Lieberman: "There is no humanitarian crisis in the Gaza Strip"

There are many Arab Muslims living in Israel, correct? They are full citizens. There are even Arab political parties represented in Israeli government.

I wonder why there aren't Jews and Jewish political parties in countries like Egpyt and Iran?

 

Israel's existence is the original sin, and therefore any attempt to defend its existence is deemed illegitimate.

This is why Hamas is able to hide behind civilians and lob rockets indiscrimately into Israel and still maintain equal, if not superior, moral standing to Israel in the eyes of people like durvasa.

Israel has a sworn enemy trying to wipe out the entire country and all jews, right on its own border. And yet they don't attack Gaza. It's a display of restraint unprecedented in the history of human conflict.

All they do is set up a blockade (the most passive of defensive measures) to inspect for arms intended to kill their people. When they are attacked by a knife wielding mob trying to enforce the blockade, they are condemned.

It would be nice if you would just be open and say Israel has no right to exist to begin with. At least that would be a starting point for an honest discussion.

 

What makes you say they are full citizens?

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

 

I think Jews and Arabs should have the same rights in Palestine, or anywhere else. I care about the rights of people to govern themselves, not the rights of political entities to exist.

But that is a digression. ATW asked why there is "hate" towards Israel amongst so many Muslims. I gave the reasons, as I think many Muslims see it (which is answering his question ... if he meant for his question to be answered). Whether those reasons are enough to justify opposition to Israel's policies is a matter of debate, but I'm not interested in getting into it because it mostly likely won't lead anywhere.

 

Pretty non-violent in comparison with the commandos. I know this irrelevant for you. They didn't kill anyone. I think it is clear that the protestors got a little hot and punched commandos and hit them with a deck chair or two, when that was not planned. when the commandos attacked unexpectedly in international waters. Of course the commandos got hot, too and went on a killing spree which was probably not planned either.

There is a long history of Israel responding to non-vilolence of even the pure Ghandi form with clubs, murders, imprisonment, deportation etc. The Israelis are very afraid of any protest and perhaps even more so of non-violent protest.

 

Not to mention the persecution of coptic christians in Egypt, a preliminary Muslim country (and remember, Egypt is one of the "tamer" ones, there are Muslim countries which are much worse):

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

The Arab-Muslim conquest of Egypt
The Muslim conquest of Egypt took place in AD 639. Despite the political upheaval, Egypt remained a mainly Christian land, although the gradual conversions to Islam over the centuries changed Egypt from a mainly Christian to a mainly Muslim country by the end of the 12th century.[18]
This process was sped along by persecutions during and following the reign of the Fatimid caliph Al-Hakim bi-Amr Allah (reigned AD 996–1021) and the Crusades, and also by the acceptance of Arabic as a liturgical language by the Pope of Alexandria Gabriel ibn-Turaik.[18]
During Islamic rule, the Copts needed to pay a special tax on non-Muslims called the jizya in order to be defended by Muslim armies, as non-Muslims were not allowed to serve in the army. This tax was abolished in 1855.
[edit]Modern era
In Egypt the government does not officially recognize conversions from Islam to Christianity; also certain interfaith marriages are not allowed either, this prevents marriages between converts to Christianity and those born in Christian communities, and also results in the children of Christian converts being classified as Muslims and given a Muslim education.
The government also requires permits for repairing churches or building new ones, which are often withheld. Foreign missionaries are allowed in the country only if they restrict their activities to social improvements and refrain from proselytizing.
[edit]Sectarian attacks since 1970
The last quarter of the twentieth century and the first decade of the twenty first have seen a deterioration in relations between Muslims and the Coptic minority in Egypt. This is seen in day-to-day interactions such as the insulting of Coptic priests by Muslim children, but also in much more serious events such as attacks on Coptic churches, monasteries, villages, homes and shops, particularly in Upper Egypt during the 1980 and 90s. From 1992 to 1998 Islamist extremists in Egypt are thought to have killed 127 Copts.[19]
By the end of the 1990s, in Minya province "an ancient center of the Coptic faith", five churches, two charity organizations, and 38 mostly Christian-owned businesses had been burned. Witnesses described the destruction as having been carried out "by gangs of young Muslims wielding iron bars and Molotov cocktails and shouting `God is Great!`"[20] The police have been accused of siding with the attackers in some of these cases.[21]. And in Southern Egypt, there were problems in which involves terrorists going into monasteries, harassing, capturing, and torturing monks (such as the 2008 attacks on the monks of the Monastery of Saint Fana).
Some observers have connected the robberies, extortion and "collection" of "taxes" from Copts to the belief by Islamists that the traditional Jizya poll tax on non-Muslims should be reinstituted. Muslim Brotherhood Supreme Guide Mustafa Mashhur expressed this belief in a 1997 interview. He also stated that while `we do not mind having Christians members in the People's Assembly [national legislature] ... the top officials, especially in the army, should be Muslims since we are a Muslim country," and Christians can not be trusted to fight for Egypt against Christian foreigners.[22]
With his freeing members of the Muslim brotherhood, persecution of the Copts only increased. [23], statements by Muslim Brotherhood and Sadat further exacerbated the situation of non-Muslims (namely the Copts). [24]
In 1981, President Anwar Sadat, internally exiled the Coptic Pope Shenouda III accusing him of fomenting interconfessional strife. Sadat then chose five Coptic bishops and asked them to choose a new pope. They refused, and in 1985 President Hosni Mubarak restored Pope Shenouda III.
In May 2010, The Wall Street Journal reported increasing "waves of mob assaults" by Muslims against Copts, forcing many Christians to flee their homes.[15] Despite frantic calls for help, the police typically arrived after the violence was over.[15] The police also coerced the Copts to accept "reconciliation" with their attackers to avoid prosecuting them, with no Muslims convicted for any of the attacks.[15]

6 November 1972
Muslim mob attack and burn a prayer meeting by Egyptian Christian Copts at the Holy Scripture College, an attack which preceded the infamous Khanka attacks on the Copts.[25]

June 1981
81 Copts were killed by a mob of Muslims. Interior Minister Abu Pasha blamed the deaths on a lack of adequate security measures for which his predecessor Ennabawy Ismael was responsible (according to Abu Pasha). [25]

17 November 1981
Coptic priest the Reverend Maximose Guirguis is kidnapped and threatened with death he does not denounce his Christianity and publicly convert to Islam. He refuses and his throat is cut leaving him bleeding to death.[25]

20 September 1991
Muslim mob attacks Copts in Embaba, an outer suburb of Cairo.[25]

9 March 1992
Manshiet Nasser, Dyroot, Upper Egypt. Copt son of a farmer Badr Abdullah Massoud is gunned down after refusing to pay a tax of about $166 to the local leader of Islamic Group. Massoud's body is then hacked "with knives."[26]

4 May 1992
Villages of Manshia and Weesa in Dyroot, Upper Egypt. After being Manshiet Naser's Christians for weeks, an Islamic extremist methodically shoots 13 of them to death. Victims included ten farmers and a child tending their fields, a doctor leaving his home for work, and an elementary school teacher giving a class.[26]

12 May 1992
A bloodshed in Manfaloot, Upper Egypt, on the Coptic Easter day with 6 Copts murdered and 50 injured, followed by some 200 arrests.[25]

15 & 16 October 1992
Muslim mob attacks with burning and looting of shops and 42 houses owned by Christian Copts, with 3 Copts injured and the destruction of an estimated 5 Million pounds of property, live stock, merchandise and work places Kafr Demian in Sharqueyya in the Nile Delta.[25]

2 December 1992
Muslim mob attacks Copts in the city of Assiut, Upper Egypt.[25]

December 1992
Muslim mob attacks Copts in the Village of Meer, Al Quosseya, Upper Egypt, murdering four Copts and slitting the throat of a Coptic jeweller for refusing to pay protection money.[25]

13 March 1997
Muslim mob attacks a Tourist Train with Spanish Tourists, killing 13 Christians and injuring 6, in the Village of Nakhla near Nagge Hammadi.
The terrorists increased the frequency of their attacks and widened it to include whom the viewed as collaborators with the security force, launching an attack on the eve of the Adha Eid using automatic weapons killing Copts as well as Muslims.[25]

1997
Abu Qurqas. "Three masked terrorist" entered St. George Church in Abu Qurqas and shoot dead eight Copts at a weekly youth group meeting. "As the attackers fled, they gunned down a Christian farmer watering his fields." [27]

January 2000
Al Kosheh, a "predominently Christian town" in southern Egypt. After a Muslim customer and a Christian shoe-store owner fall into an argument, three days of rioting and street fighting erupt leaving 20 Christians, (including four children) and one Muslim dead." In the aftermath 38 Muslim defendants are charged with murder in connection with the deaths of the 20 Copts. But all are acquitted of murder charges, and only four are convicting of any (lesser) charges, with the longest sentence given being 10 years." After protest by the Coptic Pope Shenouda the government granted a new trial. [28]

19 November 2000
Muslim mob attempt to force a Copt to pronounce the Islamic faith declarations (Shehadas) then beat him to death when he refuses their demand.[25]

19 April 2009
A group of Muslims (Mahmoud Hussein Mohamed (26 years old), Mohamed Abdel Kader (32 years old), Ramadan Fawzy Mohamed (24 years old), Ahmed Mohamed Saeed (16 years old), and Abu Bakr Mohamed Saeed ) opened fire at Christians on Easter's Eve killing two (Hedra Adib (22 years old), and Amir Estafanos (26 years old)) and injuring another (Mina Samir (25 years old)). This event was in Hegaza village, Koos city. On 22 February 2010, they were sentenced to 25 years of jail while crimes of this level in Egypt should face death penalty. [29] [30]

6 January 2010
Main article: Nag Hammadi massacre
Machine gun attack by Muslim mob on Coptic Christians celebrating the Egyptian birth of Christ. Seven are killed (including a Muslim officer in his trial to defend them) and scores injured, and lots of lives ruined.

May or April 2010
In Marsa Matrouh, a mob of 3,000 Muslims attacked the city's Coptic Christian population, with 400 Copts having to barricade themselves in their church while the mob destroyed 18 homes, 23 shops and 16 cars.[15]


----------


Where is the international outrage about all of this?

 

Except those Arabs arent given full rights. In Israel it is legal for a housing community to flat out deny an Israeli-Arab the right to purchase land or buy a home in the subdivision. It is legal for any company to fire an Israeli-Arab from a job on the basis of that person's ethnicity. Also, due-process law is non-existent, its legal to search an Arab-Israeli on almost any basis as well as detaining them without an equivalent to a warrant.

And Arab political participation is meaningless too, both Labor/Kadima and Likud refuse to form coalitions with Arab parties. They are effectively locked out of the Knesset.

Also Israel doesnt have a constitution so there is no such thing as separation of powers. Case in point the Israeli Supreme Court ruled housing discrimination was illegal and the Knesset just legalized it again anyway.

Lastly the mere act of obtaining citizenship for Arabs has recently changed to become much more complex. Arabs living in Gaza or the West Bank arent given citizenship anymore so they lie in this murky area of being citizens of no real country anymore.

I'm not suggesting that Israel's extension of rights to Arab citizens of Israel is anywhere close to Arab countries, but this notion that they are somehow granted the same level of rights as Jewish citizens simply isnt true. Arabs have little protection under the law outside of the courts and many times the courts are just ignored anyway.

 

http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/myths/mf15.html

MYTH

“Modern Arab nations are only anti-Israel and have never been anti-Jewish.”

FACT

Arab leaders have repeatedly made clear their animosity toward Jews and Judaism. For example, on November 23, 1937 [before Israel existed], Saudi Arabia's King Ibn Saud told British Colonel H.R.P. Dickson: "Our hatred for the Jews dates from God's condemnation of them for their persecution and rejection of Isa (Jesus) and their subsequent rejection of His chosen Prophet." He added "that for a Muslim to kill a Jew, or for him to be killed by a Jew ensures him an immediate entry into Heaven and into the august presence of God Almighty."3

When Hitler introduced the Nuremberg racial laws in 1935, he received telegrams of congratulation from all corners of the Arab world.4 Later, during the war, one of his most ardent supporters was the Mufti of Jerusalem.

Jews were never permitted to live in Jordan. Civil Law No. 6, which governed the Jordanian-occupied West Bank, states explicitly: "Any man will be a Jordanian subject if he is not Jewish."5

The Arab countries see to it that even young schoolchildren are taught to hate Jews. The Syrian Minister of Education wrote in 1968: "The hatred which we indoctrinate into the minds of our children from their birth is sacred."6

After the Six-Day War in 1967, the Israelis found public school textbooks that had been used to educate Arab children in the West Bank. They were replete with racist and hateful portrayals of Jews:

"The Jews are scattered to the ends of the earth, where they live exiled and despised, since by their nature they are vile, greedy and enemies of mankind, by their nature they were tempted to steal a land as asylum for their disgrace."7

"Analyze the following sentences:

1. The merchant himself traveled to the African continent.

2. We shall expel all the Jews from the Arab countries."8

"The Jews of our time are the descendants of the Jews who harmed the Prophet Muhammad. They betrayed him, they broke the treaty with him and joined sides with his enemies to fight him..."9

"The Jews in Europe were persecuted and despised because of their corruption, meanness and treachery."10

A 1977 Jordanian teachers' manual for first-graders used on the West Bank instructs educators to "implant in the soul of the pupil the rule of Islam that if the enemies occupy even one inch of the Islamic lands, jihad (holy war) becomes imperative for every Muslim." It also says the Jews plotted to assassinate Muhammad when he was a child. Another Jordanian text, a 1982 social studies book, claims Israel ordered the massacre of Palestinians in Sabra and Shatila during the Lebanon war, but does not mention the Christian Arabs who were the perpetrators.11

“We have found books with passages that are so anti-Semitic, that if they were published in Europe, their publishers would be brought up on anti-racism charges.”

— French lawyer and European Parliament member Francois Zimeray
commenting on Palestinian, Syrian and Egyptian texts
Jerusalem Post, (October 16, 2001).

According to a study of Syrian textbooks, "the Syrian educational system expands hatred of Israel and Zionism to anti-Semitism directed at all Jews. That anti-Semitism evokes ancient Islamic motifs to describe the unchangeable and treacherous nature of the Jews. Its inevitable conclusion is that all Jews must be annihilated."12 To cite one example, an eleventh grade textbook claims that Jews hated Muslims and were driven by envy to incite hostility against them:

The Jews spare no effort to deceive us, deny our Prophet, incite against us, and distort the holy scriptures.

The Jews cooperate with the Polytheist and the infidels against the Muslims because they know Islam reveals their crafty ways and abject characteristics.13

An Arabic translation of Adolf Hitler's Mein Kampf has been distributed in East Jerusalem and territories controlled by the Palestinian Authority (PA) and became a bestseller.14

Occasionally, Arab anti-Semitism surfaces at the United Nations. In March 1991, for example, a Syrian delegate to the UN Human Rights Commission read a statement recommending that commission members read "a valuable book" called The Matzoh of Zion, written by Syrian Defense Minister Mustafa Tlas. The book justifies ritual murder charges brought against the Jews in the Damascus blood libel of 1840.15 (The phrase "blood libel" refers to accusations that Jews kill Christian children to use their blood for the ritual of making matzoh at Passover.)

King Faisal of Saudi Arabia uttered a similar slander in a 1972 interview:

"Israel has had malicious intentions since ancient times. Its objective is the destruction of all other religions....They regard the other religions as lower than their own and other peoples as inferior to their level. And on the subject of vengeance — they have a certain day on which they mix the blood of non-Jews into their bread and eat it. It happened that two years ago, while I was in Paris on a visit, that the police discovered five murdered children. Their blood had been drained, and it turned out that some Jews had murdered them in order to take their blood and mix it with the bread that they eat on this day. This shows you what is the extent of their hatred and malice toward non-Jewish peoples."16

On November 11, 1999, during a Gaza appearance with First Lady Hillary Rodham Clinton, Suha Arafat, wife of Palestinian Authority Chairman Yasser Arafat stated: "Our people have been subjected to the daily and extensive use of poisonous gas by the Israeli forces, which has led to an increase in cancer cases among women and children." Similar specious allegations have been made by other Palestinian officials.17

The Arab/Muslim press, which is almost exclusively controlled by the governments in each Middle Eastern nation, regularly publish anti-Semitic articles and cartoons. Today, it remains common to find anti-Semitic publications in Egypt. For example, the establishment Al-Ahram newspaper published an article giving the "historical" background of the blood libel tradition while accusing Israel of using the blood of Palestinian children to bake matzohs up to the present time.18 Anti-Semitic articles also regularly appear in the press in Jordan and Syria. Many of the attacks deal with denial of the Holocaust, its "exploitation" by Zionism, and a comparison of Zionism and Israel to Nazism.


Egyptian Daily Al-Ahram, (May 23, 1998)

In November 2001, a satirical skit aired on the second most popular television station in the Arab world, which depicted a character meant to be Ariel Sharon drinking the blood of Arab children as a grotesque-looking Orthodox Jew looked on. Abu Dhabi Television also aired a skit in which Dracula appears to take a bite out of Sharon, but dies because Sharon's blood is polluted. Protests that these shows were anti-Semitic were ignored by the network.19

The Palestinian Authority's media have also contained inflammatory and anti-Semitic material. A Friday sermon in the Zayed bin Sultan Aal Nahyan mosque in Gaza calling for the murder of Jews and Americans was broadcast live on the official Palestinian Authority television:

Have no mercy on the Jews, no matter where they are, in any country. Fight them, wherever you are. Wherever you meet them, kill them. Wherever you are, kill those Jews and those Americans who are like them and those who stand by them they are all in one trench, against the Arabs and the Muslims because they established Israel here, in the beating heart of the Arab world, in Palestine.... 20

Even Palestinian crossword puzzles are used to delegitimize Israel and attack Jews, providing clues, for example, suggesting the Jewish trait is "treachery."21

 

Non-violent in comparison? That is ridiculous!

Let's start off with the facts. The IDF commandos exchanged their rifles in the armory with paintball guns. They only carried side arms for emergencies. The Mavi Marmara activists had stun grenades, knives, metal rods, and chains among other improvised weapons. The activists clearly planned for a violent confrontation from the beginning.

Upon dropping down from the helicopter, the activists bludgeoned the soldiers, threw one down from the top deck, knocked others unconscious, captured a few, stole the side arm of a commando and held the pistol to his head. That was when the IDF commandos got PERMISSION to open fire from the deadly force the activists were using. The IDF opened fire and killed 9 activists and shot others who they saw as violent enemy combatants.

Those are all facts. You cannot dispute that.

The IDF did not go in guns blazing. That is seen by the safe capture of the other 5 vessels. It was only when they were met with violent opposition did they ASK to use deadly force and were granted it.

Now for my interpretation, this would have happened in Israeli waters as well. These activists were prepared to be martyrs for their cause, and I believe they would have violently attacked the IDF even if they were a mile from the port. Anything to get their agenda done.

In addition, I feel the activists would have killed the commandos if they were given the chance. They stabbed a commando. Threw one over the ledge. Held one at gunpoint. These were not pacifistic activists.

 

I explicitly said that Jew-hate is prevalent. Did it preexist the establishment of Israel? Yes. Does it derive largely from political conflict? I believe so. Does that justify it? Of course not.

 

First, let me agree that it truly sucks to be an Muslim citizen in Israel. They have rights as legal citizens, just like blacks did in the Jim Crow south (i.e. on paper more often than in fact). Now, I will say that they certainly don't go out of their way to endear themselves to the Israelis, but that may be a chicken or the egg sort of problem.

But I see a commonality between the article I posted about striping the spouses of Israelis of citizenship and the article about Muslims in Germany. Specifically, when you think the "other side" is holding a destructive meme, the first reaction seems to be to isolate them; to drive them away and ostracize them for their bad ideas.

IMO, that seems to be about the most counterproductive thing that is possible if you want that to change. It just insulates them from rational thought and allows the nastiness a warm dark place to grow.

I firmly believe that if you want to change someone, the way to do it is to grasp them close to you - and this is especially important when it comes to children and young people. When I hear people with a polemical point of view, they tend to speak of "the Jews" or "the Arabs" or whomever in very abstract terms like an aggragation of nameless, faceless clones, not as a series of individuals with more differences than similarities.

I'm going to go out on a limb here and guess that Hassan Nasrallah didn't have any little Jewish friends when he was a kid, and Bibi wasn't hanging out at his Palestinian friend's house in Gaza. My personal impression is that most of the people complaining about dirty illegal aliens stealing jobs don't know any illegal immigrants on a first name basis. And in the US, the goal of institutional segregation was to keep the races from mixing and prevent good Southern white men with power from thinking of black people as anything but the "N word".

And in the Southern example, the first thing that happened when an outside force tried to bring people together was an explosion of rage by the Southern white man. This is just proof of the power of assimilation. The last thing you want to do in that instance is accede to their rage.

A famous example from WWI was the Christmas Truce. On Christmas, British and German soldiers stopped fighting, walked across the trenches, exchanged tobacco for coffee and schnapps, and sang Christmas carols together. This made the high command on both sides totally apoplectic for the vary reason mentioned. When it is a dirty baby-eating Hun you are staring at across the trench, he deserves to die for being a Hun. But when you see that guy Hans that you met, and you remember when you told him about your wife, and he told you about his daughter, the last thing in the world you want to do is shoot at him or cause him any more misery.

One of the things I've seen told is that 99% of Palestinians don't know a word of Hebrew, while 99% percent of Israelis don't speak a word of Arabic. All of the things that separate the Palestinians from the Israelis and the Israelis from the Muslims are things that help the people who don't want peace.

 

I agree, that was a fantastic post by Ottomaton. I think the only solution, looking at the future, would be to create programs of, so to speak, inter-cultural exchange, starting with children - instead of indoctrinating and teaching them from early childhood that "they" are the enemy (on both sides). There will probably be strong elements on both sides that will try to prevent that, but I hope that good will prevail.

Also thanks for posting about that Christmas truce thing, Ottomaton - I knew about that, but had forgotten it. It's absolutely amazing to me that such chivalry existed in times of war. Seems unthinkable nowadays.

 

I'm guessing I got my point off effectively then?

And why the passive aggression, i repped you?


Maybe you can cross reference the rep I gave you and the one that posters like Ottomatton continually demand with their insightful posts.

 

http://www.popjolly.com/turkish-nav...sh-prime-minister-on-the-next-aid-mission-608


I hope he does, just imagine the welcome he will receive with Israel air force squadron. Can't wait.

 

IDF troops shown bleeding in Turkish press