Here's Bob Simon of "60 Minutes" on Charlie Rose talking about an upcoming "60 Minutes" piece on the settlers on the West Bank: He says that history has passed the 2-state solution by. It is impossible to remove the 300,000 settlers. Any Israeli government that tries to remove them will fall. Many of the soldiers themselves are settlers... The only remote possibility for the 2-state solution is for "the American president to dictate to the Israelis, the West Bank settlements must be evacuated." The Israelis would panic if there was any tension between them and the U.S. (of course, they've never been weaned.) And the president won't do that.
The Israelis have thumbed their noses at American presidents for years. The only president to buck the Israelis was George Bush I, and after promising not to build settlements, the Israelis kept building settlements. Simon mentions "domestic political" considerations. Says that a president could never attempt taking on Israel within 2 years of his possible reelection. I wonder why.
So there are three options, Simon says. 1, "One state with total democracy." Votes for Arabs. "It will never happen." Israelis are facing a likely Jewish minority within the next two decades (John Mearsheimer says that it may already be majority Arab, given all the Israeli diasporites...). They don't want an Arab majority. 2, Ethnic cleansing. Move the Arabs to Jordan. 3, Apartheid. And "Palestinians say" that apartheid already exists. Jews have their own "lovely highways." Etc.
Simon was incisive, judgmental. But please tell me any of this that Walt and Mearsheimer didn't tell us about years ago.
As I said in an earlier comment today, Tony Judt outlined those 3 options in his 2003 article "Israel: The Alternative" (NYRB). I guess the MSM has to pretend it was invented by them.
Well done, Elliott Abrams!
First, there are about 420,000 settlers, if you include the Jerusalem settlers, often conveniently left out.
There is a two-state solution, which is to accept the 67 borders as borders, but give all that reside on the Palestinian side of the green line the choice of:
Stay where you are, compensate former owners/collectivity to perfect your land title (or have the state compensate), and be good Palestinian citizens,
OR move back to Israel if you want to be Israelis.
A letter to Hamas.
There are many Americans, including the incoming American president, that firmly believe that it is impossible to achieve any reconciliation in the region, without including your movement in the process.
Please demonstrate by good choices and real olive branches, the prospect that that reconciliation will bear fruit and result in peace in the region.
You have more power to make good occur than you likely realize, and that establishing peace is MORE likely to realize a healthy Palestinian society, than to seek dominance internally or to reject and confront Israel and Israelis.
You have the option now of affirming your leadership (shared or sole) in Palestinian society.
We are scared by the prospects of your rule. Please demonstrate that those fears are unfounded, so that we all may move on.
I don't remember where I saw this (apologies if it was here) but it struck me as being particularly apt:
Zionist colonialism inhabits the space between two extinct models — those provided by South Africa and French practice in Algeria. It is not a blend of the two, but rather a distillation of the worst in each."
Azmi Bishara (former Knesset member, Palestinian, Christian)
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"Nationalism is an infantile disease. It is the measles of mankind."
—Albert Einstein (attributed)
BBC reports on the massacre at al-Zeitoun neighborhood. The UN now calls it a massacre too.
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Israel 'shelled civilian shelter'
"According to several testimonies, on 4 January Israeli foot soldiers evacuated approximately 110 Palestinians into a single-residence house in Zeitoun (half of whom were children) warning them to stay indoors," the OCHA report said.
"Twenty-four hours later, Israeli forces shelled the home repeatedly, killing approximately 30."
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/7819492.stm
Since the Israeli military operation began on 27 December until 8 January 758 Palestinians have been killed—approximately 42% of whom were women (60) and children (257) according to the Palestinian Ministry of Health. The number of children fatalities has increased by 250% since the beginning of ground operation on 3 January. The Israeli offensive has resulted in the largest number of forcibly displaced Palestinians since 1967.
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42% are women and children. What about the 58% ? There is something racist in separating women and children from men in dealing with statistics of the Palestnian death toll of the Israeli campaign, while not placing such distinctions when talking about Israel's dead, most of whom are men who happen to be SOLDIERS.
Anyway, if 50% of the 58% were adult male civilians (this is an assumption, it is probably much higher, given that we have so far seen few if any dead or injured male fighters being brought into hospitals), then Israel has so far managed tot kill 220 non-civilian Palestinians. This number would include the traffic policemen massacred across the Strip on the first day of the assault, which I believe numbered more than a total of 100 according to estimates that I have heard being thrown around in the past few days. So according to my assumption, only 50% of the adult male dead are civilians, which is a ridiculous assumption in and of itself since there are a total of 15,000 fighters and a population of 1.5 million in Gaza…. according to the CIA factbook, there are around 400,000 males between the ages of 15 and 64. Let's again ASSUME that that only HALF of that number, 200,000 , are between the ages of 18 and 64. Never mind the fact that most of the fighters are not even above 50. But let us assume that there can be fighters in that entire age group. If there are 15,000 fighters in Gaza, which is A LOT , then that means that only 7.5% of the adult male population between the ages of 18 and 64 (not even counting above 64), is military… Thus, my 50% average estimate is far below the 90% probable estimate… I say probable estimate because so far there has been no real fighting, and thus far the only thing the Israelis have focused on is air strikes, which means there is a high probability that civilian male casualties are overwhelmingly larger than the number of fighters killed.
So anyway, according to the above extremely generous estimates, there are 120 fighters from a dozen Resistance groups (many of which are rather incompetent in fighting). So Israel has managed to kill 120 fighters in 14 days (about 8 fighters per day), along with 640 or so civilians (45 civilians, including 18 children, per day). Such heroism. And this is the preliminary civilian toll, as there are areas where ambulances have been unable to reach and buildings that have been bombed and no one has been able to go through the rubble… If no Palestinians are killed between now and the end of this vicious assault, it is safe to say that the final death toll will be above 1200. Israel needs to kill 1200 Arabs — the overwhelming majority of them civilians — every few years in order to provide satisfaction to its bloodthirsty population. Israel cannot live without wars and without killing a "good" number of those whom it considers to be inferior and "cockroaches". Like crushing insects that bother you, really. That's what the so-called "international community" has given Israel the green light to do, time and again. The west — and its puppets here in the Arab and Muslim world — will pay dearly for its racist crimes and genocide against the Palestinian people.
Another "nice" number:
If Israel has killed 120 fighters and 640 civilians (by my generous estimates), then at this rate, Israel would need to kill more than 80,000 Palestinians in order to kill all 15,000 fighters… and if Israel managed to kill 120 fighters in 14 days of non-stop aerial, sea, artillery, and tank bombardment, then in order to kill 15,000 fighters, it would need 1750 days (4 years, 9 months, and 20 days) of non-stop bombardment from the air, sea, and ground.
Sure the "Palestinian ministry of health". That's a source that wouldn't lie about anything , would it. Besides, what Palestinians really need from that august body is mental health help. Because has a people. Logic has left the building.
Witty, I'm flabbergasted. Two states, pre-67 borders, that's it. I'm glad you're communicating this as one of the viable solutions.
"Zionist colonialism inhabits the space between two extinct models — those provided by South Africa and French practice in Algeria. It is not a blend of the two, but rather a distillation of the worst in each."
Azmi Bishara (former Knesset member, Palestinian, Christian)"
Indeed. A very appropriate description of the zionist colonial project called Israel.
Azmi Bishara puts the dots on the letters. He was on al-Jazeera the other day, and kept pointing out that it was laughable that the proposals for a ceasefire that were circulating insisted on putting an end to the so-called "smuggling" of weapons by what is the LEGITIMATE ELECTED REPRESENTATIVE of the Palestinian people and handing over the control over the crossing — and the ability to "import" (he pointed out the difference int he words used to refer to the same activity by two different actors) weapons — to a group that lost the elections…….
Saving America in 100 Words
Simon also stated Hamas desired and was responsible for this confrontation with Israel.
This is from an Israeli PROFESSOR:
“When 2.5 million people live in a closed-off Gaza, it’s going to be a human catastrophe,” Sofer predicted. “Those people will become even bigger animals than they are today, with the aid of an insane fundamentalist Islam. The pressure on the border is going to be awful. It’s going to be a terrible war. So, if we want to remain alive, we will have to kill and kill and kill. All day, every day.” Sofer admitted only one worry with all the killing, which will, he says, be the necessary outcome of a policy that he himself helped to invent. “The only thing that concerns me,” he says, “is how to ensure that the boys and men who are going to have to do the killing will be able to return home to their families and be normal human beings.”
http://www.counterpunch.org/makdisi01072009.html
Boycott all Israeli AND non-Israeli ZIONIST universities ALREADY.
Israeli universities are the planning centers of the zionist genocide against the Palestinian people.
I discuss Israeli academia in The Changing Agenda of Israeli Sociology, Theory, Ideology and Identity by Uri Ram.
Quote:
Bob Simon:
"Israeli knew that McCain was in their pocket – but Obama?"
“The only thing that concerns me,” he says, “is how to ensure that the boys and men who are going to have to do the killing will be able to return home to their families and be normal human beings.”
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Himmler's Poznan Speech, October 4, 1943
But none has observed it, endured it. Most of you here know what it means when 100 corpses lie next to each other, when there are 500 or when there are 1,000. To have endured this and at the same time to have remained a decent person — with exceptions due to human weaknesses — has made us tough, and is a glorious chapter that has not and will not be spoken of.
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Sofer seems to consider himself as a moderate:
Abstract:Sounding the Alarm About Israel's Demographic Crisis, Larry Derfner, Jerusalem Post:
»When Arnon Soffer first issued his warning in the 1980s — that Arabs would outnumber Jews in Israel and the occupied territories by around 2010 — he was widely dismissed as a crackpot Jeremiah. Now the Israeli public and its leaders appear to have caught up with him. Soffer, head of the geography department at the University of Haifa and a longtime lecturer at the Israeli army's Staff and Command College, has influenced Benjamin Netanyahu, Ehud Barak and hundreds of other Israeli political, military and economic leaders in recent years. In February 2001, on the night of his election as prime minister, Ariel Sharon sent an aide to ask Soffer for a copy of his original 1987 pamphlet about the demographic threats to Israel — the same study that had led Yasser Arafat to declare in the late 1980s that the "Palestinian womb" was his people's greatest weapon. The stark timetables of demography that Soffer published last summer in his updated report have become part of the ABCs of Israeli political knowledge, driving public opinion against holding on to the territories. Polls now show giant majorities in favor of withdrawal from the Gaza Strip and the interior of the West Bank. Sharon himself, master builder of the settlements, announced a "disengagement plan" last month that includes the likely uprooting of some settlements in thickly populated Palestinian areas.«
»Likewise, his politics seem contradictory. "I'm always being asked if I'm a left-winger or a right-winger," he said. "I'm in favor of socially oriented economics, so that makes me a left-winger, but I'm against the increase of the Arab population in Israel, so I'm a right-winger, but I'm in favor of uprooting settlements, so I'm a left-winger. I tell people I'm exactly in the middle."«
»He thinks the idea of a negotiated settlement with the Palestinians is "utopian" and is convinced that even prominent Palestinian moderates like Yasser Abed Rabbo and Sari Nusseibeh are just suckering the Israeli left while actually planning to swallow Israel demographically. He has a grudge against the liberal Israeli daily newspaper Ha'aretz and the dovish forces in general, whom he characterizes as "those bastards in Tel Aviv who don't live with the Arabs, who've never been to Qalqilya or Ramallah and don't know what they're talking about." In the "Proposed Solutions" section of his updated pamphlet, "Israeli Demography, 2003-2020 — Dangers and Opportunities," he wrote: "A campaign should be started against traitorous academics and journalists who preach hatred of Israel at universities in Europe, the United States and Israel itself."«
»To defuse that "time bomb," Soffer would give the Palestinians all of Gaza and 85% to 90% of the West Bank, excluding small sections just over the Green Line where the Jewish settlements are concentrated — roughly the sections now being surrounded by the new security fence. He used to insist on Israel's keeping the Jordan Valley — the thinly populated band of territory in the West Bank along the Jordan River — to deter Iraq from coming through Jordan and invading Israel. But the American takeover of Iraq, he said, "means that the threat on Israel's eastern border no longer exists." Now he favors giving the Jordan Valley to the Palestinians: "Let them have it," he said. He would also give up East Jerusalem — "Who needs it? Let Arafat take it and go to hell," he said — except for the places holy to Jews like the Temple Mount and Mount of Olives.«
»Not surprisingly, Soffer's pioneering work on the Arab demographic "threat" hasn't made him many Arab friends. Noting that his last name can be taken to mean "a counter," he said with laugh, "In Arab circles they call me 'Arnon the Arab-Counter.'" Arab Knesset Member Ahmed Tibi, he added, calls him a fascist.«
Any native Arabic-speakers know the root to which Soffer could be referring?
I don't believe either shafara or safara has a meaning of count.
If I met him, I might have goofed on him by explaining that his name is rendered in Arabic as mashfar, but the word really means camel-lip or cunt according to my classical dictionary, but I don't think it is in common usage.
Maybe someone rendered Soffer as Saafar (with a Saad). It means whistler or thief.
There is a classical description Ajban min Saafar. It means more cowardly than a thief with the explanation that Saafar really means one who whistles to a woman for the purpose of fornication or adultery — because he fears lest he should be seen.
i think that the only solution is a just one. i believe that there should be one democratic state from the river to the sea for all, equial rights and the end of the aprthied state. israels claim is a false one, they are the occupiers from russain and else where they should either go back or live in peace with the palestinians.
israels PR propaganda machine has taken over our media in the west. and feeds our public with lies and falsehood. this undermiones our democrarcies.
its disgusting what israel stands.
its crime against the palestinians is unacceptable.
why are our media and politicians so pro israeli.
the just solutionis that the palestinians should get their land bad.
israel should end its aparthied. its occupation, its mass murder, iths ethnic cleansing and its terror against the palestinians.
thank you
P.S.if theres no justice there will be no peace, end to tyrancy in the arab world, end to hosni mubarak, end to mahmood abbas who is on the israeli pay check long live justice and peace
i think that the only solution is a just one. i believe that there should be one democratic state from the river to the sea for all, equial rights and the end of the aprthied state. israels claim is a false one, they are the occupiers from russain and else where they should either go back or live in peace with the palestinians.
israels PR propaganda machine has taken over our media in the west. and feeds our public with lies and falsehood. this undermiones our democrarcies.
its disgusting what israel stands.
its crime against the palestinians is unacceptable.
why are our media and politicians so pro israeli.
the just solutionis that the palestinians should get their land bad.
israel should end its aparthied. its occupation, its mass murder, iths ethnic cleansing and its terror against the palestinians.
thank you
P.S.if theres no justice there will be no peace, end to tyrancy in the arab world, end to hosni mubarak, end to mahmood abbas who is on the israeli pay check long live justice and peace
Israel :
Created 5.5 million+ Refugees
World record for UN Violations at 69+
Destroyed 350 Christian Churches & Mosques
254 km of Apartheid Wall(2 berlin walls height and length)
562 Check Points
Has Ethnically cleansed 500+ villages