Is Israel stupid?

actually it was in a book called Blood Brother written by Elias Chacour. He's a Palestinian Christian who wrote his story in this book...he was big on promoting a non-violent solution to this problem on behalf of the Palestinians.

I wasn't there...I can't verify if it happened or not. But it's his story, nonetheless.

 

More:

April 9, 1948: A combined force of Irgun and Stern Gangs committed a brutal massacre of 260 Arab residents of the village of Deir Yassin, most of whom were women and children. In April, 1954, during Holy Week, and on the eve of Easter, The Christian cemeteries in Haifa were invaded, crosses broken down and trampled under the feet of these miscreants, and the tombs desecrated. The Israeli military conquest, therefore was made against a defenseless people, who had been softened up by such earlier massacres as Deir Yasin (where 250 Arabs; men, women and children were massacred).

The Jew Weizman referred to the massacre as this "miraculous simplification of our task," and Ben Gurion said that "without Deir Yasin there would be no Israel." Americans are not told that ten percent of the Arabs killed by the Israelis in 1948 were Christian, and that ten percent of the Arab property confiscated belonged to Christians. Nor are they told that Israel's massacres and military actions forced 100,000 Christians to become refugees.

 

A little More:

Accounts by Red Cross and United Nations observers who visited the scene said that the houses were first set on fire and the occupants were shot down as they came out to escape the flames. One pregnant woman had her baby cut out of her stomach with a knife. The head of the International Red Cross delegation in Palestine, Jacques de Reynier, drove into the village and was met by a detachment of Irgun terrorists. In his report of the massacre the previous night, he wrote: "All of them were young, some even adolescents, men and women armed to the teeth: revolvers, machine-guns, hand-grenades, and knives, most of them still blood-stained. A beautiful young girl with criminal eyes showed me hers (knife) still dripping with blood, she displayed it like a trophy."

 

One more:

May 1948: The U.S. appointed Count Folke Bernadotte of Sweden to mediate between the Arabs and the Israelis. In his first progress report (of Sept. 16, 1948) he recommended that the U.N. should affirm "the right of the Arab refugees to return to their homes in Jewish controlled territory at the earliest possible date." The Israelis responded in their own quiet way. The following day Bernadotte was murdered in Jerusalem.

Responsibility for the spectacular assassination, which caused an international outcry, was claimed by an unknown group, "Fatherland Front," which was actually a cover for Shamir's Stern Gang. Yoshua Zeitler and Meshlam Markover of Stern told Israeli television in 1989 that they respectively directed and led the operation that killed the Swedish diplomat and his French aide-de-camp. Zeitler, 71, said he decided to speak now because of fear that the U.N. and the "goyim" (non-Jews) are again trying to force Israel into concessions.

 

FD Khan, what is your source?

Also, I see you fail to mention that such criminal acts are prosecuted by the Israeli government. Meanwhile, in the Palestinian territories, Hamas and other terrorists roam free like normal citizens.

You're trying to say Israelis are the same as Palestinian terrorists. I can see right through it.

 

I'm not rendering it as a one sided affair. I am rendering it as Israelis and average Palestinians vs. Terrorists.

What do you suggest be done about terrorists like Hamas? Nothing?

 

I think one praticle problem is stop using military tatics to arrest criminals. Anbody remember the movie in which Bruce Willis was the army general who took over New York, I think because of a terrorist problem, and the problems that caused.

There is a reason you don't use the army to catch criminals and you don't use the police to defeat an army. As long Isreal uses military tatics, they will never be able to capture the terrorist and it will be a never ending cycle.

 

What I'm suggesting Mr. Clutch is an equitable solution and not a one-sided solution. I am suggesting that Israel obey UN Mandates and tear down their illegal settlements in the occupied territory.

I think Hamas' suicide bombings are despicable, but Israel seems to relish in allowing the violence to continue.

I think that because we have the financial ties to Israel, we should force them into a settlement and tell them to take the higher road as the authority.

Then I think you go back to 1967 borders and every country in the middle east has already said they will recognize Israel and its right to exist. Then the occupied territories become a palestinian state. Then put up a wall, who cares after that. There will be no mixing of the populations.

The problem is that many zionists see the occupied territories as part of the 'ancestoral' homeland and are not willing to give it up. The more they wait, the more land they take day by day. So why should they force the end to violence if it serves their purpose??

 

But Israel doesn't currently have control of the Palestinian territories. It doesn't have authority to send cops in and arrest them unless it reoccupies (and even then it's too dangerous to just arrest these people). And these Hamas guys are really a military operation, like Al Qaeda.

I believe if you solve the terrorist problem, then the road map will be accomplished.

 

I agree about the settlements. Most Israelis oppose them and they only incite more violence. I believe Barak offered over 90% of the land, and now Sharon has even endorsed the idea of a Palestinian state. (I believe he also said "contiguous").

However, I don't think you really can ask Israel to move to less defensible borders or to sign a peace agreement while several Palestinian groups have declared war on it (despite what the average Palestinian has to say about it).

But either way, the terrorist problem has to be dealt with. Either the Palestinian government has to be willing and able, or Israel must root them out. I think the Palestinians are themselves terrorized by the terrorists and so they can do very little about it.

 

Tell me how this isn't anti-semetic, FD. I'd really like to hear it.

 

The Muslim, Khan

The Christian, Bush

The Jew, Weizman


I didn't know that stating someone's religion is considered insulting. Quite sensitive are we? I think if I were as sensitive as you as a muslim on this board I would have had quite the emotional breakdowns. Besides most of what I had posted was written by a Rabbi, maybe you should take it up with him?

 

That's exactly what I thought your response would be.

Please post the source. I'd like to see it.

By the way, you do know that most ultra-orthodox Jews have opposed and continue to oppose the existence of the state of Israel, don't you? Do you know why?

By the way, sensitivity isn't the issue. Respect is the issue. And if you can't understand that, I pity you.

 

As Hamas is the extremist fringe of the Palestinians, many of the settlers are the same to Israel and are not willing to give up the settlements.

Either way both of those groups must be controlled by the majority to create a two state solution. It is simply that the occupied territories must be made under Palestinian autonomy.

The violence against Israel is predominantly in the territories anyway. If they have their country there will be little mixing and they have no conventional army and we all know that an army would be wiped clean by the US weapons, planes and technology that Israel posesses.

Israel must pull back to the 1967 lines, though Rocketman Tex stated that he didn't want that because part of Jerusalem would be a "pig-sty" I believe the word was, though Deckard said he was there in 1965 and it was quite the contrary that it was clean and the people were VERY hospitable.....

 

Okay, how do you propose controlling the terrorists? Remember that when Arafat and Barak came very close to agreeing, and the talks fell apart, the Intifada was unleashed on Israel. The Palestinian government encouraged it at that time.

 

"Lies, damn lies and statistics" Mark Twain. This quote is relevant when examining the '90%' Barak offer. I have reviewed what was actually offered and it is truly and honestly a joke. The 10% that Israel would hold were settlements and the roads to them basically disecting the state in fragments. Palestinians would not be able to travel through those roads and many towns would be cut in half, making travel very difficult and maintaining many of todays problems. It was not an autonomous state, but more like a slave state with little to no control over its water suppy and ability to control itself.

I propose a simply 1967 line division. The UN mandates it is illegal for the settlements to be there in the first place. Why did we enforce this in Iraq and are not forcing the issue here??

EVERY Arab state said they would recognize Israel, have relations with Israel including Syria, Iran and Libya just if they go back to those 1967 borders. Israel simply refuses to.

 

Here you go, FD...this was written while Clinton was negotiating with Barak and Arafat. Pig sty? No question about it. I've bolded those parts to make it easier for you to read. Enjoy.

WHEN JERUSALEM WAS DIVIDED

By Jeff Jacoby

(syndicated by the Boston Globe)

In proposing that eastern Jerusalem become part of a sovereign Arab state, President Clinton is urging not just a bad idea, but one that has already been tried -- with disastrous results.

Jerusalem was always one city before May of 1948, the month British rule in Palestine came to an end. It was supposed to remain one thereafter. Under the terms of a UN resolution, Palestine was to be partitioned into two states -- one Jewish, one Arab -- with Jerusalem belonging to neither.

"The City of Jerusalem," Resolution 181 had ordained, "shall be established as a *corpus separatum* under a special international regime and shall be administered by the United Nations."

The Jews of Palestine accepted the partition plan, reluctantly agreeing to the internationalization of Jerusalem as the price of statehood. But the Arabs flatly rejected partition. There would be no Jewish state, they said, and no UN supervision of Jerusalem. To keep Resolution 181 from taking effect, they vowed to fight the Jews. "This will be," exulted Azzam Pasha, the secretary-general of the Arab League, "a war of extermination and a momentous massacre."

By May 15, the day Israel was born, Jerusalem was a battleground. Within days, the Jordanian Arab Legion, spurred by King Abdullah to capture Jerusalem, was bombarding the Old City's Jewish quarter.

Badly outnumbered, poorly armed, the Jews of East Jerusalem didn't have a prayer. When the United Nations called for a cease-fire, writes the renowned historian Sir Martin Gilbert, Jordan, "poised to overrun the Jewish Quarter," ignored it. "That day an Arab-language broadcast from Ramallah described in lurid detail the first stage of the long-drawn out destruction of the Hurva Synagogue."

The Hurva, first built in 1705, had been one of Jerusalem's great landmarks. Its destruction was a grim taste of what lay in store for the Jewish holy sites of the Old City.

By May 28, the conquest of Jewish East Jerusalem was complete. The remaining Jews -- some from families that had lived there for centuries -- were expelled. "As they left," Martin writes, "they could see columns of smoke rising from the quarter behind them. The Hadassah welfare station had been set on fire and despite [a] curfew, the looting and burning of Jewish property was in full swing."

For the next 19 years, Jerusalem was divided. West Jerusalem became Israel's capital. East Jerusalem, its Jewish Quarter now *judenrein*, was annexed by Jordan, which proceeded to erase the evidence that Jews had ever been there. In an orgy of desecration, 58 synagogues -- the oldest dated to the 13th century -- were ravaged. Those that weren't razed were ransacked, turned into stables and chicken coops, used as garbage dumps. The city's foremost Jewish shrine, the Western Wall, became a slum.

The ancient Jewish cemetery on the Mount of Olives, where the oldest tombs date from 1st century BC, was devastated. Some 38,000 tombstones were ripped out and used to build military bunkers and pave latrines. An asphalt road was cut through the cemetery; a hotel was constructed at the top. When the Jews returned in 1967, they found graves gaping open and bones strewn on the ground.

Under Article VIII of the armistice agreement signed by Israel and Jordan in 1949, the Arabs guaranteed "free access to the Holy Places and cultural institutions and use of the cemetery on the Mount of Olives." But that proved to be a lie. For 19 years, no Jew was allowed to visit the Western Wall, the cemetery, or any other site in East Jerusalem. Israeli Arabs were likewise barred from the Old City's Muslim shrines. For 19 years, no Arab from Israel prayed at the al-Aqsa Mosque or set foot on the Temple Mount.

Of course today's Palestinian Authority cannot be blamed for outrages committed during the Jordanian occupation. But reasonable people must wonder what would happen to the Jews' holy places if the Old City were placed under Arab rule again. For the Palestinians have a record too.

Time and again Yasser Arafat and his aides have insisted that the Western Wall and the Temple Mount are purely Muslim shrines with no Jewish significance. Time and again they have claimed, as the Palestinian Ministry of Information puts it, that "the archeology of Jerusalem" reveals "nothing Jewish . . . no tangible evidence of any Jewish traces or remains." When Palestinian officials assert, "Jerusalem is not a Jewish city, despite the biblical myth implanted in some minds," it is hard not to worry about how they would treat Jewish sites if they ruled East Jerusalem, or whether they would permit Jews to visit them.

Nor is that all.

When the Palestinians signed the Oslo II agreement in 1995, they promised to "ensure free access to, respect the ways of worship in, and not make any changes to, the Jewish holy sites" on land given up by Israel. They made the same promise in the Gaza-Jericho accord in 1994 and the Hebron accord in 1997. Among the listed sites: the venerable "Peace Upon Israel" (*shalom al yisrael*) synagogue in Jericho and the yeshiva at Joseph's Tomb in Nablus. Today, neither exists. In October, Palestinians burned down the synagogue.

They smashed Joseph's Tomb to rubble and trampled its holy books, and announced that a mosque would be built on the site.

If this is how Israel's peace partners act in Jericho and Nablus, how would they behave in Jerusalem?

The sacred places of Jerusalem have never been safer, or open to more people, than in the 33 years since it was reunified. There is no reason to redivide it, and every reason not to.

 

Then Mr. Clutch, it becomes easy. There are no Palestinians in your state, so no attacks.

And just don't let any of them enter Israel. Easy enough.

 

Actually it wasn't in response that the intifada started it was when Sharon with a bunch of armed guards provocatively marched up to temple mount.