ISRAEL;WHEN WILL THE WEST DO SOMETHING... PART II

[UCM]

Here goes....

"but the Zionism which displaced a people and tried to wipe out their claims and history is the one I am dead against. Jews do have a right to a national home if they want it, but to award soem other people's home for them to settle in, and to expand the Jewish national home to grab the natural resources (notably water and the land), is unsavoury to say the least"

PD, I agree with this, but I also think that it is good to put it in a historical context. There were an awful lot of people being unsavoury at the same time, perhaps including my relatives who moved to New Zealand, Canada, Australia and the African subcontinent in the 50's to take advantage of the natural resources. I very much doubt that the fact that there was an indigenous population who might be suffering because of their actions entered their consiousness (except in a 'look at the strange natives' way). I suppose what I am saying is that I understand why Arabs view Israelis as just another bunch of colonialists - its just that if they were colonialists they weren't worst of the bunch - atleast they had a historical link with the area and a reason for moving there. Perhaps what marks them out is that they are in a situation where the people who were displaced are still able to fight back.

I'm not really disagreeing with you. Its just that I am often struck when reading things (from Swallows and Amazons to 19th century classics) how different people's perceptions were only a few years ago. (Although perhaps looking at Iraq not enough has changed).

hi h2d

Hope you enjoyed the birthday party

History is important for an understanding of why people feel wronged, and how to go about finding solutions that may bring lasting peace. It doesn't have to be "I have been wronged, so I will avenge" mentality. If one learns history without his/her own baggage, one can be an honest broker. I have always had an interest in history, and I always find myself correcting zealous and emotional Muslims who deny the Holocaust.

History, I find, can teach us to recognise problems before they occur, because human nature has not changed over the period that we have records of.

You said: [quote]Jewish nation originated in Israel some 3000 years ago. The analysis of displacement is also not as straightforward / uncontentious one might gather from a cursory inspection of your post. It is somewhat disingenuous, I feel, for you to generously allow those who live there the right to stay on "or form their own state if they want it."[/quote]

You are reading into this what I did not intend to say. Maybe it demonstrates my inability to communicate properly. My answer to your points is:

First of all I did say the Zionism has many colours, and I voiced my opposition and discontent with the Zionism of displacing others.

Secondly, the Aryans and the Mongols and the Turks originated in the steppes of Central Asia or even the deserts of Gobi. Do we send them all back to their original lands to claim their "Historical National State"?

Do we ship all the decendents of European settlers in Australia, Americas and Africa back to their repective countries, and how about farther back to Scandinavia? I guess all the Indians/Pakistanis/Bangadeshis/SriLankans go back to the subcontinent, and then on to Gobi as above. But aren't many Europeans of Aryan stock?

What is my point? It is this that it is inhuman to scuttle those those who have already settled somewhere, so they should be allowed to stay. In Palestine, I would have preferred a single entity where Palestinians and Jews could live together with equal rights, but I understand that the Jews want a Jewish National Home, unadulterated by sizeable number of "others". Hence, I reluctantly accept the division of this small land into two states. It wasn't a condescending remark.

You can copy-paste the following link on the address row of your browser to see the map produced by Bob:

photos1.blogger.com/blogger/7923/1999/1600/bobs-peace-plan.jpg

Perhaps there is a way to post graphics on mumsnet. I would love to post that map here, if someone can show me how.

You could also try visiting Bob's blog:

www.InfidelBob.blogspot.com/

Re terrorists, what are your feelings about the killings of civilians by the Resistance in Vichy France, or by the Partisans in Italy and Greece during the German occupation? Or by the Mau-Mau in Kenya, or by the African National Congress in South Africa?

Were these attacks by terrorist oufits?

Terrorism is not justified, but then all terrorism should not be justified, including state terrorism.

Finally one more attempt to clear up the misunderstanding about Israel and the Holocaust. I did not imply that Israel feels justified in doing whatever it does because the Jews had been subjected to that. What I meant was that the Jews have a fear in their subconcious that there have been pogroms and even a Holocaust, and that it could happen again.

MadamePlatypus, your point is worth noting. It is true that Europeans of those times did not realise that the natives had their own culture and their own way of loking at things and their own land, which they would resent being taken away.

I did read this a long, long time ago that the Zionists were somewhat late in colonising. However, I also think that the choice for land as the Jewish National Home was most unwise. So the timing would not have mattered.

hi pd - it was very hot, but fun ! I appreciate my posts are getting longer, so I'll first comment on the speech and then address your post. MN graphics, btw are v. limited in physical size so the map would not be reproducible on MN, but your link works.

fuzzy - I looked at and read the first half of the link dealing with the 'annhiliation' speech (ie. not the holocaust comments). It's interesting to read the various transcripts and interpretations and to note how various media have 'adjusted' the text. What I do find interesting though, despite the various 'versions' and the commentary, is that the closing phrase "Very soon, this stain of disgrace will vanish from the center of the Islamic world - and this is attainable" is not being questioned - merely the insertion (clarification ?) of ;'[ie. Israel], and the argument that the text was referring to potential changes rather than suggested changes:

"Iran's President betokens the removal of the regimes, that are in power in Israel and in the USA, to be possible aim for the future. This is correct. But he never demands the elimination or annihilation of Israel. He reveals that changes are potential"

tbh I appreciate the nuance, but whether he is promoting the potential for a "stain of disgrace" to "vanish from the Islamic world" or is making a suggestion for the stain to disappear comes across, at least to me, as nothing more than a distraction.

(Sorry if I've got the wrong end of the stick).

Here's an easy hyperlink to the plan .

pd - I'm not suggesting the 'I have been wronged, I will avenge' mentality is any good / useful / sensible... but I am saying that I feel it is at the psychological core of the motivations for the actions on both sides. I'll repeat, this is not to say I subscribe to it or that it makes much sense or is useful or can be the foundation for a peaceful solution; only that I expect it accurately reflects the feelings of those who have been victims of violence.

Indeed, the most interesting challenge is perhaps how to transform a similar feeling into something constructive that might allow our children, or our children's children, to one day live in peace.

(I have a much stronger interest in psychology than I do in history btw)

re: the colours of zionism you opoose, which you call "the Zionism of displacing others." I don't want to belittle your argument, nor over-simplify, but doesn't it become a question of 'who was there first' then ? Because from my understanding, and I repeat what I said before, the Jewish nation originated in Israel some 3000 years ago. Further, if it is a "zionism of displacing others" which you oppose, which forms of Zionism are you OK with ?

Oh - re the map - no particular comments, definitely an interesting idea, but it would involve a fair amount of displacement / changing of national identity etc. And can you imagine all the affected nations around a table, hey !!!

mimoyello I saw an interview with Netanyahu a week or so ago and he was using the same analogy then. He is in complete and utter denial and evasion. All the official Israeli govt and military spokespeople use the same tactics.

I actually read a quote in The Times from a soldier in the Israeli army who said that the rules of engagement in Lebanon were not fair - he said "When we find them we kill them. It's just not right the way we are doing it. Our air force can bomb villages and not risk our lives fighting over there".

And Prince Hassan always struck me as a very decent, intelligent and articulate person. But what good will it do? This situation is turning moderates into extremists.

Peacedove is trotting out the old sad leftie line about "america being about to use nukes". We hear it every time, and it never happens. The US could (and possibly should( have used them in Afghanistan after 9/11, but didn't as it has chosen not to do on so many times.

They Yugoslavs, Afghans and Iraqis behaved very very badly. A bit of pollution is far less than they deserved. The cvillian consedquences are apparent but on a level of the average casualty rates caused by these people in an average month.

You don't want depleted Uranium on your soil ?
Here's a few hints.
Rape camps are bad. So are death camps, invading your neighbours, and killing thousands of people.
When a large % of your entire population have scars from your "security" forces, then it's fair to say you've picked the wrong government.,

DU is bad stuff. All weapons are bad things.
But it's not 1% as bad as the artsgrad lefties would have you believe. And they aren't 1% as bad as the people in those placess behaved.

DC, I think you might find the after effects of 'nuking' a region are a bit more than nuking well the entire people on it....how are the americans going to get to the oil if they nuke out Iraq eh tell me that???

H2D So you feel it's OK, for the Israeli's to kick the Palestinians into the sea, because they were there once 3,000 years ago???

I don't think either should be forced to leave their homes now they're there but it is definitely not right that because the Israelis lay a historical claim to this land they get precedence, why???

Certainly hope the vikings don't have relatives who will want me to leave my home because they were here first historically.....

hub - when you study history or politics (sorry not suggesting YOU should !) one of the first things you realise is that what a political leaders says isn't always what he is actually going to do ! You need to read between the lines and go behind the propoganda.

The Iranian President talks alot of crap, but he is also makes some interesting points re. the region, i.e. I refer you to his very long letter to Bush (the full text is widely available on the net).

The internal politics of Iran is very very convoluted (a country I take an interest in and have studied on and off for over 20 years). I have spoken to and interviewed prominent Iranians, many of whom admit to not always understanding what is going on in the country themselves !

Look for example at the previous president, President Khatami, a man with a turban and beard who by appearance looked like a Mullah, but spoke and behaved like a civilized statesman (he has a PhD in Philosophy from a German university and was very articulate and moderate by most people's standards) and who attempted to change the direction of Iran's foreign policy by offering to talk to the Americans on numerous occassions.

The world view and foreign policies of these 2 presidents are worlds apart. A feature of Iran's complex foreign policy is that it is not actually controlled in a substantial way by the elected president, rather it is dominated by the powerful Council of Guardians (an unelected body) and the religious leader, Ayatollah Khameini. Together the latter shape Iran's foreign policy not the President.

Khatami failed to change the direction of Iran's foreign policy and so will Ahmadinejad, because neither extremes (i.e either talk to the West without getting substantial concessions or talk like a warmongering manic) have the backing of the Council.

I said in an earlier post that I do not believe Iran has any intention of going to war with Israel. If you look at Iran's history, it is actually one of the few states in the region never to have invaded its neighbours or anyone else for that matter for several hundred years.

Iran was attacked and invaded by Saddam, not the other way round. I think in order to understand Iran's (or indeed any country's) foreign policy you need to look at it in prespective and context and analyse its long term goals.

1 million Iranians were killed by Saddam's forces. It is surrounded by potential enemies (the USA is in Iraq and Afghanistan and has bases in the pro-Western Sheikhdoms). If you ask any FAIR analyst of Iran WHY they think Iran wishes to have nuclear weapons, they will tell you it is because the country has been invaded and fears future attacks and invasions by the USA, i.e. a nuclear capability will provide Iran with superpower status in the region plus make it improbable that any one will invade it again.

saadia - Bibi is a bit of a loon, I wish they had interviewed a more moderate Israeli.

hub - in international law, who was there FIRST is actaully quite irrelevant. International lawyers are more interested in who was there the LONGEST and who was there as a majority i.e. in "de facto" political control before someone else came in. If you look at it this way, the Palestians have a very good case.

hi DC,

you think if some people behave badly, it is OK to use DU on their land, to bomb them with Napalm derivatives and cluster bombs?

Who measures the badness of people? Who decides to punish them for their bad behaviour? Who decides that a bit of pollution is good for them?

Who is to play God here?

Would you like to have a little bit of such pollution in your atmosphere, in your soil, in your water?

Do you want to see pictures of children who have been exposed to this little bit of pollution?

That was the most insensitive remark I have come across here, and I expect you to be ashamed of it.

Are you aware that the world thinks the US has behaved badly, very very badly. Should someone then spread some DU dust on US soil?

Rape Camps are bad. True, so did the US invade Iraq because there were rape camps there? Strange, I thought the reason was WMDs that were ready to be launched, only we didn't get to see the WMDs.

Invading your neighbours is bad? I do not recall any slap on the wrists to Israel for doing that. Quite the opposite in fact. And when was the last time Iraq invaded a neighbour?

America developng or having developed small bunker-buster nukes is from the US.

And although I am not an artsgrad leftie, I think that remark is offensive, not to me personally, but to artgrad lefties. You should be ashamed of implying that they are somewhat inferior. Are you a scigrad rightie?

Pd don't mind Dc, you'll soon get to know his style.... I think he's Catholic (no offense to Catholics)

PD - totally agree with the bollocks DC always manages to come up with re. leftie beardie weirdie arty farty students !

Go to the LSE, Oxford, Cambridge, they are packed full of rottweiler-like RIGHT-WING loons who study the Arts and Humanities ! What you study does not always end up telling you what a persons political leanings are, its a pathetic generalisation.

pmsl at fuzzywuzzy's "I think he's catholic".

Come to think of it, so do I. Only someone brought up in the One True Faith could possibly feel such virulence about it.

Thanks fuzzy and mimo for the input on DC

hi h2d

I thought you were under the impression that this mentality was what I subscribed to.

Yes, we need input on the psychological makeup, too. What do you think is the psychological response of displacement of a quarter of the population of Lebanon, with nearly a thousand dead, and many times that wounded, and an infrastructure destroyed.

From the reports that I have read, it seems that the US and Israel have planned this war in order to rearrange the map of the ME (at least the regimes) to their advantage. The perceived cause of the present conflict is the abductions by Hamas and Hizbullah. The following tell a different story:

June 20, 2006 - Israeli aircraft fired at least one missile at a car in an attempted extrajudicial assassination attempt on a road between Jabalya and Gaza City. The missile missed the car. Instead it killed three Palestinian children and wounded 15.

Back to June 13, 2006. Israeli aircraft fired missiles at a van in another attempted extrajudicial assassination. The successive barrages killed nine innocent Palestinians.

Reach far, far back to June 9, 2006, Israel shelled a beach in Beit Lahiya killing eight civilians and injuring 32.

That's just a brief trip down Memory Lane, and we trip over the bodies of twenty dead and forty-seven wounded, all of them Palestinians, most of them women and children.

a trip down memory lane

On July 24, the day before Hamas' cross-border raid, Israel made an incursion of its own, capturing two Palestinians that it said were members of Hamas (something Hamas denied?L.A. Times, 7/25/06). This incident received far less coverage in US media than the subsequent seizure of the Israeli soldier; the few papers that covered it mostly dismissed it in a one-paragraph brief (e.g., Chicago Tribune, 7/25/06), while the Israeli-taken prisoner got front-page headlines all over the world.

did Hamas start this?

and this may be of interest too:

On June 17 and 18, former Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu and Likud Knesset member Natan Sharansky met with Vice President Dick Cheney at the American Enterprise Institute conference in Beaver Creek, Colorado. There, the impending Israeli invasions of both Gaza and Lebanon were discussed. After receiving Cheney's full backing for the invasion of Gaza and Lebanon, Netanyahu flew back to Israel and participated in a special "Ex-Prime Ministers" meeting, in which he conveyed the Bush administration's support for the carrying out of the "Clean Break" policy -- the trashing of all past Middle East peace accords, including Oslo.

A scheme by the US and israel

Plus there are reports that this war is really to destroy the Lebanese economy which had attracted a record number of tourists this year.

and read this:

The lies

_

Re who was there first! Do we apply this rule to other areas and other people, too, or is this a one-time rule for the Zionists only?

I said it is not possible to ship everyone to his/her origin, and how far do we go determine the origin? Hence unlike some xallas to send back all the Ashkenazi Jews to Europe (including Russia), I say they have a right to stay. They even have a right to make a state of their own provided the rights of others who have been displaced by them are respected, too. Hence my reluctant support for Bob's peace plan. Bob explains that there will be no compulsory displacement, only voluntary one.

interesting comments about Netenyahu. He is a dangerous man. I also heard him interviewed on Radio 4 a couple of days ago. Sean Ley was asking him about the question of 'disproportionality' regarding the Israeli attacks on Lebanon and he replied by citing the US/UK bombings of Iraq and Afghanistan and asked if those attacks showed ' disproportionality'. Every question was stonewalled, which of course is predictable because anyone with half a brain cell will know that he is a vehement expansionist and believes all Palestinians should be driven further out to make way for more illegal settlements.He has made many comments to that effect. He was the man, let us not forget, who opposed Sharon's plan to withdraw some settlers from Gaza last year. Not that those withdrawals amounted to very much but I suppose a token gesture could be construed as better than nothing.

PD - you are right about the who was there first thing - how far does the argument go and WHO is to establish in any fair manner who goes back where ? It's a nonsense.

That is why international lawyers consider the length of time that a particualr ethnic group has lived on a particular piece of land as well as de facto control.

Otherwise we would all be asking for the Aussies to be shipped back to the UK since the Aboriginies where there first or the Americans to be shipped back to Europe as the Indians were there first !

The point is, you can't simply go into a region you haven't inhabited (as a majority population) for centuries and tell whoever is there to get out because we were here BEFORE you ! It is immoral and not recognised in international law.

and it is also worth mentioning that Likud, of which Netenyahu is a member, is an offshoot of the Herut party which in turn was spawned from Irgun, a known terrorist paramilitary group.

yet another hypocrite and rabid Zionist, in other words. And if you want to read all about it, go to the website I cited on part 1 of this thread
britains-smallwars.com/palestine/kidnap.html

Also if you consider the historical claim, I am pretty sure Israel consider the land stretching from Ninevah to the meditarranean, from Lebanon to Medina their promised land...where does it end??? And what happens to the people who already live there (regardless of religion as there's a pretty sizeable number of Christians as well as Muslim already there)....

donnie - this morning he was doing a "Israeli politicians are like Churchill" !

LOL @ scigrad rightie, pd.

fuzzy, I think you're putting words into my mouth. Have I said I feel "it's OK, for the Israeli's to kick the Palestinians into the sea, because they were there once 3,000 years ago" ? No, I didn't think so.

I only mention the '3000 year' phrase because I feel the fact that Jews have been there so long seems to have been conveniently overlooked at times on this thread, and I raised it to debate pd's 'Zionism of displacement' which he opposes.

So, apart from the things I didn't say, do you want to comment on what I did say re: the Iran link, I'd be interested.

mimo - re: difference between saying and doing... thanks for the headsup. I do not dispute that what Iran says and what Iran might do could well be different, but I am going by what they say, and, if they do anything, I'll be guided by what they do (IYSWIM). As I understand it, Iran has supplied weapons (and or funding) to Hezbollah too. Again, though, I'd like to point out that I haven't said anything about Iran except read and respond to that linked transcript / discussion. PS - I really don't think history or politics is for me. And thanks for information re: first / longest etc. in international law. Interesting.

pd - Sorry, but I'm a bit lost - could you clarify which mentality I thought you subscribed to ? Not sure I made any comment thereon. Re: Psychological reponse to displacement - am sure it would also be interesting to explore the psychological response of the Israelis to their history of attack... (just for the fullness of our psychological investigation IYSWIM). I imagine both sides "have issues".

Thanks for the pasting of some of the incidents prior to the 28th. Doesn't sound at all pleasant. Without researching, I imagine it would surely be possible to also identify a fair number of attacks / attempted suicide bombers against Israel prior to the 28th too.

fuzzy - you are right. It is not about religious claims. All 3 religions in fact have a claim to the same land, which is why Jerusalem is such a headache.

hub - I am glad we agree about one thing at least, there is absolutely no denying from reliable sources that Iran was instrumental in establishing and funding Hizbollah ! It is still helping Hizbollah.

But that is rather different from wishing (or being capable of) destroying Israel. For one thing, in terms of logistics and military capability, Iran can't do any such thing, it couldn't even defeat Iraq quickly, despite it's very large. pop. Iran never managed to defeat Iraq and ended up fighting an 8 year, very bloody, war of attrition.

Iran knows it can't defeat Israel in a war so why bother going to war ?

I think Israel is safe from Iran, don't worry !