Israel

[f0xxee]

(benjy @ Mar. 10 2010,19:21) the mind boggles at what could be achieved in israel/palestine if the people there would honestly embrace  true peace,freeing up all those resources bogged down in war practices.
talk about a pipe dream

Good Call benjy. Wouldn't it be nice?

[pacman]

I have discussed the Israeli situation many times over the years with a former Mossad agent who spent years living in countries surrounding Israel gathering intelligence.

He was a natural candidate because he looked more Arab than Jew plus he spoke Arabic & associated dialects like a native.

Some of the things I remember him telling me was the universal hatred of the Palestinians by their Muslim cousins. Yassir Arafat was loathed everywhere as a person but was supported for fighting Israel right up to his death.

He was telling me of a plan to relocate the Palestinians into a country of their own that was to be carved out of the eastern end of Turkey, the north west of Iraq, parts of Syria, Lebanon, I can't remember but the area where all the borders meet is desert & is sparsely populated.

I have never heard of this idea anywhere else but it never stood a chance because none of those countries wanted the Palestinians any closer to them then necessary.

I asked him a lot about this contradiction between their support for Palestine having their homeland & their dislike of their Muslim cousins. I think he said the antipathy (to put it mildly) went back centuries.

He also talked about how the US & Israel's foreign policy were one & the same. He said if the Jewish bankers in New York wanted, they could shut down the US economy anytime they wished.

Would they really do that? I don't know but it helps explain the angst that Israel feels about the hostile position Obama's administration has taken against Israel.

As the US Federal Reserve is a private bank run by Jews, it makes the Jewish lobby the most powerful in Washington. Historically the US has never refused any request from Israel for weapons or defence.

Israel has played the game very successfully since they came into existence & it is indeed ironic that what they need to do with the Palestinians is the very thing they scream about what nearly happened to them in the German Concentration Camps - genocide.

But it won't be the Palestinians who bring the Middle East situation to its final solution, it will be a nuclear armed Iran. Israel will have to attack first but just how they will withstand the retaliation of all their neighbouring states remains to be seen.

I am glad I live far away from it all but we will all have to contend with the consequences. How does $500 a barrel for oil sound?

[Snick]

Some of the things I remember him telling me was the universal hatred of the Palestinians by their Muslim cousins. Yassir Arafat was loathed everywhere as a person but was supported for fighting Israel right up to his death.

Yup

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_September_in_Jordan

The PLO pissed on everyone. Arab governments hated him, but had to give lip service to supporting him because of popular support in their countries.

Support in America for Israel is, obviously, strong from the Jewish community, BUT just as strong from the (christian) religious right.

There is little in the way of a Palestinian lobby in USA, the majority of Palestinians who have emigrated to the USA are christian.

[Tomcat]

(pacman @ Mar. 10 2010,20:17) a plan to relocate the Palestinians into a country of their own that was to be carved out of the eastern end of Turkey, the north west of Iraq, parts of Syria, Lebanon,

I thought the original idea was for Jordan to take them all in . From memory it was tried but some mini civil war broke out..

[f0xxee]

(pacman @ Mar. 10 2010,20:17) How does $500 a barrel for oil sound?

Excellent! Guaranteed employment at football star wages for Mr Foxxee and memebership to the "Ducati of the Month Club".

[Ivor Biggun]

(f0xxee @ Mar. 10 2010,14:28) [
.... Of course if you Poms hadn't caved in in 1947 to zionist terrorists and given Palestine to the jews in the first place, this would be a moot point.

Go the Pallies!

(Actually I don't give a fuck but someone has to back the underdogs)

Actually it all started in 1917, not 1947. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Balfour...ration_of_1917. Move Isreal to kansas and then see how the US likes it! Fine they are not letting off bombs in Europe but they have carried out political assasinations in Europe and the latest Assasination in Dubai involved the use of Irish, Brit and Aussie passports, amongst others ( Oops- Ierael hasn;t admitted to the killing so it can't be them!!). Here's a list of alleged mosad operations across the 'civilised' world. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mossad#Europe. Espionage activities in the US are quietly hushed up.Operations in the US

All Jew are not Israelis, just as all Mussies are not terrorists. Some of the highest achivers education-wise in the US ( and I don't mean chemistry lessons!) are Muslim and do contribute to society. Firing rubber and steel bullets at rock throwers is over-kill, the Brits wouldn't even shoot petrol bombers in Northern Ireland ( but were allowed to in Hong Kong!)

Its the hypocrasy and constant arrogance that gets up my nose. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki...._Israel

The PLO was not just Mussies either, anyone remember Ian Davison, the South Shields carpenter who was involved in murdering 3 people in Cyprus in 1985? http://www.independent.co.uk/news....53.html

[bill520]

(Ivor Biggun @ Mar. 11 2010,11:26) . Move Isreal to kansas and then see how the US likes it!

The European Union has a population of 459,900,000, with a Jewish population of 1,121,300 about 8.6% of the worlds Jewish population. The U.S. has a population of 296,500,000, with a Jewish population of 5,275,00 about 40.3% of the worlds Jewish population. Only other Country with more Jews living there is Israel with 40.6% of the worlds Jewish population. It looks to me like half of Israel already moved here.

[blonde_havoc]

(Ivor Biggun @ Mar. 11 2010,11:26) Move Isreal to kansas and then see how the US likes it!

1. Have you ever *been* to NYC?

2. I wouldn't mind it at all.

[JaiDee]

IMO the USA supports Israel WAY too much and their lobby in DC is the strongest one of all, right up there with the NRA and the Tobacco industry. Hey, Americans need their guns, butts and a presence in the middle east, OK??

But our support of them is irrational and beyond what we would do for any other country.....and yet, if we pull our support for them and abandon them they will be overrun in days or worse, completely wiped out by the arabs who surround them and absolutely hate their very existence. The only way that place is still even a country is because of US support and we like doing it because it gives is a foothold in that part of the world.

The answer? Fuck if I know, people much smarter than myself or anyone who reads here have been trying to figure this mess out since 1947 and have gotten nowhere and won't anytime soon.

[benjy]

referring to ivor's item regarding english retaliation,I recently saw 'Britz',a tv movie about the moslems in england,+ some of the things legislated for the defence of england,as portrayed in the movie,made the old south african police look like boy scouts.
but seriously,every nation practices these extreme dirty tactics"to protect the nation".problem is,no-one ever knows for sure who the good guys really are

[pacman]

(JaiDee @ Mar. 11 2010,19:23) IMO the USA supports Israel WAY too much and their lobby in DC is the strongest one of all...

Who do you think controls US finances? The Federal Reserve, the only "Reserve" Bank operating in any western country that is privately owned & the major banks of the world, all of whom have their head office or major presence in the US.

And who do you think owns them? Jewish Bankers, that's who!!

And where do you think their allegiances lie? In the Mid West? The Rust Belt? The Christian Right redneck towns of the south & anywhere else?

I hardly think so.

The US has NEVER rejected an Israeli request for military support, arms funding, any damn thing they have wanted. And how can they refuse them when the Jewish overlords of the US banking system are all PRO-ISRAEL to the detriment of any other consideration.

[Guest]

(JaiDee @ Mar. 11 2010,19:23) IMO the USA supports Israel WAY too much and their lobby in DC is the strongest one of all, right up there with the NRA and the Tobacco industry.  Hey,  Americans need their guns, butts and a presence in the middle east, OK??

    But our support of them is irrational and beyond what we would do for any other country.....and yet, if we pull our support for them and abandon them they will be overrun in days or worse, completely wiped out by the arabs who surround them and absolutely hate their very existence.  The only way that place is still even a country is because of US support and we like doing it because it gives is a foothold in that part of the world.

    The answer?  Fuck if I know, people much smarter than myself or anyone who reads here have been trying to figure this mess out since 1947 and have gotten nowhere and won't anytime soon.

The AIPAC (American /Israel Public Affairs Comitee)lobby in the us is far stronger and better connected than the nra and the tobacco lobby.Every senator,whether Republican or Democrat (with 1 or 2 notable exceptions) bends the knee every time AIPAC enters the room.As Pacman says,they control the money supply,most of the media ,tv and newspapers,and those that aren't Jewish ,are pro Israel (eg Rupert Murdoch)
Of all the people in the world who should show tolerance, decency and humanity to their fellow men,it should be the Israelis.
A country that was founded(illegally,by the way)from the ashes of the 2nd world war ,and the holocaust survivors who were its first population,how did they become this fascist totalitarian state,that treats its own citizens(the palestinians)worse than the blacks were treated in South Africa?

Whats the answer? Well,America gives Israel £10 billion in aid every year.Perhaps if they refused any more aid until the Jews stop building settlements on Palestinian land,that would be a big step toward peace.(they announced a further 1600 yesterday) Pehaps if the Jews stopped treating the Palestinians like 3rd class citizens,that would also help.Perhaps then the arabs would stop firing home made rockets over the border into israeli villages.

Jai Dee,Israel would /could never be overrun by its Arab neighbours.Israel has overwhelming military supremacy,proving itself far superior in all its encounters with the arabs.Plus ,it has over 100 nuclear weapons,which it would understandably use if its existance were threatened.As for a foothold in that part of the world! Iraq is now a client state,as is the KSA.That might have been true during the Cold War,but it no longer applies.

America 's support for Israel is an obstacle to any peace settlement,as it condones the worst excesses of Israeli policy,with AIPAC branding any dissenting voices as anti-semitic.Which as we all know ,is the worst possible thing to be......

The great irony is,the great majority of the Hasidim fundamentalist fuckers ,arent of semitic origin at all,having descended from an Eastern European tribe,whereas the Palestinians are almost all of semitic origin..

[Torurot]

Jewish lobbying fails to stop EU support for Goldstone report
http://warincontext.org/2010....-report

by Paul Woodward on March 10, 2010

On Tuesday, a headline for Haaretz declared: http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/1155417.html

Jewish lobbying sways EU against support of Goldstone Gaza report

The article said:

Members of the European Parliament have backtracked from their plan to pass a resolution demanding implementation of the Goldstone report, in response to pressure from European Jewish leaders, Haaretz has learned.

After leaders of all the major EP parties had agreed on the wording of a draft demanding implementation of the controversial document €“ which accused Israel of war crimes in Gaza last year and proposed prosecuting Israeli officials in the International Criminal Court €“ the European Union's legislative body was scheduled to vote on the measure Wednesday.

But Tuesday, leaders of the parties backed away from the draft, after the president of the European Jewish Congress, Moshe Kantor, warned them that adopting it would seriously harm EU-Israel ties.

"It appears inconceivable that while the United Nations itself hasn't yet officially adopted this report, the European Parliament, in this motion for a resolution, calls for and demands its implementation," he wrote in a letter sent to the heads of major EP parties.

The joint motion for the resolution was removed from the plenary session's agenda after the European People's Party (Christian Democrats) blocked it.

"The European Jewish Congress played an important role in blocking the legitimization of the Goldstone report," an official from the Foreign Ministry said Tuesday.

That was Tuesday, but this is what actually happened on Wednesday: http://euobserver.com/24/29650

Despite an intensive lobbying effort on the part of European Jewish groups, the European Parliament has endorsed the Goldstone report, the UN's official investigation into the bombardment of the Gaza Strip in January 2009, a report that accuses Israel of war crimes and calls for the prosecution of Israeli officials in The Hague.

In a 335-to-287 vote splitting the house between left and right, MEPs backed a joint resolution from the centre left, far left, Greens and Liberals calling on the EU's foreign policy chief, Catherine Ashton, and the bloc's member states to "publicly demand the implementation of [the report's] recommendations and accountability for all violations of international law, including alleged war crimes."

The report also said:

On Tuesday afternoon, the level of lobbying had reached such an extent that Irish socialist MEP Proinsias de Rossa, the chair of the chamber's Palestinian Legislative Council liaison delegation, sent around his own email encouraging deputies not to buckle under the pressure.

"You are being bombarded with mails at present seeking to undermine your support for the the Goldstone Report in the vote tomorrow," he said.

"Tomorrow's vote is a test of the credibility of this parliament's commitment to human rights irrespective of political considerations," he continued. "The joint resolution is a fair and balanced position negotiated by all the main political groups. I appeal to you to support it."

Imagine a similar turn of events in the US Congress. Just imagine...

(I guess it's about as easy as imagining Congress including any socialist representatives or a Palestinian liaison group.)

[assist]

Israel is no more rogue than the US

By Andrew Roberts

Published: March 3 2010 02:00

Is state-sanctioned assassination justifiable, or does it somehow de-legitimise the state that undertakes it? Two articles in this newspaper last week, by Henry Siegman and David Gardner, have been violently critical of Israel in the wake of the assassination of the Hamas arms smuggler Mahmoud al-Mabhouh in Dubai on 19 January.

Mr Siegman wrote of how "Israel's colonial ambitions" and "checkpoints, barbed wire and separation walls" were "turning Israel from a democracy into an apartheid state", thereby creating a "looming global threat to the country's legitimacy". Two days later Mr Gardner wrote of how Israel's "militarist extroversion" over the Dubai murder demonstrated an "Israeli preference for instantly satisfying executive solutions to complex political and geopolitical problems" which would "widen the international battle-space for tit-for-tat attacks" and "encourage the perception that [Israel] is a rogue state".

Both commentators are completely wrong. All that the Dubai operation will do is remind the world that the security services of states at war - and Israel's struggle with Hamas, Fatah and Hizbollah certainly constitutes that - occasionally employ targeted assassination as one of the weapons in their armoury, and that this in no way weakens their legitimacy. As for the "separation walls" and checkpoints that one sees in Israel, the 99 per cent drop in the number of suicide bombings since their erection justifies the policy. There is simply no parallel between apartheid South Africa - where the white minority wielded power over the black majority - and the occupied territories, taken by Israel only after it was invaded by its neighbours. To make such a link is not only inaccurate, but offensive. If Arab Israelis were deprived of civil and franchise rights, that would justify such hyperbole, but of course they have the same rights as every Jewish Israeli.

Far from having any colonial ambitions, Israel wants nothing more than to live peaceably within defensible borders. But equally it demands nothing less.

Furthermore, rather than some kind of knee-jerk "preference for instantly satisfying executive solutions", the decision to kill Mahmoud al-Mabhouh - assuming it was sanctioned, planned and carried out by Mossad alone, which is anything but clear at this stage - would have been minutely examined from every political and operational angle. Yet sometimes complex political and geopolitical problems do require the cutting of the Gordian knot, and this was one such.

When Britain was at war, Winston Churchill sanctioned the assassination by its Special Operations Executive of the SS General Reinhard Heydrich, the capture (and killing if necessary) of General Heinrich Kreipe on Crete; ditto Erwin Rommel. Just as with some Mossad operations, such as the disaster in Amman in 1997 when agents were captured after failing to kill Khaled Meshal of Hamas, not all Churchill's hits were successful. But the British state was not de-legitimised in any way as a result.

The intelligence agents of states - sometimes operating with direct authority, sometimes not - have carried out many assassinations and assassination attempts in peacetime without the legitimacy of those states being called into question, or their being described as "rogue". In 1985 the French Deuxième Bureau sank Greenpeace's Rainbow Warrior trawler, killing photographer Fernando Pereira, without anyone denouncing France as a rogue state. Similarly, in 2006, polonium 210 was used to murder Alexander Litvinenko without Putin's Russia being described as "illegitimate". That kind of language is only reserved for Israel, even though neither Pereira nor Litvinenko posed the danger to French and Russian citizens that was posed to Israelis by the activities of Mahmoud al-Mabhouh.

The reason that such double standards still apply - more than six decades after the foundation of the state of Israel - is not because of the nature of that doughty, brave, embattled, tiny, surrounded, yet proudly defiant country, but because of the nature of its foes. Even though one has to be in one's seventies to remember a time when Israel didn't exist, nevertheless there are still those who call the country's legitimacy into question, employing anything that happens to be in the news at the time - such as this latest assassination - to try to argue that Israel is not a real country, and therefore doesn't really deserve to exist. Real rogue states such as North Korea might be loathed and criticised, but even they do not have their very legitimacy as a state called into question because of their actions.

Those who wish to understand Israel's actions and put them in their proper historical context should read Michael Burleigh's cultural history of terrorism, Blood and Rage . Burleigh quotes a senior Mossad agent saying after the Munich Olympics massacre of 11 Israeli athletes: "If there was intelligence information, the target was reachable and if there was an opportunity, we took it. As far as we were concerned we were creating a deterrence, forcing them to crawl into a defensive shell and not plan offensive attacks against us."

Is that attitude so very different from the pre-emptive targeted assassination of Taliban leaders that Nato carries out by flying drones in Afghanistan and Pakistan today? Yet are Messrs Siegman and Gardner going to call into question America's legitimacy? No, that insult is reserved for only one country: Israel.

The writer is a historian and author. His latest book is The Storm of War

Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2010.

[assist]

UK Daily Telegraph

Anti-Israel apartheid: The bigoted campaign to de-legitimize multi-racial & full democratic state of Israel - "apartheid" slur
Thursday, February 4, 2010,

Anti-Israel apartheid: The bigoted campaign to de-legitimize multi-racial & full democratic state of Israel by (lying) branding it as "apartheid" - the slur originated at the bigoted Arab Muslim society

What drives this "belief" (slur - actually) on a society where Arabs can vote and get to high office, where all colors & races have equal rights?

More troubling how one can not ´see´ the originators of this racist label - coming from the real Apartheid Arab-Muslim states where Jews are either not allowed in (like racist ethnic cleansed "Palestine" authority) & Christians are (real) second class citizens facing persecution, where the natives of the Arab countries (such as the indigenous: Berbers, Copts, Nubians,) or Africans (ranging from slavery & even genocide or at least plain racism, accepted discrimination, etc.), or Asians (especially those in the gulf states, many as slaves) or the Kurds have been/are victims of the Arab-Islamic supremacy & bigotry.

If this bigoted campaign to exclude Jews" legitimacy to their historic homeland, to isolate Israel from all international bodies, or to tarnish all Jews, than what is Apartheid, racism really all about?

How much does modern-day Israeli society mirror this dismal record of legalized race-based repression and discrimination? One soon finds that even a superficial glance at the respective situations shows the comparison to be self-evidently absurd.

In reality Israel, one of the most multi-racial societies in the world, goes to extraordinary lengths to ensure both tolerance and equality before the law. Its very founding Declaration of Independence specifically mandates complete equality of social and political rights to all inhabitants irrespective of religion, race, or gender.

Jews and non-Jews in Israel attend the same public schools, vote and stand for election together, live side by side in the same residential areas, enjoy the same freedom of movement and job opportunities, make use in equal measure of public amenities such as beaches and parks and can marry or live together with one another as they choose.

Israel's immigration policies encourage rather than impede the influx of diverse racial groups. Amongst other things, it has facilitated the immigration of some 70,000 Ethiopian Jews and plans to absorb 30,000 more. The vast majority of the Indian and Ethiopian Jewish communities today live in Israel, as do a majority of Jews from Yemen, Iraq, Syria, Libya, Egypt and other North African and Middle East countries. All, including Circassian, Druze, Kurds, Armenians, Beduin, and other non-Jewish citizens of the Jewish State, enjoy equal rights.

What kind of 'Apartheid State' actively seeks to increase its black population (and I don't mean by importing slaves, either)? As Israeli academic Alex Yacobson points out, there has never been even a Western majority community that has been as willing to accept non-western immigrants to the extent that Israel has. Given that Israel has absorbed nearly a million Jews from Arab countries€”who in terms of their ethnicity are essentially Arabs of the Jewish faith€”one sees further that Israel has been the most generous of countries with regard to Arab immigration worldwide.1 All this has taken place under the framework of the supposedly 'racist' Zionist ideology.

While a measure of discrimination still exists in certain areas, this is in no way comparable to the kind of oppression that existed in South Africa. In any case this is being constantly confronted and eroded through the Israeli courts, in the Knesset, and by both Jewish and Arab NGOs. To compare the inequalities within Israel to those experienced by non-whites in South Africa both unjustly exaggerates Israel's faults and subtly belittles the iniquities of apartheid. As such, it is a cynical ploy to piggyback on the suffering of others for propaganda purposes.

Racist attitudes, however, are found to some degree in all countries. The real question that has to be asked is whether that racism is legally sanctioned. That is certainly not the case in Israel.

In apartheid South Africa, by contrast, racism was not merely legally sanctioned but indeed was mandatory. Even whites opposed to such racist policies had no choice but to comply with them. Courts had to enforce apartheid legislation, no matter what the personal feelings of the judges might have been, universities had no choice but to base their admissions policies on racial criteria and businesses could not employ qualified blacks in senior positions.