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

You think this statement of ican's implies ican hates Israel!???!

Again, the Palestinian Jews want Israel to continue to exist, and the Palestinian Arabs want Israel to not continue to exist.

~~~~ .!????! ~~~~
~~~~ (O|O) ~~~~
~~~~ (\ O /) ~~~~.
Your ignorant post is duly noted!
It is recommended that you immediately seek counseling

Ican hates: "Hamas TV calls for Allah to kill Jews, Christians, Communists and their supporters. "

Analysis: Mideast peace effort foundering _ again
By ROBERT BURNS
The Associated Press
Wednesday, December 8, 2010; 2:58 PM



WASHINGTON -- If the Mideast peace process is not dead, it is at least gasping for air.

As Washington searches for a new approach to get the Israelis and Palestinians back to the negotiating table, it has become clear the path to peace that President Barack Obama has pursued from the outset of his administration has ended in failure. As have previous U.S. efforts.

The Israelis have consistently rejected Obama's key demand: Stop all construction in Jewish settlements on land the Palestinians want for their own independent state. The administration this week let it be known it has given up on that approach. The standoff has left Palestinian leaders with grave doubts that Obama has what it takes to push both sides to a final peace settlement.

"The odds confronting any administration would be great, but the administration had harder odds because they defined an impossible objective - a comprehensive settlement freeze," said Aaron David Miller, a former U.S. Mideast peacemaker who is now at the Woodrow Wilson Center think tank.

"So 20 months in, the administration finds itself with no freeze, no negotiations and little prospects of an agreement," he said.

Few are suggesting Obama has given up on peace, but there is growing worry that frustration in the region over the latest setback could trigger a new outbreak of violence between Israelis and Palestinians.

The Palestinians are suggesting they may try to establish a state without Israel's agreement. Argentina and Brazil have recognized "Palestine" in recent days, but the U.S. has opposed this approach, arguing that the only way to get an enduring peace is to negotiate terms for a sovereign Palestinian state aside a secure Israel. This, they argue, could lead to broader Mideast stability.

more. . .

Demands for Israel to stop construction before the Pals will negotiate is a pre-condition. Israel would be foolish to accede to this. Let's demand that the Pals first accept the state of Israel.


The 2010 Top Ten Anti-Israel Lies
Published by the Simon Wiesenthal Center, Los Angeles, CA

LIE #1
Israel was created by European guilt over the Nazi Holocaust. Why should Palestinians pay the price?

The Truth: Three thousand years before the Holocaust, before there was a Roman Empire, Israel's kings and prophets walked the streets of Jerusalem. The whole world knows that Isaiah did not speak his prophesies from Portugal, nor Jeremiah his lamentations from France. Revered by its people, Jerusalem is mentioned in the Hebrew scriptures 600 times—but not once in the Koran. Throughout its 2,000-year exile there was continuous Jewish presence in the Holy Land, with the modern rebirth of Israel beginning in the 1800s. Reclamation of the largely vacant land by pioneering Zionists blossomed into a Jewish majority long before the onset of Nazism.

After the Holocaust, nearly 200,000 Shoah survivors found haven in the Jewish State, created by a two-thirds vote of the UN in 1947. Soon 800,000 Jews fleeing persecution in Arab countries arrived. In ensuing decades, Israel absorbed a million immigrants from the Soviet Union and thousands of Ethiopian Jews. Today, far from being a vestige of European guilt or colonialism, Israel is a diverse, cosmopolitan society, fulfilling the age-old dream of a people's journey and 'Return to Zion'- their ancient homeland.

LIE #2
Had Israel withdrawn to its June 1967 borders, peace would have come long ago.

The Truth: Since 1967, Israel has repeatedly conceded "land for peace." Following Egyptian President Sadat's historic 1977 visit to Jerusalem and the Camp David Peace Accords, Israel withdrew from the vast Sinai Peninsula and has been at peace with Egypt ever since.

In 1995, Jordan signed a peace treaty with Israel but neither the Palestinians nor 21 other Arab states have done so. In 1993, Israel signed the Oslo Accords ceding administrative control of the West Bank to the Palestinian Authority (formerly the PLO). The PA never fulfilled its promise to end propaganda attacks and drop the Palestinian National Charter's call for Israel's destruction.

In 2000, Prime Minister Barak offered Yasser Arafat full sovereignty over 97% of the West Bank, a corridor to Gaza, and a capitol in the Arab section of Jerusalem. Arafat said NO. In 2008, PA President Abbas nixed virtually the same offer from Prime Minister Olmert. In 2005, Prime Minister Sharon unilaterally withdrew from Gaza. Taken over by terrorist Hamas, they turned dismantled Jewish communities into launching sites for suicide bombers and 8,000+ rockets into Israel proper. In 2010, Prime Minister Netanyahu renewed offers of unconditional negotiations leading to a Palestinian State, but Palestinians refused, demanding more unilateral Israeli concessions, including a total freeze of all Israeli construction in East Jerusalem and the West Bank.

LIE #3
Israel is the main stumbling block to achieving a two-state solution.

The Truth: The Palestinians themselves are the only stumbling block to achieving a Two-State solution. With whom should Israel negotiate? With President Abbas, who, for four years, has been barred by Hamas from visiting 1.5 million constituents in Gaza? With his Palestinian Authority, which continues to glorify terrorists and preaches hate in its educational system and the media? With Hamas, whose Iranian-backed leaders deny the Holocaust and use fanatical jihadist rhetoric to call for Israel's destruction?

Today, it is a simple fact that while the State of Israel is prepared to recognize all Arab States, secular or Muslim, these states adamantly refuse to recognize Israel as a Jewish State and demand "the right of return" of five million so-called Palestinian "refugees"—a sure guarantee for Israel's demise.

LIE#4
Nuclear Israel not Iran is the greatest threat to peace and stability.

The Truth: Though never acknowledged by Jerusalem, it is generally assumed that Israel has nuclear weapons. But unlike Pakistan, India, and North Korea, Israel never conducted nuclear tests. In 1973, when its very survival was imperiled by the surprise Egyptian-Syrian Yom Kippur attack, many assumed Israel would use nuclear weapons—but it did not. Contrary to public condemnations, many Arab leaders privately express relief that Israeli nuclear deterrence exists. While Israel has never threatened anyone, Tehran's mullahs daily threaten to "wipe Israel from the map." The U.S. and Europe can afford to wait to see what the Iranian regime does with its nuclear ambitions. But Israel cannot. She is on the front lines and remembers every day the price the Jewish people paid for not taking Hitler at his word. Israel is not prepared to sacrifice another six million Jews on the altar of the world's indifference.

LIE #5
Israel is an Apartheid State deserving of International Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions campaigns.

The Truth: On both sides of the Atlantic, church groups, academics and unions are leading deceitful and often anti-Semitic boycott campaigns demonizing what they call the Jewish "apartheid" State.

The truth is that unlike apartheid South Africa, Israel is a democratic state. Its 20% Arab minority enjoys all the political, economic and religious rights and freedoms of citizenship, including electing members of their choice to the Knesset (Parliament). Israeli Arabs and Palestinians have standing before Israel's Supreme Court. In contrast, no Jew may own property in Jordan, no Christian or Jew can visit Islam's holiest sites in Saudi Arabia.

LIE #6
Plans to build 1,600 more homes in East Jerusalem prove Israel is 'Judaizing' the Holy City.

The Truth: Enemies of Israel exploit this phony issue. Jerusalem is holy to three great faiths. Its diverse population includes a Jewish majority with Muslim and Christian minorities. Since 1967, for the first time in history, there is full freedom of religion for all faiths in Jerusalem. Muslim and Christian religious bodies administer their own holy sites. Indeed, the Waqf [Arab authority] is allowed to control Jerusalem's Temple Mount, even though it rests on Solomon's temple and is holy to BOTH Jews and Muslims.

Meanwhile, Jerusalem's municipality must meet the needs of a growing modern city. The unfortunately-timed announcement during U.S. Vice President Biden's visit of 1600 new apartments in Ramat Shlomo, was not about Arab neighborhoods in East Jerusalem, but for a long established, heavily populated Jewish neighborhood in Northern Jerusalem, where 250,000 Jews live (about the same population as Newark, N.J.)—an area that will never be relinquished by Israel.

LIE #7
Israeli policies endanger U.S. troops in Afghanistan and Iraq.

The Truth: The charge that Israel endangers U.S. troops in Iraq or the AF-Pak region is an update of the old "stab in the back" lie that Jews always betray their own friends, and the libel spouted by Henry Ford and the Protocols of the Elders of Zion that "Jews are the father of all wars."

U.S. General Petraeus has stated he considers Israel a great strategic asset for the U.S. and that his earlier remarks linking the safety of U.S. troops in the region to an Israeli-Palestinian peace deal (which 2/3 of Israelis want) were taken out of context. A resolution of the Palestinian-Israeli conflict would benefit everyone, including the U.S. But an imposed return to what Abba Eban called "1967 Auschwitz borders" would endanger Israel's survival and ultimately be disastrous for American interests and credibility in the world.

LIE #8
Israeli policies are the cause of worldwide anti-Semitism.

The Truth: From the Inquisition to the pogroms, to the 6,000,000 Jews murdered by the Nazis, history proves that Jew-hatred existed on a global scale before the creation of the State of Israel. In 2010, it would still exist even if Israel had never been created. For example, one poll indicates 40% of Europeans blame the recent global economic crisis on "Jews having too much economic power," a canard that has nothing to do with Israel.

The unsettled Palestinian-Israeli dispute aggravates Muslim-Jewish tensions, but it is not the root cause. During World War II, the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem, a notorious Jew-hater, helped the Nazis organize the 13th SS Division, made up of Muslims. Unfortunately, in addition to respectful references to Jewish patriarchs and prophets, the Koran also contains virulent anti-Semitic stereotypes that are widely invoked by Islamist extremists, including Hezbollah (whose agents blew up the Jewish Community Center in Buenos Aires in 1994), to justify murdering Jews worldwide. The disappearance of Israel would only further embolden violent Jew-haters everywhere.

LIE #9
Israel, not Hamas, is responsible for the "humanitarian catastrophe" in Gaza. Goldstone was right when he charged that Israel was guilty of war crimes against civilians.

The Truth: The Goldstone Report on Israel's defensive war against Hamas-controlled Gaza, from which 8,000 rockets were fired after Israel's unilateral withdrawal in 2005, is a biased product of the UN's misnamed Human Rights Council. The UNHRC is obsessed with false anti-Israel resolutions. It refuses to address grievous human rights abuses in Iran, North Korea, Sudan, Saudi Arabia, Cuba and beyond.

Faced with similar attacks, every UN member-state including the U.S. and Canada would surely have acted more aggressively than the IDF [Israel Defense Forces] did in Gaza.

Yet, Richard Goldstone, a South African Jewish jurist, signed a document prepared by investigators whose main qualification was rabid anti-Israel bias. He accepted every anonymous libel against the IDF. But he insisted that hearings in Gaza be televised, guaranteeing that fearful Palestinians would never testify about Hamas' use of civilians as human shields and their hiding of weapons in mosques and hospitals. Harvard Professor Alan Dershowitz denounced Goldstone's Report as a modern "blood libel" accusing Israeli soldiers of crimes they never committed.

LIE #10
The only hope for peace is a single, bi-national state, eliminating the Jewish State of Israel.

The Truth: The one-state solution, promoted by academics, is a non-starter because it would eliminate the Jewish homeland. However, the current pressures on Israel are equally dangerous. In effect, the world is demanding that Israel, the size of New Jersey, shrink further by accepting a three-state solution: a PA state on the West Bank and a Hamas terrorist state controlling 1.5 million Palestinians in Gaza. All this, as Hezbollah, Iran's proxy in Lebanon, stockpiles 50,000 rockets, threatening northern and central Israel's main population centers.

In 2010, most Middle East experts believe that the only hope for enduring peace is two states with defined final borders. But too many diplomats, pundits, academics and church leaders ignore the fact that current polls show that while most Israelis favor a two-state solution, most Palestinians continue to oppose it.

This demand of "recognition" by the Zionists amounts to their self-serving effort to deny the Palestinians' claim of Right of Return, and to attempt to legitimize their repression of the Palestinian peoples both inside and outside of Israel by having them proclaim that Israel "is for the Jews."


This is a non-sequitur, religious mythology doesn't prove or disprove whether Israel was created by European guilt over the Nazi Holocaust.



A great many of the Palestinians that were in "the Holy Land" when the Zionists began their arrogation thereof had Hebrew ancestry. Merely, their religious affiliation changed as was expedient given the circumstances brought about by the changing power structures throughout the millennia.



Speaking of lies, this one is outright. As early as 1891 the Russian Zionist, Asher Zvi Hirsch Ginsberg, better known by his pen name, Ahad Ha'am, visited Palestine and wrote, "We abroad are used to believe the Eretz Yisrael is now almost totally desolate, a desert that is not sowed ... But in truth that is not the case. Throughout the country it is difficult to find fields that are not sowed. Only sand dunes and stony mountains... are not cultivated."


In 1897 the British Zionist, Israel Zangwill went to Palestine and noted that, "Palestine proper has already its inhabitants. The pashalik [my note, the territory under the administration of a Pasha, an Ottoman Lord] of Jerusalem is already twice as thickly populated as the United States, having fifty-two souls to the square mile, and not 25% of them Jews ... [We] must be prepared either to drive out by the sword the tribes in possession as our forefathers did or to grapple with the problem of a large alien population, mostly Mohammedan and accustomed for centuries to despise us."

The SWC refers to "reclamation" of land by the Zionists. To be more exact it should refer to the arrogation of land by the Zionists.



Most Jewish Israelis are secular. They don't subscribe to the mythologies of religious Judaism. Instead they subscribe to Zionist ideology that in turn sprang from the ethnocentric nationalist ideologies of 19th century Europe.



This is an non-sequitur since it doesn't address the conflict between Israel and the Palestinians, which of course is what people are referring to when they say that had Israel withdrawn to its June 1967 borders, peace would have come long ago. All the while, Israel has been occupying land outside of its '67 borders and building settlements therein .



This also is a non-sequitur seeing as how it doesn't address the " '67 borders for peace" claim. It merely mentions Israel's peace treaty with Jordan. All the while, Israel has been occupying land outside of its '67 borders and building settlements therein.



This is yet another non-sequitur seeing as it doesn't address the " '67 borders for peace" claim. It merely mentions the ceding of administrative control of the West Bank to the PA. All the while, Israel has been occupying land outside of its '67 borders and building settlements therein .



These offers reneged the Palestinian's Right of Return which is another core issue of the conflict.



This as well doesn't address the " '67 borders for peace" claim, and as such is a non-sequitur as well. It mentions Sharon's unilateral withdrawal from Gaza. All the while, Israel has been occupying land outside of its '67 borders and building settlements in the West Bank.



This, finally, is yet another non-sequitur seeing as how it only mentions Netanyahu's offers of negotiations, and doesn’t address the “ '67 borders for peace” claim.

Prime Minister Bibi "no preconditions except our own" Netanyahu set as a precondition some kind of a Palestinian entity without a military and explicit recognition from the Palestinians of Israel as the Jewish state.

All the while, Israel has been occupying land outside of its '67 borders and building settlements therein, and has rejected calls from the Palestinians to cease before the latter will engage in any negotiations. To negotiate while Israel continues to occupy land and build settlements beyond its '67 borders would be to make a mockery of one of the Palestinians' core issues.



The truth is that Israel is the main stumbling block to achieving a two-state solution. Israel at once wants to be an ethnocentric state, which given the circumstances under which it was created--its ethnic cleansing of most of the land it arrogated, its systematic discrimination of its non-Jewish populations, and its oppression of the Palestinians in the lands it effectively controls and occupies--must necessarily be a discriminatory and oppressive state in order to continue being "the state for the Jews"; and at the same time wants recognition and peace.

Israel wants to have its cake and eat it too, as it were.

I know of no other state with such a disconnect from reality except perhaps North Korea. What’s worse is that most of the rest of the world, especially the US, enables and helps to perpetuate this psychotic thought process.



The greatest threat to peace and stability is Israel's insistence on being a necessarily discriminatory and oppressive state.

The greatest security to those other six million Jews to which the SWC refers to would be to create a truly egalitarian and pluralistic bi-national country for all of the inhabitants of the lands delineated in 1922 by the British Mandate for Palestine.



Apartheid refers to the segregationist policies of South Africa.

Israel is a necessarily discriminatory and oppressive ethnocentric state, and as such is deserving of international boycott, divestment, and sanctions.



This is a non-sequitur as it does not address the building of homes in East Jerusalem for the exclusive use of Jews to the detriment of the Arab inhabitants therein. That is what the charges of "the Judaizing of Jerusalem" refer to.



Ramat Shlomo lies outside of Israel's '67 borders and as such is a settlement built in 1995 on occupied land. That Israel will never relinquish this area, and what's more, continues to expand its settlements is the reason why the recent attempts at peace talks have failed.



Hysterical red-herrings aside the charge that Israeli policies endanger US troops in Afghanistan and Iraq is true insofar as Israel's discrimination and oppression of the Palestinian peoples, and the US' support thereof engenders hateful indignation towards the US and its troops in those countries.



Why should a necessarily discriminatory and oppressive ethnocentric state that is at the center of a conflict that threatens the entire globe be allowed to survive in the first place? The establishment of an egalitarian and pluralistic bi-national state in these lands would be the best security measure for all of the inhabitants therein and would truly be a triumph for American interests and credibility in the world.



If this has nothing to do with Israel, then why mention it? Bringing it up is yet again dragging a red herring through the point the SWC is attempting to make regarding anti-Semitism and Israeli policies.

This doesn't address the fact that Israel's discrimination against and oppression of the Palestinian peoples works to provide anti-Semites with pretexts for their hatred. It also works towards the conflation among some people of Zionism and Jews leading them to say things like "Jews are oppressors" instead of the more accurate "Israel is an oppressor". This conflation isn't necessarily anti-Semitism; it's more a symptom of lazy thinking.



What the Simon Wiesenthal Center fails to mention is that the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem--an office whose power and authority was largely fabricated by the British Mandate government in Palestine to install a Muslim political figure that would toe the line in regard to British policy in Palestine--fought against the Zionists' appropriation of Palestine and Britain's abetment thereof leading the Arab Revolt in the late 1930's. He took the fight as far as to ally himself with the Nazis. Certainly, that was one of the biggest missteps of Mohammad Amin al-Husayni in regard to Palestinian interests in their conflict with the Zionists. Another misstep was his rejection of the White Paper of 1939 through which Britain resolved to abandon its partitioning of Palestine in favor of the creation of a government represented in representational measures by both the Palestinians and Zionists. In his megalomania, Mohammad Amin al-Husayni rejected the White Paper because it didn't put him as the ruler of that Palestinian state. The Zionists also rejected the White Paper, and their terrorist organizations such as the Irgun and Lehi increased their terrorist activities against both the British and the Palestinians.

The SWC's implied generalization that the root cause of Muslim-Jewish tensions are the anti-Semitic passages found in the Qur'an is itself a prejudiced and bigoted stereotype. It is along the lines of the stereotype that holds that Jews hate the goyim because of the anti-goyim passages in the Tanakh and the Talmud.

It is the height of hypocrisy that an organization such as the Simon Wiesenthal Center, whose very own Museum of Tolerance, in their own words, "challenges visitors to confront bigotry and racism," would itself descend to such blatant bigotry and prejudice. The Simon Wiesenthal Center has failed in its challenge with its very self. How risibly pathetic.



This is a non-sequitur. One thing is whether the US and Canada would surely have acted more aggressively than the IDF did in Gaza. Another thing, which the SWC doesn't address, is the fact that Israel committed war crimes against civilians in Gaza.



That Hamas used civilians as human shields and hid their weapons in mosques and hospitals does not negate nor mitigate Israel's war crimes in Gaza.

Both Israel and Hamas should be charged with war crimes and be dealt with accordingly.



Therein lies the reason why peace in Palestine will never be achieved, and the prospect for a larger, region-wide conflict grows more and more imminent. The elimination of the necessarily discriminatory and oppressive ethnocentric state of Israel in favor of a truly egalitarian and pluralistic one in Palestine is the answer to true peace in that region of the world.

I have a question for you about the "right to return".

Who should be given that right?
Would you give it to anyone that claims it, or only allow those that left to return?
If someone cannot prove ownership of land BEFORE the existance of Israel, should they be allowed the "right of return" also?

The people who were displaced by the wars of '48 and '67 and their decendants should be granted the Right of Return.

Many of the Palestinians who were displaced were Fellahin and didn't own land, or at least, not individually--much of the land was owned communally--so the Right of Return should not be restricted to only landowners.

Ok, so do we do DNA tests to determine who those people are? Do we accept the claim of anyone that they are descendants of those originally displaced? Next, what about the people being displaced? Wouldnt they be entitled to compensation? And what about the native borb Israelis that live on the land? Are you going to punish them for what their ancestors did? Will you set up camps for all of the Israeli's that. get displaced?
Will those Israeli's then be allowed to use terrorism in an attempt to get their homes back?

I would think that birth certificates would be sufficient, but sure, if DNA tests would be required, why not?



Who's going to be displaced?



Let the native born Israelis (Sabra) live on "the land," and duly compensate the returning Palestinians for any lands that they lost.

Why should the Sabra be punished for what their ancestors did?



Which Israelis are going to be displaced, exactly, and why?



I don't think terrorism is an answer to getting one's home back, or anything else for that matter.

It sure seems to work well for the USA in controlling defenseless countries, thereby allowing American businesses to pillage those countries' resources.

Before Israel extends a right of return, should not the Arab countries extend a right of return for all the Jews, Christians, Sikhs, Greeks, Turks, et al., driven out of those countries? As I write this, Iraq is actively driving out all the Christians in the country.

Of course we should give the right of return to all the Mexicans considering that we stole SW USA from Mexico.

I neglected to mention that the Pals are now busy eliminating visiting American tourists.

http://www.aolnews.com/2010/12/19/american-identified-as-christine-logan-found-dead-near-jerusalem/

The Palestinian Proletariat
By Michael S. Bernstam, December 2010, Commentary

British Prime Minister David Cameron recently called Gaza a "prison camp." Former President Jimmy Carter has called it a "cage." At first glance, these characterizations of the Hamas-ruled ­province seem like rhetorical excesses designed to cast Israel in the role of the unjust jailer blockading the strip. But Cameron and Carter have got it right, in a way. Gaza is a totalitarian paramilitary camp at war with its neighbors and other Palestinians. It is a paramilitary camp because it is a unique type of refugee camp. The narrow confines of the 139 square miles of the Gaza district—surrounded by Israel to the north and east, Egypt to the south, and the Mediterranean Sea to the west—feature eight separate Palestinian refugee camps, plus dozens of surrounding ghettos. Altogether, they combine the features of a refugee camp and a military camp and, cut off from the world, look to some extent like the cages Carter mentioned.

These camps were established in 1949 and have been financed ever since by the United Nations Relief and Work Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA). Yet far from seeking to help residents build a new and better life either in Gaza or elsewhere, UNRWA is paying millions of refugees to perpetuate their refugee status, generation after generation, as they await their forcible return to the land inside the State of Israel.

Though pundits and foreign-policy experts focus on the question of settlements or the current temperature of negotiations between Israel and the Palestinians, UNRWA's institutionalization of refugee-cum-military camps is, in my view, the principal obstacle to peace in the Middle East. The chances of achieving peace and security in the Middle East will continue to be remote as long as UNRWA is, in effect, underwriting a self-destructive Palestinian cycle of violence, internecine warfare, and a perpetual war against Israel.

The core issue is a phenomenon we can call "refugeeism." For 60 years, UNRWA has been paying four generations of Palestinians to remain refugees, reproduce refugees, and live in refugee camps. It is UNRWA that put them in refugee cages and watched the number of inhabitants grow. The Palestinian refugee population in Jordan, Lebanon, Syria, the West Bank, and Gaza has exploded from 726,000 in 1950 to 4.8 million in 2010. About 95 percent live under UNRWA care. The unprecedented nature of this guardianship is rooted in the unusual nature of this institution. UNRWA is a supranational welfare state that pays its residents not to build their own nation-state, for, were they to do so, they would forfeit their refugee status and its entitlements of cash, housing, health care, education, credit, and other largesse.

It is these perverse incentives above all that have undermined efforts to improve the lot of the Palestinian people, such as those measures aimed at fostering economic development in the West Bank undertaken by Palestinian Authority Prime Minister Salam Fayyad and the Israeli government. If the international community truly wishes to serve the needs of the Palestinians and improve their lot, its first task would be the abolition of UNRWA.

In their 1845 pamphlet The German Ideology, Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels coined the term lumpenproletariat. Marx later defined it as "neither wage-earning workers nor peasants," "classless elements," "beggars, alms-seekers, dole-seekers, paupers, and vagabonds." In 1949, Josef Stalin, who knew his Marx, instructed his envoy to the United Nations to oppose a refugee agency devoted to Palestinian Arabs. He wrote: "We should not vote for UNRWA. The goal should be to return Palestinian refugees to normal productive labor so that they work for a living. We need the Palestinian conscientious working class, not the Palestinian parasitic lumpenproletariat." Yet on December 8, 1949, the UN voted overwhelmingly to create the United Nations Relief and Work Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East. The U.S., Western Europe, the Arab states, and even Israel voted for it. Acting on Stalin's orders, the Soviet Union and all the other Communist-bloc countries abstained. Ever since, UNRWA has been among the most bizarre humanitarian organizations in human history. It is a refugee-relief effort whose definition of "refugees," a term meant to describe those in emergency flight from imminent peril, includes the descendants of refugees.

UNRWA is unique by design. Whereas all other refugees and deportees fall under the jurisdiction and care of the Office of the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), the Palestinians belong to UNRWA. Only ­actual refugees qualify for aid under the UNHCR, and that on a short-term basis. This draws a clear line between refugees as such and various ethnic diasporas. The UNHCR's mandate is to resettle and integrate all refugees in their historical homelands or in new host countries—to un-refugee them, so to speak. Out of the millions of refugees and deportees who emerged after World War II and since—Germans, Poles, Czechs, Hungarians, Finns, Russians, Ukrainians, Japanese, Indians, Pakistanis, Jews, Turks, Chinese, Koreans, Algerians, Cubans, Vietnamese, Cambodians, and many others—the UN provided Palestinians a different sort of relief.

The UNRWA charter specified that the Palestinians who lived in British Mandate Palestine during the years 1946-48 and who subsequently fled in 1948-49 qualified for refugee status together with all their descendants. This open-ended definition of refugees applies for generations to come. It bestows housing, utilities, health care, education, cash allowances, emergency cash, credit, public works, and social services from cradle to grave, with many cradles and grand-cradles along the way, to its beneficiaries. In practice, this means multigenerational refugee camps and ghettoes in Jordan, Lebanon, Syria, the West Bank, and Gaza. Close to one-third of today's refugees, about 1.4 million, live in 59 refugee camps. There is no room in UNRWA's mandate and agenda for resettlement and integration. In 1959, UNRWA discarded the last remnants of such programs.

UNRWA's mandate created, in effect, a multigenerational dependency of an entire people—a permanent, supranational refugee welfare state in which simply placing most Palestinians on the international dole has extinguished incentives for work and investment. It has succeeded with a vengeance. It has thwarted economic development, destroyed opportunities for peace in the Middle East, and created, along the way—both metaphorically and literally—a breeding ground for international terrorism. The great-grandchildren of East Prussian refugees do not blow up pizzerias in what used to be Konigsberg and is now the Russian city ­Kaliningrad. But the great-grandchildren of the original UNRWA refugees do blow up pizzerias in Jerusalem.

It is this open-ended refugee status—which necessarily envisions a victorious return to the Israeli part of the former British Mandate Palestine—that puts bread on the table in the rent-free house, together with an array of social services. Only the triumphant return of the grandchildren and the great-grandchildren to the ancestral land will mark the final deliverance in this ideology. Until then, the permanent refugee welfare state means permanent war. It is no longer the epitome of former British prime minister Clement Attlee's dichotomy of warfare state and welfare state: it is both.

The permanent refugeeism of the UNRWA welfare state generates a particular "right of return" claim—the argument that Palestinians should be given title to the land they occupied before Israel's independence—that fuels perpetual warfare. To see its pernicious demographic and physical meaning, consider what this claim is not, and then what it is. First, it is not the right of return of actual refugees (as opposed to descendants) that was created by international conventions since 1948 to prevent deportations and to mitigate the conditions of concurrent refugees who fled the ravages of war. Nor is it the right of return of historical ethnic diasporas to their own nation-states that Germany extends to all Germans, Armenia to all Armenians, Greece to all Hellenes, and Israel to all Jews. Nor is it the establishment of new nation-states where there were none, such as the partition of British Mandate Palestine into the Jewish and Arab states or the partition of the British Raj into India and Pakistan. Rather, the claim of the Palestinian right of return is intended for one historical ethnic diaspora of the ­descendants of perennial refugees to repopulate another people's existing nation-state, Israel.

This is not the right of return to a country; this is the right of return of a country, a reconquest after a lost war. In Europe, a similar claim would apply to the right of the Germans to a return of the Sudetenland from the Czech Republic, Farther Pomerania and Silesia from Poland, and East Prussia from Russia. In Asia, it would mean the right of the Pakistanis to parts of India.

This is not the right of return; this is a claim of the right of retake. In the world of historical ethnic diasporas, the right of return-cum-retake means a Hobbesian war of all against all. More than being detrimental to Israel, it is destructive for the Palestinians because it gives more belligerent groups, such as Hamas, an upper hand and prevents reunification of the two potential Palestinian nation-states. It converts what was meant to be a civil right into a civil war, on top of the war with Israel.

After Israel's complete withdrawal from Gaza in August 2005, conditions were in place for building a Palestinian nation-state. The Palestinian Authority could have taken over the physical infrastructure of the aid pipeline as well as social services from UNRWA. Instead, there soon followed a violent takeover by Hamas, an internecine war with other Palestinian factions, and an escalation of the Palestinian war against Israel. This war became internationalized by flotillas sent by foreign organizations to break the Israeli and Egyptian blockade of the terrorist regime ensconced in Gaza. The Palestinian failure to take advantage of Israel's withdrawal to improve their lot is reminiscent of the old joke about the Soviet failure to manufacture personal computers. The punchline was that no matter which blueprint the Russians took from the West, they always ended up making a machine gun. Similarly, the perennial refugeeism of the UNRWA welfare-warfare state always results in paramilitary formations, perpetual warfare, and terrorism.

Indeed, UNRWA sponsors terrorism in two ways—one general and one specific. The general way is the incessant warfare that is a corollary of permanent refugee status and the concomitant claim of the right of retake. James G. Lindsay, UNRWA general counsel in 2002-07, summarized this experience: "UNRWA ­encouraged Palestinians who favor re-fighting long-lost wars, discouraged those who favor moving toward peace, and contributed to the scourge of conflicts that have been visited upon Palestinian refugees for decades."

The UN's High Commissioner on Refugees disqualifies individuals who committed war crimes, crimes against humanity, and acts against peace from refugee status. UNRWA does not exclude them.

James Lindsay described it from the inside: "UNRWA has taken very few steps to detect and eliminate terrorists from the ranks of its staff or its beneficiaries, and no steps at all to prevent members of organizations such as Hamas from joining its staff." And again: "The agency makes no effort to discourage supporters of members of Hamas or any other terrorist group from joining its staff." Indeed, of some 30,000 UNRWA employees, fewer than 200 are "internationals" and the rest are Palestinian recruits, many of whom use UNRWA facilities and equipment to serve terrorist organizations. Since it is the claim of the right of retake that accompanies the eternal refugee welfare state, and warfare and terrorism enforce that claim, the staff of UNRWA must ultimately converge with the terrorist paramilitary organizations. Natural selection, if you will.

Lindsay cites numerous instances from his former agency's history. From 1975-82, UNRWA's Siblin Vocational Training Center in Lebanon was used for storing weapons, housing combatants, and retooling military equipment. At this facility, education converged with military indoctrination and recruitment. UNRWA textbooks represent what Lindsay calls a "war curriculum." Since 1987, UNRWA schools have exhibited posters glorifying militants and suicide bombers and served, in effect, as recruitment centers. In 2000-01, Palestinian children received military training in militarized summer camps. UNRWA vehicles and drivers periodically transported armed fighters. A most telling example of this institutional adaptation is the conversion of the most important humanitarian service, ambulances, into a lethal force. UNRWA ambulances routinely serve Palestinian combatants and wounded fighters during hostilities with Israel, in addition to Gaza and West Bank ambulances. They are the medical troops on one side in the war. And more: Hamas members have been employed as UNRWA ambulance drivers to transport combatants, weapons, and explosives in both the West Bank and, especially, Gaza.

The point is not that terrorists have infiltrated UNRWA. The point is that, by the logic of institutional evolution, even regardless of the policies of specific Western managers, UNRWA has become a terror-sponsoring organization.

This is not, of course, what the U.S., Western Europe, and Israel had in mind when they voted for UNRWA (or Stalin and his stooges when they abstained). But institutions tend to evolve according to their own intrinsic and devilish logic beyond the good intentions of their founders. Malthus pointed out in his classic treatise on population that the English Poor Laws, rather than alleviating poverty, actually reproduced, expanded, and perpetuated it. By subsidizing poverty, they created a demand for paupers, and demography duly provided the supply. This created the multigenerational underclass that Marx later dubbed the lumpenproletariat. The same pattern of demand and demographic supply characterized the evolution of the U.S. welfare system's Aid to Families with Dependent Children (AFDC). AFDC was established during the Great Depression in 1935 as a complement to Social Security. As the name indicates, it was intended as relief support for preexisting families with underage children who lost their breadwinner—primarily the middle-aged widows of workers like the Appalachian coal miners. The ­program evolved into a multigenerational dependency program for young, often teenaged, unmarried mothers of the permanent underclass. Senator Edward M. Kennedy described the mechanism: "We go to a young girl—a child of 18, or 16, or even younger—and this is what we say: Abandon all your hopes. You will never have a decent job. You will live in neighborhoods of endless unemployment and violence. And then we say to this child: Wait, here is a way, one way. We will give you an apartment and furniture to fill it. We will give you a TV set and a telephone. We will give you clothing and cheap food and free medical care, and some spending money besides. And in return, you only have to do one thing: Just go out there and have a baby." It was not until the Welfare Reform Act of 1996 that this trend was reversed.

Ancient Rome was the first to encounter the proletarian problem when it instituted a welfare state in 58 b.c. According to British historian Arnold Jones, it was intended initially just for the 220,000 plebeians who had lagged behind the general rise in living standards. The program began with grain allowances. But because the recipients did not want to bother baking bread, the grain allowance was converted into free bread. The right to welfare became hereditary, and by 284 a.d. there were millions of recipients. Bronze tablets, an equivalent of food stamps, were issued to recipients to control welfare rolls. N.?S. Gill reminds us that "the first part of the word proletariat derives from the Latin word proles, which means offspring. The proletariat were ‘producers of offspring.'"

By the latest count, there are some 250 theories of the decline of the Roman Empire: moral decay, fiscal failure, inflation, unemployment, endless wars, barbarian onslaught, etc. This 251st is as good as any, and synthetically subsumes the others: Mighty Rome could not sustain, simultaneously, the welfare state and the warfare state.

However, the mighty UNRWA can. It can do so indefinitely because the United States and the European Union finance it.

UNRWA has been one of the most inhuman experiments in human history. Since UNRWA creates incentives for war and disincentives for peace, conditions for Palestinian misery and disincentives for economic development, it cannot be reformed and must be removed. The change in the Palestinian incentive structure is necessary for both peace and statehood. Palestinian sovereignty will only be achieved by liberation from UNRWA and, like peace, cannot be truly achieved without this liberation. The first order of business, then, is to dismantle the UNRWA welfare-warfare state. If this were to be done, the future Palestinian state, or at least the West Bank, would be able to join the family of prosperous nation-states. To juxtapose President Carter and the last canto of Dante's Inferno, open the cage and enter the world.

But given the intractable nature of the problem and the strong support this destructive program retains in the international community, how can this end be achieved? One possible first step is to merge it with the United Nations High Commissioner on Refugees. Such a measure could allow UNRWA to be abolished immediately. If the new, merged agency adopted UNHCR's program of short-term emergency relief, it would signal the beginning of the end of the world body's support for continuance of the Palestinians' ­agony. Alternatively, UNRWA could be held in place and phased out gradually, say, over three years.

The process is not important. What is important is the change in mission. The new mandate should be resettlement, integration, and naturalization—or at least the former two or the latter two, with integration being a central and necessary component. The task is, in short, to transform 4.8 million people from dependent refugees into productive citizens.

Another option is for UNRWA funding to be converted into international subsidies earmarked exclusively for resettlement, integration, and naturalization. The funds could be applied in the countries of current residence (reimbursing, too, those countries' expenses), in Palestinian jurisdictions, or in whatever country would admit refugees on an individual basis. Israel is obviously unsuitable as a country of resettlement because integration there is not feasible, and such a plan would defeat the whole purpose of the scheme.

Most important, the transfer of UNRWA funding to the Palestinian Authority and local authorities would dispose of the very institution of the refugee camps. They would become regular neighborhoods and dwellings once their refugee status is removed. Integration would also become easier once the refugee stigma is removed from these neighborhoods. UNRWA schools, medical facilities, financial institutions, and all social services could be given outright to the Palestinian Authority, which would enhance its status, scope, and power as a sovereign government of a new nation-state, and to local governments elsewhere.

In fact, the dismantling of UNRWA would, by itself, facilitate and accelerate the task of resettlement, integration, and naturalization. This process has been forestalled in many places by the very existence of UNRWA and its refugee designation of the Palestinians.

In Jordan, more than 1.8 million of the nearly 2 million registered refugees are already naturalized citizens of that country. Lindsay aptly calls them "oxymoronic citizen refugees." Another 170,000 have permanent residency rights. Both citizens and permanent residents are integrated into the labor market and commerce and are isolated from other Jordanians primarily by the stigma of refugeeism—encaged, to rephrase President Carter. These Jordanian Palestinians or Palestinian Jordanians prefer to send their children to Jordanian schools that teach English and computer science rather than to UNRWA schools that teach historical mythology and use maps without Israel.

In Syria, since 1957, Palestinian residents have had the same rights as citizens in employment, commerce, and social services. They lack formal citizenship and full property rights because the Syrian government, in a concordat with UNRWA, committed itself to "preserve their original nationality," that is, to keep them trapped in their permanent refugee status and the ­ensuing claim on retaking Israel. Without UNRWA, this obstacle to integration would weaken even if the ­Syrian hostility toward Israel remains intact.

Lebanon is the most difficult case. Of 414,000 registered refugees, only 70,000 are citizens. Others do not enjoy employment rights, cannot own land, and do not qualify for public education, health care, and ­welfare. However, the transfer of the array of social and financial services and facilities from UNRWA to the Lebanese authorities would contribute to integration and help create jobs.

Those Jordanian, Syrian, and Lebanese Palestinians who cannot integrate into those countries could be resettled in the nascent Palestinian nation-state, which would master an expanded scope of sovereignty after the liberation from UNRWA.

The end of UNRWA would automatically nullify the pernicious issue of the right of return-cum-retake. It is unsolvable in the presence of UNRWA, because it implies the repopulation of Israel with millions of perennial paramilitary refugees. But once UNRWA is discarded, the refugee status expires instantaneously or after a transition period, and the right of return becomes a non-issue due to immediate and actually pressing needs.

Though its defenders may claim that criticisms of this agency are ill-intentioned or biased against the Palestinians, the phasing out of UNRWA is not only the Palestinians' sole hope of finding a viable future. It also fits well with Prime Minister Salam Fayyad's hope of creating a viable independent state. Though supporters of the Palestinians and even some friends of Israel have come to believe that UNRWA is indispensable, nation-building from within is the only viable form of nation-building. Instead of perpetuating the dead end that the international welfare state for the Palestinians represents, ending UNRWA's horrific six-decade reign would instantly create the conditions for an honest, meaningful, and viable peace process to begin in the Middle East.

Pal school in Israel's capital teaches children to seek death.

http://www.israelnationalnews.com/News/news.aspx/141547

Whereas Israeli schools teach children that it is perfectly all right for them to take Palestinian property.

Due to the strike by diplomats and staff at the Israeli foreign ministry, any peace talks and visits of foreign diplomats/politicians have been cancelled since last year .... until at least the end of January.

Can Christianity Survive in the Middle East?
Frida Ghitis, World Politics Review, January 6, 2011

The holiday season has now ended, but not without leaving behind a trail of devastation and a rising sense of anguish among Christian communities in the Middle East. A series of deadly assaults and ominous threats—most dramatically the New Year's church massacre in Alexandria, Egypt, and a threat from al-Qaida in Iraq to "open the doors of destruction and rivers of blood" upon Christians—have raised fears that Christianity may not survive in the region of its birth. The depth of the anxiety comes through in the words of Lebanon's former-President Amin Gemayel, who declared, "What is happening to Christians is genocide."

To be sure, Christians are facing a ruthless onslaught. And history shows that sizable religious minorities can be swept away by the tides of religious and political turmoil. Turkey, for example, was once home to millions of Christians. It is now an almost exclusively Muslim nation. Enormous, once-thriving Jewish communities have disappeared from most of the Middle East. But today's Christian communities in the region, while undoubtedly threatened, are far from inevitably doomed.

Christians living in the mostly Muslim Middle East are caught in the crossfire of an epochal ideological struggle. As the people of the region battle over highly charged choices regarding the direction their societies will take, Christianity has somehow become part of the very battleground.

The situation extends beyond the immediate Middle East to non-Arab countries. In Pakistan, the blasphemy law that imposes an automatic death sentence on anyone found to cause offense to Islam or the Prophet has become a tool used to target Christians. In November, a Christian woman was sentenced to death there after her neighbors, with whom she had had a disagreement, accused her of blasphemy. The governor of Punjab was recently killed by his bodyguard after speaking out against the controversial law.

Perhaps nowhere are Christians enduring more violence than in Iraq. Even while overall violence has declined precipitously in the country, the situation has worsened for Christians. In late-October, a group of militants stormed a church service, taking 100 people hostage. Security forces blasted in and the ensuing battle left some 70 people dead. Though it was the worst attack the community has suffered, it was just one of many that have occurred with brutal frequency. Iraqi Christians have been leaving the country in droves. Of those that have remained, many have fled to the safety of the Kurdish north. Iraqi Christian leaders estimate that perhaps 400,000 of their flock remain from a pre-war total of 1.4 million.

With few exceptions, those targeting Christians are the same people who wish to see a return to a Muslim Caliphate and a radical interpretation of Islam in the Muslim world. In other words, the ultimate fate of Christian communities is closely linked to the struggle over liberalism and modernity in the region.

Christians are particularly vulnerable, not only because they don't share the religion of the majority, or of those using violence to enforce their views. They are also often portrayed by their foes as a potential fifth column of disloyal citizens who might betray the country. That makes them targets and makes governments less inclined to protect them. It also explains why, after the Alexandria massacre, Coptic Christians in Egypt—who make up about 10 percent of the country's 80 million people—clashed with government forces. Nobody thought the government had perpetrated the bombing, but Copts have been complaining bitterly of growing discrimination throughout society and of authorities' stubborn neglect of their troubles.

The attack shocked the nation, and many Muslims seemed frightened by what it could portend. The influential cleric Ahmed al Tayeb of the famed al-Azhar University called for "unity of the cross and the crescent," as many newspapers warned that civil war could break out.

Sectarian civil war has already traumatized the balkanized Arab country of Lebanon, where Christians now maintain an ever-more fragile peace with Sunni and Shiite Muslims. Christians made up about 80 percent of Lebanon's population in the 1920s. Today, the most commonly cited number is 40 percent, but many believe the number is much smaller. Statistics in Lebanon are a matter of war and peace, so taking a census is out of the question. And yet, despite a 15-year civil war that left perhaps 150,000 Lebanese dead in all, Lebanon today has a Christian president. The future, however, remains uncertain for Lebanese Christians, as militant religious parties, particularly Hezbullah, become increasingly powerful and the threat of a new war hangs in the air. As a result, Christians are leaving the country faster than any other group.

In neighboring Jordan, King Abdullah made a point of reminding his people that Christians are an integral part of the kingdom. In a message publicized throughout the national media, he sent Christmas greetings and reiterated his commitment to tolerance and religious freedom. Jordan has become a refuge for hundreds of thousands of Iraqi Christians fleeing persecution at home. But Jordanian extremists—including the infamous Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, once the leader of al-Qaida in Iraq—have previously launched attacks against Christians in Iraq and Jordan.

In other parts of the Middle East, Christians live with varying degrees of freedom. Persian Gulf nations are home to millions of foreign workers, many of them Christians. In Saudi Arabia, the law bans them from practicing their religion, so they do it in secret. In Kuwait, large churches adorn the capital, and religious services are held openly. But only a tiny handful of Christians are Kuwaiti citizens.

In the Palestinian Territories, Christians made up 10 percent of the population in the 1920s. Today they total just 1 percent. They have experienced the hardships of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict along with the pressures of living in communities where Islamic militancy is on the rise. In Gaza, ruled by the Islamist Hamas, they have seen their churches attacked. In the West Bank, the official stance is one of religious tolerance. Even so, the Christian population in the Palestinian Territories has continued its relentless decline. In Bethlehem, the Christian population has fallen from 20,000 in 1995 to about 7,000.

Perhaps the only country in the Middle East where the Christian population has seen strong growth is Israel proper. Their presence has declined as a percentage of the overall population, but the total numbers have increased steadily, from about 34,000 in 1948 to more than 150,000 today. The sharp contrast with the rest of the region points to the role played by the battle for the heart of Islam in the plight of Middle East Christians: The one country in the region without a Muslim majority is the country where the number of Christians is growing.

Christians have become the canary in the coal mine of the Middle East, with their plight providing a measure of the perils emanating from the region's ongoing ideological battle. If those struggling for a forward-looking, modern Middle East succeed, then Christianity will survive in the lands of its birth. If they fail, then the Muslim Middle East could become a region where Christianity exists only in the history books.

Author Frida Ghitis is an independent commentator on world affairs and a World Politics Review contributing editor.

WHAT IS THE REAL DANGER?

Here's an abbreviated chronology of the ownership of the land called Palestine (some years are approximate). The Encyclopedia Britannica, “Palestine,” is the source.



The maintenance of our security will depend on whether we as well as the Israelis are successful defending ourselves against those self-proclaimed Islamists (for example, Hezbollah, Hamas, al-Qaeda, and those that support them) who repeatedly proclaim they are murdering and will continue to murder infidels (that is, murder non-believers of Islam--murder much of humanity in general and murder many Israelis and Americans in particular), or we are unsuccessful and ultimately doomed, because of our lack of success preventing the formation of a self-proclaimed Islamist totalitarian government of humanity's posterity in general, and Israel's and America's posterity in particular.

George Orwell in NINETEEN EIGHTY-FOUR,
http://etext.library.adelaide.edu.au/o/orwell/george/o79n/
wrote what constituted a prescient warning to humanity.

This warning was published in June 1949. He time-labeled his warning 1984, but his warning is a perpetual and timeless warning of humanity's propensity to contain and even court personalities in its midst that are dangerous to humanity's existence. These are the personalities in humanity's midst that seek power over what the rest of humanity thinks and what the rest of humanity does. They seek this power for no other purpose than gaining power over the rest of humanity. Possessing that power over even some of humanity deludes them into thinking they are of greater worth than those over whom they possess their power. The truth is that to hold others down, one must ALSO be down.[/quote]

The ITM (i.e., Islamic Terrorist Maniacs) are the current best example of at least some of humanity courting personalities in its midst that are dangerous to humanity's existence. These are the personalities in humanity's midst that seek power over what the rest of what humanity thinks and does. They seek this power for no other purpose than gaining power over the rest of humanity.

They seek totalitarian power over us by murdering as many of us as they think necessary to achieve their objective.

The question we should be debating is what is the best way to defend ourselves against those self-proclaimed Islamists who are seeking to foist a "big brother" totalitarian government on humanity's posterity in general and American's posterity in particular.

Here is a good piece on Palestine's culture of lying. It is interesting that, among the anti-Semites and anti-Israel people in this forum (e. g., Infra, CI, Walter, et al.), they don't hesitate to broadcast these lies, and even contribute their own.


Assisted Suicide: Who loses most when Arabs lie?
By Lee Smith, Tablet Magazine, January 12, 2011

Israel's enemies are waging a relentless information war against the Jewish state, and Israel is losing. Some pro-Israel activists insist that Israel must play offense rather than merely defend against the constant stream of charges issuing from Palestinians, other Arabs and Muslims, and Western-funded non-government organizations. Still other friends of the Jewish state think it's too late, that Israel has already lost the information war waged by its enemies—with the collusion of the Western press.

An example: Last week, the New York Times reported that a Palestinian woman named Jawaher Abu Rahmah had died from inhaling tear gas after participating in a demonstration against the separation barrier. In response, Israeli military officials, along with a group of pro-Israel bloggers, challenged the Palestinian account, and claimed they had evidence that she died from complications due to the medication she was taking for cancer. Among other tell-tale signs that something was amiss with the Palestinian version, there was the curiously worded cause of death: "Inhaling gas of an Israeli solider according to the family."

The pessimists who think Israel's case is hopeless have a point. It's not clear why both the Times reporter, Isabel Kershner, and her editors at the foreign desk failed to treat the story with more circumspection: If the chances of dying from inhaling tear gas in an open space were not infinitesimal, wrongful-death suits would prevent police forces from using it as it they do throughout the United States and Europe to disperse riotous crowds.

If journalists won't run narratives like the death-by-tear-gas tale through the most rudimentary BS-detector, it makes it harder not to conclude that they are willing to believe the worst about Israel. At the least, this is evidence of a lazy press corps that ought to take its work a little more seriously; at worst, it means that the Western media knowingly participates in a campaign to slander and libel a U.N. member state.

Outside of the Palestinian fable, floated in the late 1990s, about the Zionist chewing gum that made Palestinian women both sexually intemperate and sterile, it's hard to think of a whopper that the Western media has not swallowed whole. Among other exaggerations and outright fabrications was the so-called "massacre" at the Jenin refugee camp in April 2002. The Western press dutifully followed the lead of the Palestinian news agency, Wafa, and reported that thousands, or hundreds, of Palestinian civilians were killed. Even as subsequent reports, including a U.N. investigation, revealed the truth of the matter—56 Palestinians were killed, the majority of them armed combatants—the narrative describing Israeli soldiers as war criminals and wanton murderers stuck.

Even more impressive is when images are attached to the narrative, like when a Palestinian cameraman in 2006 caught pictures of a young girl distraught on the same Gaza beach where, he reported, seven members of a her family had been killed by an Israeli Air Force onslaught. However, it seems now that a Hamas mine was likely responsible for the tragic deaths.

Most famous is the story of Mohamed al-Dura, the 12-year-old Palestinian boy believed to have been killed by Israeli gunfire on the Gaza Strip in September 2000. His last moments were recorded and flashed across the world, turning the boy into an international icon of Palestinian suffering and Israeli brutality. However, the Israelis didn't kill Dura, and it's not clear if he was killed instead by Palestinian gunfire or if the entire episode was staged by a French-Israeli journalist named Charles Enderlin and his Palestinian cameraman. Richard Landes, a Boston University history professor who has done extensive work on the Dura case, coined the term Pallywood to describe the "media manipulation, distortion and outright fraud by the Palestinians (and other Arabs, such as the Reuters photographer caught faking photos during the Second Lebanon War), designed to win the public-relations war against Israel."

But this anti-Israeli misinformation is in fact part of a larger phenomenon. The Arabic word taqqiya is frequently used to denote the kind of dissimulation practiced by Muslims in the Middle East. Westerners tend to abuse the term, as if any Muslim who lies, for instance, about a car robbery, was practicing taqqiya, when he's just trying to avoid arrest as any other suspect would. Taqqiya is a doctrine particular to the Shia, a Muslim minority who, because they have had much to fear over the last millennium from their more numerous Sunni neighbors, are permitted to lie under duress about their real religious sentiments. The concept, however, is a useful reminder that this is a part of the world where saying the wrong thing to the wrong person can be costly.

Nonetheless, Westerners are very sensitive to the idea that some cultures do not value truth-telling in the same way that we do. For reporters it can be embarrassing if your beat is to cover, say, the Palestinian Authority, since the bulk of your work is taking dictation from frequently malevolent fabulists and having to pass it off as though you were interviewing someone actually worth speaking to. But the convention of our press corps is to treat the utterances of Muamar Qaddafi with the same respect due the prime minister of Canada. To fact-check an entire political culture is beyond the pale of Western journalism, so instead we pretend that Arab societies respect the truth as much as we do, for to say otherwise is to sit in judgment over another culture.

Unfortunately, there is no getting around the fact that societies where the truth is just one among many possible narratives are going to fare worse than societies where truth is valued. In Western culture, truth has been virtually deified since the Enlightenment. Beginning in the early 19th century, Middle East reformers have rightly feared that a similar enlightenment in their society, a regime of Arab or Muslim reason, would threaten the entire ruling order, including God's place in it. If reason is supreme, and everything must fall under the scope of the empirical method, then there is nothing to protect the supernatural or divine from the same rigorous investigation. The Muslim reformers looked at the West and saw a civilization to be admired for its scientific and technological progress and pitied for its spiritual malaise. Thankfully for us, even as the crisis of faith must inevitably follow enlightenment, it is only reason that guarantees technological progress.

Arab educators and other liberal intellectuals regularly decry the lack of critical thinking in Arab education, and yet the problem is not the ability to think critically but what it is possible to think critically about. You can't speak critically of political authorities in the Arabic-speaking Middle East or security services will break your limbs and crack your skull, as they did this week in Tunisia. Obviously, religious topics are off-limits in a region where cartoons of a prophet can touch off widespread riots. Once you have circumscribed any limits to critical thought, you have inscribed red lines throughout your society. The reason the Arab countries do not lead the world in any field is not because they are any more violent or stupid or lazy than anyone else; rather, it is because the culture is set against the very principles of reason that make success possible. It is no mystery why Saudi Arabia's King Abdullah must come to New York for medical treatment—even though his country is more than wealthy enough to build first-rate medical facilities. The culture of the kingdom rewards students for memorizing the Quran, not for scientific explorations or pushing cultural boundaries; half of the country's population is not even allowed to drive a car.

Western cyber-optimists argue that information technology like satellite television and the Internet will so inundate the Arabic-speaking Middle East with images and information that it will entirely reconfigure Arab societies. But this has it exactly wrong: Culture is more powerful than technology, and how a society uses any given technology is determined by its culture. This is why no one wants the Islamic Republic of Iran to have a nuclear bomb, but no one has a problem with France's weapons program. This is also why the Internet is not going to open the eyes of those Arabs who are instead more inclined to use it to spread disinformation. Pallywood is nothing more than the nexus where an Arab culture of lies meets Western technology.

That is to say, the Arabs are not winning an information war against Israel, nor anything else for that matter. Rather, the stories and lies they tell to delegitimize the Jewish state are part and parcel of the war that they have been waging against themselves, and with stunning success. The tragedy is that everyone knows where the Arabs are heading, because the signs of failure and self-destructiveness couldn't be clearer—poverty, violence, despotism, illiteracy, mistreatment of women, and the persecution of confessional minorities, like Egypt's Coptic Christian population. The Western journalists and NGOs who repeat and credential these lies are doing no honor to either the values of their own society or those of the Arabs; they're merely helping a culture kill itself.

So there are occurrences of misreporting particular instances within the Israel/Palestine Conflict.

Understood.

What Lee fails to grasp is the larger picture. The Zionists are discriminating against and oppressing the Palestinian people in the name of defending and perpetuating their ethnocentric state of Israel.

Lee can't, or most precisely refuses to, see the forest for the trees.

Now there's an idea, since Palestine is the region of Christianity's birth, the state of Israel should grant the right of return to all Christians.