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Politics : Foreign Affairs Discussion Group -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?


To: geode00 who wrote (198891)8/23/2006 7:28:03 PM
From: Sam  Read Replies (1) | Respond to of 281500
 
That piece that you pointed was labeled "Opinion." It is a one sided view lacking historical perspective.

Once the Arabs had rejected the UN's right to give away their land and to force them to pay the price for European pogroms and the Holocaust, the creation of Israel in 1948 was made possible only by ethnic cleansing and annexation. This is historical fact and has been documented by Israeli historians, such as Benny Morris. Yet Israel continues to contend that it had nothing to do with the Palestinian exodus, and consequently has no moral duty to offer redress.

Not so. Or perhaps better, a one sided exaggeration. Actually, Arab states practiced far more severe ethnic cleansing in the 1940s and 1950s than Israel did. Not only were more Jews than Arabs forcibly displaced from Arab countries in that time, but more property was taken from them and a higher percentage of Jews--who had lived in those countries for centuries--were kicked out. For example, there are only hundreds of Jews left in Iraq now out of a population of about a quarter million in the mid 1940s. Arabs are something like 20% of Israel on the other hand. Not everyone left, and of those who left, not all them were forced to leave. Were some of them? Undoubtedly. Stuff like that happens in wars. But question: where are the refugee camps of the 800,000 or so Jews who were forced out of Arab countries? They are nowhere to be found. Those Jews were resettled in Israel. The Jews that I know at least don't say no crimes occurred in the late 40s. They say, though, that they weren't the only ones to commit those crimes, sorting it all out is difficult if not impossible, and Jews who were displaced have at least as much to complain about as Arabs.

Since its withdrawal of occupation forces from southern Lebanon in May 2000, Israel has violated the United Nations-monitored "blue line" on an almost daily basis, according to UN reports.

I'd like to see those reports. Simply put, I don't believe him. His one sided account of things I can check makes me dubious about other claims that have not been made in accounts I have heard--even from people sympathetic to Palestineans in general, though clearly not as rabid as this person is. I googled Yusuf Rahil's name, and got this as one of the hits:
MORE ON STRINDBERG

Yaakov Har-Oz: “I'm going to keep it down to two points: (1.) Anders Strindberg claims that, ‘Since its withdrawal of occupation forces from southern Lebanon in May 2000, Israel has violated the United Nations-monitored “blue line” on an almost daily basis.’ I don't know what reports he is relying on – he quotes ‘UN reports’ without giving any detail – but he does give one and only one concrete example, claiming that earlier this year ‘15-year-old shepherd Yusuf Rahil was killed by unprovoked Israeli cross-border fire as he tended his flock in southern Lebanon.’ Did you happen to Google Yusuf Rahil? I did. It got 67 hits. All but one were cites to various versions of Strindberg’s article on the Web! (The 67th, tellingly enough, was a cite to a character in a movie.) It’s a bit hard to believe that this event actually happened, but wasn't reported on anywhere. (2.) You suggest that the land should have been purchased. Ummm . . . much of it was. According to the Survey of Palestine of 1946, more than 70% of the land (pre-1967)[EDIT: I'm pretty sure he means 1947 here] was owned by the British Mandate, which was the successor to the Turkish Ottoman occupiers. (Most of this devolved to Israel after 1948 and the remainder became Gaza and the West Bank.) Land in the area now known as Israel owned by Jews amounted to some 8.6%. Land owned by Arabs who left the country amounted to 16.5%, and owned by Arabs who remained 3.3%.”

andrewtobias.com
So it turns into a "He said, She said" thing, but as the above author notes, surely if the incident actually happened, it would have been reported in other news sources.


So you actually think that Syria left on its own?

Give me a break. Syria didn't leave on its own. But no, I don't think Israel had anything to do with it.



To: geode00 who wrote (198891)8/24/2006 11:49:41 AM
From: Sam  Read Replies (2) | Respond to of 281500
 
So, if you believe that what this guys says is propaganda, why did you reproduce it?

> Remarks of Brigitte Gabriel, delivered at the Duke University Counter Terrorism Speak-Out:
>
> I'm proud and honoured to stand here today, as a Lebanese speaking for Israel , the only
> democracy in the Middle East . As someone who was raised in an Arabic country, I want to give
> you a glimpse into the heart of the Arabic world.
>
> I was raised in Lebanon , where I was taught that the Jews were evil, Israel was the devil, and
> the only time we will have peace in the Middle East is when we kill all the Jews and drive them
> into the sea.
>
> When the Moslems and Palestinians declared Jihad on the Christians in 1975, they started
> massacring the Christians, city after city. I ended up living in a bomb shelter underground from
> age 10 to 17, without electricity, eating grass to live, and crawling under sniper bullets to a
> spring to get water.
>
> It was Israel who came to help the Christians in Lebanon . My mother was wounded by a Moslem's
> shell, and was taken into an Israeli hospital for treatment. When we entered the emergency room,
> I was shocked at what I saw. There were hundreds of people wounded, Moslems, Palestinians,
> Christians, Lebanese, and Israeli soldiers lying on the floor. The doctors treated everyone
> according to their injury. They treated my mother before they treated the Israeli soldier lying
> next to her. They didn't see religion, they didn't see political affiliation, they saw people in
> need and they helped.
>
> >For the first time in my life I experienced a human quality that I know my culture would not
> have shown to their enemy. I experienced the values of the Israelis, who were able to love their
> enemy in their most trying moments. I spent 22 days at that hospital. Those days changed my life
> and the way I believe information, the way I listen to the radio or to television. I realized I
> was sold a fabricated lie by my government, about the Jews and Israel , that was so far from
> reality. I knew for fact that, if I was a Jew standing in an Arab hospital, I would be lynched
> and thrown over to the grounds, as shouts of joy of Allah Akbar, God is great, would echo
> through the hospital and the surrounding streets.
>
> I became friends with the families of the Israeli wounded soldiers: one in particular Rina, her
> only child was wounded in his eyes.
>
> One day I was visiting with her, and the Israeli army band came to play national songs to lift
> the spirits of the wounded soldiers. As they surrounded his bed playing a song about Jerusalem ,
> Rina and I started crying. I felt out of place and started waking out of the room, and this
> mother holds my hand and pulls me back in without even looking at me.
> She holds me crying and says: "it is not your fault". We just stood there crying, holding each
> other's hands.
>
> What a contrast between her, a mother looking at her deformed 19 year old only child, and still
> able to love me the enemy, and between a Moslem mother who sends her son to blow himself up to
> smithereens just to kill a few Jews or Christians.
>
> The difference between the Arabic world and Israel is a difference in values and character. It's
> barbarism verses civilization. It's democracy verses dictatorship. It's goodness verses evil.
>
> Once upon a time, there was a special place in the lowest depths of hell for anyone who would
> intentionally murder a child. Now, the intentional murder of Israeli children is legitimized as
> Palestinian "armed struggle".
>
> However, once such behaviour is legitimized against Israel, it is legitimized every where in the
> world, constrained by nothing more than the subjective belief of people who would wrap
> themselves in dynamite and nails for the purpose of killing children in the name of god.
>
> Because the Palestinians have been encouraged to believe that murdering innocent Israeli
> civilians is a legitimate tactic for advancing their cause, the whole world now suffers from a
> plague of terrorism, from Nairobi to New York , from Moscow to Madrid , from Bali to Beslan.
>
> They blame suicide bombing on "desperation of occupation". Let me tell you the truth. The first
> major terror bombing committed by Arabs against the Jewish state occurred ten weeks before
> Israel even became independent.
>
> On Sunday morning, February 22, 1948 , in anticipation of Israel 's independence, a triple truck
> bomb was detonated by Arab terrorists on Ben Yehuda Street , in what was then the Jewish section
> of Jerusalem . Fifty-four people were killed, and hundreds were wounded. Thus, it is obvious
> that Arab terrorism is caused not by the "desperation" of "occupation", but by the VERY THOUGHT
> of a Jewish state.
>
> So many times in history in the last 100 years, citizens have stood by and done nothing,
> allowing evil to prevail. As America stood up against and defeated communism, now it is time to
> stand up against the terror of religious bigotry and intolerance. It's time to all stand up, and
> support and defend the state of Israel , which is the front line of the war against terrorism.