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ISRAEL - IRAN - SYRIA - HAMAS - HEZBOLLAH - WWWIII?

 
 
Rockhead
 
  1  
Reply Fri 26 Jun, 2009 01:18 am
@genoves,
spam...spam...
0 Replies
 
sangiusto
 
  1  
Reply Fri 26 Jun, 2009 01:32 am
McTag-I think you would indeed enjoy Johnson's History of the Jews.
McTag
 
  1  
Reply Fri 26 Jun, 2009 01:57 am
@Foofie,
Quote:
I would never have guessed that there are Jews living in England? Are many living there from the 19th century? Or, only after WWII?


You have got to be joking. Foofie, despite everything that has passed between un, you still have the capacity to surprise me.
0 Replies
 
McTag
 
  1  
Reply Fri 26 Jun, 2009 02:01 am

Foofie, have you heard of Margaret Thatcher? A British prime minister of the 1980s, she was friendly with Ronald Reagan.

Half her cabinet was jewish.
McTag
 
  1  
Reply Fri 26 Jun, 2009 02:31 am
@sangiusto,

Quote:
McTag-I think you would indeed enjoy Johnson's History of the Jews.


Thank you, I'll check it out. But I have done a good deal of reading on this already.

Arising from Foofie's comment, it may be of interest to point out that when the mass emigration of jews from northern europe was taking place in the late 19th century, many took the sea route from the Baltic and north German ports to seaports in the north-east of England, travelled accross the country heading for Liverpool in the west, and set out for America from there.

Many of those, maybe for a variety of reasons, decided not to leave and settled here. It's nice here, after all. According to my pal, whose great-grandparents did this, some even believed that had reached America when they got here. They became busy in a lot of textile trades principally, cottons, woollens, tailoring, all sorts of things.

Anyway Foofie, for goodness sake. The Rothschilds, whose bank helped Napoleon, were busy here in London. Disraeli, heard of him? Think of your Shakespeare.... jews have been here for ever. Woolfson was a great benefactor in Glasgow and elsewhere. Even Andre Previn was here for years.
FreeDuck
 
  1  
Reply Fri 26 Jun, 2009 12:32 pm
Throwing this out there for discussion. I'm obviously mostly in agreement with the author. The complete article is worth reading.

Palestinian Violence Overstated, Jewish Violence Understated
Ira Chernus wrote:

...
Those numbers reflect the narrative that President Obama recited in Cairo on June 4th. He chided the Israelis for a few things they are doing wrong -- like expanding settlements and blockading Gaza. To the other side, though, his message was far blunter: "Palestinians must abandon violence." Of Israeli violence he said not a word.

The president's speech implicitly sanctioned the most up-to-date tale that dominates the American mass media and public opinion today: The Israelis ought to be reined in a bit, but it's hard to criticize them too much because, hey, what would you do if you had suicide bombers and rockets coming at you all the time?

That view is a political winner here. In the latest Pew poll, 62% of Americans say Obama is striking the right balance between Israel and Palestine; of those who disagree, three-quarters want to see him tougher on the Palestinians, not the Israelis. A Rasmussen poll finds even stronger support for a pro-Israel tilt.

There are, however, two things wrong with his narrative. First, though it's somewhat less one-sided than the story that prevailed during the George W. Bush years, it is far from impartial, which means the U.S. still cannot act as an even-handed broker for peace in the region. Since no one else is available to play that role, it's hard to see how, under the present circumstances, any version of a peace process can move forward.

The second problem is that the popular narrative just doesn't happen to match the facts. In reality, unjustified violence is initiated on both sides -- and if anyone insists on keeping score, Israel's violence, official and unofficial, outweighs the violence coming from the Palestinians.
...

cicerone imposter
 
  1  
Reply Fri 26 Jun, 2009 12:39 pm
@FreeDuck,
Obama's position in support of Israel was known during his campaign; his support for Israel was never in doubt.

This is another disappointment about Obama that some of us have observed; he's unable to tell the truth even with the facts about expanded settlements and the over-killing of innocent Palestinians are mostly common knowledge to those who seeks this information. He must surely be aware, but continues his rhetoric to get the Jewish support; votes are more important than ethics or honesty.

He understands politics, but he has sacrificed his own soul to do it.
FreeDuck
 
  1  
Reply Fri 26 Jun, 2009 12:47 pm
@cicerone imposter,
I don't know if that's completely fair, CI, and it certainly isn't the point of the article. He's just using Obama's speech as an example of how the narrative in this country has changed.
cicerone imposter
 
  1  
Reply Fri 26 Jun, 2009 02:09 pm
@FreeDuck,
It's true that my observations may be skewed towards criticism of any American who thinks Israel is a democracy based on equal rights and treatment, and may be overly-critical of those who seem oblivious to the facts about expanded settlements and general restrictions of freedoms and property ownership of the Palestinians.
Advocate
 
  1  
Reply Fri 26 Jun, 2009 09:42 pm
@cicerone imposter,
I notice how you treat Pals in and out of Israel as the same people, with the same freedoms, etc. Thus, I assume that you don't recognize the state of Israel.
rabel22
 
  1  
Reply Fri 26 Jun, 2009 11:16 pm
@cicerone imposter,
Isent democracy a bitch. We voted for change and ended up with the same political bullshyt weve had to put up with for the last 29 years. I dont believe that it makes that much differance wether we vote dem or rep. Politicians are all the same liers they have always been. The only way I believe we can change things is to vote agenst an incumbent no matter what party he belongs too.
0 Replies
 
cicerone imposter
 
  1  
Reply Sat 27 Jun, 2009 07:53 am
@Advocate,
Show me where I've said such a thing?
0 Replies
 
McTag
 
  1  
Reply Sat 27 Jun, 2009 08:27 am

There's a quantity of Israeli agricultural produce on sale here labelled "Produce of the West Bank", the assumption being it's grown on disputed (Palestinian) land and irrigated with stolen water, so there is a move afoot to have its import banned.
cicerone imposter
 
  1  
Reply Sat 27 Jun, 2009 09:31 am
@McTag,
McTag, On our visit to Israel, we visited a huge farm on the south side of the Dead Sea where the land is mostly sand with drip irrigation systems.

Before visiting Israel, I studied about the country, and learned that most of the water resources were "stolen" by the Jews, and they control most of it.

Even with that knowledge, the produce farm was very impressive sitting in the middle of a desert.
Advocate
 
  1  
Reply Sat 27 Jun, 2009 09:50 am
@cicerone imposter,
What is your Pal source for saying that Israel stole water? Did you consider the other side's arguments? Of course not!
rabel22
 
  1  
Reply Sat 27 Jun, 2009 09:55 am
@Advocate,
He has you CI. You are almost as one sided as he is on the Isralie palistinian question. But direct opposites. You do consider the facts more than he does however.
cicerone imposter
 
  1  
Reply Sat 27 Jun, 2009 10:22 am
@rabel22,
From Amnesty International:
Quote:
Document - Israel/Occupied Palestinian Territories (OPT): House demolition/Forced Eviction/ Access to Water
cicerone imposter
 
  1  
Reply Sat 27 Jun, 2009 10:27 am
@cicerone imposter,
From Countercurrents.org:
Quote:
Water Theft In Palestine

By Fred Pearce

21 June, 2004
The New Scientist

Israel has drawn up a secret plan for a giant desalination plant to supply drinking water to the Palestinian territory on the West Bank. It hopes the project will diminish pressure for it to grant any future Palestinian state greater access to the region's scarce supplies of fresh water.

Under an agreement signed a decade ago as part of the Oslo accord, four-fifths of the West Bank's water is allocated to Israel, though the aquifers that supply it are largely replenished by water falling onto Palestinian territory.

The new plans call for seawater to be desalinated at Caesaria on the Mediterranean coast, and then pumped into the West Bank, where a network of pipes will deliver it to large towns and many of the 250 villages that currently rely on local springs and small wells for their water.

Israel, which wants the US to fund the project, would guarantee safe passage of the water across its territory in return for an agreement that Israel can continue to take the lion's share of the waters of the West Bank. These mainly comprise underground reserves such as the western aquifer, the region's largest, cleanest and most reliable water source.

For Israelis, agreement on the future joint management of this aquifer is a prerequisite for granting Palestine statehood.

Global funding

The first public hint of the plan emerged earlier in May in Washington DC. Uri Shamir, director of water research at the Technion, the Israel Institute of Technology in Haifa, told the House of Representatives Committee on International Relations that the desalination project was "the only viable long-term solution" for supplying drinking water to the West Bank.

Shamir told New Scientist this week that the project could be complete in five to seven years. "The plant will be funded by the world for the Palestinians. Israel will not be willing to carry this burden, and the Palestinians are not able to."

But other leading hydrologists contacted by New Scientist point out that desalinating seawater and pumping it to the West Bank, parts of which lie 1000 metres above sea level, would cost around $1 per cubic metre.

"The question is whether an average Palestinian family can afford it," says Arie Issar, a water expert at Ben-Gurion University of the Negev in Sede Boker, Israel, who helped green the Israeli desert a generation ago by finding new water sources in the region. "It would be foolish to desalinate water on the coast and push it up the mountains when there are underground water resources up there, which cost only a third as much."

Tony Allan of King's College London, a leading authority on Middle East water, agrees: "Pumping desalinated water to the West Bank is not the best technical or economic option."

But the project is being supported by Alvin Newman, head of water resources at the Tel Aviv office of USAID, the US international development agency, which would fund the desalination project. "Ultimately it's the only solution," he said in an interview with New Scientist.

Unusual cooperation

Water supply is one of the few areas where cooperation between Israel and Palestine has survived the current intifada. Every day on the West Bank, Palestinian engineers help repair and maintain Israeli water pipes, and vice versa.

But Palestinian water negotiators are deeply uneasy about the plans being drawn up on their behalf, especially if they involve abandoning claims to the water beneath their feet. "We cannot do that. We don't have the money or the expertise for desalination," Ihab Barghothi, head of water projects for the Palestinian Water Authority, told New Scientist.

Palestinians badly need more water. Under the Oslo agreement they have access to 57 cubic metres of water per person per year from all sources. Israel gets 246 cubic metres per head per year.
And in the nearly 40 years that Israel has controlled the West Bank, Palestinians have been largely forbidden from drilling new wells or rehabilitating old ones.

The region's sources of water are the West Bank aquifers; the river Jordan, which rises in the Golan Heights and flows into the Sea of Galilee, where it is largely tapped by Israel; and the coastal aquifer, an increasingly polluted reserve of underground water that extends south to the Palestinian territory of the Gaza Strip.
0 Replies
 
cicerone imposter
 
  1  
Reply Sat 27 Jun, 2009 10:29 am
@rabel22,
rabel, Just don't make claims you can't support. Claims about whose information is more reliable needs to be supported by evidence/facts. You haven't done that - yet, so I'll wait.
Foofie
 
  1  
Reply Sat 27 Jun, 2009 07:04 pm
@McTag,
McTag wrote:


Foofie, have you heard of Margaret Thatcher? A British prime minister of the 1980s, she was friendly with Ronald Reagan.

Half her cabinet was jewish.


From what type of wood was the cabinet made? I never heard of Jewish wood?
0 Replies
 
 

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