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| Originally posted by ronk I told myself never to enter this forum again for it's really time consuming, but I'll make an exception this time. yeah it is. if these so "righteous" brits weren't anti-semitic, they would boycott the US for their "war crimes" in Iraq (and I didn't forget the british army there too - so maybe they should boycott themselves?  ). or the palestinian universites for the missiles launched into Sderot (and I can make you a list of a lot more countries they should boycott or should have boycotted for war crimes). then their act wouldn't be anti-semitic.and I wonder if palestinians students who go to Israeli universities will be boycotted too... |
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| Originally posted by venomX True, but that is a weak argument. The brits could easily say that they consider what Israel is doing as human right abuses, torture, etc.. By your logic, the ban would then be valid. |
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| Originally posted by spiflicated Don't boycott the British just yet. Check out this NY Times article that provides a little more perspective. http://www.nytimes.com/2007/05/30/w...l?ref=education |
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| Originally posted by Jake Benson Even if it's not anti-JEW it's still wrong. I can understand boycotting anyone from an Israeli college if they are coming up to talk about pro-Israeli subjects, but nothing else. What exactly are these Brits trying to boycott anyway? I'll tell y'all somethin: I pretty much hate Palestine's stance, but if some educated Palestinian from some Palestinian college had insight on some important subject unrelated to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, I'd be pro-fly the f*cker out and let's hear them talk. Or if some Palestinian wanted to travel to the US to further their education in medicine, I wouldn't deny them just because I think most of them are poor savages who blow themselves up. I'm willing to set my stereotype aside for the sake of knowledge. I think the value of education far outweighs the value of this disgusting war. If the Brits wanted to boycott Palestinian colleges, I'd still think it would be wrong. I wouldn't say something completely retarded like "Awesome." |
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| Originally posted by Jake Benson I wouldn't say something completely retarded like "Awesome." |
Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Brits Boycott Israeli Universites
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| Originally posted by Fir3start3r That's a matter of conjecture and not fact, which my argument is. |
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| Originally posted by Jake Benson Even if it's not anti-JEW it's still wrong. |
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| Originally posted by shaolin_Z The creation of the state of Israel is wrong to begin with as it involves ethnicaly cleansing the indigenous Palestianian population of the region to do it, which uhh... anyone would have to do with out their consent ofcourse. Illegaly military occupation and expansion via annexing Palestinian land (i.e. theft) and building settlements is wrong. Complaining about armed resistance from a small faction of a persecuted and displaced indigenous population from their ancestoral homeland of centuires, regardless of what form it takes, is just downright pathetic, hypocritical, and cowardly. |
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| Originally posted by Jake Benson Let's pretend what you said is true... |
Just to put some perspective.
Antisemitism (which means anti-jews, thats just the definition of the term, Arabs, you will have to put up with a new term Islamophobia if you like. Jews didn't make up the term antisemitism, it just is what it is, and its no use fighting against a definition of a word) is overused a lot. Especially when relating to Israel.
However, this would be a good example why it is so overused.
First we must note Israel is a JEWISH NATION. The only one in the world. Therefore if one is Anti-Israel, they must treat the Israeli nation on par to all other nations of the world. If one choses to criticize its crime, it must not neglect the crims of other nations of the world.
However, if one is anti-semitic, he can criticize Israel soley for its existence with no need to compare it to other nations. Israel is a bad nation because it is a Jewish nation. This is where most people fundamentally disagree with Israel: they do not believe in its right to exist as a Jewish state.
Some of this might be an anti-religious stance (although I've never heard those who believe Denmark has no right to exist as a Protestant nation, and Iran has no right to exist as a Muslim nation).
One could argue that they are against the formation of a nation which displaces others: But then again I have heard only muted criticisms of Kosovo's displacement of ethnic Serbs, or the Russians displacement of Muslim Chechens, Turkey's displacement of Kurds, Iran's displacement of Sunnis, Albanian Muslim's displacement of orthodox Albanians, and on and on...
In this regard, the British Academics are very close to being anti-semtic as the columnist identified none of them have boycotted Iranian, North Korean, or Sudanese universities.
Being anti-semitic can be in two regards: both holding up Jews as to a higher standard than the rest of humanity; and putting Jews below that standard of humanity.
edit: grammer corrections
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| Originally posted by Yoepus Just to put some perspective. Antisemitism (which means anti-jews, thats just the definition of the term, Arabs, you will have to put up with a new term Islamophobia if you like. Jews didn't make up the term antisemitism, it just is what it is, and its no use fighting against a definition of a word) is overused a lot. Especially when relating to Israel. However, this would be a good example why it is so overused. First we must note Israel is a JEWISH NATION. The only one in the world. Therefore if one is Anti-Israel, they must treat the Israeli nation on par to all other nations of the world. If one choses to criticize its crime, it must not neglect the crims of other nations of the world. However, if one is anti-semitic, he can criticize Israel soley for its existence with no need to compare it to other nations. Israel is a bad nation because it is a Jewish nation. This is where most people fundamentally disagree with Israel: they do not believe in its right to exist as a Jewish state. Some of this might be an anti-religious stance (although I've never heard those who believe Denmark has no right to exist as a Protestant nation, and Iran has no right to exist as Muslim nation). Once could argue that they are against the formation of a nation which displays others: But then again I have heard only muted criticisms of Kosovo's displacement of ethnic Serbs, or the Russians displacement of Muslim Chechens, Turkey's displacement of Kurds, Iran's displacement of Sunnis, Albanian muslims displacement of orthodox Albanians, and on and on... In this regard, the British Academics are very close to being anti-semtic as the columnist identified none of them have boycotted Iranian, North Korean, or Sudanese universities. Being anti-semitic can be in two regards: both holding up Jews as to a higher standard than the rest of humanity; and putting Jews below that standard of humanity. |
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| Originally posted by shaolin_Z It's true. You can stop pretending now, you don't need to. |
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Six days fuelled 40 years of fighting MARK MACKINNON AND CAROLYNNE WHEELER From Monday's Globe and Mail June 4, 2007 at 4:54 AM EDT ...Yet, 40 years on, there is still room for some hope: Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert is meeting Palestinian Authority president Mahmoud Abbas this week. It is widely expected their meeting will be in Jericho, the first time an Israeli prime minister has agreed to meet in the territories. As the extremists become more extreme, opinion polling inside the West Bank and inside Israel reflects the confusion in the public's mind. Nearly 60 per cent of Palestinians surveyed in April said they would support a peace settlement with Israel, though only 22 per cent believe there is a partner for peace in Israel, and only about half called for Hamas to change its position on the destruction of Israel. On the Israeli side, support for the Oslo Accord has dropped dramatically in the past decade - to 35.8 per cent last month compared with 50.9 per cent at the same time in 1997 - yet nearly half of Israelis still support attempts at negotiation. And there are new talks on the horizon, tentative efforts at bringing a limited Arab League delegation into negotiation with Israeli officials on the 2002 Arab Peace Initiative, which would give Israel recognition and normalized relations with signatory Arab states in exchange for a return to pre-1967 borders, the establishment of a Palestinian state with East Jerusalem as its capital, and a "just" solution for refugees. As a result, the Arab League flag (albeit honouring only diplomats from Egypt and Jordan, which already have peace treaties with Israel) is expected to fly alongside the Israeli Star of David during a meeting in Jerusalem in coming weeks. |
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| Originally posted by Fir3start3r That map is overrated... |
Reality is overrated huh? LOL, ok.| quote: |
| Originally posted by Fir3start3r Some good news looks to be on the horizon for everybody though. Here's a snippet... (Certainly read the whole thing though as it gives some good backgroud on the whole situation). |
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| Originally posted by shaolin_Z LOL, that doesn't even make any sense, "overrated." Reality is overrated huh? LOL, ok.I've given plenty of that, and dispelled all your BS progadanda. And I even when as far back as ancient Canaan (i.e. Palestine) to clear up historical myths of Jewish persecution and expulsion by Arabs, unless you think Romans and Byzantinians are Arabs. |
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Six days fuelled 40 years of fighting MARK MACKINNON AND CAROLYNNE WHEELER From Monday's Globe and Mail June 4, 2007 at 4:54 AM EDT SHATILA REFUGEE CAMP, LEBANON AND JORDAN VALLEY, WEST BANK � Forty years ago, as Israeli troops thrust into the West Bank en route to smashing the combined Arab armies, a miserable mass of 250,000 people picked up what they could of their belongings and headed, on foot, for relative safety across the Jordan River. Swept up in that tide were two 11-year-old boys. One, whose family fled their home on the outskirts of Ramallah for faraway Kuwait, was named Khaled Meshaal. The other, whose family had already been living in a refugee camp near Jericho since the 1948 war that created the state of Israel, was named Shaker al-Abssi. The war lasted only six days, but the violence has yet to end and lasting peace remains elusive. Over subsequent decades, both boys would live in a succession of the refugee camps that are home to many of the 4.9 million Palestinians scattered across the Middle East. The two boys grew into 51-year-old men who adopted radical, violent interpretations of Islam and are consumed by their hatred for Israel. Mr. Meshaal is head of Hamas, the hard-line Islamist movement whose politicians control the Palestinian Authority even as its militants lob rockets into Israel from its base in the Gaza Strip. Related Articles Recent * Five takes on Six Days The Globe and Mail Mr. al-Abssi is head of Fatah al-Islam, an al-Qaeda inspired group that even Hamas considers radical and that has fought the Lebanese army for the past two weeks from its base inside one of that country's 12 Palestinian refugee camps. Neither man has returned to the Palestinian territories since leaving it as a child in 1967. Their anger is fed, in part, by extremists of a different kind: the hard-line Jewish settlers who believe the West Bank is part of a God-given birthright known as Eretz Israel, and who have done their best to block all attempts at withdrawal and negotiation, even as the Israeli public as a whole has grown accustomed to the idea of a two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. In military terms, the war that lasted from June 5 to June 10, 1967, was one of the shortest and most decisive conflicts ever. But peace never followed, and during Israel's four decade-long occupation of the West Bank, the fighting has rarely ceased. "It's now clear that 1967 was not the end of the war. The conflict is still very heavy and very alive," says Diaa Rashwan, an expert on militant Islam at the Cairo-based Al-Ahram Center for Political & Strategic Studies. The unsolved issues of June, 1967 - predominantly the occupation of Palestinian lands and the refugee crisis - led to the 1973 Arab-Israeli war and Israel's 1978 and 1982 invasions of Lebanon, as well as the creation of groups such as Hamas and Lebanon's Hezbollah, he says. Resistance to Israel's presence in the West Bank, Gaza Strip and Syria's Golan Heights has morphed over time, with leftist guerrilla movements such as Yasser Arafat's mainstream Fatah organization and the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine increasingly sidelined by Islamist movements such as Hamas and Islamic Jihad. The Palestinian cause is both inspiration and an effective recruiting tool for jihadi groups such as al-Qaeda, which have spread violence around the region and the world. The abysmal conditions in the refugee camps - a situation perpetuated by Arab governments unwilling to absorb the refugees - have also created several generations of angry youths who in many cases have grown into fighters willing to die for Palestine. "Without a real solution to the refugee issue, you will see much more extremism and war in the Middle East," Mr. Rashwan predicted. One place that both Mr. Meshaal and Mr. al-Abssi are known to have spent time is the labyrinthine Shatila refugee camp on the edge of the Lebanese capital, Beirut. Home to about 12,000 officially registered Palestinian refugees and up to 8,000 more unregistered Palestinian and Lebanese residents, it's a place where the sun is obscured by an overhead thicket of water pipes and electricity cables and where children grow up to build their home on top of their parents' because Palestinians in Lebanon have no right to own land elsewhere. It's also a hotbed of militancy. Portraits of Yasser Arafat, Saddam Hussein and Hamas founder Sheikh Ahmed Yassin hang alongside photographs of Jerusalem's golden Dome of the Rock, a place that people here under the age of 40 have never seen with their own eyes. Stars of David are drawn on the narrow alleyways so that pedestrians must step on the symbol of the Jewish state as they go about their daily business. The path to militancy for Mr. Meshaal and Mr. al-Abssi began with their initial flight from home. Mr. al-Abssi's family were refugees first in 1948, fleeing a small village near Hebron for the Ain al-Sultan refugee camp on the edge of Jericho in the Jordan Valley. Built in the shadow of the Mount of Temptation, first with tents and later with mud-and-thatch huts, the camp's population had swollen to around 30,000 people by Mr. al-Abssi's 11th birthday. On the morning of June 5, 1967, they awoke to a flood of people pouring south from Bethlehem and Ramallah. Within two days, the refugee camp was virtually empty. In the months that followed, a few hundred refugees trickled back, hiking for days through the desert. Today, 4,000 people live in the camp's narrow streets; the bare concrete homes have running water, but unemployment is high and so is despair. Most here reject Mr. al-Abssi's actions, but his sympathizers are growing in number. "Even though his life was difficult, even though they had to flee their home, still this is no excuse to act the way Fatah al-Islam is acting," says the camp's mukhtar, or leader, Ibrahim Abu Sharar. "There is great worry that [extremism] will come to us. It is seeping in from outside." At first glance, the Jordan Valley - its northern half in Israel, the south in the West Bank - is a tranquil place, the pace of farming life slowed to a crawl by intense heat most of the year. The Jewish settlements here were begun in the first years after the Six-Day War, under a plan designed to secure the border with Jordan at a time when it was still an enemy state. Hardy ideologues from across Israel built moshavs and kibbutzim - communal and co-operative farms - for 100 or 200 people around army posts; the Jordan Valley now produces $120-million (U.S.) in agricultural exports each year, or about 10 per cent of all Israeli agricultural exports. Unlike West Bank cities of Nablus and Jenin, so often the source of suicide bombers in the past and still frequently the target of raids by Israeli soldiers, the Jewish settlements and Palestinian towns here still have a symbiotic relationship through these enormous agricultural operations, producing bananas and grapes, peppers and tomatoes, fresh herbs and milk products. But there is no question of who is in control: Backed by generous state funding when these settlements were set up in the 1970s, the Israelis have the largest date plantations, the most sophisticated greenhouses, the biggest dairy distribution networks, and control over most of the limited water resources. And the Palestinians, many of them frustrated by their inability to get to their farmland, to irrigate their parched earth or to take their goods to market, have had to give up their own farms to work for the settlements. "The young men here are as angry as any in Palestine. But because we are surrounded by settlements, we are in a little prison. We would like to do something, but we can do nothing," says Abed-Rahman Salim Ghneim, leaning back in a chair in his small shop in the Arab village of Fasayel. He waits to speak until after the Israeli manager of a nearby date-palm plantation leaves the shop. "I would call them colonizers. They have come into my house, they have come into my land," Mr. Ghneim says. "My five-year-old son the other day was playing with a bottle cap," he continues. "He said, 'This is my Molotov, I'm going to point it at the Jews.' ... We have no houses, no land, no water, and no opportunity to farm." And what of the next generation? "My son will be a suicide bomber." A stone's throw from the edge of the village is the settlement of Tomer, its outlines marked by razor-wire fence and emerald-green grass. "We have no problem with that [Arab] village there," says Motti Adato, 54, who has lived here 30 years, almost since its founding. "They want to live like us. They work here with us." But that village and this settlement, he says, must be part of Israel, a passionate statement fed by a lifetime of Zionism and the pain of losing a child to his enemy. His daughter, a soldier in uniform, was stabbed to death just outside the moshav eight years ago as she got off a bus, by a Palestinian from Jenin. "If there will be a Palestinian state, there won't be an Israel because there is no place here for both people. There is a place for the Palestinian people - in Jordan," Mr. Adato says. If a two-state solution ever were to come to pass, these settlements would almost certainly be removed. Many settlers are willing to go in exchange for peace and compensation. But such a withdrawal would, many believe, be even more dramatic than that done from Gaza two summers back. "There is no Jewish people without the land of Israel. If I'm a Jew, then Judea [biblical West Bank] is mine. Practically no Arabs lived here. They have enough states and they can go to them. This is our land," says Tzafrir Ronen, a one-time campaign adviser to former Israeli prime minister Yitzhak Rabin. Mr. Ronen rejected the Labour movement as anti-Zionist after the 1994 Oslo Accord. He now leads a campaign to expand Israeli settlement. There is no situation, he says, in which he and his supporters could accept a Palestinian state. "Never. I will fight it as long as I live." Yet, 40 years on, there is still room for some hope: Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert is meeting Palestinian Authority president Mahmoud Abbas this week. It is widely expected their meeting will be in Jericho, the first time an Israeli prime minister has agreed to meet in the territories. As the extremists become more extreme, opinion polling inside the West Bank and inside Israel reflects the confusion in the public's mind. Nearly 60 per cent of Palestinians surveyed in April said they would support a peace settlement with Israel, though only 22 per cent believe there is a partner for peace in Israel, and only about half called for Hamas to change its position on the destruction of Israel. On the Israeli side, support for the Oslo Accord has dropped dramatically in the past decade - to 35.8 per cent last month compared with 50.9 per cent at the same time in 1997 - yet nearly half of Israelis still support attempts at negotiation. And there are new talks on the horizon, tentative efforts at bringing a limited Arab League delegation into negotiation with Israeli officials on the 2002 Arab Peace Initiative, which would give Israel recognition and normalized relations with signatory Arab states in exchange for a return to pre-1967 borders, the establishment of a Palestinian state with East Jerusalem as its capital, and a "just" solution for refugees. As a result, the Arab League flag (albeit honouring only diplomats from Egypt and Jordan, which already have peace treaties with Israel) is expected to fly alongside the Israeli Star of David during a meeting in Jerusalem in coming weeks. "In the past, we didn't know the price [of peace]. And now we know," says Israeli politician Yossi Beilin, a leftist parliamentarian deeply involved in both the Oslo Accord and Geneva Initiative attempts at a two-state solution. "Of course, the picture of violence is making it much more difficult to be optimistic right now," he says. But he believes extremist movements may hasten the very peace process they are trying to block, as moderate governments look over their shoulders and realize time for negotiation is running out, "undoubtedly," he says, "because of the fear." Carolynne Wheeler is a freelance reporter based in Jerusalem Timeline of the war May 9-13, 1967: Against a backdrop of rhetoric against Israel by its Arab neighbours, false Soviet intelligence reports reach Egyptian President Gamal Abdel Nasser, indicating that Israel was massing forces in preparation for an attack on Syria. Palestinian guerrilla attacks on Israel from bases in Syria lead to increased hostility between the two countries, and Syria, fearing that an imminent invasion by Israel, appeals to Egypt for support. May 16: Egypt requests removal of the United Nations Emergency Force from the Sinai Peninsula and the Gaza Strip, and within a week, deploys between 50,000 and 80,000 troops in the Sinai. May 16-19: Israel orders partial and then total mobilization of its army. May 22: Egypt closes the Strait of Tiran, gateway to the Red Sea, to Israeli shipping and the passage of all strategic material, cutting off Israel's oil supply. May 23: Under pressure from the United States, Israel postpones military action and sends foreign minister Abba Eban to the United States, Britain and France on a diplomatic mission. U.S. President Lyndon Johnson, French President Charles de Gaulle and UN Secretary-General U Thant all propose possible options for defusing the crisis. May 30: Jordan signs a mutual defence pact with Egypt, a treaty that in the days before the outbreak of war comprises all of Israel's neighbours with the exception of Lebanon. June 2: Moshe Dayan - who with chief of staff Yitzhak Rabin would direct military operations in the war - joins the Israeli cabinet as minister of defence. June 5: Israel launches attacks against air bases in Egypt, Syria and Jordan, destroying 80 per cent of their warplanes on the ground. June 6: Israel's conquest of Gaza is completed and a general retreat ordered for the Egyptian army. June 7: Jordan orders a general retreat of its legion from the West Bank as Israeli forces stormed the Old City of Jerusalem, taking possession of the Western Wall and Temple Mount. Israeli units reach the eastern end of the passes guarding the Suez Canal and are still advancing. Other Israeli formations drive eastward across the West Bank to the Jordan River, repelling Jordanian counterattacks. June 8: The entire Sinai comes under Israeli control; fighting on the Egyptian front ceases. June 9: Confident of victory and after four days of Syrian artillery fire on northern Israeli communities, Israel decides to seize the Golan Heights from Syria. Troops rushed from other fronts, scale the Golan escarpment and overrun the Syrian defences. June 10: Israeli forces drive across the plateau, seizing the town of Kuneitra as Syrian forces flee. That night, Israeli soldiers stand on the bank of the Suez Canal, in possession of all of Sinai, Jerusalem, the West Bank and Golan. Having achieved its aims, Israel says it is prepared to accept the ceasefire that the UN had been struggling for days to impose. The UN set a ceasefire at 1630 GMT after Israel and Syria agreed to position UN observers on both sides of the front line at Kuneitra, 14 kilometres inside Syria, and at Tiberias, on the Israeli side. Sources: Middle East Journal, Daily Telegraph Key figures EGYPTIAN PRESIDENT GAMAL ABDUL NASSER: He dominated the popular imagination of the Arab masses, embodying the dream of a pan-Arab nation stretching from the Atlantic to the Persian Gulf. So when, on May 27, in the buildup to the war, he declared, "Our basic objective will be the destruction of Israel," his stature, already high, soared. "He was elevated to almost a god-like status overnight and politically it seemed like a good bargain," Michael Oren, author of Six Days of War, said. "The bad news was he wasn't counting on Israel striking back militarily." Mr. Nasser took responsibility for the humiliating defeat of Egypt's forces and resigned, but thousands of people took to the streets demanding his return. He remained in power until his death in 1970. ISRAELI PRESIDENT LEVI ESHKOL: In spite of the mounting pressure on Israel in the spring of 1967, Mr. Eshkol initially opposed a pre-emptive strike against Israel's Arab enemies - pressured by the United States to hold off and reassured that U.S. measures to lessen tensions were under way. He eventually gave in to hawks within the Israeli Defence Forces only after a threat by some parties to quit Israel's fragile governing coalition. But the waiting period had allowed Israel to prepare for action and to justify its position to the world. So when war did break out, the army was ready and Israel's actions earned sympathy in European and Washington. He died in office in February, 1969. ISRAELI DEFENCE MINISTER MOSHE DAYAN: Already a war hero after his country's 1956 victory over Egypt, the charismatic Moshe Dayan was brought in as defence minister to organize and fight the war. He immediately made a series of public declarations that war could be avoided, while secretly planning a massive pre-emptive strike against the Arab enemy. The overwhelming success of the military campaign made him a legend, and he was on the cover of Time magazine's June 16 edition. But in 1973, Dayan, like other Israelis, was confounded when Egypt and Syria surprised Israel with an attack that carried them across the Suez Canal. The Yom Kippur War devastated Israeli forces. The government resigned and Mr. Dayan went into political exile. JORDAN'S KING HUSSEIN: Under pressure from Jordan's rapidly growing Palestinian population, King Hussein made what many historians believe was his biggest mistake: He joined forces with Egypt in the Six-Day War against Israel in 1967 despite the misgivings of his military advisers. Jordan lost the West Bank and East Jerusalem, one of Islam's holiest cities. The West Bank was Jordan's top agricultural region, and the war cost the king his entire air force and 15,000 troops. Five months later, Hussein helped draft UN Resolution 242, which called on Israel to return those occupied territories in return for an Arab guarantee of its right to exist within secure borders. The idea of "peace for territory" in the Israeli conflict was born. Sources: BBC, CNN, NPR, Answers.com, Ynet News, research.haifa.ac.il TOO YOUNG FOR FEAR Yishai Ben Tsedek was just 13 when the Six-Day War broke out, too young to fight, and not yet old enough to be afraid when Jordanian tanks were rumoured to be rumbling toward Tel Aviv. "We were just children - we weren't scared," says the 53-year-old chairman of the Gilgal settlement, a Tel Aviv native who moved to the Jordan Valley in the early 1970s in a drive to shore up the Israeli presence against Jordan. "In the period before the war we filled up bags of sand to put around the house for protection. We prepared the bomb shelters. And after the war started there were sirens in the city, and we would go down into the shelter," Mr. Ben Tsedek remembers. "The truth is the Jordanians weren't that far from Tel Aviv, it was 20 kilometres, and they used long-range artillery. The mortars fell not far from where I lived." But, strangely, the mortars were reassuring to the frightened families in their bunkers - because nothing was falling from the sky. Israeli warplanes had wiped out the Egyptian and Jordanian air fleets in night raids. "The whole country knew by 8 a.m. they had no air force and the war was over." Six days later, when the fighting stopped, the mood in the country was euphoric, the generals Ariel Sharon and Moshe Dayan heroes. Thousands streamed into Jerusalem to see the Western Wall and the conquered territory. "We got excited - but for nothing, really. We didn't understand what it meant from the point of view of security, of diplomacy. We understood we had a bigger country and we defeated the Arabs who wanted to destroy us." Carolynne Wheeler, Gilgal, West Bank Special to The Globe and Mail 'THE WAY OF THE GUN' Ibrahim Abu Mohammed has never seen the Palestinian territories with his own eyes, but the place consumes him nonetheless. He spends his days and nights in a grubby militia office in the Shatila refugee camp in Lebanon, staring at a map on which Israel doesn't exist. Mr. Abu Mohammed's mother was eight months pregnant with him when the family fled the West Bank city of Hebron on June 7, 1967, just before Israeli soldiers entered the biblical city. Many Palestinian residents fled in a panic that day, fearing that the Israelis would take revenge for the 1929 massacre of part of the city's Jewish population. Mr. Abu Mohammed says his mother carried with her only a jug of water as the family headed on foot for the east bank of the Jordan River. It was a journey that launched him on a lifetime of militancy fuelled by his hatred of Israel. Born in Jordan, his family moved to Syria, and then to Lebanon, passing through four different refugee camps before he finally settled in cramped Shatila, on the edge of Beirut. As his 40th birthday approaches, the gruff, bearded fighter is the local head of a Fatah al-Intifada, a small, Syrian-backed militant group that in the 1980s broke away from Yasser Arafat's mainstream Fatah movement and is sworn to Israel's violent destruction. Sitting in an office stuffed with Kalashnikov rifles and rocket-propelled grenade launchers, Mr. Abu Mohammed speaks of "liberating all Palestine, from the north to the south, from the river to the sea." Nodding at a younger fighter in the room, Mr. Abu Mohammed says that each generation that grows up in exile will be more radical than the last. "Palestinians have been humiliated and have waited a long time," he says, attacking moderate Palestinian leaders such as Mahmoud Abbas who have tried to reach a peaceful settlement with Israel. "The next generation will know only the way of the gun." Mark MacKinnon, Shatila refugee camp, Lebanon |
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| Originally posted by shaolin_Z The creation of the state of Israel is wrong to begin with as it involves ethnicaly cleansing the indigenous Palestianian population of the region to do it, which uhh... anyone would have to do with out their consent ofcourse. Illegaly military occupation and expansion via annexing Palestinian land (i.e. theft) and building settlements is wrong. Complaining about armed resistance from a small faction of a persecuted and displaced indigenous population from their ancestoral homeland of centuires, regardless of what form it takes, is just downright pathetic, hypocritical, and cowardly. |
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| Originally posted by shaolin_Z It's true. You can stop pretending now, you don't need to. |
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| Originally quoted by Fir3start3r Is Israel an Apartheid State? |
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| Originally posted by Fir3start3r Is that so? Maybe you can explain this then? Is Israel an Apartheid State? |
Shaolin's "knowledge" of the holocaust is very twisted. It was mostly ASHKENAZI Jews who were slaughtered. In fact, 6.24 million of them, and guess what - they were semites. Being a Jew means you belong to the semite tribes, which includes Jews and the people of the Middle East (Arabs). The Sephradic Jews are the Jews who have lived in the Middle East and didn't migrate to Europe. The term anti-semitism in modern times (especially the 19th and 20th centuries) is mainly used to describe hatred towards the Jews.
As for Palestine, it was the name of a country ruled by big empires but was never really controlled by the Arabic tribes who migrated to that part of the world a millenia or so ago. The previous "owners" of the land, the British, decided to split the country up in two back in 1948 but that wasn't good enough for the Arabic population in and around Israel. They couldn't fathom the idea of a Jewish state back on the map of the Middle East even though Mohamad, their prophet, based most of his religion on Judaism. So if anything, you can say the Arab world lost out to that land rather then the "Palestinians". Arab countries finally gained their independence in the first half of the 20th Century and yet all they could do at first was pick fights with each other, align themselves with the U.S.S.R, and blame everything on Israel.
Israel is here to stay. Deal with it already and let it go.
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| Originally posted by CHRles Shaolin's "knowledge" of the holocaust is very twisted. It was mostly ASHKENAZI Jews who were slaughtered. In fact, 6.24 million of them, and guess what - they were semites. Being a Jew means you belong to the semite tribes, which includes Jews and the people of the Middle East (Arabs). The Sephradic Jews are the Jews who have lived in the Middle East and didn't migrate to Europe. The term anti-semitism in modern times (especially the 19th and 20th centuries) is mainly used to describe hatred towards the Jews. As for Palestine, it was the name of a country ruled by big empires but was never really controlled by the Arabic tribes who migrated to that part of the world a millenia or so ago. The previous "owners" of the land, the British, decided to split the country up in two back in 1948 but that wasn't good enough for the Arabic population in and around Israel. They couldn't fathom the idea of a Jewish state back on the map of the Middle East even though Mohamad, their prophet, based most of his religion on Judaism. So if anything, you can say the Arab world lost out to that land rather then the "Palestinians". Arab countries finally gained their independence in the first half of the 20th Century and yet all they could do at first was pick fights with each other, align themselves with the U.S.S.R, and blame everything on Israel. Israel is here to stay. Deal with it already and let it go. |
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| Originally posted by venomX Where did our thread starter go? He seems to have disappeared. |
. I got kind of sick of Zionist apologists that refuse to acknowledge the root cause of the issue or the countless international crimes commited by the Apartheid state of Israel, which are obviously illegal expansion, ethnic cleansing, human rights violations, and a brutal military occupation. They pretty much don't acknowledge or adress any of it, including the validity of splitting up Palestine in the first place. It's pointless argueing with total hypocrites that refuse to have a single standard when it comes to elementary morality. So that's one reason I haven't really posted in a while about this issue, plus I had other things to take care of being up to my neck in bills after my motorcycle accident.
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