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What do you guys think about what is going on within the Palestinian borders right now? Is Ariel Sharon really intening to kill Arafat to end his feud with him or are his latest actions just one part of his continuing pretentious war against "terrorism"? I have two activist friends who live in Ramallah so Im a bit afraid of what might happen. What is your opinion on how far one government can go to eradicate something that they feel is terrorism against their state, regardless of who started this supposed war and the Palestinians right to stay there ? |
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sharon is a fascist. israel is terrorism. you'd think that people who had for centuries been persecuted and without a homeland would have some sympathy for a bunch of persecuted people without a homeland, but maybe i'm just stupid. |
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I'm too unedumucated bout it to have very strong opinions, but I'm no fan of isreal. |
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i just want the terrorism to end, its fucking retarded |
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I want the idiots in power to rot for a few months so we can all sort things out and live equally. The world is being run very poorly. |
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Listen to Long Time Coming by sam cooke and you will feel nothing but love!!!! Trust me |
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Israel is a bigger terrorist than Binladen ever was or ever will be,,,, Israel invented terrorsim, 19,000 civilans died when it invaded Lebanon in the 80s ... the jews held numerous terrorist attacks aganist the Arabs and even the British before 1948.... not just that but israel conducted ethnic cleansing when it was created and threw millions of arabs out of their homes Israel's first prime minister David Ben-Gurion has been quoted as saying in a letter to his son: "We shall drive them out and take their place." Slobodan Milosevic could not have put it better! come on! poor Arafat is no terrorist he has no control over the bombers and its not israel combating terrorism, the reality is that these bombers are the ones combating 50 years of israeli terrorism and israeli occupation!!!!!! Arafat all the way!!! |
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israelian justice? or israeli injustice? |
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Hi, first, to clear any doubt, I am an Israeli who has been living in the US for the last two years. Since I grew up in an Israel that had no political consensus about the arab-israeli situation (which admittedly might be a little different now), it has always been important for me to seek objective accounts and news. There's definitely much warping of the truth going on in various arab, israeli, and US media, and so it's important to sample as many different views as possible when trying to sort out the facts. I would like to address some of the accusations that have been made here against Israel, contributing to the discussion what I was told to be true, as well as what I'm fairly certain to be true. I will try to address these claims in the order they were brought up. addi b - "regardless of who started this supposed war": the palestinians claim israel is responsible for the conflict simply by taking over portions of their homeland. the israelis maintain that they were never interested in conflict (refer to the israeli declaration of independence), only in settling in the territories given to them by the UN. regardless of where the blame is placed, it is known that the first actual offensive move in the existence of the state of israel occured a mere two hours after its inception, while israelis were celebrating the UN's decision. It might be worth noting over %1 of the Israeli population at that time became casualties in the ensuing war, which lasted a year. It's easy to see how the palestinians would consider the division of their homeland to be the first offensive move, but one has to wonder whether they should have taken issue with the UN instead, rather than starting a war. salma - "19,000 civilians died when it invaded lebanon in the 80s": I'm not contesting either that israel invaded lebanon (which is true) or the number of civilians killed (I honestly don't know), but I can add the historical fact that israel's decision to invade lebanon was in response to several things. First, and m |
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most importantly, the PLO, controlled by a much younger and handsomer Arafat was continually shelling (as in bombing) the northern part of israel from within lebanon, a practice that has continued long after israel pulled out of lebanon about two years ago, and definitely at all times in between. Israel wanted to push the PLO further north, into syria, to cut off their bombing accessibility. Also noteworthy is the assassination attempt of then israel's embassador to england, shlomo argov, who was seriously wounded in the attempt shortly before Israel decided on the invasion. "the jews held numerous terrorist attacks aganist the Arabs and even the British before 1948": The jews certainly did organize attacks against the british. This happened during world war II, as a response to the british restricting the flow of jewish immigration coming from a holocaust-stricken europe threatening to eliminate them. The british "white paper", released on may 1939 allowed a total of 75,000 jewish immigrants over a period of five years, and only under the acquiessence of the arab population. While one cannot deny the political and geographical loss of control that a large jewish immigration might have imposed on the arab population, there is also no denying this was a strict matter of life and death to the jews that wished to escape europe. This is a fine example of an early jewish-arab conflict of interests where both sides had extremely good reasons to hold their own. As for jews organizing attacks against the arab population prior to 1948, I know of no historical record to support this, what's your source on that? "israel conducted ethnic cleansing when it was created and threw millions of arabs out of their homes": First, the actual figure is approximately 700,000 rather than "millions". The number of refugees now, 50 years later, numbers in the millions (well over three million) in part due to the exceptionally high birth rate in the palestinian population (a little over 6 children per palestinian woman on a |
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average compared to 2.6 per israeli woman). Many financially-capable palestinians left of their own accord, not willing to live in a country populated by jews. Many others were driven to neighboring arab countries during arab-initiated wars. A fair number stayed in Israel, and to this day have full Israeli citizenship, which among other things allows them to vote and become members of the highest israeli governing body - the knesset. the David Ben-Gurion quote: Here's a good Araft quote to an arab crowd, that's about 40-50 years more recent (1996): "We the PLO will concentrate all our efforts on splitting Israel psychologically into two camps. Within five years we will have six to seven million Arabs living on the West Bank and in Jerusalem. The PLO plans to eliminate the State of Israel and establish a purely Plastinian State. We will make life unbearable for Jews by psychological warfare and population explosion; Jews won't want to live among Arabs." You need more? I got plenty. "Arafat is no terrorist he has no control over the bombers": There's a strong belief on both sides that Arafat is not in control of many if not the majority of terror acts carried out. Then again, there's definitely solid proof that he is active in supporting, organizing and carrying out some terrorist attacks. For one, the Fatah, a branch of Araft's PLO is taking responsibility for an awful lot of them. Another thing I can think of is the very recent capture of a 50 ton boatload of illegal arms headed to the palestinian authority *while* US envoy Anthony Zinni was trying to mediate an arab-israeli settlement. Arafat denied all association, but the ship's captain ultimately confessed to having received direct orders from one Adel Awadallah, one of the highest-ranked officials in the palestinian authority. Finally, I'd like say a little something about this whole mess. If you look back through the history of the arab-israeli conflict, and you learn enough about it, you'll realize there are no good and bad side |
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sides in this story. We can all keep our personal tally to figure out what side has the slightly higher moral ground. But many people, in Israel, and everywhere else, realize how futile this is. The palestinians are there, and they're not going anywhere. The Israelis are there, and they're not going anywhere either. This conflict can go on forever, get a little worse, get a little better. But the only real solution lies in a peace agreement. Maybe Sharon is not the prime minister to bring that peace. Ehud Barak, the former Israeli prime minister, offered more than Israel ever dared offer and the most it's capable of without granting its own destruction, and yet Arafat decided to walk away from the table, providing no alternatives. The two points of contention were the control of east Jerusalem and the right of return. Israel agreed to palestinian sovereignity over east Jerusalem barring only the wailing wall, the holiest site in judaism still in existence. Complete right of return would have destroyed Israel through democracy, by making the Palestinian vote a majority (just imagine half a billion chinese immigrating to your country of residence. now imagine they're not interested in having YOU around and you'll get the picture). I could go as far as say this illustrates Arafat's disinterest in any solution that doesn't involve the elimination of the state of Israel, but I'll refrain. I will say though, Arafat really needs to get his shit together in preparation for the next time a real chance for peace smacks him in the face. Cheers, Nir |
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Salma: "Slobodan Milosevic could not have put it better". Please, just tell me whose territory have Serbs taken by driving others out, to your knowledge. Those who know my earlier posts, know that I have no love for Serbs or Milosevic, but what you say is just a stereotype, man. |
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ok i will first post a viewpoint article i wrote about this subject last year which addresses many of those points: |
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The Israeli-Palestinian conflict, perhaps the most complex of all the conflicts of the world, caused a great deal of misery to an entire people, the Palestinians. I can’t help but question the roots and causes of this conflict. Did the Jews have the right to create a nation at the expense of the Palestinians in the first place? The Zionist movement calling for an independent Jewish community in Palestine began in the 19th century. They claimed Palestine was their spiritual homeland promised to them, God’s chosen race, exclusively by him! What god would make a promise that would lead to the destruction of an entire nation and the persecution of an entire people? The Jews had no right to start migrating to Palestine against the will of the Palestinians. They assumed it was a land without a people. Can anyone lay claim to land solely on the basis of his spiritual belief? Palestine has been Arab for the last 1300 years. No other people had or have the right to claim it as their own, no matter what they think God promised them. In fact, neither the Jews nor the Arabs were the first to live in Palestine, but the Arabs certainly lived there for much longer. The Palestinians responded by riots and general strikes to the large-scale settlements established by the Zionists on their land. They, as you and me would if we were put in that position, felt threatened by the increasing presence of a foreign people on their land. They knew that one-day soon the Jews will outnumber them and that part if not all of Palestine will become a Jewish nation. They fell victims to trickery by those who were more powerful. In 1914, Britain promised the independence of Palestine from the Ottoman Empire. But in a conflicting move, came the Balfour declaration in 1917. In it Britain promised to support a Jewish national homeland in Palestine, and also to insure that “nothing shall be done which may prejudice the civil and religious rights of the existing non-Jewish communities in Palestine”. A lot was done. After Jewish migration to |
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After Jewish migration to Palestine was restricted in 1939, Zionist groups carried out a bloody campaign against the British and the Arabs. One notable massacre is when they blew up a hotel in Jerusalem used by the British government killing 91 people. In 1947 the UN called for the partition of Palestine into Jewish and Arab states, with Jerusalem as an international zone. Israel was declared by the Zionist groups immediately after in 1948. Arab states attacked it but tragically failed to stop the Zionists. More than 750,000 Palestinians were forced out of their homes or fled for their lives making way for the new Jewish state. This was no less than ethnic cleansing carried out by the Jews; imagine an entire people forced to leave their homes and possessions, to leave their country, the country of their ancestors. For over five decades those refugees and many new generations of them have lived in appalling poverty. For fifty years those people who now number close to four million have been living in tents and slums so the Israelis could prosper on the land that that was their home. |
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According to the Zionists, the Arabs were the aggressors when they attacked Israel in 1948. The creation of Israel itself was the greatest act of aggression. The Arabs couldn’t simply stand by and watch 13 centuries of their history disappears. Would you stand by and watch a foreign people make a homeland of part of your country no matter how big or small? Well the Israelis took 78% of Palestine in 1948 and the other 22% in 1967 when they invaded the Gaza strip and West Bank. Along with that Israel took over the Golan Heights from Syria and the Sinai from Egypt. So many of Israel’s acts don’t just defy basic moral and ethical laws, they also defy numerous UN resolutions. According to international law, Israel has no right to occupy the Gaza Strip, West Bank or Jerusalem. According to international law, the Palestinian refugees have the right to go back to their homes or be fully compensated for their losses. Israel has been refusing to comply with these resolutions, and many others, for decades. The UN gave Israel its existence by calling for the partition of Palestine. Yet Israel defies its decisions openly! |
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Israel has now reached such a level of arrogance as to demand that Palestinians “compromise” some of their land and rights in order reach a peace deal. The Zionists seem to have forgotten that they are the occupier and the Palestinians are the occupied. The Palestinians already made the biggest compromise they can possibly make when the PLO recognized Israel’s right to exist, thus only demanding the West Bank and Gaza Strip back. Israel expects this single organization, the PLO, to give up the right of four million human beings to return to their own homes on their own land; this is the truly God given right, that no individual leader nor organization nor even the holders of the right themselves can give up. For over half a centaury an entire people have been under occupation, and a brutal occupying power has been causing wars and invading nations. More often than ever before we now hear of attacks by Palestinian groups on Israelis, this is no more than resistance, resistance by a people who have been striped of their homeland and left to rot! When a country is under occupation its people have the absolute right to use everyway possible to liberate it. Certainly, they are not the ones obliged to compromise. |
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Meho Krljic : all i know is that slobodan attempted ethnic cleansing in the bulkun wars, sorry if i'm mistaken and sorry if i offended you |
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Salma: No problem, I feel no insult and i know none has been ment (and I hate most of my nation anyway). It's just that Milosevic has become such a symbol of bloodthirsty butcher that people easily forget that in Balkan wars, every side had similar strategy: ethnic cleansing. In august 1995, about 200,000 - 300,000 Serbs were driven out of Croatia practically in one day... And of course Serbs have done similar things in Bosnia and Croatia, but those were Serbs already living there, not Milosevic's occupation army... Anyway, I don't want to add more confusion to an already difficult debate here. Both, nir and you have a lot of points, so just go on... |
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other quick points, its late at night now and i cn't write a whole lot): - The holocaust is not of arab fault so don't even try to use it as an argument, it is not the arabs responsibilty to componsate the jews or to help them escape by giving their land up to them! -israel is qiute simply and bluntly illigaly occupying land that isn't theirs now and in the past..it is in violation of numerous UN resolutions as i mentioned even though you brought up the UN as a method that arabs could've used to resolve the sitution, israel is clearly not trying to do so -the arabs never agreed to the partition of palastine, frankly i don't belive the UN had the right to do that in the first place -don't call the viewpoint article biased, because its a VIEWPOINT article so... |
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i think it's hard for us the western ppl to make out exactly what's going on in israel and what really happened in bosnia etc. i don't trust the media about this. did you know the US were dropping experimental bombs as powerful as small nuclear bombs in afghanistan?? that's completely insane, but you don't read about it in the paper. |
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cheers Meho Krljic , this debate can get very complicated, i feel very strongly about the issue...and obviously so does nir.. |
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well, nir is an Israeli. And those suicide bombers really go around killing civillians. I know how he feels... |
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well many tens of thousands of arab civilans have been killed as a result of the occupation not to mention the poverty and oppression caused to millions..... i am Egyptian and 150,000 Egyptian soldiers died in wars with israel, wars caused by the israeli occupation of unrightful land....they occupied part of Egypt for a while, something that makes me want to cry... |
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Yeah, I know, the famous Egypt-Israeli war... Middle east has been an area of constant conflict for as long as I can remember (and I'm thirty, possibly the eldest on this messageboard...) and it is all more or less due to western interference. Fucking imperialists who make others fight their wars... |
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I like your sweater Netlon - very Freddy Crueger! (back on topic now..) I don't think we know the half of what goes on in places like the Middle East. I don't really understand a lot of the political 'goings on' in that region, but it does seem that there has allways been trouble in that part of the world, and that maybe something should be done to sort it out!! What though - I don't know! |
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i'm 17): |
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haha!! thanks but that's not me, you know. it's the infamous billy corgan, formerly of smashing pumpkins, currently leading his new band zwan into greatness (hopefully). i wish i had a sweater like that, though ;) |
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Nice, you have a life before you. I've already spent the best part of mine... So, you live in Egypt? |
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no i live all the way downunder in New Zealand and have been living here for 5 years.. |
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Your not ancient at thirty years old - I'm 29...... |
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Salma: yeah, your english did seem a bit too perfect. So, how's things down there, are there a lot of Serbs causing trouble? As far as I know, a lot of my people try to get there but it's not that easy... Chris: Wait til you thirty. You'll know despair |
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thnx, i dn't use big fancy words when i talk tho, i reserve them only for when i write about the Arab-Israeli conflict! lol lol no , no trouble here, by Serbs or any one else actually, nothing ever goes on here...! |
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good, NuZealand always looked like a heaven on earth to me... All those nice animals and green pastures... And pleasant people (Though Maori are not too happyfor being colonized I guess). |
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haha, not all the Maoris are upset about that, some are still debating land issues but its all good.... i have maori mates and i've never heard them complain..its not really colonisation i guess cause there was a treaty signed etc.. |
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i have to go soon goodnight all...... long live Palastine and Egypt ... no offence to nir, maybe our people have been fighting since the dawn of time but atleast he/she is a fellow Aphex Twin fan! lol |
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Well, as long as they don't go around with tnt tied to their bodies and blow people up in restaurants, i guess you can say it's pretty peaceful down there. Great to hear that... |
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and may New Zealand have more and more sheep.... |
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lol no, the maoris might look scary doing the haka but really they're as gentle as ever ! atleast the ones i know! lol laterz... |
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cheerz, mate |
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the base assumption of your argument is that palestine is the homeland of the arabs, but not the jews'. I think a short account of jewish history over the past few millenia is in order. Jews have been living in Palestine for roughly over a thousand years before the hardships began that would ultimately see them exiled for two thousand more years. After Jerusalem was conquered by the Babylonians in 597BC, a fair amount of jews (around ten thousand) were forced to leave Palestine and move to the city of Babylon. There's not much known about the ones that remained in Palestine after that point in time, but overseas jewish religion kept evolving in babylonian exile (it's believed the jewish bible was written during that period). A resurgence in the judaic faith started revolving around the longing for the lost homeland. In 533BC, the babylonian jews were finally allowed, even urged to return to Jerusalem by cyrus the persian, the greatest conqueror history has ever seen, to build the second temple to yahweh, in preparation for his "fight of good against evil". All this came to an end around 200 years later, when Alexander the greek conquered persia in 332BC. Things went fine enough for a while, till around 70AD, when the romans destroyed Jerusalem, and began systematically exiling Jews from Palestine. The following two thousand years saw virtually all jews kept out of Israel, and yet a small number of them remained in Palestine, living under a constantly changing and often hostile rule. The arab rule came with the rise of Muhammed and Islam in 570AD. One thing that's important to note is that Muhammed's fondness-turned-to-anger towards the jews for refusing to acknowledge him as a prophet of god (Muhammed was quite a fan of judaism initially) defined the way Islam has regarded Judaism ever since. So what does all this boil down to? As you already mentioned, Palestine has been a home to arabs for around 1300 years. But it has also been the only jewish homeland for over twice that long. Zionism isn't work |
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working out of some imaginary directive from god, it's been working to return to a land jews have occupied long before Islam even existed. You ask us to look back through history, to maintain the arabs' claim of ownership over Palestine, but what value does such a claim have if it selectively ignores all preceding history? No. You have to consider Palestine to be a homeland to both the arabs *and* the jews. Any other solution is an exercise in selective ignorance. This means several things. You can't call the repopulation of Palestine by jews stealing land. They have as much a stake on the land as the Palestinians do. You *can* look into what Israel has been doing in the last century and ask, in light of this acknowledgement, whether Jews in Israel have been working to become the sole populace. See, it's a dominoe effect. The moral justification for the first Palestinian attack on the state of Israel is ENTIRELY based on the understanding that Jews have no right to share their land. But that's not true, is it? And if it isn't, all you're really dealing with here is an unsolicited and unprovoked attack. Everything past that point may very well be considered to be mutual escalation. Arabs kept attacking Israel under the (false) assumption Israel had no right to be there. Israel did its best to defend itself, and in the process conquered territory it was never meant to own. You can't just keep fending off attacks indefinitely if there's no buffer zone. It's a very basic strategic truth. Israel kept increasing the buffer zone to increase its defense potential. Sure, the settlements were a horrible mistake, spearheaded by a tiny minority of suicidal fanatics, but that can be easily reversed, and such a reversal was indeed part of the solution Ehud Barak was offering in Camp David II. You want to know the truth? Israelis hate the territories. They would like nothing more than to get rid of them, but they need to know they can do so in safety. You need to get it out of your head that Israel is a comic-book sty |
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style supervillain interested in harming others because of some "darnkess within". We've got stuff to do like watch the latest simpsons and steal music on the net that's way more interesting than dealing with this tired old crap. And hey, if you're just interested in hating Israel for the fun of it, to maintain whatever inner balance you have going on right now, cheers mate, but if you're actually interested in the truth, and you can fit the idea of a story that's all davids and no goliaths in your head, try taking a couple of seconds to assume I'm not full of shit, and see where it takes you. Cheers, Nir |
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Hey, nir, quite an interesting thread this turned out to be. I take no sides with any of you, but just want you to know that I support you in your defence against stupid simplified attacks on jews that we've seen at the beginning of this thread. People bash others without thinking twice, but OK, that's their right, and yours is to sit and explain your views. This Messageboard is really good for it. BTW, Salma has been offline for more than an hour now, so he'll probably read your response tomorrow.. |
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thanks meho, I appreciate the kind word cheers, nir |
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Nir, you dig John Zorn? |
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and yeah, that's a pretty accurate breakdown of internet communication dynamics :) |
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I don't really know his stuff, but his description on allmusic makes him look like the IDM artist that never met a mixing table. there's a ton of his stuff on soulseek, definitely will check it out |
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He's pretty strong on zionism issue and has done a lot on promoting "radical jewish culture" as he calls it. His band (or I should say, one of his many running bands/ projects) Masada does a beautiful combination of klezmer and hardbop jazz. And he's got a shitload of interesting klezmer-(or otherwise jewish-) related stuff on his label Tzadik. Check them out. And that description that you give (IDM artist who's never met a mixing board) sounds really great, although he did meet a mixing board more than once, one of his newer albums "Songs from a hermetic theatre" is for a large part electronic (I didn't hear it, so i quote a review), but ce^rtainly has very little to do with IDM or any dance music whatsoever. I have over thirty of his albums, so if you need recommendations... |
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