You report that Israeli Ambassador Michael Oren says that Palestinians are doing fine with water. This is a complete misrepresentation.
I just dug up this short video done as part of TVE’s Earth Report show, circa 2004. It shows Jeff Halper (of ICAHD) trying to prevent the IDF from destroying a farmer’s water reservoir. Obviously the crisis goes back further than 2004, but this is a good and modest demonstration of it, and is how I first learned of Halper.
Related posts:
- Jerusalem Post reporter says she is not allowed to go into West Bank
- Michael Oren is about to become single loyalty. Before he was just dual
- Michael Oren is about to become single loyalty. Before he was just dual
- Diamond King Leviev’s Land Grab in the West Bank
- UN: Israel Has Increased Checkpoints and Roadblocks in West Bank
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Good catch!
This is the kind of thing that Americans are never allowed to see.
What cruel ugly people to do this. Dr. Norman Doidge is right about the brain and culture.
Again, I ask, MRW, who is Dr
Doidge? I never found him in our last exchange on this subject.
And can’t Palestinians just drink out of the sewer? Why do they feel the need to curtail Israeli swimming pools? They have no class.
What is the overall water plan for the region?
It is an ecological problem and social distribution problem. Is it your contention that the water table is declining (I’ve heard that it is down 100 feet from 50 years ago.) When I hiked with Bedouin in the Negev, they told that the water table was lower than their traditional wells, and that in the 70’s we could have drunk at wells along the trail to the Dead Sea from Arad, but there was no longer any water available.
Are you certain of the reasons for that? Do you think the cause is solely Israeli use?
And, if so, do you have impressions on the balance of water use that SHOULD be for industrial use, versus power, versus agricultural, versus leisure use, versus hotel fountains, versus personal?
Phil, Do you?
You are making that judgement now, not only a suggestion that the issue deserves inquiry.
Witty the problem is that ISRAELIS ARE STEALING EVERYONE ELSE’S WATER. From the West Bank, from Golan and even in effect from Gaza by demolishing their water treatment facilities. Amnesty International is merely the latest organization to report about that.
That’s not a “ecological or social distribution” problem any more than the Holocaust was a “demographic” problem.
They’re also interested in stealing the Lebanese Litany River that suddenly and foxily veers west some 25 kilometers from their border, pouring itself into the Mediterranean Sea instead.
Not to mention the truth about Israeli water wastage and water pollution – in a land where water is in a crisis of short supply.
Environmentally speaking, the Israelis are living way beyond their water means without a care for the future.
What’s the point in going through all the trouble of fighting and dieing for a country when your lifestyle itself is patently self-destructive.
Is it unpatriotic that I increasingly find myself asking myself the same question as an American citizen, Taxi? I’d like to think that real patriotism is respecting the past and the future of my country simultaneously.
Indeed, if water was an ecological problem, why are the settlements allowed to build swimming pools and waste water so grautitously?
Chaos,
I think real patriotism and self-respect are inseparable. If one has a healthy lifestyle, they become part of their country’s progress. For example, I can categorically state that I have solved my part of our country’s ‘health-care crisis’. Long story short: I became very sick five years ago, I went to doctors/specialists and in fact they made my illness worse, practically killing me. Under their care my weight had dropped to a pitiful 78 pounds and I was in severe pain 24 hours a day. One day I decided to stop going to doctors and took it upon myself to learn about biology and nutrition. I studied ‘macrobiotics’ at home and practiced it and it cured me – when I first started practicing it I doubted it would work but I felt I had to try everything under the sun to stop from dying – more than that, it re-constituted and rejuvenated all my vital organs (at 48 I feel better than in my 30’s and as good as 20). Soon as I learned enough and knew how macro worked and why, I canceled my health insurance but kept my accident insurance. Knowing what I know about the human digestive system and what food affects what organ, I will never be sick again because my eating lifestyle is what I call ‘preventative’. This month marks my fifth year without a single moment of illness or body discomfort – no colds, no flu, no upset stomach, no headaches, indigestion, etc. etc. NOTHING!… Yeah I liberated myself from the health-care system and so I am less of a burden on my country – my productivity is reliable and dynamic. I benefit, my family benefits, and so does my country.
This is one small example of patriotism.
Thanks for indulging me and apologies, Chaos, if I seem perhaps, overindulgent.
Not at all, Taxi. That’s a bit heartwarming to hear a story like that.
“You are making that judgement now, not only a suggestion that the issue deserves inquiry.’
That sentence is classic Witty hypocrisy. There’s absolutely no reason why you couldn’t make a larger point about the water issue without turning it into an attack on Phil. If you were genuinely interested in problems of water usage in the Mideast or the American Southwest, or sub-Saharan Africa or wherever, you could raise that issue without attacking Phil or making it seem like you are trying to change the subject in order to divert attention away from Israel’s selfish behavior.
He also constantly puts the lie to his own contention that he is “well-read” on the situation in Israel/Palestine. Here he admits, or perhaps feigns, profound ignorance on the water issue, which is a significant one.
I’ll add that you’d be a more effective propagandist if you were more subtle. Make it seem like you are genuinely interested in the problems of water supply in arid or semi-arid regions with growing populations. Do it without making it seem so obvious that you are attacking Phil and trying to change the subject (Israel’s misbehavior). Given your record, it’s not likely to work, but it has a better shot than doing what you do now.
Did you watch the video Richard? The issue there is more than just inequitable water distribution, although that certainly is part of it. (And are you really pretending that the distributional inequalities are not ethnic and discriminatory?) The IDF’s destruction of private rainwater wells is simply indefensible. It is racist persecution, not simply an administrative problem. Or don’t you agree?
Look at him ignore the video, ignore the evidence, ignore the entire point and try to divert attention to irrelevancies.
I’m going to come to your house, Witty, and turn off the water main. I’m going to sit on your roof and shoot at you if you try to go out to the store for bottled water, and I’ll have the cops arrest any water delivery trucks. If it rains and you try to catch water in buckets, I’ll shoot holes in them. I’ll piss in them, too, just for fun.
And if you complain, I’ll tell you this is not harrassment, it’s a social distribution problem. And probably shoot at you, just for fun.
Good analogy. At a fundamental level he seems quite incapable of feeling empathy for other humans outside of his tribe.
“At a fundamental level he seems quite incapable of feeling empathy for other humans outside of his tribe.”
To be fair, he’s better in the comment section at “Realistic Dove”, where he argues with hardline racist Zionists. I don’t want to go overboard–his stance there is the same here. He supports being kinder to Palestinians on his terms, like a fair number of other liberals. But as we all know, if you go too far (in his eyes) in criticizing Israel, that takes precedence.
RE: “Look at him ignore the video, ignore the evidence, ignore the entire point…” – potsherd
MY COMMENT, SPOKEN WITH A ‘TEXAS TWANG’: Poor Witty! He was born with a silver spoon in his frontal lobe (like George W Bush).
Donald, perhaps Witty does as he does on Realistic Dove for the same reason J-ST does what it does in comparison to AIPAC? Think about it. RW’s goal is always the same, that is “Jewish continuity” uber alles, no matter the cost.
Pure, unadulterated casuistry.
What is the overall water plan for the region?
Obviously part of the Israeli water plan is to hinder and destroy Arab access to it. This is simply a prelude to thievery. Do you think Arab resistance to Israeli destruction of wells and cisterns would not be met with deadly force? The threat of violence underlies all operations against Arab water infrastructure. Do you deny this? These operations are nothing less than state-sponsored armed robbery.
It is an ecological problem …
The ecological and sustainability problems are shared by all peoples living in the region, and they are also irrelevant to the severe imbalance in access to water between Jews and Palestinian Muslims and Christians.
… and social distribution problem.
Your term ’social distribution problem’ is a euphemism for Israeli state-sponsored armed robbery. How exactly are Palestinians supposed to respond to this? How are we in America who are involuntarily taxed and unnecessarily endangered to subsidize Israeli armed robbery supposed to react to this?
RE: “What is the overall water plan for the region?” – guess who
MY COMMENT: The Israelis want an ‘overall water plan’ nearly as much as they want a constitution. It’s just best not to put some things in writing! (I wonder who they learned that from. Hint: Wannsee)
Gee, Dickerson3870, that is an astute comment! “Hint: Wannsee.” My how the Israelis & AIPAC have learned from former tormenters! Why, that’s poetry since Goebbels learned from the Jewish American guy who taught us all to smoke by
displaying chorus girls smoking. I forget his name–Bernays?
witty has left the building again… this happens a lot when folks respond to him!
Colin Murray writes:
“The ecological and sustainability problems are shared by all peoples living in the region, and they are also irrelevant to the severe imbalance in access to water between Jews and Palestinian Muslims and Christians.”
Of course, I agree. The point of all this is that denial of water is oppressive and unnecessary (and probably illegal).
On another point entirely, leaving behind the problem of water.
The formulation was once “Jews and non-Jews” or “Israelis and non-Israelis”, depending. Murray’s formulation “Jews and Palestinian Muslims and Christians” makes it sound as if all Palestinians are Muslims or Christians (as most are, but some may be Druzes, etc.). BUT not all Israeli by-Israel-treated-more-as-Jewish-than-as-Arab persons are Jews; some are Russians who are not Jews but are treated for many purposes as Jews (rather than as “Arabs” to use an Israeli designation aimed, perhaps, at pretending there is no Palestinian people). The Russians were encouraged to come from USSR to Israel to help head off the “demographic threat” and their Jewishness was not very closely examined (at first).
All of this is part of a distressing language-game played by some Israelis. They speak of a “demographic threat” (meaning the situation, approaching or already achieved, in which the “Jews” are outnumbered by the “Arabs” within The Land, professing to be upset by the possibility of no longer being “democratic” or “Jewish”. This is all play-acting, a language-game. The status quo, an undemocratic and apartheid-style one-state arrangement, is as permanent as Israel can make it, and Israel has not the slightest intention of giving citizenship or the vote to the non-Israelis in the West Bank and Gaza. Israel-Palestine is not democratic now, and won’t be later, whatever the “demographics” may be.
Sorry that this riff is not about water, a very serious problem. There is talk of Israel poisoning the land (if not the water) with industrial and nuclear wastes, to say nothing of sewage. anyone know anything about this?
Yes, there are toxic waste dumps in the Arava, poisoning the Bedouin. And infiltrating the aquifer.
http://internationalschoolhouse.org/isramhov.htm
What you mention about mass Russian immigration to Israel also highlights another fun fact about the Zionist “homeland” — it is now a hotbed for the operations of the Russian mafia.
And really virulent anti-semitism from the non-Russian Jews, which they dont like to publicize.
Gee, you mean the “Russian” mafia that the USA’s “best and brightest” ivy leagers
let loose? (And now aren’t those ivy league kids repeating the same process in Obamaland?)
I got that EXACTLY backwards. I meant to write really virulent anti-semitism from the non-Jewish Russians!
Nazi skinheads, many of them. And obviously ignorant of Russian history.
But perhaps not ignorant of certain recycled activites under different names?
This water problem is directly related to one of the big myths about the ‘miracle’ of Israel. Pro-Israeli propagandists rarely mention is today but beginning in the 50s we heard over and over again how the Jews made the desert bloom. This was a direct result of pumping ground water for irrigation. They started pumping from the coastal aquifer. The native Palestinians had been using that aquifer for thousands of years but they recovered it using human labor and traditional wells. The Israeli came in with western pumping systems that could go much deeper. And after about 10 years of this heavy pumping the native wells dried up, ie the water aquifer had dropped. Today it has dropped so far that water from the Mediterranean is flowing in; i.e. salinization of that aquifer. This source of water is so marginal that Israel can no longer support her population and agriculture from that alone. Gaza’s water supply comes is part of the same aquifer. This subject is not talked about that often, but Israel’s need for water is probably a bigger a reason for holding onto the West Bank than are the settlements.
I heard about this. I also heard that the reason for Israel’s interest in Darfur was originally to gain access to Sudan’s significant water from the Ethiopian highlands Ethiopia supplied 85% of the Nile as it flows north:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/africa/4232107.stm
And this from the NYT in 2007
I think of this everytime I see a commercial put out by some Israeli aid group crying into the screen about the poor people of Darfur. If these dont give a shit about the Palestinians, it’s hard to believe they give a green fig for Darfur without some ulterior motive. And lo and behold . . . .
Didn’t proofread. Sorry.
Excellent observation, MRW, and one never made in the USA MSM.
They have also reduced the Jordan River to a sewage ditch, saving one pool that they keep around for the Xtian tourists.
Ariel Sharon greatly favored the agricultural sector, blocking any moves that would have raised agricultural water rates so low that they encouraged waste.
That’s interesting. It does sound like the water problems I’ve read a little about in the American Southwest, where growing populations are depleting supplies of groundwater that can’t be replenished on human timescales, and where different states (and Mexico) fight over who has the right to the water in the Colorado River. It would not surprise me if there were social justice issues involved there too, though not on the scale that we see with Israel/Palestine.
The Colorado River was carved up in 1924. California got approx 4 million acre ft per year (how they measure it), Arizona got approx 2.2 million acre ft/yr, Utah a little less than that if I remember correctly, dont remember if New Mexico got any, but Nevada only got 400,000 acre ft/yr because never in a million years did they think anyone would live there.
Consequently, guess who are the water conservation experts In Nevada? The casino owners. Specifically Steve Wynn, who led the charge to solve it as soon as he got to town in the 80s. The Mirage and Treasure Island, built years and years ago, were double-plumbed to catch all the grey water (shower, bath, sink) and he built water treatment plants in the basements so that he could use the water to irrigate his golf courses and fill his fountains.
Then he invented, or had someone invent, an absolutely revolutionary way to water the golf courses and gardens that was unaffected by the high desert heat, which evaporates 60% of the over-the-ground sprinklers. Incidentally, this invention was so revolutionary that the Arabs (UAE) came over to license his patent, and grow their deserts.
Las Vegas soil is something called coliche (sp? pronounced co-leech-y) and about as hard as tooth enamel, which contributes to lethal flash floods when it rains. It’s like raining on marble. But the soil is really ‘hard’ as a result, meaning super alkaline. You can’t put a metal pipe into the ground without deposits forming, clogging them.
Wynn wanted to run irrigation grids of PVC piping 20″ down under the surface to draw the roots down, and run his grey water through them to irrigate, but the problem was the tiny attachment connecting each square in the grid pattern. They would clog, and he couldn’t be digging up his golf courses to fix them. I don’t know the ins and outs of his final solution, but the connector was so revolutionary that he got an immediate patent; its coupled with a computer monitoring system tied into the water treatment plant, and is in the vanguard of desert irrigation systems worldwide. That’s why I had to laugh that Dan Senor claimed the Israelis invented some world-renowned computerized water conservation irrigation system. They probably licensed Wynn’s, if anything. Why re-invent the wheel.
Wynn told the other casino owners to build their casinos his way, and as a result, all the Las Vegas casinos (except the old dives) are so efficient in their water and electrical use, they return 1/3 of their water to the Colorado River every year. They only use 3% of Nevada’s total water even with all their perfectly green golf courses. Residential customers use 60% to 75% of the remainder, and industry the rest.
So the next time you hear someone go on and on about the wasteful casinos, tell them this story. And these guys started addressing this problem 30 years ago.
Correction: 3% of the Southern Nevada water allotment. Northern Nevada is different.
http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-3392229,00.html
MRW, thank you for this extremely interesting and informative comment.
It’s the rare comments like yours which make reading a comment section worthwhile.
Note bene Richard Witty: This is what a real comment looks like.
I can’t remember Witty ever having written anything with this substance. MRW has contributed more with this single comment to Mondoweiss than Witty does in a year of posting twenty times a day.
MRW & postherd, thank you so much for sharing such key information!
Thanks, Alec and Citizen.
OT,
PulseMedia has a long but fascinating must-keep-a-copy article entitled:
Realite EU: Front group for the Washington based Israel Project?
The well-documented article is a treasure trove of names to keep your eyes open for. http://z.pe/zr6
Stealing Arab water sources for the survival and prosperity of European Jewish settlements in Palestine – has been on the World zionist Movement since the early 19th century. The first water-based European Roshbina Jewish settlement was built in spring and water rich Upper Galilee in 1878. In 1903, the Egyptian government turned-down Zionist movement’s request to divert the course of the Nile River to Sinai and Negev in Palestine to build Jewish settlements. In 1937, the British mandate authories conducted a study to divert water from Yarmuk in Transjordan for its future plan for the partition of Palestine. In 1978, Zionist regime occupied southern Lebanon and took control of Al-Wazzani and Al-Hasbani rivers. In 1982, it extended its control over Litani River. In fact the Zionist robbers pumped Lebanese water to its northern settlements for over two decades until its forces were forced to vacate most of southern Lebanon by Hizb’Allah fighters in 2000.
Israeli theft of Arab water sources
http://rehmat1.wordpress.com/2009/10/29/israeli-theft-of-arab-water-sources/
And now, as the Ynet article above points out, they’re holding on to the Golan for the same reason.
Thanks for sharing, Rehmat! Very interesting indeed.
OK Citizen, I’ll go and find the Doidge posts and repost them here for you.
In the meantime, EVERYONE, enjoy, enjoy, enjoy this great column by Larry Derfner in the Jerusalem Post. Dont miss this one! It’s a keeper. http://z.pe/zGn
Citizen, here’s the Doidge stuff for you. It was in Mr. Moor’s thread.
Citizen, there was one more piece.
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