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RedditIn an interview with This Week, anchor George Stephanopoulos on Sunday, former President Jimmy Carter said that his recent book Palestine Peace Not Apartheid has led to the most personal criticism of his life. Carter said that he has been called a "liar," "anti-Semite," "plagiarist," "thief," "coward"--and yet the 82-year-old remains as focused, passionate and articulate as ever on his reasons for writing the book and what he hopes it will accomplish.
"If I have had one burning desire in my heart and mind for the last thirty years, I would put peace for Israel at the top of the list," Carter said. "And commensurate with that has to be justice and human rights for the Palestinians next door." (To readers who would still question Carter's commitment to Israel, read the article in The Nation by former national Director of the American Jewish Congress, Henry Siegman). Carter hopes his book will precipitate an open debate on the Israel-Palestine conflict and renew the abandoned peace process- certainly, as both Carter and Stephanopoulos noted, it has already accomplished the former.
In Carter's opinion, the need for this vigorous public debate is all the more crucial since he doesn't believe the Democratic Congress will take any more of a balanced approach to peace than its Republican predecessor. Aside from "maybe two or three members" Carter believes that our representatives view any position critical of the current conservative Israeli government as "politically suicidal."
The same humanity which leads Carter to speak out fearlessly about the Middle East has led him to address "diseases that no one else really cares about much, or knows about"--like Guinea Worm (now on the verge of becoming the first disease eradicated in over twenty-five years largely through the work of the Carter Center)--that impact "the poorest, most destitute, forgotten and needy people on Earth." He stated plainly that the United States needs to increase our foreign aid--"We're at the bottom of all the developed countries in giving to other people"--and he's right, as a percentage of GDP we are shamefully stingy.
Finally, Carter gets the importance of global warming as a defining issue of our time--which is a significant reason why he would support formerly elected by popular vote/Oscar winner, President Al Gore in 2008. "I've put so much pressure on Al to run that he's almost gotten aggravated with me," Carter said, laughing. "He said, 'Jimmy, I'll support you. Don't call.' But he would be my favorite."
At a time when there is too little honesty or boldness in our politics, Jimmy Carter speaks his mind, with sanity and humanity. His ideas deserve discussion and debate, not vituperation and ad hominem attack.
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Katrina vanden Heuvel
Thoughts on politics, current affairs, riffs and reflections on what’s in the news and what’s not--but should be.
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Hmmm...what about THESE folks....from wikipedia--
Chairman Howard Dean asserted that he personally disagreed with Carter's "analysis of Israel and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict" and stressed that Carter's views on the issue do not represent those of the Democratic Party.
Then-House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi also criticized Carter, saying: "It is wrong to suggest that the Jewish people would support a government in Israel or anywhere else that institutionalizes ethnically based oppression, and Democrats reject that allegation vigorously. With all due respect to former President Carter, he does not speak for the Democratic Party on Israel."
Other Democrats, such as New York representatives Steve Israel, Charlie Rangel and Jerrold Nadler issued similar statements.
Representative John Conyers, Jr. (Michigan), who, according to The Forward, "is often criticized by members of the Jewish community for his failure to support Israel in a certain instance," added: "I cannot agree with the book's title and its implications about apartheid. . . . I recently called the former president to express my concerns about the title of the book, and to request that the title be changed." For him the title "does not serve the cause of peace[,] and the use of it . . . is offensive and wrong."
Posted by Mask at 02/26/2007 @ 4:09pm
BTW, as Groucho would say...."You've said the secret woid...'Israel'...and win 50 cut&pastes articles from RESE and PLUNGER!"
Posted by Mask at 02/26/2007 @ 4:11pm
The RESE and PLUNGER articles will make more sense than the RIOBRAVO, LVLIBERTY1, CPT, etc. crowd...
Posted by bjkron at 02/26/2007 @ 4:23pm
Are the Israelis still bulldozing the houses of "suspected" terrorists?
Posted by mtspence05 at 02/26/2007 @ 4:26pm
I'm missing your point, MASK. KVH quotes Carter saying that he thinks Democrats generally view a position critical of Israel as politically suicidal. Conyers may be one of the "two or three" exceptions. . .and notice that he seems to be critical only of the title. So what's the point in quoting a bunch of mainstream Democrats saying things cosistent with Carter's expectations of them?
Posted by Haldane at 02/26/2007 @ 4:28pm
Posted by HALDANE 02/26/2007 @ 4:28pm
That the THEORY is that it's all "neo-cons" and the "pro-Israel Rapture-ready Religious Right".
Carter has been sidelined by Democrats....Dean?...SPEAKER Nancy?...Rangel?...Conyers? Now, put that into one of two theories....
A. As per the liberal mythos, the Dems are "skeered of AIPAC"
or B. Carter is flung himself headlong into the Hard Left of what Ari Berman of "The Nation" called "the reflexively anti-Israel Left".
Either way....nobody cares what Jimmah thinks or is avoiding it like the Plague.
Posted by Mask at 02/26/2007 @ 4:44pm
That the THEORY is that it's all "neo-cons" and the "pro-Israel Rapture-ready Religious Right".
Posted by MASK 02/26/2007 @ 4:44pm
Nice attempt to wiggle your way out, but clearly THAT is not Carter's THEORY.
"In Carter's opinion, the need for this vigorous public debate is all the more crucial since he doesn't believe the Democratic Congress will take any more of a balanced approach to peace than its Republican predecessor. "
Posted by Hman23 at 02/26/2007 @ 4:49pm
Posted by HMAN23 02/26/2007 @ 4:49pm
Didn't mean Jimmah...meant the "anti-Israel Left".
Again, Carter's irrelevant and then excusing his irrelevance by saying "Oh, Democrats are wrong too". It's like saying he wasn't invited to the party and then saying "Oh, I'm too NICE to go to that party...those kids are all snobs!"
Well...whatever. The man has pushed himself into a TINY fraction of the Left, and will be lauded and cheered on blogs and "The Nation"...but anybody with any clout will treat him like its January 1981 again. And THIS time, he probably won't recover.
Posted by Mask at 02/26/2007 @ 4:58pm
"...but anybody with any clout will treat him like its January 1981 again. And THIS time, he probably won't recover." Posted by MASK 02/26/2007
Jimmy doesn't care. Jimmy is not running for any office now or in the future. Jimmy is free to speak his mind, free to point out the ugly truth; it's not his fault the emperor has no clothes.
Posted by mtspence05 at 02/26/2007 @ 5:05pm
if you speak the truth, have one foot in the stirrup - turkish proverb...
especially if you speak heresy in the eyes of the aipac grand high hierophant...
Posted by ibbleblibble at 02/26/2007 @ 5:28pm
Are the Israelis still bulldozing the houses of "suspected" terrorists?
Posted by MTSPENCE05 02/26/2007 @ 4:26pm | ignore this person
are the palestinians still blowing up innocent civilians? does Eilat sound familiar?
Posted by johannesrolf at 02/26/2007 @ 6:06pm
One of the unpleasant consequences about telling the truth is that those who will do anything to suppress truth will always go batshit insane trying to discredit the messenger. They do this because they cannot discredit the message.
Posted by ARCHANGEL_M at 02/26/2007 @ 6:28pm
That the THEORY is that it's all "neo-cons" and the "pro-Israel Rapture-ready Religious Right".
Carter has been sidelined by Democrats....Dean?...SPEAKER Nancy?...Rangel?...Conyers? Now, put that into one of two theories....
A. As per the liberal mythos, the Dems are "skeered of AIPAC"
or B. Carter is flung himself headlong into the Hard Left of what Ari Berman of "The Nation" called "the reflexively anti-Israel Left".
Either way....nobody cares what Jimmah thinks or is avoiding it like the Plague.
Posted by MASK 02/26/2007 @ 4:44pm
Mask, can you be any more of an ultra-nationalist buffoon? You sound like a Nazi. Remember that there is a very thin line between patriotism and nationalism, and Hitler's Germany crossed it during the 1930s. In the 21rst Century, it's the U.S. and Israel that are now suffering from ultra-nationalist policies held by government officials who, seeking to consolidate supreme political power, try to stifle all dissent as an attack on the nation itself and its people. It never occurred to you to actually read Carter's book, much less consider that he has a valid point of view shared by most Israelis.
Posted by ARCHANGEL_M at 02/26/2007 @ 6:38pm
Are the Israelis still bulldozing the houses of "suspected" terrorists?
Posted by MTSPENCE05 02/26/2007 @ 4:26pm | ignore this person
are the palestinians still blowing up innocent civilians? does Eilat sound familiar?
Posted by JOHANNESROLF
You must reap what you sow.
Posted by mtspence05 at 02/26/2007 @ 6:38pm
Good read Katrina!
Far as I know, Carter ain't running for office so whats all the panderin pols drivel amount to?
Thanks for the courage to take a stand that might not please everybody, but is consistent with progressive principles, not to mention humanitarian. Think you and Jimmy Carter are on the same page today.
Posted by OneVote at 02/26/2007 @ 6:58pm
After centuries of expulsion and slaughter, the Jews wanted out of Europe. After the Holocaust, in a flickering moment of--remorse? pity? guilt? -- the wise men of the West gave them a piece of Palestine. A mistake, but then none of the Western powers were interested in absorbing all those Jews. Shoulda given 'em Austria, homeland of unser Fuehrer and as antisenmitic as countries come. But hey, that's white man's territory. So two peoples, both screwed by the civilized world, have been going at each other in the most uncivilized way. Auden was right--those to whom evil is done, do evil unto others (in return). There's no "solution" here, even if the Israelis and Palestinians start to run out of fervor and blood. And your "humanitarian" Jimmy will not even try to understand how the Israeli mindset developed -- especially since 1967, when every Arab leader screamed for a war of annihilation and the hope of seeing the road to Tel Aviv lined with Jewish skulls.(All the lovely quotes in "Six Days of War.") Jimmy has never forgiven Americans for not returning him to office in 1980. Underneath that toothy smile and Habitat pose is a politician and ego feeling wronged and sniping, grinning, sniping, and grinning. What we used to call, once, "a little prick."
Posted by donescobar at 02/26/2007 @ 7:42pm
ZERO
Sure, but what was to be done with/about the Jews after WWII? Surely, not back to the Judeophiles of Poland, Croatio or Hungary? And not in our own Western Backyard. So...
As far as Florida is concerned, the Jews have gotten back at those State Department nasties from Yale. I believe it is the Mahjong heaven of the world. Your move, granma Esther.
Posted by donescobar at 02/26/2007 @ 8:23pm
Jimmy Carter is the most honest man I know,his honesty is the reason he failed so miserably as President. however his work since then is a paradigm for all people to follow, he should be the most respected man on the planet!
Posted by averitas at 02/26/2007 @ 8:32pm
Mask, can you be any more of an ultra-nationalist buffoon? You sound like a Nazi. Remember that there is a very thin line between patriotism and nationalism, and Hitler's Germany crossed it during the 1930s. ---Posted by ARCHANGEL_M 02/26/2007 @ 6:38pm
Somebody help me out...what's that rule about how when a blogger is losing an argument, they resort to calling their opponent a "Nazi"?
Oh righ t, this [en.wikipedia.org]
ARCH dont think you can intimidate me with your lame-ass liberal "catch-all" that anybody who disagrees with you or a MINORITY of opinion is a fascist...if anything, you are.
I quoted HOWARD DEAN....NANCY PELOSI...CHARLIE RANGEL and JOHN CONYERS in that article snippet. Are THEY "ultra-nationalist buffoons"? Or do they, like me, realize that Carter is completely off the range...and a LOT of Democrats do as well?
Posted by Mask at 02/26/2007 @ 8:59pm
You must reap what you sow.
Posted by MTSPENCE05 02/26/2007 @ 6:38pm | ignore this person
glib answer.this goes for both sides.
Posted by johannesrolf at 02/26/2007 @ 10:33pm
Don, and zero, your knowledge of history is appalling. you are clueless where the establishment of Israel are concerned. do yourself a favor and read a book. I recommend Charles Smith, "Palestine and the arab israeli conflict".
I will give you a hint. the establishment of Israel had nothing to do with the holocaust or WW2, it had everything to do with WW1.
Posted by johannesrolf at 02/26/2007 @ 10:37pm
From what I have heard, many Americans think that Carters book was not political correct which I think it means it dosent agree with American thinking and therefore its easily dimissed. For aountry with civil linberties and freedom speech it dosent show much responsibilty when it comes to foreign affairs. The American Image abroad is key in iliminating terrorsim.
Posted by Dony at 02/26/2007 @ 11:07pm
ARCH dont think you can intimidate me with your lame-ass liberal "catch-all" that anybody who disagrees with you or a MINORITY of opinion is a fascist...if anything, you are.
Posted by MASK 02/26/2007 @ 8:59pm = = = = = It's odd that you accuse those who take a dangerously unpopular view of intimidation when there is so much evidence of the such behavior from AIPAC and like-minded Jewish nationalist and Zionist groups. What else could get all but a few members of Congress to agree on anything? And public statements by politicians carry agendas--that's not a reflection on the morality of the individual as much as on the corruption of the system. Call me a cynic, but I don't see why honest people would get into politics.
Carter has never done what was popular. Indeed, that is precisely why he had so many failures as president. I have not always agreed with the man, but he has my enduring respect as a man of immense integrity and humility. Whatever lies his detractors peddle, you'll never hear him respond in kind. He speaks what he believes in his heart and to disrespect his honesty is to reveal your own agenda.
Ironically it is those who defend the mistaken policies of successive Israeli governments and their American supporters who do the most to encourage what you call "lame-ass liberal" views. In my experience, even those American Jews I count as friends immediately shut down at any hint of reasonable criticism of Israel. It's a victim mentality, and you can't blame those of us who have begun to think of it as a self-fulfilling prophecy. It's hard to claim you believe in democracy when you're debate boils down to the simplistic labeling of all political dissent as "anti-Semitic".
One last thing. The I-know-you-are-but-what-am-I name-calling approach only works for PeeWee Herman and preschoolers. Bulk up on the dictionary and come back with a real argument. Really. It's boring to mop the floor with an unarmed hack.
Posted by aedelbert at 02/26/2007 @ 11:33pm
I just love this "reasonable criticism of Israel" stuff. What is is that? Don't take anymore of thy neighbor's land than what we already gave you? If your neighbors want to kill you, show them the other cheek? As we Americans/Brits/French and German Christians have always done and still do? The first generations of Zionists were children of the pogroms. The following ones of the Holocaust. The establishment of Israel, says JohannesRolf, had "everything" to do with WWI, and "nothing" with WW II. Neat lines, clear and complete divisions. But history ain't all treaties and declarations. I visited Israel in 1963. The mindset was very much a product of the Holocaust, among the survivors as well as among their children born in Israel. In that respect, WWII figures as much as WWI does in the "establishment" of a society and culture. As far as that has to do with Jimmy Carter, he has not shown one sign he understands, or cares to understand. And since this The Nation, do any of you remember what Jimmy the Peacelover did with the defense budget? Go back and look--makes his successor look like the Berrigans
Posted by donescobar at 02/27/2007 @ 12:02am
Posted by JOHANNESROLF 02/26/2007
1896, Theodor Herzl: "Supposing his Majesty the Sultan were to give us Palestine; we could, in return, undertake to regulate the finances of Turkey. We should there form an outpost of civilization as opposed to barbarism." Theodor Herzl, The Jewish State (London: 1896).
1905, the Seventh World Zionist Congress... "The movement which has taken hold of a great part of the Arab people may easily take a direction which may cause harm in Palestine. ...The Turkish government may feel itself compelled to defend its reign in Palestine and Syria with armed force. ...In these circumstances, Turkey can be convinced that it will be important for her to have in Palestine and Syria a strong and well-organized group which ... will resist any attack on the authority of the Sultan and defend his authority with all its might." Hyman Lumer, Zionism: Its Role in World Politics (New York: International Publishers, 1973).
They played another hand as well, this was to the British; Chaim Weizmann... "We can reasonably say that should Palestine fall within the British sphere of influence, and should Britain encourage Jewish settlement there, as a British dependency, we could have in twenty to thirty years a million Jews out there, perhaps more; they would develop the country, bring back civilization to it and form a very effective guard for the Suez Canal." Chaim Weizmann, Trial and Error: The Autobiography of Chaim Weizmann (New York: Harpers, 1949), p.149.
Since from the MSM, "World War I started with the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand, heir to the Austria- Hungarian throne, in Sarajevo on 28 June 1914." The processes which ended in the formation of the state of Israel were initiated by at least 1896, doubtless earlier, which obviously predated WW1 by at least 18 years.
Posted by V at 02/27/2007 @ 12:13am
Well...whatever. The man has pushed himself into a TINY fraction of the Left, and will be lauded and cheered on blogs and "The Nation"...but anybody with any clout will treat him like its January 1981 again. And THIS time, he probably won't recover. Posted by MASK 02/26/2007 @ 4:58pm
What does being in a "tiny fraction" have anything to do with being right? Given the politcal climate, the likelihood is that the majority is wrong.
Posted by Ra Zen at 02/27/2007 @ 01:23am
jimmy, the last saint king...
Posted by ibbleblibble at 02/27/2007 @ 06:41am
Posted by RA ZEN 02/27/2007 @ 01:23am
Don't matter, RA, if you're "right"...if you're irrelevant.
Now, when you become the majority opinion, you'll be able to get what you want.
Posted by Mask at 02/27/2007 @ 07:05am
Posted by AEDELBERT 02/26/2007 @ 11:33pm
ARCH accused me of being a Nazi or atleast "Nazi-like".
Yet you accuse ME of "name-calling"?!?!?!
Posted by Mask at 02/27/2007 @ 07:06am
"Israel is going to have to make peace with all of its neighbors." Wouldn't it be loverly. But how is that going to work? Usually nations "make peace" when their means for making war have been destroyed. Or, as Curtis LeMay put it so elegantly, "Kill enough of them and they'll stop." The blood-soaked ME is going to be an exception?
And, Israel--any society--is more than its founding machinations, documents and arrangements. Remember the Soviet anti-Israel slogan: "Hitler--The Founder of Israel?" Nasty, but not all wrong, on several levels.
Posted by donescobar at 02/27/2007 @ 08:56am
Don, that you would cite that lunatic LeMay tells much about you.
Posted by johannesrolf at 02/27/2007 @ 09:14am
Israel as a political project of western European religious fundamentalists and western colonialism certainly dates to the Balfour declaration and further back.
you are illinformed. Zionism was a predominantly secular movement. in addition jews had been living in palestine for centuries, and then in increasing numbers. the land that the brits supposedly gave away did not belong to the arab inhabitants of palestine, it belonged largely to the ottomans.
read the goddamn book, so you won't parade your ignorance.
Posted by johannesrolf at 02/27/2007 @ 09:18am
zero, britain did not rule palestine per military conquest. it was appointed by the league of nations to its mandate.
I feel like I'm corresponding with preschoolers, as much notion some of you have of history.my patience is not unlimited.
Posted by johannesrolf at 02/27/2007 @ 09:21am
V, that chronology is certainly correct, but the decisive move by the brits came out of WW1 and the geo political machinations thereof.
Posted by johannesrolf at 02/27/2007 @ 09:23am
Don, that you would cite that lunatic LeMay tells much about you.
Posted by JOHANNESROLF 02/27/2007 @ 09:14am
Lemays young nephew is sitting in our county jail now, accused of raping a lass. the boy road about with his pocket constitution, very adept at applying it to current circumstances. But alas, it seems he could not keep it in his pocket.
Posted by crabwalk at 02/27/2007 @ 09:33am
Carter is right.
Israel is the power, Israel holds the answer to end their Palestinian problem.
Posted by crabwalk at 02/27/2007 @ 09:42am
"Israel is going to have to make peace with all of its neighbors." Wouldn't it be loverly. But how is that going to work? Usually nations "make peace" when their means for making war have been destroyed. Or, as Curtis LeMay put it so elegantly, "Kill enough of them and they'll stop." The blood-soaked ME is going to be an exception?"
Posted by DONESCOBAR 02/27/2007 @ 08:56am | ignore this person
I think Curtis LeMay would be proud of this plan...don't you? Since we can't nuke em...lets try to get em to kill each other off. You sure Israel wants peace, or do they want to dictate terms of that peace, or as LeMay so fervently desired "UNCONDITIONAL SURRENDER OR NOTHING ELSE."
12/14/06 09:00:19 am, Categories: Voices, 1839 words Iraqi Creative Chaos - Satanic Doctrine Designed to Control MidEast Ibrahim Ebeid From Palestine Free Voice
"To the ugly American, who remains ignorant:
The 'Creative Chaos' in Iraq at its best, is a madness and insanity that reflects the neoconservatives' doctrine in Washington. It is designed to control the "Middle East" in an effort to rip it apart further more, to weaken it, and to turn the region into insignificant sectarian and ethnic powerless mini states.
[More:]
There are two reasons for creating such chaos:
1) To protect the Zionist entity, known as the "Israeli State," not because Iraq posed a threat to the United States. The illegal attack on Iraq and occupying it was one of these two reasons. Zelikow made statements about 'the unstated threat" during his tenure on a highly knowledgeable and well-connected body known as the President's Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board (PFIAB), which reports directly to the President. He served on the board between 2001 and 2003. "Why would Iraq attack America or use nuclear weapons against us? I'll tell you what I think the real threat (is) and actually has been since 1990 -- it's the threat against Israel," Zelikow told a crowd at the University of Virginia on Sep. 10, 2002, speaking on a panel of foreign policy experts assessing the impact of 9/11 and the future of the war on the al-Qaeda.
2) To control the oil. Mr. Bush always states that he will never leave Iraq unless the "mission is complete." He also declared on Thursday August 24, 2006, that "to leave without finishing our mission will create a terrorist state in the heart of the Near East, in a country with enormous resources of petroleum, which the terrorist network can take for them." To accomplish his scheme, the President has conceived a planned chaos in Iraq by creating a sectarian regime in the "Green Zone," a small fortified section of Baghdad. This sectarian regime consists of several reactionary sectarian parties that were established by Iran to fight Arab Iraq.
Each party in the "government of the "Green Zone" has a militia and death squads that are killing hundreds of innocent people in Iraq who do not belong to their sect or do not agree with their agenda, be it Shia, Sunni, Christian or others. These sectarian racist parties were to replace the secular Arab Baath Socialist party; and the militias were to replace the Iraqi Army and the security forces. A chaos was created soon after the occupation, the museums were looted, and a heritage of more than ten thousand years old was destroyed. Bush and his henchmen like Rumsfeld called it 'Creative Chaos' to give birth to a new Iraq, a "democratic" Iraq. Is ruining an entire country and destroying its institution a "democracy or was it intended to erase the great Civilization of the Land of the Two Rivers?"
It seems to me that President Bush is a typical "ugly American" who remains ignorant of his surroundings. He has no knowledge of Arab culture that has its roots deep in history, certainly deeper and richer than that of the US or Western cultures. Bush insists to transform Iraq into a "model of freedom and democracy" for the rest of the "Middle East." But Iraq was turned into the "Gates of Hell" against him and his plans. When President Bush and his cronies look at the map of the "Middle East," they do not see the Arab people but rather vast oil fields and the illegal state of " Israel." Their dreams to control the area were shattered by the legitimate Iraqi Resistance that is scoring victory day after day.
The American President is sinking very fast in his ignorance and arrogance and he is dragging the United States with him. He is looking desperately for salvation and for a rescuer. Salvation he will never find in the Maliki "Government or in the Person of Abdul Aziz Al Hakim, a sectarian man who presides over a fascist sectarian organization, founded by Iran of the Mullahs. His allegiance is not for Bush and his cronies, but for Iran and the Mullahs, which makes him a major part of the problem.
Abdul Aziz Al Hakim, the Commander in Chief of the terrorist Badr Corps, and the head of the Supreme Council of the Islamic Revolution in Iraq along with the Mahdi Army of Sadr, the Chalabis and the Dawa "Islamic" Party are sending their death squads to kill and terrorize innocent people, The number of killed, according to the latest statistics reached an average of 400 a day in Baghdad and its surroundings, and yet President Bush receives this man in the White House to seek his help.
Is the United States looking to Iran for help? Isn't Iran part of the problem and not the solution? Is the President of the United States doing like Nero setting more fire on Iraq to burn the green and dry grass at the same time? Is this the exit he is looking for, an exit to more chaos and more killing? The hands of the sectarian "government' that Bush is supporting is stained with the blood of Iraqis. Their militias are cooperating with the Pasdaran, the Revolutionary Islamic Army of Iran, their purpose is to usurp southern Iraq and annex it to Iran to become part of the Islamic Republic of Iran and Mr. Bush has facilitated the way.
The occupation along with the sectarian allies is continuously targeting the education system. Myriads of professors, scientists and educators were assassinated and thousands left the country or stayed home because they were threatened. The latest such act took place in Al Anbar University on December 2, 2006 where many professors decided to quit and about 25 decided to move away from the University dwellings seeking safer places when the occupation arrested 12 professors falsely accusing them of supporting the Resistance and help making explosives. The professors who were targeted were in the Science Department, such as physics, chemistry and biology.
The cars which were used recently to kill about 200 innocent people in Al Thawra City (Al Sadr) belonged to the Badr Corps and they were shipped from Iran. The serial numbers were found on the chassis of the vehicles.
An Iraqi friend, who escaped the terror of occupation and their agents, told me that she was kidnapped by the gangs of Hakim, she was hit on the head with a rifle butt and her head was severely damaged because she is a Shia and married to a Sunni. She holds a doctorate degree in science. One day she applied for a teaching job at a Baghdad University; the interviewer told her that she will get the job if she joins the :Debaathification Committee"; the woman refused, and did not get the job.
"Freedom is completely lost in Iraq," as an Iraqi friend told me, whom I shall call Palmyra for protection. Women are not encouraged to go to school any more, they cannot hold any jobs any more. They have to cover their heads and the entire body with dark cloaks, Iranian style of the Mullahs. And, yet, the President of the United States keeps saying that women are free in Iraq? Palmyra opened a beauty parlor in order to survive and earn an income.
The first day, some armed men from the Badr Corps came to her and asked her to remove the pictures of women with different hair styles hanging at the windows. She complied, and then later that evening, while she was sitting home, she received a phone call from one of the hairstylists telling her that the Badr militia attacked the beauty salon, and sprayed it with bullets, as everything was shattered and left in ruins and yet President Bush is seeking help from this man to create more chaos?
Even the hospitals are not safe anymore, Ali Al Shummari, the Minister of Health, a Sadrist, allows the militia of Sadr and Badr to enter the hospitals and kill people who have no allegiance to them or who do not belong to the "Shia" faith. Those who go to pick up the dead are being killed also. Hundreds of corpses are taken on daily basis from the hospitals and buried in mass graves, in Najaf and Karbala, with no names. Who will President Bush blame in the future for his act? Will he blame Saddam Hussein, the Resistance or the real perpetrators of the sectarian and the occupation forces? Maybe he will blame himself!
Fatima, a Palestinian from Iraq, told me that most of the Palestinians were forced to leave their homes and gather with relatives in Baladiyat section where some Palestinians live. Her cousin was killed by a missile attack few months ago and her family was evicted from their home which was given to them by the government of Nuri Al Said in 1948. She told me that a Palestinian delegation from Baghdad went to the city of Najaf to meet with Hakim asking for help, and his answer was "we have a plan to expel all the Arabs from Iraq and the Palestinians are on the top of the list. Go, disappear, you have no place in Iraq ..." Then, they went to the Police and complained about the acts of the militias and the Police officer in charge told them "you are terrorists and you are supporting terrorism and Saddam Hussein." And yet the President keeps deafening our ears with his speeches about the "young democracy" in Iraq, and he is supporting such men like Hakim and Maliki?
During the previous regimes in Iraq, security was dominant and harmony was prevalent. The Palestinians were respected and given homes to stay as guests until they go back to their country from which they were evicted by force, and now they are facing certain death and being terrorized by the occupation forces, their sectarian allies and death squads, the friends of Bush and Iran of the Mullahs. At many occasions, the Baath Party ascertained that Iran is a strategic partner with the US and the Zionist entity.
They share the same objectives to dismember the Arab homeland. Some people and movements have objected to this, defending Iran and saying: "Iran has an anti Zionist Islamic revolution and we should give it complete opportunity to prove it!" The opportunity was given and now we see the result on the ground, the organizations which were created by Iran, the sectarians who were brought by Bush are allied with the US, and they are part of the problem and not a solution. And their representative Abdul Aziz Hakim was a guest in the White House.
The American people and the Anti War Movement should understand that the only solution is the recognition of the Iraqi National Resistance, as the sole representative of the Iraqi people. The Resistance has already made its conditions for peace known that the Anti War Movement should accept, advocate and support, especially the American Anti War Movement.
-###-
First Published in Al-Moharer
The author is a US Vietnam era veteran 25th Infantry Division and an anti war activist.
© Copyright 2006 PalestineFreeVoice - All rights reserved
Voice Your Opinion"
Posted by OneVote at 02/27/2007 @ 09:44am
"glib answer.this goes for both sides." Posted by JOHANNESROLF
Exactly! Both sides employ terrorism.
Posted by mtspence05 at 02/27/2007 @ 09:51am
GUILTY!!!
Neys Chief of Staff pleads out. Now, one more CoS to go.
Bringing respect back to Washington, said the repubs.
"The plea agreement by William Heaton revealed for the first time that Ney kept some of his ill-gotten gains -- $5,000 in British pounds -- in a safe in his congressional office. Heaton, who worked for Ney from 2001 until last year, admitted that he helped the congressman stash the money and periodically opened the safe at Ney's request so he could get to the cash, prosecutors said."
"Heaton, the ninth person to be convicted in the Abramoff investigation, also admitted that he received hundreds of thousands of dollars' worth of gambling chips from a foreign businessman who has been identified by Ney's attorney as Fouad al-Zayat, a high-rolling London gambler who sought Ney's help in circumventing a law barring the sale of U.S.-made airplanes and airplane parts to other countries."
Repubs all:
Also convicted in the scandal were Abramoff, who along with business partner Adam Kidan is in prison for a related fraud case in Florida; Volz, who pleaded guilty to conspiracy; Tony Rudy, a lobbyist and onetime aide to former House majority leader Tom DeLay (R-Tex.); David H. Safavian, a former chief of staff for the General Services Administration, who is appealing his conviction for lying about going on the Scotland trip; Michael Scanlon, a former Abramoff business partner and DeLay aide; and Roger G. Stillwell, a former Interior Department official, who was sentenced to two years' probation.
Posted by crabwalk at 02/27/2007 @ 09:51am
"he illegal state of " Israel.""
Even I can't get around that idea.
Posted by crabwalk at 02/27/2007 @ 09:54am
the state of israel is no more illegitimate than any of the mideast states, which ALL were established by fiat by the victors of WW1.
Posted by johannesrolf at 02/27/2007 @ 10:06am
Posted by JOHANNESROLF 02/27/2007 @ 10:06am
Seems according to the "The West illegally created Israel" Theory....
I suppose we need to give back Iraq, Jordan, Syria AND Palestine....to the "Ottomans". Turkey will be pleased!
Posted by Mask at 02/27/2007 @ 10:11am
I'm just curious: has anyone actually read the book in question? I confess that I haven't, myself, and so I'm refraining from judgment. It strikes me, though, that batting back and forth whether or not Carter is 'anti-Semitic', 'brave/courageous,' or 'hard left' is pretty unproductive (not to mention pretentious) if you haven't.
Posted by Interlocutor at 02/27/2007 @ 10:29am
Posted by INTERLOCUTOR 02/27/2007 @ 10:29am
jimmy - the last saint-king
no, i have not read it. i suspect i would find nothing new...for me the man is just preaching to the choir, i think.
besides, more than almost any public figure i can think of, i trust saint jimmy when it comes to morality and fairness...
a great and courageous man...
Posted by ibbleblibble at 02/27/2007 @ 10:43am
jimmy carter for president!!!!
lol
hey - he's got one term left....
Posted by ibbleblibble at 02/27/2007 @ 10:43am
JOHANNESROLF
I cited LeMay not because I admire him, but because in the ME his way of looking at things has become anything but "lunatic" in many quarters. But, talking about Israel is close to impossible. Your history ( is quite right, but who's learning from it? And in all the discussion, well-meant or not, I have never heard a thoughtful and viable answer to the "Jewish problem" in 1947? If not Palestine, what? Assimilate them all, but where? Everybody is stuck with five million Jews in a bad place. That they wanted the place, that's their own doing, but the Jimmy Carters and the Left could at least try to understand why. Instead, the daily rants at Counterpunch and the phony "consternation" from the Peanut. You don't "get" Israel unless you try to also get Herzl's Vienna under a mayor who proclaimed "I'll determine who is a Jew." (Lueger)
Posted by donescobar at 02/27/2007 @ 10:49am
Thank you, Katrina. The so-called left can be as dogmatic in its beliefs as the right wing. Kudos to Carter for his courage in tackling one of the most dogmatic ideologies in the liberal community. A full and reasoned discussion of the Palestinian issue benefits everyone and may even advance world peace.
Posted by crhiggins at 02/27/2007 @ 11:00am
This is typical slander and smear coming from a multitude of people and interests who find it easier to harass Carter, making reprehensible attempts to suggest the man is a loon, instead of actually addressing the issues he broaches in his book. The history of Israel is complex, the relationship between the Muslims and Jews there even more so, but this shouldn't mask the current state of affairs in the region, for it isn't so much yesterday that requires redress, rather, the strife of today that calls for attention. To flip the script and turn Carter's diagnosis of this important issue into a diagnosis of the author's mental state is yet another blow to the already hampered struggle for debate and diplomacy. Israel doesn't like to be criticized, so they sick their smear crew on Jimmy and the ADL follows suit. You can think whatever you want about Carter, but at least address the state of the Palestinians and the treatment they've become accustomed to as goyim under the Israeli occupation. It isn't pretty.
Israel, like the US, practices terrorism because it has the right to defend itself from terrorism. And those who criticize state terror are called anti-Semites or terrorist sympathizers. How long will the kidnapping of an Israeli soldier or two allow Israel to kidnap Palestinian sovereignty, or that of Lebanon? How long must the blood flow until force justifies what the law will not? Israel has ignored (often with contempt) 46 resolutions by various organisms of the UN. How long will Israel be allowed the privilege of deafness? How long must Arabs and Muslims be considered second and third-rate citizens, if not animals? How long until the west realizes that their invasions, whether of Afghanistan, Iraq, Gaza or Lebanon create seedbeds of hatred fueled by the humiliation and injustice? What does it say when the response to terrorism brings a legitimization of the same by those sworn to combat it?
Posted by chimichenga at 02/27/2007 @ 11:05am
Why can't anyone just admit that both sides are in the wrong? It's wrong to use terror to further your political goals, regardless of whether that terror comes in the form of suicide bombing or carpet-bombing.
What irks me is how, while both sides are so obviously in the wrong, Israel is portrayed ALWAYS as the pure and righteous, and the Palestinians are portrayed as the foil, the evil, the unpure. From what I have read of Carter's book, it seems he feels the same way, and he is simply trying to bring some balance to the discussion.
Just because what someone or a group of someones does something wrong to you DOES NOT make you righteous and DOES NOT grant you carte blanche to reap vengeance, regardless of how much lobbying you do, or how much money your benefactors have.
Posted by jorcheim at 02/27/2007 @ 11:08am
Posted by DONESCOBAR 02/27/2007 @ 10:49am | ignore this person
your historical analysis is stuck in mid twentieth century. the times have passed you by. germany for one is trying to attract jews to live there. israel has seen a huge influx of jews from russia. Israel itself has become a lot less secular it seems, and is divided sharply in its politics, as is the US.
what we have here is an unholy alliance between the most reactionary and bellicose elements of both societies. that is why there has been no meaningful peace process in the last six years. on the palestinian side too developments have been largely negative. with no central figure such as Arafat to rally around, the election of Hamas, the equation is far more complicated.
by the way, the notion that we invaded Iraq for Israel is absurd. Saddam was no threat to israel, which has shown that it can handle its threats well enough
.the fact that Israel has made peace with and reached an accommodation with at least half its arab neighbors is largely overlooked in your and many others' analysis.
Posted by johannesrolf at 02/27/2007 @ 11:13am
+-10% of Israelis want to keep the status quo, +-10% of Palestinians want that too. they are controlling the majority of the populace that could live in peace with their neighbors. It is time that the majorities step out of their slumber and MAKE the minority do the right thing.
will that happen, I doubt it. But a kid can dream.
Posted by crabwalk at 02/27/2007 @ 11:13am
JOHANNESROLF:
Agreed, we did not invade Iraq at Israel's behest. We did it to control their oil supply. Very simple.
Posted by jorcheim at 02/27/2007 @ 11:15am
Johaann, we find ourselves on a similar page, not the same, but similar.
Keep in mind, Israels' security was USED as a reason to invade, regardless of the reality of the situation. Much like the rest of the reasons given.
Posted by crabwalk at 02/27/2007 @ 11:16am
National Review, Sept 19, 2003:
But the premise is facile. The principle that drove Iraq and al Qaeda together is one of the oldest in international-relations theory -- the enemy of my enemy is my friend. The motive for their alliance was a common hatred for the United States and Israel. Ideology seldom determines wartime-alliance structures, and for both Saddam and Osama the 1990s were wartime. The Iraq/al Qaeda combination is as reasonable as the temporary strategic alliance between the U.S. and the Soviet Union against Nazi Germany, or Syrian and American troops fighting side by side during Operation Desert Storm. (Note that it is hard to distinguish Syria from Iraq ideologically, and Baathist solidarity was certainly not a motivating factor in the relationship between the two countries.) Moreover, despite their personal dislike for each other, Saddam Hussein was the only state leader openly to praise bin Laden's attacks on the U.S. (if not bin Laden himself).
Saddam Hussein showed no reluctance to support terrorism per se during his career. The fact that he gave money to the families of Palestinian suicide terrorists and had a close working relationship with the PLO was well known, and something he admitted.
Posted by crabwalk at 02/27/2007 @ 11:27am
With all the talk of war and terror in the Middle East, the number one threat to peace is always the last to receive any mention in the west, if ever - Israel. Iran may one day have a nuclear bomb, yet Israel is believed to have perhaps 250 and has proven to be a nation living on the brink of a nervous breakdown. How Iraq, Syria or even Iran are believed to be more threatening is ridiculous. But then again, in today's world only a handful of nations have the right to defend themselves.
Posted by chimichenga at 02/27/2007 @ 11:28am
I do know some who are of the mind: Israel right or wrong....similar to their counterparts here... And I know that there are differing opinions within and without Israel by ardent supporters of Israel. So... if I were to comment (but I really can't as I haven't read the book, but can't resist, and so based upon observation of humans and Carter's history of level headedness): Carter probably has many valid points....that need open logical discussion. That is not to say that all his points will be valid....but would bet at least 90% are.
Posted by evergreen at 02/27/2007 @ 11:32am
JOHANNESROLF
Segments of the Israelis and Palestinians are stuck in mid-20th century mindsets, not me. What would the "open, full discussion" Saint Jimmy and others so devoutly wish for produce? If Israel were, somehow, to close every WB settlement, and the Palestinians would have all of that territory and Gaza, with the freedom to move from one to the other as they pleased, and a share of Jerusalem, how long before that would not do? Why is "Palestine from river to sea" not taken seriously? Two or three biological or chemical weapons smuggled into Tel Aviv, Jerusalem and Haifa, and the "Zionist entity" would cease to be the villain of good Lefties. But to be fair, both societies--the Israeli and the Palestinan one--are by now driven by horrible destructive and self-destructive urges. Six decades of hatred and bloodshed will do that. Open, full discussion isn't what you want. Not in the ME, not in America, not in the UK or France, and certainly not in Muslim countries. The people should participate? The American people should participate in a discussion of the Israeli-Palestinian "issue?" The don't even have the information or interest to talk about problems in their country or hometown. Jimmy wrote a book that whould sell. He succeeded.
Posted by donescobar at 02/27/2007 @ 11:36am
Crab, I forget was it reason number 33 or 34?
Posted by johannesrolf at 02/27/2007 @ 11:38am
Posted by DONESCOBAR 02/27/2007 @ 11:36am | ignore this person
You made clear your subjectivity and distrust of Palestinians, if not all Muslims and Arabs. "Two or three biological or chemical weapons smuggled into Tel Aviv?" What about the scores if not hundreds of nuclear bombs already inside Israel? That Israel's disproportionate force and exaggerated response is accepted speaks volumes, but then again Americans love death and destruction, ¿no?
Posted by chimichenga at 02/27/2007 @ 11:46am
Saddam Hussein showed no reluctance to support terrorism per se during his career. The fact that he gave money to the families of Palestinian suicide terrorists and had a close working relationship with the PLO was well known, and something he admitted.
Posted by CRABWALK 02/27/2007 @ 11:27am | ignore this person
as did many others. the fact is that Saddam and Bin Laden had a common enemy, Saudi. the other fact is that Saddam was defanged after the '91 war. Saddam could have harbored Bin Laden but he didn't. i'm surprised that you seem to be buying into the now discredited lie of a Saddam Bin Laden relationship.
Posted by johannesrolf at 02/27/2007 @ 11:48am
Don:"If Israel were, somehow, to close every WB settlement, and the Palestinians would have all of that territory and Gaza, with the freedom to move from one to the other as they pleased, and a share of Jerusalem,"
that Israel will have to shut down ALL west bank settlements is clear. the freedom to move between Gaza and the west bank is problematical, Israel cannot be expected to create a corridor through their country, especially for folks who would kill them. Jerusalem too is not a prize the israelis are likely to relinquish.
in any event these are all subject for negotiation. what do the palestinians have to offer?
Posted by johannesrolf at 02/27/2007 @ 11:53am
CHIMICHENGA
No, not "all Muslims and Arabs." Read more closely: "Segments of the Israelis and Palestinians are stuck..." is what I wrote. Now, the Israelis have had all those nuclear weapons for years and never used one. The Iranians don't even have one yet, but are already talking of "wiping (Israel) off the map." Many in Arab countries would love to live in peace. As much as those with similar desires in Israel, they need to come to power. But, how is that going to happen????? Not by invading Iraq, to be sure. Then, how?
Posted by donescobar at 02/27/2007 @ 11:55am
"wiping (Israel) off the map."
what he said was wipe the current Israeli regime off the map.
Posted by johannesrolf at 02/27/2007 @ 11:57am
JOHANNESROLF
Well, what? And, sez who?
Posted by donescobar at 02/27/2007 @ 11:57am
Yeah, "wiping off" is a term with bad associations and a long memory. And how do you wipe a regime off without spilling some of that cleaning fluid on those pesky people living under the regime? Please, a little seriosity here.
Posted by donescobar at 02/27/2007 @ 12:00pm
Posted by DONESCOBAR 02/27/2007 @ 11:55am | ignore this person
Your quote is wrong. He spoke of wiping Israeli aggression from the pages of history, not wiping Israel off the face of the earth. But arguing over linguistics is pointless, for America didn't even know that a Nova wouldn't sell in neighboring México due to "no va" meaning "doesn't go" in Spanish. That they might misinterpret an eastern language should be assumed. That they'd misinterpret intentionally and for despicable reasons is now common practice. But I digress…
As I always say, there needs to be more faith in the world that might be produced where the powerful lead by example. Israel, like the US, gives a green light to terror and outlawry every pre-emptive strike or humanitarian intervention.
Posted by chimichenga at 02/27/2007 @ 12:01pm
Well, the last time anybody threw flowers at American soldiers was in 1945. (1948, if you count the Berlin airlift.) Since then the powerful have acted, well, like the powerful. If we were to follow examples, I'd say follow Finland or Norway, but then they are not powerful. Game to those who have the most divisions, as Uncle Joe once understood it.
Posted by donescobar at 02/27/2007 @ 12:11pm
Chimi you got it right. the quote is from the pres of Iran.
Posted by johannesrolf at 02/27/2007 @ 12:13pm
Since then the powerful have acted, well, like the powerful with a death wish.
Posted by johannesrolf at 02/27/2007 @ 12:14pm
But, as the Marx Brothers might have asked, "why the death wish?"
Posted by donescobar at 02/27/2007 @ 12:33pm
Well, after much discussion here on Carter and his views....
I guess I'm just going to have to stick with the vicious "neo-con right-wingers" like...
Howard Dean, Nancy Pelosi, Charlie Rangel, etc.
Posted by Mask at 02/27/2007 @ 1:02pm
viaduct.
why a duck? why not a chicken?
Posted by johannesrolf at 02/27/2007 @ 1:38pm
Any of you posters in touch with the White House, I think they could use some good advice. Can you imagine, a few individuals can sent America in such predicament.
Posted by Dony at 02/27/2007 @ 1:45pm
what we need is regime change in Wash. the war won't be budged until then
Posted by johannesrolf at 02/27/2007 @ 1:55pm
Or, why not a chickenhawk? Ooops, already got that. Vorwaerts, Kameraden, wir marschieren zurueck!
Posted by donescobar at 02/27/2007 @ 1:56pm
Don, for Umlauts try option key together with u, and then the letter you wish to provide with Umlaut. I'm not sure if it will work for you, lemme know.
Posted by johannesrolf at 02/27/2007 @ 2:04pm
Thanks. Old Luddite will practice.
Posted by donescobar at 02/27/2007 @ 2:06pm
old luddite is redundant, I'm afraid. I used to think I would be the last person with computers, my metier is with video cameras. now we have three computers, planning for a fourth. turns out, the computers do the work, and I blog to my heart's content, well, almost.
Posted by johannesrolf at 02/27/2007 @ 2:17pm
With all the rhetoric and saber-rattling occuring over Iran and NK's nuclear arsenals or "ambiguities", I wonder how many people in the US even know the name Mordechai Vanunu. His whole story, from speaking to the British press about Israel's nuclear program, to being snatched in Italy by the Mossad and then tried for treason before being locked up for 18 years is an important one when contemplating the nuclear issue in the Middle East. Though Iran has certainly been clandestine with its nuclear program, Israel had done so to a much greater degree long before Iran became an issue. Only a serpent would deny the relevance of Israel's program in the ME proliferation of nuclear ambitions if not actual armaments. Only an idiot could accuse Iran of seeking to increase hostilities in the neighborhood, whether out of a desire to potentiate its own threat of force or for the even more ludicrous claim, so as to expand its territory in the ME, without taking into account the role Israel has played in pushing the dangerometer to new heights. Nuclear countries have proven that their weapons serve as powerful deterrents, not to mention successful avenues by which to attain global power and dominance, as the traditional power of the veto in the UN was held soley by the principal nuclear powers - US, England, France, China and Russia. How tragic that world peace rests with the nations who possess and produce the most arms on the planet, one of them being the only nation to use them on humanity - and to great effect...
Posted by chimichenga at 02/27/2007 @ 2:46pm
I guess I'm just going to have to stick with the vicious "neo-con right-wingers" like...
Howard Dean, Nancy Pelosi, Charlie Rangel, etc.
Posted by MASK 02/27/2007 @ 1:02pm | ignore this person
Mask, sometimes you are SOOOOOOOOOOO far out there.
To you, the statements of Howard Dean and Nancy Pelosi are somehow on par with the wingnuts calling Carter a "liar," "anti-Semite," "plagiarist," "thief," and "coward"?!?!?!
Those are obviously HIGHLY personal attacks directly at the former President. Why don't you show us all where these kinds of personal attacks are in the Dean and Peolosi's statements...
Dean: "While I have tremendous respect for former President Carter, I fundamentally disagree and do not support his analysis of Israel and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. On this issue President Carter speaks for himself, the opinions in his book are his own, they are not the views or position of the Democratic Party. I and other Democrats will continue to stand with Israel in its battle against terrorism and for a lasting peace with its neighbors."
Pelosi: "With all due respect to former President Carter, he does not speak for the Democratic Party on Israel. Democrats have been steadfast in their support of Israel from its birth, in part because we recognize that to do so is in the national security interests of the United States. We stand with Israel now and we stand with Israel forever.
Here's the opening
Posted by Lillian at 02/27/2007 @ 2:57pm
CHIMICHENGA 02/27/2007 @ 12:01am
Thank you for reminding me of my favorite example of American myopia. And this from a Detroit boy, whose first car was a Nova.
And to you and Johannesrolf, thanks for your patience in dealing with the fact free flareups (say that 10 times fast!) that dominate these pages whenever Israel is discussed.
Posted by MyParadigm at 02/27/2007 @ 3:01pm
Carter is no less right or 'marginalized' for being unpopular, Mask. His energy policies were 'unpopular' as well; now anybody with more that a pinch of brains knows he was right.
Posted by brantl at 02/27/2007 @ 3:06pm
Posted by LILLIAN 02/27/2007 @ 2:57pm
Did I say that? Or point out the fact that Carter is the one that is sooooooo far out there that even Dean and Pelosi have distanced themselves from him.
Having his enemies call him names is bad....having his FRIENDS try to put as much air between him and themselves...is WORSE.
Posted by Mask at 02/27/2007 @ 3:18pm
Posted by BRANTL 02/27/2007 @ 3:06pm
Fine....how much of THAT got enacted and was kept around?
You can talk about somebody being "right" all day....but if even their FRIENDS are not pushing their agenda...that's "marginalized".
Posted by Mask at 02/27/2007 @ 3:19pm
Posted by MYPARADIGM 02/27/2007 @ 3:01pm | ignore this person
More times than not I too must defer to JRs vast knowledge and comprehension of history, for not only is he full of names, dates, events, and fun factoids, but he understands their context and how they all relate to one another. He's slayed and wounded more than a few poseurs and pedants here, chasing off LL after many ill-fated attempts at pathetic pontification or slipping by a few phoney facts and fabrications under the guise of "history" - more like His Story, which we all know is well-recorded in a disturbing book called "Diary of a Madman".
Posted by chimichenga at 02/27/2007 @ 3:20pm
President Carter is right about nothing different from the current Congress. Again it's up to the people to lead our "leaders" in Washington on a critically important issue. The conservative government in Israel is no more effective than the neocons here. Blasting Lebanon into the 80's only strengthened Hezbollah's influence there. I don't believe they're any more interested in a peaceful, economically sustainable Palestinian state than the Bush administration is in exiting Iraq.
Posted by GoCards1978 at 02/27/2007 @ 3:41pm
Chimi and paradigm, I thank you. I am proud of the respect of my peers here, something that is sometimes described as delusions of grandeur.
Posted by johannesrolf at 02/27/2007 @ 3:45pm
Why can't anyone just admit that both sides are in the wrong? It's wrong to use terror to further your political goals, regardless of whether that terror comes in the form of suicide bombing or carpet-bombing.
What irks me is how, while both sides are so obviously in the wrong, Israel is portrayed ALWAYS as the pure and righteous, and the Palestinians are portrayed as the foil, the evil, the unpure. From what I have read of Carter's book, it seems he feels the same way, and he is simply trying to bring some balance to the discussion.
Just because what someone or a group of someones does something wrong to you DOES NOT make you righteous and DOES NOT grant you carte blanche to reap vengeance, regardless of how much lobbying you do, or how much money your benefactors have.
Posted by JORCHEIM 02/27/2007 @ 11:08am | ignore this person
FINALLY!!!!!
Someone says what I've felt for YEARS!!! A pox on both their houses! Thanks from the bottom of my heart, Jorcheim.
While everyone seems to want to take either the Palestinians alone to the woodshed (America, most of the media) while others want to take Israel alone (Europe), the fact is, both of these countries are in the wrong.
Until both the Israelis and the Palestinians are made to confront this reality, the problem will never be solved.
Posted by edwriter at 02/27/2007 @ 3:54pm
The rapidity with which Carter was smeared as an anti-Semite shows both the lunacy as well as the power of the rightist Israel lobby and its allies in the US.
One of the saddest aspects of that smear campaign, little noted, is that abusing the label "anti-Semitic" by vastly inflating it to include anyone who makes any criticism of the Israeli government's worst activities, draws attention away from real anti-Semitism in the world. By creating Jimmy Carter's peace activism as "anti-Semitism", the fact that there are figures in the world who are seriously anti-Jewish is hidden and these figures are egregiously associated with decent people, giving the real anti-Jew cover.
Posted by ZERO 02/26/2007 @ 4:28pm | ignore this person
I second Zero's first post. No less an establishment figure than Colin Powell declared (while he was still Sec State, I think), something like, "Criticism of the Israeli government is not anti-Semitism." It absolutely baffles me how anyone can equate the two, and yet, that is what many idiots (including Democratic ones who are apparently too scared to know better) are doing with regard to Carter's book. If anything, one could make a good case (and some Israeli writers have) that SUPPORTING the present Israeli government is tantamount to anti-semitism for the reason that its policies are making the world -- especially the Middle East -- far more dangerous to Israel's continued existence that would implementing the kinds of policies Carter is suggesting.
Posted by w_m_bear at 02/27/2007 @ 4:03pm
What irks me is how, while both sides are so obviously in the wrong, Israel is portrayed ALWAYS as the pure and righteous, and the Palestinians are portrayed as the foil, the evil, the unpure.
certainly that is not the case in these pages, Jorchy
Until both the Israelis and the Palestinians are made to confront this reality, the problem will never be solved.
Posted by EDWRITER 02/27/2007 @ 3:54pm | ignore this person
this goes for the entire region. the palestinian problem was not created by Israel alone, but rather is the product of a region wide dispute that four or five wars have been unable to address.
what will work? let's try what they did when they produced a peace between egypt and israel, peace between israel and jordan, and an accommodation with Saudi. I believe Carter had something to do with that.
Posted by johannesrolf at 02/27/2007 @ 4:04pm
If Israel were, somehow, to close every WB settlement, and the Palestinians would have all of that territory and Gaza, with the freedom to move from one to the other as they pleased, and a share of Jerusalem, how long before that would not do? Why is "Palestine from river to sea" not taken seriously? Two or three biological or chemical weapons smuggled into Tel Aviv, Jerusalem and Haifa, and the "Zionist entity" would cease to be the villain of good Lefties. But to be fair, both societies--the Israeli and the Palestinan one--are by now driven by horrible destructive and self-destructive urges. Six decades of hatred and bloodshed will do that. Open, full discussion isn't what you want. Not in the ME, not in America, not in the UK or France, and certainly not in Muslim countries. The people should participate? The American people should participate in a discussion of the Israeli-Palestinian "issue?" The don't even have the information or interest to talk about problems in their country or hometown. Jimmy wrote a book that whould sell. He succeeded.
Posted by DONESCOBAR 02/27/2007 @ 11:36am | ignore this person
Donescobar,
So, you base your premise of the Palestinians not deserving sovereign and autonomous rule in nation state-form because you think they may not be satisfied with the fundamentals and basics of human digity?
This is BS. Just because both sides perpetuate cyclical violence (though in great disproportion) does not excuse the dominant power, Israel, from engaging in imperial aggression and further destabilizing the already basketcase-like region. Egypt's Sadat offered peace to Israel in 1971; they refused out of arrogance and plans to acquire more territories. Following the near diaster of 73, they came back down to the real world and eventually negotiated peace, but not before the world came close to suffering nuclear devastation as a consequence. Israel is reckless and out of control, and the only nation capable of tempering that instability is a government little better in constraining its own delusions of power.
This book was not written for the American people, true, it was written to smoke the issue out of the subterranean shadows of American politics and into the light. Scarely anyone is brave enough to mention the topic in differing perspective and framing of the great mythologies written in the NYTimes, Washington Post, etc. The public tarring of Carter serves as further warning to those who might speak publicly.
Posted by Oustbush at 02/27/2007 @ 4:06pm
what will work? let's try what they did when they produced a peace between egypt and israel, peace between israel and jordan, and an accommodation with Saudi. I believe Carter had something to do with that.
Posted by JOHANNESROLF 02/27/2007 @ 4:04pm | ignore this person
I think we need strong leadership from the US, heck, we control the purse strings with our annual welfare payment to Israel. The Israelis negotiated with Egypt because they were forced to concede the wisdom in Eqypt as their ally having more value than territorial expansion. Currently, Israel is playing the military emphasis card; they went into Lebanon with this overconfident mentality, overplaying their cards. But, look at the aftermath: they are all talk of the "next time" we'll crush em. I just don't see anything happening when the US is unwilling to intervene objectively. We can't even have an open debate in this country. It's sad.
Posted by Oustbush at 02/27/2007 @ 4:19pm
egypt's Sadat offered peace to Israel in 1971; they refused out of arrogance and plans to acquire more territories.
really? can you flesh this out a bit?
Posted by johannesrolf at 02/27/2007 @ 4:22pm
egypt's Sadat offered peace to Israel in 1971; they refused out of arrogance and plans to acquire more territories.
I'd say Israel was as unwilling to compromise as Egypt, but the latter was certainly looking for a new direction in the relationship between the two, which stands as an opportunity the Israelis (and Americans) could have but didn't take advantage of.
Posted by chimichenga at 02/27/2007 @ 4:40pm
Posted by JOHANNESROLF 02/27/2007 @ 4:22pm
If Egypt was offering peace to Israel in 1971....
then why does Jimmy Carter get CREDIT for Camp David-1979, when he wasn't even "in the loop" for FIVE YEARS?
"He pressured Begin"?....no, then THIS..."Following the near diaster of 73, they came back down to the real world and eventually negotiated peace"....is false. For it means they didn't NEED Jimmy since they were already set on negotiations.
OUST just cut Carter out of his ONE major "achievement" as President.
Posted by Mask at 02/27/2007 @ 4:53pm
An independent report commissioned by the United Nations compares Israel's actions in the West Bank and Gaza to apartheid South Africa - charges that drew angry rebukes from Israel and were sure to revive charges that the UN Human Rights Council is biased against the Jewish state.
The report by John Dugard, independent investigator on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict for the council, is to be presented next month, but it has been posted on the body's Web site. In it, Dugard, a South African lawyer who campaigned against apartheid in the 1980s, says "Israel's laws and practices in the ( Palestinian territories) certainly resemble aspects of apartheid."
The 24-page report catalogues a number of accusations against the Jewish state ranging from restrictions on Palestinian movement, house demolitions and preferential treatment given to Jewish settlers in the West Bank.
"Can it seriously be denied that the purpose of such action is to establish and maintain domination by one racial group - Jews - over another racial group - Palestinians - and systematically oppress them?" he asks.
http://www.ynetnews.com/Ext/Comp/ArticleLayout/CdaArticlePrintPreview/1, 2506,L-3368610,00.html
"Israeli Apartheid Week" will take place for the third consecutive year starting next Monday through to Saturday.
Israeli-Arab MK Jamal Zahalka was invited to speak at one of the events marking the week in Montréal on Thursday.
"Calling the occupation apartheid isn't an overstatement, it's an understatement," Zahalka told Ynet, "The Israeli occupation in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip are worse than apartheid."
Organizer's of the events said on the week's official website , "The past few years have seen an explosion of literature and analysis that has placed Israel alongside other settler-colonial states like South Africa, arguing that Israel is in fact an apartheid state, not just a belligerent occupying power."
According to the organizers, the week's goal was to "push forward the analysis of Israel as an apartheid state and to bolster support for the boycott, divestment, and sanctions campaign in accordance with the demands outlined in the July 2005 Statement: full equality for Arab citizens of
Israel, an end to the occupation and colonization of the West Bank and Gaza, and the implementation of the right of return and compensation for Palestinian refugees pursuant to UN resolution 194."
He also pointed out that during the apartheid, blacks and whites were separated, but the current situation was of Palestinians being separated from Palestinians, through the use of fences, roadblocks, and limited travel.
"It's worse," he said, "Even those arriving from South Africa say the situation in the occupied territories is worse than the apartheid."
http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-3362888,00.html
Posted by fromredbird at 02/27/2007 @ 4:54pm
are the palestinians still blowing up innocent civilians? does Eilat sound familiar?
Posted by JOHANNESROLF 02/26/2007 @ 6:06pm
How many Palestinian suicide bombers were there between 1948 and 1980, a period of about three decades when Israel could have offered the peace that they claim they've always wanted. There must not have been many since Golda Meir liked making public statements that there was no such thing as a Palestinian. That's why there are suicide bombers now.
Israel does not want peace or any kind of negotiated settlement that doesn't create a situation where they can eventually seize all of Palestine. That is their goal. It's validated by the continued injection of Jewish settlers onto Palestinian land that has occasionally slowed but never abated.
Posted by fromredbird at 02/27/2007 @ 5:04pm
A new report released Monday by Peace Now says that several West Bank settlements have annexed land from nature reserves for construction purposes.
The left-wing organization's claim is based on a comparison of aerial photographs of settlements and outposts and maps of nature reserves.
The report, which refers to settlements in the northern West Bank, states that the phenomenon is widespread and a central reason for the popularity of settlements in the area.
http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/830764.html
Posted by fromredbird at 02/27/2007 @ 5:06pm
Israel, like the US, is learning the limits of brute force. They'll be forced to negotiate a peace with the Palestinians, just as the US will have to make peace with the insurgents in Iraq. And while Israel certainly supports the war with Iraq, it is also in their interest that the US get out as soon as possible, for a USA throwing away its treasure on an unwinnable war leaves less and less money for Israel, which means less means to wage war themselves.
Posted by chimichenga at 02/27/2007 @ 5:09pm
Posted by MASK 02/27/2007 @ 3:18pm | ignore this person
Did I say that? Or point out the fact that Carter is the one that is sooooooo far out there that even Dean and Pelosi have distanced themselves from him.
Actually Mask, yes, that's what you said here...
I guess I'm just going to have to stick with the vicious "neo-con right-wingers" like...
Howard Dean, Nancy Pelosi, Charlie Rangel, etc.
Posted by MASK 02/27/2007 @ 1:02pm | ignore this person
You might have (properly) noted that Carter is stating the obvious in his book...and Dean and Pelosi both took steps to distance the Demcratic party (rightly) from his position due to the political ramifications associated with being seen as criticizing Israel.
But no, it was more important for you to take the opportunity to 'jab' at the Dems...by equating their words with the wingnut personal attacks on Carter. You even tried to jam the 'point' in further, to inflict a bit more pain, with this little followup...
Having his enemies call him names is bad....having his FRIENDS try to put as much air between him and themselves...is WORSE.
Posted by Lillian at 02/27/2007 @ 5:20pm
Ack!...bold attack! :-(
Posted by Lillian at 02/27/2007 @ 5:21pm
By the reasoning of some here the US can never get out of Iraq as long as there are suicide bombings. If they would just let us occupy them without those nasty suicide bombings we will stop occupying their country.
It really is particularly mean of them to do that before we even started transporting in our Christian settlers to move into their houses, take over their fields, palm groves, and oil wells after driving 70% of them out of their own country by means of violence, and then telling the world that they never really existed.
Posted by fromredbird at 02/27/2007 @ 5:23pm
Posted by FROMREDBIRD 02/27/2007 @ 5:04pm | ignore this person
I consider this an inadequate response to the issue of an attack on civilians in Israel. you cannot dismiss this or wish it away.
your use of the term palestine is misleadingly imprecise. the country Jordan, for instance is palestine, in the sense the word was used historically.the many jews who lived in palestine were referred to as palestinians. this is the reason I often put this term in quotes. the many arabs from palestine who are warehoused in countries such as jordan and others are palestinians, but their second and third generation offspring can hardly be described as such, as they have not set foot in "palestine".
I do not defend or dispute the reprehensible actions of the current gov't in Israel, and most of all the settlers, just as I do not defend the reprehensible actions of our own gov't.
Posted by johannesrolf at 02/27/2007 @ 5:24pm
the actions of the US gov't cannot be used to characterize the entire nation. the same is true with Israel.
Posted by johannesrolf at 02/27/2007 @ 5:25pm
Just how is the yearned for "open debate missing?" Jimmy was on the NYT op ed page, on every TV talk show, why he even spoke to the Jews in their own den, at Brandeis University. Every day Israel is depicted as the new Nazi state on Counterpunch, on many other left websites, on Consortium News, in The Independent and The Guardian, on the BBC--all available to any American interested in this issue. Whom do you want to debate? Congress? One lobbyist vs the other? In townhall meetings across the country? Do you anything like that going on about job loss, income gap, health care etc? Same websites, same (relatively) small and committed readerships. To Counterpunch Israel and American Jews who defend it are evil; on LGF Palestnians and Muslims are the villains. Debate? Uri Avnery insists on Counterpunch that Arafar must have ben assassinated--his "common sense" tells him so, without a sliver of evidence. On this issue, the "debate" is like a puppet theater--two puppets smack each other with sticks. (Used to be big in public squares in Europe.) First, to discover why that is so, then proceed to a debate. I don't see either side shedding its baggage--or stick.
Posted by donescobar at 02/27/2007 @ 5:27pm
very true, Don. but WE can change it, here and now. you go first.
Posted by johannesrolf at 02/27/2007 @ 5:31pm
sorry about the typos etc. anything on the dread I-P issue goes on, and on, and on...And who do you think wore the prettiest gown at the Oscars?
Posted by donescobar at 02/27/2007 @ 5:34pm
I go first. OK. A Marshall Plan for Palestine (agreed on borders, even if not all final), administered in part by the Israelis. Force both sides to work together or one side will starve and the other become defenseless. Money from the USA et al, technological and agricultural know-how from the Israelis. Everybody get behind it--USA, UK, China, Russia, even the French. Or, no help and bucks for either side. Get the Arabs to stand aside. Then, when the first Israeli-Palestinian soccer team beats the shit out of Manchester United, final borders and recognition and all that can be approached. Something those "on the street"--with food, security and a victory for their side can understand. My modest plan. Now, kick the shit out of it and come up with something better.
Posted by donescobar at 02/27/2007 @ 5:43pm
Posted by FROMREDBIRD 02/27/2007 @ 5:04pm
I consider this an inadequate response to the issue of an attack on civilians in Israel. you cannot dismiss this or wish it away.
your use of the term palestine is misleadingly imprecise. the country Jordan, for instance is palestine, in the sense the word was used historically.the many jews who lived in palestine were referred to as palestinians. this is the reason I often put this term in quotes.
A person who owned land or whose ancestors lived in Jaffa, which is located on the coast, for many hundreds of years, is a Palestinian. A person who had the same circumstances in Amman is a Jordanian. You're trying to resurrect a version of the "no such thing as a Palestinian" argument when all but the most vicious zionists in Israel have already abandoned it.
the many arabs from palestine who are warehoused in countries such as jordan and others are palestinians, but their second and third generation offspring can hardly be described as such, as they have not set foot in "palestine".
The Jews in Palestine were a tiny minority until the British Mandate gave world zionism a protective cover to invade the country wholesale. Neither they, nor their ancestors who they couldn't even name, had set foot in Palestine since about 70 A.D., if ever. But you have a whole catalog of excuses to paper over that, such as one of your favorite terms, "the many Jews in Palestine", a pretension that a great number of them were native. In any case, it was the position of the PLO for decades that any Jew who lived in Palestine prior to the founding of Israel was welcome to stay.
I do not defend or dispute the reprehensible actions of the current gov't in Israel, and most of all the settlers, just as I do not defend the reprehensible actions of our own gov't.
Posted by JOHANNESROLF 02/27/2007 @ 5:24pm
Fine. However, any Israeli who continually votes to elect those very governments that have never stopped engaging in those reprehensible actions is directly responsible. It's childish to pretend otherwise, as if there were some mystical difference between a people and the governments that they empower. There surely are Israelis who have opposed exactly that but they are a vanishingly small minority and they are typically dismissed by "liberal" supporters of Israel as "ultra-leftist" and by zionists as "self-haters".
Posted by fromredbird at 02/27/2007 @ 5:53pm
the actions of the US gov't cannot be used to characterize the entire nation. the same is true with Israel.
Posted by JOHANNESROLF 02/27/2007 @ 5:25pm
Yes they can. That's exactly why the Republicans were kicked out of Congress, because the American people no longer wanted to accept the responsibility for what they were doing. They just haven't finished the job yet. That's the first opportunity they had after three years of the Republican disgrace.
Israelis, unfortunately, have been electing the same human rights-abusing, land-stealing governments for nearly 60 years. That means something.
Posted by fromredbird at 02/27/2007 @ 5:58pm
an awful lot of money has been shoveled to the palestinians. to send more money? my question remains. what do the palestinians of the west bank have to offer?
if the only answer is cessation of all attacks, then it is in their interest to increase attacks until the settlement, in order to have more to offer in return for more.
I personally favor the dismantling of all settlements in the west bank, a huge political problem in Israel. I also favor recognition of Israel's right to exist as it exists now, a huge political problem on the other side. it is realism that is in short supply.
take redbird for example, whose compassion for the palestinians is commendable and inspiring. yet he is still concentrating on the very founding of Israel, its very existence, which is definitely not up for negotiation. the right of return of all those who were expelled and left, too is not up for negotiation, just as the hundreds of thousands of jews expelled from arab countries in '48 will not be repatriated. that clock will not be turned back. the jews are not likely to relinquish the old city of Jerusalem. what was it that Jordan did to jewish holy sites? turned them into stables. people do not forget.
Posted by johannesrolf at 02/27/2007 @ 6:05pm
"The Jews in Palestine were a tiny minority until the British Mandate gave world zionism a protective cover to invade the country wholesale. Neither they, nor their ancestors who they couldn't even name, had set foot in Palestine since about 70 A.D., if ever."
this is revisionism, and a lie. typical of your onesided portrayal of the conflict. palestine in the 19th century saw an increasing influx of both jews and arabs.the land there was mostly owned by absentee landlords, ottoman and otherwise. this was a backwater until jews began to invest and build. this too attracted more arabs. just look around at Israel's neighbors. how are the ones without oil doing? a hot bed of economic and technical innovation?
Posted by johannesrolf at 02/27/2007 @ 6:14pm
JOHANNESROLF
Yes, people do not forget. Now, see the Jews from Russia streaming into Germany. Has anyone forgotten? No, but we forced the Germans to construct a new society. Did they want to? No choice. It's not the money (easy for me to say), it's either that or self-destruction. They may choose the latter. Let's at least get to the fork in the road. Circle-jerks around peace processes get us nowhere.
Posted by donescobar at 02/27/2007 @ 6:14pm
Israelis, unfortunately, have been electing the same human rights-abusing, land-stealing governments for nearly 60 years. That means something.
Posted by FROMREDBIRD 02/27/2007 @ 5:58pm | ignore this person
with exception of the land stealing this could also be said of the US.
you see Don, it is hardly possible to discuss dispassionately here. you can imagine what it is like over there. still, the attempt must be made. not with me and redbird though, I know my limits.
Posted by johannesrolf at 02/27/2007 @ 6:16pm
"No, but we forced the Germans to construct a new society."
I do not accept that characterization, it sounds too George Bush to me, with the specter of Iraq looming.
Germany was a liberal society in many many ways before Hitler. the Weimar constitution, which is celebrating an anniversary, is still regarded as a progressive milestone.
Josephine Austria was the first with social safety net provisions, which are the standard today in industrialized countries.
Posted by johannesrolf at 02/27/2007 @ 6:22pm
Israelis, unfortunately, have been electing the same human rights-abusing, land-stealing governments for nearly 60 years. That means something.
Posted by FROMREDBIRD 02/27/2007 @ 5:58pm | ignore this person
it must have been a gov't from mars, which made peace with egypt and returned the sinai. redbird you try too hard.
Posted by johannesrolf at 02/27/2007 @ 6:25pm
you can imagine what it is like over there ...
Posted by JOHANNESROLF 02/27/2007 @ 6:16pm
Why should we have to imagine? Even an occasional effort from the MSM to get beyond the sound bites and do some reporting on what life is actually like in Israel and the occupied territories would go a long way toward ending America's role in the perpetual cycle of attack and retaliation.
Perhaps if we hear the voices of the actual people living in these places, the politicians will stop assuming no one will understand if they try to move away from the safe positions they took in the past.
Posted by MyParadigm at 02/27/2007 @ 6:32pm
JOHANNESROLF
Read "The Failure of Illiberalism" by Fritz Stern. But we are dealing with what in Palestine? A society at the edge of nothingness and destruction. Comparisons don't work, but world-wide "persuasion" might. Call it blackmail. What do the Palestinians offer, you have asked several times now. Has anyone answered? I suspect that for some, they don't have to offer anything. Maybe what the world needs is a Victimhood Claims Adjuster.
Posted by donescobar at 02/27/2007 @ 6:41pm
Maybe what the world needs is a Victimhood Claims Adjuster.
Posted by DONESCOBAR 02/27/2007 @ 6:41pm | ignore this person
alas, that is not likely. I have had some experience with claims adjusters, having been burgled twice, and having insurance twice. the reality is that you don't get but a fraction of your loss.
Posted by johannesrolf at 02/27/2007 @ 6:56pm
paradigm, we are able to read the Israeli press on line, Haaretz on the left, the jerusalem post on the right. I do not know what the west bank palestinians read.
Posted by johannesrolf at 02/27/2007 @ 6:58pm
I was kidding, sort of. But settling for a fraction would be swell in the ME.
Posted by donescobar at 02/27/2007 @ 7:01pm
I was kidding, sort of. But settling for a fraction would be swell in the ME.
Posted by DONESCOBAR 02/27/2007 @ 7:01pm | ignore this person
that was my point.
Posted by johannesrolf at 02/27/2007 @ 7:22pm
attention, post is of rese length.
The Population of Palestine Prior to 1948 Introduction The population figures for mandatory and Turkish Palestine are of historical interest and figure in many historical debates. The Zionist claim that Palestine was "a land without a people" is challenged by pro-Palestinian historians who cite census figures showing a substantial Palestinian-Arab population by 1914. The Zionists note that most of this increase seems to have occurred after 1880, when Jews began developing Palestine. In particular, Joan Peters ("From Time Immemorial") claimed that a large proportion of the population increase among Arabs was due to immigration. Pro-Palestinian historians try to make a case that Zionist settlement had begun displacing Palestinians before 1948. The goal of the present is to examine the claims in the light of the best available statistical data, without supporting the contentions of either side, and without any intention either to denigrate from the tragedy of Palestinian refugees or to use the data to question Jewish claims to Palestine. The moral claims of the sides should not depend on percentages of population. In practice, I am aware that the data on this page have been used to support various partisan claims. That is precisely the sort of abuse that this material is intended to fight. The major conclusion is "The nature of the data do not permit precise conclusions about the Arab population of Palestine in Ottoman and British times" Anyone who pretends otherwise is deliberately misleading you. We can reach some general conclusions - Palestine was not empty when Zionists started arriving, there was some Arab immigration as well etc. But we cannot give a precise number in any case, and even if we could, it would not constitute evidence to back any moral claims. Uncertainties in the data - Debates about the population of Palestine flourish because of the lack of good information and confusion over the meaning of census figures, and the will of partisans to distort history. Census figures of the Ottoman Empire were unreliable. Foreign residents were not counted, and illegal residents did their best to evade the census, as did people wishing to evade military services and taxes. The population figures of the British mandate were more reliable, but there was no published census taken after 1931. Mandatory figures for the period after 1931 are based on hospital and immigration records and extrapolation, it seems. Nomadic Bedouin were not counted or undercounted in both Ottoman and British censuses. Those who became settled in Palestine would then add to population figures. In studying the population of Palestine between 1800 and 1948, we must keep in mind that there was only one agreed-upon reliable census in all that time, which took place in 1931. The British census of 1922 was taken in less than settled conditions, and may have undercounted the population. The Ottoman figures certainly undercounted. The census data of 1922 and 1931 and the estimates based on these censuses have also been challenged but they appear to be internally consistent. That is, in the main, the number of people reported by the British mandate in 1922 and 1931 is consistent with the rates of natural increase that they reported. The numbers given in the 1945 survey are about 100,000 or more below what would be expected based on the number of refugees and remaining population in 1948. Uncertainties in infant mortality and underreporting of births would not account for all of this discrepancy. It could be due to illegal immigration or in part to settling of nomadic Bedouins in the Palestinian Arab population.. Economics and Immigration - Under the British Mandate, which began after WWI, Jewish population increased due to immigration, especially in the 1930s. Arab population also increased at an exceptional rate. According to records, about 18,000 non-Jews entered Palestine between 1930 and 1939 when there were more or less reliable figures. In the same period, about 5,000 non-Jews left. This does not count illegal immigration of course, or immigration prior to 1930. Economic analyses show that by the 1930s the standard of living of Palestinian Arabs was approximately twice that of Arabs in surrounding countries, whereas in Ottoman Turkish times it was lower than in surrounding countries. Some of the farm population may have suffered economic hardship, characteristic of any industrializing and urbanizing society, but in the main, the standard of living improved, and it improved much faster than it did in surrounding countries. There is no doubt that this improvement in conditions was an attractant for immigrants as well as resulting in improved health and larger families. Additionally, British activity in building the port of Haifa during the 1920s and in operating it during WW II undoubtedly attracted at least some immigrants. However, there is no hard evidence that more than 100,000 or 200,000 (out of about 1.3 million in all of Palestine, and about 7-800,000 in the area that was to become Israel in 1948) Palestinians had immigrated to the land that was to become Israel. It is impossible to determine at present when this immigration took place. 100,000 Arabs immigrating in 1880 would have produced many more descendants by 1948 than 100,000 Arabs immigrating in 1930. However, since economic conditions did not improve until mandatory times, it is unlikely that the bulk of the immigration occurred under Turkish administration. Joan Peters, in her book "From Time Immemorial," argues that most of the increase in Arab population was in fact due to illegal Arab immigration. Her figures are not accepted by most demographers and historians, including Zionists. Norman Finkelstein and others have criticized her thesis and shown evidence of poor scholarship. Finkelstein's analysis also shows that the largest increases of Palestinian Arab population occurred close to Jewish population centers in Palestine, which would argue against the Palestinian contention that the Zionists were dispossessing Arabs. We do not know if this increase was due to population shifts in Palestine or immigration from outside Palestine. It is certain that there was at least some illegal Palestinian-Arab immigration, as noted in British mandatory reports. Immigration from Transjordan was not illegal, and was not recorded as immigration at all until 1938. Beginning in the 1920s when they built Haifa port, and especially during and just prior to World War II, the British recruited Arab workers from the Houran in Syria and elsewhere. Arabs also came to Palestine before the war, attracted by higher wages. However, since much of the depletion of Palestinian population that had occurred in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries was due to migration to neighboring countries, many of these returning Arabs may have been families returning to Palestine. About this page - This page is the result of an ongoing analysis. It is not intended to be an exhaustive demographic study. Corrections and additions are most welcome. Major Conclusions 1. The nature of the data do not permit precise conclusions about the Arab population of Palestine in Ottoman and British times, and the relative contributions of natural increase and immigration, imprecision in the counts and other issues. 2. Palestine was not an empty land when Zionist immigration began. The lowest estimates claim there were about 410,000 Arab Muslims and Christians in Palestine in 1893. A Zionist estimate claimed there were over 600,000 Arabs in Palestine. in the 1890s. At this time, the number of Jewish immigrants to Palestine was still negligible by all accounts. It is unlikely that Palestinian immigration prior to this period was due to Zionist development. Though uncertainty exists concerning the precise numbers of Arabs living in the areas that later became Israel, it is very unlikely that the claims of Joan Peters that there were less than 100,000 Arabs living there are valid. 3. Zionist settlement between 1880 and 1948 did not displace or dispossess Palestinians. Every indication is that there was net Arab immigration into Palestine in this period, and that the economic situation of Palestinian Arabs improved tremendously under the British Mandate relative to surrounding countries. By 1948, there were approximately 1.35 million Arabs and 650,000 Jews living between the Jordan and the Mediterranean, more Arabs than had ever lived in Palestine before, and more Jews than had lived there since Roman times. Analysis of population by subdistricts shows that Arab population tended to increase the most between 1931 and 1948 in the same areas where there were large proportions of Jews. Therefore, Zionist immigration did not displace Arabs. For a detailed discussion that focuses on this myth, please refer to Zionism and its Impact. 4. Historic population data in Palestine during Ottoman times and during Mandatory times show significant discrepancies. For example, figures reported by Rodinson for 1930 population of Arabs are about 100,000 too low according to census figures for 1931 5. It is not possible to estimate illegal Arab immigration directly, but apparently there was some immigration. The total Arab immigration to Palestine recorded or estimated by the Mandate government was in the neighborhood of 45,000. Illegal immigration that was not recorded would not register in the final population figures for 1945, because those figures were estimates. We simply do not know how many Arabs and Jews there were in Palestine before the declaration of the state of Israel. It is probable that there were about 100,000 Arab immigrants into Palestine. An unknown number may also have migrated internally, from the Arab areas in the West Bank that were formerly the centers of commercial activity and population to the coastal plain and Galilee. The Arab population increase of areas with large Jewish settlement was about 10% greater than that in areas without Jewish settlement. This effect cannot be totally separated from urbanization. A population of approximately 103,000 Bedouin (1922 estimate reported in the 1927-1929 reports of the Mandatory) may have been excluded or included in different population figures as the authorities and demographers saw fit. There is no way to know how many of these Bedouin made a permanent home in Palestine or how many became part of the city population in the course of industrialization between 1922 and 1948. However, the evidence indicates that they were in fact included in all the official population figures. This is shown by the fact that estimates of Muslim population that explicitly do not include Bedouin were significantly lower than the census figures, and by the fact that population growth is consistent with figures for natural increase if we assume that the Bedouin were included. 5. There are large discrepancies between official population figures and the number of Palestinian refugees - An analysis of population by subdistricts and villages, using the data of the Palestine Remembered Web site, shows that there were about 735,000 Muslim and Christian Arabs in Palestine in 1948. There would not have been more than 620,000 refugees in 1949 if these figures are correct, since the Israeli census showed 156,000 non-Jews living in Palestine in November 1948, of whom about 14,000 were Druze. The number of refugees reported by UNRWA in 1948 was 726,000. It might indicate that an unregistered and illegal population of 100,000 was included in the refugees, or it might be due to serious and systematic undercounting of Arab population by the Mandate authorities. McCarthy suggests that there was such undercounting, yet his figures for the total population of Palestine agree with projections based on official figures for 1945. 6. There are serious discrepancies in reporting of the number of refugees by UNRWA. In 1949, UNRWA reported 726,000 refugees. By 1950 they reported 914,000 according to one source (McCarthy), an increase of 26% that could not come either from births or further displacement of refugees, which were negligible. 7. The city of Jerusalem has had a Jewish majority since about 1896 - The city of Jerusalem itself there was a Jewish majority since about 1896, but probably not before. The district of Jerusalem (as opposed to the city) comprised a very wide area in Ottoman and British times, in which there was a Muslim majority. This included Jericho, Bethlehem and other towns. Within the Jerusalem district, there was a subdistrict of Jerusalem that includes many of the immediate suburbs such as Eyn Karem, Beit Zeit etc. In that subdistrict, the Jews remained a minority , with only about 52,000 out of 132,000 persons in 1931 for example.
Posted by johannesrolf at 02/27/2007 @ 7:26pm
from mideast web.
Posted by johannesrolf at 02/27/2007 @ 7:33pm
http://www.mideastweb.org/palpop.htm
Posted by johannesrolf at 02/27/2007 @ 7:34pm
and Dean and Pelosi both took steps to distance the Demcratic party (rightly) from his position due to the political ramifications associated with being seen as criticizing Israel.
---why "rightly", LILLIAN? Political ramifications more important than doing what's "right"?
But no, it was more important for you to take the opportunity to 'jab' at the Dems...by equating their words with the wingnut personal attacks on Carter. You even tried to jam the 'point' in further, to inflict a bit more pain, with this little followup...
--- What were Dean, Pelosi, Rangel's words except the NICE, FRIENDS way of saying what Carter's right-wing/Republican opponents were saying?
and the only "pain" involved is the pain of noting that Carter is on the outs with the mainstream of DEMOCRATS...well before he has to worry about the TRUE right-wing neo-cons and their harsh words, who weren't going to like him anyway.
Posted by Mask at 02/27/2007 @ 7:41pm
about Balfour declaration:
Paradoxically, perhaps, a major motivation for the declaration may have been the belief, inspired by anti-Semitism, that international Jewry would come to the aid of the British if they declared themselves in favor of a Jewish homeland, and the fear that the Germans were about to issue such a declaration.
Posted by johannesrolf at 02/27/2007 @ 7:57pm
How come nobody is talking about the negotioans of Carter and Rabin, from what I read Palestians violance against Israelis was almost non existing during that time. If Rabin had not been assasinated and a peace deal finalized what sort world would we have in Palestine today. I can assume that most of the violence that have happened since would not have occured- Land grabbing by Israel countered by suicide bomber by Palestinians
Posted by Dony at 02/27/2007 @ 8:13pm
http://www.mideastweb.org/briefhistory.htm
brief history.
Posted by johannesrolf at 02/27/2007 @ 8:20pm
I have mentioned this as a path for the future many times.
Posted by johannesrolf at 02/27/2007 @ 8:21pm
I still dont see the strategy by US in Palestine. When Palestinians commit violent acts against Israelis, Israel have punished the Palestians severely with tanks, helicopters and bulldozers but when Israel grabs land the US says it OK. I dont get it, does this not create more terrorism from other countries in the region.
Posted by Dony at 02/27/2007 @ 8:42pm
the right of return of all those who were expelled and left, too is not up for negotiation, just as the hundreds of thousands of jews expelled from arab countries in '48 will not be repatriated. that clock will not be turned back.
Posted by JOHANNESROLF 02/27/2007 @ 6:05pm
The right of return of Palestinians to their homes and land is a right guaranteed to all people in the world under the Geneva Conventions. These guarantees were a result of the population relocations carried out by the nazis during WWII. You are, however, not the least bit embarrassed to follow the path previously trodden by others.
At least one Arab country has offered to accept back Jews and compensate them for property. No Arab country has ever declared itself an Arab state in the same manner as Israel declares itself a Jewish state and which considers the acceptance of non-Jewish immigrants as something tantamount to a mortal sin.
The emigrations from Arab lands were encouraged by the zionists directly and also indirectly, by their vicious treatment of the Palestinians:
Let me begin with a telling story that took place in Israel in January 1952, about half a year after the official conclusion of the operation that brought Iraq's Jews to Israel. During this year, two Zionist activists, Yosef Basri and Shalom Salah, were hanged in Baghdad. They had been charged with possession of explosive materials and throwing bombs in the city center. According to the account of Shlomo Hillel, a former Israeli cabinet minister and Zionist activist in Iraq, their last words, as they stood on the gallows, were "Long live the State of Israel." (Hillel, 1985: 342) It would have only been natural for Iraqi Jews in Israel to react to the news of this hanging with outrage. On the contrary, however, the mourning assemblies organized by leaders of the community in various Israeli cities failed to arouse widespread solidarity with the two Iraqi Zionists. In fact, the opposite was true. A classified document from Moshe Sasson, of the Foreign Ministry's Middle East Division, to then Foreign Minister Moshe Sharett maintained that many Iraqi immigrants, residents of the transit camps, greeted the hanging with the attitude: "That is God's revenge on the movement that brought us to such depths" (2). The bitterness of this reaction attests to an acute level of discontent among the newly arrived Iraqi Jews. It suggests that a good number of them did not view their immigration as the joyous return to Zion depicted by the community's Zionist activists. Rather, in addition to blaming the Iraqi government, they blamed the Zionist movement for bringing them to Israel for reasons that did not include the best interests of the immigrants themselves.
However, the passage of the law itself did not induce Jews to register for emigration. Indeed, the question of what motivated Iraq's Jewish population to leave en masse remains unresolved (the subject is discussed in Meir, 1997). We do know that on April 8, 1950, a fragmentation grenade exploded near a Jewish café in Baghdad, and that in the wake of the incident there was a huge rise in the number of candidates for emigration, from 150 to about 23,000. Over the next year or so, until June 1951, four similar explosions occurred at sites associated with Jews. To date, we do not have clear evidence indicating who planted these bombs.
Posted by fromredbird at 02/27/2007 @ 9:01pm
the jews are not likely to relinquish the old city of Jerusalem. what was it that Jordan did to jewish holy sites? turned them into stables. people do not forget.
Posted by JOHANNESROLF 02/27/2007 @ 6:05pm
You provide not the least bit of documentation but assuming that were the case a reasonable person can easily figure out why:
. . . more than four hundred Palestinian villages inside what became Israel were destroyed or depopulated. During and after the War, Israel engaged in the wholesale destruction of mosques which had been in those places for centuries. Former Israeli deputy mayor of Jerusalem, Meron Benvenisti writes that of the approximately 140 mosques in villages that were depopulated in 1948 in areas which became part of Israel, "about 100 were completely leveled when the villages themselves were leveled." Mr. Benvenisti continues, "According to findings in the field, some 40 mosques have not been torn down but are currently in an advanced stage of deterioration and neglect, or are being used by Jewish residents for purposes other than those for which they were erected."
Mr. Benvenisti notes that "the bare statistics are that twenty mosques are currently in various stages of deterioration and decay; six are being used as living quarters, sheep-pens or stables, carpentry shops, or storehouses; six have been or are at present serving as museums, bars, tourist sites of some sort; four are being used wholly or in part as synagogues; and two have been partially renovated for Muslim worship, but that use has been either prohibited or restricted." Many churches and mosques in Palestinian cities suffered a similar fate, but these numbers apply only to the ones in smaller villages. (Sacred Landscape: The Buried History of the Holy Land Since 1948, Univ. of California Press, 2000)
While Israel has allowed all 2,400 Jews who were forced out of east Jerusalem in 1948 to return, and settled a further 200,000 Jews in and around the city since 1967 in strict violation of international law (FRB: these figures are very much higher now), it has not allowed any of the 30,000 Palestinians evicted from west Jerusalem to return to their properties. Moreover, Israel has actually declared that it owns all of the property and has redistibuted thousands of Palestinian-owned homes in Jerusalem to its own citizens. Furthermore, Israel has confiscated vast tracts of Palestinian-owned land in east Jerusalem and demolished hundreds of houses for the expressed purpose of limiting the non-Jewish population in the city. These policies and practices are amply described in a book written by two former senior employees of Israeli Jerusalem mayors Teddy Kollek and Ehud Olmert, and a former senior reporter with the Jerusalem Post. The book is "Separate and Unequal: The Inside Story of Israeli Rule in East Jerusalem, by Amir Cheshin, Bill Hutman and Avi Melamed (Harvard University Press, 1999).
Posted by fromredbird at 02/27/2007 @ 9:05pm
take redbird for example, whose compassion for the palestinians is commendable and inspiring. yet he is still concentrating on the very founding of Israel, its very existence, which is definitely not up for negotiation.
Posted by JOHANNESROLF 02/27/2007 @ 6:05pm
That's true, not for the reasons you wish but because there's no negotiation with the truth. You seek to bury Israel's real history to give it a moral authority which it does not have and simultaneously erase the injustices still continuing against the Palestinians while new ones are created daily. There's no time clock that changes injustice to irrelevance as you often seem to wish, and certainly not in a matter of mere decades.
You love using that small "p" in Palestinian, don't you?
Posted by fromredbird at 02/27/2007 @ 9:12pm
You love using that small "p" in Palestinian, don't you?
Posted by FROMREDBIRD 02/27/2007 @ 9:12pm | ignore this person
you're barking up the wrong tree here, my capitalization is random and indifferent.
Posted by johannesrolf at 02/27/2007 @ 9:17pm
JOHANNESROLF 02/27/2007 @ 7:57pm
JOHANNESROLF 02/27/2007 @ 8:20pm
Fascinating. The former is a masterpice of clarity - much can be gained from reviewing the main conclusions. The latter will take some time. On the first pass I was struck by the idea that the "creation" of Israel - an event a century in the making - had as much to do with Britain washing its hands of a troublesome foreign territory as it did with any of the more noble efforts we read about in history books. I wonder how accurate that first impression will turn out to be.
Posted by MyParadigm at 02/27/2007 @ 9:18pm
"The right of return of Palestinians to their homes and land is a right guaranteed to all people in the world under the Geneva Conventions."
really? and how realistic is that? will I be able to return to my grandparent's house in east prussia? will the 40,000 ethnic germans return to hungary? what about the indians who fled and were expelled to pakistan, are they coming back. how about the poles who lived in what is now russia? coming back? this is a story all over the world. I did not make this world, but I am realistic enough to see that this right of return would lead us to endless wars. enough.
enjoy your view from your moral high horse, the facts on the ground will not change.
Posted by johannesrolf at 02/27/2007 @ 9:22pm
Israelis, unfortunately, have been electing the same human rights-abusing, land-stealing governments for nearly 60 years. That means something.
Posted by FROMREDBIRD 02/27/2007 @ 5:58pm
it must have been a gov't from mars, which made peace with egypt and returned the sinai. redbird you try too hard.
Posted by JOHANNESROLF 02/27/2007 @ 6:25pm
Egyptians are not Palestinians. Seizure of Palestinian land and expulsions of Palestinians has never abated during the period of this agreement with the Egyptians. The purpose of the peace agreement was to allow Israel to continue it's crimes against the Palestinains unimpeded by anything other than Egyptian rhetoric in return for which the Egyptian kleptocracy is the recipient of billions of dollars in American foreign aid flowing into it's pockets.
You're the one trying too hard and having to grasp at irrelevant scraps to patch up your argument. More to the point:
Noam Chomsky:
For example, in public the Israeli Labor government and Washington praised the Sept. 95 Oslo II agreements as a great step towards peace with noble sacrifices by Israel, but I don't recall reading in the English press that President Ezer Weizmann had exulted that "we screwed the Palestinians," or that Labor Foreign Minister (now party leader) Ehud Barak, when asked by the Hebrew press how they expected the Palestinians to accept this virtual surrender, answered simply: "We are the ones with the power."
Similarly, one would be unlikely to read in the New York Times the advice to Israel by its Middle East correspondent Thomas Friedman on the occasion of his (second) Pulitzer prize: that Israel should treat the Palestinians in the manner of southern Lebanon (run by a terrorist client army under the direction of still more murderous Israeli forces, with ample torture, etc.), but that Israel should grant the Palestinians something, because "if you give Ahmed a seat in the bus he may lessen his demands"
http://www.zmag.org/forums/chomarb.htm
Posted by fromredbird at 02/27/2007 @ 9:26pm
Paradigm, one of the things that struck me in reading the history of Israel and palestine, in Smith's book and this site, was that Israel was not so much just given that part of palestine, but that they also took it, with force, against the british, who were trying to renege on Balfour, and to some extent the arabs in palestine, with massacres on both sides.I find that site to be free from cant, which is not something that can be said about bird.
Posted by johannesrolf at 02/27/2007 @ 9:28pm
"The Jews in Palestine were a tiny minority until the British Mandate gave world zionism a protective cover to invade the country wholesale. Neither they, nor their ancestors who they couldn't even name, had set foot in Palestine since about 70 A.D., if ever."
this is revisionism, and a lie. typical of your onesided portrayal of the conflict. palestine in the 19th century saw an increasing influx of both jews and arabs.the land there was mostly owned by absentee landlords, ottoman and otherwise. this was a backwater until jews began to invest and build. this too attracted more arabs. just look around at Israel's neighbors. how are the ones without oil doing? a hot bed of economic and technical innovation?
Posted by JOHANNESROLF 02/27/2007 @ 6:14pm
It's a lie, J? I have proved otherwise in the past at this very blog by quoting population figures. The great misfortune for your false argument is that the British kept population figures and they don't support your assertions. That's exactly why you aren't quoting them. Why don't you? It would greatly aid your argument if it is based on facts.
Posted by fromredbird at 02/27/2007 @ 9:30pm
Posted by FROMREDBIRD 02/27/2007 @ 9:30pm | ignore this person
I have posted an extensive examination of this issue. what have you posted?
Posted by johannesrolf at 02/27/2007 @ 9:32pm
The major conclusion is "The nature of the data do not permit precise conclusions about the Arab population of Palestine in Ottoman and British times" Anyone who pretends otherwise is deliberately misleading you.
excerpted from the lengthy article above.
Posted by johannesrolf at 02/27/2007 @ 9:35pm
4. According to official estimates, the population of Palestine grew from 750,000 at the census of 1922 to 1,765,000 at the end of 1944. In this period the Jewish part of the population rose from 84,000 to 554,000, and from 13 to 31 percent of the whole. Three-fourths of this expansion of the Jewish community was accounted for by immigration. Meanwhile the Arabs, though their proportion of the total population was falling, had increased by an even greater number-the Moslems alone from 589,000 to 1,061,000.*
Posted by johannesrolf at 02/27/2007 @ 9:42pm
You love using that small "p" in Palestinian, don't you?
Posted by FROMREDBIRD 02/27/2007 @ 9:12pm
you're barking up the wrong tree here, my capitalization is random and indifferent.
Posted by JOHANNESROLF 02/27/2007 @ 9:17pm
There is, on the contrary, a strong consistency of using a small "p" when using the word Palestinian.
Posted by fromredbird at 02/27/2007 @ 9:48pm
The major conclusion is "The nature of the data do not permit precise conclusions about the Arab population of Palestine in Ottoman and British times" Anyone who pretends otherwise is deliberately misleading you.
excerpted from the lengthy article above.
Posted by JOHANNESROLF 02/27/2007 @ 9:35pm
I think it's rather artful of you to leave out the rest of the major conclusions, J:
Major Conclusions 1. The nature of the data do not permit precise conclusions about the Arab population of Palestine in Ottoman and British times, and the relative contributions of natural increase and immigration, imprecision in the counts and other issues. 2. Palestine was not an empty land when Zionist immigration began. The lowest estimates claim there were about 410,000 Arab Muslims and Christians in Palestine in 1893. A Zionist estimate claimed there were over 600,000 Arabs in Palestine. in the 1890s. At this time, the number of Jewish immigrants to Palestine was still negligible by all accounts. It is unlikely that Palestinian immigration prior to this period was due to Zionist development. Though uncertainty exists concerning the precise numbers of Arabs living in the areas that later became Israel, it is very unlikely that the claims of Joan Peters that there were less than 100,000 Arabs living there are valid. 3. Zionist settlement between 1880 and 1948 did not displace or dispossess Palestinians. Every indication is that there was net Arab immigration into Palestine in this period, and that the economic situation of Palestinian Arabs improved tremendously under the British Mandate relative to surrounding countries. By 1948, there were approximately 1.35 million Arabs and 650,000 Jews living between the Jordan and the Mediterranean . . .
Posted by fromredbird at 02/27/2007 @ 9:59pm
Johannes the UN says land grabing in Palestine is illegal, you seem to have a double standard, give it up its not worth it, all that bloodshed- disgusting.
Posted by Dony at 02/27/2007 @ 10:08pm
The Jews in Palestine were a tiny minority until the British Mandate gave world zionism a protective cover to invade the country wholesale.
Posted by FROMREDBIRD 02/27/2007 @ 5:53pm
this is revisionism, and a lie. typical of your onesided portrayal of the conflict. palestine in the 19th century saw an increasing influx of both jews and arabs.the land there was mostly owned by absentee landlords, ottoman and otherwise. this was a backwater until jews began to invest and build. this too attracted more arabs. just look around at Israel's neighbors. how are the ones without oil doing? a hot bed of economic and technical innovation?
Posted by JOHANNESROLF 02/27/2007 @ 6:14pm
The lowest estimates claim there were about 410,000 Arab Muslims and Christians in Palestine in 1893. A Zionist estimate claimed there were over 600,000 Arabs in Palestine. in the 1890s. At this time, the number of Jewish immigrants to Palestine was still negligible by all accounts . . .
By 1948, there were approximately 1.35 million Arabs and 650,000 Jews living between the Jordan and the Mediterranean . . .
Posted by JOHANNESROLF 02/27/2007 @ 7:26pm
I'm lying? That's something you accuse me of very often. But your own data that you have tried to use to support your case says I'm not. You tried to remedy that later by excising two of the major conclusions. You should have read it before you posted it but thanks for saving me the effort.
The Jewish population in Palestine surged under the British Mandate. Of course it did. Have you ever read the wording of the Mandate? It instructs Britain to effect the promises in the Balfour Declaration, that scribble on a scrap of hotel stationery in which a British government representative promised a very wealthy Jew that they would give Palestine to the Jews. The Balfour Declaration, by the way, does damage to your contention that "palestine" is a very difficult to define term.
You say the land of Palestine was owned "mostly" by absentee landlords but you present zero data to support such a broad and sweeping assertion. The Palestinians maintain that after the Ottomans were defeated corrupted officials in Turkey engaged in fraudulent land transfers with zionists in exchange for bribes. There are many Palestinians with deeds to land that Israel labels as "worthless". In any case, this amounted to only an increase of Jewish land ownership from about 5 - 6% to about 7% or so by 1948. 93% - 94% of the land for the creation of the state of Israel was acquired by means of violent robbery.
Posted by fromredbird at 02/27/2007 @ 10:21pm
Posted by FROMREDBIRD 02/27/2007 @ 9:30pm
I have posted an extensive examination of this issue. what have you posted?
Posted by JOHANNESROLF 02/27/2007 @ 9:32pm
I have posted your examination of this issue since it supports my case.
Posted by fromredbird at 02/27/2007 @ 10:23pm
It's completely ridiculous to attempt to assert that there was not a mass invasion of Palestine by Jewish immigrants under the British. At first this took place with the collusion of the British and then later in an on again/off again collusion when the Palestinians reacted violently to what was plainly a plan to import Jews from Europe and America to rule over them. It was clearly enunciated in the Mandate.
Posted by fromredbird at 02/27/2007 @ 10:29pm
Paradigm, one of the things that struck me in reading the history of Israel and palestine, in Smith's book and this site, was that Israel was not so much just given that part of palestine, but that they also took it, with force, against the british, who were trying to renege on Balfour, and to some extent the arabs in palestine, with massacres on both sides.I find that site to be free from cant, which is not something that can be said about bird.
Posted by JOHANNESROLF 02/27/2007 @ 9:28pm
Trying to renege on Balfour, eh? The British give Palestine to a Jew who has never lived there and the only wrong thing you can see in it is a later British recacitrance to finish off the Palestinians?
If you appreciate that website so much why did you cut their conclusions into shreds to get the smaller part that served YOUR cant? I didn't have any problem quoting ALL the conclusions, you did.
Posted by fromredbird at 02/27/2007 @ 10:45pm
enjoy your view from your moral high horse, the facts on the ground will not change.
Posted by JOHANNESROLF 02/27/2007 @ 9:22pm
Your zionist triumphalism of force just can't help seeping through, can it?
Posted by fromredbird at 02/27/2007 @ 10:47pm
I still dont see the strategy by US in Palestine. When Palestinians commit violent acts against Israelis, Israel have punished the Palestians severely with tanks, helicopters and bulldozers but when Israel grabs land the US says it OK. I dont get it, does this not create more terrorism from other countries in the region.
Posted by DONY 02/27/2007 @ 8:42pm
I guess you haven't heard the explanation yet that Arabs and Muslims are just born crazy. It's quite a convenient explanation for the party that is always innocent of any wrongdoing.
Posted by fromredbird at 02/27/2007 @ 10:51pm
Posted by MASK 02/27/2007 @ 7:41pm | ignore this person
---why "rightly", LILLIAN? Political ramifications more important than doing what's "right"?
Mask, when did you fall into the 'alternate reality' in which any political party that is seen as criticizing Israel has even a snowball's chance of getting someone in their ranks elected? If they did something like that...you'd be the first one lambasting them for their politcal stupidity. (And you know it!)
--- What were Dean, Pelosi, Rangel's words except the NICE, FRIENDS way of saying what Carter's right-wing/Republican opponents were saying?
Is that your way of trying to defend your assertion that the words of Pelosi and Dean (and Rangel) are the same as the wingnuts' personal attacks on Carter? Don't look now Mask...but that's a pretty weak argument...and anyone with a brain isn't going to buy it. If you're going to try to stick to that lame assertion, the only "pain" you're going to be inflicting is on your own credibility.
Posted by Lillian at 02/27/2007 @ 11:05pm
Posted by JOHANNESROLF 02/27/2007 @ 7:26pm
Another thing I want to mention before calling it a day is that your emphasis on the immigrant Jews envigorating the economy of Palestine is an implication that they were therefore "more deserving" of Palestine, an old zionist trope ("the Jews made the desert bloom"). It's completely false to paint your picture of a destitute populace who had nothing to do until the zionists arrived.
Your description of Palestine as a backwater is highly spurious. That's a relative term, of course, but your claim is patently false. See for example this repudiation of Joan Peters thoroughly debunked zionist propaganda "history" that attempts to argue along the same lines. Included are numerous references to the vibrancy and economic growth of Palestine by European visitors, economists, and others prior to the arrival of zionist settlers from Europe and America:
From Time Immemorial: The Resurrection of a Myth by: Muhammad Hallaj January - March 1985 The Link - Volume 18, Issue 1 Page 8
In 1615, the English poet George Sandys described it as "a land that flowed with milk and honey; in the midst as it were of the habitable world, and under a temperate clime; adorned with beautiful mountains and luxurious vallies; the rocks producing excellent waters and no part empty of delight or profit."47
A British missionary who lived in Beirut and visited Palestine in 1859 described the southern coastal area as "a very ocean of wheat."48 The British consul in Jerusalem, James Finn, wrote that "the fields would do credit to English farming."49
Lawrence Oliphant, who visited Palestine in 1887, the time which concerns Joan Peters's argument most, wrote in his book Haifa, or Life in Modern Palestine that the Valley of Esdraelon was
"a huge green lake of waving wheat, with its village-crowned mounds rising from it like islands; and it presents one of the most striking pictures of luxuriant fertility which it is possible to conceive."50
Such testimonies prove the inaccuracy of Peters's assertion that on the desolate state of Palestine before Jewish colonization, "the reporters varied, but not the reports" (p. 158), and they demonstrate the selective nature of her reading. In the same manner, studies of the economic development of Palestine in the late 19th and early 20th centuries prove her conclusions to be untrue.
In the second half of the 19th century, Palestinian agriculture was expanding, making Palestine an important exporter of agricultural commodities to European as well as Middle Eastern countries. Before the period which Peters identifies as the beginning of Jewish settlement, Palestine was undergoing significant economic growth. A well-known German geographer who studied Palestine's economy during the twenty years preceding Jewish settlement concluded that "in the two and a half decades following the Crimean War [1856], Palestine experienced a remarkable economic upswing" based on agriculture, and enjoyed a favorable balance of international trade.51 "During the period we are concerned with," he wrote, "Palestine produced a relatively large agricultural surplus which was marketed in neighboring countries, such as Egypt and Lebanon, and increasingly exported to Europe."52 Palestinian exports included what, barley, dura, sesame, olive oil, soap, oranges, vegetables and cotton. Among the European importers of Palestinian produce were France, England, Turkey, Greece, Italy and Malta.53
Before Jewish settlement began, the orange groves in the Jaffa area produced 36 million oranges in 1880, compared with 33.3 million in 1873.54 During the period 1857-1863, Palestine exported an average of 6,050,000 oranges annually, but in the period from 1873 to 1882, the figure went up to 19,650,000 oranges annually. 55 Palestinian prosperity is also indicated by rising imports of European products, which increased from 14,575,500 Turkish pounds in 1874 to 36,964,663 in 1882.56
A study of the subsequent period (1885-1914) confirms that Palestinian agriculture yielded a substantial surplus for export, and helped to finance the crushing Ottoman Public Debt, before any significant contributions were made by the Jewish colonies.57 Paul Masson, a French economic historian, said that wheat shipments from the region's ports, especially Acre in Palestine, "helped to save southern France from famine on numerous occasions in the 17th and 18th centuries."58 The author of the study, quoting reports of foreign consular officials, indicates that agricultural techniques in Palestine were much more advanced than is generally understood. In 1886, the American consul in Jerusalem, Henry Gillman, "outlined reasons why orange growers in Florida would find it advantageous to adopt Palestinian techniques of grafting directly onto lemon trees."59 In 1893, the British Consul advised his government of the value of importing "young trees procured from Jaffa" to improve production in Australia and South Africa.60
This economic boom was attributed by another study to improved security in the coastal agricultural regions due to Ottoman efforts to drive Bedouin populations out of Palestine across the Jordan River, and to increasing "European demand for Palestinian citrus fruits and barley."61 This is hardly the picture of a depopulated, impoverished and desolate land which was nursed to life after 2,000 years of neglect portrayed by Peters.
To clinch her case, however, Joan Peters denies the Arab contribution to the development of Palestine by making incredible claims on behalf of the economic efforts and impact of early Jewish settlers. She not only exaggerates their numbers, but also their role in the Palestinian economy by stating that Jewish colonists were supporting themselves, while also providing the livelihood of at least ten times their number of Arab workers.
```
The fact of the matter is that, during the late 19th century and early 20th century, the period when Peters claims large-scale Arab immigration took place into "the Jewish-settled areas" in search of new opportunities, the Jewish community was actually miniscule, lived mostly in cities, and subsisted poorly on contributions from world Jewry who treated Palestine's Jews as a charity case. As Abba Eban said in a statement quoted earlier, many of Palestine's Jews were "pious orthodox Jews" who went to Palestine to worship and die in the Holy Land. Chaim Weizmann, who visited Palestine in 1918 when the British occupied it, testified to this effect when he observed that the greatest worry of Palestinian Jewry, even then, was how Jewish charitable contributions from abroad were being distributed among Palestinian Jews. He wrote that he was shown, by British censors, the letters from Palestinian Jews to their benefactors in America and elsewhere, and discovered that "Quite 90 percent of them were devoted to complaints about the hardships which writers were enduring at the hands of the Zionist Commission, with frequent hints of maladministration of funds."62
http://www.ameu.org/page.asp?iid=114&aid=156&pg=8
Posted by fromredbird at 02/27/2007 @ 11:52pm
egypt's Sadat offered peace to Israel in 1971; they refused out of arrogance and plans to acquire more territories.
really? can you flesh this out a bit?
Posted by JOHANNESROLF 02/27/2007 @ 4:22pm | ignore this person
Johannesrolf,
Well, I can see you are battling out Middle East affairs with Fromredbird, it is a hot subject and certainly not one dimensional or lacking complexity. The two of you still have more aggreement than dis. Here's something concerning Sadat's 1971 peace offer and the Israeli/US (Kissinger) rejection. Noam Chomsky is no anti-Semite, though a fair number of his interlocutors offer the gamut of heinous slanders against him.
I haven't read through all the postings, but I thought I saw something between you and this Donsbar(?) character assessing the likely value Palestinians might offer to the world. I'm confused here. Since I'm more familiar with your perspectives (and trusting), I wonder what you think this means...does a culture need to offer something of value to exist? I don't recall this precluding the end of Apartheid in South Africa; it was abolished because institutional racism and oppression so overt is unacceptable in this day and age. Also, just throwing money at Palestinians, while absolutely necessary at a minimum, is not enough: look at the cash we throw at Egypt and how their people suffer under the brutality their leaders-despite our categorizing Egypt as "moderate."
Mask,
Just because the Egyptians were offering terms before Carter doesn't negate the fact that Carter was the man to make it happen. And one side's compliance doesn't seal the deal. Carter's conflict resolution skills were still quite necessary for the peace accords to succeed.
"In 1971, not 1977, Sadat offered a full peace treaty to Israel in accord with official U.S. government policy offering nothing to the Palestinians. Their rights had not yet entered the international agenda. That was recognized by Israel to be a genuine peace offer. They rejected it. They preferred expansion to peace. This is the labor government. Expansion then meant into the northeastern Sinai. Important question as always is what's the U.S. going to do under Kissinger's initiative. The U.S. decided to reject its official policy and to support Israeli rejectionism, the policy was what Kissinger called stalemate in his memoirs. Stalemate, we prefer to stalemate not negotiations, just force. That led directly to the 1973 war. A very close call for Israel. Nuclear alert. Very close call for the world. After that, Kissinger recognized that you cannot just dismiss Egypt as a basket case, began his famous shuttle diplomacy, that led to the Camp David agreements where indeed in 1979 the United States and Israel accepted Sadat's 1971 offer, okay. Actually from the U.S.-Israeli point of view, a harsher offer because by that time, it included a call for a Palestinian state in accordance with a new emerging international consensus, which faced an impossible obstacle, namely the U.S. government and its median commentary. Well, that goes down in history as a diplomatic triumph for the United States. In real history it's a diplomatic catastrophe. The U.S. refusal to accept a peaceful settlement in 1971 led to a terrible war, very dangerous one, years of suffering and misery with effects that still are very much there. But it shows the advantages of owning history."
Posted by Oustbush at 02/28/2007 @ 12:16am
Fromredbird,
You're very well armed in this field; excellent posting. What other mainstream American official will follow Carter into this snake den? I have to get out of here, but I saw someone making lame argument out of Carter (he is a former president for C's sake- if he can't get space who can?!) being allowed to receive some media attention in the New York Times and other outlets. It might be useful to post the number of articles critical of Carter vs. favorable, in say, the Times or the Post. I have good deal of work to do and hope this thread stays open tomorrow. Nice commenting.
Posted by Oustbush at 02/28/2007 @ 12:30am
Posted by OUSTBUSH 02/28/2007 @ 12:16am | ignore this person
Forgot to cite the author of the quote: Noam Chomsky.
Posted by Oustbush at 02/28/2007 @ 12:34am
Also from YOUR reference, J:
Table 3: Approximate population growth in Mandatory Palestine (1922-1947)
Jewish population increased by nearly 800%
Arab population increased by 192%
my statement again that you call a lie:
"The Jews in Palestine were a tiny minority until the British Mandate gave world zionism a protective cover to invade the country wholesale"
In Table 3, Jews were 11.14% of the population in 1922, the beginning of the British Mandate.
This is what you call lying.
Posted by fromredbird at 02/28/2007 @ 12:40am
Fromredbird,
You're very well armed in this field; excellent posting. What other mainstream American official will follow Carter into this snake den? I have to get out of here, but I saw someone making lame argument out of Carter (he is a former president for C's sake- if he can't get space who can?!) being allowed to receive some media attention in the New York Times and other outlets. It might be useful to post the number of articles critical of Carter vs. favorable, in say, the Times or the Post. I have good deal of work to do and hope this thread stays open tomorrow. Nice commenting.
Posted by OUSTBUSH 02/28/2007 @ 12:30am
The slanders against Carter are a measure of the depths to which pro-Israel forces will go to suppress honest debate. There are few with the fortitude to undertake even mild questioning of Israel and our morally dysfunctional relationship with it.
Expect Chuck Hagel to be in the crosshairs soon, too. He says we should open a consulate in Tehran and he made a comment several months ago that we needed to get out of Iraq and then resolve the Palestine/Israel issue. All completely commonsensical and completely dangerous to his standing with the elite of the political class.
Posted by fromredbird at 02/28/2007 @ 12:51am
Posted by OUSTBUSH 02/28/2007 @ 12:30am
I'm also glad you appreciate my efforts and I hope that, in some small way, it benefits all of us some day.
Posted by fromredbird at 02/28/2007 @ 12:54am
Egypt's Sadat offered peace to Israel in 1971; they refused out of arrogance and plans to acquire more territories. Following the near diaster of 73, they came back down to the real world and eventually negotiated peace, but not before the world came close to suffering nuclear devastation as a consequence. Israel is reckless and out of control, and the only nation capable of tempering that instability is a government little better in constraining its own delusions of power.
Posted by OUSTBUSH 02/27/2007 @ 4:06pm
Israel's arrogance and faith in total conquest has grown since then. Read the following and tell me otherwise. [tinyurl.com] What else could they ask for from the Syrians other than that they get down on their bellies and kiss their feet? How could Israel in any way be described as a country that wants peace?
Posted by fromredbird at 02/28/2007 @ 01:10am
In Table 3, Jews were 11.14% of the population in 1922, the beginning of the British Mandate.
This is what you call lying.
Posted by FROMREDBIRD 02/28/2007 @ 12:40am | ignore this person
I guess it would depend on what you call tiny. a close look at the charts reveals that over half of the Palestinians came from elsewhere in the region. with your single minded attempts to blame everything on the Tschuuss, you try to reduce complexity to slogans, and you distort history to fit that narrow view.
Posted by johannesrolf at 02/28/2007 @ 06:35am
Oust, yes I saw the Chomsky article. his is one interpretation of events. it is clear that a peace offer was made. after that interpretation comes in. the four or five wars were not started by Israel. redbird is unable to see a bigger picture, how the arab israeli conflict is a piece of the larger puzzle that is the mideast. it does not begin and end with israel. and his attitude of moral superiority can be grating. he thinks he's the only one who knows the history of the region.
Posted by johannesrolf at 02/28/2007 @ 06:41am
I do not consider Chomsky a disinterested observer if such a thing is possible. I don't even consider him a historian, as the sound of an ax grinding permeates his writings.
in any event, there comes a time when the past is an inadequate roadmap for the present and the future. there comes a time when who did what to whom is less important than where do we go from here.
Posted by johannesrolf at 02/28/2007 @ 06:47am
I watched a story on BBC News last night about an Israeli Jewish woman that is married to a Palestinian. They were moving to Europe because Israel does not allow such a relationship (and, of course, the Palestinian man was suffering all kinds of threats and harassment). Legally barring marriage between Jews and Arabs?
Posted by mtspence05 at 02/28/2007 @ 09:07am
Posted by LILLIAN 02/27/2007 @ 11:05pm
Okay, LIL...have it your way. I'll retract what I said my "comparison" (note the quotes...which you didn't before) of Dean and the people saying Carter is an anti-Semite.
and simply say....I agree with Howard Dean and Nancy Pelosi.
hehe
Posted by Mask at 02/28/2007 @ 09:28am
Carter's conflict resolution skills were still quite necessary for the peace accords to succeed.
Posted by OUSTBUSH 02/28/2007 @ 12:16am
See, I KNEW that had to be the case...hehe. After all, the ONLY salvaging moment of the Carter Presidency HAD to be defended.
Posted by Mask at 02/28/2007 @ 09:29am
Legally barring marriage between same sex couples Posted by MTSPENCE05 02/28/2007 @ 09:07am | ignore this person
I don't know what the Israeli position is, but I do want to draw a parallel, which is not to excuse the racism that some Israelis practice, but rather to add a perspective. I oppose this kind of thing no matter where it is practiced.
Posted by johannesrolf at 02/28/2007 @ 10:01am
I saw a US senator calling for attacks on Iran because their president is a holocaust denier. is there anything more stupid and absurd. deny away, I say, the perpetrators of these monstrous crimes never denied committing them, in fact kept careful records. I would support firing a teacher who does this in the classroom, but to go to war? incidentally I oppose the german law which criminalizes holocaust denial.
Posted by johannesrolf at 02/28/2007 @ 10:09am
apropos marriage in israel, from Wiki:
As civil marriage does not exist in Israel, the only institutionalized form of marriage in Israel is the religious one, i.e. a marriage conducted by a cleric. Specifically, marriage of Israeli Jews must be conducted according to Orthodox Jewish halakha. This implies that people who cannot get married according to Jewish law (e.g. a kohen and a divorcée, or a Jew and one who is not halachically Jewish) cannot have their union sanctioned. This has led for calls, mostly from the secular segment of the Israeli public, for the institution of civil marriage. There are many people affected by this law. In Israel today, there are approximately "300,000 Israelis who cannot marry because one of the partners is not Jewish, or his or her Jewishness cannot be determined."
Many secular Israelis travel abroad to have civil marriages, either because they do not believe in the Orthodox view of Judaism or because their union cannot be sanctioned by halakha. These marriages are legally binding in Israel, though not recognized by the rabbinate as Jewish.
so it's a bit like catholic marriages. in their religion they can do what they will. we don't have to support it, however. our prohibition against gays marrying is a civil marriage thing, and I believe it is unconstitutional, as it violates due process.religious marriages, as stated before, are a different matter.
Posted by johannesrolf at 02/28/2007 @ 10:14am
Not same sex couples. It was a Jewish woman and a Palestinian man. Jim Crow, apartheid--strict segregation.
Posted by mtspence05 at 02/28/2007 @ 10:16am
The BBC stated that the Israeli government would not allow a Jewish woman to live with a Palestinian man in Israel. That's a form of apartheid.
Posted by mtspence05 at 02/28/2007 @ 10:18am
both of these are indeed objectionable, as is the prohibition against same sex marriage. as stated before, in religious marriages they can do what they will, I may object but since I am not a member of that religion it is not my concern. did you read the wiki post?
Posted by johannesrolf at 02/28/2007 @ 10:36am
if you had read the wiki post, you would realize that the religious prohibition does not single out arabs or palestinians. a law prohibiting cohabitation would be a different matter.
are you holding redbird's place until he is able to return and resume his israel bashing?
Posted by johannesrolf at 02/28/2007 @ 10:40am
Yes, I read the post.
Carter is being attacked, called an anti-semite for using the word apartheid. What's wrong with calling a spade a spade?
Posted by mtspence05 at 02/28/2007 @ 10:42am
I'm not "bashing" anything. Once again, pointing out a fact doesn't make you an anti-semite, a basher, or anything else other than an observer.
Posted by mtspence05 at 02/28/2007 @ 10:43am
JR, just to pick up a question from yesterday, as i had to run. I am not buying into the protect Israel lie/excuse #34 for the Iraq war. I just wanted to point out that that WAS used as an excuse. For some reason the neo's consider Israels' security to be Americas problem. While I believe Israel has a right to exist in peace, I don't think it is my job to see to their protection.
Posted by crabwalk at 02/28/2007 @ 10:45am
As I read that article, it bans ALL marriage except those condoned by the Jewish state, via an Orthodox Rabbi. As a goyim married to a Jew, I find that to be an apartheid type law for sure. In Israel I would NOT have been allowed to marry my wife, unless I converted.
am I reading that correctly?
Posted by crabwalk at 02/28/2007 @ 10:51am
If you're a Palestinian you can't even live with a Jewish woman!
Posted by mtspence05 at 02/28/2007 @ 10:56am
am I reading that correctly?
Posted by CRABWALK 02/28/2007 @ 10:51am | ignore this person
not entirely, there are no civil marriages, though the state recognizes civil marriages preformed in other countries.
spence, it was said in jest. I do not call anyone an antisemite. "bashing" israel and israelis is not anti semitic as there are many more jews worldwide than in israel. many american jews are just as critical, if not more so, of israel.
Posted by johannesrolf at 02/28/2007 @ 11:05am
If you're a Palestinian you can't even live with a Jewish woman!
Posted by MTSPENCE05 02/28/2007 @ 10:56am | ignore this person
this is deplorable. this was also the situation here in the US until somewhat recently,between blacks and whites. how are these things handled in the arab world? I can imagine.
Posted by johannesrolf at 02/28/2007 @ 11:09am
As a goyim married to a Jew...
this would be a problem in orthodox communities here as well. as the wiki article showed, there are many israelis who wish to have civil marriages instituted.
Posted by johannesrolf at 02/28/2007 @ 11:12am
Thanks to Chimpy, all is well on the mixed marriage front in Iraq at least. The rest of the Arab countries will soon follow along on the utopian path set forward by our Peerless Leader.
Posted by crabwalk at 02/28/2007 @ 11:14am
While I believe Israel has a right to exist in peace, I don't think it is my job to see to their protection.
Posted by CRABWALK 02/28/2007 @ 10:45am | ignore this person
this is what is known as geo politics, it's not pretty.the military support for israel is a left over from the cold war, where israel's arab enemies were armed by the soviets.
read the mideastweb citations, they are a good summary, or get the Smith book from the library.
Posted by johannesrolf at 02/28/2007 @ 11:15am
Carter is being attacked, called an anti-semite for using the word apartheid.
not by me.
Posted by johannesrolf at 02/28/2007 @ 11:17am
So, My spouse and I could go to say, Syria and get married because Israel won't allow it?
wonderbar.
Posted by crabwalk at 02/28/2007 @ 11:17am
Crab, I'm not defending the policy, but I am providing some nuance and context.
Posted by johannesrolf at 02/28/2007 @ 11:23am
this is at best a sidebar to the bigger issue, israel's conduct and policy in the west bank and Lebanon.
Posted by johannesrolf at 02/28/2007 @ 11:25am
So, My spouse and I could go to say, Syria and get married because Israel won't allow it?
wonderbar.
Posted by CRABWALK 02/28/2007 @ 11:17am | ignore this person
this analogous to the issue of gay marriage in this country.
Posted by johannesrolf at 02/28/2007 @ 11:29am
Except in the US, a gay marriage codified in Canada would have no standing in the US. Whereas a civil marriage performed outside of Israel would be honored in Israel.
"this is at best a sidebar to the bigger issue,"
Correct. But it is all part and parcel of the Israeli apartheid system.
Peace, must go. Hope you have a grand day.
Dancing with the starts will be starting soon. we can all sit back and enjoy this important competition that will bring America together once and for all as we root for the one legged chick.
Posted by crabwalk at 02/28/2007 @ 11:36am
"stars", not "starts.
The mind is a terrible thing to waste.
Posted by crabwalk at 02/28/2007 @ 11:37am
Dancing with the starts will be starting soon. we can all sit back and enjoy this important competition that will bring America together once and for all as we root for the one legged chick.
Posted by CRABWALK 02/28/2007 @ 11:36am | ignore this person
I once taped a dance performance by a woman in a wheelchair. enjoy your day.
Posted by johannesrolf at 02/28/2007 @ 11:43am
I still dont see the strategy by US in Palestine. When Palestinians commit violent acts against Israelis, Israel have punished the Palestians severely with tanks, helicopters and bulldozers but when Israel grabs land the US says it OK. I dont get it, does this not create more terrorism from other countries in the region.
Posted by DONY 02/27/2007 @ 8:42pm
I guess you haven't heard the explanation yet that Arabs and Muslims are just born crazy. It's quite a convenient explanation for the party that is always innocent of any wrongdoing.
Posted Joha I get last word, Amen
Posted by Dony at 02/28/2007 @ 12:19pm
Hmmm. Lets let Moshe Dayan, former Chief of Staff and Minister of Defense, speak to the "population issue";
"We came here to a country that was populated by Arabs, and we are building here a Hebrew, Jewish state. Instead of Arab villages, Jewish villages were established. You do not even know the names of these villages and I do not blame you, because these geography books no longer exist. Not only the books, but also the villages do not exist.
Nahalal was established in place of Mahalul, Gevat in place of Jibta, Sarid in the place of Hanifas and Kafr Yehoushu'a in the place of Tel Shamam. There is not a single settlement that was not established in the place of a former Arab village."
Moshe Dayan, March 19,1969, Ha'aretz, April 4, 1969.
It's obvious that at least he thought there was "once a country populated by Arabs." In citing fact it's best to get as close to the original as possible.
Posted by V at 02/28/2007 @ 12:36pm
Posted by V 02/28/2007 @ 12:36am | ignore this person
Breslau is now called Wraclaw, what was german is now Poland, what was Poland is now russia, I could go on and on.
Posted by johannesrolf at 02/28/2007 @ 12:41pm
for a detailed analysis visit mideastweb
Posted by johannesrolf at 02/28/2007 @ 12:43pm
Also from YOUR reference, J:
Table 3: Approximate population growth in Mandatory Palestine (1922-1947)
Jewish population increased by nearly 800%
Arab population increased by 192%
my statement again that you call a lie:
"The Jews in Palestine were a tiny minority until the British Mandate gave world zionism a protective cover to invade the country wholesale"
In Table 3, Jews were 11.14% of the population in 1922, the beginning of the British Mandate.
This is what you call lying.
Posted by FROMREDBIRD 02/28/2007 @ 12:40am
I guess it would depend on what you call tiny. a close look at the charts reveals that over half of the Palestinians came from elsewhere in the region. with your single minded attempts to blame everything on the Tschuuss, you try to reduce complexity to slogans, and you distort history to fit that narrow view.
Posted by JOHANNESROLF 02/28/2007 @ 06:35am
That's a completely spurious conclusion. The associated Table 4, right next to table 3, shows an average annual increase in the Palestinian population from 1922 - 1937 of 2.704%. If anything that is low for simply the natural increase of a population in the 1920's through 1930's for a largely agricultural society outside the more developed world. It wouldn't surprise me if the natural birth rate in the US was higher than that in those years. However, the average annual increase of Jews was 11.09% during those years. In 1925 it was 28.206%. In 1926 it was 22.818%. In 1933 it was 15.716%. In 1934 it was 21.267%. In 1935 it was 26.274%. In 1936 it was 15.647%. http://www.mideastweb.org/palpop.htm
The data, in fact, indicate that there was very little Arab migration into Palestine. Just so, right above Table 3 we see this:
Arab population and illegal immigration - The mandatory blue book reports for the 1920s estimated about 25,000 illegal Arab immigrants in total that were not recorded. The 1937 Mandatory report estimated about 25,000 legal Arab immigrants over the entire period.
The data, again, YOUR data, are entirely consistent with my comment that "The Jews in Palestine were a tiny minority until the British Mandate gave world zionism a protective cover to invade the country wholesale".
You say above that I "try to reduce complexity to slogans, and distort history to fit that narrow view". That was after calling what I said a "lie". You haven't even started to prove that case. If anything you've proven just the opposite. You began this conversation with a stated enthusiasm for knowing history but it seems your ardor for that has cooled remarkably and you now want to talk about me.
The zionist fantasy history that you've been recycling attempts to paint Palestine as a destitute wasteland that indigenous Jews brought to never before seen heights of glory with the tiniest bit of help from outside and that brought in massive immigration of "Arabs" who didn't rightfully belong there. The truth is, in fact, exactly the opposite and it's a truth that you stubbornly refuse to look at.
Posted by fromredbird at 02/28/2007 @ 1:44pm
you may want to read that article again. according to the stats there was a great influx of arabs from the surrounding areas, shooting to hell your point that they were there for hundreds of years. some were but others weren't. economically it was a backwater. that did not change until the mandate which brought economic activity. it was shown quite clearly that the areas with jewish settlement had higher standards of living and more economic activity.you are most selective, and you made me the point of your diatribe as well and first I might add.just read the damn thing and stop cherrypicking. I have an evenhanded grasp of history, something you will never see.
Posted by johannesrolf at 02/28/2007 @ 1:54pm
I watched a story on BBC News last night about an Israeli Jewish woman that is married to a Palestinian. They were moving to Europe because Israel does not allow such a relationship (and, of course, the Palestinian man was suffering all kinds of threats and harassment). Legally barring marriage between Jews and Arabs?
Posted by MTSPENCE05 02/28/2007 @ 09:07am
If a Palestinian living inside the borders of Israel whose ancestors 15 generations back were born there marries his fourth cousin whose ancestors 15 generations back were born inside the current borders of Israel but who was expelled and now lives outside the borders of Israel, he is not allowed to have his wife join him in Israel. He is quite welcome to leave, though.
On the other hand, if two Jews in the USA who have never lived anywhere other than the USA, and whose parents generations back never lived anywhere else, get married in the USA they can promptly immigrate to Israel and immediately receive housing assistance and all other social benefits that are available.
This is what is referred to by the name, "the only democracy in the Middle East".
Posted by fromredbird at 02/28/2007 @ 1:59pm
I will close my part of this discussion with a quote from mideastweb:
In practice, I am aware that the data on this page have been used to support various partisan claims. That is precisely the sort of abuse that this material is intended to fight. The major conclusion is "The nature of the data do not permit precise conclusions about the Arab population of Palestine in Ottoman and British times" Anyone who pretends otherwise is deliberately misleading you. We can reach some general conclusions - Palestine was not empty when Zionists started arriving, there was some Arab immigration as well etc. But we cannot give a precise number in any case, and even if we could, it would not constitute evidence to back any moral claims.
Posted by johannesrolf at 02/28/2007 @ 2:03pm
Posted by JOHANNESROLF 02/28/2007 @ 12:41am
Yes you can, as sophistry is both written, and verbal. And that is what you are presenting here, unless you can show that they were renamed under this functional context;
"Between ourselves it must be clear that there is no room for both peoples together in this country. We shall not achieve our goal if the Arabs are in this small country. There is no other way than to transfer the Arabs from here to neighboring countries - all of them. Not one village, not one tribe should be left." Joseph Weitz, A Solution to the Refugee Problem, Davar, September 29, 1967. Cited in Uri Davis and Norton Mezvinsky, eds, Documents from Israel, 1967-1973, p21
"There are some who believe that the non-Jewish population, even in a high percentage, within our borders will be more effectively under our surveillance; and there are some who believe the contrary, i.e., that it is easier to carry out surveillance over the activities of a neighbor than over those of a tenant. [I] tend to support the latter view and have an additional argument: ... the need to sustain the character of the state which will henceforth be Jewish ... with a non-Jewish minority limited to fifteen percent. I had already reached this fundamental position as early as 1940 [and] it is entered in my diary." Joseph Weitz, Davis, Israel: An Apartheid State, p.5
We must use terror, assassination, intimidation, land confiscation and the cutting of all social services to rid the Galilee of its Arab population. The Koenig Report, Al Hamishmar (Israeli newspaper), September 7, 1976.
: "We have to kill all the Palestinians unless they are resigned to live here as slaves." Chairman Heilbrun of the Committee for the Re-election of General Shlomo Lahat, the mayor of Tel Aviv.
"We shall reduce the Arab population to a community of woodcutters and waiters." Uri Lubrani, Israeli Prime Minister David Ben Gurion's special adviser on Arab Affairs, 1960, Sabri Jiryis, The Arabs in Israel (New York: Monthly Review Press, 1976).
"We declare openly that the Arabs have no right to settle on even one centimeter of Eretz Israel ... Force is all they do or ever will understand. We shall use the ultimate force until the Palestinians come crawling to us on all fours." Raphael Eitan, Chief of Staff of the Israeli Armed Forces, Gad Becker, Yediot Ahronot, April 13, 1983, and The New York Times, April 14, 1983.
"When we have settled the land, all the Arabs will be able to do will be to scurry around like drugged roaches in a bottle. " Raphael Eitan, Ibid.
"After we become a strong force as the result of the creation of the state, we shall abolish partition and expand to the whole of Palestine. The state will only be a stage in the realization of Zionism and its task is to prepare the ground for our expansion. The state will have to preserve order – not by preaching but with machine guns." Ben Gurion in a 1938 speech.
We were speaking of the what, the above is the who, now a little of the when and the how; Deir Yasin...
"I saw cut off genitalia and women's crushed stomachs ... It was direct murder." Commander of the Haganah, Zvi Ankori, Brenner, The Iron Wall, p.52.
A legend of terror spread amongst Arabs who were seized with panic at the mention of our Irgun soldiers. It was worth half a dozen battalions to the forces of Israel. Arabs throughout the country ... were seized with limitless panic and started to flee for their lives. This mass flight soon developed into a maddened, uncontrollable stampede. Of the 800,000 Arabs who lived on the present territory of the state of Israel, only some 165,000 are still there. The political and economic significance of this development can hardly be overestimated. Menachem Begin, Ibid., p.143.
"The implementation of this program was carried out in part by Menachem Begin and in part by his future successor as Prime Minister, Yitzhak Shamir, as military commanders of the Irgun and the Lohamei Herut Israel (Lehi), i.e., Fighters for the Freedom of Israel. Inhabitants were force marched in blood-soaked clothing through the streets of Jerusalem to jeering on-lookers, before disappearing."
"It was noon when the battle ended and the shooting stopped. Things had become quiet, but the village had not surrendered. The IZL (Irgun) and Lehi (Stern Gang) irregulars left the places in which they had been hiding and started carrying out clean-up operations in the houses. They fired with all the arms they had, and threw explosives into the buildings. They also shot everyone they saw in the houses, including women and children – indeed the commanders made no attempt to check the disgraceful acts of slaughter. I myself and a number of inhabitants begged the commanders to give orders to their men to stop shooting, but our efforts were unsuccessful. In the meantime, some twenty-five men had been brought out of the houses: they were loaded into a freight truck and led in a 'victory parade,' like a Roman triumph, through to Mahaneh Yehudah and Zikhron Yosef quarters [of Jerusalem]. At the end of the parade they were taken to a stone quarry between Giv'at Shaul and Deir Yasin and shot in cold blood. The fighters then put the women and children who were still alive on a truck and took them to the Mandelbaum Gate" Meir Pa'il, Yediot Aharanot, April 4, 1972. Cited by David Hirst, The Gun and the Olive Branch (Great Britain: Faber & Faber Ltd., 1977), pp.126-127.
"... The Commander of the Irgun detachment did not seem willing to receive me. At last he arrived, young, distinguished, and perfectly correct, but there was a peculiar glitter in his eyes, cold and cruel. According to him the Irgun had arrived twenty-four hours earlier and ordered the inhabitants by loudspeaker to evacuate all houses and surrender: the time given to obey the order was a quarter of an hour. Some of these miserable people had come forward and were taken prisoner, to be released later in the direction of the Arab lines. The rest, not having obeyed the order, had met the fate they deserved. But there was no point in exaggerating things, there were only a few dead, and they would be buried as soon as the "clean-up" of the village was over. If I found any bodies, I could take them, but there were certainly no wounded.
This account made my blood run cold. I went back to the Jerusalem road and got an ambulance and a truck that I had alerted through the Red Shield ... I reached the village with my convoy, and the firing stopped. The gang (Irgun) was wearing uniforms with helmets. All of them were young, some even adolescents, men and women, armed to the teeth: revolvers, machine-guns, hand grenades, and also cutlasses in their hands, most of them still blood-stained. A beautiful young girl with criminal eyes showed me hers, still dripping with blood; she displayed it like a trophy. This was the "clean-up" team, that was obviously performing its task very conscientiously.
I tried to go into a house. A dozen soldiers surrounded me, their machine-guns aimed at my body, and their officer forbade me to move. The dead, if any, would be brought to me, he said. I then flew into one of the most towering rages of my life, telling these criminals what I thought of their conduct, threatening them with everything I could think of, and then pushed them aside and went into the house.
The first room was dark, everything was in disorder, but there was no one. In the second, amid disembowelled furniture and all sorts of debris, I found some bodies, cold. Here the "clean-up" had been done with machine guns, then hand grenades. It had been finished off with knives, anyone could see that. The same thing in the next room, but as I was about to leave, I heard something like a sigh. I looked everywhere, turned over all the bodies, and eventually found a little foot, still warm. It was a little girl of ten, mutilated by a hand grenade, but still alive ... everywhere it was the same horrible sight ... there had been four hundred people in this village; about fifty of them had escaped and were still alive. All the rest had been deliberately massacred in cold blood for, as I observed for myself, this gang was admirably disciplined and only acted under orders.
After another visit to Deir Yasin I went back to my office where I was visited by two gentlemen, well-dressed in civilian clothes, who had been waiting for me for more than an hour. They were the commander of the Irgun detachment and his aide. They had prepared a paper which they wanted me to sign. It was a statement to the effect that I had been very courteously received by them, and obtained all the facilities I had requested, in the accomplishment of my mission, and thanking them for the help I had received. As I showed signs of hesitation and even started to argue with them, they said that if I valued my life, I had better sign immediately. The only course open to me was to convince them that I did not value my life in the least." Director of the International Red Cross in Palestine, Jacques de Reynier, personal testimony. Jacques de Reynier, A Jerusalem un Drapeau Flottait sur la Ligne de Feu, pp.71-76. Cited by Hirst, pp.127-8.
Dueima...
"... They killed between eighty to one hundred Arab men, women and children. To kill the children they [soldiers] fractured their heads with sticks. There was not one home without corpses. The men and women of the villages were pushed into houses without food or water. Then the saboteurs came to dynamite them.
One commander ordered a soldier to bring two women into a building he was about to blow up ... Another soldier prided himself upon having raped an Arab woman before shooting her to death. Another Arab woman with her newborn baby was made to clean the place for a couple of days, and then they shot her and the baby. Educated and well-mannered commanders who were considered "good guys" ... became base murderers, and this not in the storm of battle, but as a method of expulsion and extermination. The fewer the Arabs who remain, the better." By a soldier who participated in the horror: Official Hebrew daily newspaper of the Labor-Zionist-run Histadrut General Federation of Workers, Davar, June 9, 1979.
Gaza...
"The wide, dry riverbed glitters in the moonlight. We advance, carefully, along the mountain slope. Several houses can be seen ... In the distance we can see three lights and hear the sounds of Arab music coming out of the homes immersed in darkness. We split up into three groups of four men each. Two groups make their way to the immense refugee camp (Al Burj) to the south of our position. The other group marches toward the lonely house in the flat area north of Wadi Gaza. We march forward, trampling over green fields, wading through water canals as the moon bathes us in its scintillating light. Soon, however, the silence will be shattered by bullets, explosions, and the screams of those who are now sleeping peacefully. We advance quickly and enter one of the houses - "Mann Haatha?" [Arabic for "Who's there?"]
We leap towards the voices. Fearing and trembling, two Arabs are standing up against the wall of the building. They try to escape. I open fire. An ear-piercing scream fills the air. One man falls to the ground while his friend continues to run. Now we must act – we have no time to lose. We make our way from house to house as the Arabs scramble about in confusion.
Machine guns rattle, their noise mixed with a terrible howling. We reach the main thoroughfare of the camp. The mob of fleeing Arabs grows larger. The other group attacks from the opposite direction. The thunder of our hand-grenades echoes in the distance. We receive an order to retreat. The attack has come to an end." Meir Har Tzion, Diary (Tel Aviv: Levin-Epstein Ltd., 1969). Cited in Livia Rokach, Israel's Sacred Terrorism (Belmont, Mass.: Association of Arab American University Graduates Inc. Press, 1980) p.68.
...?
Perhaps in your response you could also do a poll: Of how many Americans would, tolerate such, how long before they would get over such, and what would be a legitimate response to such. The fact that the Palestinians are willing to engage in peace talks post genocide establishes their humanity in no small amount. No, they will not reach peace one suicide bomber at a time, such is a cynical use of the true potential of a human life. And gives the Israelis a legitimacy instinctively felt by human beings the world over, the mourning after loved ones taken before their time.
Posted by V at 02/28/2007 @ 2:29pm
Posted by V 02/28/2007 @ 2:29pm | ignore this person
you can change the names and particulars and you have the numerous progroms the arabs carried out against the jews. many people died. the arab rhetoric, which is conveniently ignored, was likely as virulent. the mufti went to Hitler's court for chrissakes.
Posted by johannesrolf at 02/28/2007 @ 2:44pm
you may want to read that article again. according to the stats there was a great influx of arabs from the surrounding areas, shooting to hell your point that they were there for hundreds of years. some were but others weren't. economically it was a backwater. that did not change until the mandate which brought economic activity. it was shown quite clearly that the areas with jewish settlement had higher standards of living and more economic activity.you are most selective, and you made me the point of your diatribe as well and first I might add.just read the damn thing and stop cherrypicking. I have an evenhanded grasp of history, something you will never see.
Posted by JOHANNESROLF 02/28/2007 @ 1:54pm
Your statement above is in jarring conflict with your own referenced data which you suggest that I read. That's conclusively illustrated by my 1:44pm post which quotes extensively from your reference. There are also the following quotes that I haven't mentioned:
Economics and Immigration - Under the British Mandate, which began after WWI, Jewish population increased due to immigration, especially in the 1930s.
The total Arab immigration to Palestine recorded or estimated by the Mandate government was in the neighborhood of 45,000. (the average Arab population from 1922 - 1937 was about 823,000)
Three-fourths of this expansion of the Jewish community was accounted for by immigration.
. . . which further invalidate your statements. Your statements, in fact, bear no relationship to the data you referenced.
It isn't the least bit surprising that areas with Jewish settlement had higher standards of living and more economic activity because the Jewish immigrants settled primarily in urban areas, which I referenced further up the thread with quotes from zionists themselves. The areas with Jewish settlement had higher standards of living and more economic activity because it existed when they got there. Further up the thread I posted extensive evidence of the strong economic development that was already taking place in Palestine before zionists had even started thinking about immigrating to Palestine. You simply ignore it.
If the "just read the damn thing" advice you're giving me means you want me to just read the quotes from Joan Peters then at least I will understand what you're talking about. The only problem there is that Joan Peters is the mother of all lying propagandists, to use a recently coined term, which anyone can discover by typing her name into a search engine. The reference you provide, itself, discredits her. It, in fact, reflects poorly on them that they even quote someone who is so thoroughly discredited as a liar.
I have explained myself by quoting extensively from your own reference and none of those quotes are in conflict with the general conclusions of the entire report, as you claim.
You need to explain yourself by some means other than sweeping assertions that don't reference your own data and by making bald assertions that I am "most selective", "cherrypicking", and engaging in a "diatribe" while crediting yourself with an "evenhanded grasp of history", to which you add that I am incapable of ever seeing.
Posted by fromredbird at 02/28/2007 @ 2:47pm
"The fact that the Palestinians are willing to engage in peace talks post genocide establishes their humanity in no small amount."
oh the humanity of the rockets lobbed into israel, the humanity of the blown up busses. arghh
Posted by johannesrolf at 02/28/2007 @ 2:48pm
Posted by V 02/28/2007 @ 2:29pm
you can change the names and particulars and you have the numerous progroms the arabs carried out against the jews. many people died. the arab rhetoric, which is conveniently ignored, was likely as virulent. the mufti went to Hitler's court for chrissakes.
Posted by JOHANNESROLF 02/28/2007 @ 2:44pm
I don't think you're trying to say, are you, that the Arabs were virulently advocating an invasion of Europe and America where they would kill and drive the Jews from their homes and property, and take their place?
The Mufti certainly wasn't offered a hearing in the British court. The British Mandate was to turn Palestine into a Jewish homeland by transferring Jews there. What would you have done if you were the Mufti and saw your country being overrun?
Posted by fromredbird at 02/28/2007 @ 2:57pm
"The nature of the data do not permit precise conclusions about the Arab population of Palestine in Ottoman and British times" Anyone who pretends otherwise is deliberately misleading you.
in other words a lie. das ist alles.
Posted by johannesrolf at 02/28/2007 @ 3:08pm
V. that is not a discussion, that is propaganda.
Posted by johannesrolf at 02/28/2007 @ 3:09pm
Look Palestine was colonized and Israel is there to stay so lets think about a two state solution, Peace will not come easy by itself it should be made. Israel should be told how much land they are allowed to keep, US should start being objective about the whole thing and not be persuaded by religious forces in the nation. And keep your posts concise and brief this is not a history class. Dont colonize this blog site. Amen
Posted by Dony at 02/28/2007 @ 3:16pm
This is quite an evolution, J. You start with:
FRB:"The Jews in Palestine were a tiny minority until the British Mandate gave world zionism a protective cover to invade the country wholesale. Neither they, nor their ancestors who they couldn't even name, had set foot in Palestine since about 70 A.D., if ever."
this is revisionism, and a lie. typical of your onesided portrayal of the conflict. palestine in the 19th century saw an increasing influx of both jews and arabs.the land there was mostly owned by absentee landlords, ottoman and otherwise. this was a backwater until jews began to invest and build. this too attracted more arabs. just look around at Israel's neighbors. how are the ones without oil doing? a hot bed of economic and technical innovation?
Posted by JOHANNESROLF 02/27/2007 @ 6:14pm
. . . and then bring you're supporting references:
Posted by JOHANNESROLF 02/27/2007 @ 7:26pm
. . .followed by praise for MidEast Web (http://www.mideastweb.org/palpop.htm) :
I find that site to be free from cant, which is not something that can be said about bird.
Posted by JOHANNESROLF 02/27/2007 @ 9:28pm
. . . which you later change your mind about and attempt to throw in the trash by quoting the following:
I will close my part of this discussion with a quote from mideastweb:
In practice, I am aware that the data on this page have been used to support various partisan claims. That is precisely the sort of abuse that this material is intended to fight. The major conclusion is "The nature of the data do not permit precise conclusions about the Arab population of Palestine in Ottoman and British times" Anyone who pretends otherwise is deliberately misleading you. We can reach some general conclusions - Palestine was not empty when Zionists started arriving, there was some Arab immigration as well etc. But we cannot give a precise number in any case, and even if we could, it would not constitute evidence to back any moral claims.
Posted by JOHANNESROLF 02/28/2007 @ 2:03pm
It is not a "cherrypicked", partisan claim to quote their own major conclusions, which they can draw without having to be "precise":
Major Conclusions
2. Palestine was not an empty land when Zionist immigration began. The lowest estimates claim there were about 410,000 Arab Muslims and Christians in Palestine in 1893. A Zionist estimate claimed there were over 600,000 Arabs in Palestine. in the 1890s. At this time, the number of Jewish immigrants to Palestine was still negligible by all accounts. It is unlikely that Palestinian immigration prior to this period was due to Zionist development. Though uncertainty exists concerning the precise numbers of Arabs living in the areas that later became Israel, it is very unlikely that the claims of Joan Peters that there were less than 100,000 Arabs living there are valid.
It seems to me that you looked at this, saw some things that seemed to agree with your version (probably the ridiculous Joan Peters quotes), and posted it. You later realized that the basic data and conclusions don't support your version of "history", just the opposite, and now you're trying to flush it down the toilet.
Posted by fromredbird at 02/28/2007 @ 3:23pm
"The nature of the data do not permit precise conclusions about the Arab population of Palestine in Ottoman and British times" Anyone who pretends otherwise is deliberately misleading you.
in other words a lie. das ist alles.
Posted by JOHANNESROLF 02/28/2007 @ 3:08pm
J., you are the one who tried to lie with their website, not me. Anyone who reads through what they wrote can see that.
I'll add this since you don't seem to want anyone to look at it anymore: http://www.mideastweb.org/palpop.htm
Posted by fromredbird at 02/28/2007 @ 3:28pm
V. that is not a discussion, that is propaganda.
Posted by JOHANNESROLF 02/28/2007 @ 3:09pm
It's propaganda even when he quotes words directly from the mouths of the zionists themselves? Where do you stop with this ridiculous game? Isn't there a limit?
Posted by fromredbird at 02/28/2007 @ 3:31pm
And keep your posts concise and brief this is not a history class. Dont colonize this blog site. Amen
Posted by DONY 02/28/2007 @ 3:16pm | ignore this person
I don't know how long you've been reading here, but we do not tell others what to post or the appropriate length. you mat read or not read, but you may not tell others what to do.OK?
Posted by johannesrolf at 02/28/2007 @ 3:36pm
Posted by FROMREDBIRD 02/28/2007 @ 3:28pm | ignore this person
you're drooling on the keyboard. let me translate the german above. I'm done.
Posted by johannesrolf at 02/28/2007 @ 3:38pm
Look this is what I know 1. During the second world war Arabs and Americans were friends and they fought together agaist Nazism 2.In Palestine Jews and Moslems lived in peace 3. Arafat rememeber him, he had many Jewish friends. Eveything was nice, Eh
Posted by Dony at 02/28/2007 @ 3:44pm
Posted by FROMREDBIRD 02/28/2007 @ 3:28pm
you're drooling on the keyboard. let me translate the german above. I'm done.
Posted by JOHANNESROLF 02/28/2007 @ 3:38pm
It's about me now, J., isn't it? You don't want to talk about your evidence anymore and probably wish you could forget it.
Posted by fromredbird at 02/28/2007 @ 3:50pm
don't believe the hype. Bird is telling a one sided story. here's what happened: palestine, the larger region was supposed to be partitioned in a jewish state and an arab state, with hoped for population exchange, somewhat like india was partitioned, with muslims in one state and hindus in the other.that disn't work out so well either, but that's for another time.
same in palestine. the arab state was called transjordan, now jordan. any kind of peaceful solution became impossible when the arab countries attacked israel. from then on it was war. around half a million arabs were driven out AND fled from israel, as people flee from a war. the arabs encouraged them, telling them that they could return at the end of the war, arabs being victorious. a roughly equal number of jews were expelled and fled from arab countries. those jews came to israel,the lie is that they all came from europe, they did not. yes a great number in addition came from europe.remember most jews in germany and poland were killed, six million. those jews did not emigrate to israel.
now one thing you must remember, the palestinian refugees have been kept in camps, in conditions similar to the west bank today, for 60 years. yes the arabs are great humanitarians. the people who fled are practically all dead now,do the math, and their children and grandchildren are still in the camps. they are held hostage by those arab gov'ts to use as a club against israel and a bargaining chip.
V took great delight in quoting the most extreme elements of israelis. we get no quotes from arab leaders, equally extreme.there were massacres on BOTH sides during that war in '48. there were arab massacres of jews in the '20s and the "30s, called progroms. the palestinian arabs got their state, it is called Jordan.
I suggest you don't believe either of us, but see for yourself at the site I quoted, mideastweb.
bird, don't bother to reply to me, you may of course try to refute my post, but you will not be doing so to me.
Posted by johannesrolf at 03/01/2007 @ 12:15am
It's propaganda even when he quotes words directly from the mouths of the zionists themselves? Where do you stop with this ridiculous game? Isn't there a limit? Posted by FROMREDBIRD 02/28/2007 @ 3:31pm
I posted that as a matter of incredulous induced efficiency.
Posted by JOHANNESROLF 03/01/2007 @ 12:15am
"V took great delight..." Are you insane? You actually see "delight" in that post? Really? In your delusion you project your pathology, as one would have to be pathological to find such (delight...), in myself or in anything remotely related to that post.
"in quoting the most extreme elements of Israelis." In quoting the most extreme elements of Israelis in power... As for the rest I'll let the sources speak for themselves.
"We get no quotes from arab leaders" As far as can be seen the Arabs were more than willing to live with Jews. The 20,000 Jews of of Jerusalem were wholly integrated and accepted in Palestinian society. There was no systemic organized anti-Jew equivalent of the Zionists, or the settlers for that matter. It was not until the 1917 Balfour Declaration that Arab tolerance began to diminish.
You said you were done, in German no less, so just go. As, since you are capable of responding in such a manner to mine unlike yours (second to third hand), sourced and documented posts. You are doubtless blind the the loss of credibility you've suffered as well.
You have internalized a lie, at best. In your blindness and willingness to find excuses, no matter how far fetched we actually find a more subtle reason for conflicts, the world over.
And no, I do not find "delight" in this either...
Posted by V at 03/01/2007 @ 01:55am
Posted by V 02/28/2007 @ 2:29pm | ignore this person
you can change the names and particulars and you have the numerous progroms the arabs carried out against the jews. many people died. the arab rhetoric, which is conveniently ignored, was likely as virulent. the mufti went to Hitler's court for chrissakes.
Posted by JOHANNESROLF 02/28/2007 @ 2:44pm | ignore this person
"the mufti went to Hitler's court for chrissakes." ...For the sake of completness;
The Zionist Federation of Germany sent a memorandum of support to the Nazi Party on June 21, 1933. In it the Federation noted:
"... a rebirth of national life such as is occurring in German life ... must also take place in the Jewish national group. On the foundation of the new [Nazi] state which has established the principle of race, we wish so to fit our community into the total structure so that for us, too, in the sphere assigned to us, fruitful activity for the Fatherland is possible ..." Brenner, Zionism, p.48.
Far from repudiating this policy, the World Zionist Organization Congress in 1933 defeated a resolution calling for action against Hitler by a vote of 240 to 43.
"During this very Congress, Hitler announced a trade agreement with the WZO's Anglo-Palestine Bank, breaking, thereby, the Jewish boycott of the Nazi regime at a time when the German economy was extremely vulnerable. It was the height of the Depression and people were wheeling barrels full of worthless German Marks. The World Zionist Organization broke the Jewish boycott and became the principal distributor of Nazi goods throughout the Middle East and Northern Europe. They established the Ha'avara, which was a bank in Palestine designed to receive monies from the German-Jewish bourgeoisie, with which sums Nazi goods were purchased in very substantial quantity." Schoenman, The Hidden History of Zionism, Chapter 6 Zionism and the Jews.
"The Zionists brought Baron Von Mildenstein of the S.S. Security Service to Palestine for a six-month visit in support of Zionism. This visit led to a twelve-part report by Joseph Goebbels, Hitler's Minister of Propaganda, in Der Angriff (The Assault) in 1934 praising Zionism. Goebbels ordered a medallion struck with the Swastika on one side, and on the other, the Zionist Star of David. In May 1935, Reinhardt Heydrich, the chief of the S.S. Security Service, wrote an article in which he separated Jews into "two categories." The Jews he favored were the Zionists: "Our good wishes together with our official good will go with them."[82] In 1937, the Labor "socialist" Zionist militia, the Haganah (founded by Jabotinsky) sent an agent (Feivel Polkes) to Berlin offering to spy for the S.S. Security Service in exchange for the release of Jewish wealth for Zionist colonization. Adolf Eichmann was invited to Palestine as the guest of the Haganah.
Feivel Polkes informed Eichmann:
Jewish nationalist circles were very pleased with the radical German policy, since the strength of the Jewish population in Palestine would be so far increased thereby that in the foreseeable future the Jews could reckon upon numerical superiority over the Arabs." Brenner, Zionism, p.99.
Posted by V at 03/01/2007 @ 02:22am
The 20,000 Jews of of Jerusalem were wholly integrated and accepted in Palestinian society.
they were in the majority in Jerusalem and greater jerusalem.
"As far as can be seen the Arabs were more than willing to live with Jews."
this is an absurd lie, progroms in the '20 and '30 .
Posted by johannesrolf at 03/01/2007 @ 07:38am
Far from repudiating this policy, the World Zionist Organization Congress in 1933 defeated a resolution calling for action against Hitler by a vote of 240 to 43.
phony as can be .the virulent persecution of jews in germany did not begin until later, with Kristallnacht often given as a starting point. that happened in '38. in '33 Hitler looked OK to many people, his political rise being entirely legal at that point.
Posted by johannesrolf at 03/01/2007 @ 07:41am
I am perfectly comfortable with my credibility on this site. let the reader judge for themselves, and consider the source.
Posted by johannesrolf at 03/01/2007 @ 07:44am
3. Zionist settlement between 1880 and 1948 did not displace or dispossess Palestinians. Every indication is that there was net Arab immigration into Palestine in this period, and that the economic situation of Palestinian Arabs improved tremendously under the British Mandate relative to surrounding countries. By 1948, there were approximately 1.35 million Arabs and 650,000 Jews living between the Jordan and the Mediterranean, more Arabs than had ever lived in Palestine before, and more Jews than had lived there since Roman times. Analysis of population by subdistricts shows that Arab population tended to increase the most between 1931 and 1948 in the same areas where there were large proportions of Jews. Therefore, Zionist immigration did not displace Arabs.
from mideastweb
Posted by johannesrolf at 03/01/2007 @ 08:25am
they were in the majority in Jerusalem and greater jerusalem.
correction, my statement above is half right only, jews were NOT in the majority in greater jerusalem. the first part stands.
Posted by johannesrolf at 03/01/2007 @ 08:32am
the palestinian refugees have been kept in camps, in conditions similar to the west bank today, for 60 years.
these camps are supported financially by donations from western countries, NOT by their arab "hosts"
Posted by johannesrolf at 03/01/2007 @ 09:54am
I think Im going to become an atheist, I'll be ok as long as I dont tell anybody. God save the Palestians
Posted by Dony at 03/01/2007 @ 10:32am
Posted by DONY 03/01/2007 @ 10:32am | ignore this person
there are atheist support groups all over the place. in unity there is strength. you will find a sympathetic ear from agnostics too.
Posted by johannesrolf at 03/01/2007 @ 10:35am
there are atheist support groups all over the place. in unity there is strength. you will find a sympathetic ear from agnostics too. Johannes: SUPPORT GROUPS?, sounds like another religion, might as well go to church
Posted by Dony at 03/01/2007 @ 11:40am
might as well go to church
last one, they won't make you get down on your knees and genuflect.
Posted by johannesrolf at 03/01/2007 @ 11:59am
I am perfectly comfortable with my credibility on this site. let the reader judge for themselves, and consider the source.
Posted by JOHANNESROLF 03/01/2007 @ 07:44am | ignore this person
Your comfort is part of your delusion, besides I wasn't speaking of, or in terms of, consensus. But intellectual honesty and integrity, and on this issue you have none, wither or no you have a cheering section or not. The truth isn't in you. I started this search with no axe to grind or preconceptions, I have also been to middleastweb, (pablum, fluff..). And considering the source is exactly what I am speaking of.
"There were over one thousand villages in Palestine at the turn of the 19th century. Jerusalem, Haifa, Gaza, Jaffa, Nablus, Acre, Jericho, Ramle, Hebron and Nazareth were flourishing towns. The hills were painstakingly terraced. Irrigation ditches crisscrossed the land. The citrus orchards, olive groves and grains of Palestine were known throughout the world. Trade, crafts, textiles, cottage industry and agricultural production abounded.
Eighteenth and 19th century travellers' accounts are replete with the data, as were the scholarly quarterly reports published in the 19th century by the British Palestine Exploration Fund.
In fact, it was precisely the social cohesiveness and stability of Palestinian society which led Lord Palmerston, in 1840, when Britain had established a consulate in Jerusalem, to propose, presciently, the founding of a European Jewish settler colony to "preserve the larger interests of the British Empire"." Joy Bonds et. al., Our Roots Are Still Alive – The Story of the Palestinian People (New York: Institute for Independent Social Journalism, Peoples Press, 1977), p.13.
"Despite the fact that a large share of Jewish capital was allocated to rural areas, and despite the presence of British imperialist military forces and the immense pressure exerted by the administrative machine in favor of the Zionists, the latter achieved only minimal results with respect to the settlement of land.
They, nevertheless, seriously damaged the status of the Arab rural population. Ownership by Jewish groups of urban and rural land rose from 300,000 dunums in 1929 [67,000 acres] to 1,250,000 dunums in 1930 [280,000 acres]. The purchased land was insignificant from the point of view of mass colonization and of the settlement of the "Jewish problem". But the expropriation of one million dunums – almost one third of the agricultural land – led to a severe impoverishment of Arab peasants and Bedouins.
By 1931, 20,000 peasant families had been evicted by the Zionists. Furthermore, agricultural life in the underdeveloped world, and the Arab world in particular, is not merely a mode of production, but equally a way of social, religious and ritual life. Thus, in addition to the loss of land, Arab rural society was being destroyed by the process of colonization." Ghassan Kanafani, The 1936-1939 Revolt in Palestine (New York, Committee for a Democratic Palestine).
Lastly I'm done, and unlike you I mean it. There is no point in further "debate" with someone so morally crippled, so blindly, willfully, intellectually dishonest. And I don't debate ignorance in any case. There is sufficient information to on either side to find the real heart of the matter. As you say let the reader judge, they can imbibe your obfuscation, or, they can search for the truth. Lest they be like you... steeped in the subornation of genocide.
Posted by V at 03/01/2007 @ 1:13pm
V, you do not merit a response.
Posted by johannesrolf at 03/01/2007 @ 3:01pm
it is your personal attacks that do not merit any response.
your quotes suggest no more than various sources disagreeing on some particulars. I note that you have not attempted to actually discredit what I wrote and cited. I don't recall stating anywhere that there weren't any settlements.
what I have seen in everything I have consulted was that over 40% of the land in palestine was gov't owned, that much of the rest was owned by absentee landlords, and that the locals lived in share cropper like arrangements. these landlords were quite happy to sell land to the jews. when the land was sold these sharecroppers were indeed displaced.
everything that you have posted has been conspicuously onesided, the sound of an ax grinding is deafening.
as far as my credibility here is concerned, unlike you, I have been posting here for a long time, and I have during that time seen many expressions of respect from both sides of the aisle.
Posted by johannesrolf at 03/01/2007 @ 3:15pm
Lest they be like you... steeped in the subornation of genocide.
what the hell does this slur mean?
Posted by johannesrolf at 03/01/2007 @ 3:17pm
Posted by JOHANNESROLF 03/01/2007 @ 3:17pm
Here, let me add another "slur," hypocrisy. I will say in closing... as you said, let the reader judge, by whatsoever comment you or I have made on this subject, as to it's respective truthfulness. As I said I'm done. If you wish further meaning you'll have to find it in what has been written. Based on your comments, such in fact is possible. There is no ambiguity as to my meaning.
Posted by V at 03/01/2007 @ 8:20pm
V, I know the truth or even the search for truth makes you uncomfortable, to the point where you spent your time attacking me in your inimitable vicious way. that's when I know I'm on the right track. you know of course that your holy righteousness does not soothe one palestinian's pain.
Posted by johannesrolf at 03/01/2007 @ 11:47pm
Posted by JOHANNESROLF 03/01/2007 @ 11:47pm
"V, I know the truth or even the search for truth makes you uncomfortable, to the point where you spent your time attacking me in your inimitable vicious way." You're kidding right? If you had checked you would have found that the individuals quoted, were done so truthfully. I think you know this. Hence you willfully mis-characterized my intent and meaning. And started the personal slurs when you called me a propagandist, and a liar. It's just this kind of lapse which makes me question your integrity, if not your rationality. And says to me that it's you who has a personal bias, a bias towards Zionism. I didn't start this you did... and as far as my "inimitable vicious way," thank you, it does come in handy, no matter the ease with with it can be avoided...
"Your holy righteousness does not soothe one [P]alestinian's pain." I beg to differ, leave the ivory tower of your preconceptions, and abstractions, and find a living, breathing Palestinian. Find out what they think. I'll bet you dollars to doughnuts that the buried, unreported truths finally... coming to light will make any Palestinian who sees them in print feel much better. Even to the point having a wee bit of hope, that the truth crushed to the earth will rise nonetheless.
And "holy righteousness?" nope sorry that is not an accurate cast of my character. You keep attempting to cast yours truly as someone with an emotional bias towards something other than the truth. Were I to give opinion, second, or third hand characterization, rather than the words of the perpetrators themselves such would perhaps, be possible.
Find a mirror, tell the truth about what you find there, for it wasn't in me that it was observed, but in you, at least first, in anywise.
Posted by V at 03/02/2007 @ 3:48pm
Joint Arab-Jewish agreement on Jewish Homeland, January 3, 1918 Feisal Hussein, King of Iraq and Syria agreed to Jewish National Home according to British Mandate (Israel and Jordan) in 1918. King of Iraq from 1921; eldest son of Hussein, sherif of Mecca. He led the Arab intifada against Turkey (1916-1918) and was designated king of Syria. Feisal was at first sympathetic to a Jewish Homeland from which he hoped to receive aid in building his future kingdom. He met Dr. Weizmann in Jordan (1918) and Paris (1919) where they reached an agreement on mutual aid, conditional on the implementation of British promises to the Arabs. Later, owing to his expulsion from Syira by the French (1920) and the influence of other Arab leaders, his attitude later became hostile. By the mid-19th century, up to 100,000 people lived in Palestine, including a high percentage of Jews, whose forebears had lived there for thousands of years. In 1882, roughly 200,000 Muslims lived in all of Western Palestine.1 By 1918, the situation had not changed much: That was why Hussein ibn-Ali, Sherif of Mecca, and his son, King Faisal of Iraq, both endorsed and extolled the Balfour Declaration 2
Hussein wrote in Mecca's Al Qibla, in 1918, "The resources of the country are still virgin soil and will be developed by the Jewish immigrants. One of the most amazing things until recent times was that the Palestinian used to leave his country, wandering over the high seas in every direction. His native soil could not retain a hold on him.... At the same time, we have seen the Jews from foreign countries streaming to Palestine from Russia, Germany, Austria, Spain, and America. The cause of causes could not escape those who had a gift of deeper insight. They knew that the country was for its original sons [abna'ihi-l-asliyin], for all their differences, a sacred and beloved homeland. The return of these exiles [jaliya] to their homeland will prove materially and spiritually an experimental school for their brethren who are with them in the fields, factories, trades and all things connected to the land." 3
In early 1919, King Faisal, then the only recognized Arab leader in the world, executed a treaty with Chaim Weizmann adopting the understanding of the Balfour Declaration. It outlined relations between Palestine and the Arab state, recognizing the former as a National Home for the Jews, in which they should quickly settle. He wrote, "We Arabs, especially the educated among us, look with the deepest sympathy on the Zionist movement. Our delegation here in Paris is fully acquainted with the proposals submitted yesterday to the Zionist organization to the Peace Conference, and we regard them as moderate and proper." (emphasis added) 4
The 1919 Faisal-Weizmann treaty provided a firm foundation for League of Nations ratification of the Balfour Declaration at the San Remo Conference in 1920. The proposals covered Palestine - from the Mediterranean through the entire Galilee, up to the Litany River, hundreds of miles east of the Jordan River through all of current day Jordan, and into part of the Sinai. The League assigned Palestine Mandate administration to Britain, entrusting it to establish the National Home for the Jews. 5
Posted by johannesrolf at 03/02/2007 @ 5:40pm
Aliya (Jewish immigration to the Land of Israel) from North Africa took place in 1191-1198 and a trickle of Jewish refugees from the Spanish Inquisition came in the late 15th century. Others, fleeing pogroms in the Ukraine, came in the mid-17th century. In the same century, a messianic movement arose under Shabbatai Zevi of Izmir with some it its adherents settling in the Land. They were followed in 1700 by hundreds of Hasidic Jews who arrived from Eastern Europe. The flow of aliya in the 18th and the first part of the 19th centuries was significant enough to make the Jews of Jerusalem the largest religious community in the city by 1844. Thus the great waves of Zionist immigration, which began in 1882 and continued throughout the 20th century, were preceded over the years by many small, sporadic influxes of Jews into the country.
Posted by johannesrolf at 03/02/2007 @ 5:42pm
Old stories wount change anything, the whole exercise of the immigration was to set up a Jewish sate. The current problem from what I see is that Israel has become expanionist and in process the have illegaly annexed most of the west bank. In other words they want the land not the people, if they absorb all the displaced Palestians they will loose the majority and will not have a Jewish state. This has given rise to a form of apartheit where Palestians are sort of caged up behind fences and a good number still in cocetration camps. This is not an occupation but a displacement of people which is not legal according to conteporary standards.
Posted by Dony at 03/02/2007 @ 7:34pm
Posted by DONY 03/02/2007 @ 7:34pm | ignore this person
did you see my post about the palestinian refugee camps in the neighboring arab countries? they have been using the refugees as a bargaining chip against israel.
I believe the case can be made that the settlers in the west bank are a comparable bargaining chip for the right wing israeli gov'ts.
Posted by johannesrolf at 03/02/2007 @ 8:22pm
no matter what the israelis do or have done, it will not come up to what america has done and is doing, that is important to remember. this country was founded on genocide. right of return? the displaced indians never had and never will have a right of return. neither will the slaves.
Posted by johannesrolf at 03/02/2007 @ 10:45pm
Johannes, the differences: 1. The colonial period was over long time ago, today we have UN, besides there was lots of land to go around 2. The current Palestianian problem is driven mostly by religion on both sides 3. Indians in America were given the right to participate in its development and prosper
Posted by Dony at 03/03/2007 @ 11:15am
DO. #1 the past is not dead, it's not even past
#1a that is a pisspoor excuse, the white settlers wanted it all, the indians were shoved onto unproductive land.
#2 no, it's not a religious issue, it is about power and land.
#3 you have got to be kidding. that was never true and it is not true today. look up the statistics for indian "reservations" of poverty, child mortality, health care etc.
you won't get very far with me with these absurd assertions, which I'm not sure you even believe.
Posted by johannesrolf at 03/03/2007 @ 12:24pm
DO. #1 the past is not dead, it's not even past
#1a that is a pisspoor excuse, the white settlers wanted it all, the indians were shoved onto unproductive land.
#2 no, it's not a religious issue, it is about power and land.
#3 you have got to be kidding. that was never true and it is not true today. look up the statistics for indian "reservations" of poverty, child mortality, health care etc.
you won't get very far with me with these absurd assertions, which I'm not sure you even believe. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ ----------------------------------------- These are not an excuse, just some points, dont get antagonistic------------------------- 1.power thats human nature, Some Indian tribes also waged war on other tribes and took all land--- 2.Palestine is very much religious issue, the bilble talks about the promissed land, Judia now called the West Bank was unified by King david with east part of Israel-Evangelist are big supports of Irael/// 3.Poverty on reservation what you expect to be reach on a reservation, to be rich you have to go with the indutrial revolution, if you live like an Indian you going to be poor, Indian had the right to education and become layers and doctors etc., they can leave the reservation and go with the flow---------------------------------------------------------------- Anyways history and sociology were not my subjects in school, just trying to be logical
Posted by Dony at 03/03/2007 @ 4:15pm