This is part of the appalling daily oppression and persecution ongoing against Palestinians in the OPT and also against Israeli Arab citizens living in Israel. Former US president Jimmy Carter pierced the "last taboo" daring to open a forbidden window on part of it in his new best-selling book Peace Not Apartheid that got him vilified by the Israeli Lobby implying he's anti-semitic. He courageously wrote about a rigid system of segregation in the OPT even though he failed to acknowledge the same injustices go on inside Israel he called a model democratic state which it is not.
Palestinian Israeli citizens living get none of the democratic rights afforded Israeli Jews, and Carter, of course, knows that or should know it. He distanced himself from that consideration that might have been too much truth to reveal at one time. Nonetheless, his bold, if partial, step represents an important breakthrough that may encourage other high-level officials in the US and elsewhere to add their voices to his exposing all Israeli crimes demanding redress. They won't ever be addressed until enough prominent figures step forward to denounce them and finally reveal their extent to an uninformed public.
Redress one day will come just like it did for Jews no longer persecuted as they were for centuries. But it won't happen until the power of the Israeli Lobby is neutralized by forces for truth and justice surpassing it in power and influence. That day is nowhere in sight, but when it arrives, Jews and Arabs will again live in peace the way they once did in pre-Zionist times. It's the way Jews and Christians now easily mix in the US unlike decades ago when anti-semitism was significant enough to deny Jews the kinds of opportunities and rights they now take for granted including achieving positions of high influence in government, business, academia and other prominent public and private institutions in the country. There's no reason Jews and Arabs can't coexist as easily provided there's a will to do it or events intervene.
An Intractable Problem Caused by "Fortress Israel"
Pappe's final chapter deals with what Israel calls its "demographic problem" and need to limit future Palestinian population growth. The problem is an old one understood by early Zionists as the major obstacle in the way of their dream of a homeland for Jews alone. Theodor Herzl wrote his solution in his diary in 1895: "We shall endeavour to expel the poor population across the border unnoticed, procuring employment for it in the transit countries, but denying it any employment in our own country."
In 1947, Ben-Gurion adopted his own version of Herzl's solution with his ethnic cleaning plan that's gone on ever since in various forms under succeeding prime ministers to this day. It's meant continual displacement of Palestinians in the West Bank by new and expanded Israeli settlement developments and Separation Wall land seizures. Pappe explains the "Zionist project (today is trying) to construct and then defend a 'white' (Western) fortress in a 'black' (Arab) world. At the heart of the refusal to allow Palestinians the Right of Return is the fear of Jewish Israelis that they will eventually be outnumbered by Arabs." To assure this won't happen, Israel intends to maintain an overwhelming Jewish majority regardless of world public opinion. There's no dissent in the West or among most Arab leaders because US administrations won't tolerate any.
Pappe believes the consensus in Israel today is for a state comprising 90% of Palestine "surrounded by electric fences and visible and invisible walls" with Palestinians given only worthless cantonized scrub lands of little or no value to the Jewish state. In 2006, 1.4 million Palestinians live in Israel on 2% of the land allotted them plus another 1% for agricultural use with six millions Jews on most of the rest. Another 3.9 million live concentrated in Israel's unwanted portions of the West Bank and concentrated in Gaza that's three times the population density of Manhattan. It's made for intolerable conditions throughout the OPT that guarantee resistance to them and the same harsh Israeli responses in an unending cycle of violence, repression and unresolved and unaddressed injustices.
The growing demographic imbalance only exacerbates things, and it's already a nightmare for Israeli leaders. They haven't gotten enough new Jewish immigration or adequately increased Jewish birth rates to counteract it. They also haven't been able to reduce the number of Arabs in Israel. All solutions so far considered only lead to an Arab population increase barring mass expulsion or worse some extremists in Israel favor and one day may be able to make policy unless cooler heads stop them.
For Pappe and all people of conscience and good faith, there's only one solution - Israel's willingness one day to transform itself into a civic and democratic state ending the last postcolonial European enclave in the Arab world. The Palestinian people will accept nothing less nor should they, and growing numbers of Israelis are aware of the horror and injustice of the Nakba. So far, they only comprise a small minority, but they may hold the key to a future resolution if their numbers grow enough and they become vocal as is now slowly happening.
Today, however, the situation for Palestinians is grim with unrelenting daily Israeli assaults against them in Gaza and the West Bank along with Jerusalem slipping away by an ethnic cleansing process to make the city one for Jews only. At the end of his book, Pappe explains "The problem with Israel was never its Jewishness....it is its ethnic Zionist character." It represents a "tempest that threatens to ruin (Jews and Palestinians alike)," and it's now raging in the OPT as it did in Lebanon over the summer where an uneasy peace could again erupt in conflict on any pretext.
The future of Jews and Arabs depends on finding an equitable solution to their unresolved problems and issues and avoiding further escalation that threatens to engulf the whole region in raging conflict if extremists in Israel and Washington get their way and extend the Iraq war to Iran and Syria. Kuwait-based Arab Times Editor-in-chief Ahmed al-Jarallah cites what he calls a reliable source saying a military strike against Iranian oil and nuclear facilities is planned before April to be launched from warships in the Persian Gulf that grow in number and readiness.
He may be right based on former Russian Black Sea Fleet commander Admiral Eduard Baltin's judgment about US activity in the Gulf. Currently, US nuclear submarines are maintaining a vigil there and Admiral Baltin told Interfax News: "The presence of US nuclear submarines in the Persian Gulf region means that the Pentagon has not abandoned plans for surprise strikes against nuclear targets in Iran. With this aim a group of multi-purpose submarines ready to accomplish the task is located in the area." Admiral Baltin added the presence of these submarines indicates the Pentagon wants to control navigation in the Gulf and conduct strikes against Iranian targets.
One other report adds still more credibility to the current danger of a wider regional war. It comes from former US State Department Middle East intelligence analyst Wayne White who said: "I've seen some of the planning....You're not talking about a surgical strike. You're talking about a war against Iran. We're talking about clearing a path of targets" against the Iranian Air Force, Kilo submarines, anti-ship missiles and even ballistic missile capability that could target commerce and US warships in the Gulf as well as the country's nuclear infrastructure.
More pressure still is coming from Israeli officials calling Iran's nuclear program an "existential threat" and Israeli opposition leader and former prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu whose rhetoric makes him sound like he's criminally insane. On January 21, he addressed a security conference in Herzliya stoking the flames of war by calling the Iranian government a "genocidal regime" and adding "Either it will stop the nuclear programme without the need for a military operation, or it could prepare for it....who will lead the charge if not us. No one will come defend the Jews if they do not defend themselves." Also at the conference, US Under-Secretary Nicholas Burns spoke hawkishly saying "There is no doubt Iran is seeking nuclear military weapons (and) the policy of the United States is that we cannot allow Iran to become a nuclear weapons state....Iran has refused to back down in its attempt to destabilize the region....We have an absolute right to defend our soldiers."
If the US and/or Israel attack Iran, all bets are off, and Palestinians already under an Israeli siege will suffer even more. It means cooler heads on both sides must denounce this kind of talk and find a way to avoid a wider war and bring the present conflicts in Iraq, Afghanistan and Palestine to an end. It won't be easy at a perilous time looking like conflict escalation is planned, not its resolution with the potential fallout from it too horrendous to allow for all parties in the region, but especially for those suffering under occupation.
Now there's the further threat of one Palestinian faction facing off against the other. On one side is the besieged Hamas-led government already in tatters from months of harsh sanctions and daily Israeli assaults. On the other are corrupted Fatah forces loyal to PA chairman Mahmoud Abbas acting as a quisling proxy comprador enforcer for Israeli and US imperial interests for everything he stands to gain selling out his people for crumbs handed him and his cronies. They're being armed to the teeth to do it, and George Bush announced he's helping further by transferring $86 million to Abbas while starving Hamas and most Palestinians. It's taken the lives of dozens of Palestinians in recent days. They're in the middle having no dog in this fight except their oppressive occupier they want expelled.
I am a 72 year old, retired, progressive small businessman concerned about all the major national and world issues, committed to speak out and write about them.
Mr. Lendman, I happen to know about Dr. Pappe and his writings and I happen to agree with most of his conclusions. As I have mentioned in my comments and writings (see my 'Slimy Love' series in the diaries) the Zionist doctrine is the primary obstacle to peace because it does not presume peace to happen. But I want to mention that Zionists in the late 1940s would not have been so successful if it was not for the ' embracing' of that concept by all the victorious powers in WWII. The 'Jewish question' was a major embarrassment for all of them because they all were guilty and thus the appearance of organizaiton which proclaimed itself speaking for all the jews was a saviour to them. Instead of justice they preferred politics and Israel practically openly 'hijacked' ALL then Jews. From that moment it was adopted that any Jew was an Israeli first(at least in spirit) and the human second, that all the Jews dream only about Israel and that even if they adopt different religion or no religion at all they still spiritually belong to Judaism forever. In a sort of way Israel proclaimed a right of ownership over all the Jews in the world. Such ownership automatically excluded the right of any individual Jew to decide for himself and subjugated all the Jewish communities in the world to consider Zionism as a guidance. It was surely again 'embraced' by all the primary powers except for the Soviet Union where this worked backwards, promoting a series of blody retaliations against Jews and furhter nourishing of the deep- rooted antisemitism. But Zionists, sleek as they were, liked that too because antisemitism is a source of people for them. Surely, they wanted Jews who would run away from something. Perpetual fear is the primary engine they drive upon to extarct the young people for their armies.
Israel was founded as an experiment to make a 'new nation'. History proves that experiments with people are fatal. You do not sacrifice people for ideology, no matter what it is. If only those who died in Holocaust could rise again, they would deny any concept of the pure Jewish state. It is because there is no pure Jew and there is no pure Arab. Feichtwanger wrote that we could trace a dog's pedigree but as for man's we rely on the word of a mother and that is by far a not very reliable source. We all are humans first. By imposing the pure Jewish state concept the Zionists do a disservice to all people and put the Jews in danger once again. But they are drunk with power as all people before them. And there are a lot of people here who supply booze. Cut the supply, impose a 'prohibition' and sobriety can still happen. I hope.
by
Mark Sashine (55 articles, 19 quicklinks, 256 diaries, 3702 comments)
on Thursday, February 8, 2007 at 7:23:32 AM
Many thanks as before for your interesting comments. Think of Israel as a regional or mini version of the US empire running amuck and getting away with it because it has powerful friends supporting it. If US position ever changes Israel will fold like a tent and one day I expect either that to happen or Israel like us will become another victim of its own "overstretch" and imperial hubris.
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Stephen Lendman (289 articles, 0 quicklinks, 0 diaries, 77 comments)
on Thursday, February 8, 2007 at 7:28:22 AM
treated as a 'Middle-Eastern Confederacy'. There are notices that when Confederates imposed a constitutional provision about legalizing of the inequality of the black race some of the more intelligent people there expressed concern. They said that 'no state in the world can be built upon such narrow-minded ideology.' They were right. And it is the same with Israel - the 'Confederacy', supported by others as you have mentioned, but deemed to fall, unfortunately for the innocent people on all sides and of all races.
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Mark Sashine (55 articles, 19 quicklinks, 256 diaries, 3702 comments)
on Thursday, February 8, 2007 at 7:47:35 AM
You comment here seems to have answered my question about one the five results you would like to see happen in Israel Palestine and Lebanon with Israel, Hezbollah, Hamas and Fatah.
1. Israel exterminated.
2. ?
3. ?
4. ?
5. ?
What are the other four of the five results you would like to see.
Am I very far off the mark?
by
pratliff94 (0 articles, 0 quicklinks, 0 diaries, 970 comments)
on Thursday, February 8, 2007 at 8:52:26 PM
There is a total different read on Israeli history than this one sided one you guys are giving.
Mr. Lendman,
I am not sure how far you and I are apart. We may not be that far apart, or we may not even be on the same planet.
May I ask you to give a list of five things you would like to see in the Hezbollah, Fatah, Hamas and Israeli situation? Just one sentence please... They can be compound sentences, but no snow jobs, please. We can refer to your article above. I am not looking for reasons. I am looking for what you would like to see as the finished results.
You and Panurg come across as, using Panurg's word, "vehemently," hating Israel. I dislike Likud, almost as much as you seem to dislike Israel, but I admire Israel greatly.
Hamas, Hezbollah, and Fatah began as terrorist organizations; they are presently terrorist organizations and will continue in the foreseeable future as terrorist organizations. Surely, that is fact we can all agree upon. They murder civilians, they hide among civilians while doing battle, they terrorize each other and innocent Palsestinians.
Five things you would like to see in the situation in five sentences. please.
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
Among those five of your best of worlds, would Israel exist as an independent nation? Could you guarantee there will not be a mass holocaust of Jews in Israel and around the world if the five results happen which you would like to see?
Panurg, I think you equate Israel with Zionism; therefore you think Israel is an aberration of history and has not the right to exist as it exist since the UN Declaration of 1948 which even the USSR voted for.
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pratliff94 (0 articles, 0 quicklinks, 0 diaries, 970 comments)
on Thursday, February 8, 2007 at 8:14:40 PM
Only from my side: I do not vehemently hate Israel and I do not equate Israel with Zionism. That is your interpretation. I do believe that people of Israel have a full right to live where they do live, Jews and Arabs alike and I would prefer for them to be a citizens of some state, whatever it is called. I don't care how it is called, and what % of which people will live there. I guess, maybe to the best of my thinking it should be called Lebanon, but if it is called Israel or Judea, fine with me. But one man- one vote. I believe also that if it was not for the deliberate efforts by pro-Zionist groups here and there the Israeli society would have already corrected the anomaly and have a reasonable government. Being acquainted with many Israelis I know for sure that they are 'Jews of many nationalities' and thus the actual idea of the pure Jewish anclave is fairly utopian, particulary the idea of the supreme Jewish anclave. You say you admire and love Israel greatly. Then you should understand that neither Hamas nor Fatach nor Hizbollah are really a threat to Israeli people but the people both in and out who push Israel to become a first dog to bite in the upcoming US-led attack on the Humanity. We all, you, me and whoever should understand that Zionist govt does not care for the Jews. It went through the inevitable transformation from the ideology- bearers to the powermongers. In their current form Zionists would rule whoever, Jews or not as soon as they are rulers. They become a danger to Israel proper and to the people of it and around it. As for Hamas and other groups the information about those is very limited as well as distorted but history proves (take the story of Michael Collins in Ireland) that when the oppressor becomes reasonable the oppressed take care of their extremists.
As for the USSR supporting the UN resolution in 1948 I already touched basis in my comments above. Stalin was at that time under the 'socialist' delusion of the possible Israel becoming a socialist state. When that did not happen and after Golda Meir's visit to the USSR where she was greeted by some people not as a 'socialist' but as 'Jewish nationalist', Stalin went into paroxysm. In 1948 the campaign against the cosmpolites was unleashed. Several prominent Jewish intelligent people were killed. Many were arrested and tortured, among them scientists, engineers, poets, writers,all their families, etc. There was a campaign against 'covert zionists' too. Many people who had nothing to do with anything, not even Jews, were killed.
Thousands were purged from their jobs and exiled. The media went nuts hunting for the 'domestic enemies'. Sounds, familiar, Reverend? Among other people Molotov's wife was arrested for her meeting with Golda Meir.
The culmination was a Doctor's Plot (not all of them were Jewish) when the Kremlin physicians were accused of murdering several party leaders by the order of 'Jewish nationalistic organizations'. They surely confessed under torture and were supposed to be hanged publicly on a Red Square. Only Stalin's death prevented that. BTW, similar events with most tragic results took place in Chechoslovakia.
Zionists, of course, did not plot against Stalin or anything like that. But they used him and they knew very well the consequences of their actions. At those times to tackle Stalin was a dangerous and irresponsible provocation and you cannot say that those who did that did not understand what they were doing. Zionists were and are interested in the Russian Jews as a source of cannon fodder. Much later, in the 1970s there was a special project sponsored by Mossad which was supposed to 'prevent the Russian - Jewish immigrants from going anywhere else but Israel'. The members of that project bragged openly about it on the pages of the Russian-Jewish immigrant media in the US.
Thus, Reverend, I think, I have addressed the 'potatoes', maybe not in the way you wanted that. Five potatoes, six potatoes, seven potatoes, more..
I am sure, Mr.Lendman will add.
by
Mark Sashine (55 articles, 19 quicklinks, 256 diaries, 3702 comments)
on Friday, February 9, 2007 at 7:51:30 AM
I appreciate your interpretation of what you see and taking the time to explain them to me. I have studied Jews from the time of Abram in Ur, through the four hundred year slavery in Egypt, the four hundred year period of what we goyim call the Judges, the United Kingdom under Saul, David and Solomon, the divided Kingdom, the destruction of Israel (ten tribes)by Assyria in 722 BCE, the Destruction and Captivity of Judah in 586 BCE, the Exilic Period and return in under Artaxerxes in 512 BCE, the Greek, Maccabean and Roman Periods.
I understand the Roman Persecution of Christianity while Christianity was outlawed until 313 CE began as a Jewish persecution. Until then Christianity was considered a sect of Judaism. I understand the Spanish Inquisition began as persecution of Muslims in the Spanish Empire but ended up with the persecutions of Jews as well as Christians.
There has been a concentrated effort to destroy the Jew from the time Abram left Ur with Sarah, from the killing of all born males by the Egyptians, to the plot of Haman in Persia, to the planned extermination in Hitler's German Empire. I need not explain the pogroms which took place throughout Europe and Africa. It was no different under Islam than it was in the so called Christians country. I personally believe there cannot be such a thing as "Christian" country. The basic teaching book of Christian is the New Testament and there is a marked separation of Christianity and State.
There have been Jews killed since 1948, but the difference is the Jews have killed right back. If it were not for the Zionist movement, you would never have had an Israel. Likud is not Zionist. Likud is an outlaw political movement in Israel. It is not Zionism. I do not know what you mean by Zionism. I do know what historical Zionism and it is nothing as the word is used by Muslim extremist.
What I read in the above article is a strict condemnation of Israel with no condemnation of Fatah and Hezbollah. There will never be peace until there are recognitions of each other (States of Palestine and Israel), negotiations for respected borders, and those within the states punishing their own citizens for the smallest violation of the other's borders. These one sided verbal bombs do not help one bit.
The Palestinians must decided do they want a State or do they want to destroy Israel. Israel must decide whether she wants peace or continual war.
About who was there first. We an argue that one also some other time. If you can go back sixty years, let us go back to 70 A.D when the Jew was forced off their land by Rome.
by
pratliff94 (0 articles, 0 quicklinks, 0 diaries, 970 comments)
on Friday, February 9, 2007 at 10:26:21 AM
One good feature of this site is that we share certain knowledge. Ok, being once a subject of Zionist classrom ( a refugee Russian Jew in the European settlements in limbo and waiting for someone to take us) I happened to be indoctrinated into a version of that teaching ( granted, I cannot claim it was the right version, but it was explicitly taught to us and also it was in all the books which were available in the Israeli-run center):
1. That Israel is a sacred homeland of all Jews whenever they were born.
2. That every Jew is bound by his Jewishness to always think of Israel first and foremost.
3. That Zionism is the only true coglomerate of ideology and religion and all Jews must either be Zionists or strive to become ones.
4. That I was a bad Jew by definition because I was born in the Soviet Union, did not know Hebrew and did not praise Israel every day ( sorry for being a little caustic, but that's how it sounded to me).
5. That my children if any will be always bad Jews unless they go to Israel and join the IDF ( eventually).
6. That the process for any Jew to get to Israel and live there is called ascension and that that is how Jews are distinguished- from low to high. The highest are Founding Zionists. The lowest was me.
7. That Holocaust was a horrible thing but many Soviet Jews brought it on themselves because they were atheists or even communists.
8. That Arabs are and always will be the enemies of all Jews ( myself included) and that one of the things I have to develop is hatred towards them.
Reverend, for goodness sake. I did not make it up. It is being still propagated in most of the Russian- speaking Jewish newspapers in the US ( not all of them, granted). So, Likud or not, we should agree on something -that is not all the Jews are the friends of the Jews as not all the Arabs, granted are the friends of the Arabs. I would concede that that's how the world maybe is made, unfortunately. Thus, I can tell you that after that interesting study I personally wanted to find some Arab and check with him or her if they were told something similar in nature on their side. And if yes, we both could come to the same conclusion that rulers on both sides want us dead. Guess what, I have so far confirmed that perception with many individual Arabs as well as with Jews.
People are not stupid when they are alone and nobody looks over their shoulder.
Thanks
by
Mark Sashine (55 articles, 19 quicklinks, 256 diaries, 3702 comments)
on Friday, February 9, 2007 at 2:17:49 PM
This is on Yahoo News today. To those who think anti-Semitism is dead, read the aritcle about Elie Wiesel who had his picture taken at Aushwitz and his written extensively:
"A Beggar in Jerusalem."
"The Oath."
"Night."
and forty other books.
The US will probably let the case drop as they usually do, I have a felling the slime ball who attacked Wiesel will have a visit from Mossad. Kill a Jew a Day game is followed by severe punishment and should be.
Yahoo News
Elie Wiesel accosted at S.F. hotel
By PAUL ELIAS, Associated Press Writer
Sat Feb 10, 6:18 AM ET
Police are investigating the incident in which they say a man, who may have been a Holocaust denier, approached Wiesel in an elevator at a peace forum at the Argent Hotel Feb. 1 and requested an interview.
When Wiesel consented to talk in the hotel's lobby, the man insisted it be done in a hotel room and dragged the 78-year-old off the elevator on the sixth floor, police Sgt. Neville Gittens said.
The assailant fled after Wiesel began to scream, and Wiesel went to the lobby and called police.
Gittens said investigators were aware of a posting at an anti-Semitic Web site in which a man claimed responsibility for the attack, but declined to comment further.
The Web site is registered in Australia. Australian police said they had not received a request from U.S. officials seeking help in the investigation.
Wiesel couldn't be immediately reached for comment at Boston University, where he teaches, or through his institute in New York.
Wiesel, who survived the Nazi death camps at Auschwitz and Buchenwald during World War II, has worked for human rights in many parts of the world and was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1986.
___
Associated Press Writer Meriah Foley in Sydney, Australia contributed to this report.
by
pratliff94 (0 articles, 0 quicklinks, 0 diaries, 970 comments)
on Saturday, February 10, 2007 at 11:17:36 AM
Panurg,
I just read this report off Reuters about the Fatah/Hamas Summit meeting in Mecca.
I cut and pasted it.
Reuters.
February 9, 2007.
By Mohammed Assadi
MECCA, Saudi Arabia (Reuters) - Hamas urged the West on Friday to accept a new Palestinian unity government but leading officials from the Islamist group said they would never recognize Israel nor abide by existing peace accords.
Hamas and its rival movement Fatah signed a deal on Thursday to end factional warfare that has killed scores of Palestinians and to form a coalition, hoping this would lead Western powers to lift crippling sanctions imposed on the Hamas-led government because the group rejects Israel.
Israeli officials said the coalition agreement failed to meet conditions to end sanctions and initial reaction from the United States and Europe was muted.
"We have agreed with the Saudis to market this agreement internationally. Our (Saudi) brothers are in constant contact with the Americans and Europeans," Hamas government spokesman Ghazi Hamad told Reuters.
"They (the West) cannot ignore this agreement and impose their own conditions," he said. "The European Union should open a dialogue with this new government and this is the only way to have stability in the region."
Nizar Rayyan, a senior Hamas leader in Gaza, welcomed the agreement reached in Mecca but said Hamas shunned Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas's call for Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh, who will form the new cabinet, to abide by previous peace accords.
"We will never recognize Israel. There is nothing called Israel," he told Reuters. "We, in the Hamas movement, will not abide by anything."
Hamas spokesman Ismail Rudwan said: "The recognition is not an option at all, is not discussible."
It was unclear if Rayyan and Rudwan were speaking on behalf of Hamas as a whole or expressing personal opinions.
The agreement made no mention of recognizing Israel, a requirement laid down by the Quartet of Middle East peacemakers -- the United States, the European Union, Russia and the United Nations -- for lifting sanctions imposed on the Palestinian Authority after Hamas trounced Fatah in elections last year.
U.S. SILENCE
Senior Israeli government officials said Israel did not think the unity deal sealed in Saudi Arabia between Abbas and Hamas chief Khaled Meshaal met conditions to end sanctions.
"The conditions have not been met. This is not something we can live with," said one official, on condition of anonymity.
A formal Israeli response is expected after Prime Minister Ehud Olmert's regular cabinet meeting on Sunday.
The United States, which spearheaded the economic sanctions, was silent. The European Union said on Friday it would study the deal "in a positive but cautious manner".
France welcomed the agreement and said the international community should back the new government. Britain described the accord as "interesting".
Abbas advisor Nabil Amr said, however, that he feared the deal might not be enough to end sanctions, which Palestinians say were partly to blame for the violence that has killed 90 people since December.
"We don't have great expectations that this agreement will completely end the siege, but it will pave the way to end it," he told Reuters in an interview.
"We needed an agreement after the pressure of the black days (recent violence)."
Abbas had been seeking at the Mecca talks a clear statement that the new government would be "committed" to past accords, as a formula offering implicit recognition of Israel from Hamas.
A letter from Abbas reappointing Haniyeh as prime minister called on Hamas to "abide by the interests of the Palestinian people" and "respect international law and agreements signed by the 542138732
by
pratliff94 (0 articles, 0 quicklinks, 0 diaries, 970 comments)
on Friday, February 9, 2007 at 8:13:38 PM
here, Reverend. First, about Mr. Wiesel. He certainly is not 'some another Jew'. He is a Nobel Laureate and as such he was on an official mission and it is inconceivable that he had no someone with him especially being 78 years old. Also, the investigation is certainly proceeding, Wiesel should press charges and then whatever comes from it. But from the point of view of evaluating antisemitism Wiesel is by far not the right symbol- he is a political figure and as such was attacked. BTW, there was a forum there. Those folks did not have any security? I sincerely doubt that. Most likely we here have a case of a very troubled individual who wanted to become a celebrity or something.
As for the Hamas stuff, well the Saudis are also 'brothers' of our President, right? I read that the Saudi ambassador was like a member of the family to Bushes. This brings us back to the principle- there are too many sticky fingers in the game.
Reverend, I am a Jew and you are apparently not. It is not that I impose that I have some privileges in our discussions. But as an obvious 'subject of your affection'
I can tell you again that the only chance for us Jews to live anywhere peacefully id that volunteer lovers should leave us alone. Stop stalking us and stop being interested. Stop protecting us from the enemies. Protect yourself from yours. If only the Jews of Israel could tell that to all do-gooders and brokers from afar. I hope I will live until that day when Condi Rice is booted by a shoe into her unfortunate derrier and that shoe would be on the foot of the Jew and Arab alike. And then the Jews and Arabs there would boot after her all her friends and 'brothers' and sisters and brokers and (yes) extremists and then sit down at the tea table and make piece as cousins they are.
Quite a dream, right?
by
Mark Sashine (55 articles, 19 quicklinks, 256 diaries, 3702 comments)
on Saturday, February 10, 2007 at 1:55:31 PM
It is not your choice for me to leave the Jews alone. Thank you, but no thank you. It is for me to decide and not you. Who are you to decide who supports the Jew and is their friend? I sense that you are bitter and angry at the Jew and at the United States. I sense that it is something that is almost like a disease. I hope I am wrong. It is a terrible way to live. But it is your choice, and it is a choice. I do not dislike you, but I do disagree with your position for I feel it is illogical and ill founded. I guess you have never heard of the "righteous Gentile" of those like Bonhoffer, Schindler, Ten Boon and thousands of others who died attempting to save Jews. I am glad Israel at least thanks them.
I notice the writer of this long, long article has nothing to say does he?
I take you for your word that you are a Jew. Of course, there was and is a certain small sect of Jews even in Israel who opposed statehood from the start. They never miss a chance to criticize Israel. It is their right. If Israel existed in 1932 as the Balfour Declaration promised they would, six and one half million Jews would not have been destroyed for just being Jews and no other reason. I have read Mein Kampf by Adolph Hitler. He meant every word and did exactly what he said he would do. Adolf Hitler is mild to what is being done and said by the Muslim news papers. You need to see what their real opinion of Jews is. I know of not one Muslim newspaper that defends the Jew, not one. That says a volume, too, does it not.
I am waiting for a member of Hamas, Hezbollah or Fatah to develop an organization and to public criticize the founding of a Palestinian State. That will be the day the earth really stands still. It says volumes that an Israeli can openly oppose Israel in Israel and if one living in Gaza or the West Bank opposes Palestine Statehood they are murdered.
I really feel anti-Semitism is hiding in words like "Zionism" and "Jewish State." It is just another way of attack the Jews. You may not realize it, but Israel is the only real protection the Jews have from going back to pre-1948 days when it was popular in every country but the United States to play the game, "Kill a Jew a Day." There has never been a sanctuary fort the Jew since General Titus destroyed Jerusalem in 70 BCE.
Wherever I find the even the smell of anti-Semitism, I will fight it with everything I have within me and everything at my disposal.
By the way I have about fifteen years of news letter from 1898-1912 of Jews buying deeds and properties from the Ottoman Empire. It is interesting to see how many deeds were purchased in Palestine and by whom and recorded in Istanbul.
If the Muslims have a right to the Dome of the Rock, do the Jews have the right to the Temple Mount? They were from 1400 BCE to 200 CE if we are going by who was there first. I know what the Muslims would do if the Jews had a Synagogue on the Mt and they had the power position Israel has. They would destroy it in a minute and you are crazy to not to see that.
by
pratliff94 (0 articles, 0 quicklinks, 0 diaries, 970 comments)
on Saturday, February 10, 2007 at 10:50:23 PM
I just joined opednews today and this was the very first article I read. Hopefully many others will be just as eye opening as I found this one to be.
Clearly Mr. Lendman has spent a considerable amount of time and effort in studying this conflict and its related history. I can only assume it requires a fairly firm grasp of the events as they occurred in order to craft such an in depth and comprehensive collection of blatant lies as presented here.
I have never seen such a corruption of the history of Israel as this. Never seen someone present so many easily dispelled myths in one place. Never seen a mock history that contained so little truth as this one, usually present in even the most hateful propoganda to serve as camoflauge for more critical falsehoods.
Rarely do believers in such muck make their true ideology known and their scorn for truth so obvious. This article serves as a reminder that there are many people who will spend inordinate amounts of time in the service of hate. It serves as an example that anti-semitism often does masquerade as anti-Zionism even though discerning between the two may not always be as easy as it is here. And it serves as a warning for those that would not take the time to learn about history, for while only someone with no education whatsoever on the middle east could be fooled by propoganda this inept, their vote counts as much as yours or mine.
by
adam selbst (0 articles, 0 quicklinks, 0 diaries, 1 comments)
on Monday, February 26, 2007 at 8:29:10 PM
13 comments
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