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No Jews Speech
The US State Department condemned this speech. The message from State was that “it is wrong to say we support ethnic cleansing when what we really want is just to see all of the Jews eliminated from the region . . . one way or another.”**
** May not be an exact quote, but it expresses the same sentiment.
Published in General
I have a diverse, prosperous, democratic one-state solution in mind, but I don’t think the administration, the State Department, or the PLO will like it.
@zafar: Gideon Levy…
Is a reliable hard Left tool. Thomas Friedman and Jonathan Hari like him a lot. He writes for Haaretz, which is reliably Left. He is the paradigmatic lover of the Palestinians who (according to Tuvia Tenenbom’s interview with him) speaks no Arabic and has no Palestinian friends. His Palestinian colleagues feed him what he needs to know. (Tenenbom’s Catch the Jew is a must read))
Levy wins lucrative international awards for his journalism about Palestinians from anti-Israel NGOs funded by George Soros, by European governments, and by groups like the New Israel Fund (“One high-ranking NIF official has stated that his group not only views Zionism as an anti-democratic movement, but also believes that Israel should eventually yield to the creation of an Arab state where Jews will be a minority.”) Levy works for an international boycott of Israel.
@zafar, the sources you pick require fact checking and fisking to the point that it would be a full time job, so I’ll just mention that the “relief convoy” was organized by the Free Gaza Movement and the International Solidarity Movement as non violent support for Palestinian “armed resistance.” They fully support Hamas’ goals.
The list of Muslim signatories of that letter includes Nihad Awad, one of CAIR’s founders and an architect of the Muslim Brotherhood’s project in the US.He was involved in funding Hamas. His Islamic supremacist/jihadi views and enmity for Western liberal (small l, small l) civilization seem to be the rule and not the exception for those signatories.
Why do people always leave out Palestinian Christians in this kind of discussion? They were dispossessed and made refugees as well you know.
But Jews and Palestians, co-existing in the same space, with equal de jure and de facto civil and political rights?
Yes, that would be what I think is a good outcome. But they both have to want that – and at this point I don’t think Palestinians want to accept Israelis, and I don’t think Israelis want to give up their privilege.
What does Israel need my satisfaction for? I’m not at war with it, and it’s not my tax dollars that subsidise it.
But if they want to make peace with the Palestinians, I think they could start with the plight of the refugees (which is important, and pressing) and deal with boundaries and States later. I think they’re going about it backwards.
Don’t I know it. Hence Israel, right?
You could, but the Greeks would need to do it for it to be real.
Reasonable point about States’ foundings, but I am not really arguing for (or against) a Palestinian State. What seems important to me is the people and their rights.
Will they regain land that was taken from them? Will they regain their homes? Will they have full civil and political rights? Will they be individually treated as equal by the law? That’s the important stuff – whether it happens in a free Palestine, or as a part of Jordan, or as a part of Israel doesn’t matter.
Arguendo – so they defeated the five armies and then expelled local Palestinians from their homes.
Logical connection?
If both groups of refugees freely agree, it could.
He can be a plate of ham if he wants. What he said this time was to the point.
Any plan that does not begin with, “Palestinians renounce terrorism, vigorously prosecute all those who who engage in it (IE no show trials,) and recognize the right of the Jewish state to exist in peace” is a non-starter. There will be peace when the Arabs lay down their weapons and negotiate in good faith. If the Jews lay down their weapons there will be genocide.
Those who name streets after suicide bombers, who celebrate the murder of children, who preach genocide on children’s television have forfeited the moral high ground for all eternity. Period. No buts. No qualifications. No, “But they started it.” Palestine is as close to a culture of evil as exists in the modern world, and nothing will or should change until they fix this.
Is that not Israel today? Explain what you mean by privilege, with specifics. As I am informed that Arab Israelis enjoy all the same civil liberties as Jewish Israelis, to the point of being allowed to sit in Parliament and play on the football team, and enjoy more rights in Israel than they do in any other middle-eastern nation.
Im glad you’re not at war with it, but our tax dollars subsidise alot of things, probably both Israel and Palestine, along with the NGOS, academics, terror cells and other bit-players. Alot of that falls under the umbrella of the UN, but not all of it.
Hence every state that ever existed. Im sure there’s still a few Britons harbouring a grudge against the Angles too. And you might know our own Australian Left constantly wants us to feel guilty for existing.
Its not an ethnic Greek question, it’s about religion and culture. Otherwise why should you care one way or the other about Israelis or Palestinians?
“The only mass ethnic cleansing that took place here was in 1948, when some 700,000 Arabs were forced to leave their lands.
Wealthy Arabs tended to leave before the massive Arab invasion of the new Jewish state. Some Arabs fled the fighting following from the massive Arab invasion of the new Jewish state. That could be described as being “forced to leave,” but should not be classified as deliberate expulsion. Some were coerced to leave by local Jewish forces. Some were begged to stay and left at the behest of international and local Arab leaders.
To lump those together into a global “700,000 forced to leave” is to the point only if your point, as Levy’s points generally are, is tendentious to the point of falsehood.
There was an even greater and more complete ethnic cleansing of the Jews from the Arab world at the same time.
There is no emergency except what Hamas foists on its own people. The supermarket shelves are full. Medical supplies come in through normal channels from Israel – and as opposed to the ones in the flotilla, they have not expired.
But the Arabs don’t want anything “through Israel” (=validated by security people). They want it on their own terms, which includes accompanied by arms. Spare us the tears. Either you know this and are dishonest or you are ignorant of the facts. But after this long, any ignorance you have must be willful.
[Attn CoC Master – this guy wants me and my family dead. Cut me some slack please.]
The Jews have the deed to their land second only to that of the Chinese in their own.
This goes double for the Temple Mount, and certainly all of Jerusalem, and the whole slope on down to the Jordan.
That’s not even hostility. That’s just common sense.
Did you know that there were once Jews in Libya? There aren’t anymore, because they were forced to flee with little more than the clothes on their back.
Iraq used to have a large Jewish population too, many of them successful merchants, but they were driven out too, again, leaving substantial wealth and property in their countries of origin.
Likewise, the Jews of Tunis, Lebanon, Yemen, and Egypt. Iran still has a few Jews, but most of them have been driven out, and the remainder of Syria’s historic Jewish communities has been escaping, once again, as refugees, over the last few years. Morocco was different; in spite of pogroms and discrimination, the King offered them some protection, and many Moroccan Jews in Israel still hold the King in esteem.
Most of these Jews came to Israel, although a lot went to France (and many are now reconsidering Israel.) The reason that they are no longer refugees is that Israel, often under difficult conditions, gave them a home, and not just a grudging refugee status.
Is the glass half empty or half full? Both, of course.
The most obvious examples of discrimination are in the areas of family re-unification (who can and cannot move/return to Israel), right to property (there are Israeli Arabs who can’t live in their own properties) and access to land and housing.
Adalah has a list of fifty Israeli laws which are discriminatory in intent or practice. Roland Nikles comments:
Don’t be silly Israel P, I don’t want you dead, I don’t even necessarily want you to move.
I just think that Israel was gotten immorally. The only thing my words might threaten is your sense of self righteousness, and frankly I doubt that they will.
Greek religion and culture. And people.
Because they’re all human beings. Not good enough?
Podkayne – I’m aware of Mizrahi migration to Israel, and how that reflects badly on the Arab countries, but Israel was able to give them a home because it had taken someone else’s home away from them first. That’s also true.
Adalah is an antisemitic organization that lies about Israel. It may tell the truth at times, but is not committed to it programmatically.
Demonization. Deligitmatization. Double standards.
Antisemitic, @zafar. So is Mondoweiss where the Nikles piece you cite and link to appears.
Instead of focusing on Adalah (maybe they’re what you say, maybe you’re trying to demonise and delegitimise them?) how about addressing why you believe some of these laws are in fact not discriminatory against Palestinian Israelis and are not applied in a discriminatory manner?
You could start with the Law Of Return, or the Present Absentee Law, or that one keeping Palestinian spouses of Israeli citizens from joining them in Israel.
“[Aware of thi mizrachi migration to Israel…]
http://www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-13610702
Nice try at deflection, @zafar. Adalah is antisemitic. So is Mondoweiss. Antisemitic. Cited by you as authorities without comment.
Just out of curiosity: Do you also oppose the Palestinian law of return?
Which I think had previously been public lands under the Mandate. If I’m correct, deceptive and double standards.
The Jews took no one’s land. The entire place was a wasteland in the 19th century. When Jews began to return early in the 20th century, the desert changed under their industry. And Arabs came later, in large numbers for jobs and prosperity.
Okay, so you have no specific responses. Fair enough.
What is the Palestinian Law of Return? Which State’s Government passed it and when? What are its words? Do you have a link to it?
Please comment on the proposed Judenrein nature of the Palestinian state envisioned by the PA. We already know what Hamas thinks.
But if you’re not correct:
Slightly overstated but essentially true. We were talking about the 19th century settlers last night at dinner. I’ve read straight-up histories, but James Mitchener’s sweeping historical novel The Source was a good read 20 yrs ago and I bet is still.
Baloney.
Read Joan Peters’ From Time Immemorial.
Edit to add: Mark Twain was the one that described the land as a wasteland upon his visit.
Oh Lidens….
Finkelstein on Peters’ book. From which:
And here’s Yehoshua Porath on the same subject: