Can you look at this map and say Israel does not systemically appropriate land?

Conservatives are consistently and wilfully ignorant of those factors that lead to ongoing hostility on both sides. Israel has a right to exist - but so do Palestinians, as fully equal citizens.

Quote:
UNITED STATES
To the Students for Justice in Palestine, a Letter From an Angry Black Woman
‘You do not have the right to invoke my people’s struggle for your shoddy purposes’

The student organization Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP) is prominent on many college campuses, preaching a mantra of “Freeing Palestine.” It masquerades as though it were a civil rights group when it is not. Indeed, as an African-American, I am highly insulted that my people’s legacy is being pilfered for such a repugnant agenda. It is thus high time to expose its agenda and lay bare some of the fallacies they peddle.

• If you seek to promulgate the legacy of early Islamic colonialists who raped and pillaged the Middle East, subjugated the indigenous peoples living in the region, and foisted upon them a life of persecution and degradation—you do not get to claim the title of “Freedom Fighter.”

• If you support a racist doctrine of Arab supremacism and wish (as a corollary of that doctrine) to destroy the Jewish state, you do not get to claim that the prejudices you peddle are forms of legitimate “resistance.”

• If your heroes are clerics who sit in Gaza plotting the genocide of a people; who place their children on rooftops in the hopes they will get blown to bits; who heap praises upon their fellow gang members when they succeed in murdering Jewish school boys and bombing places of activity where Jews congregate—you do not get to claim that you are some Apollonian advocate of human virtue. You are not.

• If your activities include grieving over the woefully incompetent performance by Hamas rocketeers and the subsequent millions of Jewish souls who are still alive—whose children were not murdered by their rockets; whose limbs were not torn from them; and whose disembowelment did not come into fruition—you do not get to claim that you stand for justice. You profess to be irreproachable. You are categorically not.

• If your idea of a righteous cause entails targeting and intimidating Jewish students on campus, arrogating their history of exile-and-return and fashioning it in your own likeness you do not get to claim that you do so in the name of civil liberty and freedom of expression.

• You do not get to champion regimes that murder, torture, and persecute their own people, deliberately keep them impoverished, and embezzle billions of dollar from them—and claim you are “pro-Arab.” You are not.

• You do not get to champion a system wherein Jews are barred from purchasing land, traveling in certain areas, and living out such an existence merely because they are Jews—and claim that you are promoting equality for all. You do not get to enable that system by pushing a boycott of Jewish owned businesses, shops, and entities—and then claim that you are “against apartheid.” That is evil.

• You do not get to justify the calculated and deliberate bombings, beatings, and lynchings of Jewish men, women, and children by referring to such heinous occurrences as part of a noble “uprising” of the oppressed—that is racism. It is evil.

• You do not get to pretend as though you and Rosa Parks would have been great buddies in the 1960s. Rosa Parks was a real Freedom Fighter. Rosa Parks was a Zionist.

Coretta Scott King was a Zionist.

A. Phillip Randolph was a Zionist.

Bayard Rustin was a Zionist.

Count Basie was a Zionist.

Dr. Martin Luther King Sr. was a Zionist.

Indeed, they and many more men and women signed a letter in 1975 that stated: “We condemn the anti-Jewish blacklist. We have fought too long and too hard to root out discrimination from our land to sit idly while foreign interests import bigotry to America. Having suffered so greatly from such prejudice, we consider most repugnant the efforts by Arab states to use the economic power of their newly-acquired oil wealth to boycott business firms that deal with Israel or that have Jewish owners, directors, or executives, and to impose anti-Jewish preconditions for investments in this country.”

You see, my people have always been Zionists because my people have always stood for the freedom of the oppressed. So, you most certainly do not get to culturally appropriate my people’s history for your own. You do not have the right to invoke my people’s struggle for your shoddy purposes and you do not get to feign victimhood in our name. You do not have the right to slander my people’s good name and link your cause to that of Dr. King’s. Our two causes are diametrically opposed to each other.

Your cause is the antithesis of freedom. It has cost hundreds of thousands of lives of both Arabs and Jews. It has separated these peoples, and has fomented animosity between them. It has led to heartache, torment, death and destruction.

It is of course your prerogative to continue to utilize platitudes for your cause. You are entirely within your rights to chant words like “equality” “justice” and “freedom fighter.”

You can keep using those words for as long as you like. But I do not think you know what they mean.

Q: Are Palestinian and Jewish citizens of Israel treated equally?
A: No. Although Palestinian citizens of Israel are entitled to vote and participate in Israeli political life, and several Palestinians are members of the Knesset (the Israeli parliament), they do not receive the same treatment as the Jewish citizens at the hands of the government. Israel still applies 20 laws that privilege Jews over Arabs. For example, the 1950 Law of Return grants automatic citizenship rights to Jews from anywhere in the world upon request, while denying that same right to Palestinians. The Basic Law of Human Dignity and Freedom ensures that Israel is the state of the "Jewish people," not its citizens. This law was passed in 1992 to serve as a "bill of rights," as Israel does not have a written constitution.

Israel's flag and other national symbols are Jewish religious symbols, not neutral or national ones that represent all the citizens of the state. Government resources, meanwhile, are disproportionately directed to Jews and not to Arabs, one factor in causing the Palestinians of Israel to suffer the lowest living standards in Israeli society by all economic indicators.

Human Rights Watch has compiled an extensive study of Israel's policy of "separate, not equal" schools for Palestinian children, finding that "Government-run Arab schools are a world apart from government-run Jewish schools. In virtually every respect, Palestinian Arab children get an education inferior to that of Jewish children, and their relatively poor performance in school reflects this."

Nearly 25% of Israel's population is not Jewish.

As many as 100 Palestinian villages in Israel, many of which pre-date the founding of the state, are not recognized by the Israeli government, and are not listed on maps and receive no services (water, electricity, sanitation, roads, etc.) from the government. More than 70,000 Palestinians live in these unrecognized villages. Meanwhile, hundreds of new Jewish towns have been established on lands confiscated from Palestinians.

From jewishvoiceforpeace.org.

No American is capable of getting irony. It's something that only Brits are able to understand.

Where are the gas chambers and the starving Palestinians behind barb wire living in their own waste waiting to die?

http://www.amazon.com/Palestine-Joe-Sacco/dp/156097432X

This is an alien concept to a hate filled pustule like yourself. You've shown you hate Moslems by going on a thread about Islam just to insult and denigrate the religion. As hate is the only emotion you understand, you automatically accuse others of your own failings purely because you are incapable of expressing anything else

http://www.amazon.com/Palestine-Joe-Sacco/dp/156097432X

Edward Said: The Bitter Orientalist
Posted on August 2, 2010 by William J. Holland

Before his death in 1995 the great political historian and anthropologist Ernest Gellner began a very long celebrated demolition of the literary critic Edward Said (d. 2003 pronounced Sigh-eeed), especially Said’s book titled ‘Orientalism’ (1978). The original source is Ernest Gellner, ‘The Mightier Pen: The Double Standards of Inside-Out Colonialism’, in Times Literary Supplement, 19 Feb. 1993, pp.3-4. It is cited here for those who wish to enjoy reading an exposed fraud that is Dr. Edward Said.

The article remains the foremost in exhorting the fraud that Said became after the publication of Said’s texts and diatribes.

Columbia University is known as being the Berkley of the east coast!

Newsflash: This is pejorative, even if the residents of Columbia think not.

Edward Said took up the radical posture of the Palestinian cause throughout the 1980’s where he begot a cult like following throughout the left in America similar to Noam Chomsky. Even if Said and his followers never admitted to extreme political posturing; outside of academia Said’s status has only grown. This has much to do with the hardening of the left with both the arrival of the Obama administration, the lack of fresh ideas and the fascist impulse that grounds much of liberalism today. Nevertheless, for those who are firmly grounded in reality, Ernest Gellner began the assault on Edward Said long before Said became fashionable.

The demolition of Said by Ernest Gellner had its origin in Edward Said’s ignorant reply that Gellner ought not to have published or spoke on anything regarding North Africa, for he was ignorant of its native languages. This was grave ignorance on behalf of Said, for Ernest Gellner spent most of his adult life as an anthropologist living and studying throughout North Africa for over forty years. He knew the languages, and was a world renowned expert in Medieval Islam! Gellner was just to modest to respond publically.

A deep admiration of Said and his hard posturing for the Palestinians has lead to a schizoid review of most of his writings regarding the Near East. The original camp of hardened leftist literary critics who espouse the beliefs of culture and its relation to power in a vein similar to Michel Foucault are contrasted by more realist Arabist’s and Near Eastern anthropologists who firmly believe that Edward Said is nothing more than a fraud, a bitter Orientalist!

We are a long way from T.E. Lawrence, St. John Philby and Gertrude Bell!

Edward Said tried to dress up in literary drab the work of both an anthropologist and/or ethnographer. One who is fascinated by other peoples, their customs, mores, beliefs, practices and history. Of course the original was Herodotus and Thucydides. Said corrupted the moral reserves of a fine discipline that preceded him. For Said, the study of the Near East (the Middle East for Americans) as it is practiced in the West is always allied with colonial, imperial interests. Said claimed that even the most disinterested, ostensibly antiquarian research was inevitably compromised by reasons of realpolitik! Said even pushed to reveal and punish interlocutors who interrupted his fascist belief that the connivance of Orientalist’s help make possible the political, technological and cultural hegemony that American and the West has over Islam and the Islamic world. In espousing such, Edward Said gave intellectual cover to Osama bin Ladin. True academics who lived modest lives of intellectual responsibility distrusted such ideals. Ernest Gellner’s childhood Jewish memories of Germany provided the impetus to respond.

In responding, Dr. Ernest Gellner sought to discern the principle of intelligibility intrinsic to Said, what he found was neither intelligible nor worthy of defense, he found Said’s premise canny, but unimaginative.

In the years after his death in 2003, many have taken time to seek out and expose Edward Said’s work as fraudulent. It is a worthy endeavor. Their remains a very sad chapter when you surmise the talent that became of Edward Said. The decade before his life saw the most significant work he’d ever propose and defend. After growing sick of his accolades he tacked a more conservative line of literary endeavor. I witnessed his investigation into the work of Catholic Phenomenologists in the mid 1990’s as astonishing. Can one bridge the gaping breech between the rigid fascism in ‘Orientalism’ to the lovely episodes of numerous essays in ‘Reflections On Exile’?

How can anyone make sense of a radicalized Palestinian in touch with the work Marleau Ponty? Certainly the drive for acclaim in media overcame the sincere thinker. How else to explain the moral breech?

Many have undertaken efforts exposing such a fraud, the most kind and sincere efforts were done by Robert Irwin in ‘Dangerous Knowledge’, Ian Burma and Avishai Margalit in ‘Occidentalism’ or ‘The Orientalist’ by Tom Reiss.

Well you have admitted you can not win the argument of ideas by resorting to name calling like most cowards do

No. I am not hating on "The Jews". I am hating on the Israeli government.

That is a bit farfetched! Go back and read the facts izzy!

Israel is trying to defend itself to the point that these loons will stop sending missiles across the borders. Hamas is a left wing loon organization that openly admits to wanting to annihilate the Jews from the face of the earth. Now you tell me if that does not speak of hatred. Israel was provoked and thus must stand up for itself.

The western media delivers puke and expects us to lap it up as if it were delectable. They always err on the side of the loons! There would be no innocent babies killed if Hamas would quit provoking Israel. What about all the money that the IMF has sent these clowns and what do they do with the money? Buy missiles and concrete to build tunnels to Israel in order to infiltrate Israel and cause terror. These people are NUTS to say the least!

ISRAEL has every right to defend itself!

Annihilate Israel,’ Hamas leaders urge Gaza teens

In video of camp graduation ceremony, top officials urge young Palestinians to keep fighting Zionists, carry jihad across the world

By Lazar Berman and Elhanan Miller January 24, 2014, 9:25 am 40


Read more: 'Annihilate Israel,' Hamas leaders urge Gaza teens | The Times of Israel http://www.timesofisrael.com/annihilate-israel-hamas-leaders-tell-gaza-youth/#ixzz38tE2AqXr
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