You keep trying to change the subject. You have stated that Palestinian actions against Israeli civilians in the 50s and 60s was not terrorism, but “reprisal attacks by people in military uniform that were in reply to the ongoing ethnic cleansing of Palestinians from Palestinian land,”. I’m asking, what “ongoing ethnic cleansing of Palestinians from Palestinian land” was going on the 50s and 60s, before the Six Day War, that you’re referring to?
If you want to talk about the treatment of Israeli Arabs in Israel, and to what extent they’re “molested” or “unmolested”, we can, but please answer my question first.
Israel haven’t taken any such steps. They’re not prepared to talk to the democratically elected representatives of the Palestinians, they’re keeping Gaza under imprisonment and a current starvation regime, they’re trying to make a deal with non-elected crokked representatives of the Palestinians, they’re refusing to sttop building settlements. They’re doing everything they can to avoid negotiating in good faith. And as history shows us, the resistance to their regime will only continue. It takes Israel to mke the first move and nobody, especially the Israelis, are claiming that they’re making it. Netnanyahu’s government would collapse overnight if he even attempted it.
Israel want to keep the status quo so they can continue their policy of slow-motion ethnic cleansing of the remaining 22%.
Are you seriously saying you’re so clueless about this that you don’t know the history of 1948? Here’s an Israeli historian for you:
What you are telling me here, as though by the way, is that in Operation Hiram there was a comprehensive and explicit expulsion order. Is that right?
“Yes. One of the revelations in the book is that on October 31, 1948, the commander of the Northern Front, Moshe Carmel, issued an order in writing to his units to expedite the removal of the Arab population. Carmel took this action immediately after a visit by Ben-Gurion to the Northern Command in Nazareth. There is no doubt in my mind that this order originated with Ben-Gurion. Just as the expulsion order for the city of Lod, which was signed by Yitzhak Rabin, was issued immediately after Ben-Gurion visited the headquarters of Operation Dani [July 1948].”
Are you saying that Ben-Gurion was personally responsible for a deliberate and systematic policy of mass expulsion?
“From April 1948, Ben-Gurion is projecting a message of transfer. There is no explicit order of his in writing, there is no orderly comprehensive policy, but there is an atmosphere of [population] transfer. The transfer idea is in the air. The entire leadership understands that this is the idea. The officer corps understands what is required of them. Under Ben-Gurion, a consensus of transfer is created.”
Ben-Gurion was a “transferist”?
“Of course. Ben-Gurion was a transferist. He understood that there could be no Jewish state with a large and hostile Arab minority in its midst. There would be no such state. It would not be able to exist.”
I don’t hear you condemning him.
“Ben-Gurion was right. If he had not done what he did, a state would not have come into being. That has to be clear. It is impossible to evade it. Without the uprooting of the Palestinians, a Jewish state would not have arisen here.”
“Population transfer” is the Israeli euphemism for ethnic cleansing.
The legal right of the Palestinians to live without a military occupation in some kind of state has zero bearing whatsoever on how they or their neighbors deal with womens’ rights.
The Palestinian people don’t want war, they want an uncorrupt government and the international recognition of their rights, which is why they voted for Hamas. Conditions in the WB have improved because Israel have dialled down the general repression and opened a few of the hundreds of checkpoints they maintain there, allowing a small part of the economy that would exist with free movement of goods to regenerate. Meanwhile they control all entry/exit of people and good from Gaza, and are literally starving the people and crushing the economy in a ham-fisted attempt to get the Palestinians to support Fatah (a nice example of point 2.) When democracy returns to the WB they’ll turn the repression knob up to 11 again.
Palestinians have been thrown off their land on a regular basis ever since 1948. It didn’t end there, it’s continuing today. It’s tailed off since Oslo but the widespread murder/ethnic cleansing of Palestinians on a local under-the-radar scale has continued from 1948 to the present day and will continue for the forseeable future. When it was still happening at a reasonably high level, in the 50s and 60s, it engendered reprisals, the kind of things your wiki thing was calling terrorism.
I’m not talking about the present day. The present day is complicated, because in the present day, you have the West Bank and Gaza, large portions of land that’s not part of Israel that is occupied by Israel, and nobody has any idea what’s going to happen to it or the people living there. So when you say, “When it was still happening at a reasonably high level, in the 50s and 60s”, show me that it was happening at a reasonably high level in the 50s and 60s, instead of what you’re doing, which is just asserting it and then linking to examples of Palestinians with their lands at risk now.
I actually had a quick google for it but there’s a limited amount of 1950s/60s stuff on the internet as I’m sure you’re aware. But let’s look at it logically. Israel, a country literally founded on ethnic cleansing and terrorism and led by former terrorists, adheres to a policy of scrupulous fairness and nondiscrimination between the two populations, then sometime in the “present day”, when things are somehow more complicated, allow settler populations toattack/kill/etc. Palestinians, use terror tactics to get them off their land etc. etc. with relative impunity. You honestly think things were just peachy for Palestinians forty odd years ago? That nothing was done to them in those years that might have resulted in reprisal attacks?
So Israel kinda likes what the West Bankers are doing, but not what the Gazans are doing. As a result, the West Bankers’ lives are improving while the Gazans are not.
Well, if I lived in Gaza, I know what lesson I’d learn from this.
Well, does democracy in the West Bank mean a resumption of attacks on Israel?
Their democratic aspirations are being ignored because the US isn’t practising what it preaches. After making it the central aim of US foreign policy to press for democracy in the region, the US is now ignoring the results of democratic elections if it doesn’t like the results.
Gazans and West Bankers appear to have learnt the opposite lesson, they still stubbornly insist on voting for people who represent integrity and freedom. That’s why Abbas refused to hold elections after his presidential term expired, because Hamas would stroll any free election.
Attacks on Israel will continue as long as they continue to keep another people in starvation conditions, in ghettoes on their own land with no chance of freedom or any chance of a normal life.
Turns out you’re right! TheWikipedia article on the subject says that FGM is mainly an African practice, predating both Christianity and Islam, which is also practiced sporadically in the Middle East by people of Afro-Arab descent. It is mainly done in secret and is outlawed by governments, including the Egyptian government, and the practice appears to be declining. The article specifically mentions Saudi Arabia, southern Jordan, Syria, northern Iraq (Kurdistan), Oman (all areas that were populated by zanj, or East African blacks)…and also South America and Indonesia. But not Palestine. The connection of this practice with Islam seems a little shaky.
And moralistic social pressure is worse than immoral social pressure because…?
I have heard Latino mothers complaining moralistically about their teenage daughters wearing shorts. I don’t think that indicates there’s anything wrong with Latino culture. Every urbanized culture has a limit for “uncovering” yourself, beyond which you face social disapproval. And for most of Islam, that limit is female hair.
Actually, a good many White, Anglo-Saxon, conservative and/or Christian mothers might have the same complaint about shorts and revealing clothing. I don’t agree with conservative Christianity, but I’m not about to criticize or find fault with it, especially since so many in my own family are adherents. It’s a lifestyle choice and I have to be tolerant.
Your characterization of Corrie’s death is cruel, callous, and according to witnesses at the scene, factually wrong. But the bulldozer driver was even more cruel and callous.
It was only a matter of time before a Darwin Awards fan posted here. The thing about the Darwin Awards is that they make fun of people who simply made mistakes, or who were risk-takers who would have been lauded as gutsy had their luck been a little better. I have a very low opinion of those who make fun of the dead, or even celebrate their deaths as something positive for humanity.
Better check your brake fluid before you drive home tonight…or you may wind up inducted into the Darwin Awards!
Of course it is to Israel’s credit that the soldier who murdered Hurndall was convicted and sent to prison.
But I can’t help but wonder…was justice secured in this case mainly because Hurndall was a foreigner, and a white European?
How many Israeli soldiers have been imprisoned for killing a Palestinian noncombatant?
(The question is not rhetorical, I really want to know. And I am willing to predict that the number is higher than the hypothetical situation with Hamas. In my OP, I did not take a very good view of Hamas.)
Well, first of all, I disagree with your characterization of Israel’s founding and of present day Israel, but beyond that, in the 50s and 60s, there weren’t any Palestinians under Israeli control. The attacks that were going on the 50s and 60s were being launched from the refugee camps in the West Bank, which was, of course, part of Jordan. There was an Israeli Arab population, but the attacks weren’t coming from there.
Looks like someone is trying to gain an edge in the argument by dialing up the foul language. I will not be emulating that. Reason is always better than shouting and cussing.
I can understand if you’re ticked off that I’ve been sarcastic with you, but, well, when you make sweeping generalizations, you’re asking for it.
It looks like you’re raking me over the coals because I have (since my OP) been consistently honest in admitting that Palestinians are not perfect, and that Palestinian individuals have done some inexcusable things. I have not taken the position of “Palestinians, good, Israelis, bad,” even though some people in this thread have tried to Straw Man me that way.
My main point is: Even if it were true that the Palestinians have a deeply traumatized society – even if too many of them approve of unethical tactics – heck, even if the GREAT MAJORITY approved such unconscionable acts – they would still deserve the same human and civil rights as any other community, as outlined in my OP. The right to dig wells. The right to go to the hospital or another village without passing through a dozen checkpoints. The right to grow olive trees. The right to get an education. The right to keep living in the homes they inherited from their ancestors, and even build and add on to them. What Israeli is threatened by these rights???
It is my opinion, based on historical examples of nationalistic rebellions, that once the Palestinians are no longer oppressed, the terror and murders of Israeli civilians will stop. The Palestinians will rebuild a viable society, similar to or better than the one they had in Ottoman times and even during less harsh periods of the Occupation, and the bloodlust and “war fever” and gloating at civilian deaths will be forgotten. Once the nightmare is over, the nightmarish demonizing of the enemy, including in schools and on television, will have no reason to exist. Dare we say, maybe even peace and good relations between the two states of the Holy Land. This prediction will probably cause others on this Board to chortle and call me “naive” … and it is really sad that they would consider that naive. Your possibilities are limited by your hopes.
Be that as it may, very few Irishmen now hope for the deaths of English children, nor do they teach their own children to hate. And that was considered the most intractable and least solvable struggle of the 19th century.
So, you can keep all your cites – I’ll concede every one of them. Although, it does seem you were rather selective in choosing excerpts. The article I cited, which you gleefully quoted the “bad parts” of, is an answer to your previous statement:
Well, I did. And your sweeping, generalized statement was proven to be wrong.
Again:
Well, now you have seen such a news story. You made a FACTUALLY WRONG and PREJUDICIAL statement, and you were wrong. And it was so easy to prove you wrong, I took the reference from the top of the first page of Google…probably took me less than 5 minutes, searching, reading, posting and all. But at least you got to do some more reading.
So cram that one back into yourself, “chuckles.”
Gosh, so nice of you to admit that now. And that is way far away from your previous statements.
When Israel can stop settlers from bullying and terrorizing Palestinians and seizing their land, I’ll be impressed. Hell, I’ll be impressed if I think they’re trying. The monopoly of violence is the most basic measure of a functioning state. If you cannot stop people from persecuting and robbing minority populations, you are not functioning. If you can stop them but will not, you are waging war by proxy. You give me a call when they start putting significant numbers of militant settlers in jail and keeping them there.
Actually, I’ll concede that Israel has put some Jewish terrorists in jail…and the PA has imprisoned some Palestinians for egregious acts, like the ones who beat to death some soldiers in a police station, I believe. Neither number is acceptably high enough.
During all the intifadas and conflicts, how many Palestinian children have been killed? 1,233. How many Israeli children? 142.
I am not willing to excuse the IDF these children’s deaths because of mistakes or “collateral damage.” When you get so many deaths because of “accidents,” the continuation of tactics causing these “accidents” is nothing more or less than a deliberate decision to keep killing innocents.
How many Israelis lose sleep because of these children’s deaths? If it turns out not to be very many, can I call them “sick, perverse and evil”???
Once again, that contradicts your previous statements.
I’m not defending conservative Christianity. I don’t respect social conservatism or think that anybody should feel obliged to respect it.
A key connection that you’re missing is that restrictions on a woman’s dress go along with general restrictions on women and the general status of women within a culture. Take a look at the cultures that think women shouldn’t show their hair, arms, legs, etc - are these cultures where women are encouraged to get an education? Where women are viewed as free individuals rather than the property of their husbands or fathers?
Moralistic social pressure is worse because every aspect of it is more severe. Girls who do not dress in a sexy manner are not considered to have done something wrong in Western societies. Their friends and family do not consider them whores. There are no cases that I know of of a father killing his daughter because his daughter didn’t want to look like Britney Spears.
If you don’t want to criticize conservative social views, hey, that’s your thing. I’m the type to actually raise his voice and make it clear that homosexuality isn’t wrong, that abortion isn’t wrong, that it’s okay to have sex before marriage, and that women are nobody’s property.
There are more women than men in Iranian universities. I am not sure if it is > 50% in the UAE, but there are plenty of professional women in universities and business in the UAE.
I know what you mean, I’m still waiting for anything at all about the '56 Suez War or the '67 Six Day War to appear on the intrawebs. I heard there were wars in Korea and Vietnam in the 1950s/60s as well, but I can’t find a damn thing about them on the net. Guess they didn’t happen.
This is one of the most patently absurd sentences I’ve ever read here. You can’t expect to pass off being unable to back up an assertion of yours like this and get away with it. You must have heard this from somewhere, citing a book or publication is as acceptable as a website. Actually, probably more acceptable than an internet cite.
And isn’t this viewed by religious conservatives, including supporters of the present government, as alarming? I was under the impression that Iranian students were one of the driving forces behind Mousavi’s campaign.
Not every Muslim society is like Saudi Arabia – a place where women weren’t even allowed to flee a burning building without going back in to put on their hijab. In fact, most Arab societies don’t even come close.
Unlike Saudi Arabia, for example, women in Egypt, Palestine, Lebanon, Syria, Jordan and (I think) some of the United Arab Emirates, are allowed to drive cars, hold jobs, go shopping unaccompanied, hold leadership positions in business and nonprofit organizations, and not wear hijab when at home or in the office – although they do put it on when they go out in the street. And that’s in Gaza – in the West Bank, Palestinian women have been seen without hijab in protest demonstrations, although they are certainly a minority.
As for the right to vote – that seems to depend on how democratic the country is. Generally, if the men are allowed to vote, so are the women.
Hanan Ashrawi is probably the most famous Palestinian woman. She never wears hijab in her appearances on the Western TV news, although she probably wears it elsewhere. Queen Rania of Jordan always appears without hijab in her official pictures, but she wears it when greeting people in the street. (I don’t think the average Jordanian thinks of Queen Rania as a slut, although al-Qaeda might.) Use of hijab is actually suppressed in Turkey, but women still wear it when visiting the mosque. And, Hillary Clinton wears hijab when visiting the Middle East. YMMV.
You just can’t make a case that a simple head-covering equals repression. It’s a 4,000 year old tradition that predates Islam and probably started with the Babylonians.
Guess they didn’t happen.