Palestinian Solidarity Campaign disrupts Israeli Concert. Yeah!!!

You are incorrect in your history. The Israelis told them (with megaphones) to stay. Those Arabs that stayed are living comfortably in Israel today.

Sorry. They are part of the 300 or so million U.S. citizens that are part of this democracy. So, I do not ignore them. I do however try to ignore those that think their way is objectively correct, rather than subjectively correct.

You mean it was a canard that I always heard that the Lord of the Manor was allowed first shot at the bride on the wedding night?

I am not sure that property rights meant that a serf could take his SUV and color tv when they decided to work another Lord's land. I mean that a serf was by definition someone that owned no land, and therefore had to be subservient to some Lord of some Manor. Yes, they could not be "sold down the river," so to speak, breaking up families, but neither were the Hebrew slaves in ancient Israel. My point being that splitting hairs over the correct definition of a slave is just in context of the time period, I believe.

He's actually quite mannerly in his lexicon. You do know that the "N" word has been used as a suffix to the word "sand" in referring to Arabs by more than just a few? I have heard it used prior to 9/11, back in the '80's. I avoid all people that use the "N" word, regardless of its usage. But, I did hear it more than once.

It appears to me that you believe your desire for a permanently Jewish state of Israel is objectively correct. Where does that leave you?

I read and reread your question above. I can only guess that there is an inference in your question that I cannot discern. Please be more forthcoming. What do you mean, "Where does that leave you?"

My desire for a permanently Jewish state is just in context of the historical evidence that anti-Semitism in its "exterminist" mode, that was not invented by the Nazis, is like an intractable illness, that the Gentile world can never completely eliminate. So, subjectively, I believe, an ethical argument can be made that Israel needs to exist, since the world will continue with not only its exterminist anti-Semitism, but its projecting onto Jews all the negative traits it cannot accept it has, based on the unattainable virtues of other monotheistic faiths. This includes the fact, in my opinion, that three other monotheistic faiths (Islam, Catholicism, Eastern Orthodoxy) still accepts, through tacit approval, an anti-Semitism that permeates its popular culture.

Izzy you think you have tapped into a gold mine of insults with this tired line of how hard you have to struggle to explain things to me when you've simply become a boring and often obscure one trick pony.

In any case, like Walter you are focusing on only one element because you're unwilling or unable to address the whole.

As I noted in my post the Panel did find that the Israeli's use of force was excessive, and that they abused the flotilla passengers after the incident.

What you are blithely dismissing are the other findings:

The Blockade is legal and a legitimate security measure.

The cornerstone of criticism against the Blockade has always been that it violates International Law, and, indeed, the Turks went to great, and idiotic, lengths arguing this point. The importance of this contention is that if accepted, then it doesn't matter whether Israelis were provoked or defending themselves. Someone robbing a bank can't make anything approaching a credible argument that he shot the bank guard in self-defense. Any Israeli action that flows from the Blockade is indefensible if the Blockade itself is illegal.

In addition, any situation or conditions that can possibly be attached to the illegal Blockade (i.e. Gaza hardship) can be declared all the more repugnant because they are resulting from an illegal and unjustified practice.

The Panel completely nullified this argument. First by finding the Blockade legal, then by finding it to be a legitimate security method and not an attempt to punish or squeeze the Palestinians of Gaza, and finally by making the clear point that regardless of what the conditions may be in Gaza, the Blockade cannot have contributed to them.

If you really believe this is really of little importance instead of just being psychologically unable to acknowledge vindication for Israel, then you are far less intelligent than I've been giving you credit for.

Almost equally important is how the Panel gave lie to the notion that this flotilla was on a humanitarian mission, that the organizers fully intended it as a provocation, and came prepared to engage in violence that was predictable.

You make quite a lot of your Campaign's use of non-violent tactics. Do you expect the same from the Palestinians and their supporters?

How easily the condemnation of Israel flows when the "victims" are seen as peaceful humanitarians who simply have the conviction to face the Brutal Occupier and just say "No!" However, when you recognize that the organizers of the flotilla and their hardcore agents came spoiling for a fight and prepared to engage in violence it renders the incident something other than Good vs. Evil.

Finally, the difference between an expression of regret and an apology (let alone a "full" one) is obviously distinct in international affairs. Otherwise, the Turks would not be demanding the latter.

The recommendation by the Panel that Israel issue an expression of regret was not just another way of telling them to say they were sorry.

I'm not suggesting that the Panel wanted to completely exonerate Israel, but given the geo-political dynamics involved, a UN commission that may have wanted to, never would. Instead they are able to signal just how guilty Israel may actually be by calling for an expression of regret rather than an apology.

Nine people died and over 50 (including Israeli soldiers) were wounded. It never should have happened and a UN commission was never about to contend the violence justified.

Elite Israeli military professionals did the killing, and whether or not self-defense was a justifiable explanation at the moment, the situation should never have occurred, and Israel can be criticized for allowing it to develop. Not because it is unreasonable for them to be sick and tired of being targeted by most of the world as the New Nazis or New Afrikaners, nor because it is not understandable how they might feel a bunch of Turkish Muslims trying to shove a flotilla up their national ass, were asking for it, but because they know how these things play out. They know that they have to be more circumspect than virtually every other nation in the world. They know that as much as they count of American support, they need to make certain that they do not undercut that support.

Usually they get it right, like in resisting the urge to bomb Iraq into the Stone Age during the first Gulf War, but it is unrealistic to expect that anyone or any nation can endure violent provocation time after time and not occasionally lash out without full consideration.

Still, they have been willing to express regret and pay compensation to the families of those killed. Unfortunately that, like every other Israeli overture is not enough for the fanatics who wish to destroy them (Hamas) and the political opportunists (Turkey) who wish to solidify their position in the Muslim World by taking on Little Satan.

The Palestinians have proved themselves to be master manipulators of the international media and the international Left (but I repeat myself). You and your fellow Campaigners are serving them well. Particularly by arguing that they are victims of the most egregious example of State oppression in the modern world.

I feel flattered that you find my post interesting.

But originally you didn't write what you wrote now. You wrote that the international media "virtually ignored the report".
And that's why I responded.

Thus you assert that your view is objectively correct, and thereby contradict your statement above.

Why are not the Jews of North and South America leaving for the safety of Israel? Indeed, why haven't you gone?

Perhaps your belief is not so solid as you suggest.

For someone who believes in the right to bear arms, your insistance on non-violence from others does seem a bit hypocritical.

I accept that the blockade was found to be legitimate as you say. It does have valid concerns regarding guns explosives etc. None of which were found. Men were fighting occupation using clubs, they were met with guns.

The blockade is being used to collectiely punish the Palestinians. After the bombing there has been hardly any reconstruction as concrete is not allowed in. There is hardly any economy whatsoever. Certain things are allowed one day and banned the next. Lets not forget all the enforced queueing, the denial of medical treatment.

How would 'right to bear arms' Finn deal with that daily humiliation?

We're going to have to agree to differ on that. Those Arab Israelis living in Israel today could hardly be classed as 'living comfortably.'

Perhaps one of the greatest injustices ever meted out to the Jewish people was the way Rome managed to 'wash its hands' of the crucifixion, and blame everything on the Jews. The way forward is not to continue persecuting Palestinians, but to respect the rights of all minorities. Israel could do a lot worse than take its lead from the recent actions of British Jews.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2011/sep/04/dale-farm-travellers-jewish-backing

What you had going on in the 30s was a perfect storm of three or four different flavors of antisemitism blending together. What you have now is driven by I-slam and Europe's perceived need for oil, but the potential for it to get really ugly again is real enough. There were no Jews dying in the 40s because they couldn't get out of Nazi-controlled territories, they were dying because they couldn't get INTO other countries, which is why Israel has to remain a Jewish state.

Again a look at maps should settle the issue for most intelligent people. You've got the gigantic region which is the muslim world and the tiny sliver of territory called Israel, and that's just too much for both muslims and people like Izzy the POOP and Hinkey here.

Your map is not of a country. There are several different countries where Islam happens to be the main religion. They are not all the same race, do not all speak the same language or even have the same view on Islam. That basically shows your 'thinking' for what it is.

This is typical Foofie drivel. Leaving aside the failure of subject/verb agreement, one wonders if this is fact or Foofie's opinion. However, of course, since it hasn't been demonstrated, it can't be fact.

Yeah, it's the world that has the problem, not Foofie, and the world is out to get him.

This mental disorder makes up much of the psychological basis of Zionist nationalists, and is the basis for their discriminatory and oppressive behavior towards the Palestinians.

Unfortunately, the US is their foremost enabler in the Zionists' dysfunctional relationship with the world.

And your history is incomplete, Foofie.

Ethnic cleansing was perpetrated by the Haganah, the Zionists para-military organization which was the percursor to the Israel Defense Forces. The Israeli historian, Benny Moris, talked about some of the facts he brings up in his book, "The Birth of the Palestinian Refugee Problem Revisited," in an Ha'aretz interview in January of 2004: "There were twenty-four small scale massacres perpetrated by the Israeli forces in 1948. Morris says, "in some cases four or five people were executed, in others the numbers were 70, 80, 100. There was also a great deal of arbitrary killing. Two old men are spotted walking in a field - they are shot. A woman is found in an abandoned village - she is shot. There are cases such as the village of Dawayima [in the Hebron region], in which a column entered the village with all guns blazing and killed anything that moved.

"The worst cases were Saliha (70-80 killed), Deir Yassin (100-110), Lod (250), Dawayima (hundreds) and perhaps Abu Shusha (70). There is no unequivocal proof of a large-scale massacre at Tantura, but war crimes were perpetrated there. At Jaffa there was a massacre about which nothing had been known until now. The same at Arab al Muwassi, in the north. About half of the acts of massacre were part of Operation Hiram [in the north, in October 1948]: at Safsaf, Saliha, Jish, Eilaboun, Arab al Muwasi, Deir al Asad, Majdal Krum, Sasa. In Operation Hiram there was a unusually high concentration of executions of people against a wall or next to a well in an orderly fashion.

"That can't be chance. It's a pattern. Apparently, various officers who took part in the operation understood that the expulsion order they received permitted them to do these deeds in order to encourage the population to take to the roads. The fact is that no one was punished for these acts of murder. Ben-Gurion silenced the matter. He covered up for the officers who did the massacres."

There was a comprehensive and explicit expulsion order in Operation Hiram. "One of the revelations in the book [The Birth of the Palestinian Refugee Problem Revisited, 2004] is that on October 31, 1948, the commander of the Northern Front, Moshe Carmel, issued an order in writing to his units to expedite the removal of the Arab population: "Do all you can to immediately and quickly purge the conquered territories of all hostile elements in accordance with the orders issued. The residents should be helped to leave the areas that have been conquered." Carmel took this action immediately after a visit by Ben-Gurion to the Northern Command in Nazareth."

One thing is the words expressed by the Zionist leadership about "doing everything in their power to maintain peace, and establish a cooperation gainful to both," quite another is their actions, ethnically cleansing the portion of Palestine that fell under their control during The Catastrophe of 1948 of a majority of its Arab population.

As Rashid Khalidi writes in his book The Iron Cage, "The flight of the Palestinian population from areas conquered by the Hagana and other Jewish forces increased under the impact of the shock of the Deir Yasin massacre, growing to a flood with the fall of Tiberias, Haifa, Jaffa, and other towns later in April and into May."

Typical cheap shot about language from Setanta. Pretty damn hypocritical coming from a guy whose posts are loaded with typos, which, in Foofie's post, I'm sure this is.

You are talking as someone raised in a religion that reflects a fair percentage of the western world. You might not be seeing that I am talking as someone that may be living in relative safety in a Protestant country, but is aware that other Jews may not be living in such relative safety in other parts of the world. So, for their sake, I would like to think a Jewish State will exist for any future situations like Nazi Germany. Remember, the Nazis first wanted the Jews out of Germany, but no one would take them, including the U.S. Voila, Israel, if it existed in 1939, might have prevented the Holocaust.

There is no need to have more repartee with me, since I am quite accepting of your position. It is just that I am also aware that there are good folks today that, in private, think that one thing the Nazis did that was "good" was get rid of the Jews. So, with that degree of empathy in the popular culture of some Europeans, and some people of European descent, I will continue to feel that a world without a Jewish State is just a world waiting for a future Holocaust to occur.

Continue your analysis. It might lead you to see that there never was a Palestinean people, nor an AUTONOMOUS Palestine. Squatters (aka, Palestineans) moved into Israel, and decided to do an imitation of a people. As Jimmy Durante said, "Everyone wants to get into the act."

All the countries that were carved out of the defunct Ottoman Empire had an historical precedent of a people living there.

In my opinion, world-wide Judeophobia drives the desire to debunk the legitimacy of a Zionist State. The rallying cry should be: How can we assimilate the Jews, if they continue to have their own nation?