"The Arab Spring came to Israel this weekend. Thousands of Palestinians - not just from the Palestinian territories but also from Syria and Lebanon - marched on Israel's borders from all sides. Israel's military met them with bullets, killing more than a dozen and injuring many more."
Read more: http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2011/05/16/EDMU1JGQ6I.DTL#ixzz1MZOg4r8U
24 comments :
I guess Israel reacted to the ivasion of their country. Usually there's more than meets the eye when Israel gets blamed because they seem to get blamed for all the problems in the world. Wish the Koran wasn't so anti-Semitic,
‘Do not argue with the followers of earlier revelation otherwise than in a most kindly manner – unless it be such of them as are bent on evil-doing – and say: “We believe in that which has been bestowed from on high upon us, as well as that which has been bestowed upon you; for our God and your God is one and the same, and it is unto Him that we [all] surrender ourselves.”’
--The Qur'an
'A day after mass protests at Israel’s borders set off deadly clashes, Israelis expressed concern that an alarming new chapter had opened in their country’s conflict with the Palestinians.
“The nightmare scenario that Israel has feared since its establishment came true: that Palestinian refugees would simply start walking from their camps across the border, and with their own two feet try to realize the right of return,” wrote Aluf Benn, a commentator in the Haaretz newspaper.'
No spring, Assad thought he could distract his subjects from his crimes and oppression. It didn't work.
I can see that people who were born in Israel would have a right to return, but all the people in the pictures from yesterday were born long after 1948 and are citizens of some other country (Syria, Jordan or Lebanon probably).
You don't have a right to live in a country that your grandfather lived in.
DC
I know a Palestinian Christian couple in Baghdad who had to leave their home in Palestine in 1967. They are in their 60s, and their sons were born in Baghdad. The youth are walking for their parents and grandparents. The injustice against Palestinian refugees has not been addressed as it should have been long ago.
"What injustice?
Neve understood that"
Yes I think this is a big part of the problem.
It does not help that the Palestinian perspective is never told in mainstream American media. Take this article in the USA Today: "In 1948, Israel was attacked by the armies of Egypt, Lebanon, Syria, Iraq and Jordan. In 1967, armies from 10 Arab countries battled Israel in the Six-Day War."
No mention that Palestine was invaded by Irgun and other armed groups that even the British considered to be terrorists. No mention of the violence committed by these armed Jewish groups against innocent Palestinians, and never ever mention the hundreds of thousands of Palestinians who fled their homes, by force or by fear, and were never allowed to return.
"In 1948, Israel was attacked by the armies of Egypt, Lebanon, Syria, Iraq and Jordan. In 1967, armies from 10 Arab countries battled Israel in the Six-Day War."
It's the truth,even if that is inconvinient to you.
Why are you ignoring the Arab violence toward jews?
On 1948: “The Arab League hastily called for its member countries to send regular army troops into Palestine. They were ordered to secure only the sections of Palestine given to the Arabs under the partition plan. But these regular armies were ill equipped and lacked any central command to coordinate their efforts...[Jordan’s King Abdullah] promised [the Israelis and the British] that his troops, the Arab Legion, the only real fighting force among the Arab armies, would avoid fighting with Jewish settlements...Yet Western historians record this as the moment when the young state of Israel fought off “the overwhelming hordes’ of five Arab countries. In reality, the Israeli offensive against the Palestinians intensified.”
--Our Roots Are Still Alive, by the Peoples Press Palestine Book Project.
“Joseph Weitz was the director of the Jewish National Land Fund...On December 19, 1940, he wrote: ‘It must be clear that there is no room for both peoples in this country...The Zionist enterprise so far...has been fine and good in its own time, and could do with ‘land buying’ — but this will not bring about the State of Israel; that must come all at once, in the manner of a Salvation (this is the secret of the Messianic idea); and there is no way besides transferring the Arabs from here to the neighboring countries, to transfer them all; except maybe for Bethlehem, Nazareth and Old Jerusalem, we must not leave a single village, not a single tribe’...There were literally hundreds of such statements made by Zionists.”
--Edward Said, The Question of Palestine.
“Ben-Gurion clearly wanted as few Arabs as possible to remain in the Jewish state. He hoped to see them flee. He said as much to his colleagues and aides in meetings in August, September and October [1948]. But no [general] expulsion policy was ever enunciated and Ben-Gurion always refrained from issuing clear or written expulsion orders; he preferred that his generals ‘understand’ what he wanted done. He wished to avoid going down in history as the ‘great expeller’ and he did not want the Israeli government to be implicated in a morally questionable policy...But while there was no ‘expulsion policy’, the July and October [1948] offensives were characterized by far more expulsions and, indeed, brutality towards Arab civilians than the first half of the war.”
--Benny Morris, The Birth of the Palestinian Refugee Problem, 1947-1949
“During May [1948] ideas about how to consolidate and give permanence to the Palestinian exile began to crystallize, and the destruction of villages was immediately perceived as a primary means of achieving this aim...[Even earlier,] On 10 April, Haganah units took Abu Shusha... The village was destroyed that night... Khulda was leveled by Jewish bulldozers on 20 April... Abu Zureiq was completely demolished... Al Mansi and An Naghnaghiya, to the southeast, were also leveled. . .By mid-1949, the majority of [the 350 depopulated Arab villages] were either completely or partly in ruins and uninhabitable.”
--Benny Morris, The Birth of the Palestinian Refugee Problem, 1947-1949.
1967:
Did the Egyptians actually start the 1967 war, as Israel originally claimed?
“The former Commander of the Air Force, General Ezer Weitzman, regarded as a hawk, stated that there was ‘no threat of destruction’ but that the attack on Egypt, Jordan and Syria was nevertheless justified so that Israel could ‘exist according the scale, spirit, and quality she now embodies.’...Menahem Begin had the following remarks to make: ‘In June 1967, we again had a choice. The Egyptian Army concentrations in the Sinai approaches do not prove that Nasser was really about to attack us. We must be honest with ourselves. We decided to attack him.’“
--Noam Chomsky, The Fateful Triangle.
Was the 1967 war defenisve? — continued
“I do not think Nasser wanted war. The two divisions he sent to The Sinai would not have been sufficient to launch an offensive war. He knew it and we knew it.”
--Yitzhak Rabin, Israel’s Chief of Staff in 1967, in Le Monde, 2/28/68
Moshe Dayan posthumously speaks out on the Golan Heights in 1997:
“Moshe Dayan, the celebrated commander who, as Defense Minister in 1967, gave the order to conquer the Golan...[said] many of the firefights with the Syrians were deliberately provoked by Israel, and the kibbutz residents who pressed the Government to take the Golan Heights did so less for security than for the farmland...[Dayan stated] ‘They didn’t even try to hide their greed for the land...We would send a tractor to plow some area where it wasn’t possible to do anything, in the demilitarized area, and knew in advance that the Syrians would start to shoot. If they didn’t shoot, we would tell the tractor to advance further, until in the end the Syrians would get annoyed and shoot.
And then we would use artillery and later the air force also, and that’s how it was...The Syrians, on the fourth day of the war, were not a threat to us.’”
--The New York Times, May 11, 1997
I am Muhannad, in case there is any confusion.
I have not ignored Arab violence. Take this for example:
12 times as many suicide bombings in Iraq as in Israel
Mojo
The US helped Germany to recover, but it was only part the the plan.
Germany took responsibilty for its actions,changed,renounced racism,violence and militarism and embraced democracy and cooperation. That's why their are flourishing country they are today.
do you Germany going to war today? No. The same process happened in Japan.
In sharp contrast, the Arabs refuse to take any responsiblity for their actions or to change.
That is why the palestinians where they are.
"Palestine only wanted to remain whole, or at least remain in their homes."
Yes, by killing and dispossesing their jewish neigbours.
If they didn't start a war, they would still be in their homes.
"the winners of WWII did not annex any part of Germany" - Wrong. A large part of pre-war German teritorry in now in Poland.
"80% of historic Palestine" - is Jordan
"Yes, by killing and dispossesing their jewish neigbours."
Sounds like bullshit to me. Is that still part of Israel's "hasbara" ?
' "80% of historic Palestine" - is Jordan '
I've heard that nonsense before too. Would you like to see the remaining Palestinians in the West Bank to move to Jordan?
'In 1940, Joseph Weitz, the head of the Jewish Agency’s Colonization Department, which was responsible for the actual organization of settlements in Palestine, wrote:
"Between ourselves it must be clear that there is no room for both peoples together in this country. We shall not achieve our goal if the Arabs are in this small country. There is no other way than to transfer the Arabs from here to neighboring countries - all of them. Not one village, not one tribe should be left. [39]"
Joseph Weitz elaborated upon the practical meaning of rendering Palestine “Jewish”:
"There are some who believe that the non-Jewish population, even in a high percentage, within our borders will be more effectively under our surveillance; and there are some who believe the contrary, i.e., that it is easier to carry out surveillance over the activities of a neighbor than over those of a tenant. [I] tend to support the latter view and have an additional argument: ... the need to sustain the character of the state which will henceforth be Jewish ... with a non-Jewish minority limited to fifteen percent. I had already reached this fundamental position as early as 1940 [and] it is entered in my diary. [40]"
The Koenig Report stated this policy even more bluntly:
"We must use terror, assassination, intimidation, land confiscation and the cutting of all social services to rid the Galilee of its Arab population. [41]"
Chairman Heilbrun of the Committee for the Re-election of General Shlomo Lahat, the mayor of Tel Aviv, declaimed: “We have to kill all the Palestinians unless they are resigned to live here as slaves.” [42]
These are the words of Uri Lubrani, Israeli Prime Minister David Ben Gurion’s special adviser on Arab Affairs, in 1960: “We shall reduce the Arab population to a community of woodcutters and waiters.” [43]'
--Ralph Schoenman, The Hidden History of Zionism
The Palestinians from "Syria and Lebanon" are the red flag. This is astro-turfing from the Syrian regime to distract from their own murder of protesters.
It will probably work too. Arabs are a lot like Doug the Dog in the movie "Up". "Sane conversation sane conversation sane sane JOOZ! sane our leaders are tyrants sane sane ISRAEL!"
Mojo
It's clear to me that we don't agree about this subject.
I think that you are very selective
in your arguments,to say the least.
Let's agree to disagree.
I believe Ralph Schoenman is also Jewish. There are many educated Jews who have written about the history of Israeli violence against Arabs. God bless Schoenman and those honest and courageous Jews who have educated us!
Thanks to world wide web and Foreign Policy magazine, I am learning more about the history of Palestine: "My hometown, Al-Lyd, (which is today called Lod), was besieged by Haganah troops in mid-July 1948. As part of Operation Dani, Al-Lyd and the neighboring town of Ramla were depopulated of tens of thousands of Palestinians. At the time, the city was filled with at least 50,000 people, more than twice its usual population, because it had swelled with refugees from nearby villages. After the siege, my grandparents were among the 1,000 original inhabitants who remained. They and many others refused to flee during the fighting and hid in the city's churches and mosques. Unlike their neighbors, who were hiding in the Dahmash mosque where scores of refugees were massacred by Haganah troops, they managed to survive and walk out of their refuge into the destroyed ghost town they called home."
Trouble in the Arab Spring:
http://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2011/07/anne-frank-liar/241500/
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