Such nuances feature prominently in Zahran’s thinking. He is vehemently opposed to what he sees as the cynical exploitation of the Palestinian cause by Arab leaders, a phenomenon which he blames for his own family’s repeated displacement from the outskirts of Jerusalem.
‘As long as the Palestinians fight with the Israelis, no one will turn around and look at what the Arabs are doing to one another’
“They were listening to Nasser’s Egyptian radio [in 1967] saying that ‘the Jews are butchering everyone and raping the women.’ It was one of the ironies that their relatives who stayed saw none of that. We have never had a single relative killed in the so-called ‘Jewish massacres of the Palestinians.’ It shows it is the Arabs who played the greater role in terrorizing the Palestinians and creating Palestinian misery. Nasser’s Egypt actually gave them instructions to leave… and then gave them the promise that it would be a very short time before they’d be back home.”
He says his family suffered the same ordeal in 1948: being pushed to leave their homes in what would become Israel through what Zahran sees as an ongoing, and baseless fear campaign: “They got fooled twice.”
“There is a huge campaign to terrorize the Palestinians. As long as the Palestinians fight with the Israelis, no one will turn around and look at what the Arabs are doing to one another. Look, no one is really reporting much about Assad bombing Palestinian refugees with Mig 29s but you can read all about the latest car accident in Jerusalem,” he says in a refrain often espoused by Arab liberals and dissidents. “The Palestinian cause is a necessity for the Arab regimes — and one of the regimes that prospered most from this is the Hashemite regime.”
0BDS leaders and activists tend to make a lot of noise around what they consider “successful” campaigns, i.e. affirmation of specific calls for boycott. One of their main targets are Israeli products, and more specifically items produced in the Palestinian/ occupied territories.A recent example is the plan to change the labeling of these products in South Africa, A prospect that sent the BDSers to celebrate with joy – Online and offline.What they probably don’t take into account is the fact that these factories they call to boycott and shut down, pay salaries to thousands (around 15,000) of Palestinian workers, receive social benefits and the same paychecks as the Israeli workers.I simply cannot understand this call for boycott. Are thousands of families and individuals becoming unemployed a good thing? Will the fact that they will lose their source of income a reason to celebrate? Is the unholy principle of boycott more important than actual people, with actual lives (Not internet ”personas”) being fired?Take for example the Lipski Plastic Industries factory, located in the Barkan Industrial Zone. There are 80 workers in this factory, 40 out of which are Palestinian. But apparently these concerned workers are simply not part of the BDSers’ plan. No-one cares about them losing their jobs.The away I see it, these factories are small colonies of co-existence, places where Jews and Arabs work together. I don’t see the sense in boycotting (And hoping to shut down) these places.Has anyone heard of a campaign calling to buy Palestinian produce’ rather than boycotting? Of course not, because BDSers believe that hate and destruction are more effective than cooperation and debateThe more I look into this issue’ the more I feel that the BDS activists have, in fact, no real desire of peace and that will do anything in their power to avoid it – As long as their self-righteous facade is kept in tact.All the while, actual Palestinian factories are being bombed and blocked, so normal Palestinians can’t make a living. The point of this boycott is to show the injustice forced upon by Israel.
False. The only places being bombed are the places that Hamas is using as headquarters to fire rockets into Israel. Hamas chooses to fire rockets out of civilian areas, which include neighborhoods, workplaces, schools, and hospitals. Hamas does not care about casualties—in fact, they fire rockets from these places intentionally to create casualties and thus bring more condemnation against Israel. Hamas is to blame for the plight of its people. Boycotting is not solving anything, it is just creating more problems. The real solution would be to stop Hamas from embezzling all the money sent to the Palestinians and for them to use it to help their people instead of buy weapons.
Actually, there have been several occasions where Isreal has bombed none Hamas targets, one example was this Cheese and Yogurt factory, which had been bombed 4 times since the 2008-09 war, and has nothing to do with the conflict.
Furthermore, Hamas has largely upheld the peace treaty with Israel. Rockets are being fired by other militant groups. (You may have to scroll down in order to find the info)
As I have maintained in past blogs, the only way to finally ensure peace, is for Israel to give back the land it took during the 6 Day War through negotiations. That is the only way to solve the conflict.
Hamas can’t control the other terrorist groups, or they don’t want to? They avert their gaze so they can deny responsibility. “Who us? No way! It’s those other terrorists! Really!” No, it’s Hamas, either implicitly or in complicity.
Israel was under constant attack before the Six Day War, so how could anybody think that returning the land would solve a problem that began long before 1967? Especially when Israel evacuated Gaza and was rewarded with rocket attacks. And then there’s the Hamas charter, which calls for the destruction of Israel, borders be damned. Meanwhile, the Palestinians under the PA have refused statehood. They too, refuse to live in peace with a Jewish state.
The way to solve the conflict is to halt all aid to the Palestinians. Force them to take responsibility for their own sorry, self-inflicted state.
Is that the same lack of control Israel has for Jewish Extremists as well? The same extremists attack innocent Palestinians and are considered ‘terrorists’ by the United States? Better look at yourselves before you start blaming others for the lack of peace.
This conflict has changed since the founding of the Israel. For all the talk of destroying it, Palestinians do accept the existence of the Jewish state. This was what lead to the Oslo peace accord. What they don’t accept is the illegal occupation of their land. Even if Israel has removed its ground forces, its domination of Gaza’s airspace, territorial waters, and restrictions on how many people can get out, means that the United Nations and the international community still deems it as occupied. This was the reason why Hamas was democratically elected in 2006.
Furthermore, if you’re going to back your claims that Palestinians don’t want a state, you might want to choose a source that isn’t biased, and actually gives facts. Ehud Olmert never gave offer for land, like most Israeli PM that came before him. The only person who would was Yitzhak, and he was killed for it. Recognition of a Palestinian state is actually good for peace, but Israel has gone so far to stop it, that they’ve actually blackmailed the PA, by threatening to cut off it tax revenues.
As for Camp David, the negotiations failed because refused to give back all the land it took. Most of the Israeli concessions was land that was legally Palestinian land, and accepting the deal would have meant forfeiting what was rightly theirs under international law. It was the standing of the USA that negotiations start with the precondition that the pre-1967 boarders would be the basis of the talks but Israel refused to agree to this. You can read about it here.
As for your solution, if it can be called that, basically shows how completely ignorant Zionists are. Your so wrapped in your paranoia, that you won’t admit the your own faults that fueling the conflict. Get you heads out of yours asses, and make the land offer that proves that Israel does really want peace.
I notice that whenever I argue with an Israel hater, once I poke enough holes in their Israel-hating bubble they start with insults and name-calling. Israel haters can’t stand the intrusion of reality into their “blame the Jews” fantasy world. So in return, thou art an artless beetle-headed foot-licker and a gorbellied flap-mouthed measle.
Then there’s the whining about bias in the sources I use. Bias? You bet, there’s a complete bias toward honesty. You want more bias? Here’s a site exposing the anti-Israel bias at the UK Guardian. Read it and weep. The point is not that there is bias. All sources are biased. The question is: who’s telling the truth? Hint: it ain’t your side.
Then there’s the moral equivalence angle. While the attacks by Jewish extremists are reprehensible, they are condemned by Israeli leadership, unlike Hamas, who takes a “What me worry?” position on their terrorists. And if we look at sheer numbers and fatality rates, there is no comparison to Palestinian homicide bombers, rocket attacks, baby killers, etc.
Palestinian children’s shows are full of anti-Israel incitement and anti-Semitism. Streets and public places are named after terrorist child killers. They do not accept Israel. PA maps show no Israel. Admit it. If Hamas ever decided to live in peace with Israel, the blockades and controls would be gone. They want a state of war against Israel and then they want to whine to the world that Israel isn’t being nice to them. Again, they don’t have to take responsibility because they have cheerleaders like you.
It seems that if the Palestinians don’t get exactly what they want, rather than negotiate some more, they rev up the killing machine. Of course, now Abbas is avoiding negotiations altogether on a Palestinian state that could have been in place since 1948.
Why should Israel give back any more land in return for nothing (or for rocket attacks in the case of Gaza)? Israel gave back the Sinai in return for peace, but we’ll see if the Muslim Brotherhood wants to continue that peace or if they, in order to take Egyptians’ minds off of how badly their being burned by their own government and turn their citizens’ savagery toward the Jews, repudiates the agreement. How many times are the Islamic nations allowed to start wars and promote terrorism with no consequences? How many “do overs” are they allowed in their quest to destroy the Jewish state? When has anything ever been demanded of the Palestinians in return for the “painful concessions” always asked of Israel?
Ok, lets get some things straight before we continue.
First off, I “do not” hate Israel. I believe that Israel has the right to exist, and I also believe in the two state solution. I also find it terribly ironic when you talk about how “Israel Haters” are stuck in their “Blame the Jews” Fantasy world, when you yourself are stuck in what could be best described as a “Blame the Arabs” mentality. This is why I called Zionists ignorant, because even I can admit that I can be wrong sometimes, but Zionists can’t.
Secondly, I do not support Hamas. They are a terrorist organisation, and have committed crimes against the population of Israel. My main arguments are against Israeli foreign policy, and how Israel is the one blocking the route to peace.
So lets get started. So that site you linked to me, while I can’t go through every it posts about the Guardian, being it would take far too long, I can talk about one such story. It uses the story as an example of bias, but it comes from the comment is free section, where anyone can write whatever they want. Even I would admit that the article doesn’t comprehend the full nature of the conflict.
As for the other stories about the Guardian, they mostly talk about how the Guardian is failing to report the attacks by Militants. I’ve already talked about the subject in another blog, so here it is:
“Its a sad fact that only death can bring the worlds’ attention. Right know, the biggest stories that are coming out of the Middle East are about the Syrian civil war, and the bombings in Iraq. Stories comes and goes, and only those with the biggest headlines get the most attention. Still, just because newspapers are limited, doesn’t mean that the internet isn’t. The fact that we can learn about this here is a bigger triumph for journalism. It’s just up to us to interpret these facts.”
Even you have to admit that at the end of the day, It’s the facts that matter. Even though the Israeli Leadership condemned these attacks, they have done nothing to prevent further attacks from happening. In fact, it continues to become worse. Even in face of this, nothing seems to have happened to stop these attacks. As for your comparison, it doesn’t really match up when you take into account the Gaza war, where 926 civilians were killed. You can see why Gazans don’t view Israel in a favorable light.
This whole conflict is based on a eye for an eye mentality. One side attacks, and the other side retaliates. Only Israel has the power to end it, because it is occupying land that legally belongs to Palestine. By giving the land back through negotiations, Hamas and other Militants will lose their support, and their power. They were elected by the people of Gaza, they can be overthrown by the people of Gaza.
Israel however, has refused to agree to this. You claim that Israel has made efforts to give back land, but you don’t back it up. The truth is while Israel talks of peace, settlers continue move into illegally occupied land. They know that this will disrupt the peace process, but they carry on anyway.
The fact is that the peace process has not gone far enough. Nothing has accomplished for the last decade, and its that reason that the attacks keep on coming. It’s sad to see it go this way, and is also sad how neither side has made any mass attempts of starting the peace process. The only thing they keep doing is point fingers at each other.
Still, I maintain that Israel is the one that needs to make the first move. It’s continuing occupation of the Gaza strip, and the West bank settlements are the main cause for the conflict today. Arabs have moved on from trying to get rid of Israel. Now they want is rightfully theirs under UN law.
Ahh, so you take the “moral equivalence” route. I know others who take the same mode of thought. You’re all wrong, and here’s why. You have to ignore certain facts in order to still accept it, for example, the two state solution. It doesn’t matter whether or not you believe in it. Neither Hamas nor the PA, not to mention the rest of the Islamic world believes in it. They have the firearms to wreak violence in quest of their one state solution. That trumps both of our keyboards.
Speaking of Hamas, they admit that 600-700 of their terrorists were killed during Cast Lead. As they wear no uniform it’s easy to pretend that they were civilians. That doesn’t leave room for the previously claimed 926 civilian deaths. Of course Hamas conducts operations from heavy populated areas, using Gazans, especially children as human shields. They militarize schools, hospitals, and mosques hoping that civilians will be killed so that Israel will be condemned.
And there is no “eye for an eye mentality”. Hamas targets women and children. The IDF targets Hamas. Yes, unfortunately Gazan civilians die. Review my section on Hamas’ use of human shields.
You ignore generations of violence to pretend that this is strictly a modern conflict that began after the 6-Day War. Arabs began slaughtering Jews even before Israel became a state. Recall the Hebron Massacre in 1929, and that was only one of many. If the facts matter, then look at facts previous to 1967.
Your analysis of negotiations is, I’m sorry to say, naïve at best. Yes, Hamas was freely elected, but don’t ever look at them to give up power. Any support that Hamas has lost has been due to corruption and the cruel treatment of Gazans. The only way they can be overthrown is through violence by the Palestinian people. Don’t count on any more free elections in Gaza, at least with non-Hamas candidates. For more on this subject, see Iran, Iraq, Syria, Egypt, and the rest of the Islamic world.
How does the land belong to “Palestine?” Egypt and Jordan occupied it from 1948 to 1967 and nobody cared. Before that Jews who moved into Palestine, a backwater of the Ottoman Empire acquired land legally.
It’s time to recognize that the peace process is a myth. As I previously stated, absent the constant refusal of the Arabs to accept it, there could have been a Palestinian state back in 1948. Current Palestinian leadership refuses to negotiate, and previous Palestinian administrations have duped a number of American and Israeli leaders. Good faith was never a Palestinian tactic. That’s obvious by Palestinian intifadas, terrorism, rocket attacks, riots, etc.
Since the Palestinians aren’t interested in peace, but demand to simply be handed everything they demand like a nursery full of spoiled children, why not expand settlements? Palestinians need to be held to the same standard as ever other nation if they expect to become a nation and to know that the longer they refuse peace the more they will lose. It’s called learning to taking responsibility for one’s actions, something that has never been demanded of the Palestinians. By not holding Palestinian leadership accountable (and I don’t mean in the morally equivalent manner you profess) the world allows and encourages Palestinian obstreperousness, hate, and violence.
Who is really willing to live in peace? Look at each society and what they value. (Refer back to the Palestinian public places named after terrorists). There are Jewish, Muslim, and Christian citizens of Israel with equal rights. Not so in Gaza or the West Bank. The Christian minorities are shrinking in both places (while growing in Israel). And Jews? Yeah, right
Shame, I thought you actually address the settlement issue, but you continue to blame the Palestinians for practically everything. You even go on to repeat the claim that everyone is out to destroy Israel, despite the PNA, the legitimate representatives of the Palestine people, recognising Israel’s right to exist. You can show me that link from before, but it’s ridiculous to say this is what the actual leadership thinks. You can point to Hamas’s charter as well, but in the end, their power comes from anger from Israel, and it’s continued occupation of its land.
Yes, Hamas has committed atrocities during the war, but this does not excuse Israel from doing the same thing. During the war, Israel committed similar atrocities, including the shelling of neighborhoods, and using children as human shields. You can find more examples here. True, there a long list of massacres of Jews, though I find it funny that you use an example where in the same event, 435 Jews were saved by Arab families, but there is also a long list of Arab massacres too. Like I said, in the end, it really does become an eye for an eye.
It is also true that Hamas won’t give up power that easily, and that they have abused their power, but they are not stupid. In the face of vast opposition to them, they will back down. They have already shown this, when they dropped their support for President Assad, even at the cost of Iranian funding. Your view that the Islamic world rules against its people is completely out of touch with the realities on the ground, and reflects Israel’s own paranoia.
As for your argument that the land didn’t belong to Palestine in the first place, it is a view only shared by Israel. The rest of the international community however, agrees that the land taken during the 6 day war, still constituted as territorial violations, and thus illegal. Egypt and Jordan both represented the Palestine territories, and passed these claims onto the PLO. You can brag about the technicality all you like, the international community has spoken.
As I said before, Israel has to give back the land it has taken if it is serious about peace. Everyone agrees that it is the settlements that are the main roadblocks to peace, but Israel continues to increase their size. You call Palestinians spoiled children, but this evidence proves that Israel is the spoiled brat, kicking and screaming, until it only gets what it wants. It’s this reason why this conflict continues, and it doesn’t rest on Hamas’s shoulders. It lies on Israel’s.
Gasp! I’ve been shamed. Wait, no I haven’t. I have addressed the settlement issue. Israel is right. The Palestinians and the “international community” (and that includes the EU) are wrong. The Palestinians are wholly to blame for the conflict. As I’ve already stated, the Palestinians could have had their own nation as far back as 1948, (as much as you hate to go back any further than 1967 (and we thought young-earth-creationists were bad)) a time when they and the international community referred to them as Arabs, had they, as Israel did, accept the U.N. partition plan. As for giving up more land when nothing is expected of the Palestinians, why? Giving up Gaza has proven once again that appeasing terrorists is a losing strategy. By the way, I never said everyone is trying to destroy Israel, only the Islamic world and their anti-Semitic fellow travelers.
The problem with your repeated appeal to the opinions of the international community is that the international community (once again, including the EU) does not have Israel’s best interests at heart. Israel does. And as your mother must have told you as you were growing up – the fact that everybody else is doing it or thinking it, doesn’t make it right, especially when it is the current UN that seems to be the voice of the international community. I would have more faith in the international community if they were as concerned with actual humanitarian disasters like Sudan, Somalia, Tibet, as they were every time Israel is forced to defend itself. I would have more faith in them if they could respond to disasters as quickly and as efficiently as Israel did after the Haitian, Thai, and Japanese disasters.
Why shouldn’t some Arabs help Jews? They aren’t all terrorists, right? Some are able to reject their governmental and societal incitements to Jew-hatred (a hatred that stretches back long before the founding of modern Israel). Comparing the Israeli vs Arab use of human shields; Hamas etc., still uses them to increase casualties, especially civilian casualties, and of course, nobody in the international community cares. Due to condemnation from the international community and internal soul-searching though, Israel no longer engages in that practice.
Your list of alleged list of Arab massacres isn’t very long, but I guess you have to take whatever you can get from whatever source you can find. I’m surprised neither list has the “Jenin Massacre” nor Mohammed al-Dura on them. Another point of interest is that massacres of Jews took place whenever the local Arab population could be riled up enough to attack the Jews. The alleged massacres of Arabs took place during wars either started or provoked by Arabs.
As much as I like to add a bit of levity to this discussion to keep myself entertained, you’ve outdone me in the humor department with the contention that “Egypt and Jordan represented the Palestinian territories and passed these claims onto the PLO” and even found a source for the claim on Wikipedia. But according to this Wikipedia page, Jordan annexed the “West Bank” and offered Jordanian citizenship to WB Arabs. The use of nameless “handpicked representatives” should have been the give-away that this may be another fraudulent claim. And here, Egypt administered Gaza through a military governor. No mention of any “representation”.
In short, Israel is right. Palestinians are wrong. There is no moral equivalence, eye-for-an-eye, or tit-for-tat between them. The Palestinians and their allies-of-convenience, will easily lie if necessary to demonize Israel. It’s a shame that so many people fall for it.
In 1950, UNRWA defined a refugee as someone who had “lost his home and his means of livelihood” during the war launched by Arab/Muslim countries in response to Israel’s declaration of independent statehood. Fifteen years later, UNRWA decided — against objections from the United States — to include as refugees the children, grandchildren, and great-grandchildren of those who left Israel. And in 1982, UNRWA further extended eligibility to all subsequent generations of descendants — forever.
Under UNRWA’s rules, even if the descendant of a Palestinian refugee has become a citizen of another state, he’s still a refugee. For example, of the 2 million refugees registered in Jordan, all but 167,000 hold Jordanian citizenship. (In fact, approximately 80 percent of Jordan’s population is Palestinian — not surprising, since Jordan occupies more than three-fourths of the area historically referred to as Palestine.) By adopting such a policy, UNRWA is flagrantly violating the 1951 Convention Relating to the Status of Refugees, which states clearly that a person shall cease to be considered a refugee if he has “acquired a new nationality, and enjoys the protection of the country of his new nationality.”
Just who is and who is not a “settler” in the land in question?
As I like to remind folks, when the United Nations Relief Works Agency—UNRWA—was set up to assist Arab refugees, the very word refugee had to be redefined to assist those people. So many Arabs were recent arrivals—settlers—themselves into the Palestinian Mandate that UNRWA had to adjust the very definition of “refugee” from its prior meaning of persons normally and traditionally resident to those who lived in the Mandate for a minimum of only two years prior to 1948.
Thousands of Arabs had come with Muhammad Ali and Ibrahim Pasha’s invading armies from Egypt in the latter 19th century and remained behind and settled the land.
During the mandatory period after World War I, the Minutes of the League of Nations’ Permanent Mandates Commission recorded additional scores of thousands of Egyptian, Syrian, and other Arab settlers entering into the sparsely populated Mandate of Palestine.
It is estimated that for each one of these incoming Arabs who were recorded, many others crossed the border under cover of darkness to enter into one of the few areas in the region where any economic development was going on because of the influx of Jewish capital. These folks later became known as “native Palestinians”…the only folks, according to Mr. Obama, entitled to any rights in the disputed territories.
Meanwhile, hundreds of thousands of Jewish refugees from some of those same “Arab” countries—Syria, Egypt, Iraq, Morocco, Yemen, and so forth—became labeled, by folks like the President, as illegal settlers.
This influx of Arabs into the land is historically well documented (correspondence of Prime Minister Churchill, President Franklin D. Roosevelt, and so forth) for those who want to seriously know the facts…which many folks don’t.
While this is not to say that there were not native Arabs also living in the Mandate of Palestine, it is to say that many, if not most, of the Arabs were also relative newcomers--settlers—themselves. Many travelers in the 19th century—including Mark Twain—wrote of the sad, depopulated condition of the Holy Land.
So, despite the President’s and State Department’s lectures and nastiness towards those who disagree with them, truth be told, many of the villages set up in the West Bank and elsewhere were recent, 20th century settlements established by Arab settlers.
And there were Jews whose families never left Israel/Judea/Palestine as well over the centuries, despite the tragedies of two, well-documented major wars for their freedom and independence with Rome, forced conversions of the Byzantines, the Diaspora, Crusades, and other nightmares as well.
Mohammed Nabil Taha, an 11-year-old Palestinian boy, died this week at the entrance to a Lebanese hospital after doctors refused to help him because his family could not afford to pay for medical treatment.
The tragic case of Taha highlights the plight of hundreds of thousands of Palestinians who live in impoverished refugee camps in Lebanon and who are the victims of an Apartheid system that denies them access to work, education and medical care.
Ironically, the boy’s death at the entrance to the hospital coincided with Israel Apartheid Week, a festival of hatred and incitement organized by anti-Israel activists on university campuses in the US, Canada and other countries.
It is highly unlikely that the folks behind the festival have heard about the case of Taha. Judging from past experiences, it is also highly unlikely that they would publicize the case after they heard about it.
Why should anyone care about a Palestinian boy who is denied medical treatment by an Arab hospital? This is a story that does not have an anti-Israel angle to it.
Can anyone imagine what would have happened if an Israeli hospital had abandoned a boy to die in its parking lot because his father did not have $1,500 to pay for his treatment?
The UN Security Council would hold an emergency session and Israel would be strongly condemned and held responsible for the death of the boy.
All this is happening at a time when tens of thousands of Palestinian patients continue to benefit from treatments in Israeli hospitals.
Last year alone, some 180,000 Palestinians from the West Bank and Gaza Strip entered Israel to receive medical treatment. Many were treated despite the fact that they did not have enough money to cover the bill. In Israel, even a suicide bomber who is — only! — wounded while trying to kill Jews is entitled to the finest medical treatment. And there have been many instances where Palestinians who were injured in attacks on Israel later ended up in some of Israel’s best hospitals.
Lebanon, by the way, is not the only Arab country that officially applies Apartheid laws against Palestinians, denying them the right to receive proper medical treatment and own property.
Just last week it was announced that a medical center in Jordan has decided to stop treating Palestinian cancer patients because the Palestinian Authority has failed to pay its debts to the center.
Other Arab countries have also been giving the Palestinians a very hard time when it comes to receiving medical treatment.
It is disgraceful that while Israel admits Palestinian patients to its hospitals, Arab hospitals are denying them medical treatment for various reasons, including money. But then one is reminded that Arab dictators do not care about their own people, so why should they pay attention to an 11-year-old boy who is dying at the entrance to a hospital because his father was not carrying $1,500?
But as the death took place in an Arab country – and as the victim is an Arab – why should anyone care about him? Where is the outcry against Arab Apartheid?
