Israel Under Attack: Does Anyone Care?

Things are much more peaceful in Israel now that it is a state and has fenced itself off. (Good fences make good neighbors.)

Good. Can America finally get back to the community of nations and let Israel fend for itself?

Would you prefer that the United States just abstain from any further votes in the United Nations that have to do with any Israeli or Middle East issues?

Would the Israelis?

Israel needs help from the USA, and pays the USA back many times over in various ways. BTW, the help is not that much, equivalent to the cost of a couple of stealth bombers.

It seems as though you are praying for the destruction of Israel, the only real democracy in the ME, and the home of 1.7 million Muslims.

Next you will be calling me an anti-Semite, Advocate.

I am not anti-Jew; anti-Semite; or anti-Israel..and most assuredly I am not praying for the destruction of Israel. I am trying to get across to someone who is exhibiting a stone head on the issue...that the creation of Israel in that area IS the primary reason for the discord there.

I note you have never contested that...never really taken that part of the issue up for discussion.

I would be just as strident about this if an Arab state had been formed there...and was the primary reason for discord.

But you just cannot...more likely, will not...acknowledge that.

In any case, I would love to see America stop favoring Israel over the Arabs. There is very little reason for the unbalanced approach...very little America gets out of the deal despite the protestations of American Jews about Israel being "the only real democracy" in that area.

I would love for us to withdraw all support for Israel and all the Arab countries in that area...and to stop vetoing resolutions introduced in the United Nations...especially the ones that seem to be supported by almost all the other nations except America and Israel.

And since you suggest our support is so little (and apparently not of much value)...would you favor us becoming neutral on these issues?

According to the latest data by the Israelian Centre of Statistics (as of December 2012), the number of Arabs in Israel is 1,630,000. The number of Muslims is 1.2 million.

Most Christians in Israel are Arabs.

I don't believe that Palestinians are a sub-human species that deserves to live in squalor, although I do believe that there response to the cards that life and history have dealt them could not have been played any worse than they have.

Let's, for discussion's sake, assume that their daily existence is as onerous as they and their supporters insist it is. Is it rational to endure such an existence for the sake of a goal that no one can currently imagine will be realized, when the opportunity to make a nation (that never existed in the past) that will enjoy a torrential rain of foreign aid, and assure much better futures for their children?

A culture that glorifies martyrs (the relative few who die and the much larger number who are suffering) is committing suicide, and it's all well and good to endure suffering for your own personal spirituality/honor/hate (take your pick) but to undeniably impose it on your children is filthy.

This situation is like someone who lays claim to someone else's winning lottery ticket, and rather than accepting a generous settlement that would vastly improve their life style, beggars themself financially and emotionally by insisting on having it all. What's worse is they insist on dragging their children and grandchildren into the pit of their obsession.

Their position isn't noble in the least, it's a manifestation of the worst of human nature.

Another tragedy within this tragic situation is how horribly ill served the Palestinians have been by their corrupt leaders. How depressing is it to realize that there is virtually no possibility that they will find the leadership they need?

The reality is that, short of a cataclysm, a Jewish State in the region is here to stay. All of the vehement protestations of the anti-Semites and people of good faith are irrelevant. Violence (by nations and by individuals) has been tried and has not worked. The "International Law" ploy has been tried and has not worked. The Zionist Entity is here to stay until the Crescent A-Bomb wipes it off the map, and that is very, very unlikely to happen.

Put the Palestinians, historically, in the place of American Indians. The US treated Indians shamefully, and perhaps Israel does the same with Palestinians, but the enormous difference is and which the Palestinians can't seem to appreciate is that the world is very happy to support them in a solution that ends this mess,while no one cared what happened to Indians, but then if the Palestinian leadership has been good at anything,it is in manipulating left-wing opinions worldwide, and particularly in America.

Oh, and by the way, I don't think Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Iran, Turkey, Afghanistan, etc would tolerate a Christian, Buddhist or Jew at the helm, but maybe they haven't been "explicit" about it and so that must make all the difference.

That is a stupid and rather obvious lie, and the fact that you repeat it suggests you know nothing about the real history of the region for the past few centuries, but are willing to relay Zionist propaganda designed only for the ignorant, credulous, and stupid.

The Palestinians and the Arab citizens of several provinces of the former Ottoman Empire engaged to assist the British & French in their unprovoked assault on the Ottoman Empire in WWI, precisely in order to achieve independence and self government for themselves, which the British indeed promised them. They unfortunately were deceived by these European Powers who instead set up colonies and local protetorates according to boundaries they (the Europeans) arbitrarily drew. Thus were created (from largely self-governing former Ottoman provinces) states now known as Syria, Lebanon, Jordan, and Iraq. There was another, called Palestine, which was goverened by the British in much the same way as they then governed Jordan and Iraq.

The post WWII Jewish exodus from Europe to Palestine, then governed by the British seriously disrupted the then ongoing efforts of the Palestinians and the Arabs to get the French and British out of their territories. They were successful in Syria, Lebanon, Iraq, and Jordan. However the mass influx of displaced European Jews and the efforts of their Zionist leaders to create an exclusively Jewish state within it, seriously disrupted the anti colonial efforts in Palestine.

The Zionists deliberately created a revolution in Palestine, using precisely the tactics used now by Hezbollah, and were resisted by the then only well-organized Arab/Palestinian military force in the region, that of Jordan. Broke and exhausted after WWII, and anxious to wash its hands of the mess it created, the British simply bugged out, abandoning the place and turning it over to the then new UN (which at the time had almost zero reoresentation from Moslem states anywhere, and none within the region). Led by a sympathetic US and European states anxious to keep their exported "solution" the UN verty quickly legitimized the Jewish state, before the Palestinians could have any say in the outcome.

Thus a new "border" between the new state of Israel and an expanded Jordan was created along the military lines of the ensuing war between the two peoples - a war that was clearly and deliberately started by the Zionists. The Palestinains became defacto Jordanians.

The subsequent 1967 war later, started by Israel, significantly expanded the Jewish state. After the sound defeat of the neighboring Arab countries, Israel, then in control of all the Palestinain territory west of the Jordan river, announced that it would forever retain military control of the West bank of the Joirdan River and the hills that overlook it, thus forever sealing the West bank Palestinain population in a ghetto ruled by an alien power, and entirely isolated from Jordan. Since then Israel has steadily absorbed increasing sections of the West bank; established large settlements of radical Jews within it; linked them with limited access roads, confining the palestinains in ever smaller enclaves (much like the "Bantustands" of Aparteit South Africa); and now has completed the job (and ghetto analogy) by enclosing it all behind a high wall. All of this was done in clear violation of conventionally accepted norms for human rights and indeed in violation of the UN convention regarding them.

Throughout Israel has rationalized these actions as necessary to limit the retaliatory bombings and killings done by Palestianian and Arab resistors. However, no law limits the right of these oppressed people to fight for their freedom and property.

However, Palestinians don't mind at all: ministers, advisers, ambassadors, consuls, heads of mission ... are Christians. (And the captain of the women football team. She's in a church choir, too .... local choirs from here are visiting their partner choirs just now over Easter.)

That is a good recitation of the typical condescending Zionist rationalization. It was also typical of the attitude of the 18th - early 20th century British towards their unruly Irish subjects, who, in a similar fashion, failed to understand the "relatively good deal" their self-styled benign oppressors deigned to bestow on them. Unfortunately for both their oppressed subjects were very intensely aware of their lost freedom, and unwilling to settle for less.

In both cases the real suffering of the oppressed was a good deal greater than was recognized by their oppressors, armed as they were by rationalizations about the foolish violence of those they were oppressing and (sometimes) hidden views of their natural inferiority. Thus in the midst of a famine that killed about two million during which Ireland was a net exporter of food to England, Johanathan Swift wrote "A modest proposal" to the English government as a more humane replacement to their then current policy (you should read it).

Assasination, bombings, murder and martyrdom are the natural weapons and tactics of the weak in a struggle with the strong. That's how the Irish escaped British misrule in the Republic and later in Northern Ireland. That's how the desperate European Jews created a country for themselves (alone) in Palestine, and that's how the Palestinains are trying to get theirs back today. Your riff about "cultures of martyrdom" is overblown and reeks of disengaged complacency. It too is but a useful tactic for demoralizing and defeating an overwhelmingly powerful foe, and it has been used throughout the world, from Europe to Asia and the Middle east. From Terrance Mc Sweeny, the mayor of Cork in 1914 to the Tommy Sands in 1975 Northern Ireland to Ghandi earlier in India, hunger strikes have been powerful and very effective weapons for such struggles for independence.

I believe you completely overlook the evident desire of Palestinains for freedom. You should also give some serious thought to just how much of that precious commodity they are likely to see in a state completely surrounded by Israel, with no control of its water or air rights and no acess to the external world except at the sufferance of its oppressor. Instead it apears you have instead bought in to the self-serving rationalization of the Zionist oppressors, who are interested in justice only for themselves.

I guess you have not heard about the Palestinian persecution of Christians and other minorities. Large numbers of these minorities are fleeing the area. Christian, et al., Israelis are prospering.

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

Another lie. It is the Israelis who have driven out much of the Christian population of all the territories it controls. Have you ever been to Bethlehem????

You are the liar. In fact, the persecution of Christian Arabs and other minorities is going on all over the ME. It is particularly bad in Iran.

Not really, no.
But I've talked to quite a few of them.
(Our parishes are selling Christian articles, produced in by Christian Palestinian workshops, Europe-wide; the last archpriest of our Greek Orthodox parish, a Palestinian, was a member of the Orthodox Church of Jerusalem; there are frequent and regular exchange visits between members of our parishes and Palestinian parishes [our local gospel choir and others just flew there yesterday] ...)

Your statements on persecution of Christians, et al., could not be further from the truth. It is forcing the victims to flee the various Muslim countries. BTW, your conversation with "a few" of them is anecdotal, at best.

See http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/religion/9762745/Christianity-close-to-extinction-in-Middle-East.html

Well Walter, I never said they were all bad.

It's quite amusing to find someone schooling me on condescension in such a condescending manner.

Apparently you have a Romantic's appreciation for the cult of martyrdom and obviously consider any distaste of it to signal membership in the imperialistic ruling class.

The only smell I perceive in our exchange is the odor of your hypocrisy, but then I may be entirely wrong and you have engaged in the Palestinian's struggle for freedom in a much more meaningful way than debating the issue in an internet forum. Talk is cheap george but it's often enough to make the talker feel superior.

I haven't in the least overlooked the legitimate grievances of the Palestinians. I have, though, focused on the means by which they seem to want to settle them and found them wanting in a world of which the Irish, American Indians, Indians and all of the other oppressed people you care to trot out, never had the advantage.

Christian Palestinians have suffered under the Israeli occupation and are a big part of the peaceful resistance movement.

Surely you have heard of Hanan Ashrawri.

I have been disappointed that Ashrawri has not done more over the years. In fact, she has done nothing but, occasionally, whine a bit.

But, she probably fears assassination should she really negotiate for peace sincerely.

"The Illusion of Shared Values

"One of the most widely held and harmful fallacies about the U.S.-Israeli relationship is that the two countries share ideals, democratic structure and respect for human rights. This is a delusion that complicates our quest for peace. Israel is not a democracy. It does not have a constitution. It discriminates broadly on the basis of religion and is harsh and often brutal in its treatment of minorities. It is an exclusionary and expansionist state. For nearly a half century Israeli practice have been repeatedly condemned by the world community as violations of international law. Although these practices contradict American law, the United States, to its great discredit, has usually acted to protect Israel.

"Israel practices as state policy a number of measures that are illegal in the United states and other western countries. These include assassination, kidnapping, expulsion, detention without charges or trial, land confiscation, and collective punishment––not to mention Israel's long-standing practice of espionage against the United states (Jonathan Pollard as one example), its principal benefactor. Moreover, Israel is the only country that officially sanctions torture.

"Prime Ministers Yitzhak Shamir and Menachem Begin, leaders of the two largest Jewish terrorist groups in Palestine before the formation of Israel, never expressed any remorse about their bloody activities. In fact, Shamir went out of his way at the Madrid peace conference in 1991 to say in response to charges about his earlier terrorist days: "I have always said, I always say, I m proud of everything I have done in my past. I do not disown a single step…I am proud of what I have done and I do not owe an accounting to anyone."

"Some years earlier Shamir had told an interviewer: "There are those who kill [an individual] is terrorism, but an attack on an army camp is guerrilla warfare and to bomb civilians professional warfare. But I think it is the same from the moral point of view….It was more efficient and more moral to go for selected targets."

"Such an attitude has led to Israel's practice of assassinating its enemies. Among the operations that are documented, in the early 1960s Israel carried on a campaign of terror against German scientists working for Egypt, including at least five persons killed by letter bomb. An Egyptian scientist that killed in 1979 while working for Iraq. In 1990 Gerald Vincent Bull, a Canadian artillery expert, as hot to d eat outside his Brussels apartment after being publicly linked to Iraq's weapons program. Bull was reported to be the victim of Israeli assassins.

"Over the decades Israel has wage an unrelenting assassination campaign against Palestinians belonging to the Palestine Liberation Organization, including the mistaken killing of an Arab waiter in Lillehammer, Norway, in 1973, and the 1991 assassination of the PLO's military chief Khalil Wazir, better known by the nom de guerre Abu Jihad (Father or Struggle), at his home in tunis.

"Israel's state policy condoning kidnapping has affected U.S. security and cost American lives. The best-known and most recent example of this practice was the 1989 abduction of Shiite Sheikh Abdul Karim Obeid from his home in southern Lebanon. In retaliation, a U.S. hostage held in Lebanon, Marine Lieutenant Colonel William R. Higgins, was hanged by his Shiite Muslim captors.

"After Higgins hanging ,President Bush said publicly: "On Friday, I said that the taking of any hostage was not helpful to the Middle east Peace Process. The brutal and tragic events of today have underscored the validity of that statement. Tonight I wish to go beyond that statement with an urgent call to all-–all––parties who hold hostages in the Middle east, to release them forthwith as a humanitarian gesture to begin to reverse the cycle of violence in that region.

"Israel refused to release Obeid and hundred of other Palestinians held hostage. This provoked criticism from Senate Republican leader Bob Dole, who charge that Israeli actions "endanger American lives." He added that "a little more responsibility on the part of the Israelis one of these days would be refreshing."

"Israel also routinely imposes such barbaric measures as collective punishment, "administrative detention," torture, and expulsion in its attempt to suppress the Palestinian uprising. Book burning is another mark of Israel's occupation. Israel Shahak, an Israeli scholar who survive a Nazi extermination camp and now campaigns for Palestinian rights, reports: "Israeli soldiers enter a Palestinian library, public or private, gather up all the books put them in a pile outside and set them on fire. because they cannot read Arabic, they say them must burn all books, just to make sure the evil ones are destroyed."

From the book : "Deliberate Deceptions" by Professor Paul Findley,
Emeritus

Excellent post, but we all know that the Zionists are totally blind to their crimes against the Palestinians.