International Law.

When the time was ripe to bring down the Gaddafi regime as the rebels threw him out of his cities, Obama decided to go for a UN vote to legalise the intervention. The UN dillied and dallied, wating for the Arab League to decide who might be next among them if they agreed to an intervention, and by the time intervention was authorized the moment was lost.

So Obama acted legally and Gaddafi regained the upper hand, Libya is in a dead-lock and thousands will die because of it.

Good for international lawyers. Not so good for human lives.

I do not feel I have to offer you evidence of "decades worth of Israeli aggression" as I suspect that you include that aggression to be where Israel tried to defend itself from Hezbollah and Hamas insurgencies into Israeli territory, which, if you take those lovely people's point of view in life, is understandable.

Others see no difference in using aircraft and artillery on terrorists that have attacked them, like Cameron and Obama in Libya and Afghanistan for example, except of course, Libya is not attacking the UK. So Obama and Cameron (and possibly you) think it is OK to attack people that are threatening the people opposed to their leader, but the Israelis cannot attack people who are attacking them! Go figure.

Your comment to Penny that "International law states that captured land may not be held by an aggressor – but Israel was not the aggressor." - Er...No and No..." is where you came out as a closet Palestinians and Arabs are the only victims believer.

As for a legal position, what pray, are your thoughts that at the end of a war, when the fighting is over, and a cease fire is arranged, the loser refuses to sign a peace treaty?

Do you believe the cease fire is for a period without limit or do you believe that in reality, a state of War still exists between the parties involved?

And if you believe the reality, that a state of War still exists, can you tell me why it is that the winners of that war should be expected to withdraw unilaterally from their positions? Especially when the losers continually break their own ceasefires.

What does the law say on that aem? And if you can find some law that contradicts such a commonsense situation, then I will just have to go and renew my subscription to the Bumble Club.

Thomas

"In short, you are not debating in good faith."

"...your silence is what usually follows when one presents a rational, and realistic, discussion in front of idealogues..."

"...the grand assertion "all can be discredited" demonstrates someone who is not a truthseeker..."

We are operating in an irony-free zone.

Start with "the grand assertion 'all can be discredited'" - check it against what was said. And then try again.

Steve

John Roosevelt

"..etc..etc..I hope you get my point..."

They won't.

Truthtriumphs

Thomas.May27 @12.35.

"The fact of immigration is irrelevant to the crucial question, which is why the Zionists thought that they were entitled to a state, contrary to what the treaties actually say, and in total disregard of the population of Palestine.
Why you think your account of the population before the Mandate and immigration after the Mandate has any bearing on the answer to this question we have still to learn. You are quite astonishingly unwilling to tell us".

I am perfectly willing to tell you, indeed, I have told you many times, but, hopefully, this time, the message will get through.

The population before the Mandate, and immigration after the Mandate IS crucial to the question of "whether the Zionists, (ie,the vast majority of Jews), thought they were entitled to a state".
The Jews WERE the population of Palestine before the Mandate...since the expulsion in AD 70, there was a continuous presence of Jews in the Holy land. The Jews were the only people in history to have their own, in fact, two sovereign states in the region, spanning a period of some 1,400 years.
That is the reason the league talked about the RE establishment of the Jewish homeland.
How do you explain the fact that the league emphasised the re-establisment, as opposed to just establishment?

The question of the Arab immigration IS crucial to the debate, because of your contention that the re-establishment of Israel was "with total disregard of the population of Palestine".
The population of Palestine you refer to was only the ARAB population, and if, as we see, they were mainly RECENT immigrants, then your argument does not stand.
Over a time span of 2,000 years, the Arabs were the immigrant population....there were none there for some 600 years after the Roman conquest, and they never held sovereignty.
The vast majority started coming only some 70 years ago, and later.
Therefore the immigrant status of those who did not want a Jewish state in their midst, is abolutely crucial to the argument.
You reveal your prejudices because you have no regard to the wishes of the Jewish population of Palestine, only the Arab one.
What's with the Jewish population? Is it for you a sub-species, a kind of 'untermenschen' that ITS wishes should count for nought?

"...which is why the Zionists thought that they were entitled to a state, contrary to what the treaties actually say, and in total"

Where do you get that revisionist clap-trap from?
Did the league intend sovereign states for Iraq, lebanon, Trans-Jordan and Syria, and if the answer is yes, why do you think they didn't intend a sovereign state for the Jews?
Why would they have been singled out for special treatment?

teresa

Hi Adam and Truth

Not disappeared I assure you - just earning a crust today, working. Are you guys retired, perhaps?

Truth wrote:-

//Both Adam and myself have repeatedly asked you how you would deal with the hatred pouring out from the PA//

Not sure you have - at least I've missed your questions if you've asked.

//because until that is resolved there is not a cat in hell's chance of peace.
You remain conspicuously silent about this.
Why?//

Because I've missed your question[s]. Prepared to have a go, though. I've no idea how to make Palestinian Arabs love Israeli Jews. Would you love them in the circumstances? Short of love, though, polite relations ought to be possible in the context of a regional settlement. Two peoples fighting over the same bit of land? It isn't going to be easy. The people in possession of the land are going to be happier but nervous always of losing it and the people dispossessed are going to be angrier and more desperate of ever getting it as the years go by.

//Is it only the Israelis who have any responsibility to make peace?//

No - but they really do hold all of the cards, possession being nine-tenths of the law, as they say.

Bottom line is, I think Israel knows they aren't prepared to give the Pals anything like the contiguous state that they're after. I think settlement building and expansion is intended to be permanent. The longer the impasse lasts, the longer Israel has to make irreversible its territorial gains. That being the case, who has the stronger motive for stalling peace talks?

Truthtriumphs

So. aem/aelle,

I'm just wondering about your uncharacteristic silence.
Where are the answers to the questions I posed....you know, about where you think Jews should live, about the times of Jesus, King of the Jews, about dual loyalty, and about the 2 year rule for refugee status of the Palestinians?

Can't do better than quote you back at yourself:--

aem May 26th, 2011 5:12pm
"I note that you have chosen to persist in a prudent silence rather than answer the questions put to you on a previous thread.
- A prudent silence instead of an answer; and a whole lot of noise and bluster about anything irrelevant that passes before you, presumably to divert attention away from your failure to answer.
If you have an answer, give it now. If you think you have already answered, tell us where."
This is beyond dishonesty."

I'm waiting for you!

Gilbert Belwether

If you go and look up the article Truthtriumphs quoted ("Abbas vows: No room for Israelis in Palestinian state"), it's perfectly clear that Abbas was talking about an Israeli military presence. Again, such disinformation to the contrary, the Palestinians are not demanding a Jew-free Palestine.

JOHN ROOSEVELT

aem: Why, one wonders, do make no mention of the most unequivocal and frequent examples of Crimes Against Humanity in history - that of a variety of Palestinian groups - from Hams to Fatah - deliberately targeting civilians?

You go figure...and bury your head in your hands at aem's celebration of International Law.

JOHN ROOSEVELT

Steve
May 27th, 2011 3:14pm
Steve: "John Roosevelt

"..etc..etc..I hope you get my point..."

They won't."

Mmm..you don't say:)?

None of these twaddlemeisters ever answer the basic question I put to them.
They simply have no answer or they know that the only answer there is will make a mockery of the twaddle they continue to peddle here.

It is remarkable, by the way, how little play the embarrassing demise of Obama, at the hands of Netanyahu this week, had in Britain. The likes of aem, Herzen, Thomas must have have been frothing for a long time at the prospect of have a President of the US in their camp. Much to their consternation, no doubt, no president, I suspect, in history, has been so resoundingly rejected and ridiculed by Congress as this one and no foreign leader so rapturously received.

Israel needs to learn form this experience and start with renewed vigor to out the scandalous lying and unadulterated and ideologically-driven Jew hatred (sorry, anti Zionism) that the twaddlemeisters purvey. It's enough.

We have outed a US President.

Time to out all those who had dreams this President would lead them to their Promised Land of the the demise of Israel.

Wende Carr

Melanie,

You "nail it" every time! Would you please run for US President in 2012??? We need someone like you.... a truth teller!!!! And, someone who sees!!

C.Gee

aem:

Your hypocrisy-catching hypothetical is utterly hopeless.
Obviously, if you are going to import some of the same international concepts and actions into the parallel universe, there is no reason not to import all of them, with the same history behind them, and the same justifications. If you do, then the parallel universe is the same as this one, and all you have done is substitute “Lebanon” for “Israel”, the Arabs for the Jews, etc. In which case, the answer to your hypothetical is that whatever is right/wrong for Israel in this universe is right/wrong for Lebanon in the parallel universe.

What do you wish to prove? That I will blindly support anything called “Israel” across the universe? That Israel’s actions are universally objectively wrong?

Or are you auditioning as my straight man? You have stiff competition from Thomas. (I see you offered a contribution to the strong-horse skit.)

C.Gee

“International law since 1945 does not bind Israel. International law circa 1920 as misinterpreted by Zionists is binding in perpetuity on everyone else.”

As a general rule, law remains in effect unless abrogated by subsequent law. Whether there has been an abrogation is an issue of law, often mooted by facts, especially in the international arena, where facts can happen quickly in ways not anticipated by law. The international law since 1945 binding Israel are the peace treaties with Egypt and Jordan after a war declared by the Arab states. Whatever was going by way of law governing Israel’s relations with the Arab states was abrogated by that war.

As for the laws binding everyone else, let us hear from that elusive expert, Howard Grief. Yes, Thomas, I have decided to give you another morsel from the HG tome. Just this one, mind. Do not expect a whole conversation about it. Not until you obtain a copy.

“Estoppel in international law can be truly defined as a legal bar, impediment or limitation which prevents a state from denying or contradicting anything which it previously admitted or recognized either by its own actions or conduct or be making clear, voluntary and express statements or declarations, particularly as evidenced in an international agreement or treaty to which it was an original party of subsequently acceded or which it recognized.

“As applied to the case of Palestine, the principle of estoppel will debar or impeded any nation which expressly recognized the Balfour Declaration and Mandate for Palestine as well as the Franco-British Boundary Declaration of December 23, 1920 from denying Jewish legal rights and title of sovereignty over the entire territory of Mandated Palestine.”

C.Gee

“Again, such disinformation to the contrary, the Palestinians are not demanding a Jew-free Palestine.”

Again, I ask you for a cite to your source - if it is other than the statements by Ahmed Qureia I linked to above. These statements do not constitute bankable promise by the Palestinians, merely a description of a negotiating posture once taken as part of a deal to get East Jerusalem.

Adam B.

teresa, I did not ask you why the Palestinians don't love the Jews (presumably you think the Jews should love the Palestinians?) I drew your attention to the racism, hatred, glorification of violence and antisemitism which is taught in Palestinian schools, is regularly broadcast on Palestinian official media and newspapers, and statements by the Palestinian leadership. Go back and take a look what I wrote. You have simply failed to address this, instead trying to couch the debate in "why would they love them"? They are two quite different things.

You've also gone quiet on the other questions I put to you, including the situation of the ethnic Germans in Europe and the German government's stance on the issue.

the reason I said you had gone quiet is that you had posted since I posed these issues, yet didn't address them.

Adam B.

Thomas wrote about Dr MacEoin's points "they do not stand up to scrutiny".

Thomas, you did not say some stand up to scrutiny, some don't. You simply dismissed the entire content of Dr MacEoin's letter, without providing a single substantive point to counter any of the arguments, let alone all of them.

Thta is, as you know, a pathetic smear, and such a casual dismissal of such a well written letter shows that you are not serious about debate.

Adam B.

Gilbert Belwether, I refer you to both my post of 24 May 11.46pm and Truthtriumphs post of 25 May 1.53am, which demonstrate that no Jew would be allowed to live in Palestinian administered areas.

Such apartheid against Jews clearly doesn't bother you. This also has a track record - look at the disappearance of entire Jewish populations throughout the Arab world during the last 60 years.

Presumably you're fine with that as well.

aem

Truthtriumphs
May 27th, 2011 5:04pm

I will let aelle speak for himself if he wishes, although your questions to him probably don't warrant a reply.

I will try again to respond to what you have said to me, in the hope that the technology doesn't cause my words to disappear into the ether again.

It appears that you are indeed arguing that the inhabitants of Palestine before the Mandate were to be ignored.

It appears that you mention the small net Arab immigration during the Mandate because you confuse the inhabitants of Palestine before the Mandate with them, lumping them all together as "recent immigrants".

And it appears that you repeat the error that the inhabitants of Palestine were all "Arabs" in the sense that they came from the Arabian peninsula (and were therefore, for some reason, not "proper" inhabitants, in some sense, of Palestine - whereas the ancient Jews, who were by their own account immigrants also, were "proper" inhabitants).

The 700k approx. Muslims, 80k approx Christians, and 60k approx. Jews living in Palestine before the Mandate were not recent immigrants, in any normal usage of “recent” applied to human populations. The most recent were the political Zionists. Also recent were other Jewish immigrants in the previous 50-150 years. Among the Jews, as among the Muslims, were descendants of the original Jewish population of Judea, Samaria etc. Among the “Arabs”, any who came from Arabia were “recent” immigrants, I suppose, in much the same way as Saxons in England, or even more outrageous interlopers like the Normans – as opposed to the ancient Britons, many of whom were Celts, and therefore “recent” immigrants from the steppes.

The trouble with your arguments for the Zionists to have precedence over the inhabitants of Palestine in the early 20th century is why anyone not a convinced Zionists should accept them, let alone act on them.

There existed at various times and for various durations assorted kingdoms in Judah, Israel, whatever, a few thousand years ago, small and, on the archaeological remains, more backward than their neighbours, professing a tribal religion somewhat similar to modern forms of Judaism (once they had dropped Yaweh's consort). Are you saying that this history provides a legal claim on modern Palestine? If you are, then you are simply wrong. There is no legal principle that allows ancient title (assuming there is such a thing as ancient title) to be resumed after centuries, trumping the current population. So you may prefer a different version of the ancient history, you may be passionately attached to your version, you may think the above a travesty, but this gives no-one else any reason to act according to your wishes based on your version. Only law or force could do that for you – and in this case the law is not on your side.

A portion of the population of Palestine can no doubt be traced back to the ancient Jews of Judea, Samaria etc. Some of them were still adherents to the Jewish faith, which they shared with the ethnically diverse Jewish population of other countries around the world. Are you claiming that, because the religion of each was a version of Judaism, the ethnically diverse Jews of other countries around the world had a claim to sovereignty over Palestine where the non-Jewish inhabitants of Palestine had no such claim simply because they were not adherents of Judaism although ethnically indistinguishable from the Jewish descendants of the ancient Jews? Again, what is the basis for such a claim? It is certainly not a matter of law. Why were Jews from around the world to have a claim and the descendants of the ancient Jews who had converted to Islam to have no claim? Again, you may prefer a different account of the subsequent history of the ancient Jews, but your preferred account still does not give anyone else a reason to act as you wish.

You appear to argue that the Jews were the aboriginal population and therefore can reclaim sovereignty even after two thousand years of rule by various different sovereign entities. If this were taken as a general principle the consequence would be perpetual war of all against all. - Which may be why it has never been accepted as a general principle. Why then should it be accepted as a special principle that applies uniquely to the descendants of the ancient Jews (by their own account not the aboriginal population) who retained their faith in Judaism and to others of the Jewish faith (who were not even from Palestine/Israel/Judah/Samaria/Canaan...)?

Your arguments from ancient history and from Judaism have no leverage on anyone not already persuaded. They are like the claim some make that God has given them the land – to which the natural response from those who disagree is either No he hasn't, or Our God disagrees, or There is no God to give you the land, or, What has God, if there is such a Being, got to do with it.

You arguments can also produce peculiar results:

Your argument from ancient history might suggest that only those descended from ancient Jews should be allowed to decide. Your argument from religion might suggest that only those of the Jewish faith in one form or another should be allowed to decide. So, if all the ancient Jews who remained in Palestine had converted to Islam or Christianity, and the few who emigrated had all expired after productive careers proselytising among the gentiles, then, by your arguments combined, it would be logical for sovereignty to fall to people with no link to Palestine (other than eschatological), while those who could trace their lineage back to the ancient Jews, and, who knows, beyond, would have no say.

A few minor points:

You ask why I do not allow that the Jewish population of Palestine had rights too. Again you ascribe to me what I have never said. The population who should have been granted the right to determine their own future was the population of Palestine - 700k Muslims, 80k Christians, 60k Jews.

After the inevitable allusion to German anti-semitism, you end lamely by asking whether the League of Nations intended Lebanon, Syria, Iraq, Trans-Jordan to be sovereign states. The answer is, Yes. This has never been in dispute. The League also intended a sovereign state of Palestine. This also has not been in dispute. The question is whether the League intended a Jewish state. The answer is, No.

Thank you, nevertheless, for explaining both your assertion that Palestine was a desert and your interest in Arab immigration in the Mandate. You wish to show what is not entirely true that the inhabitants of Palestine were recent immigrants (i.e. within the last fifteen hundred years) and for good measure you wanted to show also what also is not entirely true that there were so very few of them anyway that they didn't count. They were all "recent" so a convert within the last few minutes would have more right to Palestine than they.

Unfortunately the explanation doesn't make your assertions any less absurd.

aem

C.Gee
May 28th, 2011 1:16am
It is really very simple.

The law is to apply equally to everyone.

The only thing changed in the two examples is that the Lebanon has the wherewithal to respond to Israel's attacks in the same way as Israel claims to have "responded" in 1967.

You assert that Israel broke no laws by its actions. You have to accept that the Lebanon likewise broke no laws in occupying Galilee.

The fact that it is possible to think of other universes where there are more alterations does not change the conclusion to be drawn from this example.

You want to say that there are various details of history ignored in my example that make it okay for Israel but not for the Lebanon? - what details precisely?

aem

C.Gee
May 28th, 2011 2:15am
No doubt I should steer clear - but what you say is distinctly odd.

The League of Nations was founded on an international treaty. The UN was founded on an international treaty. Britain as member of the League was bound by the treaty. Israel as a member of the UN is bound by the treaty. Indeed, Israel is bound by all sorts of international treaties it has signed.

Your deployment of "estoppel" is masterly. It is a joy to observe.

Unfortunately it does you no good unless this Howard Grief chappie is right about the League Covenant and the Mandate Treaty. And it isn't at all clear that he is. Simply quoting Mr. Grief at us becomes progressively less and less impressive. His whole argument rests on one proposition, which has the unfortunate property of being untrue.

(On the Strong Horse, I didn't pick up, perhaps you didn't bother to say, whether you agree that this journalist has transformed Bin Laden's profound insight into the key to understanding your Arab's atavistic mentality, or that Bin Laden's apercu doesn't get us very far at all and does not distinguish your Arab from anyone else.)

JOHN ROOSEVELT

aem: your legal and historical exegesis is fascinating of Middle Easter history is truly fascinating and what you may lack honesty you certainly make up for in obsessiveness.

Correct me if I am wrong, though, but don't the criteria on which you base your attempts to delegitimize Jewish claims - under the Mandate - to rights of sovereignty fall away after the UN recognition of Israel and the demographics that pertain now, in the territory still in dispute?

If this is the case, why do you carry on with such fervour if your argument are, at best, redundant?

Even a BENNY MORRIS, whilst perhaps giving "concerned' citizens like yourself grist to your moralising mill, is very explicit about a few points which, if you only took them to heart, should surely shut you up i.e.:

- the Arab will never give up the "right of return".

- the Arab will never concede this land - once muslim - to the Jew/infidel.

- the Palestinian leaderships, historically, cannot be trusted by anyone adhering to Western norms of International relations. Treaties have not the same significance to the muslim when signed with an infidel as the reverse. In other words, you cannot trust the Palestinians to make peace.

- ethnic cleansing i.e Jews of Arabs - is always a better choice than genocide i.e arabs of Jews.

Israel cannot make peace with an enemy that does not want peace. It is simple. This will therefore preclude you from realising any of justice you purport to pine for for the Palestinians because , as Morris points out,

- ". Arafat and his generation cannot give up on the vision of the greater land of Israel for the Arabs. [This is true, because] this is a holy land, Dar-al Islam. It was once in the hands of the Muslims, and its inconceivable [to them] that infidels like us would receive it. And besides, even if Arafat (or his heirs) will sign an agreement, I find it hard to believe, in view of his behaviour during the last two years, that he or his heirs will abide by it."

He goes on to say:

"...they (the Palestinians) don't understand that justice exists on the other side as well. We do understand that justice exists on the other side. Have you ever heard a senior Palestinian official who says that the Jewish demand for the State of Israel is justified? I have never heard that being said..."



..and.."We will not reach a compromise in this generation, and I have a sneaking suspicion that we will never reach a true and permanent agreement. In the heart of every Palestinian exists a desire that the State of Israel will not be here anymore. For many of them this translates into more than just a desire. As far as they are concerned, all of their misfortunes are a consequence of our deeds, and our destruction will bring about their salvation. Their salvation is the whole of Palestine....Every nation has its own particular way to understand reality, and their (the Palestinian) reality is very fluid. They feel that demographics will defeat the Jews in one hundred or two hundred yeas, just like the Crusaders. Or [the Palestinians are hoping that] the Arabs will have nuclear weapons. Why should they accept a compromise that is perceived by them as unjust today?"

Morris, for one, does not believe the Palestinian leaders when it comes o their pronouncements re Peace with Israel. On the other, he says, "I do believe them when they cheer for bin Laden..."

So we are stuck, aem. War has to continue as long as the muslims and arabs - any way they can - adhere to their religious dream of ridding what they see as their land of the Jew. This is no reasonable recipe for peace; and if they continue to coopt and the terminology of Western values and Law successfully, and thereby "useful idiots" like you, they will merely make the certainty of the Palestinians remaining the cannon fodder of the Middle East much more likely.

For a "concerned citizen" like you, surely this would be like a glorification of suicide bombing and, even though you have become know as resident kimikaze on this thread - goading the venerable Mr Gee, as you do, I am sure an Oxford first would not be of that ilk..or...?

PS. be a good gal and answer my questions, however much condescension that may entail.

Gilbert Belwether

C. Gee, there are no "bankable promises" by either side about a final status agreement because such an agreement has not been reached. All we have are "negotiating postures".

Adam B, my intention was to refute the claim often made here that the Palestinian negotiators are demanding a Jew-free Palestine, that is all. None of your statements are relevant to this.

C.Gee

Gilbert Belwether, do you or do you not have a source other than those statements by Qureia? If so, I should very much like to read it. If not, then I am satisfied that as far as my own research has taken me, the negotiating posture was hypothetical, and has been superseded in any case by other negotiating postures.

Truthtriumphs

Gilbert Belwether
May 28th, 2011 9:28pm

"Adam B, my intention was to refute the claim often made here that the Palestinian negotiators are demanding a Jew-free Palestine, that is all. None of your statements are relevant to this."

A Jew-free Palestine would be entirely consistent with the the situation that prevails in all Israel's neighbouring countries---all of them are judenrein.
Indeed, the "moderate" Jordan, with whom Israel has a peace treaty, forbids Jews to reside there.
Whom are you trying to fool?

Thomas

When the reference to Howard Grief would show C. Gee wrong (or Grief trying to "big up" soemthing that in fact does not support his case), then C. Gee makes a big fuss about not providing the reference. However, when he thinks (wrongly) that the reference will help, then he is very happy to trot it out, estoppel and all.

A faintly discreditable way of conducting himself.

Thomas

Casuistry, perhaps not at its most adept, but certainly at its most brazen:

The territory is not "occupied", it is "disputed". How so? Because Israel disputes that it should give it up after occupying it.

The question is now one of "demographics" in the "disputed" territories. Translation? Israel has settled a large chunk of its population on the occupied territories ("dispute", sorry), so there are now more Israelis there than when Israel first occupied them.

Squatter rights. Or, the thief complaining when required to return what isn't his.

Thomas

Dr MacEoin makes all the standard points provided by the MFA's hasbara department. He makes them with more clarity and reasonableness than anyone manages here. "They do not stand up to scrutiny" - as has been shown here many times in thread after thread, threads which I'm sure those who hail the good Dr. as their champion have read ( - and conveniently forgotten?).

C.Gee

“The fact that it is possible to think of other universes where there are more alterations does not change the conclusion to be drawn from this example.”

The fact that it is possible to think of universes of examples differing in some point or another from the real one, makes the conclusion to be drawn from any particular example entirely trivial, and without relevance to reality. You can rig any universe for any conclusion. You can pull a rabbit out of a hat if you put one in it. You can have any hypothetical territory illegally occupied if you give a hypothetical army enough hypothetical power to seize it from its hypothetically legal sovereign.

“The only thing changed in the two examples is that the Lebanon has the wherewithal to respond to Israel's attacks in the same way as Israel claims to have "responded" in 1967.”

If the issue is relative power and success in war, then the question the hypothetical invites is not whether Lebanon’s act is legal, but political, whether Israel could, should or would fight back to regain sovereignty, and who among the international community and upon what authority and precedent would help her, at what cost, and with what potential consequences in the Arab world.

If the question posed by the hypothetical is the legality of the “response”, and the history of Lebanon and Israel, including the history of their legal claims, remains unchanged, then the hypothetical legal argument would simply echo the legal debate on Israel and Palestine, without being relevant to it, because Israel v. Palestine is not the same case as Lebanon v. Israel at the very core of the legal debate: who has rights to sovereignty over the land. The Lebanese/Palestine border was fixed internationally (and given recent UN approval after Israeli withdrawal). That has not changed in your parallel universe. To conclude that hypothetical Lebanon is acting illegally assumes Israel’s sovereign rights over its territory, including Galilee. To carry that hypothetical to Israel v. Palestine, you would have to assume a “Palestine” and its sovereign rights over the territory of Gaza and territory previously held by Jordan, and assume Israel’s sovereign rights to the rest. Give Marvo the Magician a clap! He’s just pulled the bunny from the hat he put it into.

Why not hypothesize what would have happened if Israel had lost the war of independence? Or loses the next war? I think the IDF takes war games very seriously. Moot War is far more relevant hypothetically than Moot Court for the real Israelis and Palestinian Arabs.

“The law is to apply equally to everyone.”

I think you do not understand the concept of equality before the law. Treating like alike describes the process of finding how a particular set of circumstances best can be likened to others for which the law has passed judgment and found remedies and so can apply them to the instant case. Precedent is a difficult concept in international law, for obvious reasons.

Truthtriumphs

Thomas
May 29th, 2011 11:43am

"Casuistry, perhaps not at its most adept, but certainly at its most brazen:"

A perfect description of your posts.

"The territory is not "occupied", it is "disputed". How so? Because Israel disputes that it should give it up after occupying it."

Who occupied it before Israel, and who or what decides ownership, Thomas?
Your yardstick is very simple.
To the Jews, nothing, to the others, everything.

"The question is now one of "demographics" in the "disputed" territories. Translation? Israel has settled a large chunk of its population on the occupied territories ("dispute", sorry), so there are now more Israelis there than when Israel first occupied them."

Excellent news that.
The Jews have rightfully reclaimed what was always theirs.

"Squatter rights. Or, the thief complaining when required to return what isn't his."

That exactly describes the theft of the Temple Mount in Jersusalem from the Jews,on which were the two temples...Judaism's holiest shrine, destroyed by the Babylonians, then the Romans and stolen and built upon by the Muslim invaders, as was Judea and Samaria."

I notice that you coyly refrained from answering my last posts to you.
Why is that, Thomas?

Thomas

C.Gee
May 29th, 2011 12:02am
I'm sure Mr. Belwether will consider further engaging with your surmises and prejudices when you have given some indication that your researches have extended to reading the Palestine Papers and other evidence of what the Palestinians will and will not give up for a peace deal.

Thomas

"Even a BENNY MORRIS..." Even? When he was engaged in honest research he couldn't even bring himself to spell out the conclusion of all the evidence he had uncovered. Now that he has converted to Lieberman lout, he is less coy. He regrets that Ben Gurion did not finish the job of ethnic cleansing, and contemplates its completion in time of war. "Even a Benny Morris"! Beyond parody.

Herzen

The puppy love and adoration for C. Gee: it would take a heart of stone not to laugh.

Adam B.

Gilbert Belwether, a slightly ridiculous position - it's Ok that the Palestinians want a Jew free Palestine, as long as they don't admit it in negotiations, but admit it elsewhere.

Adam B.

Thomas, it is pleasing to see that, yet again, you are rendered unable to refute a single point made by Dr MacEoin, let alone all of them, which, again, you have dismissed out of hand.

That's not debate, and it also isn't the action of someone interested in truth or ideas which may challenge.

Never again can you get on your high horse and demand detailed answers from anyone else.

Truthtriumphs

Herzen
May 29th, 2011 6:44pm

"The puppy love and adoration for C. Gee: it would take a heart of stone not to laugh.".......at you!

Truthtriumphs

Thomas
May 29th, 2011 6:23pm
C.Gee
May 29th, 2011 12:02am

"I'm sure Mr. Belwether will consider further engaging with your surmises and prejudices when you have given some indication that your researches have extended to reading the Palestine Papers and other evidence of what the Palestinians will and will not give up for a peace deal."

As we have come to expect from you, a lot of strutting and fretting upon the stage, signifying...nothing.

C.Gee

Thomas:
“...faintly discreditable?” Should I be faintly insulted? Never, old chap. Not by you.

I am sure that after a moment’s reflection, you will understand how I really cannot be expected to hold seminars on Howard Grief, and most certainly not if my students refuse to read the book. When I mentioned writing a book entitled “Coming to Grief: Misreadings of the Unread,” or somesuch, I was - in your words - showing levity. If you want to see whether Howard Grief addresses the points you think are inarguable from Quigley et al., then do get the book - from Australia, if need be. I cannot be expected to hunt through the HG tome for sections that might have something relevant to a point you have in mind from reading - for all I know, misreading - your authorities. Nor is HG’s treatise the Bible, or I Ching, or Das Capital to be consulted for wisdom on the universe and everything in it. (I find it interesting that you friend should carry such a heavy book with him on his travels. Perhaps he does regard it as a source of wisdom. Perhaps he opens it at random, to seek advice on whether to travel at all. Which makes me wonder whether the HG, the Bible, the I Ching and Das Capital are available on Kindle.)

Why do I quote Howard Grief here? To make specific points, expressed better than I can express them, relevant to points made here. And to demonstrate that the arguments put out by anti-Zionists as settled truth have counter-arguments - for the record, as it were, so that the Judge - that mystical decider who reads the record - will know what needs to be decided. That is all. I do not expect to persuade anti-Zionists. I know that they will discount the counter-arguments (variously, as being put forward by partisans of the wrong side, as being the lies of criminals, as being “hasbara”, as being knavish, foolish, and against nature).

Sometimes, a new angle emerges from the anti-Zionists, which is an opportunity to refine the pro-Zionist argument. But most of the anti-Zionists launch the same hand-made arguments, carrying a pay-load of pathos and landing wide of the mark. Then they complain bitterly of disproportionality when their arguments are responded to with targeted efficiency.

I recall someone - Tilly? - saying that the problem with Israeli hasbara was that it was so aggressive, it silenced the other side. I thought that was a delightful new angle. It afforded an opportunity to refine my argument - by providing a new metaphor for the debate.

Truthtriumphs

aem/aelle. May 28@2.18pm.
Resident Oxford first in...history???

I've copied just a small portion of your rambling, often incoherent post, designed to bamboozle/impress/confuse the ignorant and gullible.
You do not provide a single source of reference anywhere...I wonder why not?

"After the inevitable allusion to German anti-semitism, you end lamely by asking whether the League of Nations intended Lebanon, Syria, Iraq, Trans-Jordan to be sovereign states. The answer is, Yes. This has never been in dispute. The League also intended a sovereign state of Palestine. This also has not been in dispute. The question is whether the League intended a Jewish state. The answer is, No."

So there we have it, the sage of the Hampstead Garden Suburb has spoken.

Speaking of anti-semitism, you are quite right, I did allude to it.
You are something of a British establishment FO type anti-semite who likes to cloak his bigotry in excessive and pretentious verbiage, thinking it will go un-noticed and unchallenged.

With that in mind, I recommend the following, highly acclaimed new book, by a genuine academic, the professor of modern European history at the Hebrew University, Jerusalem:--

–Robert S. Wistrich, "A Lethal Obsession: Anti-Semitism from Antiquity to the Global Jihad".

In the introduction, he writes:-
"Solidarity with the Palestinians has, in effect, been globally hijacked by a culture of hatred that shamelessly and totally distorts the integrity of religious beliefs; terrorism has come to justify itself as “resistance” under the false banner of justice and human rights; the Holocaust is cynically turned against its primary victims and the “deicidal” people of yesterday are transformed into the mythical perpetrators of today’s genocide. The Jew-hatred of yesteryear has not only mutated but is actively fueling the Middle East conflict and re-exporting its poisonous fruits to Europe and beyond.
Unless it is checked in time the lethal triad of anti-Semitism, terror and jihad is capable of unleashing potentially universal conflagration. A deadly strain of genocidal anti-Semitism brings the nightmare of a nuclear Armageddon one step closer and with it the need for more resolute preventive action."

Excellent Summer reading matter for those long, balmy summer days ahead, I assure you.
It might even leave you enlightened.

And you still haven't addressed the questions I posed earlier.
I'm especially anticipating your reply to my query as to where you think Jews should live, where they should build their future and establish themselves long term.
I also wonder why you think it is that for generations, the "Jew, go back to Palestine" refrain was the standard taunt of antisemites?

C.Gee

Er, whoops. "Das Kapital". A senior moment.

Gilbert Belwether

C. Gee, on the possibility of settlers staying in Palestine, my reference was to the Olmert-era negotiations, yes. I don't think there has been any opportunity for the PA to change its stance on this since there haven't been any serious negotiations since.

aem

C.Gee
May 29th, 2011 5:47pm
You are quite right. I was slow to see that I am wrong: my analogy does not work.

We are left at the impasse where so many other debates on this site have ground to a halt.

You think international law should apply for example to the border between Israel and Lebanon. You think international law should be disregarded for example when Israel adds to the territory it illegally annexed in 1948 by taking territory Jordan illegally annexed in 1948.

We are left with the double standard: Israel is to decide for itself what is international law.

The only sanction against such disregard for the rule of law is stymied by the veto so faithfully used by the US to protect its satellite from the punishment it would mete out to any other similarly defiant but with the wrong friends.

aem

Truthtriumphs
May 30th, 2011 12:27am
I was not surprised that your scientific education left you ill-equipped to engage in rational debate but well able to descend to puerile insults (again).

For the record, I am not aelle.

Thomas

C.Gee
May 29th, 2011 9:34pm
No insult was intended, so I am relieved none was taken.

Your effort at misdirection won't do. No-one required a seminar of you (and no-one would require a seminar of you).

Nothing else you say provides any reason to think the motive for your intermittent inability to quote Mr. Grief other than the one I suggested - which as I hinted is not honest.

Thomas

Truthtriumphs
May 29th, 2011 6:06pm
I see that your questions have been answered in detail. If I were to take the time to duplicate the effort, I fear I too would be served a helping of Prof. Wistrich's stuff. You should wean yourself off it.

I would be interested in how you go about justifying your presumptions about the population of Palestine and who has a right to self-determination there.

Adam B.

Thomas, I would be interested to know on what grounds you disagree with every point written by Dr MacEoin, but you haven't provided a single one.

And you want answers from Truthtriumphs? Nice tactic.

Adam B.

Thomas, look at Melanie's latest blog about the legal grounds for Jews to live in Jerusalem, Judea and Samaria. Then let's hear why you will (inevitably) disagree with them.

Herzen

We have here illustrated a fault shared by Truthtriumphs and Adam B.

Each time a subject comes up, they pretend that they have never been given any counter-arguments to what the assert as self-evident fact, and demand proof that there is such a thing.

So Truthriumphs has been told again and again why his assertions about the Balfour Declaration and the Mandate are questionable. Yet each time he raises them he demands to be told (as if he didn't know) what possible arguments there could be against his assertions.

And Adam B. tells us all to accept his Dr.'s assertions. The Dr. presents as fact what has here been shown time and again to be questionable. Yet Adam B. demands, as if he did not know, what possible objection there could be to what his Dr. asserts.

This is a less than honest way to go about defending prejudice.

C.Gee

Thomas and aem, and other dead horse floggers:

“Smart arse! We all know what bin Laden said. And, if we didn't, Penny reminded us. It is said US journalist who took bin Laden's profound insight and presented it as the key to understanding your Arab, who, given the choice between a strong horse and a weak horse will back the strong horse. Is there no end to the irrational perversity of your Arab?”

You have just done it again: tried to turn a hideous oriental’s solipsism into a hideous orientalist solecism with over-wrought irony. Bin laden may be trivially - and self-servingly - correct that strong-horse preference is universal. But it might also be a profound insight - and the key to understanding that particular Arab, as well as your Arab and maybe even your human being - even if it does not decode the whole mystery of man. But why bother with the stalking-horse of the “said journalist” ? Did you ever say who he is? He appears to be the unsaid journalist. Why is this person suddenly an exemplar of the irrational perversity of your westerner? And is he supposed to speak for me? Who the hell is he? I would like to read him.

Strong-horse theory is, in fact, very interesting. It is a gateway into an analysis of how culture and ideology created the current political realities in the Middle East. It also ties in, for those who are interested in such things, with the normative historiography that infected nineteenth and twentieth century political philosophy and which allowed history to ride rough shod over law - destiny triumphant over humanity.

Mankind - even your European - likes strong horses. Conquering hero-kings, mighty emperors, strong presidents, strong parties, have always been admired - worshipped, even. Strong-horsism has been the active principle in geo-politics across the planet (even where there are no horses) and across the millennia. Yes, it is atavistic, but then most of mankind’s group thinking is atavistic, because man is a social animal. Empire, tribe, nation, all atavistic. A global state of mankind? Not until man evolves into houyhnhnm.

Your Thomas and your liberal anti-Zionist westerner are in a muddle over strong-horsism, because sometime in the middle of the twentieth century the idea that there ought to be a law against war caught on among opinion-makers and the UN was born to institutionalize that European hypocrisy. The victors of the second world war (and France) sought to set up a system which vindicated their war and criminalized Germany’s war - so that the second world war was barred from happening again. Strength - the power to win a war - came to be seen as the cause of war. A super-power is, ipso facto, the cause of violence against it. Militarism, nationalism, expansionism, racism - the four horses of the nazi apocalypse - outlawed. War-horsism (the extreme of strong-horsism) was to lose wars henceforth. Resistance, international humanitarianism, liberation - the allied cavalry of salvation, weak-horsism - was to win wars henceforth.

But what to do with the muscular nationalism Europe had bred and let loose upon the Middle East? The British in particular were so enthralled by strong-horsism that they groomed a stable of donkeys to look like stallions (See T.E.Lawrence, Damascus and the Australian Desert Mounted Corps) so that the donkeys could rule (with British help) with borrowed heroism. Sadly, the Arabs, when fighting the Jews (who traditionally were asses by law), despite British help, were defeated. The Arab humiliation did nothing to suppress their strong-horse longings. When bin Laden killed 3000 people, a modern Arab hero was born. Your Arab was a strong horse again. Hence children’s programs on Palestine TV showing pilots flying a cardboard plane looking out for towers.

Does this sort of vulgar strong-horsism demonstrated by their Arab proteges embarrass your Thomas and your aem? Not a bit of it. Weak-horse theory permits resistance and liberation heroism and hero-worship. And Israel is the local strong-horse - its relative strength proving that it is fighting an illegal, losing, outlawed German war.

Yes, the more I think about it, the more I think that bin Laden and said journalist are correct about atavistic strong-horsism. It is universal, and your Arab’s version of it is correctly weak-horsism, and so your Arab is legally entitled to win the war against Israel.

Adam B.

Herzen, that's because Dr MacEoin's arguments have never been satisfactorily refuted. I have seen much bluster around these issues, and never seen it systematically taken part. Similarly, several lies and accusations repeatedly levelled at the Jewish state by you and your fellow travellers have been comprehensively trashed, only to reappear on another thread, like some demented broken record player.

Another Joshua

@aem
You say:"You think international law should be disregarded for example when Israel adds to the territory it illegally annexed in 1948 by taking territory Jordan illegally annexed in 1948."

I am having serious trouble in understanding your terms. Territory taken in 1967 was not "annexed" illegally or otherwise, as you say, but became Jewish occupied land/disputed land, which jurists and non alike attribute to it belonging to the Jews from the time of San Remo in 1920. The only way this arrangment changes, legally is if the parties to the dispute reach a compromise, whereby territory may be ceded for a long lasting peace and the terms are enshrined ain a new treaty. It is not annexed and different ordinances govern the ruling in this territory.

As for a "ghetto" which you say, in a previous post, is an "apt" description for Gaza: Again, which Ghetto in 20th century or earlier times had its inhabitants indiscrimately lobbing missiles over to civilian targets, that exports products (yes-exports aem), is supplied with food, oil and electricity by its enemy,has a population that is growing, a population that is not left hungry, laws that don't restrict trade to usury,(as in the real medieval ghetto) receives massive financial aid (which I contribute to with my taxes? Mmm?

Apt indeed!

Which leads me back to the point as to why you think it is "apt" and why I should not consider the usage of such terms, particularly with regard to the working definition by the EUMC, that potentially it is antisemitic to do so. Are we understanding history here or are we conflating terms to describe a situation that is not true? In other words: perpetuating porky pies.

Another Joshua

@Herzen

You say: "So Truthriumphs has been told again and again why his assertions about the Balfour Declaration and the Mandate are questionable"

And you have been told time and time again , why it is not so questionable.Pages of it. Even Howard Grief's book is beginning to look thin in volume ccompared to what has been stated!
I have just got hold of Ashcar's book and will leaf through when I have a moment, In the meantime I'm wondering whether you have researched Jacques Gauthier and had a look at the Land of Dust by Saul Friedman?

Thomas

C.Gee
May 31st, 2011 3:41pm
This I suppose is the risk you run in interrupting a discussion you have not been following - Who? What? Where?

My copy of the book you seek is just beyond my reach at the moment. The reference to it you will find earlier in the thread. When you have got yourself up to speed you can resume your effortful sarcasm, perhaps to more purpose.

C.Gee

“ The reference to it you will find earlier in the thread.”

Nope. No reference by “Thomas” to a US journalist writing about OBL in the thread. A couple of people are mentioned, but none with reference to strong-horse theory. “Said journalist” pops up out of the blue.

Adam B.

Thomas, why is it beyond your reach?

Are you in prison?

Truthtriumphs

Another Joshua.

"In the meantime I'm wondering whether you have researched Jacques Gauthier and had a look at the Land of Dust by Saul Friedman?"

Remember that on a previous thread you wrote that the book
Palestine, by Saul Friedman, is a must-have?

I tried to source it on Amazon, without success.
Could you tell me whether you have seen it recently...London, New York or Israel would do.

Thanking you in anticipation.

Another Joshua

@TruthTriumphs

Try the US Amazon site:

http://www.amazon.com/Land-Dust-Saul-S-Friedman/dp/0819124044/ref=sr_1_10?ie=UTF8&qid=1306939037&sr=8-10

UK Amazon is selling secondhand at £31 at the moment. The US site is slightly cheaper.

Hope this helps.

Thomas

C.Gee
May 31st, 2011 7:14pm
Do try to keep up. A "discussion" has more than one participant. If anyone else were this slow-witted, you would be practising your "wit" on them by now.