CATASTROPHE... no quotes needed.

I have never been one to put much faith in religious fairy tales. Reason, genuine compassion and the rule of law is a much better way to run the world.

According to the Zionists, their "God" told them they were spiritually pre-destined and justified in invading Palestine and killing Palestinians while stealing their land. That holy decree must make it O.K.

But if we look at courts in this world, the most serious and clear definitions of crimes are regarding murder and theft. Under international law murder and theft of a national scale are called crimes against humanity. And then there are the "thou shall not kill and thou shall not steal" laws of the same "God".

If a murder and thief told a judge and jury that "God" gave him a spiritual decree to kill and steal the result would be a very harsh judgment or perhaps a finding that the criminal was insane.

Yet, due to the incredibly twisted Zionist influenced American media, we are conditioned to believe that the Palestinians who are imprisoned in walled-in apartheid ghettos dominated by the Israelis are actually the "bad guys" and the Israelis are the victims.

I wonder if the pre-WWII deeds to property in what is now Israel are available to verify who are the real owners of the land ?

JConrad:

I agree with what you say. Unfortunately, identifying deeded land in Palestine is difficult because the Turkish Empire claimed ownership of much of it. In effect, individual Palestinians had permanent rights to work and live on the Empire's land as they had been doing for centuries. This system worked very well, and it was really identical to land ownership. Unfortunately, the system gave Western colonists the opportunity to say they were "confiscating" the land from the defeated Turks (WWI). One thing is clear; the colonists had absolutely no right to the land under any reasonable system. It was taken by force.

If I sell YOUR bicycle to John, is that a legal transaction? much less a moral one??

Bush and his Zionist pals...
Just because they are insane doesn't mean they don't have the right to exist... not as they are existing now anyway, but safely put away in very high security padded cells!

texlorado:

Good example.

pax4all:

Thanks for the interesting discussion.

" Unfortunately, the system gave Western colonists the opportunity to say they were "confiscating" the land from the defeated Turks (WWI)."

Help me and other readers out on the history here. Who exactly were the post WWI "Western colonists" that you mention?

I find it hard to believe that old Turkish claims had any meaning after WWI as nearly all of their imperial holdings reverted back to regional indigenous people. And if the Turks lost their claims after WWI, a new legal system of land ownership must have been established prior to the end of WWII ?

The major shift in occupied "ownership" of Palestinian lands happened following WWII after the British were driven out in part by Zionist terrorism.

But of course the argument about "legal" deeds is technical as you mention. Native Americans had traditional claims to regional lands without courthouse deeds. They were then killed or starved or cheated with bogus "treaty" agreements and forced into apartheid "reservations" and poverty.

Unfortunately, the Euro/Americans had more and bigger guns just like the Israelis.

Also check out

http://www.guardianweekly.co.uk/?page=editorial&id=583&catID=9

and

http://www.ifamericansknew.org/

JConrad:

The only modern colonist movement to Palestine of which I am aware is the Zionist movement. Turkish land claims had no meaning, but that didn't stop Zionist authorities from using them as justification for confiscation. The creation of Israel on Palestinian land was a crime, but it was primarily a crime of the US. The US enabled the Zionist movement after WWII, added significant support after the 67 war, and now cheers them on and bankrolls their worst depravations.

Palestinians are paying a debt they never owed in the first place. Relocate "Israel" to Germany, Austria, Brooklyn, Miami Beach or the damn Moon!

lets give the Native Americans their land back too, start with DC

Nahida,

What is your proposal? I see much wringing of hands and bewailing of the Israeli state - but no ideas. What is your best outcome? What do you want to see happen?

Golddogs:

Thanks for admitting that the Zionist movement committed, and is still committing, ethnic cleansing equivalent to the slaughter of Native Americans in North America.

Kendpotter:

Let's start by ceasing the ongoing theft of Palestinian land. Nothing justifies this; not murder, terrorism, or militia attacks. Theft is theft, even if one believes that one is stealing from "bad people". Everyone born in historic Palestine has a right to stay there, even if one's parents were colonists. The status of colonizing immigrants can be negotiated, but colonists are certainly subject to violent resistance from indigenous inhabitants. This sort of resistance has always been legitimate everywhere in the world, including North America. I imagine that the Palestinian people would settle for an independent state with borders strictly along the pre-1967 green line, with all of the "settlements" under Palestinian rule. It's not up to me to decide for the Palestinian people though.

More poetry nahida?

You guys mark this as a "catastrophe" because you didn't get to genocide the jews in the region, which was the arab goal in the 1948 war. Excuse us for not considering this to be a "catastrophe".

I celebrated israel's 60th with a fine bottle of golan heights riesling and a delicious meal. I hope you lefties fared as well...

"President George Bush has claimed he was told by God to invade Iraq and attack Osama bin Laden's stronghold of Afghanistan as part of a divine mission to bring peace to the Middle East, security for Israel, and a state for the Palestinians."

I wonder which Red State(s) America will give to the Palestineans and to the Iraqis and to the Afghanis and...

nahida - your poems are beautiful. They start with the heart and spirit and then add intellgent ideas. The best solutions to human problems start with the opening of the heart and the possibility of justice followed by sharing, forgiveness and reconciliation as you imply.

I know many Jews who feel as you do.

Albert Einstein said: "And the Jewish people to whom I gladly belong and with whose mentality I have a deep affinity have no different quality for me than all other people. As far as my experience goes, they are no better than other human groups, although they are protected from the worst cancers by a lack of power. Otherwise I cannot see anything 'chosen' about them."

When an oppressed people get power, they can become just as bad as anyone. Israel must stop the land grabbing and penning people up in ghettos not dissimilar to Warsaw or Lodz.

I am hoping that the best of the Palestinians and the best of the Israelis can get together and shape a concrete proposal for solution and then sell it to thier own people.

Jclientle- Israel wouldn't need to use those security measures of palestinians weren't always trying to kill them.

You guys always ignore that.

I love the pure racism that comes forth from the Jews (some of them ... unfortunately the ones with the power to kill). "Jewbacca" above shows it so clearly. When you blindly accuse an entire race and say they are all 'always trying to kill them', the racism of that statement just drips from it. This is the pure racial hatred that drives today's problem. You just saw evil.

Samson, it is a FACT, that palestinians, and of course not all of them, but a LOT of them, are trying to kill israelis at any given moment. Israel, in assuming any kind of relaxed security posture, would be attacked and its citizens murdered. So how can the israeli government EVER back down? They have a responsbility to their citizens, not to their enemies.

Give me a break with this nonesense about evil, YOU support evil, not me.

Nahida, well said even though you pegged me on your list #5 as algebra did traumatize me indeed but I agree with you and love your info and your truth telling and it would be ideal if thinking people like you were more involved in mediative diplomatic go betweens for this horrible problem that needs to be clearly reminded of the history that lead to this pinnacle of hatred and violence the jews passed to this problem. This could all have been avoided and resolved if the jews hadn't played up to the holocaust to the point where they began victimizing as they had tragically been.

Sorry Nahida,

Apparently I am too stupid to understand.

Does your poetry mean the boundaries of 1948 or 1967 or extermination? Right of return or not? If right of return, then what kind of compensation from the Arab countries that expelled all the Jews after 1948 and expropriated all their lands?

Israel Sucks!!!!

Nahida,

Very interesting and informative article. Thanks.

Treefrog,

thanks for (literally) nothing.

Nahida, what you are saying is an outright lie. The jews of iraq were persecuted into leaving, and many of them, as well as jews all over the arab world, were also forced out of their homes. The arab nations have NEVER made a real peace agreement to israel, perhaps the very recent saudi deal could be seen this way, but this was in 2002. If you are claiming there was a comprehensive peace deal before then you are simply making it up, like most of your "facts".

Funny how you guys never talk about right of return for them...

Nahdia, wow, great quotes, any comments on the right of return for jews who were violently kicked out of arab countries?

Nahidia, as usual, you have lied/misrepresented...

That manual does not call for these techniques to be used to israeli supporters. Rather, it WARNS israel supporters of their use, and exaplins how to deal with it. As one glace back on any of these threads can show, you guys use namecalling certainly as one of your main methods. I wonder how many times I and other zionsts on here have been called "nazis"?

And as for bandwagon, you simply have to be kidding me. The main argument of those who support the arabs is: "the whole world is doing it".

You use the techniques in that manual nahidia, not me.

back at ya...kendpotter....

What about the children of "palestine"? Let's see some of what they are exposed to:

www.al-fatah.net

Not an israeli site...

Nahidia, stop scolling the discussion with that bad poetry.

No amount of half-assed poetry is going to change the fact that israel is responding to palestinian aggression. Calling me a nazi won't change that either. Why won't you deal with reality?

One of the problems of this subject is how easy it is to be pushed into the two dimensional frame, a simplistic, dualistic argument on and about the justification of violence, a preferred direction of propagandists to avoid facing the underlying problem of a Zionist theft of Arab land, authorized by colonialists and imperialists. It may help to step back and broaden the perspective.

In fact, many Israelis have been made into and are as much pawns to a Zionist elite power game as are many Palestinians pawns for a much larger Arab elite power structure, dominated by the hang over of a colonial history in terms of potentates and dictators now supported by today's imperialist America.

Religion is over emphasised in the context and is not as much the cause of the differences or the problems as one might be lead to believe but it is used as a simple excuse again by propagandists for the irrational, in most cases as a short cut for the ignorant or brainwashed masses in America, Israel and the Arab world. There is no doubt that the issues surrounding the Naqba, and the wars, expulsions, and illegal occupation and Israeli war crimes since are not simple, but all must be addressed to arrive at a practical sollution.

Personally I found the following article in The New Statesman, "Talking to the Enemy" by Avi Shlaim, very helpful to understand how the Zionists were able to use the fears of both Gamal Abdel Nasser of Egypt and the Hashemite kings of Jordan to consolidate their gains of wars.

http://www.newstatesman.com/200805150024

"There can be no genuine or viable peace between Israel and the Palestinians without an end to the occupation. Peace-making and land-grabbing simply do not go together. Consequently, 40 years after its spectacular victory in the Six-Day War, Israel still faces the same fundamental choice: it can have land or it can have peace; it cannot have both."

For further interesting perspectives and especially an excellent commentary by Paul Woodward on "Talking to Hamas" (16/05) and "Bush Bullshit" (15/05) take a look at:

http://warincontext.org/

Lucitanian,

Thanks for the post and the even-handed perspective. I just can't believe the posters to this board. If you can't agree with them 100% and take a stand that maybe the other side has good points too, then you end up taking crap from everybody.