I don’t get to feel proud as a Jew very often these days, when 300 Jewish communal leaders are beating the drums on Iran, and Jewish organizations support the settlements. But here is an amazing interview with the great Gideon Levy, by Robert Hirschfeld at In These Times. James North, who passed it along, asks: If the New York Times published such astonishing criticisms made by a dissident journalist in the country’s leading publication, it would be the most emailed piece of the day. But the Times won’t tell you this! Read the whole thing. Here are excerpts.
Note the second to last question. It is about the Israel lobby, the power of the lobby. Don’t blame George Bush. don’t blame Netanyahu. Don’t blame the Christian Zionists. Start at home, brother Democrat; blame the lobby.
How did you get from there to where you are now: a journalist famous for ferociously speaking out for Palestinian human rights and a Palestinian state totally free of Israeli occupation?
It was a gradual process. There was no single incident involved. I didn’t suddenly see the light. When I first started covering the West Bank for Haaretz, I was young and brainwashed.
My “journalism school” was the Israeli Army Radio Station, which was not the kind of place to learn the truth about the occupation. I would see settlers cutting down olive trees and soldiers mistreating Palestinian women at the checkpoints, and I would think, “These are exceptions, not part of government policy.” It took me a long time to see that these were not exceptions—they were the substance of government policy. I had failed to make that connection.
Why do Israeli journalists shy away from writing about the day-to-day repression that is an inextricable part of the occupation?
It’s all about self-censorship. Journalists do not want to write critically of the occupation because readers do not want to read about it, and publishers and editors want to keep their readers happy. Since no one is really that interested in the abuses, they don’t get written about. Journalists are also part of the whole machinery of denial and justification and the closing of eyes that includes telling lies and collaborating with lies….
I think today the media is playing an almost criminal role by cooperating with the occupation. If it hadn’t, the occupation probably wouldn’t have lasted this long.
Some Israelis criticize you for writing the same kinds of stories about abuses over and over again.
That’s right. They don’t ask why the abuses continue to happen, they ask why I continue to write about them.
…It is clear from your article that you consider Obama’a [Cairo] speech highly significant.
Absolutely. He gave a new direction. He put things on the table, like the settlements being illegal, that hadn’t been on the table before.
Does the Israeli public believe that if the United States applied enough pressure, the settlements would be dismantled?
I think so. Israel depends on the U.S. in so many ways that saying no would not be an option if pressure was really applied…
When you are on the West Bank working, do you have run-ins with soldiers?
All the time. Once, soldiers raked my car with bullets. If it wasn’t a bulletproof car, we wouldn’t be having this conversation now. It happened in 2003. They didn’t know who was in the car, but they shot like crazy. It was a big story at the time. There are still many incidents. Soldiers still aim their weapons at me.
Finally. A great mind who’s not nerdy looking.
There is no occupation. There is only a pre-occupation with ethnic cleansing of the Jewish people from our aboriginal homeland in Israel
“There’s no final solution. There is only a stab in our back and pre-occupation with stifling natural German life both within Germany and within our historical additional living space to the East”–Adolph Hitler (1939)
You sound like a robot.
That sounds familiar. Now who was it before. Some character that named itself after an Israeli drone of all things. I believe we have a ressurection.
RE: “You sound like a robot.”
MY COMMENT: Very perceptive! Psychopaths often appear to be “robotic”. They lack the feelings, emotions, empathy, etc that distinguish normal human behavior from “robotic” behavior.
FROM WIKIPEDIA: These items cover the affective, interpersonal, and behavioral features. Each item is rated on a score from zero to two. The sum total determines the extent of a person’s psychopathy.[6]
Factor 1: Aggressive narcissism
Glibness/superficial charm
Grandiose sense of self-worth
Pathological lying
Cunning/manipulative
Lack of remorse or guilt
Emotionally shallow
Callous/lack of empathy
Failure to accept responsibility for own actions
PSYCHOPATHY – link to en.wikipedia.org
____________________________________________________
P.S. Compulsive behavior can also be seen as “robotic”.
FROM WIKIPEDIA: Repetition compulsion
(EXCERPT) …Another is a participatory form, wherein a person actively engages in behavior that mimics an earlier stressor, either deliberately or unconsciously. In particular, this is often described by the statement that events that are terrifying in childhood become sources of attraction in adulthood. For instance, a person who was spanked as a child may incorporate this into their adult sexual practices. Another example is a victim of sexual abuse, who may attempt to seduce another person of authority in his or her life (such as their boss or therapist). Psychoanalysts describe this as an attempt at mastery of their feelings and experience, in the sense that they unconsciously want to go through the same situation but that it not result negatively as it did in the past [1].
Franz Alexander (1891-1964), a Hungarian American psychoanalyst and physician, stated:[citation needed]
“ The patient, in order to be helped, must undergo a corrective emotional experience suitable to repair the traumatic influence of previous experiences…”
REPETITION COMPULSION – link to en.wikipedia.org
It’s an energy creature. Starve it.
The Arabs control more than 99.5% of the region, but it’s not enough for them.
It’s the reason they have rejected every peace offer.
Even in Israel Haaretz is a very small and insignificant paper. Levy a Joke.
No, Julian, you need to update your script. It’s the Arabs who are making peace offers and Israel who is saying, NO, NO, NO.
Sometime I really get tired of the constant bullshit – these Zionist think they can just pronounce something with conviction – no matter how far fetched it is from reality, and everyone is supposed to be “awed?” what they rely upon is the gross ignorance of the general population – why they come here and make these silly pronouncements is beyond me, perhaps they like well deserved verbal abuse.
History tells us that Arab control of the various Arab nations was the result of colonial Europeans’s drawing lines on a map, cutting the Arab lands into nation states. Why is this a matter of “it’s not enough for them (the Arabs)”? The fact is all those lands
had been the homes of Arabs for centuries. Why is that “the reason they (the Arabs)
have rejected everyb peace offer”? Julian, please explain. You make no sense when you say “it’s not enough for them (the Arabs).” Why is it the Arabs fault that Jews
had no land of their own for centuries? And why should Palestinian Arabs just roll
over and give the Jews the land they had, and have lived on for centuries? I don’t get it. Again, Please explain.
Israel depends on the U.S. in so many ways that saying no would not be an option if pressure was really applied.
This can not be too strongly emphasized. If pressure were really applied. Which serves as proof, as if it were needed, that real pressure has never been applied.
RE: “Israel depends on the U.S. in so many ways that saying no would not be an option if pressure was really applied.”
MY COMMENT: This assumes RATIONAL behavior, and does not apply to psychopaths. I suspect that it would have only LIMITED application in the case of compulsive behavior. See my comment above on ‘psychopathy’ and ‘repetition compulsion’.
We shouldn’t apply pressure on Israel. We should cut off the welfare check.
Exactly, cutting off the annual welfare check would be pressure sufficient, especially as a companion to why we did so. Too bad our congress and executive branches are
whores, thanks to our campaign finance system, coupled with our whore MSM which makes sure the USA masses never get a clue how they are used and abused in behalf
interests surely not their’s.
Yes, Obama’s Cairo was historically very significant. I’ve heard that he plans to
say more in the next month or so–stay tuned to see if he has been de-balled. He has
to roll the dice, by publically threatening Israel with some economic sticks, not just giving more Zionists carrots.
Why doesn’t Gideon decry the murder of innocent Israeli children and adults by Palestinian Homicide bombers.
The murder of Israeli’s observing Passover, in restaurants, hotels, disco’s and the hell the surviving victims of these acts of Palestinian terror face for the rest of there lives.
That’s comparing a few to thousands. Jeez, Ed_Frias, get some non-Zionist perspective.
Mr. Frias of course has no interest in any kind of answer because this is a one-way conversation as far as he is concerned – to educate and abuse the Israel-haters on Mondoweiss. A mission, if you will. But for the benefit of the rest of us, Gideon Levy is asked this question all the time – sometimes seriously, by someone who really wants an answer. In an excellent interview on Israeli TV a few years ago, he explained that there are three reasons why he focuses on Palestinian suffering: Because he looks at the bottom line, and there is no comparison between Israeli and Palestinian suffering (as Citizen pointed out); because it is his government that is the direct cause of Palestinian suffering; and because there are more than enough journalists covering suicide bombings and Israeli casualties, but a dire lack of reporters willing to inform the Israeli public about the terrible consequences of their government’s actions.
As the Rabbis once said: Where there is no humanity, strive to be human.
Levy wont even criticize when Israelis are lynched.
link to pmwatch.org
Another Israeli journalist at a different newspaper, Nahum Barnea of
Yediot Aharonot, wrote in November of 2000 that there are Israeli
reporters who do not pass the “lynching test.” These are journalists who
could not bring themselves to criticize the Palestinians even when two
Israelis were savagely murdered by a Palestinian mob in Ramallah. Which
journalists? Gideon Levy, Amira Hass, and Akiva Eldar of Ha’aretz.
Yep Ed, that is what happens when you steal another people’s land. It pisses them off and they tend to retaliate is some terrible ways. Every Israeli should be fully aware that they have chosen the path of perpetual war to pursue their Zionist goals, they should also know that they will have to take casualties. So stop whining my boy, get that stiff upper lip and get on with your war.
Yeah, cry me a river; you think the readers of this blog do not know what the
ratio of innocent deaths is as between Israelis and Palestinians? That’s not to say
innocent Israeli deaths is ok, but is to recognize who suffers collectively the most, and exceedingly so. Get some perspective–try hard as I am aware of all the material saying that’s really difficult
for most Jews.
Frimet Roth who lost her daughter in the Sbarros massacre in 2001.
Read what she wrote about Gideon Levy and Amira Hass.
Wouldn’t it be great if the times quoted Roth.
She hits it right on the head.
link to web.israelinsider.com
Gideon Levy, who writes for Israel`s pre-eminent daily, Haaretz, fancies himself a champion of the weak and vulnerable. The day after my child`s cold-blooded murder by a Hamas bomber, Levy wrote the following in his weekly piece detailing Palestinian suffering:
“These children, every child in the world should have protection as though he were a VIP. Every child in the world is a VIP”
Levy did not mention the seven Jewish children whose graves were dug that day because he did not mean those children. He never does.
Levy`s colleague, Amira Hass, the only Israeli journalist who lives in a Palestinian town, Ramallah, was equally indifferent to my child`s murder. The first piece she published in Haaretz after the Sbarro massacre made no mention of the fifteen victims. Instead, it was an emotive tirade about the Palestinian right of return, reminding her readers of two major Jewish settlements close to Jerusalem that she fears “won`t be evacuated”: the city of Maaleh Adumim and the Jerusalem satellite community of Givat Ze`ev.
Murdered Jewish children do not move Hass either.
RE: “Every child in the world is a VIP…” – Frimet Roth
SEE: “Israel’s war on Gaza killed 252 children, report claims”, By Donald Macintyre in Jerusalem, 09/09/09
***Israeli human rights agency challenges army’s figures***
(EXCERPT) The Israeli official figures seriously underestimated the civilian Palestinian death toll exacted during its onslaught in Gaza early this year, according to painstaking research to be published today.
The first detailed casualty figures from an Israeli human rights organisation since the war ended puts the number of children under 16 killed in the offensive at 252 as opposed to the 89 cited by the military. B’Tselem says its fieldworkers gathered death certificates, photos, and testimonies relating to all 252 of the children…
ENTIRE ARTICLE – link to independent.co.uk
RE: “Every child in the world is a VIP…” – Frimet Roth
SEE ALSO – Report: IDF killed women and children with white flags in Gaza, Israel News @ Ynet, 08/13/09
(EXCERPT) More than six months after Israel’s Gaza offensive, Operation Cast Lead, accusations are still being leveled against the IDF’s combat ethic. Human Rights Watch published a report Thursday detailing testimonies of seven incidents in which Palestinian civilians in the Gaza Strip were shot by Israeli soldiers despite the fact that they were carrying white flags.
According to the report, 11 civilians, including five women and four children, were killed and another eight were injured in the said incidents. The IDF refused to cooperate with the rights’ group’s investigation and did not respond to questions the group submitted to it in writing.
The authors of the report visited the sites of the attacks, examined ballistic evidence, collected medical records, and interviewed multiple witnesses – at least three people separately for each attack. In one case, forensic pathologists examined a survivor…
ENTIRE ARTICLE – link to ynetnews.com
P.S. Also, please see my comment above regarding ‘repetition compulsion’.
I feel your pain, but please look at the facts–how many Palestinian parents could
write a comparable story? Many more than the collective of Israeli parents. Further,
American gentile families are suffering the same rooted pain for rascist Israel, which is against all the USA stands for…
But Arabs are animals, they don’t feel pain or care for their children.
The classic “they don’t love their chidren like we do” has been used for years, and has been crucial to the desensitisation of the Israeli public to Palestinian civilian and especially child deaths. The overwhelming Israeli public support for the carnage in Gaza is a product of this strategy – reinforced by the never-ending and mostly baseless “human shield” argument. The point is not merely to absolve Israel of its responsibility for the murder of civilians, but to further dehumanise Palestinians, which makes it so much easier to brutalise them.
As the West began it’s “conquering” path through the Middle East, it was the job of some to study these cultures that they assaulted and enslaved, they were called orientalists. It was the job of the orientalist to so categorize and define the existence of the people, that the conquering power could exploit to the fullest extent the population(s).
These orientalists at the beck and call of conquering powers began to describe the people as if they were totally other – different in every sense from the refined, intelligent and noble people who fancied themselves their superiors and therefore masters. If one looks at the time of the crusades there is very little different by way of demeaning description, and in the same way this was used as an excuse to conquer and “civilize” these backward and ignorant mass of humanity – create a “New Middle East.”
The people who were the object of exploitation were narrowly defined, as if their aspirations were other than human. That they did not have the same love for their families and their children that the Judeo/Christian betters have, and they do not have the same sense of community, but on the contrary that they cannot be reasoned with and are barbaric – violent, and without mercy.
Yet millions of them live among people in the United States, in this very diverse culture. If they are so different, so backward and retarded, such violent people, than how are they living among us in such peace? If you travel through these countries in the Middle East you find great diversity, community and care, indeed, a more ancient and noble civilization.
What is amazing in this scenario is that the people who promote this view claim to be the heirs of the Renaissance, the Enlightenment, and it’s natural offspring of humanism. Many confess to be in the Judeo-Christian tradition which claims to believe that man is created in the imago dei, the image of god which claims the dictum “love your neighbor as yourself.” Yet they “officially” spread this spurious lie through an elite which deceives their people, and an ignorant mass which believes their lies.
So those who claim to drink from this enlightened spring of humanism, the use of reason to claim the highest pinnacle for mankind, vilifies and creates death and destruction in these lands. As if there is some impenetrable wall that separates us from other human beings, like we have been thrown back 200-300 years without the abilities of modern communication. As if there are no commons, and that we do not live in a world enriched by a multiplicity of cultures!
People who embrace these concocted views of empire have no idea what a living contradiction they are. They have allowed extremist elements in the seat of power, a rancid and bankrupt Christianity of fundamentalist – apocalyptic, within Judaism a murderous element called Zionism – all wielding influence within the halls of power. A group of modern day orientalists in the employment of an elite that is enamored by money alone and listens to a homicidal corporatocracy. All trying to lump a billion plus people into a monstrous category that must be destroyed.
So, we are supposed to believe that USA funded and military-supported Jewish Israelis suffer more than Arabs either within Israel or within Israeli-controlled land? LOL
So, we are supposed to believe that USA funded and military-supported Jewish Israelis suffer more than Arabs either within Israel or within Israeli-controlled land? LOL
I have admired (revered) Gideon Levy, his writings, and his courage for years. It is people like him, Amira Hass, Philip Weiss, Amy Goodman, Glenn Greenwald, etc., etc. (along with the character of my Jewish personal friends) , who – in spite of all the harm done by Israel, Zionism, and the Israel Lobby – have helped me avoid falling into the trap of anti-Semitism.
I am sure that this is true of a great many other literate non-Jews, and it is something that Zionists (especially the hard-core kind) should spend a lot of time mulling over.
I would like to modify the last word of the first paragraph of my previous comment to read “anti-Semitism in the abstract”. Unlike some Jewish PIPs (progressive including Palestine) such as perhaps Philip Weiss, I do feel that under current political conditions the growth and spread of anti-Semitism “in the abstract” (i.e., not personally directed) is a danger for American society.
So, whale master, what’s your point? That the USA should continue to rubber stamp Israel right or wrong, and give its tax money and soldiers to do so?
Commit to avoid anti-semitism, even the ones that irritate you.
Otherwise your politics devolve into, “I’ll treat you considerately, IF you believe the same thing as me.”
That would be failing the test of humanism.
Citizen, I am wondering how you could have so misread the gist of my comment. Could it be that you are looking for antagonists in the wrong places?
(BTW, I gave up sailing the high seas decades ago.)
“in spite of all the harm done by Israel, Zionism, and the Israel Lobby – have helped me avoid falling into the trap of anti-Semitism.”
Sometimes Richard Witty has a legitimate point. And he has one here, though he doesn’t express it very well. He talks about people you disagree with–well, that’s not it. You’re quite right to be angry with Israeli atrocities and those who defend them.
That said, there should be no temptation to be anti-semitic under any circumstances. You can despise the ideology, but when you start thinking in terms of people themselves, being anti-X is a mistake. A large group of members of group X might support atrocity Y—that should not make you think in racist terms about group X.
Sadly, the temptation is there. It stems from the impression of overwhelming Jewish support for Israel’s unconscionable actions, and Israel’s own fallacious claim to be the “State of the Jews”. Even intelligent, well-meaning souls find themselves asking “what is it with these people?” Such generalisations are always wrong, but they are sometimes understandable. The number of such “good” anti-Semites is growing, as the truth about Israel gets wider circulation and as Jewish organisations step up their unquestioning support for Israel. How convenient for Israel. How sad for our societies.
Hasn’t Gideon come out strongly for a two-state solution, and in opposition to BDS?
Great. And you and your son look at the USA as merely a toad stool from which to
frolic in Jewish fun waters. You can argue with your son all you want as far as what’s
best for the Jews, Richard Witty; we all know neither of you care about what’s best
for most North Americans.
What did my comment have to do with your raging, “citizen”.
You need a p-38 to open the can, “witty.”
Read The last refuge
snippet:
Even if Levy had come out against BDS, that would be neither here nor there with respect to his courage in illuminating the horrors of the occupation. One doesn’t have to agree with everything someone else says or does just because one admires that person’s morals or courage.
Laura Rozen on her ‘Politico’ blog reported that the ‘Israel-First’ communal leaders were addressed by Obama’s Middle East strategist, Dennis Ross (a Zionist Jew), in Washington’s Synogogue before their march onto Capitol Hill – to receive more assurances from America’s pro-Israel political leaders against Iran. Obama’s Under Secretary of States for Political affairs, William Burns (a Zionist Jew). Both told the conference that Obama administration is committed to Israeli desire not to let Iran become a nuclear power – and that it is planning to put-in-place more strict sanctions against Tehran by the end of September and revist further by the end of the year.
And let us not ignore the Mossad agent and now president Nicolas Sarkozy, who in June 2008 put his two-cents worth of his French Jewishness (his mother is a Spanish Jew) to the great applause from the Zionist terrorists in the Knesset : “I reiterate here in the clearest manner. As far as France is concerned, a nuclear Iran is totally unacceptable. France is dtermined to continue to lead, along with its partners, a policy that integrates gradually intensifying sanctions with openness, in case Iran choose to honour its international obligations”.
“Jewish Conference on Islamic Iran”
link to rehmat1.wordpress.com
Judea and Samaria and all of Jerusalem are liberated Israeli Land.
Tell us when did it ever belong to Palestinians? Answer Never. It was never a Pal land to
begin with, so your question is invalid. The Palestinians never governed or controlled any land before 1993. To make it simple, please tell me one
Palestinian President before 1948. Keep thinking. The Palestinians want a capital, which they never had, in a country that never existed.
Israel existed 1500 years before Muhammad was born. Look at Islamic countries and look at
Sharia laws. Its a brutal, violent and an intolerant religion. It produces the most inhumane people on this planet. Besides Saudi Arabia and Egypt, the
entire Middle East and North Africa was never Arab or Muslim. The thieving Arabs stole all the land from the Native peoples in the Middle East in the 7th century and forced everyone they colonized, to become Muslim. Anyone that didn’t convert, had there heads cut off. The Jews resisted the terrorist Muhammad and didn’t convert.
There is a primary historical fact, that must be established now. There has never been, I repeat NEVER been, a civilization, Entity, or a nation referred
to as “Palestine” There was never a Palestinian tribe, and there was never a Palestinian country in the Land of Israel to begin with! Arab culture that allows honor killings to be legal. Israel is not for sale. It is not a pie to be sliced up and served to a clan of killers and their supporters.
1: When did Jerusalem serve as a capital to any Arab Country ? Never.
2: When did Jerusalem serve as a Palestinian capital ? Never.
3: Only Israel have had Jerusalem as there capital in
Ancient and modern times. Jerusalem was never in history an Arab capital and never will be one.
4: How many times is Jerusalem mentioned in the Koran? Zero. Was Mohammed to so badly educated, he could not utter the word “J-e-r-u-s-a-l-e-m”
A few actual facts:
Before the Israelites, the land belonged to the Canaanites. The Israelites were a Canaanite group who conquered and displaced other Canaanite tribes in a genocidal campaign.
Jerusalem was a Canaanite city founded by the Jebusites. If we are going back to origins, then, the Israelites have no claim on it.
After the Romans killed and enslaved the Judean terrorists, initiating the diaspora, some of the Canaanite/Samaritan/Hebrew population remained in the land they renamed Syria Palestina, after enemies of the Israelites. Many of them converted to Christianity. This population was later conquered by the Arabs and later the Ottomans, and many of them converted to Islam. Today they are called “Palestinians,” but they are who they have always been, the descendants of the Canaanite tribes, including the Israelites.
In the 20th century, this population, the descendants of the Judeans, was conquered by Europeans who expelled the descendants of the Israelites and took their place, establishing a regime based on hate, prejudice and lies. As well, apparently, on ignorance.
potsherd, if you could recommend one book that gives an honest (I know, we all have our own versions of the truth, but you know what I mean) accounting of the history of the region, and that is quite readable (not too academic), what would it be? Thanks.
As Golda Meir brilliantly said, there is no such thing as the “Palestinian” people. They are nothing more than a mixed multitude of unwanted Arabs from every Arab country. Arab expansioninsm is their historic trait. What started as a bunch of tribes out of Arabian
peninsula had occupied the whole Middle East and North Africa and forced everyone to convert to Islam. They just can’t live with a fact that anyone would resist them.
They just can’t live with a fact that anyone would resist them.
I find it amusing when less balanced colonials unconsciously and transparently project their own feelings and perceptions onto those they see as their enemies. ‘Arabs understand nothing but force!’ is one of my favorites.
Golda Meir was reared privileged in the USA, always protected by goy cops and soldiers. She eloped to Israel and claimed the land Jews increasingly occupied after WW2 (think, this was during the time of the genesis of “Crimes Against Humanity” and the international humane rejection for the first time in human history of “Might Makes Right”), was “a land without people, for a people without land.”
She used colonial expansion (with the support of the Goy power winners) in the name of Shoah surviors to circumvent
the basic humane principle established at Nuremberg in the wake of WW2.
Israel’s current policy is the deepest negative irony, both as to those who actually suffered in the Shoah and to those who died in WW2 attacking the Nazis and Imperial Japan.
Ed is innaccurate.
Whether there was a self-identified “Palestinian people” at the time of Golda Meir’s opportunistically quoted statement is a different question.
There IS now, and therefore the Palestinian people deserve the right to functionally self-govern, functionally meaning substantively not token.
The statement “all of the land is Israel, God promised it to us”, is a revision of Torah (a very grievous sin to revise Torah, even posting on this Shabbas, in the name of Torah, is odd. I’m doing it too.)
Jewish identity and population and NEED for self-governance as a nation will not disappear. Palestinian identity and population and NEED for self-governance as a nation will not disappear.
Any fantasies by anyone that that will change in the foreseeable future, either by annexation, forced removal, or magic single-state, is exerting cruelty on the civilians of the region, and on the world for the dogmatism implied.
The two-state solution is the ONLY possible one currently. The only condition in which the single-state solution would be more democratic than the two-state is if a super-majority in each of Israel and Palestine prefer civilist emphasis to nationalist or religious.
And, that is FAR from the case, and growing even farther from the case by the isolation implied in BDS.
Sounds good, tastes like shit.
Ed is innaccurate
But his heart is in the right place, hmm?
Ah, I think you are correct that the Jews do not want a secular single state; I’m not
at all certain you are right that the Palestinians wouldn’t grab it if allowed. Where do you get your consensus about the Palestinians, from Hamas’s military leaders?
Richard Witty, why stop with the nonsense.
You know you want a 1 state solution.
You figure this is the Arabs best way of eliminating Israel.
Look the Arabs think since a Kurd named Saladin was dumb enough to go along with the one state solution, so might an Israeli leader.
How did that one state solution work out for the Kurds?
Didn’t work out to good.
LOL Now I’ve heard everything! Witty hates Israel! Who knew?
Are you joking Ed? Have you read my comments here at all?
Richard Witty, the Palestinians twice this decade were offered a state and they rejected it.
Cant you see, having a conflict is far more useful to them then a solution would ever be. The Palestinians are Rejectionists.
Olmert offered Abbas 94% of the West Bank, 6% of Israel and a safe-passage corridor from Gaza to the West Bank. Olmert offered to divide Jerusalem. The Holy Basin of Jerusalem would be under no sovereignty at all and administered by a consortium of Saudis, Jordanians, Israelis, Palestinians and Americans. Regarding refugees, Olmert says he rejected the right of return and instead offered, as a “humanitarian gesture,” a small number of returnees, although “smaller than the Palestinians wanted—a very, very limited number.”
Saeb Erekat, the chief Palestinian negotiator, confirmed that Olmert had made the offer.
Well, I think this is just adding more evidence to state what everyone should already know: The main deal-breakers are the Palestinians wanting to flood Israel with millions of Arabs.
The Palestinians want 2 states.
Any fool can see this.
I am a strong defender of Zionism, and if I were Arafat, I would have rejected the two generations of Israeli offers.
I just would have responded to it with a counter-offer and a brainstorm of how to get there tangibly and politically.
Its actually irrelevant to the question “who is to blame”, if the real question is to realize a just peace.
If your goal is something different than that, say annexation in a one-way heart-valve, then you should state that overtly.
Every tangible difference can be reconciled where there is the will to. And, while it may be rational for Israel to reject a particular proposal, it is NOT rational for Israel to reject
the pursuit of peace.
Ed sounds like he is from the Kach or Moledet parties. I’d bet he liked Meir Kahane a lot. He is probably missing him now.
Many people aren’t AGAINST a two-state solution per se. They just happen to look at the facts on the ground and realize it’s an impossibility.
So, they’re not unsupportive of the two-state “solutions” because they don’t want peace, or because they just like to antagonize, or any other assorted reasons, rather they are looking at the situation in front of them and seeing that there is no way now for a viable Palestinian state.
The two-state solution is possible, but is being divested in by “activists” that imagine a parallel between Israel/Palestine and South Africa, and are particularly too lazy and too unimaginative to persuade.
Any possibility that a two-state solution could succeed is being eroded by people who reject any actual means of achieving it.
When you die with the Palestinian state unborn, you can let your last words be congratulations to yourself for killing it in the womb.
The two state solution is already dead, now it is time for a single state democracy. This will be recognizable to the world, as the Palestinians claim their rights just like the South Africans
What do you imagine will happen to the “settlers”. I imagine that they will become raving homicidal holy warriors if they are removed from large parts of the territories, not unlike jihadis. Beware the unrighteous Jews and the arabs will be like the walking dead. They have been left alone and wink wink let do what is convenient for the state. The army is largely behind their acts. Get a grip Richard!!
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The world’s jews can only be assured of a place of refuge in Israel from the default anti-semitic stance taken by the world’s goys eternally. Jews want an insurance policy in the form of a landed sovereign Jew state, against the goy neighbor around the world. Israel is a Jewish State. That’s why the one-state solution will never sell. OTH, a two-state
solution is also anti-semitic in the sense that the world’s goy’s don’t seem to acquience
in a rump state, not really sovereign, for the Palestinians. Ergo. Israel and USA AIPAC
cannot agree to either a single or double state solution. The result is surely WW3. I’d say in the next decade. The results of that war cannot be forseen, given all the factors. The only thing I am sure of is that the USA’s citizens, representing the most powerful
collective on earth, will pay the price as if they had been all along galley slaves in
in some narrow centuries old ship.
WWIII, Citizen, is more likely to come about in consequence of Israel’s aggression against Iran and others of its neighbors, rather than the issue of the settlements. Recent history is shown that the world is likely to acquiesce with the reduction of the Palestinians to a state of permanent statelessness, rather than do what is necessary to challenge Israel over this.
The most disturbing development is Obama apparently making the deal to support Israel on the Iran front in exchange for Netanyahu screwing him on the Palestinian front. Because Obama is the sucker.
“I don’t get to feel proud as a Jew very often these days…”
You may be very surprised to learn, Phil, that Judaism is a religion, as well as a social identity! No, really, it’s true.
And if you are a Jew, you are proud of Judaism, no matter or even in spite of what any other person calling themselves a Jew might do or say.
Did it ever occur to you that depending on the actions of other human beings to be proud of your religion is no way to live?
If that’s a problem for you, just quit, and save us all some trouble.
I am proud of Judaism, the religion, and proud of being a Jew, every single day of my life. And there’s lots of hope: We stopped offering freshly killed burnt sacrifices, why, we may even give up on circumcision some day. I know it’s hard to believe, but it doesn’t make your Jewish dick any larger. Quite possibly the reverse.
The Jewish admission that we have failed God, and it is not God who has failed us, is what I am most proud of. Very few religions have the cajones (that’s Yiddish for “moral courage”) to admit that basic fact.
Er, Mooser, here’s an analogy you can pick apart to show us more of your universal light:
Should I, for example, be proud of being raised as a Catholic despite the Spanish Inquisition? Religion is as Religion does in it’s own name by its leaders, no?
Well, Richard Witty, you sure got told off by a true Zionist! About time you listened to a real Jewish patriot like Ed.
That’s why I hate Zionism: It posits that God somehow failed the Jews, instead of the opposite. And it also posits that God wants Jews to be theives and killers, which I know is not true.
Do you mean that since G-D didn’t simply give Jews an earthly land base by magic
that Zionists dismissed G-D and took it upon themselves to take a land base/insurance policy? And No matter the cost to those already living off the land taken for a long time in common sense ken?