Michael Lerner: Why Arafat Failed

Please post a URL, thanks.

You would assume a religious leader would wait awhile to write such a critical aricle out of respect for the dead and Palestinian mourning but I wouldnt be surprised if he did write it. People are so blinded by hatred they dont realize that while many Palestinians were very critical of Arafat when he was alive the memory that is being honored now is that of the Palestinain struggle that Arafat represented and not particulars of Arafat's actions over the past 10 years. The way Arafat was issolated, humilitaed by the US and ISraeli government and demonized after his death by the US and Israeli press (as well as by members of the US, Israeli government and Australian governments) symbolizes the Palestinian plight; just as the Nazis dehumanized Jews and the world sat by and only acted when the Nazis posed a direct threat to neighboring countries, excuses are made for Israeli ethnic cleansing by dehumanizing Palestinian freedom fighters as terrorists and justifying collective punishment since distinctions are never made between the actions of individuals, groups and the Palestinain people. Even on this site, right-wingers smear Arafat in death by talking about Hamas as if the death of one of the last popular secular Palestinian leaders will not make fundmentalism the only path left for people upset by warcrimes in Iraq and Israel.

The world is heading towards a major rise in the power of Islamic fundametalists because people are upset with US and Israeli actions and the US and Israel have blocked other paths of resistance with piles of corpses and broken promises (the Communists and Arab Nationalists were killed over the past decade leaving little other option for those who want to fight back)

The numerous crimes and misdeeds Arafat had perpetrated against his own flock have been told and retold time and time again here and elsewhere, so there's no need to further outline the reasons. The "particulars" have been more of the rule than the exception.

The preposterous comparison you're making between the Israelis and the Nazis demonstrates just to which depths of depravity Palestinians and many of their supporters keep willing to sink to demonize their enemy at any cost. And it would appear you're hinting that Israeli "ethnic cleansing" -- a phrase used to designate a phenomenon only remotely resembling the label being attached to it -- is a forebearer of an all-out extermination of Palestinians. I sure hope for the Palestinians' sake that the attitude you're expressing will never gain enough currency that it could grow to proportions that will upgrade it to the level of a self fulfilling prophecy among Palestinians. I also wish both sides, especially the Palestinian, that there's a sufficient mass of Palestinians to reject your gloom-and-doom viewpoint that Arafat's death will necessarily cause the adaptation of fundmentalist attitudes and ways by all Palestinians.

Has Israel blocked every path of non-violent resistance? I'm afraid you hadn't thought this matter out.

It's telling that while you accuse Israel of terrorism in abandon, you aren't willing to face up to the fact that the vast majority of Palestinian gunmen do commit acts of terror, if impartial dictionaries are to be believed. Equally disingenuous is your argument that the actions of Palestinian individuals and groups are viewed as those of the Palestinian people.

I got it because I'm on his mailing list, but it's also available here:

http://www.beliefnet.com/story/155/story_15596_1.html

And I would assume that Lerner is going to call 'em as he sees 'em, and that he's far from the only one who sees Arafat as someone who, in the end, chose symbolic victories over real ones -- to the lasting detriment of the people he was "leading."

Excellent article.

Why? Doesn't Tikkun have a URL for the original article?

Other than that, and nevertheless, there are, of course, the usual moral contradictions with Zionists.

Why was, or is, it incumbent upon the Palestinians, who are a continuously indigenous people, to acknowledge "the humanity and suffering" of the European Jews in their mass influx to Palestine, and to resist settler-colonization non-violently, when the mass immigration of European Jews, and their terrorist and military forces, obviously did NOT recognize (and, in fact, didn't even care about) "the humanity and suffering" of the Palestinian people?

The European Zionists did not enter Palestine nonviolently; why, then, must the Palestinians resist nonviolently, especially to be worthy of the world's support?

(And actually, the Israeli government has often made Palestinian _organized_ NONVIOLENT resistance _illegal_ ! You know, like during American slavery, it was, after all, _illegal_ for a slave to seek liberation or to organize mass resistance!)

The Palestinians, whom Lerner acknowledges, that those Jewish forces drove over 800,000 of them from their homes in one of the largest military ethnic cleansing operations in history. And those hundreds of thousands just in 1948 alone (when Israel declared "statehood"). This doesn't include the previous mass dispossession (systematic, vs. mass, ethnic cleansing) by European Jews of Palestinian homes, land and employment that began in the 1920's.

Then, Lerner (in his usual moral gobbledygook) puts the onus and the blame on the VICTIMS (something American Jews, being quick to claim and remind us of their historical victimhood status, should morally understand well from their own history) for the crisis that has existed in Palestine since Zionist Jews tried to colonize it in the 20th century.

Lots of paragraphs by Lerner about the obligations of the oppressed VICTIMS who were rendered stateless! No paragraphs about the moral obligations of the oppressors and their state!

Even in the paragraph where Lerner acknowledges, "The lies told by Israeli Prime Minister Barak about his "generous offer" [a lie that is constantly repeated by even American Jewish government and organizational officials today] ... at the hands of a well-oiled propaganda machine of Israelis and their US supporters...," Lerner then immorally turns around and says, "Yet in the final analysis Yasser Arafat was not up to the challenge of meeting Israeli intransigence with the kind of leadership that a Martin Luther King, Jr., a Mahatma Gandhi, or a Nelson Mandela was able to bring to their peoples facing their own forms of oppression." Again, Lerner resorts to blaming the VICTIMS.

Well, Gandhi, Mandela, and certainly King never faced 500 or 1,000 lb bombs dropped on apartment buildings or residential neighborhoods to kill one person, tanks lobbing shells through the walls of people's homes, jet fighters firing missiles into same, helicopter gunships blowing up suspect cars on city streets, children being killed in their own parents' kitchens by sniper fire, or giant military bulldozers leveling entire neighborhoods and market districts.

The British, even the Apartheid South African state, or even Southern sheriffs, never forced Indian, African, or African American women to have babies on the side of dusty roads in sweltering midday heat, never targeted ambulances with missiles and automatic gunfire, and never prevented the critically ill (from babies to the elderly) from going to hospitals on the wrong side of checkpoints.

If Michael Lerner (or all those other Zionists who keep hypocritically tear-jerking us with endless movie tales of the, indeed, tragic Holocaust) were a morally conscionable person, instead of writing a long-winded screed that could be entitled:

"BLAMING THE VICTIM" ...

He should have written an article entitled:

"WHY ISRAEL FAILED".

Or better yet:

"WHY ZIONISM FAILED".

But, Lerner doesn't have the moral, ahem, let me more politely say, "guts" for that!

>>>"Why was, or is, it incumbent upon the Palestinians, who are a continuously indigenous people"<<<

This bit of misinformation has been refuted over and over again. Suffice to mention the 1911 edition of Encyclopedia Britannica's breakdown of the geographical origins of many of the people comprising the "Palestinian" population then (showing that people had been imported from as far as Afghanistan and the Caucas region, for example), or the fact that thousands of Syrians infiltrated the Galilee and Egyptians entered from the Sinai during the 1920s and 1930s to prove that the "Palestinians" are by no means a "continuously indigenous people".

>>>"Why was, or is, it incumbent upon the Palestinians to acknowledge "the humanity and suffering" of the European Jews in their mass influx to Palestine, and to resist settler-colonization non-violently, when the mass immigration of European Jews, and their terrorist and military forces, obviously did NOT recognize (and, in fact, didn't even care about) "the humanity and suffering" of the Palestinian people?"<<<

(a) That's an inaccurate portrayal of history because there were quite a few Zionists that did acknowledge the local non-Jews' humanity (including prominent leftists and even Jabotinsky as demonstrated by his literature) and even took note of their suffering and advised their counterparts to take it into account and take steps to accommodate many of their needs and cope with their problems.

(b) Even if that portrayal were accurate, two wrongs don't make a right.

>>>"The European Zionists did not enter Palestine nonviolently; "<<<

That's another distortion of history. The European Zionists and other Jews did enter the Land of Israel non-violently, but were occasionally attacked by the "Palestinians". It would seem like some people non-critically adopt the Palestinian narrative on this topic alleging that "the mess began when the Jews hit back".

>>>"why, then, must the Palestinians resist nonviolently, especially to be worthy of the world's support?"<<<

See (b) above.

>>>"The Palestinians, whom Lerner acknowledges, that those Jewish forces drove over 800,000 of them from their homes"<<<

Benny Morris' most recent book on this subject puts the number of 1948 "Palestinian" refugees at 700,000. Why hype the number and resort to the usual charge that Morris is a Zionist and therefore shouldn't be trusted, even if did meticulous research and relied upon newly released information from the IDF archive? Is he Joan Peters of "From Time Immemorial" fame? His research on this particular point seems sufficiently extensive to me.

>>>"...one of the largest military ethnic cleansing operations in history"<<<

How does that estimate of 800,000 Arab refugees stack up against the widespread ethnic cleansing accompanying the Yugoslav wars from 1991 to 1999; or the 1915-1916 Armenian Genocide; or the ethnic cleansing of Jews that occurred during WWII; or the 12 million ethnic Germans from Central and Eastern Europe that were forcibly expelled between 1945 and 1950, pray tell??

>>>"This doesn't include the previous mass dispossession (systematic, vs. mass, ethnic cleansing) by European Jews of Palestinian homes, land and employment that began in the 1920's. "<<<

That's yet another historical falsification. (And one should raise a quizzical eyebrow at that allegation as most anti-Israel folks maintain that that "mass dispossession" began in 1882...)

>>>"Then, Lerner puts the onus and the blame on the VICTIMS for the crisis that has existed in Palestine since Zionist Jews tried to colonize it in the 20th century."<<<

The 1st Problem is that these alleged victims are more often than not the wrongdoers rather than victims.
The 2nd is that this crisis actually began when the "Palestinians" resolved to treat the Zionist movement and its adherents who were immigrating to the Land of Israel in a peaceful and lawful manner (not provoking non-Jews, buying their lands) with violent hostility.

>>>"[a lie that is constantly repeated by even American Jewish government and organizational officials today] (bev's charge that Barak has repeatedly told lies about his offer of Palestinian statehood)"<<<

Except it's not a lie.

>>>"Well, Gandhi, Mandela, and certainly King never faced 500 or 1,000 lb bombs dropped on apartment buildings or residential neighborhoods to kill one person,"<<<

That was a rare exception. It's not the rule as bev would have others believe.

>>>"Gandhi, Mandela, and certainly King never faced tanks lobbing shells through the walls of people's homes, jet fighters firing missiles into same, helicopter gunships blowing up suspect cars on city streets,"<<<

Those three definitely never led people who led national freedom struggles so plentiful of moral abominations, war crimes and crimes against humanity as the Palestinians that have necessitated firm military action for the attacked nation and state to keep the "freedom fighters" from massacring millions and destroying the state.
And they certainly wouldn't have condoned, let alone endorsed, the terroristic practices so commonly widespread among the Palestinians.
And at any rate I doubt whether those three would have had the audacity to claim the military and police forces of the state/nation/empire at the sustaining end of their struggle weren't entitled to the vast majority of the military reprisals Israel has taken against Palestinian "freedom fighting", or whether they would have had the nerve to insinuate that all targets being hit during the reprisals are simply innocent people, or "suspects" at an absolute most, and their property.

>>>"Gandhi, Mandela, and certainly King never faced children being killed in their own parents' kitchens by sniper fire, or giant military bulldozers leveling entire neighborhoods and market districts."<<<

They never exactly led national or civil struggles that triggered military counter-action that entails the amount of military accidents and mistakes causing the extent of collateral damage present in the intifada, or the odd need to flatten relatively large areas.

>>>"The British, even the Apartheid South African state, or even Southern sheriffs, never forced Indian, African, or African American women to have babies on the side of dusty roads in sweltering midday heat,"<<<

They never faced the daunting challenges posed to Israel by the Palestinian "fight for freedom" where Palestinian terrorists have occasionally disguised themselves as pregnant women in a hurry to get to the hospital, or tried to sneak past inspection as a person assisting a pregnant woman, and as a consequence have forced Israel to impose movement restrictions and stiffer inspection procedures to the detriment of innocent pregnant Palestinians.

>>>"The British, the Apartheid South African state, or even Southern sheriffs never prevented the critically ill (from babies to the elderly) from going to hospitals on the wrong side of checkpoints"<<<

They didn't have to try to outsmart terrorists who have been using ambulances to transport terrorists and their ammunition either together with critically non-combatants or alone.

>>>"The British, the Apartheid South African state, or even Southern sheriffs never targeted ambulances with missiles and automatic gunfire ."<<<

Neither have the Israelis.

bev: "The Indybay article and the article URL from gehrig do not completely match. Why? Doesn't Tikkun have a URL for the original article?"

Maybe he tweaked it between the time he sent it to his mailing list and the time he sent it to BeliefNet. He hasn't posted it on Tikkun.org.

If you intend to accuse me of having doctored it, incidentally, please have the courtesy to do so explicitly. Your innuendo games demean you.

But I can see why you'd want to do everything you could to change the topic away from Arafat's many failures as a leader -- including the implication that Lerner is blaming "the Palestinians" for Arafat's personal mistakes. And I'm sure the late and unlamented terrorist leader would have his little heart warmed to know that someone somewhere actually bought his excuses, that all his failures were really Israel's fault.

The Palestinian National Charter -- remember, the one that explicitly called for the violent distruction of Israel and explicitly renounced the possibility of peaceful negotiations of any kind -- was signed in 1964. By 1974 Arafat was speaking (armed, I recall) to the General Assembly. So -- through a carefully cultivated network of terror, after a decade Arafat had the world's attention for the Palestinian cause. What did he do with that attention for the next thirty years? Nothing. Less than nothing, if you consider how he personally obstructed any possibility of peaceful negotiations with Israel, or stalled and weaseled once those negotiations became necessary because his Soviet sponsors had fallen apart.

Sure, there are going to be people who say "everything that's the Palestinians' fault is really the Zi-i-i-i-ionists' fault." Then there's reality, and the reality is that Arafat let it all slip through his fingers.

@%<

I am about a year older than Yasser Arafat was at his death and, I suspect, somewhat more ill than he was before his final collapse. Which is a way of begging indulgence to engage in what many would consider some very politically incorrect contemplations of the true meaning of what transpired around Arafat's death.

What we saw at the Ramallah compound where his body was flown in by two Egyptian military helicopters for burial on Friday afternoon was the true face of the Palestinian people.

There is no doubt that the frenzied mobs of tens of thousands of uncontrollable young men who prevented the unloading of the casket from the helicopter truly mourned their leader. They chose to express that mourning in an ethos of savagery, many frenziedly firing AK-47 assault rifles – whose possession was forbidden them by the post-Oslo agreements signed, and immediately flouted, by Arafat.

A dwindling number of Israelis, but more people in the West, chose to see Arafat as a romantic freedom fighter – an Arab Che Guevara who was the cultural icon of their youthful days.

There have been many movements of national liberation during the past half-century. None of them, perhaps with the exception of the Chechens, have been as murderous as the movement for Palestinian independence that Arafat created and led.

As far as we know Arafat was not part of the al-Qaida network of anti-Western terrorism created in recent years by Osama bin Laden. But he was undoubtedly bin Laden's mentor in the techniques of harnessing large-scale murder and terrorism in the service of such causes.

Arafat and the Palestinian movement he headed first came to the world's notice with the hijacking of Israeli civilian jets and the demolition of European and American ones, and the barbarous murder of 11 Israeli sportsmen at the 1972 Olympics in Munich.

The disappointing reaction of many European commentators who witnessed Arafat's murderous rampage over 30 years was basically a racist one. What else can one expect from Palestinians, and Arabs, whose rage is so deep over memories of European colonialism, new American economic and cultural imperialism and the presence of a Jewish Israel in their midst?

But what transpired on Friday belies that argument. That culture-wide sense of inchoate murderous rage does indeed pervade much of the Arab world. But it is primarily directed inwardly, against universally corrupt Arab regimes. What keeps it in check, however, are exactly those tyrannical Arab regimes.

The pre-funeral rites for Arafat at Cairo's airport were conducted with exemplary order and formal respect. That is because Hosni Mubarak's moderate but effective military dictatorship ordered that it be so, and kept the Egyptian populace away from the airport.

Nor are such armed mobs permitted in the Jordanian, Syrian and other Arab dictatorships.

Arafat's would-be successors, who were aboard the Egyptian helicopters, obviously could not control their followers; as Arafat himself did not, and mostly would not, during the 10 years since Oslo and the past four years of the "intifada."

The most telling pictures from Ramallah on Friday were of the Palestine Authority's Saeb Erekat vainly trying to force open the door of the helicopter in the face of the mob, then escaping with his other returning colleagues and losing themselves in the crowd.

In that context it is worth recalling that until Friday many were pressuring Israel to permit Arafat's burial on the Temple Mount.

The problem all along was not merely the murderer Arafat but the Palestinian people whom he truly represented and led. It is a population with an unprecedentedly high proportion of violence-prone young men, and parents who have surrendered any hope of controlling them.

Such a population does not deserve an independent state, even if it does hold superficially democratic elections. Such an armed independent state would constitute a great danger to Israel, to the surrounding Arab world and to the stability of the Middle East and the world as a whole.

Other nationalities who are much more deserving of independence, such as the Kurds in our region, are being denied such independence for much crasser reasons of Big Power political interests.

Arafat's greatest achievement was to put the claims of the Palestinians at the head of that list. That totally undeserving claim should and can now begin to be rolled back.

On Friday, someone at the Foreign Ministry leaked a decision to begin a worldwide campaign to blacken Arafat's name after his burial. Such a campaign would be at least 30 years overdue. Today it would be flogging a dead horse.

What is needed instead is to speak the bitter truth about the Palestinian people to the world.

>>>What is needed instead is to speak the bitter truth about the Palestinian people to the world.<<<

The bitter truth-----is that Israel confiscates Palestinian land and demolishes Palestinian homes thereby giving the Palestinians a reason for the need to fight for their land and freedom............

These are some of the reasons why we need that Palestinian State in the Whole of the West Bank and Gaza......

So that the Israeli Military can stay inside its own borders of Israel Proper.....and this Struggle for Palestinian Freedom can end.

Tit for Tat is getting us nowhere, as proof you can see there is still conflict after thirty six years. So you have to look at the problem as it stands today, and do the right thing so both people can live in peace and with freedom.
If only one side has freedom, the other side will always be seeking it, in anyway they can. That is why there have been wars as far back as we can remember.
Thirty six years of war should be enough for such a small number of people, when you consider the World Population.
You can end this never ending conflict by allowing the Palestinian People to have their small state in the Whole of the West Bank and Gaza.
There are 1,200,000 or so Arabs living inside Israel Proper.
There are 400,000 or so Jews living inside the West Bank and Gaza.
Trying to remove all the settlement can be an almost undoable task.
So Set the Borders for Israel to it Pre 1967 Border (Green Line) and have the State of Palestine inside the West Bank and Gaza.
If the U.N. can decide the Borders of Israel in 1948.
The U.N. can decide the Borders of Palestine in 2004.
You would end up with Israel with a majority Jewish Population and Palestine with a majority Muslim Population.
This would allow for the Israeli Military to Guard and Control the Israeli pre 1967 borders instead of confiscating Palestinian Land and Demolishing Palestinian Homes in the West Bank and Gaza that only goes to fuel the need for the Palestinian People to fight for their Freedom.
The Jews who do not like living in the new Palestinian State can feel free to move to Israel if they so choose.
The Arabs living inside Israel can feel free to move to the new Palestinian State if they so choose.
Almost every nation on earth has more then one ethnic group or religious group. So why not Israel and Palestine?
It would sure be better then the never ending conflict we have right now.

" These are some of the reasons why we need that Palestinian State in the Whole of the West Bank and Gaza..." The real Palestinian state already exists, on the East Bank...it's called Jordan...

by ANGEL Monday, Nov. 15, 2004 at 12:06 PM

>>>What is needed instead is to speak the bitter truth about the Palestinian people to the world.<<<

The bitter truth-----is that many Palestinians are committing terrorist atrocities and still more Palestinians are assisting them thereby giving the a reason for Israel to confiscate Palestinian land and demolish Palestinian homes for the need to to enhance their existence and security...........

These are some of the reasons why we need that Palestinian State in Part of the West Bank and Gaza......

So that the Palestinian Military can stay inside its own borders of Palestine Proper.....and this Struggle for Israeli Freedom can end.

Tit for Tat is getting us nowhere, as proof you can see there is still Conflict after thirty seven years. So you have to look at the Problem as it stands today, and do the Right Thing so both people can live in Peace and with Freedom.
If only one side acts with Reason, the other side will always be seeking to avoid compromises based on Reason in anyway they can. That is why there have been wars as far back as we can remember.
Thirty seven years of war should be enough for such a small number of people, when you consider the World Population.
You can end this never ending Conflict by allowing the Palestinian People to have their small state in Part of the West Bank and Gaza.
There are 1,200,000 or so Arabs living inside Israel Proper.
There are 400,000 or so Jews living inside the West Bank and Gaza.
Trying to remove all the Settlements can be an almost undoable task.
So Set the Borders for Israel to somewhat beyond its Pre 1967 Border (Green Line) and have the State of Palestine inside Part of the West Bank and Gaza.
If the U.N. could decide the Borders of Israel in 1947 and fail to protect it from the Arab Attack that ensued,
The U.N. can not decide the Borders of Palestine in 2004.
You would end up with Israel with a majority Jewish Population and Palestine with a majority Muslim Population.
This would allow for the Israeli Military to Guard and Control the new Israeli Borders instead of confiscating Palestinian Land and demolishing Palestinian Homes in the West Bank and Gaza, provided the Palesinian Terrorists stop trying to rob Israelis of their Freedom by initiating attacks on Israeli Citizens that only go to fuel the Israeli Reprisals.
The Jews who do not like living in the new Palestinian State can feel free to move to Israel if they so choose.
The Arabs living inside Israel should feel free to move to the new Palestinian State if they so choose.
Almost every nation on earth has more then one ethnic group or religious group. So why not Israel and Palestine?
It would sure be better then the never ending Tot for Tat Conflict we have right now.

>>>"Why was, or is, it incumbent upon the Palestinians, who are a continuously indigenous people"<<<

non-Critical Thinkifier, ANTI-BLACK RACIST, "AL-NAKBA DENIER": "This bit of misinformation has been refuted over and over again."

A Jewish "AL-NAKBA DENIER", "The Cataclysm", denier -- this is how Palestinians refer to the mass semi-genocidal ethnic cleansing from their homes and land by Zionist Jews -- is the Jewish equivalant of a Holocaust denier. (For further information, google "al-Nakba".)

Only in your imagination, 'CT' (and, of course, that of Joan Peters' book, 'the Jewish Mein Kampf', "From Time Immemorial". Why don't you give us a URL for this "1911 Edition of Encyclopedia Britannica"? Or are we supposed to just take your word for it? By the way, would you want your *doctor* to use a *1911* medical enclyclopedia to treat you?

At any rate, Palestine was certainly *NOT* "a land without a people" as the Zionist Jewish mythology falsely propagandized, but undoubtedly -- and by the very words of the Zionist founders of Israel themselves -- Zionist Jews certainly *INTENDED* it to be so: PALESTINE ETHNICALLY CLEANSED OF IT INHABITANTS TO MAKE *LABENSRAUM* FOR EUROPEAN JEWS.

But, as has been stated before, racists/colonialists ALWAYS try to do at least too things, propagandistically: (1) deny the CULTURE or even the very PERSONHOOD of the people whose land those people occupy, and (2) deny the HISTORY and/or CONNECTION of the people to their land.

THIS WAS DONE IN EVERY SINGLE NON-EUROPEAN LAND THAT EUROPEANS COLONIZED.

The native inhabitants of, according to Zionist propaganda mythology, "the land without a people" HAD A RIGHT TO LIVE THERE, REGARDLESS, and European Jews did *NOT* have a moral right to go and impose a *FOREIGN* state.

To say that Zionist Jews have a right to take over another land because some of its inhabitants were immigrants -- in the ebb and flow of immigration throughout the countries of the world -- is no more valid than to say that Zionist Jews have a right go colonize CALIFORNIA (or ENGLAND) and set up their own EXCLUSIVIST nation-state because many California (or England's) residents were immigrants!

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non-Critical Thinkifier, ANTI-BLACK RACIST, "AL-NAKBA DENIER": "...quite a few Zionists that did acknowledge the local non-Jews' humanity (including prominent leftists and even Jabotinsky as demonstrated by his literature)..."

Well, then what happened to the "over 800,000" Palestinians that Michael Lerner acknowledges were driven off of their land?

And you have the *CHUTZPAH* to reference the ultra-right wing -- and so much a fascist admirer (short of its anti-Semitism) that he even organized his own *BROWNSHIRTS*: Betar!!

Let's see what ole Jabo had to say:

".... Settlement can thus develop under the protection of a force that is not dependent on the local population, behind an IRON WALL which they will be powerless to break down. ....a voluntary agreement is just not possible. As long as the Arabs preserve a gleam of hope that they will succeed in getting rid of us, nothing in the world can cause them to relinquish this hope, precisely because they are not a rubble but a living people. And a living people will be ready to yield on such fateful issues only when they give up all hope of getting rid of the Alien Settlers. Only then will extremist groups with their slogan 'No, never' lose their influence, and only then their influence be transferred to more moderate groups. And only then will the moderates offer suggestions for compromise. Then only will they begin bargaining with us on practical matters, such as guarantees against PUSHING THEM OUT, and equality of civil, and national rights."

"The Arabs loved their country as much as the Jews did. Instinctively, they understood Zionist aspirations very well, and their decision to resist them was only natural ..... There was no misunderstanding between Jew and Arab, but a natural conflict. .... No Agreement was possible with the Palestinian Arab; they would accept Zionism only when they found themselves up against an 'iron wall,' when they realize they had no alternative but to accept Jewish settlement."

http://www.palestineremembered.com/Acre/Famous-Zionist-Quotes/Story640.html

Sources:

Israeli *Zionist* historian Benny Morris book "Righteous Victims", p. 108

Jewish-American *anti-Zionist* foremost scholar Lenni Brenner's book, "The Iron Wall", p. 11

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>>>"The European Zionists did not enter Palestine nonviolently; "<<<

non-Critical Thinkifier, ANTI-BLACK RACIST, al-Nakba denier: "That's another distortion of history. The European Zionists and other Jews did enter the Land of Israel non-violently, but were occasionally attacked by the "Palestinians". It would seem like some people non-critically adopt the Palestinian narrative on this topic alleging that "the mess began when the Jews hit back"."

One only has to read Israeli historian and academic Benny Morris' book "Righteous Victims" or "The Birth of the Palestinian Refugee Problem, 1947-1949"

Let's see a quote from the latter publication:

"The principle cause of the mass flight of April-June [1948] was Jewish military attack, or fear of such attack. Almost every instance---exodus from Haifa on April 21- May 1; from Jaffa during April-early May; from Tiberias on April 17-18; from Safad on May10- was the direct and immediate result of an attack on and conquest of Arab neighborhoods and towns. In no case did a population abandon its homes before an attack; in almost all cases it did so on the very day of the attack and in days immediately following."
http://www.palestineremembered.com/Acre/Palestine-Remembered/Story562.html

In general, Morris said, 'Make no mistake, the bulk of the creation of the Palestinian refugee problem [ethnic cleansing] was due to Israeli military force'. Actually, he said that specifically, but since I can't find the exact quote in my notes, I wil only use single quotation marks for now. But, anyone gets the idea.

Morris' conclusions were based on declassified Zionist and Haganah archives.

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>>>"why, then, must the Palestinians resist nonviolently, especially to be worthy of the world's support?"<<<

non-Critical Thinkifier, ANTI-BLACK RACIST, "AL-NAKBA DENIER": "See (b) above: Even if that portrayal were accurate,..."

-- Ooops! We've got a *HEDGE* here from ole 'CT'!!


non-Critical Thinkifier, ANTI-BLACK RACIST, "AL-NAKBA DENIER": "...two wrongs don't make a right."

Since when is it wrong to defend your home!? Can I come take over *YOUR* home by force and move my family and all my relatives and friends in? (I'll graciously leave you the back yard to recognize your "humanity".)

Name any other country in the world -- like the U.S. itself? -- that would accept an armed ALIEN invasion -- and with the invaders' expressed intent to mass dispossess the existing population and set up a foreign nation-state?

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>>>"The Palestinians, whom Lerner acknowledges, that those Jewish forces drove over 800,000 of them from their homes"<<<

non-Critical Thinkifier, ANTI-BLACK RACIST, "AL-NAKBA DENIER": "Benny Morris' most recent book on this subject puts the number of 1948 "Palestinian" refugees at 700,000. [...plus the Zionist tactic of strawman falsifying others arguements...]"

HEY, 'CT', GO ARGUE WITH *LERNER*, IDIOT!!

(Figures do vary from 700,000, to 750,000, to 800,000, to 1,000,000 -- order of magnitude. The variation probably depends on how one brackets the time frame. For example, just a few months in 1948, or the entire year 1948 when Israel declared statehood, or 1947 through 1948 as statehood was incepted, or 1947 through 1949, when the Zionist forced ethnic cleansing campaign was ongoing or consolidated.)

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>>>"...one of the largest military ethnic cleansing operations in history"<<<

non-Critical Thinkifier, ANTI-BLACK RACIST, "AL-NAKBA DENIER": "How does that estimate of 800,000 Arab refugees stack up against the widespread ethnic cleansing accompanying the Yugoslav wars from 1991 to 1999; or the 1915-1916 Armenian Genocide"...

--You mean where about 1,000,000 to 1,500,000 Armenians were exterminated?

Any other time, Holocaust-waving Jews like 'CT' always talk about how unseemly it is to weigh lives on each side of the balance of holocausts or ethnic cataclysms. Now 'CT' is saying that the ethnic cleansing by Zionist Jews of 700,000 to 1,000,000 Palestinian is not particularly large.

In fact, the Jewish establishment denies any other people's right to call their extermination and/or ethnic cleansing "a holocaust" -- and, as you can see, 'CT' (an *anti-Palestinian* anti-Semite) is quick to minimize the the Palestinian catastrophe -- just as anti-Jewish Holocaust deniers minimize the number of Jews exterminated. In addition, people like Native Americans, black slaves, Belgian Congo Africans, and others were generally killed far more brutally than most Jews in their holocaust.

If 'CT' was not an "al-Nakba denier", he would now that there are, in fact, now about *6 million* -- AN IRONIC NUMBER, HUH? -- Palestinian refugees.

Well, if you want to compare numbers -- and decide which is "large" and which is "small" -- there were *far* more blacks killed in the slave trade (through what was called "spoilage" -- the loss rate) and during slavery (anywhere from violence to needless disease/illness to elements exposure) and the violence in Jim Crow apartheid (like lynchings and massacres) over *MANY* more generations than the Nazi-era Jewish holocaust, which only lasted the last few years of WWII, starting in late 1941 or 1942. The estimates of blacks killed were from the very lowest estimate of 12 million to almost 100 million approximate/rough order of magnitude -- depending on how the death/loss rate is calculated. And in recent years it has been established that Jewish financiers, ship builders, merchants, and insurers played a significant part in the American slave trade. (At first it was said by many Jews that it was only the "anti-Semitic" Louis Farrakhan who came up with this history.)

The number of Native Americans killed in North America has been estimated from 12 to 25 to 50 million. Again, white men didn't keep records on who they killed/massacred.

The number of Philippinos massacred in the genocidal war by the U.S. around the turn of the 20th century is about 1,000,000+.

I've seen estimates of the Belgian Congo genocide of blacks starting around 10 million and upward (these are estimates, as the Belgians did not keep records of who they killed) -- not including the widespread Belgian practice of cutting off of hands, arms, feet, and other maimings.

But, to argue over whether 700,000 to 1,000,000 Palestinians (or anyone else) is "large" or "small" is quite *PETTY* and *IMMORAL* -- but that's what ZIONISTS are like.

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

The rest of 'CT's anti-Palestinian "CATACLYSM" DENIER arguments -- and the, of course, subtle strawman twisting of Bev's arguments that one can obviously read for themselves -- are far too tedious for me to waste my further time on. Everyone gets the idea. Being a Zionist propagandist may be your job, but I've got a life.

Or, since I like to quote both Gandhi -- who morally *CONDEMNED* Zionism -- "...It would be a crime against humanity" (see "The Jews of Palestine, 1938") -- and the anti-Zionist Jewish-American anti-racist activist and public lecturer Tim Wise (see "Fraud Fit for a King"):

"But of course, the kinds of folks who push an ideology that required the expulsion of three-quarters-of-a-million Palestinians from their lands, and then lied about it, claiming there had been no such persons to begin with (as with Golda Meir’s infamous quip), can’t be expected to place a very high premium on truth."


That's fairly much all one needs to say about *anti-Palestinian* anti-Semitic Zionist Jews.

You've actually bolstered the validity of the majority of my points, Juif A. Through that perspective, your strenuous work in posting your ranting screed is much appreciated! You have yet to learn that your overwhelmingly childish and merit-free derision of my remarks doesn't invalidate them in itself. You're actually setting your argument level to one understood by grade school students and that's just fine for you, since you know there are rather few adults that are persuaded by your level of arguing; and we both know who these people are. You're apparently so desperate to win over whoever you can that you're prepared to drone on regardless of the degree your image is compromised. Not that there's more than a precious scintilla left to compromise...

You know, I wasn't surprised the least bit reading in another thread some uncomplimentary snippets about your behavior and at least one misfortune that befell you.

You may resume your raving in an even more frenzied mode.

non-Critical Thinkifier, ANTI-BLACK RACIST, AL-NAKBA DENIER: "I expected you to hit the roof..."

Yyyyeppp!: That's 'obviously' what I 'did'.

That all you got ta say when you have *nothing* intellectually critical to say???

>>>Jordan is Palestine
by Black September Monday, Nov. 15, 2004 at 12:15 PM

" These are some of the reasons why we need that Palestinian State in the Whole of the West Bank and Gaza..." The real Palestinian state already exists, on the East Bank...it's called Jordan...<<<

To say that the Palestinian People in the West Bank and Gaza have to move to Jordan because some Palestinians happen to live in Jordan, would be equal to saying that the Jews in Israel have to move to the U.S. and Europe because some Jews happen to live there.

And the West Bank was Part of Jordan before 1967.
And the People Now Living in the West Bank (the majority of whom were born and have lived there all their lives) are the Palestinians and not the minority (Jewish settlers),

A Palestinian State Now So that the Israeli Military can stay inside its own borders of Israel Proper.....and this Struggle for Palestinian Freedom can end.

Tit for Tat is getting us nowhere, as proof`you can see there is still conflict after thirty six years. So you have to look at the problem as it stands today, and do the right thing so both people can live in peace and with freedom.
If only one side has freedom, the other side will always be seeking it, in anyway they can. That is why there have been wars as far back as we can remember.
Thirty six years of war should be enough for such a small number of people, when you consider the World Population.
You can end this never ending conflict by allowing the Palestinian People to have their small state in the Whole of the West Bank and Gaza.
There are 1,200,000 or so Arabs living inside Israel Proper.
There are 400,000 or so Jews living inside the West Bank and Gaza.
Trying to remove all the settlement can be an almost undoable task.
So Set the Borders for Israel to it Pre 1967 Border (Green Line) and have the State of Palestine inside the West Bank and Gaza.
If the U.N. can decide the Borders of Israel in 1948.
The U.N. can decide the Borders of Palestine in 2004.
You would end up with Israel with a majority Jewish Population and Palestine with a majority Muslim Population.
This would allow for the Israeli Military to Guard and Control the Israeli pre 1967 borders instead of confiscating Palestinian Land and Demolishing Palestinian Homes in the West Bank and Gaza that only goes to fuel the need for the Palestinian People to fight for their Freedom.
The Jews who do not like living in the new Palestinian State can feel free to move to Israel if they so choose.
The Arabs living inside Israel can feel free to move to the new Palestinian State if they so choose.
Almost every nation on earth has more then one ethnic group or religious group. So why not Israel and Palestine?
It would sure be better then the never ending conflict we have right now.

>>>Jordan is Palestine
by Black September Monday, Nov. 15, 2004 at 12:15 PM

" These are some of the reasons why we need that Palestinian State in the Whole of the West Bank and Gaza..." The real Palestinian state already exists, on the East Bank...it's called Jordan...<<<

To say that the Palestinian People in the West Bank and Gaza have to move to Jordan because so many Palestinians live in Jordan, would not be equal to saying that the Jews in Israel have to move to the U.S. and Europe because some Jews happen to live there.

And the West Bank was illegally Part of Jordan before 1967.
And the People Now Living in the West Bank (the majority of whom were born and have lived there all their lives) are the Palestinians and not the minority (Jewish settlers),

A Palestinian State Eventually So that the Palestinian Military can stay inside its own borders of Palestine Proper.....and this Struggle for Israeli Freedom can end.

Tit for Tat is getting us nowhere, as Proof`you can see there is still Conflict after thirty seven years. So you have to look at the Problem as it stands today, and do the Right Thing so both people can live in Peace and with Freedom.
If only one side acts with Reason, the other side will always be seeking to avoid compromises based on Reason in anyway they can. That is why there have been wars as far back as we can remember.
Thirty seven years of war should be enough for such a small number of people, when you consider the World Population.
You can end this never ending Conflict by allowing the Palestinian People to have their small state in Part of the West Bank and Gaza.
There are 1,200,000 or so Arabs living inside Israel Proper.
There are 400,000 or so Jews living inside the West Bank and Gaza.
Trying to remove all the Settlements can be an almost undoable task.
So Set the Borders for Israel to somewhat beyond its 1967 Border (Green Line) and have the State of Palestine inside Part of the West Bank and Gaza.
If the U.N. can decide the Borders of Israel in 1947 and fail to protect it from the Arab Attack that ensued,
The U.N. can not decide the Borders of Palestine in 2004.
You would end up with Israel with a majority Jewish Population and Palestine with a majority Muslim Population.
This would allow for the Israeli Military to Guard and Control the new Israeli Borders instead of confiscating Palestinian Land and demolishing Palestinian Homes in the West Bank and Gaza, provided the Palesinian Terrorists stop trying to rob Israelis of their Freedom by initiating attacks on Israeli Citizens that only go to fuel the Israeli Reprisals.
The Jews who do not like living in the new Palestinian State can feel free to move to Israel if they so choose.
The Arabs living inside Israel should feel free to move to the new Palestinian State if they so choose.
Almost every nation on earth has more then one ethnic group or religious group. So why not Israel and Palestine?
It would sure be better then the never ending Tot for Tat Conflict we have right now.

" To say that the Palestinian People in the West Bank and Gaza have to move to Jordan because so many Palestinians live in Jordan"

The vast majority of "palestinians" still hold Jordanian passport...except of course for the others who arrived in Judea and Samaria from the other 21 arab nations...
Regardless, until 1967...there weren't any "palestinians" they were Jordanians Syrians and egyptians...

give that tired old propaganda a rest.

Jordan Is Palestine...70% of Jordan's population is palestinian..it comprises 80% of the palestine mandate...that's whty the PLO tried to overthrow the kingdom, resulting in the massacre of 25,000 PLO and their expulsion to Lebanon...

note this classic Afro-Nazi blood libel: "And in recent years it has been established that Jewish financiers, ship builders, merchants, and insurers played a significant part in the American slave trade. (At first it was said by many Jews that it was only the "anti-Semitic" Louis Farrakhan who came up with this history.)"

This is a classic lie favored by such verminous specimen as the late and unlamented Khalid Abdul Muhammad and other Hitler sympathizers. The number of Jews involved was quite minimal and none of them acted as *JEWS* as JA would say (anymore than an individual criminal who happens to be black, latino etc. should be categorized by his race. But JA has a double standard for Jews as we have just seen). The only truth in the above quote is that Louis Flakycon is indeed an anti-semite or as I prefer to label him, Jew-hater.

We should rather wonder why JA and his Black likes embrace Islam -- and not even Suni or Shi'a Islam but rather the grossly distorted Nation Of Islam version -- and then remain aloof of the rampant intentional and racially motivated Arab Muslim mistreatment of Blacks while they tend to lash out at Jews, amplifying every instance or event where a Jew ever harmed a Black with no racist motivation.

But there definitely can be no doubt that JA doesn't lament the catastrophe his African Muslim co-religionists has gone through at the hands of Arab Muslims, and that this failure is morally indefensible. JA will probably respond by authoring yet another psychotic ranting screed laced with colorful epithets in an attempt to cover up for his indifference for those Blacks.

will Sharon come up with now, now that Arafat is dead?

Former Secretary of State James Baker, recognizing the opportunity for a settlement of the conflict most favorable to the US and Israel, urged the release of Barghouti a couple of days ago, but Sharon and Bush will undoubtedly exploit the Palestinian election, and hope for a Barghouti victory so that each can use it to cater to his fundamentalist constituents, and put off any meaningful negotiations into the indefinite future

(observe, Bush moved the date for a Palestinian state back to 2009)

after all, Bush has already adopted the Sharon perspective that any discussion of the right of return is forbidden, and that Israel will be allowed to maintain settlements within the occupied West Bank, even as he accepts a Gaza disengagement plan designed to strengthen Israel's hold on the West Bank

within 5 years, Israel is going to wish Arafat was still alive, given his willingness to accept the capitulation of Oslo, combined with his peculiar combination of violence and cronyism that made it easy for many in the West to discredit the Palestinian cause

as Israel faces a new leadership developed indigenously through the first and second intifadas, they will discover that the future is going to be very challenging, and likely to be both more violent and more ideologically difficult to fight

--Richard Estes
Davis, CA

" as Israel faces a new leadership developed indigenously through the first and second intifadas"

Oh by...more murderous terrorists...(both intifadas failed miserably..the second was devestating to the palestinians...they never miss an opportunity to shoot themselves in the foot...)

>>>"Former Secretary of State James Baker, recognizing the opportunity for a settlement of the conflict most favorable to the US and Israel, urged the release of Barghouti a couple of days ago, but Sharon and Bush will undoubtedly exploit the Palestinian election, and hope for a Barghouti victory so that each can use it to cater to his fundamentalist constituents, and put off any meaningful negotiations into the indefinite future"<<<

I don't quite understand what you're getting at here...seems to me you're contradicting yourself, favoring on the one hand Barghouti's release from prison so he can participate in the PA elections and hopefully win, yet being apprehensive of a Barghouti victory which you apparently perceive as a recipe for stalling Palestinian-Israeli negotiations on the other. Can you clear up this confusion?

>>>"after all, Bush has already adopted the Sharon perspective that Israel will be allowed to maintain settlements within the occupied West Bank, even as he accepts a Gaza disengagement plan designed to strengthen Israel's hold on the West Bank "<<<

Not quite. Bush only agreed that a few Jewish enclaves remain in Judea and Samaria.

>>>"within 5 years, Israel is going to wish Arafat was still alive, given his willingness to accept the capitulation of Oslo,"<<<

What? You actually view Arafat's signing of Oslo as capitulation? Why?
Furthermore, how does his flouting of the Oslo process accords since day one amount to "capitulation"? I hope you can explain these points.

JA: "And in recent years it has been established that Jewish financiers, ship builders, merchants, and insurers played a significant part in the American slave trade."

So JA is drinking the NOI kool-aid. Sad, but not unexpected.

@%<

[>>>"Former Secretary of State James Baker, recognizing the opportunity for a settlement of the conflict most favorable to the US and Israel, urged the release of Barghouti a couple of days ago, but Sharon and Bush will undoubtedly exploit the Palestinian election, and hope for a Barghouti victory so that each can use it to cater to his fundamentalist constituents, and put off any meaningful negotiations into the indefinite future"<<<

I don't quite understand what you're getting at here...seems to me you're contradicting yourself, favoring on the one hand Barghouti's release from prison so he can participate in the PA elections and hopefully win, yet being apprehensive of a Barghouti victory which you apparently perceive as a recipe for stalling Palestinian-Israeli negotiations on the other. Can you clear up this confusion?]

RESPONSE: Certainly, a legitmate inquiry. Actually, I don't purport to know whether Barghouti is the best person to take over for Arafat or not. This is for the Palestinians to decide, and, most importantly, not for the Israelis.

My initial comment is based upon my amazement that Baker actually publicly advocated for his release, which suggests to me that Baker knows something about Barghouti that persuades him that Barghouti is both practical enough and hard nosed enough to successfully push through a two state solution by making and receiving difficult concessions, unlike Arafat, whose ability to navigate the political challenges of Israel, the US and Europe completely evaporated in recent years.

For example, I seem to recall that Barghouti was involved in administering security for the PA during the 1990s (at least I think so), and that the PA received CIA training and assistance, so Baker may be aware that US intelligence had a good relationship with him, at least until the second intifada. Baker may see him as good for American interests in contrast to others with no relationship with the US. Again, speculative, but food for thought.

Unfortunately, at least for two state solution advocates (which you no doubt know does not include me from our previous encounters), Bush and Sharon do not view the world the way that Baker does, and, hence, they have no interest in taking advantage of the opportunity. This is the point that I was trying to make.

Strangely enough, Bush and Sharon may make it more likely in the long term that Israel and the occupied territories will be transformed into one, secular Palestine, which I advocate as you know, but I'm not so cold hearted and Machiavellian to actively encourage them.


[>>>"after all, Bush has already adopted the Sharon perspective that Israel will be allowed to maintain settlements within the occupied West Bank, even as he accepts a Gaza disengagement plan designed to strengthen Israel's hold on the West Bank "<<<

Not quite. Bush only agreed that a few Jewish enclaves remain in Judea and Samaria.]

RESPONSE: There are different perspectives about this. Wasn't it Dov Weinglass, a close political associate of Sharon, who said that the ultimate purpose of the Gaza disengagement plan was to make a Palestinian state impossible? A couple of days later, some Bush official issued an unconvincing reprimand. Anyway, upon close reading, I'm not really sure that your comment actually contradicts what I said.

[>>>"within 5 years, Israel is going to wish Arafat was still alive, given his willingness to accept the capitulation of Oslo,"<<<

What? You actually view Arafat's signing of Oslo as capitulation? Why?
Furthermore, how does his flouting of the Oslo process accords since day one amount to "capitulation"? I hope you can explain these points.]

RESPONSE: People like Edward Said and Rahul Mahajan, among many, have legitimately criticized Arafat for entering into an agreement which merely created yet another process without ensuring the creation of an independent Palestinian state. Indeed, it didn't even require the cessation of settlement construction, much less the removal of existing ones. Both, I think, went so far as to call it appeasement.

Too strong, perhaps, but the practical consequence of Oslo was that successive Labor and Likud governments instituted a degree of social control over the occupied territories that was unprecedented. Amazing as it may sound, Palestinians had more freedom of movement pre-Oslo than post-Oslo. Labor under Rabin, Netanyahu and Barak created a military checkpoint system, along with settlement expanision, that made life for Palestinians worse than before Oslo.

Of course, Arafat made a catastrophic mistake: he thought that he could engage in the calculated use of violence to compel concessions through subsequent negotiations that he should have obtained in Oslo. But it would be an error to describe the increasingly suffocating Israeli restrictions on Palestinian social life as merely a response to Palestinian violence.

No, they were designed to compel concessions from the Palestinians in subsequent negotiations. They were designed to acheive the impossible: an agreement with the Palestinians that would not require any Israeli government to actually remove existing settlements in the West Bank. After Rabin's assassination, any subsequent Israeli leader was additionally motivated by the compelling interest in personal survival.

Thus, the endless succession of Israeli curfews, checkpoint closures and denial of entry for Palestinians with jobs within Israel, which would be imposed, lifted, imposed then lifted like some kind of avant garde dance. Eventually, Israel too found itself stuck with violence as a means to a political end in negotiations.

Meanwhile, Arafat craved the patronage, even as his appeal waned, and both sides acted in bad faith. Like other nationalists with a populist streak, he had to fall back upon his violence resistance to Israel to conceal his cronyism, his failure to actually establish an open, democratic society in the occupied territories.

Violence became a means of political survival, as the failure of Oslo, with Palestinians locked away in towns throughout the occupied territories, frequently surrounded by settlements on the heights and Israeli military checkpoints down below, become obvious, while PA officials individually prospered like petty 19th Century French magistrates.

Nothing like a violent attack upon the Israelis to distract the restless masses from the realization that the PLO had grossly exaggerated the benefits of Oslo . Netanyahu and Sharon, and to a lesser degree, Barak, were on the reverse side of this coin, as they could use violence, and even manipulate Palestinian violence, to avoid making painful domestic concessions that would enrage the settlers.

Accordingly, I reached the conclusion that the whole process was poisoned by two antiquated nationalist visions based upon suspicion and mutual exclusion. So, I decided to simplify and adopt views consistent with my left principles, equal rights and privileges in a secular society.

Arafat was a towering figure who established a Palestinian identity for the world, overcoming the Israeli attempts to prevent it, and his great achievement must be respected. But, like Robert Fisk recently wrote, it's impossible to imagine anyone having posters of Arafat in their room like people still do with Che. Only old leftists with a fondness for repressive state socialist leaders of the Baathist kind could love him uncritically.


--Richard Estes
Davis, CA

(Well, I was up late catching up on my email and reading articles in CounterPunch.com. But, I stopped by here before finally going off to sleep for some laughs -- OR RIDICULE -- against the ZIONIST *SELF-IMPORTS* [pun intended] after all that serious reading. Haven't you self-imported Zionists *SCROUNGED* up anyone in the Bay Area for us to intellectually lambaste and lampoon?)


-- OVERWHELMING EVIDENCE:

The history is the entire three century history of Jewish presence in South America and the Caribbean. Other highly acclaimed Jewish scholars have not been so blind:

- Lee M. Friedman, a one-time president of the American Jewish Historical Society, wrote that in Brazil, where most of the Africans actually went, "the bulk of the slave trade was in the hands of Jewish settlers."

- Marcus Arkin wrote that the Jews of Surinam used "many thousands" of Black slaves.

- Herbert I. Bloom wrote that "the slave trade was one of the most important Jewish activities here (in Surinam) as elsewhere in the colonies." He even published a 1707 list of Jewish buyers by name with the number of Black humans they purchased.

- Cecil Roth, writer of 30 books and hundreds of articles on Jewish history, wrote that the slave revolts in parts of South America "were largely directed against [Jews] as being the greatest slave-holders of the region."

- Wilfred Samuels, Jewish scholar wrote, "I gather that the Jews [of Barbados] made a good deal of their money by purchasing and hiring out negroes..."

- All Barbadian Jews, according to the Jewish historians, owned slaves - even the rabbi had "the enjoyment of his own two negro attendants."

- Isaac and Susan Emmanuel report that in Curaçao which was a major slave trading depot, "the shipping business was mainly a Jewish enterprise."

- Says yet another Jewish writer of the Jews of Curaçao, "Almost every Jew bought from one to nine slaves for his personal use or for eventual resale."

- Seymour B. Liebman in his New World Jewry, made it clear that "[t]he ships were not only owned by Jews, but were manned by Jewish crews and sailed under the command of Jewish captains."

- Moshe Kahan stated bluntly that in 1653-1658, " Jewish-Marrano merchants were in control of the Spanish and Portuguese trade, were almost in control of the Levantine trade...were interested in the Dutch East and West Indian companies, were heavily involved in shipping; and, most important, had at their disposal large amounts of capital."

- Arnold Wiznitzer, Jewish scholar, is most explicit about Jewish involvement in Brazil, where most of our kidnapped ancestors were sent:

"Besides their important position in the sugar industry and in tax farming, they dominated the slave trade. From 1636 to 1645 a total of 23,163 Negro slaves arrived from Africa and were sold for 6,714,423 florins. The West India Company, which monopolized imports of slaves from Africa, sold slaves at public auctions against cash payment. It happened that cash was mostly in the hands of Jews. The buyers who appeared at the auctions were almost always Jews, and because of this lack of competitors they could buy slaves at low prices. On the other hand, there also was no competition in the selling of the slaves to the plantation owners and other buyers, and most of them purchased on credit payable at the next harvest in sugar. Profits up to 300 percent of the purchase value were often realized with high interest rates....If it happened that the date of such an auction fell on a Jewish holiday the auction had to be postponed. This occurred on Friday, October 21, 1644."

- Ask the Jewish critics to name one (just one) prominent Colonial American Jew who did not own slaves. He will have the same difficulty as the Anti-Defamation League of the B'nai B'rith had in their 1976 pamphlet entitled, "American Jews: Their Story".

- The ADL lists 13 pioneers of the American Jewish community - 10 of whom have been definitively linked to the slave trade.

- Some Jewish scholars of today, such as Jacob Rader Marcus, chart the wealth and prestige of their ancestors by the number of Black slaves they possessed.

- As Rabbi Bertram Korn, the foremost scholar of nineteenth century Jewish history, has written: "It would seem to be realistic to conclude that any Jew who could afford to own slaves and had need for their services would do so....Jews participated in every aspect and process of the exploitation of the defenseless blacks."

- LENNI BRENNER: "Anyone seriously interested in the topic can read the Encyclopedia Judaica articles on all the European colonies in the Caribbean. There they will see for themselves, from Jewish scholarly sources, that Jews played a major role in slavery in that region. If they read further, they will see that the first American Jews in this country migrated here from their strong economic base in the Caribbean."

NOW, GERHIG, NON-CRITICAL THINKIFIER: WHAT YOU GOT TA SAY!?

You know, the idea CONCOCTED and PROPAGANDIZED by numerous Jews -- and, in general, the Jewish establishment -- that Jews cannnot be racist -- but that everyone else can be, and ultimately/secretly/subconsciously is, in particular, against Jews -- is itself *RACIST* -- albeit a rather narcissistic form of (Jewish) racism.

TRY *THIS* OUT!:

- Michael Levin of City College of New York, Vincent Sarvich of the University of California at Berkeley and Richard Hernstein at Harvard are among the most prominent Jewish scientists and scholars who maintain that Black people are intellectually deficient.

- Hernstein's book Bell Curve harkens back to some plantation philosophy claiming that Blacks are intellectually inferior to whites.

- Other Jews, including Howard B. Abikoff of the Long Island Jewish Medical Center, Rachel Klein of the Long Island Medical Center and Columbia University, and Gail Wasserman, in the Department of Child Psychiatry at Columbia, are engaged in research which has the potential to link genetics to violence in inner city Black and Latino children.

- The San Francisco Chronicle, the San Francisco Examiner, the Los Angeles Times and numerous other newspapers have documented the fact that for decades the ADL ran a private nationwide spy network - "a systematic, long-term, professionally organized political espionage operation complete with informers, infiltrators, money laundering, code names, wiretapping and secret meetings." Newspapers have revealed that among the 950 organizations and 10,000 individuals that the ADL prepared files on were many Black groups, including the NAACP!

- For thirty years Israel has maintained strong economic, military, nuclear, scientific, academic, energy, tourist, cultural, sports, transportation, agricultural and intelligence ties with South Africa - and thereby prolonged Black oppression there.

- Jews were the only group in this country who arrogantly threatened to protest the visit of revered African National Congress Chairman and now President Nelson Mandela to the United States in 1990. They have labeled Mandela and Bishop Desmond Tutu "anti-Semites" while the 110,000 Jewish South Africans are, in fact, the richest single community in the world.

- The late Israeli Defense Minister Moshe Dayan asserted that the quality of American military forces had deteriorated because they were composed of Blacks "who have low intelligence and low education." He urged America to ensure that "fresh blood and better brains go to their forces." He is a hero in Israel.

- Jewish talk show host Howard Stern was quoted in the November 1st issue of Time magazine as stating that, "they didn't beat this idiot (Rodney King) enough." In March, he played Ku Klux Klan songs on his broadcast and used the term "nigger" 55 times in 10 minutes. He offered the term "porch monkey" and "yard ape" as labels for Blacks.

- Furthermore, during the week of March 7, 1994, Jewish comedian Jackie Mason was quoted by news broadcasts as having said: "The susceptibility to violence happens to be more among Blacks than whites - a hundred times more."

- In 1991, Judge Joyce A. Karlin sentenced Korean merchant Soon Ja Du to five years of probation, 400 hours of community service and a fine of five hundred dollars for killing Black teenager Latasha Harlins.

- Judge Stanley M. Weisberg transferred the Rodney King case to Simi Valley and thereby virtually assured an unfair trial for the Black victim.

- Superior Court Judge Roosevelt I. Dorn, a Black jurist who had been hand-picked to hear the case of three men charged with beating Reginald Denny during the early hours of the L.A. Civil unrest, was removed from the case by District Attorney Ira Reiner. Karlin, Weisberg and Reiner are all Jews. Jewish leaders did not repudiate them for their "racism" or "unfairness;" there were no newspaper advertisements taken out to condemn them, nor were their names dragged before congress to be censured.

- LENNI BRENNER, a foremost Jewish scholar: "Anyone reading the papers now knows that the organization is a non-stop spy outfit, "investigating" innumerable Black groups, and the progressive camp in general."

- NOW, maybe one of you Zionist Jews can tell me why the term "Judeo-Nazi" is taken to be the height of anti-Semitism by you -- even though some Israeli Jews in the military have *proudly* declared themselves to be Judeo-Nazis -- but the term "AFRO-NAZI", used by "'CT' - ANTI-BLACK RACIST" (JA watch, Tuesday, Nov. 16, 2004 at 4:40 PM), is not RACIST?

- Then we can also wonder why "'CT' - ANTI-BLACK RACIST" also pejoratively, and thus *RACISTLY* and BIGOTEDLY, equates all Blacks with being Muslim -- as though there is something wrong with being Muslim, anymore than being religiously Jewish or Christian?

(Incidentally, I was raised CHRISTIAN, you Jewish *RACISTS*: GEHRIG and NON-CRITICAL THINKIFIER!)

Of course, unlike ZIONIST JEWS, not all Jews are RACIST. But, where is the outrage? Where are the Jewish calls for repudiation of these RACIST Jews?

HI RICHARD!!

KEEP UP THE GOOD WORK!

(NO REST FOR THE WEARY FROM THESE SELF-IMPORTED ZIONISTS!)

You earlier claimed:
>>>"after all, Bush has already adopted the Sharon perspective that Israel will be allowed to maintain settlements within the occupied West Bank, even as he accepts a Gaza disengagement plan designed to strengthen Israel's hold on the West Bank "<<<

I responded:
Not quite. Bush only agreed that a few Jewish enclaves remain in Judea and Samaria.

>>>"RESPONSE: There are different perspectives about this. Wasn't it Dov Weinglass, a close political associate of Sharon, who said that the ultimate purpose of the Gaza disengagement plan was to make a Palestinian state impossible? A couple of days later, some Bush official issued an unconvincing reprimand. Anyway, upon close reading, I'm not really sure that your comment actually contradicts what I said. "<<<

Well, Sharon may have conceived his "unilateral disengagement from Gaza and 4 isolated settlements in Samaria" plan with the objective of retaining as much of Judea-Samaria under Israeli control as he could in mind, but Bush hasn't given his blessing for such an intention, neither in writing nor orally.

>>>"Amazing as it may sound, Palestinians had more freedom of movement pre-Oslo than post-Oslo. Labor under Rabin and Barak, [and Likud under] Netanyahu created a military checkpoint system, along with settlement expanision, that made life for Palestinians worse than before Oslo. But it would be an error to describe the increasingly suffocating Israeli restrictions on Palestinian social life as merely a response to Palestinian violence. No, they were designed to compel concessions from the Palestinians in subsequent negotiations. They were designed to acheive the impossible: an agreement with the Palestinians that would not require any Israeli government to actually remove existing settlements in the West Bank. Thus, the endless succession of Israeli curfews, checkpoint closures and denial of entry for Palestinians with jobs within Israel, which would be imposed, lifted, imposed then lifted like some kind of avant garde dance."<<<

The governmental budget allocations for construction of settlements were frozen by Rabin and remained so under Peres. The vast majority of settlement enlargement and expansion occurred under Netanyahu, particularly the construction of new ones.
The '00 pre-intifada checkpoint system was -- strange as this seems to you -- merely designed to deal with the escalating Palestinian violence. The first instances of that system being utilized for intentionally inducing hardship among non-combatant Palestinians as a matter of policy occurred subsequently to the intifada's outbreak. That policy was intended as collective punishment for the massive resort to terror and violence among Palestinians during the intifada.
As to the movement restrictions being constantly imposed and lifted intermittently, there are other factors to account for that: high states of alert stemming either from warnings about impending terror attacks or the need to prevent terror attacks on Jewish and Israeli holidays (Independence Day, Jerusalem Day) periodically followed by low points in the Palestinian terror threat, in addition to Muslim and Christian holidays, prior to and during which the Israeli authorities would make all sorts of goodwill gestures.
Unfortunately, you've arrived at conclusions predicated on faulty information.

>>>"After Rabin's assassination, any subsequent Israeli leader was additionally motivated by the compelling interest in personal survival."<<<

You're forgetting Netanyahu ceded additional territory to the Palestinians -- Hebron. If your assertion accounts for their motives, wouldn't you say Netanyahu was acting in defiance of his alleged uppermost concern for his personal safety? More tellingly, we (or at least some) have witnessed Sharon running for re-election on a pledge to create a Palestinian state and proceeding to take practical steps in defiance of the majority in his party to execute his "unilateral disengagement" plan. There already have been threats on Sharon's life which don't really seem to deter him -- he's forging ahead in earnest.

>>>"Meanwhile, Arafat craved the patronage, even as his appeal waned, and both sides acted in bad faith."<<<

I disagree that Rabin and Peres were acting in bad faith. You've read above that Rabin froze all budgetary allocations for settlement construction. Moreover, Rabin crammed the Oslo accords down Israelis' throats, not least by securing a 61-59 marginal majority for the passage of Oslo II in the Knesset through his bribing of two unscrupulous ultra-rightist Knesset members who bolted their party and joined Labor, one having been tempted with a ministerial office and the other with the office of deputy minister along with a Mitsubishi (true as amusing as it surely sounds).
Ehud Barak met the Israeli undertakings of prisoner release and redeployments under the 1999 Sharm el-Sheikh Memorandum signed on Sep 4 that year, al least until corresponding actions by the Palestinians were not. Barak also negotiated in good faith during intensive working-level meetings in late 1999 and the first half of 2000, which led to Camp David.
As for Netanyahu, my conclusion is that he was stalling on implementation of certain Israeli commitments mainly because the Palestinian side hadn't been delivering the goods from their end. He was attempting to cause to PA to live up to its undertakings.

>>>"Netanyahu and Sharon, were on the reverse side of this coin, as they could use violence, and even manipulate Palestinian violence, to avoid making painful domestic concessions that would enrage the settlers.

I believe this argument has been belied above when I aluded to Netanyahu's concessions and Sharon's yet-to-come concessions. You don't seem to grasp to which extent the Jewish residents outsides Israel proper have been enraged because of them.

>>>"why the term "Judeo-Nazi" is taken to be the height of anti-Semitism by you -- even though some Israeli Jews in the military have *proudly* declared themselves to be Judeo-Nazis -- but the term "AFRO-NAZI", used by "'CT' - ANTI-BLACK RACIST" (JA watch, Tuesday, Nov. 16, 2004 at 4:40 PM), is not RACIST? "<<<

I'm not "JA watch" even if Juif Antagoniste tries to wish it into becoming true. Your uncritical conviction that I'm him/her just reveals the reverse correlation existing between your height and your brain power.
Secondly, only one Israeli Jew apparently has made the nauseating statement branding himself a "Judeo-Nazi". Are we supposed to believe your distraction about those several Jews having said what you allege just because you claim so? (note: JA isn't content with the word of an "arch-Zionist Jew" relating something, but at the same time believes his word should be taken at face value just because he's anti-Zionist...)

>>>"Then we can also wonder why "'CT' blah-blah also pejoratively, and thus *RACISTLY* and BIGOTEDLY, equates all Blacks with being Muslim -- as though there is something wrong with being Muslim, anymore than being religiously Jewish or Christian? "<<<

I was referring only to you and your Black arch-disturbed ilk among the Blacks rather than to all Blacks. I'm not about to burst into tears over your attempt to obscure what I said in order to score some additional racist baiting points. There is, however, a post by someone else which was hidden that does complain about all Blacks embracing Islam which you apparently have been too lazy to search for.

>>>"(Incidentally, I was raised CHRISTIAN, you Jewish *blah blah blah!)"<<<

So were lots of other African-Americans who've embraced NOI Islam. It's even well known that Louis Farrakhan draws more on Christian religious glossary and concepts than from Muslim.

>>>"Of course, unlike ZIONIST JEWS, not all Jews are RACIST. But, where is the outrage? Blah blah..."<<<

As you're fond of uttering, YYYYYYAAAAAAAWWWNNNNNNN.........

___________________________________________________


A slight Correction:

One sentence in my preceding post should begin: "The pre-intifada checkpoint system".

None of his "evidence" -a list of random individuals-proves that Jews "were the DOMINANT force in the slave trade" as he earlier claimed. Rather they only show the extreme lengths to which he will go in his relentless attempts to defame Jews, Judaism and the Jewish religion. Just like the good AfroNazi that he is, he sees all individuals simply on the basis of their religious, racial, ethnic birth and as having "immutable" racial qualities.

To be fair, it's not really JA's claim -- it comes straight from _The Secret Relationship Between Blacks and Jews_, the single most infamously antisemitic (and, incidentally, well-refuted) document from the Nation of Islam.

Google "secret relationship farrakhan antisemitism" for a general idea of this pamphlet's reaction.

JA, I'll say this directly: you're on extremely shaky ground here. You might want to think _very carefully_ about whether you want to present a well-known bit of antisemitica as anything other than a racist screed. If you do not repudiate it, it will say something very serious -- irremediably serious -- about your stance toward the political exploitation of antisemitism, and also, frankly, your stance toward the Jews.

You will remember that I have, several times, defended you against the charge that you're antisemitic. That would become impossible for me to do again if you publicly embrace NOI's most infamously antisemitic tract.

Think twice.

@%<

JA: "You know, the idea CONCOCTED and PROPAGANDIZED by numerous Jews -- and, in general, the Jewish establishment -- that Jews cannnot be racist -- "

Find me any statement from any organization in "in general, the Jewish establishment" saying that Jews can't be racist.

Post the URL here, or else admit that you're slinging straw men.

@%<

down below is an interesting article from a right wing Israeli website

but, before I get there, I don't recall seeing anything in your response that indicates that Israel intended to remove any settlements from the occupied territories in a final piece agreement, nor do you indicate that this would be acceptable to you

perhaps, this is what so "enraged" Jews around the world as you suggest?

here's the link to the article:
http://www.shalomjerusalem.com/jerusalem/jerusalem6.htm

the article makes interesting reading, despite the repetition of its format, both for its implied candor about Israel's true goal with Oslo (increase settlement activity under the guise of a peace process, making a Palestinian state impossible) and the fact that Labour aggressively increased the number of people in the occupied territories consistent with Rabin's expressed policy

note the hilarious comment that Israel only seizes "public land" in the occupied territories for settlement construction as some sort of bizarre justification for shrinking the boundaries of Palestinian territory

also, note the discussion of the Har Homa settlement, about the need to address a housing shortage among Jews, when Jerusalem mayors have historically made it exceedingly difficult, if not impossible, for Palestinians in East Jerusalem to obtain construction permits, sometimes bulldozing the structures that they built without them

finally, note the discussion about the "right" of Jews to settle Judea, Samaria and Gaza, a more antiseptic description of ethnic cleansing on the basis of religion would be hard to imagine

of course, there is no concomitant "right" of Palestinians to return to homes that the Israelis forced them to abandon in 1948 and 1967, just the creation of a mythology that they voluntarily left

in any event, Labor apparently said one thing to its American supporters about Oslo and something quite different to the Israeli right, the source of this statement, and both Labor and Likud acted consistently with this latter understanding

finally, note that things became worse after Rabin's assassination, and contrary to your post, Barak was an equally avid, if not more, aggressive constructor of settlements as Netanyahu and Sharon

from the introduction of "Breaking Ranks", a book of interviews of Isreali refuseniks:

"After the assassination of Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin in 1995, the Israeli government intensified a systematic policy of settlement expansion and constructed bypass roads dividing the territories into several separate areas. Indeed, more Palestinian land was expropriated and more settlements built during Ehud Barak's tenure as prime minister [May 1999-February 2001] than during any previous administration. The Palestinians were subject to closures that prevented them from working in Israel and earning a livelihood. They were not permitted to move freely inside the occupied territories."

(Page 5, "Breaking Ranks")

and, this note in support of that paragraph, note 7 at the bottom of page 5:

"The number of housing units in the West Bank--not including East Jerusalem--and the Gaza Strip rose from 20,400 on the eve of the signing of the Declaration of Principles in September, 1993 to 32,800 in June 2001. In other words, there was a 61% increase in less than eight years. The sharpest increase was registered in the year 2000 during Ehud Barak's tenure as Prime Minister, where construction on some 4,800 housing units was launched. At the end of 1993, the settler population in the West Bank--again, not including East Jerusalem--numbered 100,500. By the end of 2000, the settler population had grown to 191,600, a 90% increase in a period of seven years. (B'tselem Settlement Report, 2000)."

accordingly, while Rabin may have been most benign in regard to settlement activity, such activity was consistent with his interpretation of Oslo, as the following article indicates.

similar to the the US in Iraq, Israel, as nation state, responsible for its policies, persists in characterizing itself as the victim of violence (which many of its citizens sadly are) even as it continues its colonization of the West Bank and refuses to accept any accommodation with the Palestinians other than one in which they serve as a politically disempowered, socially marginalized, low wage workforce.

it is an approach that will ultimately lead to replacement of the Israeli state with a secular one, just as the US will inevitably be forced out of Iraq

we can only hope, in both instances, that both transformations occur with the least amount of violence possible, but this does not appear to be very likely



--Richard Estes
Davis, CA



[Myths and Facts About Jewish Settlements

- MYTH -
The Oslo Accords prohibit the expansion of Jewish settlements in Judea, Samaria and Gaza.

- FACT -
Neither the Declaration of Principles (DOP) of September 13, 1993 nor the Interim Agreement ("Oslo 2") of September 28, 1995 contains any provisions prohibiting or restricting the establishment or expansion of Jewish communities in Judea, Samaria and Gaza.

When he presented the Oslo 2 accords before the Knesset on October 5, 1995, the late Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin stated, "I wish to remind you, we made a commitment, meaning we reached an agreement, we made a commitment to the Knesset not to uproot any settlement in the framework of the Interim Agreement, nor to freeze construction and natural growth."

Under Article XXXI(5) of Oslo 2, the issue of Jewish settlements is to be addressed in the final status negotiations. According to an internal Israel Foreign Ministry legal analysis prepared on March 18, 1996 by Joel Singer, the Foreign Ministry Legal Advisor under the Labor Government, Israel rejected Palestinian attempts to bar new Jewish settlements in the context of the Oslo process. According to Singer, "In the course of the negotiations on the DOP, the representatives of the PLO tried to obtain a clause prohibiting Israel from establishing new settlements. Israel rejected this demand." Thus, Yasser Arafat agreed to the Oslo Accords despite the fact that he failed to achieve a halt in settlement activity in the interim period.

- MYTH -
The expansion of Jewish settlements is an obstacle to peace.

- FACT -
Under the previous Labor government, the Jewish population of the West Bank and Gaza grew by approximately 50%, from 96,158 in June 1992 to 145,000 in June 1996. This rapid growth occurred concurrently with the signing of the September 1993 Oslo Accords and the September 1995 Oslo 2 Accords and did not forestall progress in the peace process.

As the late Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin said, "I am not ready for there to be a law in Israel to forbid building houses in existing settlements, or a kindergarten or a cultural center in a place where people live today." (AP, January 10, 1995) Former Prime Minister Shimon Peres also stated, "Building which is necessary for normal life, like schools, private apartments, we are not going to stop." (Jewish Telegraphic Agency, January 25, 1995)

- MYTH -
Israel confiscates land to build settlements.

- FACT -
As a matter of policy, Israel does not requisition private land for the establishment of Jewish communities in Judea, Samaria and Gaza. Housing construction is allowed only on public land after an exhaustive investigation has confirmed that no private rights exist regarding the land in question.

Jewish Communities in Judea, Samaria and Gaza

A Commitment to Continued Natural Growth
Israel is committed to safeguarding the Jewish communities of Judea, Samaria and Gaza and ensuring their continued natural growth and development.

Under the previous government, the Jewish population of Judea, Samaria and Gaza grew by approximately 50%. As the late Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin said, "I am not ready for there to be a law in Israel to forbid building houses in existing settlements, or a kindergarten or a cultural center in a place where people live today." (Associated Press, January 10, 1995) Former Prime Minister Shimon Peres also stated, "Building which is necessary for normal life, like schools, private apartments, we are not going to stop." (Jewish Telegraphic Agency, January 25, 1995)

Consistent With Oslo
Israel’s policy is fully consistent with the terms of the Oslo Accords.

Neither the Declaration of Principles of September 13, 1993 nor the Interim Agreement ("Oslo 2") of September 28, 1995 contains any provisions prohibiting or restricting the establishment or expansion of Jewish communities in Judea, Samaria and Gaza.

When he presented the Oslo 2 accords before the Knesset on October 5, 1995, the late Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin stated, "I wish to remind you, we made a commitment, meaning we reached an agreement, we made a commitment to the Knesset not to uproot any settlement in the framework of the Interim Agreement, nor to freeze construction and natural growth."

While there is a clause in the accords which prohibits changing the status of the territories, it was intended to ensure only that neither side would take unilateral measures to alter the legal status of the areas (such as annexation or declaration of statehood).

No Current Plans for New Communities
While Israel retains the right to establish new Jewish communities in Judea, Samaria and Gaza, there are currently no plans for the creation of such communities. Any such plans require approval of the Prime Minister and the cabinet.

No Requisition of Private Land
As a matter of policy, Israel does not requisition private land for the establishment of Jewish communities in Judea, Samaria and Gaza. Housing construction is allowed only on public land after an exhaustive investigation has confirmed that no private rights exist regarding the land in question.

Current government decisions restrict building to within the municipal boundaries of existing communities.

The Right of Jews to Live in Judea, Samaria and Gaza
Jews have a historical, moral and legal right to live in Judea, Samaria and Gaza.

The Historical Right
The Jewish communities of Judea, Samaria and Gaza signify the return of the Jewish people to their ancestral homeland.

Since the dawn of Jewish history, Jews have resided in Judea, Samaria and Gaza. It is unthinkable that Jews would not be able to live in areas which are the cradle of Jewish civilization, religion and culture.

The Moral Right
Jews have the right to live wherever they may choose. The assertion that Jews should not be allowed to live in a certain area because they are Jews smacks of racism and segregation.

The Legal Right
The legal right of Jews to reside in Judea, Samaria and Gaza was given its first modern expression in the 1922 League of Nations Mandate for Palestine. Article 6 of the Mandate required the mandatory power to encourage "close settlement by Jews on the land."

The legal right of Jews remains in force today. As the internationally-recognized legal expert and former US Undersecretary of State Eugene V. Rostow has written, "The right of the Jewish people to settle in Palestine has never been terminated for the West Bank…" (American Journal of International Law, Vol. 84, July 1990, p.718)

Some have argued that Jewish communities in the areas violate Article 49 of the 1949 Fourth Geneva Convention, which provides that, "The occupying power shall not deport or transfer parts of its own civilian population into the territory it occupies." The Convention, however, is not applicable to Judea, Samaria and Gaza. Yet even if it were applicable, Article 49 would not be relevant. Drafted four years after the end of World War II, it was intended to prevent forced transfers of civilians such as those which took place in Czechoslovakia, Hungary and Poland before and during the war. Thus it has no bearing on Jewish communities in Judea, Samaria and Gaza.

Government's Decision on Settlements
Restoring Parity
The Government of Israel's decision on 13 December 1996 to restore National Priority A status to the Jewish communities of Judea and Samaria put an end to four years of social and economic discrimination.

The Government's decision is intended to reinstate social and economic parity between the Jewish communities and other developing areas of the country. Thus, for example, educators travelling to teach children in Jewish communities in Judea and Samaria will once again be subsidized by the government, as they were prior to 1992. These communities will now enjoy the same benefits as do those in the Jordan Valley, the Golan, the Gaza District and parts of the Negev and Galilee.

Consistent With Oslo
The Government's decision is fully consistent with the agreements signed by Israel and the Palestinians. Neither the Declaration of Principles of 13 September 1993 nor the Interim Agreement ("Oslo 2") of 28 September 1995 contains any provisions prohibiting or restricting the establishment or expansion of Jewish communities in Judea, Samaria and Gaza.

Indeed, when he presented the Oslo 2 accords before the Knesset on 5 October 1995, the late Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin stated, "I wish to remind you, we made a commitment, meaning we reached an agreement, we made a commitment to the Knesset not to uproot any settlement in the framework of the Interim Agreement, nor to freeze construction and natural growth."

While there is a clause in the accords which prohibits changing the status of the territories, it was intended to ensure only that neither side would take unilateral measures to alter the legal status of the areas (such as annexation or declaration of statehood).

No Change in Land Policy
The government decision does not call for the establishment of new settlements, nor does it affect Israel's strict policy not to requisition private land for the establishment of settlements. Housing construction is allowed only on public land after an exhaustive investigation has confirmed that no private rights exist regarding the land in question.

Sending a Message to Terrorists
Jewish communities have flourished in Judea, Samaria and Gaza for thousands of years. The aim of terrorists is to instill fear among the residents of these communities and uproot them. The Government means to ensure that the terrorists will not achieve their goal.

Provided by the Government Press Office

Construction at Har Homa
Construction for Jews and Arabs in Jerusalem
Prime Minister Netanyahu believes that the building of homes for Jewish and Arab residents alike is essential for the continued development of Jerusalem. Construction plans for 3,015 housing units in 10 Arab neighborhoods of Jerusalem will be implemented simultaneously with the Har Homa project.

Most Expropriated Land was Jewish-Owned
To implement the Har Homa construction project, it was necessary in past years to expropriate land, most of it Jewish-owned. Approximately 1,400 of the 1,850 dunams at the site, or 75%, were expropriated from Jews, while nearly 450 dunams, or 25%, were owned by Arabs. No new expropriations are necessary to implement the building project at Har Homa.

Eases Jerusalem’s Housing Shortage
The building project at Har Homa is slated to take place in two stages and will ultimately include 6,500 housing units, as well as schools, parks, public buildings, and commercial and industrial zones. In the first stage, 2,456 housing units will be built.

The Har Homa project will ease the housing shortage in Jerusalem and provide residents with a wider array of housing options.

Located Within Jerusalem’s Municipal Boundaries
Har Homa is located in the southern part of Jerusalem near Kibbutz Ramat Rachel and Gilo. The 1,850 dunam site is fully within Jerusalem’s municipal boundaries and is currently uninhabited.

Approved by the High Court of Justice
The High Court of Justice rejected appeals by both Jewish and Arab landowners and approved the expropriations. The expropriations were undertaken on the basis of the fundamental common law principle of eminent domain, allowing governments to expropriate land from private owners for public use. In a decision issued on December 22, 1994, the Court concluded, "There is no other option for constructing the neighborhood other than expropriating the land, and building the neighborhood as planned by the state."

As the late Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin said in the Knesset on May 15, 1995, "Building Jerusalem, like any other city, sometimes requires confiscating land both for construction needs and for public needs, like roads, schools, kindergartens, and community facilities. It has always been this way in Israel."

Consistent With Oslo
Despite Palestinian claims to the contrary, Israel’s policy is fully consistent with the terms of the Oslo Accords.

Neither the Declaration of Principles of September 13, 1993 nor the Interim Agreement ("Oslo 2") of September 28, 1995 contains any provisions prohibiting or restricting Israel’s right to undertake construction projects in areas under Israel’s jurisdiction.

Provided by the Israeli Government Press Office]

For starters, I haven't found evidence proving that website is Israeli. I've looked around and it seems to me far more likely it's an American Jewish website supporting the Israeli Right.

I'm at a loss of thoughts as to why you'd expect me to indicate or confirm that an Israeli government would remove Jewish villages, towns and cities from the disputed territories in the framework of a final settlement of the conflict. I'm not an operative or spokesperson for official Israel. I speak on my own behalf.
I happen to agree with the evacuation of the Gaza strip, though I'm not terribly happy about seeing it turn entirely Jew-free, just as I wouldn't cheer on such a development in any county within Israel proper. If Israel ever uproots all Jewish residential areas in Judea-Samaria as well and completely withdraws its military presence, only to witness the Palestinians making territorial claims on sparsely Jewish populated parts of Israel proper, coupled with another violent low-intensity campaign, I suspect some observers will then urge Israel to uproot all Jews from those regions too. To me this is unacceptable.

Some confusion arose over my assertion that Jewish residents beyond Israel proper were enraged by Netanyahu's concession and Sharon's plan. I should have expounded that I use such phraseology to designate the Jews most commonly known as "settlers". I didn't mean to refer to Jews worldwide. Hope the mist has lifted.

Having read your descriptive contentions regarding what you term Israel's real goals concerning the Oslo process, I've noticed you're somewhat exaggerating and reading more ill will into the intentions of Rabin, Peres and Netanyahu than the document in question testifies to. When Rabin had formed his coalition I heard through the Israeli media that government financing and sanction of settlement construction was frozen; I also had heard through the same media that this had remained the case throughout Rabin and Peres' terms. "Natural growth" and illegal construction (illegal as in breaching a government decision and/or Israeli law) should account for the population increase and the erection of new settlements during that period.

I've got nothing against having a good laugh, although I don't concur with your remark about what Israel labeled public land in the disputed territories. In my view, this point is no small matter, for we keep constantly hearing people charging that Israel has been confiscating only privately owned land. If you start arguing that I'm now in cahoots with Netanyahu's spokespeople's alleged attempts to sugarcoat the destruction of the prospects for forming a contiguous and reasonably sized Palestinian state through justifying the seizure of only non-privately owned land, you're missing the point.

Your reference to the discussion of the Jewish rights to re-settle Judea-Samaria and Gaza is purely the superimposition of your own opinion about a supposed ethnic cleansing on what the text actually said and meant. Your opinion presumes that Jewish re-settlement of these areas entails displacement of Arabs by definition. Factually speaking, at least 60% (to the best of my recollection) of the land in Judea-Samaria is uninhabited. So it's at best erroneous to imply that Jewish resettlement would always entail dispossession of long-time Arab residents, either .

>>>"In any event, Labor apparently said one thing to its American supporters about Oslo and something quite different to the Israeli right, the source of this statement, and both Labor and Likud acted consistently with this latter understanding"<<<

I'm still compelled to say, based on all that I've heard and seen, that the Israeli governments during the Oslo process, specifically the Labor ones, did that mostly through omission rather than commission.

>>>"similar to the the US in Iraq, Israel, as nation state, responsible for its policies, persists in characterizing itself as the victim of violence (which many of its citizens sadly are) even as it continues its colonization of the West Bank."<<<

You appear to disapprove of any Jewish presence in Judea-Samaria and insist on tagging it as colonization. Or perhaps it's only construction of new settlements that you consider colonialist? Though I'm not crazy about either, I hope it's the latter that disturbes you.

>>>"[Israel] refuses to accept any accommodation with the Palestinians other than one in which they serve as a politically disempowered, socially marginalized, low wage workforce."<<<

Your contention seems to me much too premature and hasty as we all should be watching the Palestinian political scene, waiting for a new and serious leadership to emerge and fill in the vacuum left by Arafat's departure. Until such time that happens -- once the Palestinians elect their leadership early next year, hopefully -- it's pointless to make the sort of charges you leveled at Sharon and his deputies.

'CT': I'm not "JA watch"

UH-HUH....

(Just one of 'CT's many aliases. Are you still using other aliases to attack Angie?)


'CT': "I was referring only to you..."

UH-HUH....


'CT': "and your Black arch-disturbed ilk..."

WOULD THAT CORRELATE HYPOTHETICALLY BE LIKE..."YOUR *JEW* ARCH-DISTURBED ILK" ???

NO..., NOTHING *RACIST* THERE!! -- HUH, 'CT'?

*QUESTION*, GERHIG: SINCE YOU ALREADY TRIED TO DENY THAT JEWS PARTICIPATED IN THE AMERICAN SLAVE TRADE -- AND I ALREADY CRITICALLY TORE YOU 'A NEW ONE' ON THAT, SO *EVERYONE* (HA-HA-HA!!) COULD SEE!!...

?: CAN JEWS BE JUST AS MUCH *SLLLIMEY*, *DESSSPICABLE*, *VVVILLLE*, *DISSSGUSSSTING*, *IGGGNORRRANT*, *DIRRRTY*, *LLLOW-LYYYIN'*, *RRREDNECK* -- AND EVEN ANTI-PALESTINIAN, AS WELL AS ANTI-BLACK -- *RACISTS* AS, MIGHT BE, ANY GENTILE?

-- OR ARE JEWS TOTALLY AND UNIQUELY *EXEMPT* FROM THIS EMOTIONAL/PSYCHOLOGICAL ILLNESS?

I have broken down some of your comments in brackets. My responses follow. I don't think that I have engaged in any selective editing to misconstrue the general tone of your remarks.

[For starters, I haven't found evidence proving that website is Israeli. I've looked around and it seems to me far more likely it's an American Jewish website supporting the Israeli Right.]

Perhaps so, I was hard for me to tell precisely. The Rabin quotes are certainly enlightening, though.

[I'm at a loss of thoughts as to why you'd expect me to indicate or confirm that an Israeli government would remove Jewish villages, towns and cities from the disputed territories in the framework of a final settlement of the conflict. I'm not an operative or spokesperson for official Israel. I speak on my own behalf.

I happen to agree with the evacuation of the Gaza strip, though I'm not terribly happy about seeing it turn entirely Jew-free, just as I wouldn't cheer on such a development in any county within Israel proper. If Israel ever uproots all Jewish residential areas in Judea-Samaria as well and completely withdraws its military presence, only to witness the Palestinians making territorial claims on sparsely Jewish populated parts of Israel proper, coupled with another violent low-intensity campaign, I suspect some observers will then urge Israel to uproot all Jews from those regions too. To me this is unacceptable.]

I find this fascinating, in other words, if Israel pulls its settlements from the West Bank, then the Palestinians might copy the strategy that the Israelis utilized in the West Bank to destroy any continguous territory for the Palestinians. Given your argument, quoted below, about Israel seizing uninhabitated land in the occupied territories without impairing the presence of the Palestinians, why shouldn't the Palestinians be able to do likewise within the boundaries of Israel proper? More realistically, in a secular Palestine, there might well be movement, but I suspect that it would be economically motivated, i.e. Palestinians moving to locations within Israel close to the places of employment.

Finally, one last note, for the William Safire type language freaks out there, the term "disputed territories" in the remark above is a right wing one of Likud origin, designed to replace the more commonly used term, "occupied territories", in an attempt to wrongly suggest that Israel has some vague right to retain some, again vague, sections of the territory that it seized in the 1967 war.

[When Rabin had formed his coalition I heard through the Israeli media that government financing and sanction of settlement construction was frozen; I also had heard through the same media that this had remained the case throughout Rabin and Peres' terms. "Natural growth" and illegal construction (illegal as in breaching a government decision and/or Israeli law) should account for the population increase and the erection of new settlements during that period.]

I'm not really clear on how this contradicts anything that I wrote. In other words, Rabin had a more subdued settlement expansion policy, through the euphemism of "natural growth" and illegal land seizures and construction (which, by the way, usually ended up by approved after the fact by Israel, and rarely reversed, through the provision of military protection), while Netanyahu, Barak and Sharon were more aggressive, which, as I stated, Rabin's interpretation of Oslo permitted.

[I've got nothing against having a good laugh, although I don't concur with your remark about what Israel labeled public land in the disputed territories. In my view, this point is no small matter, for we keep constantly hearing people charging that Israel has been confiscating only privately owned land. If you start arguing that I'm now in cahoots with Netanyahu's spokespeople's alleged attempts to sugarcoat the destruction of the prospects for forming a contiguous and reasonably sized Palestinian state through justifying the seizure of only non-privately owned land, you're missing the point.]

It's that word again, the "disputed territories"! Anyway, this is a classic instance of what Mao called, "mixing in sand", creating confusion through the introduction of non-issues and the inflation of small ones into big ones. In this instance, the "sand" is the illusory issue of the seizure of public versus private lands for settlements in the occupied territories.

Perhaps, there is some exploitation of Marxism doctrine here for the defense of Zionism, as Marx supposedly said that one of the first acts leading towards the creation of a capitalist society was the conversion of public land into private property, which is exactly what was done here. I'll leave it to others to argue whether the assumption here is correct, that Israel has not been seizing land owned by Palestinians. As for me, I'll just say that Israel has no right to seize any land in the occupied territories, public or private, for any purpose.

[Your reference to the discussion of the Jewish rights to re-settle Judea-Samaria and Gaza is purely the superimposition of your own opinion about a supposed ethnic cleansing on what the text actually said and meant. Your opinion presumes that Jewish re-settlement of these areas entails displacement of Arabs by definition. Factually speaking, at least 60% (to the best of my recollection) of the land in Judea-Samaria is uninhabited. So it's at best erroneous to imply that Jewish resettlement would always entail dispossession of long-time Arab residents, either.]

I agree, my statements were most assuredly my opinion, based upon my subjective interpretation of information about the Israeli/Palestinian conflict. People who cruise this website can reach their own conclusions as to how credible they are.

I concede that my "ethnic cleansing" comment was erroneous and contradictory, because, as I stated later in my post, and have discussed at length elsewhere on indybay, I don't personally think, unlike many others, that Israel wants to get rid of all of the Palestinians. Israel needs them as a low wage labor force, but wants to retain them within territory dominated by Israel, either directly or indirectly, through an acquiescent PA, without meaningful political and social rights.

You will recall that, during a discussion about Benny Morris' study of 1948, and his recent remarks that Ben-Gurion erred by not finishing the "job" of expulsion (Morris is explicitly in support of ethnic cleansing), I remarked that Ben-Gurion probably understood that this was not a viable option because he could not be certain that enough Jews would emigrate to Israel to fulfill all of the tasks required in a modern economy. I still believe this to be true for Israel today. Ben-Gurion was, I guess, a partial ethnic cleanser, because he wanted to get rid of all of the Arabs within his new nation state except those he believed were economically necessary.

For semantic reasons, it might just barely be "erroneous to imply that Jewish resettlement would always entail dispossession of long-time Arab residents", primarily because of the use of the word "always", but, in fact, as long as settlements, and a Jewish only support structure for them, have been constructed in the occupied territories, dispossession in some form or another, such as loss of freedom of movement, loss of income from orchards destroyed by settlers. loss of one's home because of loss of income, loss of the ability to have your children educated, etc., seems to have been the eventual outcome.

Indeed, "dispossession" is a very artful word to use, suggesting that as long as Palestinians remain in the homes in which they lived prior to the construction of settlements and their support systems, regardless of their many other difficulties, then nothing particularly bad has been done to them. Perhaps, this is another carefully constructed word of Likud origin to conceal the realities of the situation? And, of course, these other losses, and degradation of their quality of life is directly connected to the lack of any political rights in the land in which they live.

[You appear to disapprove of any Jewish presence in Judea-Samaria and insist on tagging it as colonization. Or perhaps it's only construction of new settlements that you consider colonialist? Though I'm not crazy about either, I hope it's the latter that disturbes you.]

Regardless of one's perspective about the acts in the 20th Century whereby the West created Israel, the idea of removing Jews from the pre-1967 boundaries is both immoral and absurd. And, I believe that many Palestinians, more than you mght think, recognize it. The future success of the people in the region is dependent upon the synergy of the interrelationship of Israeli and Palestinian culture, and, it is a form of suicide for either to exclude or eliminate the other.

With that said, all of the settlements in the occupied territories must go, because they were imposed upon a people with no rights, no privileges and no capacity to consent to what was being done around them. In a secular Palestine, with equal rights and privileges for all, without reference to race or religion, Jewish migration into the occupied territories would be consistent with my left principles, just as Palestinian movement into territory previously considered part of Israel would be.

But, any invocation of such leftist doctrines of freedom of movement and immigration to justify the settlements in the occupied territories is a perversion of these principles, because they were constructed against the will of the inhabitants for the express purpose of colonizing the area and rendering a Palestinian state impossible, as even the most cursory examination of the public statements of settlers and Israeli politicians in support of them will demonstrate. It is would also be embarassingly hypocritical to assert that Israelis can seize unoccupied land in the territories on this basis while denying a similar ability for Palestinians to do on land within Israel, as my earlier rhetorical question suggested.

[>>>"[Israel] refuses to accept any accommodation with the Palestinians other than one in which they serve as a politically disempowered, socially marginalized, low wage workforce."<<<

Your contention seems to me much too premature and hasty as we all should be watching the Palestinian political scene, waiting for a new and serious leadership to emerge and fill in the vacuum left by Arafat's departure. Until such time that happens -- once the Palestinians elect their leadership early next year, hopefully -- it's pointless to make the sort of charges you leveled at Sharon and his deputies.]

Sharon's record is well known, and the only significant change in his thinking has been his willingness to abandon Gaza as part of his vision for Greater Israel, which must have been difficult, given his role in the 1970s in trying to "transfer" the Palestinians there to other countries, so that it could be incorporated into Israel. Dov Weinglass' recent comments about the purpose of the Gaza disengagement plan being to consolidate permanent Israeli control over the West Bank is a pretty accurate description of his close friend's attitude, and, naturally, he was publicly criticized for his candor.


--Richard Estes
Davis, CA

>>>Finally, one last note, for the William Safire type language freaks out there, the term "disputed territories" in the remark above is a right wing one of Likud origin, designed to replace the more commonly used term, "occupied territories", in an attempt to wrongly suggest that Israel has some vague right to retain some, again vague, sections of the territory that it seized in the 1967 war."<<<

Actually, it's far more correct to say the phrase "disputed territories" has its roots in official papers put out by pre-1973 Labor governments in reference to the territories in question.
The West Bank and Gaza Strip are disputed territories whose status can only be determined through negotiations. Occupied territories are territories captured in war from an established and recognized sovereign. As Judea-Samaria and Gaza Strip were not under the legitimate and recognized sovereignty of any state prior to the Six Day War, they should not be considered occupied territories. Furthermore, the fact that there were no established sovereigns in the West Bank or Gaza Strip prior to the Six Day War means that the territories should not be viewed as "occupied" by Israel. When territory without an established sovereign comes into the possession of a state with a competing claim -- particularly during a war of self-defense -- that territory should be considered disputed. Therefore, the argument that Israel has *no rights whatsoever* to hold on to any of the territory under dispute, not even densely Jewish populated areas or uninhabited sections therein, has no merit.

>>>"Perhaps, there is some exploitation of Marxism doctrine here [my remark about what Mr. Estes termed "hilarious"] for the defense of Zionism, as Marx supposedly said that one of the first acts leading towards the creation of a capitalist society was the conversion of public land into private property, which is exactly what was done here."<<<

I did not draw on Marxist or any other communist doctrine to make my observation.

>>>"As for me, I'll just say that Israel has no right to seize any land in the occupied territories, public or private, for any purpose. "<<<

Do individual Jews have any right to purchase any land, public or private, in the disputed territories? (If Mr. Estes finds nothing wrong with Palestinians buying land within Israel proper and especially in the disputed territories, why shouldn't individual Jews be entitled to same?)

>>>For semantic reasons, it might just barely be "erroneous to imply that Jewish resettlement would always entail dispossession of long-time Arab residents", primarily because of the use of the word "always", but, in fact, as long as settlements, and a Jewish only support structure for them, have been constructed in the occupied territories, dispossession in some form or another, such as loss of freedom of movement, loss of income from orchards destroyed by settlers, loss of the ability to have your children educated, etc., seems to have been the eventual outcome. "<<<

It's unfair to extend the defenition of dispossession of Palestinians to the consequences Palestinians suffer because of military actions performed by the IDF in response to *unprovoked* Palestinian attacks on Jewish residential areas in the disputed territories.
What's more, when Hamas and their likes fire rockets on Israel proper from within the Gaza strip, or when terrorists infiltrate Israel and massacre people in a suicide bombing from either Judea-Samaria or Gaza, they aren't necessarily protesting Jewish residence in these territories, much less attacking the Jewish residential areas themselves; they might be committing terror against the "Zionist entity" for merely existing within the Arab expanse. After all, Hamas and their ilk consider even Israel proper itself illegitimate and brand every Jewish location therein a "settlement". So if, in reaction to these attacks, the IDF imposes closures and curfews and sets up roadblocks, it would be unfair to blame the settlements for the hardships the Palestinians have to endure.
Now, here's a potential scenario worth pondering: Israel evacuates all Jews and its military presence from Gaza by June next year, then Hamas and others fire Qassam rockets at Israel proper shortly thereafter, claiming they're "protesting the occupation in the West Bank". Would Mr. Estes consider that violence legitimate or excusable?

>>>"Indeed, "dispossession" is a very artful word to use, suggesting that as long as Palestinians remain in the homes in which they lived prior to the construction of settlements and their support systems, regardless of their many other difficulties, then nothing particularly bad has been done to them."<<<

Actually Mr. Estes is the one suggesting, thereby providing his own interpretation rather than mine.
Granted, there's no excuse for the phenomenon of Jews in the disputed territories destroying Palestinian crops and property, but when it comes to hardships suffered by Palestinians due to unprovoked violence against Jews living either within or beyond Israel proper, there can be no morally acceptable excuse for such violence. Therefore, I believe that closures, curfews and roadblocks are justified under certain circumstances and in response to certain threats. Roadblocks, for example, have proven themselves in thwarting suicide bombings on various occasions.

>>>"Perhaps, this [my use of the word dispossession in the context I used it for] is another carefully constructed word of Likud origin to conceal the realities of the situation?"<<<

Definitely not. And I must wonder which word I could have used instead that wouldn't be subjected to speculations that it had been the product of rhetorical craftsmanship.

>>>"And, of course, these other losses, and degradation of their quality of life is directly connected to the lack of any political rights in the land in which they live."<<<

But the Palestinian lack of political rights is far from being only Israel's fault as many believe. Much of this problem was brought about by Arafat and his cronies.

CT: You appear to disapprove of any Jewish presence in Judea-Samaria and insist on tagging it as colonization. Or perhaps it's only construction of new settlements that you consider colonialist? Though I'm not crazy about either, I hope it's the latter that disturbes you.

>>>"Regardless of one's perspective about the acts in the 20th Century whereby the West created Israel, the idea of removing Jews from the pre-1967 boundaries is both immoral and absurd. The future success of the people in the region is dependent upon the synergy of the interrelationship of Israeli and Palestinian culture, and, it is a form of suicide for either to exclude or eliminate the other.
With that said, all of the settlements in the occupied territories must go, because they were imposed upon a people with no rights, no privileges and no capacity to consent to what was being done around them."<<<

Well, many Palestinians make the same argument in the last paragraph about Israel proper. Needless to add that many of them and their supporters apply this argument to the beginnings of Zionist settlement in 1882. This is not to say that their argument really holds water (and I've repeatedly explained this point on this IMC and others), but rather to prove there's no solid basis for applying it to the disputed territories alone.

>>>"In a secular Palestine, with equal rights and privileges for all, without reference to race or religion, Jewish migration into the occupied territories would be consistent with my left principles, just as Palestinian movement into territory previously considered part of Israel would be."<<<

Well, it remains to be seen if a majority of Palestinians will come to adopt Mr. Estes' brand of Western secular leftist ideology. We're still very far from the point of seeing the Palestinians switching over to any form of real democracy.

>>>"But, any invocation of such leftist doctrines of freedom of movement and immigration to justify the settlements in the occupied territories is a perversion of these principles, because they were constructed against the will of the inhabitants for the express purpose of colonizing the area and rendering a Palestinian state impossible,"<<<

I find this objection ironic when other leftists find no problem with Palestinians infiltrating Israel proper and squatting (this has gone unreported in the world media mostly due to lack of interest by reporters, but has received coverage in the Israeli media). Not to mention when these leftists indignantly protest instances where Israeli Jews within Israel proper attempt to keep colonizing Arabs (and the use of the term colonization in this context is equally justified to the description of Jewish settlement in the disputed territories, if not more) away from setting up residence in their own communities against their will. Those leftists apparently apply a double standard to Jewish resistence of colonization.

>>>"Sharon's record is well known, and the only significant change in his thinking has been his willingness to abandon Gaza as part of his vision for Greater Israel, which must have been difficult, given his role in the 1970s in trying to "transfer" the Palestinians there to other countries, so that it could be incorporated into Israel. Dov Weinglass' recent comments about the purpose of the Gaza disengagement plan being to consolidate permanent Israeli control over the West Bank is a pretty accurate description of his close friend's attitude, and, naturally, he was publicly criticized for his candor."<<<

Sharon won't rule forever anymore than Arafat had. At present -- at least over the next months -- it's more important to observe what's unfolding in the Palestinian political arena, unless Sharon's government is unexpectedly brought down and a rightist leader opposed to withdrawal from Gaza and other regions becomes prime minister.
Furthermore, I wouldn't be surprised if Sharon or another rightist conceives a new plan to evacuate most of Judea-Samaria too. Stranger things have been known to happen. For instance, have you heard that ultra-rightist Avigdor Lieberman told the press a few weeks ago about a plan he had conceived to create a Palestinian state on most of Judea-Samaria? I guess not.

JA: " NOW..., LET'S *SEE* WHO I RELIED ON... "

Sure thing, folks. I highly recommend it. Just Google the names he's quoting, say "friedman arkin bloom roth samuels barbadian emmanuel" and see what you pull up. See who generated that carefully collected, carefully cropped, carefully ripped-from-context list of quotes.

What you pull up are NOI sites and Holocaust denial sites. If you'd prefer to claim you're getting your stuff from Holocaust denial sites than NOI sites, be my guest.

You're caught, JA. One hundred percent caught -- as anyone who does that google search can verify. If you had any wisdom at all, you'd say "oops" and immediately distance yourself from the antisemitic post you have now posted twice.

But, frankly, you're just too much of a jackass to do that, aren't ya, little guy.

@%<

Next he's gonna run and **CRY** to his MOMMA!!

HA-HA-HA-HA-HA...!!

ROTFLMAO.!!!

I don't know what's your jive about now. I just know -- having read the other thread -- that you pick fights with women half your size and with old men. How physically heroic you must be, you infant.

I went to watch a tape of a Farrakhan speech shown at UC Davis, and took notes for an opinion piece that I naively sent to the Sacramento Bee in the expectation of publishing it

pretty scary stuff about Jews, and there was an NOI guy nearby that was definitely not down with the fact that I was taking notes of what was being said by Farrakhan

my guess at the time was that the NOI tended to downplay its views when responding to media inquiries, while being much more bigoted in the presence of its supporters, as I doubt that the mainstream media ventured out to these events very often

as someone who grew in Georgia in the 1960s, and hence, well aware of all the terrible things that white Southerners did to African Americans, I've always thought that the NOI was pretty much letting us off the hook with this stuff about Jews and the slave trade

--Richard Estes
Davis, CA

I JUST CAME BACK FROM DINNER WITH AN ATTRACTIVE FRIEND IN MY 'GOURMET GHETTO' "EUROCHIC" NEIGHBORHOOD, BUT I'LL BE HEADED BACK OUT TO A COFFEESHOP. (I just wanted to show her what you two *YUKS* were like!)

BUT, NOW, I SEE, I'LL NEVER BE ABLE TO SHOW MY FACE IN PUBLIC AGAIN!!

HA-HA-HA--HA-HA...!!

YOU TWO YUKS JES' CRACK ME UP!!

HE-HE-HE...


(YO, 'CT'!: IT'S FUNNY HOW YOU USED THE SAME WORDS THAT YOU USED IN ONE OF YOUR OTHER ALIASES IN THE OTHER THREAD. YOU *SLIPPED* UP THERE, DIDN'T YA!?)

OH, YOU TWO ARE A *HOOOT*!!

HE-HE-HE...!!

JA's cracked
by concerned Thursday, Nov. 18, 2004 at 5:56 PM

Yeah, I'd have to agree. A classic case of a mentally unbalanced sociopath. Just look at his half-baked screeds, all in caps. It's really quite sad when they get this way, isn't it? But don't expect him to get the proper supervision with the current administration in office. They're cutting mental health services these days.

GEE, BEFORE IT WAS "concerned" (when you posted the very same message in the KPFA thread -- I didn't know I was *that* **IMPORTANT** to you!); NOW IT'S "from another thread"; ELSEWHERE IN INDYBAY, YOU GO UNDER STILL *OTHER* ATTACK ALIASES!!

ARE YOU THAT MUCH OF A **COWARD**!?

OH! I GET IT!: YOU'RE JUST **SCHIZOPHRENIC**!!!

ARE EACH OF YOUR DIFFERENT ALIASES ONE OF YOUR PSYCHO PERSONALITIES!!?

I GUESS THAT'S HOW YOU KNOW ABOUT THE CUTS IN MENTAL ILLNESS FUNDING!

THAT'S OKAY: WITH YEARS OF THERAPY MAYBE WE CAN GET YOU UP TO THE INTELLECTUAL LEVEL OF A **CARROT**!!

HA-HA-HA...!!

(*GERHIG*!!: COME GET'CHA BOY 'CT'!! HE'S NEVER GONNA BE READY FOR PRIME TIME!!

'CT'!: FROM NOW ON, JUST LET GERHIG TRY TO DO ALL THE HEAVY MENTAL LIFTING!! ...WE DON'T WANT YOU TO *STRAIN* YOURSELF ANYMORE! HA-HA-HA...!!

What a COUPLE O' *CLLLOWWWNNNSSS*!! Ha-ha-ha...!!)

At this point it's pretty clear that JA has no intention of addressing his use of antisemitic materials from the Nation of Islam. Why? Because he can't, without acknowledging that, yes, they do originally come from the infamous _The Secret Relationship Between Blacks and Jews_.

Which means that -- after several clearly worded warnings about the shaky ground he was on -- I no longer have any compunction against concluding that, yes, it turns out that JA is an antisemite after all. Not because he criticizes Israel -- again, legitimate criticism of Israel doesn't automatically make you an antisemite -- but because he embraces long-debunked antisemitic propaganda from the Nation of Islam suggesting that the Jews are disproportionately responsible for the slave trade.

It's also interesting what an emotionally needy little guy that JA is. In his last post in this thread, he goes out of his way to tell us he was on a date with "an attractive friend." Oh boy, JA has "an attractive friend." What're we supposed to do, applaud? Is he looking to Indymedia to marvel at the fact? Or is he just so blatantly emotionally needy that he needs, needs, needs the Indybay affirmation that he's not nearly the all-around loser he appears to be?

Needy little guy, ain't he.

@%<

>>>Do individual Jews have any right to purchase any land, public or private, in the disputed territories? (If Mr. Estes finds nothing wrong with Palestinians buying land within Israel proper and especially in the disputed territories, why shouldn't individual Jews be entitled to same?)<<<by CT>

Now if we already had the State of Palestine in the Whole of the West Bank and Gaza, And the 400,000 or so Jews living in these areas were allowed to stay in the State of Palestine, there is no reason why they could not buy land, if they chose to stay in Palestine.

I also believe that the 1,200,000 Arabs living inside the State of Israel should also be allowed to by land inside Israel so that they can have equal rights just like any other Israeli Citizen.

You would simply have two countries one with a Jewish majority and equal rights for the Arab minority.
and the other with a Palestinian Majority and a Jewish minority with the same rights as all the people inside Palestine.

But the Occupation and Oppression of some 4,000,000 or so Palestinians is not the answer............

>>>Do individual Jews have any right to purchase any land, public or private, in the disputed territories? (If Mr. Estes finds nothing wrong with Palestinians buying land within Israel proper and especially in the disputed territories, why shouldn't individual Jews be entitled to same?)<<<by CT>

Now if we already had the State of Israel also in the Whole of the West Bank and Gaza, And the 400,000 or so Jews living in these areas were allowed to live there in Peace and Quiet, there is no reason why they could not buy land, if they chose to stay in Israel.

I also believe that the 1,200,000 Arabs living inside the State of Israel should also be allowed to buy land inside Israel so that they can have more equal rights just like any other Israeli Citizen.

You would simply have one Country with a Jewish majority and more rights for the Arab minority.
and the other with a Palestinian Majority no Jewish minority with the same rights as all the people inside Palestine.

But the Terror and Violence against some 4,000,000 or so Israelis not the answer............

sad, isn't it?

YA *LOVVVE* ME -- DON'T YA!!?

YOU *KNOW* YA CAN'T DO *WITHOUT* ME!!

KEEP SENDING ME YOUR *LUVVV*!!

(BUT, HEY, JUST SO YOU KNOW: I'M STRAIGHT!)

HA-HA-HA--HA-HA!!

CAN ANYONE IMAGINE A COUPLE O' CLOWNS ZIONISTS, LIKE GERHIG AND 'CT' COMPLAINING ABOUT THE NOI!!?

IF *THAT'S* NOT LIKE THE 2 POTS CALLING THE KETTLE (AHEM) BLACK!!

OH! THAT'S *CHUUUTZPAH*!!!

HA-HA-HA!!

ZIONISTS: IT'S LIKE THE KKK COMPLAINING THAT THE NOI IS A "HATE" GROUP!!

RICHARD, YOU WILL ULTIMATELY FIND OUT THAT YOUR LONG AND EARNEST DISCOURSES WITH THOSE TWO CLOWNS ARE *WASTED*.

THE WAY I PUT IT, SOME PEOPLE JUST BELIEVE IN A STATE BASED AND DEFINED ON ONE ETHNICITY -- AN IDEOLOGICALLY ETHNOCENTRIC STATE -- AND PEOPLE SOME DON'T.

ZIONISTS DO.

THE REST OF THE MORE SOCIALLY ADVANCED WORLD DOES NOT!

AND NEITHER DO I.


(*IRONICALLY*, FARRAKHAN'S NATION OF ISLAM ETHNOCHAUVINISTIC, SEPARATIST AND EXCLUSIVIST IDEOLOGY AND ZIONIST ETHNOCHAUVINISTIC, SEPARATIST & EXCLUSIVIST IDEOLOGY ARE ESSENTIALLY THE *SAME*!! --NOI IDEOLOGY HOLDS IT WITH RESPECT TO *WHITE* GENTILES AND ZIONIST IDEOLOGY HOLDS IT WITH RESPECT TO *ALL* GENTILES!

RICHARD, YOU WILL NEVER CONVINCE ZIONISTS OTHERWISE. ZIONISTS WILL DO WHATEVER MENTAL CONTORTIONS -- THAT NO OTHER COUNTRY OR ITS PEOPLE WOULD EVER ACCEPT SUCH A RIDICULOUS CLAIM AGAINST THEMSELVES, ESPECIALLY A CLAIM ON THEIR HOME BASED ON AN ALLEGED 5,000 YEAR-OLD "PROMISE" BY "GOD" -- OR A ONCE ANCIENT TEMPORARY POLITICAL PRESENCE -- TO TRY TO 'JUSTIFY' THAT.

ZIONISM IS A RELIGIO-*RACIAL/ETHNIC* **IDEOLOGY**. HOW MANY TIMES HAVE YOU EVER BEEN ABLE TO CONVINCE A *RACIST* THAT HIS RACISM IS FUNDAMENTALLY **WRONG**!?

ONE DAY YOU'LL SEE, AFTER ALL YOUR VERY LONG, MUCH TOO RESPECTFUL DISCOURSES.)

"Concerned" has spoken of Juif Antagoniste's mental condition as prone to ultimately evolve into a bi-polar syndrome.

>>>"SOME PEOPLE JUST BELIEVE IN A STATE BASED AND DEFINED ON ONE ETHNICITY -- AN IDEOLOGICALLY ETHNOCENTRIC STATE -- AND PEOPLE SOME DON'T"<<<

"...and people some don't?"

I rest my case.

Anybody can make a simple word-transposition error. If that were the worst of Anderson's faults, then Anderson would be a lucky man.

Unfortunately, it's not the worst of his faults. As his recent posts demonstrate, not by a long shot.

@%<

I meant it more sarcastically then literally.

But it is a bit fun to have a small laugh at JA's expense every now and then, given the way he disparages other people's linguistic shortcomings.

"say something once, why say it again?"

--David Byrne
"Psycho Killer"
Talking Heads '77