AIBU to think that the State of Israel is racist?

[CoteDAzur]

11 Dec 2008 13:34 GMT

DJ Israel Min:Israeli Arabs Should Live In Separate State-Report

LONDON (Dow Jones)--Israeli Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni has said Israeli Arabs should leave Israel for a Palestinian state once such a state is established, The Jerusalem Post reports on its Web site Thursday.

"My solution for maintaining a Jewish and democratic state of Israel is to have two nation-states with certain concessions and with clear red lines," Livni said. "And among other things I will also be able to approach the Palestinian residents of Israel, those whom we call Israeli Arabs, and tell them, 'your national solution lies elsewhere.'"

Livni, speaking in a meeting with Tel Aviv high school students, also hinted that kidnapped soldier Gilad Schalit could remain in the hands of Hamas in Gaza.

Full story: www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?pagename=JPost/JPArticle/ShowFull&cid=1228728156919

-London bureau, Dow Jones Newswires; +44 (0)20 78 42 9330; [email protected]

mhmummy - The conflict is territorial, but there is also racial discrimination. "Palestinian" is not a race but "Arab" is. "Israeli" is not a race but "Jew" is.

Read the OP. Tzipi Livni is saying Arab citizens of Israel should be booted off to Palestine, once that country is established. This is ethnic cleansing, and is inherently racist - It was wrong when Nazis wanted to cleanse Germany of Jews, and it is still wrong when the State of Israel wants to cleanse Israel of Arabs.

Hamas is a terrorist organization. It is not a big surprise that they kill civilians. So did ETA, PKK, and IRA. In contrast, Spanish, Turkish, and British Armies did not set their jets loose on Basque, Kurdish, and Irish towns, bombing civilian population to smithereens. Israel is the only example in living memory that bombs civilian population because there are some terrorists in there somewhere.

Do you think other countries don't bomb civilian areas because they are weak? Because they don't care about their people's security? No. It is because it is a war crime to do so.

This is from the Hague Convention (IV) respecting the Laws and Customs of War on Land and its annex: Regulations concerning the Laws and Customs of War on Land. The Hague, 18 October 1907.

HOSTILITIES
CHAPTER I
Means of injuring the enemy, sieges, and bombardments

Art. 22. The right of belligerents to adopt means of injuring the enemy is not unlimited.

Art. 25. The attack or bombardment, by whatever means, of towns, villages, dwellings, or buildings which are undefended is prohibited.

And this is from Nuremberg Principles

CHARTER OF THE INTERNATIONAL MILITARY TRIBUNAL
AUGUST 8, 1945

ARTICLE VI

(b) War Crimes: namely, violations of the laws or customs of war. Such violations shall include, but not be limited to, murder, ill-treatment or deportation to slave labor or for any other purpose of civilian population of or in occupied territory, murder or ill-treatment of prisoners of war or persons on the seas, killing of hostages, plunder of public or private property, wanton destruction of cities, towns, or villages, or devastation not justified by military necessity;

mhmummy - the so called 'conspiracy theorist' is Professor Richard Falk who is a highly respected Human Rights campaigner and ambassador in the United Nations. You are talking utter rubbish - why don't you do a search on him and get yourself a little bit educated? He is the person who likened Israeli actions to those of the Nazis. I challenge you to prove his comments as "unfettered antisemitism".

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MaryMariott- agree with you about Tony Blair, I'm disappointed that his apparent lack progess - unless I'm missing something.

Cote D'Azur- 'Jew' is not a race - it's a member of the Jewish religion. Hence 'antisemitism', not 'racism' against Jewish people.

What Tzipi Livni actually said is that once a Palestinian State was established, the nationalist demands of Arabs within Israel would end, as in: "The idea is to maintain two states for two peoples, that is my path to a democratic nation," she said (Ha'Eretz newspaper). This is no different from the two-state solution which, in 2000, US President Bill Clinton put forward at the Camp David summit, where he presented ideas on borders, Jerusalem and land transfers to the Israeli and Palestinian delegations. His plan called for far-reaching concessions from Israel, which Prime Minister Ehud Barak agreed to in the hope of achieving peace. The proposal also included an historic offer to the Palestinians, offering 91% of the West Bank in contiguous territory, all of Gaza, Arab neighbourhoods of east Jerusalem, a Palestinian state plus the dismantling of settlements. Yasser Arafat rejected this offer and instead opted for violence, resulting in the September 2000 Palestinian outbreak of violence. Despite this, Israel was still willing to negotiate with Arafat. In December 2000, Clinton proposed another deal for an Israeli withdrawal from 97% of the West Bank, which Barak accepted but which was once again dismissed by Arafat, despite his not presenting a counter-offer at either opportunity.

The Hague Convention articles don't shed any light on this, given that Israel has only targeted terrorists and not civilians within Gaza (as demonstrated last night when they succeeded in targeting a senior Hamas leader in Gaza, unlike the Palestinians, who are aiming their rockets at nursery schools within Israel - but you choose to overlook that). The civilian casualties have all occurred as a result of the fact that the terrorists have sheltered within those communities, as I said previously.

Donnie - no need to "get myself a little bit educated" thanks - I'm very well informed and happy to debate things without the blinkered bias which appears to affect you. The title 'Professor' and a job in the UN doesn't mean you're not a racist/antisemite/weird conspiracy theorist, any more than the title 'MP' doesn't mean that if you describe black soldiers as 'idle and useless' (Patrick Mercer, former Tory MP) you're not racist.

Comparing the Nazi holocaust to Israel's actions to defend itself now, against a terrorist organisation which has stated time and again that it wishes to obliterate it from the map, is not a subjective opinion. It is antisemitic, whether said by you, by someone who works for the UN, or the man on the street. If you can't see that then to be honest I pity you, Donnie. I won't engage in a debate about Israel with you because clearly that's not what you want. I think it's sad that Mumsnet gives you a forum to vent your prejudices at every opportunity instead of using it for its intended purpose. To debate, engage and inform - and not to offend. You only do the latter.

Sorry about the long thread! I'm off to do something more useful!

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Bloss - I totally agree -it's horrendous and I'm not saying that Israel can't be blamed for the death of civilians - clearly their action is inflicting it. The point I was making is Israel is doing all it can to avoid targeting civilians, but that Hamas seems to have no regard at all for Palestinian life in the pursuit of its aim.
I'm also horrified by the current loss of life. It is awful and I hope it ends imminently. I'm just trying to redress some balance because the Palestinian terrorists in Gaza have been targeting Israeli civilians - also including children - with their rocket attacks for the past six years. And it's not the fault of innocent Palestinian children that Hamas choose to take that path, so I don't know what the answer is.

It will be very interesting to see what Barack Obama can achieve.

1. He was very keen for Rahm Emanuel to join his team, who is Jewish and fairly Zionist, I have read, and a kick arse get things done type.

1. Obama also invited Hillary Clinton on board and she had a deep personal knowledge of the situation including the possiblity of Arab leaders to "go on the journey with no intention of reaching the destination" ie engage in peace talks which will stall at the last minute when acceptance of Israel becomes unavoidable.

1. Obama himself is presumably a lot more palatable to the Muslim world than the usual WASP Presidents. He may be able to win the hearts and minds of the Arab peoples.

Prior to the establishment of the State of Israel that we have now there was a very active, very violent zionist terrorist campaign in the 20s and 30s.

https://lsa.umich.edu/content/dam/cmenas-assets/cmenas-documents/unit-of-israel-palestine/Section1_Zionism.pdf

Not really knowing where to start with your post I thought this might be helpful - a tourism poster from 1930s.

https://www.etsy.com/listing/598282132/travel-poster-visit-palestine-vintage?click_key=99499c855b8fdc0dcf3b846f9be2c8303713130e%3A598282132&click_sum=952047cd&external=1&rec_type=cs&ref=landingpage_similar_listing_top-6&frs=1&sts=1

A Zionist tourism poster.

That means Jewish people who were trying to establish a State of Israel in the region before the WW11.

Look at the poster - a graphic rendition of a beautiful, sophisticated, established city. Definitely not two stones in the desert...

That genetic heritage link is always an interesting one.

I heard that a lot in Italy - that the blondes in Sicily are descendants of the Norman conquests for example. It is more likely that the blondness comes from American soldiers in WW11 but it is probably harder to tolerate.

1. For starters Jordan is home to around 3 million Palestinians. You should look up the other countries you mentioned.

2. Why are you saying that countries should accept Palestinians? Does that mean we accept the expulsion of Palestinians from Gaza Strip, West Bank, etc?

I agree with you here but it is also fair to say that when we withdrew our occupying army, punitive corrupt police force and state enforced bigotry the IRA changed behavior.

Not for one second am I for the muderous bastards but there was/is a correlation.

We, the British, and most certainly our government, behaved very badly indeed there.

Israel has been attacked throughout its short history.

Is there any country on the planet that has not been attacked in either a short or long history?

Don't all countries get attacked?

The difference here is that Israel has the total, unconditional backing of the most powerful and wealthy country on earth right now.

Therefore it is not as vulnerable as it would like to seem.

Israeli politics have much more to do with this than anything else.

But the British army did fire into towns and cities all over the British empire.

We did the most appealing atrocities in the name of our flag, Queen/King, land, money and power.

The body count for the Irish, Indian, Kenyan, American, anywhere we had a colony, was disastrous.

We don't like to think about that but I am afraid we acted very much like Israel.

There is a reason we are unpopular! :)

*appaling

@yesmen

" I agree with you here but it is also fair to say that when we withdrew our occupying army, punitive corrupt police force and state enforced bigotry the IRA changed behavior"

Except that is not what happened. As far as their "downfall", the IRA/PIRA was never really defeated in the conventional sense. They just kind of realized over decades of insurgency that they weren't going to achieve their goals violently, so they (mostly) gave up and accepted ceasefire in favor of political negotiating. When they started to turn over weapons and explosives, it was clear they had enough to continue fighting for decades. And while the violence had mostly ended by the 90's, 9/11 in 2001 really spelled the end of any hope for the public supporting a violent insurgency