RubySoho
Winston
60 Years of Israel
May 14th 2008 06:44
Sixty years of Israel.
Sixty years of occupation.
Sixty years of oppression.
Sixty years of displacement.
Sixty years of refugee camps.
Sixty years of massacres.
Sixty years of war crimes.
Sixty years of ethnic cleansing.
Sixty years of international condemnation.
Sixty years of power cuts.
Sixty years of blockades.
Sixty years of curfews.
Sixty years of segregation.
Sixty years of degradation.
Sixty years of exploitation.
Sixty years of humiliation.
Sixty years of starvation.
Sixty years of checkpoints.
Sixty years of identity cards.
Sixty years of midnight raids.
Sixty years of hatred.
Sixty years of injustice.
Sixty years and still no Palestine...
Happy Birthday Israel.
Shalom.
Ruby
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Comment by Tom Craven
Independent Australian By Thomas J Craven
50 Years since the king of Jordan vowed to 'wipe Israel off the face off the earth'
40 years since another invasion of Israel by the entire Arabic alliance which was defeated by Israel.
30 years since another invasion attempt
I don't agree with everything Israel does, but think about it. The Palestinian's invaded Israel in the first place, in 1948 we had a 2 state solution but the Palestinian's and their allies destroyed it by invading Israel, they tried to invaded Israel another 3 times and if they could do it today they would. We sympathize with the Palestinian's but there not blameless.
Comment by RubySoho
Music Zone
Thought Zone
The Arabs were right royally screwed by the British and the UN, promised autonomy when the British really had no intention of giving it. The only reason the British left Palestine was because they had had enough of the Jewish terrorists. Yes, sometimes terrorism pays off, just ask David Ben Gurion, worked a treat for him didn't it?
You point the finger at the King of Jordan and the Arab alliance. But who is building settlements in the Occupied Territories? Today Israel flourishes and the Palestinians live like caged animals.
Comment by Jeff Musall
Secular Humanity
Well put counter points to the big party....
Comment by postmoderncritic
Postmodern Critic
Relativity Watch
Padsoc
Comment by Mountain Fog
Infognito
Screen Trek
QUOTE ME NO QUOTES!
Israel proper, as we know it today, was created by Ben Gurion and his supporters, who used terrorist acts to make Britain and other officials withdraw their military governorship, leaving the Palestinians to fend for themselves and the Jews to create their State of Israel in the way they wished. This in turn led to the first Arab Israeli conflict in 1948, basically becasue of obrder disputes and land grabs that were not agreed to, but taken by force, by Gurion and his supporters.
Gurion and his followers bombed the King David Hotel, (July 1946) destroying the British Military High Command post and the British Criminal Investigation Division, situated within the hotel. No major military response was taken against the Gurion terrorists, because of the horror just perpetrated against Jews by the Nazis would make such a response more like oppression against the Jews yet again, and sympathy lay with the Jews to establish their own homeland, in the area of origin of their religion.
And who could blame them? Who would want to live in Germany, Poland etc, if you were Jewish, after what happened to them there in the 1930s and the 1940s? Remember, it would not just be living near the extermination camps, which were everywhere, it was living next door to the people who, at the very best, did and said nothing against the Nazis and what they were doing, to the other extreme of total support and involvement in the Nazi regime and its Jewish (gays, Gypsies etc) annihilation programmes.
This support of the Nazi regime, and all it stood for, was either tacitly agreed to, or totally supported by everyone in those countries who were not Jewish! Although there was a very small minority who went underground, and helped to fight against the regime, in some way, or by helping Jews escape, they were a tiny minority among millions of pro Nazi citizens!
Imagine having escaped the Nazi regime and then contemplate returning to all that after the war? Not me! I remember seeing film shot by the USA Army, of the liberation of those dreadful concentration camps, where so many people were exterminated, and the officers interviewed the locals, some whom lived directly across a normal width town street, from the concentration/extermination camp the Yanks were liberating.
Not one of those people admitted to knowing what was going on in the camp!! Not one said they suspected, or believed it was for exterminating the Jews!! Yet, the camp wa ssurrounded by an electric wire fence, not a wall obscuring the view! The soldiers spoke of the terrible stench of death, rotting corpses, and the vile human crematorium ovens, belching out the stench of burning bodies, which the soldiers could smell from a mile away!!
Who could blame the Jews for never wishing to return to these countries that betrayed them so awfully. And remember, it also involved all the Slavic States, who have largely escaped criticism for their own participation in the war crimes of WW2.
As for Israel, the old Palestine and environs, what many people seem to forget is, this area has indeed been co-occupied by Jews and Arabs for thousands of years now.
It never particularly belonged to one group, more than the other. The argument that "God" gave the Israelies this land cannot be proved in court, as the existance of "God" cannot be proved.
However, it is bemusing and ironic that, in all Western courts, the Bible is used to swear upon, so that you will tell the truth, when at the same time, its contents would not pass the laws of proof, nor would any court recognize any legal ownership of lands based on its contents, let alone accepting all the alleged miracles as truth.
It is terrible and so sad, that so many have died, in Israel, the occupied territories, Jordan, Egypt and Lebanon.
So many Israelies do want a just and lasting peace, but their voice is drowned out by the hawks, who want to eliminate the 'Palestinian Problem', and that reference has shades echoing back to WW2, as does the use of collective punishment, where an entire town will be isolated, because of the actions of a few.
Very sad, because many whom survived the atrocities of the Nazi extermination camps, do not see the way things are being handled as a just solution.
It leads to hatred and ingrained bigotry, and the dehumanisation of the oppressed. Let us all hope a more sane leadership gets in control of Israel, and finds a just peace, and then, the Arab peoples will come together to protect it, I believe, and isolate the hard core terrorists.
But not until the terrible human rights abuses stop, not until a just solution to the two State entity is resolved and created, not until then. Let us all hope and pray they find a just solution.
I link here to a small history of this attack on the King David Hotel, and it explains the details and also how the Irgun gang had actually wanred the hotel of its imminent attack, denied for years by the British, but proven in recent times.
King David Hotel attack
fog
Comment by RubySoho
Music Zone
Thought Zone
That said, I am not anti-Israel in that I do accept its right to exist- and defend itself. What i am speaking out against here is Israel's treatment of the Palestinians in Gaza and the occupied Territories- this is not defence, this is aggression and oppression and a gross violation of human rights.
PMC, I have written a few blogs about this issue (and will continue to do so), this is possibly a good one to start with to give you an idea of how both Israel and Hamas have a lot to answer for in this ongong saga:
Really Long Link
Comment by Culture War Watch
This is yet another article misinformed by inaccuracy and cliched bigotry. We can have little hope in solving this problem if we continue to allow so much misinformed nonsense to go unchecked.
The number of refugees and the reasons for their flight in 1948 have long been a source of fractious historiographic debate and negotiations starting points. One fact is reasonably agreed upon; on 27 November 1947, the Arab Palestinian authorities - the Arab Higher Committee led by the grand mufti of Jerusalem, Haj Amin al-Hussein - rejected the UN General Assembly’s partition resolution 181.
Israel’s subsequent military victory resulted in what the Palestinian narrative calls al-Nakba - the disaster; a passable Arabic transliteration of the Hebrew, Shoah. This victim identity permeates Palestinian historiography, and indeed, much of the post-Zionist or “new” Israeli historiography. It also colludes in attempts to co-opt the real Holocaust narrative for the Palestinian Nakba.
Even when there is a degree of civilised consensus on the archival data, there are many informed differences of interpretation even among historians and scholars of integrity. So we can only cringe when polemicists like Antony Loewenstein LIE that Israel was always intent on ridding its land of all Arabs and that the “opportunity came in 1947-48, when Jewish forces drove up to 700,000 Palestinians into exile.” No such academic consensus exists.
On the contrary the issue is complex, the pattern of events chaotic. After all, this was a war! Indeed the top scholars do adduce evidence that some Arab leaders did urge Arab Palestinians to flee their homes in Israel. Nor does the Israeli historian Benny Morris say anything resembling what M&W, AL etc. cite him as saying.
Here is what Benny Morris actually wrote:
"In some areas Arab commanders ordered the villagers to evacuate to clear the ground for military purposes or to prevent surrender. More than half a dozen villages — just north of Jerusalem and in the Lower Galilee — were abandoned during these months as a result of such orders….there was no Zionist policy to expel the Arabs or intimidate them into flight."
On November 30, 1947 the day after the U.N. decision to partition the British Mandate of Palestine, the Arab reaction began - violent, manic, the sword was par for the course. Seven Jews were killed. In the following days stabbings, shootings, beatings coupled the attacks on the consulates of Sweden and Poland (Danish cartoons anybody), torching of synagogues. Molotov cocktails in shops.
On December 3 the Palestinian leadership ordered the razing of the Jewish retail precinct in Jerusalem. On December 4 over 100 armed Arabs attacked Kibbutz Efal on the outskirts of Tel Aviv.
But what do we get from Ruby, AL or any of the Usual Suspects? Of course not. What do we get? The unsupported claim that “Hard line elements in the Zionist movement also rejected the partition.” However, it does not take long to find AL’s source, where in Pappe’s book we get violence “was activated by hot-headed youth on both sides,” triggered by the Haganah. Of course, perish the thought that Arabs could get “hot-headed” without Zionist ‘triggers!’
There is so much nonsense posted here fleshed out here. Really Long Link
I’ll return tomorrow to contend with some of the more outrageous claims
Comment by RubySoho
Music Zone
Thought Zone
But seriously, culture war watch...my main problem is not with the creation of the state of Israel, it is with the way in which Israel has conducted itself since its creation.
'Bigotry'...that's really funny....
Comment by Jeff Musall
Secular Humanity
Comment by Mountain Fog
Infognito
Screen Trek
QUOTE ME NO QUOTES!
just tried to check up on "culture war watch" and his/her profile, and it isn't there, and the URL is posting as invalid...and his/her blog nor his/her name does not show up in Orble's list of writers...how can someone remark on Orble here, but have no registered ID, yet show the veneer of having one....strange don't you think?
Gee...I wonder if "culture war watch" is a phantom....and if so..how is this possible?
And "culture war watch"s so called LINK..leads to nowhere, just to a "blogger" advert to join up the site...
why is that "culture war watch"?
fog
Comment by Culture War Watch
Really Long Link
Comment by Culture War Watch
Yes, the UN did plan for Jerusalem to be an international city. But that all collapsed once Jordan illegally invaded and annexed it in 1948 before kicking out all the Jews there and in the West Bank.
Comment by RubySoho
Music Zone
Thought Zone
Note to you: Israel's occupation of the West Bank is illegal under international law. Whilst Israel lists Jerusalem as its capital most countries do not recognise it as such. Except for the US of course. Big surprise there. As for Jordan invading and kicking out Jews, please see my comment about western ethnocentrism addressed to Tom Craven. What is it with these darn Arabs hey? Why don't they accept that we are better than them and let us divide up their land amongst ourselves? Bloody hell, you'd think they thought they were actually human or something.
Comment by Culture War Watch
Comment by RubySoho
Music Zone
Thought Zone
Comment by Alexander Hine
Human, all too human thoughts, raving and dingustalk
Tones and Tremelos; music news and views
Music Toes
Also, you might want to look into the history of Jewish terrorism a little more - all terrorism is bad, and the Irgun cannot be excused even by the rightness of their cause, but the fact is those terrorist groups are gone now and have been for a long time - PLO, fatah, Hamas, Islamic Jihad, the A-Aqsa Martyr's Brigade and others, these groups are not going anywhere - Hamas is running the country for God's sake! And they are all committed to the destruction of Israel and the expulsion of almost its entire citizenry, except those they deem as Palestinian. You have to have some perspective in these things. Not tired cliches.
Well, I await your accusations of ethno-centrism
A. Hine
Comment by RubySoho
Music Zone
Thought Zone
I'm not going to address any of the comments in your first paragraph as you re not putting forward a clear argument there.
I find this sentence interesting:
Irgun cannot be excused even by the rightness of their cause,
What made Irgun's cause any more right than any other terrorist cause?
And yes, Irgun no longer exists. Why? Because they got what they wanted; the creation of a Jewish state. Ben Gurion and Begin went from being terrorists to being Prime Ministers.
Arab terrorists on the other hand, are still fighting for what they perceive is their right. In case you are not aware, there is still no Palestinian state and Israel still invades Lebanon on a semi-regular basis. Please note that I'm not defending any terrorists actions here, just stating facts. I have never shown support for terrorism in my writing, my concern is for the Palestinian civilians.
Hamas is not "running a country". There is no country. Gaza is a territory. A territory which has been plunged into a humantarian crises because of the failure of Hamas to recognise Israel AND because of Israel's continued sanctions against it. However, Hamas has repeatedly declared its willingness to recognise Israel and stop calling for its destruction if Israel would include Hamas in its peace negotiations. Israel refuses because, as we all know, Israel "does not negotiate with terrorists", which is a rather hypocritical stance for a country that was founded on terrorism and which still celebrates one of the most destructive acts of terror perpetrated in the Middle East- the bombing of the King David Hotel in 1948.
Comment by Alexander Hine
Human, all too human thoughts, raving and dingustalk
Tones and Tremelos; music news and views
Music Toes
Irgun’s cause was more legitimate than Hamas’ or the PLO’s because the Irgun were not seeking to destroy a sovereign state and eject or slaughter its inhabitants. I don’t really approve of Israel celebrating the bombing at the King David Hotel (is that Eurocentric?), or of any terrorist acts – especially that kill civilians. There is certainly a case to be made for the idea that the Jewish terrorist groups were disbanded at least in part, because of the establishment of the state of Israel, but we shouldn’t forget that the original division of Mandatory Palestine envisioned the creation of a Jewish and an Arab state side by side, with the Arab state being larger than the Jewish. This small non-contiguous state was accepted by Ben-Gurion etc. and rejected by the Palestinians and the Arab nations generally.
I doubt very much that Hamas would choose to recognise Israel, as this would go against there entire ethos and agenda – Hamas were formed to combat the peace process. I imagine, though of course I could be wrong, that if recognised as a negotiating party, Hamas would continue Arafat’s “phased strategy” whereby any territories gained through negotiation are used as springboards for new aggression, ad infinitum until the destruction of Israel. (I realise ad infinitum is somewhat erroneous there (just like 'somewhat' here), but let's leave that for now)
But then again, why should you listen to my Eurocentric views. I’m sure Hamas are a lovely bunch of guys and those evil Jews should just dissolve their state and go back to Russia and Germany.
A. Hine
Comment by RubySoho
Music Zone
Thought Zone
However, I don't recall telling you you were eurocentric so I won't go into that.
Irgun’s cause was more legitimate than Hamas’ or the PLO’s because the Irgun were not seeking to destroy a sovereign state and eject or slaughter its inhabitants.
That's not really true. There may not have been a sovereign state in Palestine, but the Arabs that lived there had done so for many generations. These same people were either forced to leave or fled their homes voluntarily. Those who tried to return were refused re-entry.furthermore, the Arabs had been promised sovereignty by the British who failed to deliver.
Also, you are neglecting the many other massacres and terrorist activities of Irgun, Lehi and haganah such as the Deir Yassin massacre in in 1948, when irgun raided an Arab village and slaughtered as many of its inhabitants as it could and the Cairo-Haifa train bombing which killed 40 Arabs and wounded 60.
I doubt very much that Hamas would choose to recognise Israel,
Pure conjecture. And both the UN and the UK have given calls for talks with Hamas.
I imagine, though of course I could be wrong, that if recognised as a negotiating party, Hamas would continue Arafat’s “phased strategy” whereby any territories gained through negotiation are used as springboards for new aggression, ad infinitum until the destruction of Israel. (I realise ad infinitum is somewhat erroneous there (just like 'somewhat' here), but let's leave that for now)
Yes, because those pesky rocket attacks fired from Gaza have been so successful against the military might of Israel and the US.
But then again, why should you listen to my Eurocentric views. I’m sure Hamas are a lovely bunch of guys and those evil Jews should just dissolve their state and go back to Russia and Germany.
Childish Alexander, very childish.
Comment by Alexander Hine
Human, all too human thoughts, raving and dingustalk
Tones and Tremelos; music news and views
Music Toes
Once again western ethnocentrism rears its ugly head, oh you foreigners, why can't you just accept it when we invade your countries? Who do you think you are fighting back?
You seem to be equating the empire promised to Hussein (on conditions which were not met) with a sovereign Palestinian state. The Palestinians were offered a state in 1948 but it was rejected because the Arab nations did not want to accept Israel's right to exist.
I am not neglecting, nor am I justifying, forgicing or praising, any of the massacres carried out by Irgun, Lehi or any Jewish terrorists - I don't know where you are getting that from...I didn't mention them explicitly, but why should I?
I condemn terrorism outright, whatever the cause, because it involves the deliberate tergetting of civilians with deadly force.
I wouldn't call my suspicions about Hamas 'pure' conjecture, that would imply that there was no basis for my assertions, but anyone who takes ten minutes to read about Hamas' agenda or watch a program from their TV channel will see that their aim is the destruction of Israel. If I saw real evidence, however, that Hamas would be willing to accept Israel, end terrorist activities and turn to responsible government of a Palestinian state then I would change my views.
Yes, because those pesky rocket attacks fired from Gaza have been so successful against the military might of Israel and the US.
I'll let you explain to the victims of the attacks (along with the family of a baby whose skull was crushed by a Palestinian rock thrower's stone) how ineffective these attacks are.
Have you ever noticed that in a court of law, you don't get off the hook for murder just because you've killed a big bad bully?
Childish? I prefer facetious myself.
Look, I think you just need to put these things in perspective. Irgun then doesn't justify Hamas or Islamic Jihad now - just as the Holocaust didn't justify Irgun or Lehi.
A. H.
P. S. Can you name some acts of ethnic cleanising by Israel, as in the state - not any terrorist groups? I haven't heard of any.