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What Good is Winning the Wars if you Lose the Peace?
[Mr. LeVine is professor of modern Middle Eastern history, culture, and Islamic studies at the University of California, Irvine, and author of the forthcoming books: Heavy Metal Islam: Rock Religion and the Struggle for the Soul of Islam (Random House/Three Rivers Press, July 8, 2008), and An Impossible Peace: Oslo and the Burdens of History (Zed Books, in press). He is also author of Why They Don't Hate Us: Lifting the Veil on the Axis of Evil (Oneworld Publications, 2005), and Overthrowing Geography: Jaffa, Tel Aviv and the Struggle for Palestine, 1880-1948 (California, 2005), and co-editor of Reapproaching Borders: New Perspectives on the Study of Israel-Palestine (Rowman Littlefield, 2007), Religion, Social Practices and Contested Hegemonies: Reconstructing the Public Sphere in Muslim Majority Societies (Palgrave, 2005) and with Viggo Mortensen and Pilar Perez, of Twilight of Empire: Responses to Occupation. Click here to access his homepage.]
On a flight home from a lecture at the University of Arizona on the eve of the Jewish holiday of Passover, I happened to sit next to an elderly woman whose accent, along with the Hebrew prayer card in her hand, suggested she was Israeli.
Our conversation during the flight epitomised the obstacles that continue to block a peaceful resolution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
The woman was born in Poland and had lived through the Holocaust.
"Even sixty years later it's like a dream you can't believe," she explained when I asked her if she had still been in Poland when the war began.
"You arrive and they send you immediately to the showers; you never knew which shower it was - to clean you up or gas you."
After surviving Auschwitz, she was imprisoned in two more concentration camps, and then sent to a munitions factory in Germany later bombed by the Soviets.
"We were running through the streets alongside animals who escaped from the zoo next door when it was bombed. We were pulling the flesh off the burned animals because we were so hungry. It was like a barbecue."
Somehow, she managed to survive these horrors, as well as one of the infamous "death marches" that preceded the war's end, only to face a pogrom when she returned to her village in Poland in 1946. After these attacks, her remaining family fled Poland.
"Those who could, went to the United States, the rest went to Palestine."
The women's story is almost surreal in its horror. But such stories have been seared into Israel's collective identity. These memories are so powerful that even though few Israelis today lived through the Holocaust, they are a crucial reason why the possibility of peace with Palestinians remains so elusive.
It does not matter to the collective Israeli psyche that there has been a generation of peace with Egypt, a decade-and-a half with Jordan, and strong relations with Turkey and Morocco.
Nor does it matter that there is declared acceptance of Israel's existence by most Arab states. When the subject of the peace process inevitably came up in our conversation, my companion asked me incredulously: "Do you think they [Arabs] will just let us live?"
This psychology has not just made peace hard for Israelis to believe in, but by reinforcing the Israeli/Jewish sense of besiegement it has helped ensure the futility of Palestinian resistance - especially violent opposition - against the occupation.
It has also enabled the use of "security" considerations to justify an occupation which has had little to do with security, and everything to do with cementing Jewish control over as much of Israel's biblical heartland as possible.
But it is not only the collective memory of the Holocaust, along with the nature of Palestinian resistance to the occupation, that has helped produce a high level of fear and distrust in the Israeli psyche.
As important is the moral and historical schizophrenia which stem from the reality that Israel was born out of the displacement of 750,000 Palestinian Arabs.
It matters little that the overwhelming body of scholarship on the Palestinian refugee problem, much of it by produced by Israeli scholars, accepts that Palestinians were made refugees by the deliberate actions of a Zionist/Israeli leadership.
Whether it was newly emptied Palestinian homes in Jaffa filled with Jewish refugees or national parks being established on the rubble of entire Galilee villages, the specter of Palestine Lost so haunts Israel's national psyche that it takes an unceasing process of willful forgetting to ensure the continued erasure of Palestinians from the Israeli landscape.
Despite all its accomplishments, its military and economic might, superpower patronage, and acceptance across most of the region, Israel's sense of rootedness remains fragile.
So fragile, in fact, that to entertain the idea of culpability in the creation of the Palestinian refugee problem - the "original sin" that made Israel's establishment as an overwhelmingly Jewish majority state possible - would open a Pandora's box of self-doubt and recrimination that would threaten its viability as a "democratic Jewish state" today.
Other settler colonial societies have faced similar dilemmas. But while the successful "extermination" of the native populations of the United States (to use historian Benny Morris's terminology) made possible an open and confident American nationalism, the ethnic cleansing of Palestine's non-Jewish population was never completed.
The continued presence of millions of Palestinians within and next to Israel has made it very hard for Israelis to feel confident in their control of the land.
Today, the non-Jewish population of mandate Palestine has achieved a rough parity with the Jewish population. Potentially more threatening to the Jewish identity of the state, according to some Israeli scholars, is that within a generation Palestinian citizens of Israel will come perilously close to outnumbering their Jewish compatriots.
If and when that moment arrives, Israel's existence as both a Jewish and democratic state will end.
Yet in a certain sense, the Jewish-but-democratic equation has always been a paradox imperfectly resolved. Even during the best of times, Israel has never been a fully democratic state, except for Jews of European descent.
Jews from Middle Eastern countries were excluded from the reins of political and economic power until relatively recently and have yet to achieve parity with Ashkenazis. Palestinian citizens lived under military rule until 1966; and though they have guaranteed equal political rights and can serve in the armed forces (which most Bedouin and Druze, but few Palestinians do), they remain legally and institutionally discriminated against.
This is no more evident than the crucial issues of access to land and public resources, while suffering regular surveillance and harassment by Israel's security services.
If Palestinian citizens do not live equally under the law, then Israel cannot accurately be referred to as the "Middle East's only western-style democracy".
A more accurate description of Israel would be that it is an "ethnocracy," a formally democratic state where ethnicity and religion legally determine the degree of access to the full benefits of citizenship.
The "democracy" description becomes more problematic when the reality of Israel's de facto sovereignty over the Occupied Territories during the last 40 is taken into account.
Since 1967, and even during the Oslo years (1993-2000), the Israeli government has controlled every major aspect of Palestinian life without granting the inhabitants of the West Bank and Gaza any political, civil, economic or cultural rights, effectively disenfranchising them for two generations.
One of the reasons for the failure of Oslo was that Israel retained almost full control over the Palestinian economy, borders, resources and security despite the establishment of a veneer of democracy with the Palestinian Authority and the Legislative Council.
The sheer inertia of the occupation's massive institutional and geographical infrastructure, coupled with the gnawing fear that even if peace were possible today Israel would remain vulnerable to the demographic time bomb tomorrow, helps explain why Israel intensified rather than dismantled the infrastructure of the occupation.
It doubled the settler population, widely expanding the area of Palestinian land under its control while continuing to destroy the foundations of Palestinian agriculture by seizing land, uprooting countless trees, and destroying thousands of homes.
In the minds of many Israeli leaders, peace was ultimately a mirage that would vanish into renewed existential conflict the moment it was reached.
None of this should come as a surprise to Israelis or analysts of the conflict. A generation ago, Israeli geographer Meron Benvenisti warned Israelis (in his widely publicised 1987 West Bank Data Base Project report) that Israel and the Occupied Territories were already too intertwined geographically, economically and economically to ever separate them again.
As important as Benvenisti's recognition of the depth of the Israeli occupation by the 1980s was his realisation that the goals of successive Israeli governments never included annexing the whole of the West Bank.
Rather, "the Israeli body-politic is precisely where it wants to stay. The present, fluid, amorphic situation is preferable and suits everybody. A better method than 'annexation' has been found to integrate and segregate at the same time: to integrate the territories for Israeli interests ... and segregate the Palestinian population to avoid any burdens (citizenship, extension of Israeli welfare system, free political expression)."
These are among the most prescient words ever written about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, and they reveal that half a decade before Oslo, Israel had already achieved its primary objectives in the settlement process. Israeli leaders had found a formula to maintain permanent control over the desired areas of the West Bank without fomenting overwhelming Palestinian opposition.
But if Israel's negotiating strategy during Oslo mirrored the older strategy of drawing out negotiations until facts on the ground made Palestinian independence on any terms but Israel's impossible, the reality is that in winning the war, Israel lost its chance for peace.
The minimum requirements for establishing a viable Palestinian state - dismantling most of the settlement infrastructure to allow territorial contiguity in the West Bank (including East Jerusalem), full Palestinian control over their economy, and (at the very least) an honest accounting of Israel's role in the creation of the Palestinian refugee problem - can no longer be met.
Quite simply, doing so would entail a far higher political, social and economic cost than would the continuation of the occupation, with its manageable level of violence.
This reality has cast a pall over the community of Israeli and Palestinian scholars who have devoted much of the last two decades trying to envision scenarios for a peaceful resolution to the conflict.
A little over five years ago, at the height of the al-Aqsa intifada, most of my colleagues on both sides of the Green Line remained convinced that a two-state solution was the only viable solution to the conflict, even as many supported the principle of a bi-national state.
Today, the consensus is clearly that conditions for a two-state solution no longer exist. But at the same time a workable binational option seems equally implausible to envision in the near future.
"Maybe in 50-60 years," one Palestinian colleague mused when I spoke to him recently; precisely when the demographic balance is tipped far in the Palestinians' favour.
Now the conflict is entering its seventh decade, can it ever be resolved?
For sure, the fraying of the multi-ethnic and religious fabrics of Lebanon and Iraq do not offer much hope for a shared Israel/Palestine.
Yet despite the odds, Palestinian and Israeli activists and scholars continue to imagine new scenarios for achieving peace, justice and democracy for both peoples.
Fifteen years after Shimon Peres announced the birth of a "New Middle East," in which national borders and identities would matter less than cultural capital and economic ingenuity, perhaps the best anyone can hope for is what Israeli geographer Oren Yiftachel describes as a "gradual binationalism".
This would then open up the space between the two and one-state solutions through a "reintegration of Israel-Palestine" - psychologically, as much as politically.
"Of course, this is an (almost) illusionary vision," Yiftachel is the first to admit. "I am not optimistic, but I feel it is important to continue and air options that people can imagine, and not succumb to the gloom and doom path of 'creeping apartheid' in which we are walking."
If the emerging generation of Israelis and Palestinians can begin to think outside the nationalist and religious framework that has doomed older generation to perpetual conflict, the vision of Yiftachel and his Israeli and Palestinian comrades could take root before the sheer weight of the occupation erodes whatever glimmer of hope for peaceful coexistence remains.
It is undoubtedly a long shot, but the alternative is violence on a scale that can no longer be managed by either side, with catastrophic results for Israel, Palestine, and the Middle East as a whole.
It is worth noting that the number of Palestinians killed by other Palestinians since the start of the first Intifada in the late 80s up to and including the present easily exceeds the number killed by Israelis. This reflects the often anarchic gang and clan warfare in Palestinian communities, but beyond that is due to the pervasive culture of violence and murder, and the actual praise of suicide while murdering others, as the summit of morality and spirituality amongst Palestinians both secular and religious. The people who have most suffered from Palestinian thuggery and nihilistic love of bloodshed are the Palestinians themselves, including in Palestinian communities throughout the Middle East, not just those in the Palestinian territories. It has nothing therefore to do with "colonialism." It has everything to do with Palestinian society, based as it is on traditional Arab "honor-and-shame" culture at its most dysfunctional.
Pauli J Ojala -
6/12/2008
Could you kindly comment, whether my details are correct in a dissident essay concerning the recent scaling up of production in the Israeli high Tech companies in: http://www.helsinki.fi/~pjojala/Expelled-Jews-statistics.htm ?
However, if you are only after Jihad against Eretz Israel by the means of media war after the conventional weapons were not succesful, please do not bother. I don't want to have anything to do with any holy war - wars are not holy. No matter if they are won or lost.
E.g. "...Before the Second Intifada, there were nearly 200 Israeli companies listed in the Nasdaq, at the Intifada the count dropped to 70. (The number is still greater than from all the European countries combined). It is said that the dollars are green since the Americans pull them down from the tree raw and fresh. The start-ups are imported straight from the garage, and scaling up of production in the "conflict hotspot" has been considered impossible. But the new Millennium has brought a change in tide.
As an example, the supranational Intel transferred the mass production of Centricon-processors to Israel, where ~20% of citizens possess university decrees (ranking 3rd in the world) but where the environment respects patents and are not plagiating every item they produce to others like the rocketting China. Intel was also offered an overall tax rate of 10%, which is about three times lower than that of US.
Also, the biggest generic drug factory in the world was recently established in Israel. Generating US$7 billion in annual revenues, Israel's Teva Pharmaceutical Industries Ltd. (TEVA) is the world's largest generic pharmaceutical company. That is: to cure people with less money. TEVA makes generic versions of brand-name antibiotics, heart drugs, heartburn medications, and more - in all close to 200 global generic products, 700 compounds, and more than 2800 dosage forms and formulations. TEVA's pharmaceuticals are used in some 20% of U.S. generic drug prescriptions. Examples of TEVA's generics include lower-cost equivalents of such blockbusters as anti-depressant Prozac and cholesterol drug Mevacor. Nevertheless, in biotechnology and original drug development, about 400 experimental Israeli drugs have been approved or accepted in clinical phases.
The population of Arabs under the Israeli government increased ten-fold in only 57 years. Palestinian life expectancy increased from 48 to 72 years in 1967-95. The death rate decreased by over 2/3 in 1970-90 and the Israeli medical campaigns decreased the child death rate from a level of 60 per 1000 in 1968 to 15 per 1000 in 2000 at the Westbank. (An analogous figure was 64 in Iraq, 40 in Egypt, 23 in Jordan, and 22 in Syria in 2000). During 1967-88 the amount of comprehensive schoold and second level polytechnic institutes for the Arabs was increased by 35%. During 1970-86 the proportion of Palestinian women at the West Bank and Gaza not having gone to school decreased from 67 % to 32 %. The Gross Domestic Product (GDP) per capita in West Bank and Gaza increased in 1968-1991 from 165 US dollars to 1715 dollars (compare with 1630$ in Turkey, 1440$ in Tunis, 1050$ in Jordan, 800$ in Syria, 600$ in Egypt. and 400$ in Yemen)..."
Recovering from hemorrhage in the left hemisphere of the brain, Pauli.Ojala@gmail.com, evolutionary critic
Biochemist, drop-out (MSci-Master of Sciing)
Helsinki, Finland
Ricardo Luis Rodriguez -
6/4/2008
It started at Medina
art eckstein -
5/31/2008
My no. 2, above should read:
2. As for permission to shoot at 12 year olds UNDER CERTAIN AND HIGHLY RESTRICTED CIRCUMSTANCES, it is well known that the terrorist groups use adolescents as fighters, including as suicide bombers. I can cite the specific cases. is the IDF not to defend itself? Note that these are all males. More than half the number of Israeli children killed (at PEACEFUL activities) were little girls.
[Again, Omar slanders the IDF with the charge of indiscriminate killing when the statistics themselves show this is a lie--out of 2800 Palestinians killed in the recent fighting, only THIRTY FIVE were women, whereas =THIRTY ONE PERCENT of Israeli deaths in the same period were women.
Meanwhile Omar promulgates a racist genocidal ideology that all Israelis, men, women and children, are not civilians but merely "civilians" in scare quotes, and thus "the primary target". This is doubly shameful when Omar the genocidal racist covers his own disgraceful ideology by falsely accusing the Israelis of what HIS side is intentionally guilty of.]
art eckstein -
5/31/2008
1. This has to do with people involved in actual fighting--either caught in crossfires or helping the enemy-- NOT with children on schoolbusses or at religious service. The problem is worsened by the INTENTIONAL terrorist tactic of intentionally hiding among the civilian population while attacking Israeli civilians, in order to use their own people as human shields OR to make propaganda if the IDF shoots back. We have discussed this at length. In such situations, the responsibility for civilian deaths rests SOLELY on the terrorists.
2. As for permission to shoot at 12 year olds and up, it is well known that the terrorist groups use adolescents as fighters, including as suicide bombers. I can cite the specific cases. is the IDF not to defend itself? Note that these are all males.
3. Child soldiers are used by Palestinians in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
a.
On May 23, 2005, Amnesty International reiterated its earlier calls to Palestinian armed groups to put an immediate end to the use of children in armed activities: "Palestinian armed groups must not use children under any circumstances to carry out armed attacks or to transport weapons or other material."
b.
Arab journalist Huda Al-Hussein wrote in London Arab newspaper on October 27, 2000: "While UN organizations save child-soldiers, especially in Africa, from the control of militia leaders who hurl them into the furnace of gang-fighting, some Palestinian leaders… consciously issue orders with the purpose of ending their childhood, even if it means their last breath."
c.
According to the Coalition to Stop the Use of Child Soldiers 2004 Global Report on the Use of Child Soldiers, there were at least NINE documented suicide attacks involving Palestinian minors between October 2000 and March 2004. Children are also used as messengers and couriers, and in some cases as fighters and suicide bombers in attacks on Israeli soldiers and civilians. All the main political groups involve children in this way, including Fatah, Hamas, Islamic Jihad, and the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine.
d.
Recruitment of children to fight as soldiers against Israelis has been documented in Palestinian school textbooks and the photographic record of Palestinian recruitment of children as soldiers, marching and training often with real machine guns, by the website project "InHonor.net" Recruitment also exists in the content of Palestinian children's television programming.
4. I have a colleague whose daughter is in the IDF: on border guard duty along the Egyptian border, she has been approached by Palestinian 12 year olds aiming what appeared to be guns at her. She has not shot them BECAUSE OF THE IDF CODE which protects civilians. A code which Omar lying asserts does not exist.
5. And just as the Palestinians USE children as soldiers--toa the point that internatonal gorups concerned with children's rights have protested, up to 2006, the number of Israeli children intentionally murdered by Palestinian terrorists was about 130.
6. Of these, children age 12-13 who have been INTENTIONALLY killed by Palestinian terrorists: 13, of whom seven were LITTLE GIRLS. None of them were child-soldiers or suicide bombers, Omar.
4. 9-11 year olds INTENTIONALLY murdered by Palestinian terrorists: six.
5. 5-8 year olds INTENTIONALLY murdered by Palestinian terrorists: 12, of whom 6 were LITTLE GIRLS.
6. 3-5 year olds INTENTIONALLY murdered by Palestinian terrorists: 10, of whom 9 were LITTLE GIRLS.
7. 1-2 year olds INTENTIONALLY murdered by Palestinian terrorists: 6, of whom 4 were LITTLE GIRLS.
8. Infants INTENTIONALLY murdered by Palestinian terrorists: 10.
Of course for Omar, as he has explicitly stated to us above, these children are not civilians but only "civilians" in scare quotes. It is the Palestinian ideological recipe for genocide.
Case closed.
omar ibrahim baker -
5/31/2008
MORE of the SAME
Twelve and up
Some Israeli soldiers have admitted that the army gives them “carte blanche” to shoot and kill Palestinian above the age of 12.
The noted Israeli award-wining journalist Amira Hass interviewed an Israeli sniper nearly two years ago in which the soldier described the commands he received from his superiors:
“The blood of their children is not more precious than that of our children. Let them stop killing our civilians, and we will stop killing theirs”
Abd al-Aziz al-Rantisi,
Hamas leader in Gaza (recently assassinated)
“Twelve and up, you are allowed to shoot. That’s what they tell us,” he said. “So,” responded the reporter, “according to the IDF, the appropriate minimum age group at which to shoot is 12.”
The soldier replied: “This is according to what the IDF says to its soldiers. I do not know if this is what the IDF says to the media.”
Many Palestinians are convinced that these atrocities fuel the fire of further attacks against Israel.
“The blood of their children is not more precious than that of our children,” said the new Hamas leader in Gaza, Abd al-Aziz al-Rantisi. “Let them stop killing our civilians, and we will stop killing theirs.”
omar ibrahim baker -
5/31/2008
The Impact on Children
Palestinian Children Killed by Israel
By Khalid Amayreh
From Al Jazeera
April 13, 2004
According to Al Jazeera, at least 545 Arab children have been killed since September 2000.
One of the most disturbing aspects of the strife between Israel and the Palestinians has been the killing and maiming of children.
The Israeli occupation army and paramilitary Jewish settlers have killed 545 Palestinian children and minors since the outbreak of the al-Aqsa Intifada in September 2000.
Among these victims, 266 children were 14 or younger while the ages of the remaining 279 ranged from 15 to 18. Moreover, as many as 20,000 Palestinian children were injured, with nearly 1500 sustaining life-long disabilities.
The total number of Palestinians killed by Israel during the current Intifada is around 2700, the vast majority of them civilians.
Casualties
On the other hand, the number of Israelis killed by
Omar made the accusation four days ago that settlers intentionally targetted Palestinian children for murder.
I challenged him to come up with examples. I don't support the West Bank settlements, but as an example of Omar's intellect, the fact is that: He has not come up with any examples to back his accusation.
For my part, I gave Omar specific examples of the racist, genocidal Palestinian tactic of targetting Jewish children for murder. In the Second Intifada, almost 130 Jewish children have been intentionally murdered by "shaheeds". I can cite their names.
What could be more racist than intentionally killing children?
What can be more evil than terrorists who are motivated by a racist and genocidal ideology and who intentionally engage in indiscriminate, racist and genocidal murder of Jews because they are Jews, consistently employing lying propaganda to simultaneously and lyingly call their VICTIMS racists and indiscrimate murderers?
This is Omar's disgusting ideology and method.
But at least in this case, we've caught him at it.
omar ibrahim baker -
5/30/2008
Not for Eckstein, he would NOT care less, but for the general reader.
Free Rein: Vigilante Settlers and Israel's Non-Enforcement of the Law
Over the course of the al-Aqsa intifada Settlers have shot Palestinians, hurled stones at them, damaged their property, blocked roads, and abused them in other ways. Some of these acts entailed entering Palestinian villages, damaging Palestinian vehicles travelling along the road, and mistreating Palestinian farmers working their fields.
This report discusses one kind of settler violence against Palestinians: mass rioting by settlers in retaliation for Palestinian attacks on settlers. The rioting is only one aspect of a broader phenomenon that has led to the killing and wounding of Palestinians, extensive property and economic damage, and prolonged hardship among many residents of the Occupied Territories. Although other types of acts have led to more tragic results, B'Tselem focuses on revenge attacks because they involved large numbers of participants, and were anticipated and committed openly.
We were talking about the (real) Palestinian racist policy of genocide vs. the (false) accusation by Omar that the Israelis engage in indiscriminate killing of Palestinians. He believes that if he repeats this lie often enough, some ignorant people may believe it.
In that conversation, concerning israeli policy vs. Palestinian genocidal racist pollicy, bringing in events of the 2006 Lebanon War was irrelevant. War is Hell. Hezbollah started that war, but we are not talking about Lebanon. But Omar didn't even bother to look at the "evidence" he was presenting, in order to see that a lot of it didn't have to do with Palestinians at all.
Omar made accusations about the intentional Israeli murder of Palestinian children which--after three days--he has not been able to substantiate.
Meanwhile, the number of Israeli children INTENTIONALLY murdered by Omar's "shaheeds" approaches 130. And I can give you their names.
Readers, judge for yourselves who is more reliable.
omar ibrahim baker -
5/29/2008
Professor Eckstein is really and truly a very interesting man....and most probably a most interesting Professor as his students are bound to have noticed by now.
He has this to say:
"P.S. (a) Lots of this list from Omar above, downloaded from some Jihadi website,
(b) does not concern Palestinians at all, but has to do with wars in Lebanon."
(P.S. (#123147)
by A. M. Eckstein on May 27, 2008 at 6:35 PM); (a)&(b) above my addition.
Which means in plain English?
a- The data being downloaded from a "Jihadi website" necessarily means that people (Folks!!) should disregard it.
b-That since the data "does not concern Palestinians at all" should be equally disregarded!
However this last quote, (b), is truly worth considering with greater concentration, it would mean either of two things:
i-Israeli massacres , to be called massacres at all , must have Palestinians for victims; otherwise they are NOT massacres
OR
ii- Israel even handedly, equitably ?, massacres all kinds of people around it; including Lebanese and Egyptians !
So why complain??
However being the good professor of history, and "humanities"??, that he is he does come out with his earth shattering deeply felt, conscience stricken , gut churning apologia cum interpretation/justification:
"All deaths are unfortunate. War is Hell. It is terrible when innocents are killed or injured."
(P.S. (#123147)
by A. M. Eckstein on May 27, 2008 at 6:35 PM);)
And , Folks, have no mistake about it Israel always “apologizes” as the remakable Professor always conscientiously notes!!
omar ibrahim baker -
5/29/2008
art eckstein -
5/28/2008
Yep, that's what you said. Readers, note the scare quotes around "civilian." You can't escape it.
a. The majority of the Israeli population currently consists of Middle Eastern people whose property was stolen from them. To term such Middle Eastern refugees "colons" and thus eligible every one of them--men, women, and children--for deserved death is, well, not a good argument for you, Omar.
b. It's not Zionism that made the entire population of the country a prime target--it's the political fanaticism and violence of the Palestinians and the Islamofascists.
c. If the Israelis took the same attitude towards the Palestinians as is expressed by Omar on Omar's quote, there would be a lot more female and child casualties from any fighting, since Omar's quote is an ideological formulation for genocide. A formula justifying genocide. Scare-quotes around "civilian" to describe murdered women, children, babies.
d. But the Israelis don't do this. The proof: to repeat: of the 2800 Palestinian deaths in the Second Intifada, only 35 were women. By contrast, of the Israeli deaths in the Second Intifada, thirty-one PER CENT were women.
These statistics speak for themselves concerning the tactics employed by both sides. That nevertheless Omar consistently attacks the ISRAELIS for allleged "indiscriminate killing," while justifying the Palestinians' TRUE indicriminate killing (it is the Palestinians' PREFERRED and CHOSEN tactic, as Omar--again--has made plain)--this is, again, simply evil.
e. But, we already know Omar's morality now. Omar, for your moral betterment, you had better read the recent essays of the Islamicists "Dr. Fadl" and Sheikh Oudah against the un-Koranic act of killing civilians.
omar ibrahim baker -
5/28/2008
Zionism thus managed to make of all the “colonialist community”, the Israeli people, the prime enemy and that explains the disproportionate number of “colonialist” /”civilian” and other casualties.
art eckstein -
5/28/2008
Note, readers, that now Omar puts "civilian" in scare-quotes.
In other words, it is reasonable and inevitable to intentionally kill, indeed to make "prime targets", the entire israeli population and thus to kill "colonialist" babies, "colonialist" children, "colonialist" preadolescents, old people and women, because they are not really "civilians".
Thanks, Omar, for explaining your morality to us.
I assure you, Omar, that I will never allow you to live down your putting scare-quotes around "civilian" causalties when referring to dead babies, children, women.
omar ibrahim baker -
5/28/2008
Conventionally COLONIALISM entailed the forced entry of armed forces followed by colonialist settlers who usually came to form a “colonist community” that in numbers was a small proportion , a minority, of the total population of the colonized country.
Consequently when liberation movements/wars started the PRIME ENEMY was the armed forces who protected that “colonialist community” to ensure its continued plunder of the “colony”.
More importantly and highly pertinent to the case of Zionist colonialism is that whereas conventional colonialism did NOT entail the UPROOTING of the indigenous population and its SUPPLANTATION by colons Zionist colonialist conquest of Palestine DID.
Zionist colonialism thus DID NOT conform to this standard colonialist “model” and the ensuing “wars” did take a different turn.
Zionism DID deliberately and consciously entail the UPROOTING of the Palestinian ARAB population and their SUPPLANTATION with ALIEN colons who came, as a result, to form a considerable minority then, through successive forced entry and ethnic cleansing, became a slight majority of the total population of Palestine.
With the “colonialist community "
becoming a majority upholding the objectives ofthe colonialist conquest
and defending it, the “colonialist community “ itself , as much as its armed forces became the prime enemy.
This is markedly different from the case of conventional colonialism wherein the prime enemy is the armed forces, frequently assisted by the “colonialist community”.
Hence in, say, the case of Algeria or Angola the liberation war effort was directed at the their armed forces defending their respective” colonialist communities”, always a minority of the total population, and NOT the French or Portuguese people.
Zionism thus managed to make of all the “colonialist community”, the Israeli people, the prime enemy and that explains the disproportionate number of “colonialist” /”civilian” and other casualties.
A. M. Eckstein -
5/27/2008
P.S. Lots of this list from Omar above, downloaded from some Jihadi website, does not concern Palestinians at all, but has to do with wars in Lebanon.
All deaths are unfortunate. War is Hell. It is terrible when innocents are killed or injured.
BUT: the Jihadi Islamofascists (a) INTENTIONALLY hide among the local civilian population so as to provide themselves with human shields, leaving their victims with the choice of either non-retaliation, or else risking civilian deaths if they do retailiate, and the fact is that the Jihadi Islamofascists BOAST about pursuing this satanic and un-Koranic practice, as has been proven on HNN; and simultaneously (b) the Jihadi Islamofascists intentionally target civilian populations, and they boast about THAT Satantic and un-Koranic practice as well. Omar comes close to boasting about it himself, with his "colons are legitimate targets" remarks.
But this is not the opinion concerning right action which is now strongly and publicly expressed, exclaiming their horror at these tactics, even by Islamists such as Sayyid Imam al-Sharif ("Dr. Fadl") or of Sheikh Salman al-Oudah.
Read THEM, Omar. You're behind the times.
A. M. Eckstein -
5/27/2008
1. Omar, none of the terrible incidents with children which you list at the top, even if they are true, resulted--according your own sources-- in death. HUNDREDS of Jewish children have been intentionally MURDERED by Palestinian terrorists.
You therefore stand condemned as a liar and distorter on your own evidence.
Islamic terrorists led by Al-Qaeda have also murdered hundreds of children in Afghanistan.
The toxic ideology, aimed first at Jews, rebounds (in the form of "takfir" ideology) against the Muslims, including, prominently, children.
The Sabra and Shatila massacre was done by Lebanese Christians, so it is incorrect of your source to attribute this to Zionists. How much else in this list is incorrect?
Hitting trucks moving in a war zone from far up in the air (as lots of your list consists of) is not the same as intentionally killing children. ONLY Muslim terrorists intentionally kill children. That this is a growing moral crisis in Islam is clear, and don't depend on Professor Eckstein for this insight. It is clear even to radical Islamists, such as "Dr. Fadl", or Sheih Salman al Oudah. I suggest you read what THEY have to say recently about the kind of disgraceful, dishonorable and un-Koranic tactics you support.
Omar, the facts of the Second Intifada speak for themselves: fully 31 per cent of Israeli deaths caused by Palestinian terrorists were WOMEN; meanwhile, out of some 2800 Palestinian deaths, only 35 were women. There was thus no policy of indiscriminate death-dealing on the Israeli side; by contrast, there was an intentional and racist genocidal policy of indiscriminate death on the Palestinian side.
Case closed.
omar ibrahim baker -
5/27/2008
Assaulting Palestinians children by Jewish settlers
*On October 15, in Yabad near Jenine, 13 year old Zayid Fathi was kidnapped
by settlers in a private car as he was walking home from school. He was
beaten.
*Also on Oct. 15, in the same area, four Palestinian children were attacked by a
group of settlers who severely assaulted one of them, Mahmoud Bajawi, who
was beaten unconscious.
*On October 16, settlers from Shirfee Shimron near Nablus set up road blocks
and stoned Palestinian cars. 12 year old Yaseen Zohdi was struck by a rock
and had to be hospitalized as a result.
*On October 24, Jewish settlers from the Hebron settlement of Daboya set guard
dogs on a group of children from the nearby Qurtuba Girl's School.
*On Oct. 27, 12 year old Sahar Abdulraouf Al-Muhtaseb, was beaten by Jewish
vigilantes in Hebron as Israeli soldiers watched.
*February 10, 1996, while a 12-year-old Palestinian boy from Nablus was
imprisoned in an Israeli jail, he was raped and sodomized by a Jewish soldier.
The soldier removed the child, blindfolded and handcuffed, from his cell, and took him to another part of the prison where he sodomized him.
(http://www.intellnet.org/resources/resistance/massacres/others/index.htm)
Nassacres of Palestinian children by Settlers will follow soon.
xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Israeli Massacres
Details and Numbers
Although the Image that Israel distributes about herself is that of an oppressed nation, it is with heavy hearts that we present these crimes that stand for themselves for the brutality of the Israeli Army and the heartlessness of its soldiers who seem to have a thirst for blood. It is for the hope that the world may see a clearer picture that we present these painful facts. It is interesting to notice that today's media does not dwell on these crimes as they do on the Holocaust. They are reported in the news for a week or two and then swept into the sea of oblivion. Those who attempt to revive the true history of Israel are charged of being anti-Semitic. So with the hope to keep those memories in mind we present this shameful history of Israel that seems to have found that the role of Goliath is more interesting than that of David.
________________________________________
The following list of massacres is by no means exclusive, but they reflect the nature of the Zionist occupation of Palestine and Lebanon and show that massacres and expulsions were not aberrations that happen in any war, but organized atrocities with only one aim, that is to have a Zionist state which is 'goyim rein'.
The King David Massacre
The Massacre at Baldat al-Shaikh
YEHIDA MASSACRE
KHISAS MASSACRE
QAZAZA MASSACRE
The Semiramis Hotel Massacre
The Massacre at Dair Yasin
NASER AL-DIN MASSACRE
THE TANTURA MASSACRE
BEIT DARAS MASSACRE
THE DAHMASH MOSQUE MASSACRE
DAWAYMA MASSACRE
HOULA MASSACRE
SHARAFAT MASSACRE
Salha Massacre
The Massacre at Qibya
KAFR QASEM MASSACRE
Khan Yunis Massacre
The Massacre in Gaza City
AL-SAMMOU' MASSACRE
Aitharoun Massacre
Kawnin Massacre
Hanin Massacre
Bint Jbeil Massacre
Abbasieh Massacre
Adloun Massacre
Saida Massacre
Fakhani Massacre
Beirut Massacre
Sabra And Shatila Massacre
Jibsheet Massacre
Sohmor Massacre
Seer Al Garbiah
Maaraka Massacres
Zrariah Massacre
Homeen Al-Tahta Massacre
Jibaa Massacre
Yohmor Massacre
Tiri massacre
Al-Naher Al-Bared Massacre
Ain Al-Hillwee Massacre
OYON QARA MASSACRE
Siddiqine Massacre
AL-AQSA MOSQUE MASSACRE
THE IBRAHIMI MOSQUE MASSACRE
THE JABALIA MASSACRE
Aramta Massacre
ERETZ CHECKPOINT MASSACRE
Deir Al-Zahrani Massacre
Nabatiyeh (school bus) Massacre
Mnsuriah Massacre
The Sohmor Second Massacre
Nabatyaih Massacre
Qana Massacre
Trqumia Massacr
Janta Massacre
24 Of June 1999 Massacres
Western Bekaa villages Massacre:
On December 11, 2006, Hamas gunmen shot dead three children of a senior Fatah commander as the children were coming home from school.
Omar, THIS kind of behavior has NOTHING to do with any "righteous resistance to colonialism," and EVERYTHING to do with the morally corrupt and genocidal aspects of Palestinian culture. They do it to Jews. They do it to each other.
art eckstein -
5/27/2008
Note: Since Omar cannot deny the statistics, Omar defends the killing of women and children--as long as they are Jews
This kind of genocidal frenzy is NOT inevitable, Omar
--in Tibet, where one MILLION Tibetans have been murdered by the Chinese colonialists, and their culture destroyed, no Tibetans kill Chinese women and children.
--The Jews who were expelled from Baghdad after living there for 1500 years do not blow themselves up to kill Iraqi women and children. --The millions of Germans who were expelled form eastern Europe (and cannot by law go back), their descendants do not blow up day schools in eastern Europe.
--The hundreds of thousands of Greeks who were expelled from northern Turkey (and Egypt) in the 1950s, after living in the region for up to 3,000 years, as victims of pure ethnic (and religious!) cleansing, do not savagely attack Turks or Egyptians, let alone target intentionally Turkish or Egyptian women and children--as Palestinians do to the Jews.
This sort of genocidal tactic is therefore a CHOSEN one, not an inevitable one. You yourself have said so on this very blog, Omar--saying that the other groups cited above are simply not as "noble" as the Palestinians. This was one of your most revealing statements.
But given that it does NOT happen or in most places, one must conclude that it is a particularly vicious cultural expression of a particular culture.
Given that it does not happen anywhere else, and given that in Iraq 34,000 civilians (including many women and children) were killed by Muslim fanatic terrorists last year according to the UN (and THEY weren't even Jews!), it is clear that this sort of vicious violence against civilians is a particularly vicious cultural expression of a particular culture.
How can one deny it?
omar ibrahim baker -
5/27/2008
However one fact stands out SUPREME and unchallengeable in that the general, as distinct from the personal or in localized disturbances, killing done by the Palestinians, in all its forms, was in SELF DEFENSE against the racist Zionist conquest which embarked on its colonialist project in the 1920s.
The killing by the Palestinians was generally consistently undertaken by members of the indigenous native Palestinian people of ALIENS colonists who came into Palestine,
against the express will of its people, intent on colonizing it and of their local supporters .
As such it was, still is, typical of all anti colonialist resistance movements/wars in that it was killing in SELF DEFENSE of one’s homeland and was aimed to frustrate the colonialist objectives of the conquest.
However and due to the exceptional and , for modern times, unprecedented nature of the Zionist conquest it came to include a disproportionate number of women and children when compared to conventional/classical anti colonialism liberation struggles and wars.
Conventionally COLONIALISM entailed the forced entry of armed forces followed by colonialist settlers who usually came to form a “colonist community” that in numbers was a small proportion , a minority, of the total population of the colonized country.
Consequently when liberation movements/wars started the PRIME ENEMY was the armed forces who protected that “colonialist community” to ensure its continued plunder of the “colony”.
More importantly and highly pertinent to the case of Zionist colonialism is that whereas conventional colonialism did NOT entail the UPROOTING of the indigenous population and its SUPPLANTATION by colons Zionist colonialist conquest of Palestine DID.
Zionist colonialism thus DID NOT conform to this standard colonialist “model” and the ensuing “wars” did take a different turn.
Zionism DID deliberately and consciously entail the UPROOTING of the Palestinian ARAB population and their SUPPLANTATION with ALIEN colons who came, as a result, to form a considerable minority then, through successive forced entry and ethnic cleansing, became a slight majority of the total population of Palestine.
With the “colonialist community "
becoming a majority upholding the objectives ofthe colonialist conquest
and defending it, the “colonialist community “ itself , as much as its armed forces became the prime enemy.
This is markedly different from the case of conventional colonialism wherein the prime enemy is the armed forces, frequently assisted by the “colonialist community”.
Hence in, say, the case of Algeria or Angola the liberation war effort was directed at the their armed forces defending their respective” colonialist communities”, always a minority of the total population, and NOT the French or Portuguese people.
Zionism thus managed to make of all the “colonialist community”, the Israeli people, the prime enemy and that explains the disproportionate number of “colonialist” /”civilian” and other casualties.
However what should be noted is that Palestinian inflicted Zionist casualties were in SELF DEFENSE against a raiding alien invader and colonialist conquero whereas “Zionist” then “Israeli” inflicted Palestinian casualties were in defense of a colonialist regime and that due to superiority in organized armament and the urge for wanton killing Israeli inflicted casualties outnumber Palestinian inflicted casualties, of all sorts to both, by a ratio of more than 3/1.
KILLING is a truly ugly and abominable thing and doubly so when in defense of a colonialist conquest which led to the birth of an aggressive and racist nation/ state!
However, as a tool to national liberation it is also ugly BUT , sadly, inevitable!
art eckstein -
5/27/2008
1. Readers, please note: Omar is now DEFENDING the killing of women and children as a righteous response to "colonialism".
This is because, as we saw in previous posts, he refuses to grant the Israeli people the same right to existence that he demands for the Palestinian people--though the Israelis as a new people have achieved far far more in their brief existence than the Palestinians have achieved in their equally brief existence.
As for "stolen land" (a) when you lose a war, sometimes you lose territory; and (b) more Jews were forced to leave the Muslim lands after 1948 than Arabs were forced to leave the former-Mandate; about 100,000 more (850,000 to 750,000). The difference is that they were peaceful citizens of those countries, and not involved in a war against the other part of the population. They were left penniless, and propertyless, just like the people who became the Palestinians, and someone stole all their property--some Arab. The Palestinians may deserve compensation from the current owners of that Jewish property. I'd be for that.
2. Readers, please note as well: Omar made specific accusations that settlers (he later broadened this to include the Israeli govt) intentionally target Palestinian children. It is the case that Palestinian terrorists, and Muslim terrorists in general, often target children--a dishonor, a crime, and a disgrace. I gave specific cases of that. I demanded that Omar give specific examples of HIS accusaton. He has not.
He cannot.
It is another example of his profound ignorance and of his intellectual irresponsibility.
omar ibrahim baker -
5/27/2008
Killing is an ugly criminal act irrespective of when and where.
Sadly it has come to be generally perceived as less so if done during war time by combatants; the combatant being the enemy whose physical elimination is sought after in war.
War, according to prevalent general perception, “legitimizes” killing and imbued it with a sense of achievement and glory if done to combatants; as such it was assumed that it should be restricted to men who, generally, are the combatants.
The general perception gradually widened the scope of “legitimate” killing to include the killing of those who aid and support combatants and the war effort.
It, “legitimate” killing, was later further widened to include the deliberate killing of non combatant civilians to demoralize the combatants and achieve political objectives , as in Deir Yassin, and also to destroy the infrastructure, including its human element, that maintains the war; as in the aerial bombing of England during WW II.
Ultimately it came to also include the element of warning to the combatants of the dire consequences to ALL of continued fighting as in Hiroshima and Nagasaki!
Concurrently and through out human “progress” allowance was made for killing IF IN SELF DEFENSE of one’s life and/or property but ultimately of one’s homeland which encompasses both.
Palestine in modern times has witnessed a great deal of killing.
Killing in Palestine has come to include all types, justifications and pseudo justifications in both motive and reach.
However one fact stands out SUPREME and unchallengeable in that the general, as distinct from the personal or in localized disturbances, killing done by the Palestinians, in all its forms, was in SELF DEFENSE against the racist Zionist conquest which embarked on its colonialist project in the 1920s.
The killing by the Palestinians was generally consistently undertaken by members of the indigenous native Palestinian people of ALIENS colonists who came into Palestine,
against the express will of its people, intent on colonizing it and of their local supporters .
As such it was, still is, typical of all anti colonialist resistance movements/wars in that it was killing in SELF DEFENSE of one’s homeland and was aimed to frustrate the colonialist objectives of the conquest.
However and due to the exceptional and , for modern times, unprecedented nature of the Zionist conquest it came to include a disproportionate number of women and children when compared to conventional/classical anti colonialism liberation struggles and wars.
Conventionally COLONIALISM entailed the forced entry of armed forces followed by colonialist settlers who usually came to form a “colonist community” that in numbers was a small proportion , a minority, of the total population of the colonized country.
Consequently when liberation movements/wars started the PRIME ENEMY was the armed forces who protected that “colonialist community” to ensure its continued plunder of the “colony”.
More importantly and highly pertinent to the case of Zionist colonialism is that whereas conventional colonialism did NOT entail the UPROOTING of the indigenous population and its SUPPLANTATION by colons Zionist colonialist conquest of Palestine DID.
Zionist colonialism thus DID NOT conform to this standard colonialist “model” and the ensuing “wars” did take a different turn.
Zionism DID deliberately and consciously entail the UPROOTING of the Palestinian ARAB population and their SUPPLANTATION with ALIEN colons who came, as a result, to form a considerable minority then, through successive forced entry and ethnic cleansing, became a slight majority of the total population of Palestine.
With the “colonialist community "
becoming a majority upholding the objectives ofthe colonialist conquest
and defending it, the “colonialist community “ itself , as much as its armed forces became the prime enemy.
This is markedly different from the case of conventional colonialism wherein the prime enemy is the armed forces, frequently assisted by the “colonialist community”.
Hence in, say, the case of Algeria or Angola the liberation war effort was directed at the their armed forces defending their respective” colonialist communities”, always a minority of the total population, and NOT the French or Portuguese people.
Zionism thus managed to make of all the “colonialist community”, the Israeli people, the prime enemy and that explains the disproportionate number of “colonialist” /”civilian” and other casualties.
However what should be noted is that Palestinian inflicted Zionist casualties were in SELF DEFENSE against a raiding alien invader and colonialist conquero whereas “Zionist” then “Israeli” inflicted Palestinian casualties were in defense of a colonialist regime and that due to superiority in organized armament and the urge for wanton killing Israeli inflicted casualties outnumber Palestinian inflicted casualties, of all sorts to both, by a ratio of more than 3/1.
KILLING is a truly ugly and abominable thing and doubly so when in defense of a colonialist conquest which led to the birth of an aggressive and racist nation/ state!
However, as a tool to national liberation it is also ugly BUT , sadly, inevitable!
art eckstein -
5/26/2008
Omar, if it is the Israelis who engage in indiscrimate attacks on civiians, EXPLAIN this fact for us:
a. The number of Palestinians who died during the Second Intifada was about 2800. Of those, just 35 were women.
b. By contrast, women made up 31 PER CENT of Israeli deaths caused by Palestinians during this same period.
In the face of these statistics, to accuse the ISRAELIS of indiscriminate attacks on civilians is more than ridiculous. It is evil.
art eckstein -
5/26/2008
Omar (and Readers in general)"
Husseini did not simply have political relations with the Third Reich. Husseini worked for Himmler's death machine. He organized the Handschar SS Division of Muslims that committed major atrocities against civilians in the Balkans. He organized two other SS Divisions of Muslims that were not so important because the war ended before they could be used extensively. Husseini is one of only two non-Germans condemned for war crimes at Nuremburg.
The phraseology in your latest post above tries to slide away from what Husseini actually did, Omar. You need to face facts, as hard as that is for you to do.
You also need to face the fact that Husseini got Hitler to promise him a total genocide of Jews in the Middle East, which is what he wanted. It's in his memoirs, Omar.
In July, 1944, Husseini wrote from Berlin to the Hungarian foreign minister to register his objection to the release of certificates for 900 Jewish children and 100 adults for transfer from Hungary, fearing they might end up in Palestine. He urged that they be sent instead to...Poland--that is, Auschwitz. That is what occurred.
In a book of Husayni's memoirs edited by Abd al-Karim al-Umar and published in Damascus in 1999, Husayni openly discusses his close relationship to SS chief Heinrich Himmler. According to Husayni's account, he often met Himmler for tea and during these meetings the Nazi leader confided some of the secrets of the German Reich to him. In the memoirs, Husayni describes what Himmler said to him in the summer of 1943 about the persecution of the Jews. Himmler told him that "up to now we have exterminated [in Arabic, abadna] around three million of them." [51]
In September 1943, intense negotiations to rescue 500 Jewish children from the town of Arbe in Croatia collapsed due to the objection of the Mufti. Instead, all these children died.]
Unlike you, Omar, when I make accusations I actually have the EVIDENCE to back up what I'm saying.
Do you have the strength to publicly acknowledge the awful facts above?
art eckstein -
5/26/2008
Omar, I said that Deir Yassin was an atrocity. Stop distorting--if you can learn how.
Omar--YOU, on the other hand, have never bothered to research the Mt. Scopas Massacre that occurred a few days after Deir Yassin, in which Palestinian guerrillas slaughtered 70 Jewish doctors and nurses. Are you willng to condemn it, as I did Deir Yassin?
Re the Hebron Mosque massacre: hundreds of thousands of Israelis went into the streets to protest what occurred. Compare with the massacre in the Yeshiva in March: thousands of Palestinians in the streets in Gaza CELEBRATING the slaughter, handing out candy to children.
That's the moral difference.
omar ibrahim baker -
5/26/2008
Eckstein
Re your post #2123060
Once again you have nothing to say.
However are we to understand from your post that Deir Yassin was just :
"In war these things happen all the time."
It seems here that you concede approvingly that such massacres of civilians is only to be expected considering Zionist morality.
For once I would agree with you!
omar ibrahim baker -
5/26/2008
Mr Green
For you to contend that:
” Now, Omar, you do admit that the chief Palestinian Arab leader, Haj Amin el-Husseini, took part in massacring Jews in the Holocaust.”
Is a brazen falsehood i.e. a naked LIE though not unexpected but nevertheless shows contempt of the intelligence of the general reader who did read my post !
I recognized the historical fact that relations did exist between Hajj Amin, may GOD have mercy on his soul, and Germany during the rule of the Nazi party.
That is a far distance from your assertion that:
1- He “took part in massacring Jews”
AND from your later contention that:
2- “You (I) justify these crimes…..”
To have political relations with a country does NOT mean to participate in its crimes.
Although in the case of Israeli/ ex South African relations , during the sanctions period on SA, it was a clear Israeli declaration of support of the South African fellow racist system and regime.
I note you fail to comment on the Israeli armament support of Iran during the Iraq/Iran war ( the Iran/Contra affair) and its warm relations with South Africa of the defunct Apartheid system.; which is perfectly understandable with your “objective outlook”
The amazing thing, however, is that you are still living, and trying to propagate, your illusionary delusion that the Palestinians “should” have supported their, then and present, arch enemy, Zionist colonialism, and should NOT have looked for allies against the rapacious aggressive and racist doctrine that motivated its colonialist conquest of their homeland!
If you are really serious about it then you certainly would be living in the fantasy land I outlined above.
I, however, do NOT believe that you are serious about it; your whole contribution here is meant, in a typical Zionist mode of behaviour, to create, among the unknowing, the patently false impression that the Palestinians contributed to the Holocaust and divert their attention from you fellow religionists; the Jewish KAPOS, who DID!
The hypocrisy of your erudition and pseudo scholarship, Mr. Green, is NOT demonstrated solely in your attempt to propagate such lies and disinformation BUT equally in the insidious reference you make to the Ibrahimi Mosque of Hebron.
By the same standard you use would you approve of an assumed Arab/Moslem claim that, say, the Giralda of Seville and the Cathedral of Cordoba, among the many relics of Islam in Western Europe, should revert to the Moslems???
(As inane as such a claim would be though certainly less so than your claim for the Ibrahimi Mosque in occupied Hebron.)
By your disapproving remark re my reference to the Ibrahimi Mosque massacre are we to understand that you approve of it??
I would NOT be surprised if you do though I doubt you have the courage to voice your convictions publicly!
However the fact that you concluded your post by reiterating a naked lie namely:
” Art E, please note that Omar justifies Arab Nazi collaboration and Arab participation in the Holocaust in his abovementioned comment. “
is only befitting , considering that that your whole point: to try to inseminate and propagate LIES about Palestinians of whom I am proud to be one!
(once again kindly spare me the false and unreciprocated "habibna"!)
art eckstein -
5/26/2008
Readers, when I wrote, just above that "None of this is the same as intentionally targetting children," I meant three things simultaneously, actually:
1. The examples cited by Omar are not examples of intentional targetting of children.
2. The Palestinians, and Muslim terrorists generally, DO intentionally target children. (Besides the specific examples I give, let's not forget Beslan, Russia, where 150 children were intentionally killed).
3. Omar's original statement that led to this part of the conversation was that settlers in the West Bank intentionally target Palestinian children. I challenged Omar to provide specific EVIDENCE for this accusation. Readers, please note: he has not.
Big suprise.
art eckstein -
5/26/2008
Omar cites accidents of war for which the Israelis apologized. In war these things happen all the time. The U.S. Airforce killed 600 people, mostly women and children, in an underground shelter in Baghdad during the war of 1991. They thought it was a government bunker. The U.S. Airforce killed 150 U.S. soldiers, including the commanding general of all U.S. ground forces, in a mistaken bombing in Normandy in August 1944. The U.S. Airforce mistakenly bombed--twice--a village that U.S. forces were holding during the Battle of the Bulge in Dec. 1944.
In any case, many of the civilians killed in Israeli airstrikes get killed because the terrorist fanatics INTENTIONALLY hide among the civilians, using them as human shields. We've been over this topic before--and I have cited the hideous Hamas and Hezbollah statements to that effect, that they do it intentionally.
None of this is the same as intentionally targetting children.
Yes, Omar also thinks it was fine for the Palestinians to collaborate with the Nazis. He's said that before. And al-Amin el Husseini, besides raising SS Divisions of Muslims for his friend Heinrich Himmler, the head of the SS (for whom he worked), also had a deal with Hitler to murder every Jew in the Middle East--men, women, children. It's in Husseini's memoirs.
We know Omar's "morality". It's perfectly clear. What a disgrace he is to the heritage of Islamic culture, what an example of the mental illness that increasingly affects Muslim radicals.
Elliott Aron Green -
5/26/2008
ya `Umar la habibna!!
Art, I see that Omar is at it again. Arabs are always innocent. Arabs began massacring Jews in Israel in April 1920, with encouragement by the local British authorities. The year 1929 saw another series of massacres of Jews. In Hebron, 68 Jews were massacred, again with British acuiescence and/or encouragement. By the way, Hebron is the site of the Tomb of the Patriarchs, an ancient Jewish holy site. The main structure now surrounding the tomb was built by Herod, king of Judea, 2000 years ago. Omar offensively calls this place "the Ibrahimi Mosque." That is, the Arab-Muslims expropriated a Jewish holy place for their own use and made it into a mosque, albeit this happened in the Middle Ages. On the other hand, the Arab-Muslims before the Crusades were more tolerant and Jews were allowed to pray there. However, in the year 1260 or approx., Baibars, leader of the Muslim Mamluks, forbid Jews to come above the seventh step of the entry steps into the Tomb. As said, in 1929, Arabs massacred peaceful Jews living in Hebron. There were more massacres of Jews in the period 1936-1939, again with British acquiescence or worse.
Now, Omar, you do admit that the chief Palestinian Arab leader, Haj Amin el-Husseini, took part in massacring Jews in the Holocaust. You even justify it in your earlier post above on 5-24-2008, 2:39 am, in answer to me. There you clearly justify Amin el-Husseini's alliance with the Nazis and participation in the Holocaust. You justify these crimes on the grounds that Jews in Israel were allegedly "colonists" in a country full of Jewish holy places, like the Tomb of the Patriarchs, and whereas Jewish habitation in Hebron seems to have been unbroken since ancient times up to 1929.
Art E, please note that Omar justifies Arab Nazi collaboration and Arab participation in the Holocaust in his abovementioned comment.
omar ibrahim baker -
5/26/2008
The Prof seems not only to have a one track mind, but Not to have a mind at all when the issue is the deliberate, conscious massacres perpetrated by his beloved Zionist colony in Palestine known to him and ilk as Israel and its forefathers; the Haganaah, the Stern gang etc .
He "proudly" displays the numbers at his disposal BUT not amazingly is totally blind to every thing else.
Note his remark:"A suicide bombing attack on 2 March 2002, detonated next to a group of women waiting with their children and husbands to leave a nearby synagogue (a SYNAGOGUE, Omar!) killed 12 people" !
HE, however, conveniently forgets :
1-the Hebron IBRAHIMI Mosque massacre of more than twenty Moslems at prayer by a Settler for whom other settlers erected a celebratory statue in support and appreciation.
(Shall I write A MOSQUE, PEOPLE AT PRAYER Eckstein??
NO that would be too Ecksteiningly childish).
2-What ever he things is the number of civilians, including children, killed in the Israeli air bombardment of AL DAHIYA of Beirut in the repulsed Israeli aggression of 2006 against Lebanon and Hizbu Lah??
3-Do I have to remind him of the bombing of Qanaa, TWICE, a Shelter harbouring only women and children?
4-Whatever he things of the air bombing of Bahr Al Bakaar SCHOLL in Egypt in which STUDENTS in the hundreds were killed ??
(Shall I stress MOSQUE, AT PRAYER,DAHIYA, SHELTER, SCHOOL etc...No I will not for people can read and that would be too Ecksteiningly childish? Folks!)
OR to cap it all:
should not we ALL remember the massacre of DEIR YASSIN in which oldsters and children were massacred in cold blood and women too after, if pregnant, being disemboweled as the typical, the archetypal Zionist/Israeli mode of behaviour ??
But Eckstein, the light among professors, DOES know all that and chooses to disregard it simply because the victims were/are Arabs.
Which is perfectly understandable because he is a devoted Zionist and as such an incorrigible racist?
The victims being Arabs are not worth remembering; according to Eckstein!
It is as simple as that, folks!
art eckstein -
5/25/2008
I believe need to be clearer: What I want you to PROVE, Omar, is your assertion that settlers have deliberatedly targetted Palestinian children.
That's what you asserted. I call on you now to PROVE this charge, with--let's say--seven documented examples.
Meanwhile I suggest you look up the following proven Palestinian intentional targetting of Israeli children:
Maalot massacre
Avivim school bus massacre
Kiryat Shmona massacre
These acts of Palestinian violence specifically targeting Israeli children began being committed in the 1970s
More recently:
A suicide bomb attack in front of a crowded discotheque late Friday on 25 June 2001 killed 135 people; of the 135 people who were killed, 33 were under the age of 12. The armed wing of the Palestinian terrorist group Hamas claimed responsibility.
A suicide bombing attack on 2 March 2002, detonated next to a group of women waiting with their children and husbands to leave a nearby synagogue (a SYNAGOGUE, Omar!) killed 12 people, including two sisters aged 6 and 2, and their four cousins, aged between 18 months and seventeen years. That is: six out of 12 were children (or five out of 12, if you don't want to count the 17-year-old). The rest were women. The genocidal Palestinian suicide bomber KNEW this when he detonated.
art eckstein -
5/25/2008
Do you deny, Omar, that killing Jews--ANY Jews--is THE preferred tactic of the Intifada, that blowing up busses filled with civilians is THE tactic of the Intifada, that killilng people at Seder was CELEBRATED by the Intifada, that the Sbarro Cafe atrocity, in which many women and children were killed, is CELEBRATED with an EXHIIBIT at Beir Zeit University?
You CANNOT deny it. Those are FACTS. And therefore, the Palestinians are continuously AND intentionally guilty of "criminally racist acts", according to your own definition. Think about it.
You then try to change the topic by making this charge: "Settlers have been known to wantonly kill Palestinians including deliberately targetting Palestinian children."
That is a very serious charge--although even if it were true, it would not be the same as intentionally and consistently killing Jewish civilians as a matter of genocidal and centrally-directed policy, which is the the chosen tactic of Hamas and Fatah. Nevertheless, I call onl you now not to assert but to PROVE this charge you have made with specific and well-documented examples.
Here IS a fact: In the second Intifada, 2/3 of the Israelis killed were civilians, and half of those (were women and children. 31% of the Israelis killed were females. By contrast, of the 3000 or so Palestinians killed by Israeli security forces, the number of Palestinian women killed was 35.
The implication should be clear even to you, Omar.
omar ibrahim baker -
5/25/2008
Prof
To kill a Jew just because he is a Jew is certainly a criminally racist act and as such is totally inexcusable.
If, on the other hand, he happens to be a colon, and irrespective of his religion, he would be a part, the "human" mainstay , of a colonialist regime rightfully targeted in a liberation war .
That in no way shall include, as far as I am concerned, killing children or old people or women, if those women are NOT part of the armed organization(s) that imposes and defends a colonialist regime.
However should we review "killing" in occupied Palestine it is a well known and extremely well documented fact that Settlers, the most rabid colonialists of them all, have been known to wantonly kill Palestinians including deliberately targetting Palestinian children for the simple "reason" that these Palestinians live in and dwell in their homeland.
The difference between killing a "colon" and an indigenous civilian should be unmistakably clear to all ...including to you!
However the issue of Zionist, then Israeli, "racism" goes far beyond the question of who is killing whom now!
Racism is an integral constituent, a foundation block, of the Zionist doctrine whose main concern was restricted SOLELY to the assumed "Well being" of JEWS, and to hell with every body else!
Israeli laws, mainly the Law of Return and land ownership laws, and practices are a "faithful" implementation of the Zionist doctrine despite all superficial appearances to the contrary!
Should you look objectively at the similarities between old South Africa and present Israel, difficult but possible to you, you will readily note that they are , in essence, total replicas with the "white" of South Africa being the only difference from the "Jew" of Israel.
Which only difference emphasizes and confirms the racially inspired racist nature, policies and practices of both.
art eckstein -
5/24/2008
The RACISTS are those genocidal suicide bombers who kill ANY Jews they can find--young, old, children, people at a seder, and no matter what their political opinions. They kill them Just as long as they are Jews. In the case of George Khoury in 2004, the Fatah killed someone who simply happened to LOOK Jewish, though he turned out to be a Palestinian. (He was jogging in an upscale Jewish neighborhood--so much for the "apartheid" bs constantly and vilely put forth by people such as Omar). Fatah did apologize for killing Khoury, though-- explaining they were trying to kill some Jews. WHAT COULD BE MORE RACIST THAN THAT, OMAR?
It is evil to employ the term "racist" against Israelis in the face of the true and genocidal racism here. (In israel, by the way, there are Arab Israelis who serve as judges and pass judgment on Jews--so much for the vicious South Africa false parallel.)
Those racists are Omar's friends, the people he loves and supports. He is a racist himself, since what he demands for the Palestinians--recognition of an artificial peoplehood that did not exist in 1920 (the proof being that the original meaning of "al Nakba" was the artificial separation of Arabs in the British Mandate from the Arabs in SYRIA)--he refuses to the Israelis, who, like the Palestinians, did not exist as a people in 1920 but have accomplished infinitely more than the Palestinians since then.
Omar is also wrong that Apartheid South Africa had any world-class universities. The reason it did not: crude intellectual repression. Meanwhile, Israel has three. The Arab world--fifty-five countries with its TRILLIONS of oil dollars does not. (These rankings are from the Chinese, by the way.) The reason it does not: crude intellectual repression.
But facts never have bothered Omar before, any more than illogic or hypocrisy or his vicious racism..
omar ibrahim baker -
5/24/2008
The Afrikaners of the late unregretted South Africa DID HAVE : "a vibrant economy, symphony orchestras, and world class universities."
The Afrikaners were also universally recognized as RACIST COLONS, much as most Israelis will soon be similarly recognized .
The resemblance of the late South Africa with Israel is NOT, though, coincidental Prof!
Why did you fail to mention also, as prequalification, a nuclear armament capability??
That would NOT have disturbed your erudite equation Prof.
Bravo Professor Eckstein...you are "a light" among professors!
art eckstein -
5/24/2008
Conclusion: Omar demands that the Palestinians be recognized as a people, but refuses the same recognition to the Israeli people.
This is true even though the Israelis have created a vibrant economy, symphony orchestras, and world class universities.
C ongratulations for revealing yourself in your full hypocrisy, Omar.
omar ibrahim baker -
5/24/2008
Does an “ Israeli people” exist in OCCUPIED PALESTINE?
If by "a people" we mean a number, a collection, of persons, people, that live mainly under the same political , economic etc conditions, serve in the same armed organization(s) and seem to share and support ,to a good extent, the same aggressive and expansionist objectives of the clique/establishment that rules over them then Yes we could say that such a thing does exist.
If , however, we mean by "a people" , as distinct from a community of shared interests, a number of persons residing illegally in the same geographic space, that live under the same conditions , that share the same aggressive and expansionist objectives and are primarily bound together by their racist doctrine and by a common " heritage" of willful exploitation and enjoyment of others' usurped material and spiritual properties and their negation of others' rights as IS the case of ALL non indigenous Jewish ( and others who were allowed residence in Palestine by pretending to be Jews!) present inhabitants of Palestine then the answer is : NO such "Israeli people" exists.!
The more, historically, sociologically and demographically, correct appellation would be, taking in consideration their number, “ a large community of colons” that live on colonized land , share in the spoils of usurpation and the negation of others’ rights and seem to be willing to defend their common plunder !
Too numerous to be simply called a “gang” but, ethically and legally, intrinsically no different from a gang in their common acceptance and determination to uphold the mode, the method, their “society” was built , their illegal residence, and their determination to maintain and defend their continued exploitation of the fruits of their, and their forefathers’, plunder and usurpation and the negation of the rights of others.
That of course does NOT include the indigenous Palestinian Arab and Jewish population of pre conquest Palestine who still live among the more numerous, willing and unwilling, members of the “ large colonist community and their offspring” who by right should be called the “Palestinian people” but go under the false name of “Israeli people” ; being outnumbered by the members of and beneficiaries from the “gang” of colonists and of their descendants!.
omar ibrahim baker -
5/24/2008
Green always returns to a favourite topic of his :Palestinian Arab presumed participation and collaboration in the Holocaust.
He does NOT amplify indicating whether that was in conception, inception , implementation or cover up.
All that he has to go by is the relations that existed at the time, the onset of the Zionist colonialist conquest of Palestine, between Hajj Amin Al Husseini, the Palestinian Arabs Leader, and Nazi Germany.
Green's wrath is directed at the Palestinians and their leader for one or the two of the following reasons:
1-Palestinians, according to Green, should have supported MORE Jewish emigration into Palestine thus facilitating the Zionist colonialist movement/conquest into and of their homeland.
Palestinians should NOT have restricted their hoped for, by Green, aid to the Zionist colonialist conquest to "support of Jewish emigration" but should have bettered it by willingly making way for the incoming colonialist and peacefully giving up their homes, lands, workshops and all their means of livelihood and moving away to a place, to be determined by the colonialist Zionist movement, that will not constitute an obstacle to the then or future Zionist colonization plans.
The Palestinians cardinal crime, according to Green, is that NOT only that their reaction was NOT restricted to their non hospitality to the incoming/conquering colonists but that it was compounded by their search for allies in their adamant opposition to the Zionist colonialist conquest.
Which leads us to the Palestinians' SECOND cardinal crime, according to Green!
2-In their search for allies, a dastardly act per se, they sought the help and support of their enemy's worst enemy in an unholy, being aimed at an attempt to frustrate their enemy's plans to colonize their homeland, move!
That did not only constitute a move to interfere with their enemy's divinely ordained will and promise but was equally contrary to the mode of behavior expected then demanded and ordained by their enemy !
That a Colonialist conquest is bound to be opposed and resisted seems to escape Mr. Green even if, horror of all horrors, the colonialist conqueror is the persecuted Jew peacefully desirous and intent on dislocating, dispossessing, disfranchising and subjugating the indigenous population of the land he covets and would like to colonize!
Mr. Green expected , wanted, still wants, of the Palestinians to welcome and support Zionist colonialism of their homeland Palestine and not to have any dealings with the arch enemy of their arch enemy.
This is the phantasy land in which Green dwells in his total blindness to the truism that colonialist conquest is bound to be rejected and opposed by the indigenous people irrespective of who so ever , including alien Jews, happens to be the colonialist.
(1) above is understandable in view of the total blindness of the Zionist movement and, more importantly, its deliberate and conscious racist disregard of the rights of others!
(2) Is less understandable if we recall that Zionist behaviour and moral code does and DID allow the assistance of one’s enemies for ulterior purposes and objectives as with the Jews, the kapos, who volunteered to enforce Nazi rules and discipline in the Nazi concentration camps of their follow Jews, and were rewarded for it by the Nazis!
More to the point , that that is NOT only standard Zionist but IS equally standard Israeli behaviour when we recall the Israeli assisted armament of IRAN in the IRAN/CONTRA case during the much more recent IRAQ/IRAN war.
However what should be noted is that Jews/Israel DID assist their enemies, the Nazis , Iran whereas the Arabs, and Palestinian Arabs, only went by the rule that :”The enemy of my enemy is my friend.”
Be that as it may Green remains my “favourite” Zionist in that he never camouflages his opinions or intentions and says it the way it, Zionistically, truly is!
He is open about his colonialist dreams and, being a genuinely devoted racist, is vociferous in his defense of the double standard!
Green is the true Zionist and as such IS the real enemy.
A. M. Eckstein -
5/23/2008
Last week Omar was glad to see that people on the blog, including myself, were willing to agree that a "Palestinian people" now exists--though it was not in existence in 1920 (as the original definition of Nakba, i.e., separation from Syria, showed), or in 1948 (which is why the Yeshuv was able to beat them in battle).
At that time, I asked Omar whether in his view an Israeli people similarly existed. I argued then that, similar to the Palestinians, an "Israeli people" did not exist in 1920, but unlike the Palestinians, it DID exist by 1948 (which is one reason why it beat the Palestinians and the other Arabs), and obviously it does exist now: this on the same principle that "the Palestinians" who once did not exist do exist now, having been "smelted" into a people by common (often bitter) experience.
At that time, Omar didn't answer my question: does he believe--applying the same principles of historical development to the Jews as to the Arabs in the Mandate--that an "Israeli people" now exists. as a "Palestinian people" does?
I think the answer is clear from the terminology Omar employs above in the usual tirade on Omar's part:: what he is willing to grant to the Palestinians he is not willing to grant to the Israelis. And THERE, folks, is the source of the problem.
For him, the Israeli people don't exist. Only Jews.
Yet he throws the term "racism" around so easily, doesn't he?
However, I will ask him again: does an "Israeli people"--created through a similar process that produced Palestinians out of the Arabs of the Mandate-- exist or not, Omar? Yes or no?
By your answer, so shall you be clearly known.
omar ibrahim baker -
5/22/2008
Professor LeVine's diagnosis of the plague ravaging Palestine and his prognosis for its developments are , sadly, to the point and seem to be almost fatalistically inevitable.
However that aspect of the problem which effects its Jewish residents about where will "Israel" stand regionally in days to come have been overlooked!
That is no small matter!
Sixty years of Israel's existence seem to have, contrary to all expectations,intensified it sregional
public and cultural alienation.
Rejection of its very existence have mobilzed more mass movements than ever before and is gradually escalating from a general "political"
stand into a condition, a state, of a collective subconsciouness; a comprehensive "folkloric" culture.
State to state "peace agreements" have been NOT only less conducive to public/popular acceptance of Israel but , if anything, more inducive to the collective rejection of the
"establishments" which concluded them and to a more radical and doctrine based, doctrinaire, rejection of Israel itself.
The case of Egypt stands out as the prime example of how "official" recognition of Israel only intensified opposition to the ruling establishment and to a "deeper" public rejection of Israel through the rise of the Islamist movement.
This same phenomenon is bound to be repeated not only in other major Arab countries but appears to widen its reach to include other non Arab Moslem countries with the unmistakable ascendancy of the Islamist cause!
Once again it seems that the Jewish people have chosen a remedy, Zionism, worse than the disease!
omar ibrahim baker -
5/22/2008
So what we have in Israel now is a profoundly sick nation/state.
Granted that the roots of the sickness go back to the heinous Holocaust and is, understandably , deep rooted and long lasting the more serious sympton, or out growth, of that sickness is, however, the uncertaninty about the future.
Would that future entail demolition by war, irrespective of who wins it, or the loss of Jewish majority, seem to be the questions most unsettling to many, the majority?, of Israelis.
No amount or kind of reassurances, neither international nor regional, seem to alleviate that uncertainity and dispel the horrible nightmares that return at night seemingly too frequently.
Of course that goes back , in essence, to the roots of the Jewish problem of non integrability that was highly accentuated and intensified by the horrible Holocaust.
However seemingly the triumph of the Zionist project to colonize Palestine DID NOT provide the necessary remedy.
If anything it seems to have complicated the malady and sent the patient into a more serious, terminal?, predicament: whereas the issue was to integrate or not to integrate it is now to be or not to be.
Paradoxically it seems that the Jewish people have chosen a remedy, Zionism, worse than the disease!
Serge Lelouche -
5/21/2008
I'm glad to see others are willing to call LeVine on what looks like a fabrication. If LeVine will provide flight details and his seat number he could restore his good name.
Joseph Mutik -
5/20/2008
The Palestinians adamantly opposed any kind of economic development in the Palestinian Authority areas. Shimon Peres, an expert in development of industrial areas, tried to do it but the Palestinians refused his help. Anyone remembers the Jericho casino, a Palestinian, Israeli, European joint venture? The casino was a very profitable development which created hundreds of jobs and brought lots of money into the area but the Palestinians preferred to destroy it and spend the money for weaponry. The late Arafat divided the Palestinian money between his greedy wife, his cronies and illicit weapons.
If the Palestinians want to get past the "the nationalist and religious framework that has doomed older generation to perpetual conflict" they have to begin by ending the anti-Jewish incitement in the official Palestinian media. The Israeli Palestinian dialog is about land for peace but in the actual peace talks the only thing coming out is land (dismantling Jewish settlements) and not changing the Palestinian incitement for the destruction of Israel (non recognition of Israel as a Jewish state combined with the request for the return of refugees - the only conflict where this kind of request is on the table) If the Palestinians, really, want peace they have to change their ways.
As I wrote in a message, above, I believe that time works on behalf of the Israeli Jews. In a short historic time the Arab blackmail will stop working because the oil will begin to be less important for the world economy and the calls of Mr. Levine for the next destruction of a big number of Jews will be superfluous.
Steven R Alvarado -
5/20/2008
I have noticed how so many opinion piece authors just happen to sit next to a Holacaust survivor, or some other "victim" whose story advances their cause. Seems a little too coincidental to have merit.
Bob Martin -
5/19/2008
Levine's works are more properly styled "cultural fiction" and he should not be considered a reliable objective source for history. His understanding of Israeli culture is 100% Leftist political agitprop.
The story of sitting next to a survivor of the Shoah is probably fiction, or at the least has been distorted to suit his purpose, as is the rhetorical style of this professional dissembler.
Joseph Mutik -
5/19/2008
The western world begins to develop alternative methods of transportation and fueling lowering the need for Arab oil. Without the oil blackmail the Arabs will be less influential including their anti-Jewish stance. Already the Israeli economy uses foreign workers instead of Palestinian workers. Palestinian prefer to spend their money for weaponry instead of economic infrastructure and they'll have the choice of trying to get work in Egypt or Jordan, which isn't realistic, or leave the West bank and Gaza to find work in other places. If the oil prices trend and the self destructive Palestinian behavior continues the Palestinians will begin to empty the West Bank and Gaza. The next 30-50 years will, naturally, work on behalf of Israel.
Mr. Levine, the story of Israel isn't the Holocaust against the Palestinian refugees (certainly the Holocaust played a certain role in the UN partition resolution, rejected by Arabs) but it's the Jewish refugees from Arab countries against the Arab refugees from mandatory Palestine.
The so called "Palestinians" don't want peace but a gradual destruction of the Israeli Jews, otherwise they would recognize the need for Jewish state and a Palestinian state.
Elliott Aron Green -
5/19/2008
LeVine has a grand imagination and grand theories. But his essay is fundamentally based on falsehoods and illogic. Let's just point to a few:
LeV. starts with the Holocaust. Is he unaware of the Palestinian Arab role in the Holocaust? Is he unaware that the Arab Higher Committee, the political leadership of the Arabs in the country, demanded an end to Jewish immigration to the internationally designated Jewish National Home?? Thus the Arabs rejected the Jewish right to return at that time and contributed to the Holocaust in that way, with the agreement of the UK that implemented what seems to have been both an Arab and a British policy preference. Then, the chief Palestinian Arab leader, the British-appointed Mufti of Jerusalem, Haj Amin el-Husseini [Husyani], spent most of the war in the Nazi-fascist domain, urging the Germans to prevent the escape of Jewish children from the genocide, among his other activities. He urged the Nazis to send Jewish children to Poland, where they would be under "active supervision" in his words.
Husseini was of course the recognized leader of the Palestinian Arabs in the period before and during Israel's War of Independence. Since his time the Arabs generally have incorporated Nazi-like and modern European Judeophobic themes into their traditional Arab-Muslim Judeophobia. The old Sunni notion of a Jewish plot being behind the Shi`ite split has been joined by a general Jewish conspiracy notion inspired by the Protocols of the Elders of Zion. The cartoons of Jews in the Arab press are Stuermer-like. Etc. The Hamas demonstrates its adhesion to traditional Muslim Judeophobia in its Charter [see esp. Article 7 with the medieval Muslim fable of Muslims slaughtering Jews at Judgement Day].
Indeed, in traditional Muslim society, Jews were oppressed, exploited and humiliated as dhimmis, that is, according to Islamic law, as were Christians, and, starting at a later time, Hindus in India. Although Jews were a majority in Jerusalem from the mid-19th century [attested by a French diplomat as early as 1853], the Ottoman Empire discriminated against Jews in city government. Conversely, prominent Jerusalem Arab families, Husseinis and Khalidis, received high posts in the Ottoman imperial govt., as well in Jerusalem itself.
As to "occupation," the San Remo Conference and the League of Nations, designated the country [which the Arabs traditionally DID NOT call "palestine"] the Jewish National Home. The UN General Assembly partition recommendation of 11-29-1947 was NOT law by definition. Hence, Judea-Samaria and Gaza were not "occupied" by Israel according to international law.
LeV also talks about population expulsion. The first people in the country to be driven out of their homes in the War of Independence were Jews driven out of south Tel Aviv and several Jerusalem neighborhoods in December 1947 & January 1948. At that period, the Arabs had the military upper hand which was the general opinion in the world press, as well as the Arab press. Further, about 900,000 Jews were driven out of their homes in Arab lands in the period after the 1947-1949 war [more than the number of who fled Israel], although these expulsions were planned by the Arab League before 11-29-1947. Pro-Nazi massacres of Jews took place in Iraq, Libya, and other Arab lands during WW2.
If LeVine is so enamored of bi-nationalism, why doesn't he complain about the Arab chauvinism embodied in the Arab League, overlooking the several sizable non-Arab peoples living under Arab rule??
