Gaza Blowup Highlights Bush's Broken Peace Promise
By Jon Perr Saturday Dec 27, 2008 9:30am
In January, George W. Bush famously predicted he would broker a Middle East peace by the end of his presidency. Now with Israel's launch this morning of airstrikes in Gaza -- which so far have left 155 dead -- Bush's pledge of a two-state solution is just the latest failure of his disastrous tenure in the White House.
Tensions between Israeli and Hamas forces have been escalating since the expiration last week of a six-month truce negotiated by Egypt. The retaliatory tit-for-tat has included Israeli strikes against militants in Gaza, and Hamas firing rockets and mortars into Israel. And while Israel reopened border crossings Friday for deliveries of food, supplies and humanitarian aid, the AP reported that the government of Prime Minister Ehud Olmert "wrapped up preparations for a broad offensive."
On Thursday, the scandal-plagued outgoing Prime Minister issued a warning to Palestinians in Gaza. As Reuters recounted:
"I didn't come here to declare war," Mr. Olmert told Al Arabiya, an Arab broadcaster widely watched in Gaza. "But Hamas must be stopped - that is the way it is going to be."
He issued what amounted to a public call to Gazans to overthrow Hamas, the Islamic group that controls the territory. "I'm telling them now," he said. "It may be the last minute. There will be more blood there. Who wants it? We don't want it."
That kind of rhetoric hardly suggests any imminent breakthrough in Israeli-Palestinian relations during the 25 days remaining in the Bush presidency -- especially given this morning's airstrikes. Which is exactly what President Bush promised 11 months ago.
After years of malign neglect regarding the simmering Israeli-Palestinian conflict, President Bush launched his renewed peace effort at the November 2007 Annapolis conference. During a subsequent meeting on January 11, 2008 with Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, Bush made his pledge of a signed agreement during his presidency:
"I believe it's going to happen, that there will be a signed peace treaty by the time I leave office...I'm on a timetable. I've got 12 months."
President Bush's unshakable confidence continued through the next round of talks in May. In an interview with Al-Arabiya television, President Bush doubled-down on his earlier bet. Asked if an agreement can still be reached by the time he departs the White House, he repeated his pledge:
"Yes, I think so. That's what I'm aiming for, absolutely. We're pushing hard.''
President Bush might have wanted to first check in with his Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice. On April 29, Rice tried to reset expectations, telling an American Jewish audience that "we have a chance to reach the basic contours of a settlement by the end of the year." Bush himself briefly signaled a retreat during an April 24th meeting with Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, lowering his goal from a peace treaty, "I'm confident we can achieve the definition of a state." And during a press conference five days later, Bush remained ebullient about what then seemed to be more modest goals:
"I'm still hopeful we'll get an agreement by the end of my presidency. Condi is heading back out there. I've been in touch with President Abbas here in the Oval Office, and I talk to Prime Minister Olmert, and the attitude is good. People do understand the importance of getting a state defined."
Alas, President Bush's perpetually sunny disposition seems disconnected from events on the ground. Even amid the chaos and carnage in March as Israeli forces and Hamas forces battled in Gaza, Bush announced, "I'm still as optimistic as I was after Annapolis." By May, the prospects seemed bleaker still, with Abbas still mired in Fatah's power struggle with Hamas and Israeli Prime Minister Olmert gravely weakened by the mushrooming corruption scandal enveloping his government. In an interview on May 13 with the Israeli paper Ha'aretz, Bush made it clear he was undeterred:
Q: Mr. President, Prime Minister Olmert is under a corruption probe and is basically almost on the verge of being forced out from office. And his counterpart, Abu Abbas, is also very weak. So really the question is, do you still think that you can achieve peace until the end of 2008?
THE PRESIDENT: I do, yes.
Even though talks between Olmert and Abbas continued behind the scenes, the environment was not a promising one. As Jon Alterman, director of the Middle East program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS), recently put it:
"It's hard to remember a less auspicious time to pursue Arab-Israeli peacemaking than right now. The politics on the ground are absolutely miserable."
For her part, Secretary of State Rice finally put an end to Bush's wishful thinking on December 15. After a meeting of the diplomatic Quartet of Mideast peacemakers - the U.S., the U.N., the European Union and Russia – held at the United Nations, Rice announced:
"They won't achieve agreement by the end of the year, but they have achieved a good deal of progress in their negotiations, a good deal of progress in the work that is being done on the ground."
Time will tell. Olmert, like Bush, is on his way out of office. (A victory in the February elections by Likud's Benjamin Netanyahu over Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni and Defense Minister Ehud Barak would almost certainly bring a harder line from the Israeli government). Regardless, the Israeli-Palestinian impasse is just another in George W. Bush's litany of failures - and yet another mess Barack Obama will have to clean up.
(This piece is crossposted at Perrspectives.)
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is a vassal state.
And the Zionists agenda of controlled genocide continues.
The problem is their only choice is "controlled genocide" or controlled suicide.
As good of an excuse as any other, huh?
Israel has as much right to their territory as Palestine. They both claim God gave it to them. They're retaliating for rocket strikes from Hamas. We could easily have a story here with screaming, and wailing families of Israelis who've lost family members. The only question is was Israel's response proportional? Are the strikes from Hamas from the government or from rogues? And is there any way of permanently stopping this tit-for-tat responses?
So a Brooklyn couple have more rights to that land than the natural inhabitants evicted and homes demolished from the West Bank? Is G-d a real estate agent now?
That's why I have no taste for the Abrahamic faiths. In my letter requsting excommunication from the Mormon church, so long ago, that some commenters here may not have been born yet, I refered to not wanting to worship a divine A-1 real estate agent.
By that I was referring both to the disputed regions and the Mormon teaching of levels of Heaven.
.. that it's "God's Will" that the Zionists should occupy Palestine, but somehow God messed up and the Zionists must slaughter innocents because God Him/HerSelf is incapable of enforcing His/Her own will.
Israel is simply a military outpost of the Anglo-American Empire.
is an outpost of the European Empire?
The US took over the position of the Empire's top dog in the Middle East after the Suez debacle of 1956 put Britain in 2nd place.
should we leave the Americas?
Yes, Yes!
If only we could get rid of the ....race, cancer of the Earth!
How do we know the rocket strikes actually came from Hamas?
because the media tells us?
We have agent provocatuers infiltrating peace marches, how do we know that these were not false flags?
Check out the history of Israeli false flags - King David Hotel, Lavon Affair, USS Liberty, and probably others.
(1) Israel is using the time between the American Presidential election and the Inauguration to enforce her will and certainly wouldn't hesitate to shoot rockets at herself to spark it.
(2) The rockets Hamas sends into Israel (if it is Hamas) are not much more than glorified fireworks. Rarely do they even cause injuries, but the Israelis routinely respond with air strikes that kill at least several palestinians, frequently children.
That's a good observation. It's amazing how much the world knows about the US, and how little the US knows about them.
"Marty Operations" are US-Israeli false flag ops. and, the Saudis and Iranians don't pay "Blood Money" to the families. The UN only created one state in 1948, and the first Israeli war of Survival never happened. Tell me, were 10 Million people killed during Htiler's reign of terror? or were the Jews, Commies and Homos immolating themselves as a false flag op?
I thought the UN created two states in Palestine in '48, but Israel just unilaterally declared it owned the whole damn thing. Then Truman was the first to recongnize it.
How about having Israel honor the over 100 U.N. Resolutions it and the United States have chosen to ignore?
if you read any of those UN resolutions they're pretty much prescriptions for Israel to commit suicide so I don't really blame them for ignoring the UN.
Actually had they abided by the resolutions there would be no conflict and there would be two states living side by side, but Israel insists on expanding its territory and expelling the Palestinians from their own lands.
What we have today is a de facto one state solution, Pone state controls all of the land, and it has done so for over 40 years, affirming one people's right to live, marry, work and settle by negating another people's right to do the same, on land that two peoples (not just one) call home. The situation we're in now is a situation where there's a country that rules over more or less equal populations of Jews and non-Jews, and it privileges Jews over non-Jews, it gives rights to Jews over non-Jews. An Apartheid.
Because of the kind of aggressive colonization of the Occupied Territories, it's no longer possible to separate the two populations, if it ever was. With Israel building more settlements in the West Bank, and 20% of Israel's population being Palestinian, the only real solution is a bi-national one state solution. Churchs, mosques and synagogues are scattered in this state, and so should their respective faithfuls.
European MSM is reporting every 15 minutes the words of Tipsy Livni regarding Hamas to justify Israel's genocide of Gaza -- "Enough is Enough".
The war criminal Lady Livni needs to be arrested ASAP and put behind bars at The Hague. And by the way, with her looks, she no more belongs in the Mediterranean region than the Man in the Moon.
I think they should have given the Jews Delaware, in 1948 (for example), instead of their ancestral homeland, as a compromise, and to prevent this current Middle Eastern bloodhed. Then the USA could embrace the inflow of settlers with American hospitality.
(Like that would be going well, eh?!?!? Just imagine.)
The mothers and fathers of the children who go to blow themselves up must say "enough" must not accept the 'Blood Money" from the Arab states. Must tell the Arab states to go fight their own war, that they are tired of being pawns of the Saudis, Iranians and Syrians. Let the Leaders of Hamas, the ones who live safely in Damascus come home to Philistia. They won't. They are cowards who simply enjoy seeing their "people" slaughtered.
...how about the money Israel uses to subsidize illegal settlements to put its citizens in harms way while they violate international law in a land grab? /That's/ blood money.
Put that remark on Dave's top 10 list, great witticism!
"The problem is their only choice is "controlled genocide" or controlled suicide."
[ysbaddaden]Dec 2008
They are choosing genocide, and that makes them the monsters here. Israel is not under any sort of existential threat; the Palestinians clearly are.
who only fire multiple rockets on a daily basis
and stop using the term zionist
say what you mean
JEW
What a typical tactic: cry "anti-semitism" and nothing else matters.
Give it up, the world now understands that Israeli-Jews are not the victims. They are the oppressors, the occupiers, the colonizers. Face facts...
hey its only the Israelis that dress up as Palestinians/Arabs and conduct terrorism
Lavon Affair, King David Bombing
and it was the Israeli's who flew unpainted/unmarked fighters at the USS Liberty...
ITN News has just reported that in the last 7 years, rocket attacks from Gaza into Israel have killed 14 people.
In the last 24 hours, Israeli warplanes have killed more than 277 Palestinians, the majority of which are civilians.
As much as i dislike Bush the effort for Peace in the Middle East has not exactly been a priority in this country. Even Jimmy Carter's Peace Agreement was really nothing more than a big arms deal. Clinton did not get started until his last year in office. I do not think those in power in this country want peace. How can they sell all those weapons if we have peace?
For what it's worth, the deal Jimmy Carter brokered in 1978 not only ended tensions between Egypt and Israel, it returned Sinai to Cairo. It also finally moved Egypt from a Soviet client state to a U.S. ally.
As for Clinton, he hosted Rabin and Arafat in 1993 for the signing of the Oslo accord:
http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?re...
Snip - Arafat, who was sacked as head of military intelligence this year, made numerous enemies during his years as a ranking security official and was viewed by many Palestinians as corrupt.
He had survived several assassination attempts, most recently in October when a car parked nearby exploded as his convoy was leaving the main security headquarters in Gaza City. Arafat was not injured.
The shooting may stem from infighting among the rival forces that have sown disorder in Gaza since Palestinian Authority President Yasser Arafat's death in November.
Moussa Arafat had headed the powerful military intelligence agency since arriving in Gaza in 1994, when the Palestinian Authority was created as a result of the Oslo peace accords.
http://archives.latimes.com/gaza-city-gaza-ci...
Now he's on a timetable.
boosh couldna figger out how to take a cross-town train.
If it was travelling in the opposite direction of a solution.
Bush announced his "Road Map for Peace" on June 24, 2002 - maybe he just can't figure how to unfold it.
He got it with his Happy Meal
But broke his crayons.
"Come to Christ. It's the only way for you to have Peace."
http://www.cynical-c.com/archives/bloggraphic...
http://www.cynical-c.com/archives/bloggraphic...
It is not official Israeli policy to wipe out every Palestinian.Hamas on the other hand is not quite so restrained.
Palestine has already been wiped out. Israel employs Hitlarian tactics to either systematically kill the Palestinians or encage them in an apartheid to drive them away. In the meantime, the usurp, suppress, deny and destroy what remains of historic Palestine.
the Israelis use ovens for baking bread. Given their huge military preponderance if their intent was to wipe out the Palestinians they're doing a pretty poor job of it. This is not to say the Israelis don't have some things to answer for, Shatila springs to mind, but to suggest that genocide is official Israeli policy is ludicrous.
They are just running the largest prison on the planet.
Ghetto. Just like the Warsaw ghetto in WWII.
Let me know how you respond when you're living like a caged rat, and see your former home bulldozed for a new settlement.
"I believe it's going to happen, that there will be a signed peace treaty by the time I leave office...I'm on a timetable. I've got 12 months."
It's going to take more than some imbecile saying he can get it done in 12 months. Oh yeah, this was one of his priorities. Yep, sure, you betcha.
Did anyone really expect him to actually try to do Anything?
Wait for it. It'll show up soon.
This was all Bill Clinton's fault.
That's what they're renaming San Andreas.
I thought it was Obama's fault.
Just wait until he is sworn in as president.
I'm sure there's gonna be more to come.
That's so last millennium. I'm sure it can be blamed on Obama now.
People assume its ridiculous to compare the plight of the Palestinians to a Holocaust. It's a slow genocide and yes holocaust, they've employed Hitarian tactics over the years, from encaging people to yes even stamping them! http://electronicintifada.net/v2/article10013...
The big difference was the Jewish populace weren't physically threatening the Germans in any way.
No but these are the natural inhabitants fighting for their right to live on their own land. It's a legitimate battle between the natives and the immigrants. These people have dwelled in that land much longer than 60 years. Where are they represented on the flag they are occupied by? When you plant fear hunger and hopelessness, all you will reap is terror.
Whether we believe in it or not, the Jews see themselves as a people dispossessed, so it's the same beef. We got a lot of Jewish immigrants from Russia and all over Eastern Europe the last 30 years where, under the Communists, they weren't treated much better than those under the Germans. Jews also have a tradition of insularity thus inviting hostility, but also showing they weren't intermingling through marriage with your typical European. That would be like calling the Roma (Gypsies) European.
And previous to Israel it was British held territory, with British government and officials.
In addition, we have our own AmerIndians, should we just hand over the United States to them because they're the "natural inhabitants"?
It was in Turkish Hands and everyone was relatively happy. That Star and Crescent? That was the banner of the Ottoman Turks.
then came WWI and Turkey was on the losing side.
You can't trace Jewish ancestry from thousands of years to that land. Jews are not a people, not an ethnicity, they are a religion. No one religion can claim rights to a land.
Upon its establishment, the UN unfairly gave half the land to a people that amounted to less that 8% of the total population. Ethnically cleansing Palestinians to make room for immigrants.
Technically, Judaism is the religion, but as a people they are considered a Nation-State. A Nation-State is a group of interconnected people with a related interest, even if they don't have a geographic location as such. To me that sounds much like culture, but then coming from all around the world, they don't all share exactly the same cultures either. That's why people debate themselves into snarls as to whether Judaism is a race (like Hitler and the Nazis believed,) or a religion, even though you have atheist Jews.
Oh and those "immigrants" that initially settled Israel after it was established by the UN, were essentially coming from Death Camps.
Israel's Interior Ministry has a list of 137 nationalities, starting from Abkhazi to Zimbabwean. Are these all related to one another and do they all have the right to dwell on a land at the expense of the natural inhabitants?
Remember it is the state of Israel that immigrated, not the other way around.
You still haven't answered my question, "Should the US give our territory back to our "natural inhabitants?"
The crimes we've committed to the Native Americans should not be repeated towards the Palestinians, we live in an era where we have "international laws" and the United Nations to ensure such events are not repeated. The United Nations was good to stop the Apartheid of the South Africans and now we need to do the same towards these oppressed people.
I don't believe Native Americans are seeking their land back, but we should respect them and respect the treaties that we've violated with them throughout the years.
Then let's wait and see what the UN has to say about these events.
And lets start funding them with our dues, we're in quite an arrears.
Let them have not just peace-keeping troops, but peace-making as well.
International laws and courts are worthless without the troops to back them up.
And state and commercial interests always determine who's on what side of international interests even in the UN.
America briefly considered giving them our nuclear warheads in the late 40's, but abandoned the idea.
But then wouldn't we just be fighting non-stop wars that have nothing to do with us, wearing blue helmets?
And BTW...how come nobody bitches about THEM not allowing El Baredei to come there to inspect THEIR nukes???
pretty selective about what laws should be enforced. Terrorist attacks in the form of suicide bombers and rockets are okay for some reason. I suspect that if you actually asked the American aboriginals if they'd like their land back you'd be unpleasantly surprised.
Terrorist attacks coming from those who are oppressed and in an occupation under siege collectively punished and deprived from the basic necessities of life have all rights to retaliate against their illegal occupation. Its as if your implying the Palestinians have the right to remain silent while the occupation starves them, kills them and continues to violently colonize their land.
You just echoed the al-Qaeda justification for the September 11th attacks.
I'm upset about Prop 8 here in California. Does that meaning I'm justified in blowing up a packed church that supported the Amendment?
Israel doesn't occupy Gaza, genius. It doesn't occupy the West Bank or most of Palestine. Gaza is under Hamas control and they refuse to actually govern, preferring to try to kill as many Jews as possible.
As far as I'm concerned, let the tanks roll. Hamas and the Palestinian Authority deserve nothing but the ass-kicking they've earned. Maybe, just maybe, when the Israeli Army has destroyed every "refugee camp" (really towns and cities) and pushed the Palestinians to the borders of the Arab states who don;t want them, maybe then they'll realize what happens when you push an armed nation too far.
What I just read was a call for Genocide! I am sure your family is ashamed of you in some way! You do not have a CLUE about anything regarding this issue. Go blog on some other racist website, will you.
Obviously you are misinformed, bigoted, and I guarantee you voted YES on Prob 8.
Wrong on all counts. I campaigned against Prop 8. And not genocide, but a military solution to destroy Hamas.
I love "true progressives." scratch one, and you find someone as judgmental and exclusionary as the most rabid right-win fundamentalist.
I suppose you could put it that way. If you were full of hate. Which I think you are.
Tell me, How big is the Palestinian Military? You Know, How big is their Army? Or their AirForce? How many ships are in their Navy?
Or how about their munitions?
Do you see where I'm going with this?
One is very powerful, the other, is nothing but a rag tag bunch.
So tell me, who is in the wrong here?
Under International Law, resistance to occupation is LEGAL.
Collective Punishment, on the other hand, is ILLEGAL.
.. are actively pursuing return of property taken from them.
But, to me, the big difference is that we must protect the rights of the LIVING.
Sure, terrible things were done to Native Americans. I'm one-eighth Native American & I know what my family went thru.
But the issue is how we treat those who are alive, and the Israelis are doing to the Palestinians precisely what the Empire did to the Native Americans and it should be stopped.
With the native American Indians, it seems the Europeans simply came here and slaughtered them, double-crossed them and stole their real estate. Our guns were mightier than their bows and arrows. Plus we killed millions of them with smallpox and other "germs".
As to the Palestinian/Israeli quagmire, it seems the entire mess was started with the stroke of a few pens by re-drawing some lines while sipping some brandy. The Balfour Agreement I believe. The Palestinians homes were stolen by the thousands and it's gotten worse and worse.
Which is why there are over 100 U.N. Resolutions AGAINST Israel that have been ignored by them and the United States.
Israel is our 51st state. A state taken politically with the stroke of a pen and a dirty deal to the Palestinian people.
I know this isn't what you want to hear, Ysbaddaden, but if you ask Mexicans and Mexican-Americans the same question, many will tell you they are TAKING it back, regardless of whether or not people like yourself want to GIVE it back.
"Should the US give our territory back to our 'natural inhabitants'?" That is the question you pose. Well, Native Americans have a much stronger claim to this land than the Jews ever did to Palestine. After all, Native Americans inhabited this land only a few hundred years ago, whereas Jews inhabited Palestine 2,000 years ago!
Would Americans give back the land to the Native population at this point? Probably not. So why must Palestinian Arabs give up land they continuously inhabited since the 7th century to a group of people who claim it on a 2,000 year old biblical pretext. NO LOGIC
The United States also has people from around the world living here, with numerous nationalities, it doesn't mean they practice the same religion. Does that mean we're not entitled to our own territory?
It seems like your trying to justify Israel's continued policies of usurping, suppressing, denying and destroying what remains of Palestine on the expense of the Palestinians.
Read my above comment and then read our Internation Humanitarian Laws aka the Geneva Conventions.
I've read them, my education is in Political Science and International Relations.
Read my comment
Sat, 12/27/2008 - 10:13 — ysbaddaden
You clearly missed the chapter on international law. Although our current administration has completely dismissed them, they still exist and they need to be enforced.
Those were actually several textbooks, and s**t-loads of outside reading. I must've spent $300.00 of my own money just on textbooks.
.. the origins of Israel seems rather weak.
Much weaker than you think, it's a fundamentally illegal state with a violent inception, with the right people in power they were able to commit the largest grand theft in history. This is why people debate its right to exist and why people are leaning towards a one-state solution which is the only real solution today.
Didn't you earlier admit Israel was created by the UN, and now you argue that it was illegally founded?
The UN Mandate was not fair and very racist, allocating more than 50 % of the land (mostly fertile) to a people that hardly existed at the time while clearing out those that did to make way for future immigrants - and thus the 48 War began.
The point is this is about the longest military occupation of our time and the systematic and ongoing ethnic and religious discrimination against the Palestinian people. Women, children, gay and straight Palestinians are all collectively punished under the occupation. The international community is well aware of Israel's poor human rights record but we're not unfortunately.
Americans have a responsibility to wake up and find out what is being done under our name in the rest of the world. What our government is doing, who it is supporting with our tax dollars. I personally don't want to send F-16's to kill innocent civilians especially those who are under an illegal occupation and have no rights. If we knew the atrocities in the occupied territories, we wouldn't be supporting it, at least those who have a heart would not be supporting it.
That describes the United States. We were born in a treasonous rebellion against the Throne, killed the King's men in job lots, made common cause with England's enemies, and in the end expelled Loyalists by the thousands.
Do you suggest we give ourselves back to England? But then there's that whole Battle of Hastings thing that overthrew the legitimate King...
The crimes we've committed to the Native Americans should not be repeated towards the Palestinians, we live in an era where we have "international laws" and the United Nations to ensure such events are not repeated. The United Nations was good to stop the Apartheid of the South Africans and now we need to do the same towards these oppressed people.
The Romans settled Jerusalem. As an Italian-American with Roman roots and a TRUE connection to the land, I have more right to live in Palestine with Arabs, Christians, Jews from the Desert and other Mediterranean peoples than do Zionists from Russia and Eastern Europe.
Jews had been living there on lands they had purchased for quite some time...the UN didn't just give them land and the dynamics behind that UN decision are actually quite interesting (it was almost on accident given the US switch to a "yes" vote at the last minute). Not that it was an ideal situation, but the UN Partition Plan of 1947 was soundly rejected by the Arabs there. The writing was on the wall at that point. And, of course, we know how well the Arabs' wars against Israel worked out.
I think if you really want to lay the blame at someone's feet...then you have to go to London, not UNHQ.
I think the Indians should get a big huge chunk of the USA, yes. Maybe west of the Mississippi?? At any rate, a damn sight more than they ever have been given!!! (Same applies in Canada, too.)
Under "modern law" ownership is 9/10, and the Palestinians were clearly owners and occupiers.
Did they drive the Jews to Europe, and elsewhere (the diaspora)? Guess we can blame the Romans for starting that, eh?
How long is a land claim good, in perpetuity? (In theory, yes, but... ) That would cause a lot of problems planet-wide.
in crowded markets.
.. a bit of history as to how "Israel" came into existence.
Jews double-dealt by British anit-semites, turned against the Germans in World War One, then persecuted by the Germans in WW2 for having turned against them in WW1, then fled to "Israel" which was awarded to the Zionists by the Brits for their complicity against the Germans in WW1, and then set against the Palestinians by Hitler's Holocaust, engineered by the American Anti-Semites.
Pawns on the Empire's ChessBoard.
My understanding was the Brits promised the territory to the Palestinians, and the Americans gave it to Israel.
I still sometimes suspect that was the creation of the ultimate ghetto, so if they have someplace to go, they won't come here.
I'm outta here, I gotta go do my recycling.
"I still sometimes suspect that was the creation of the ultimate ghetto, so if they have someplace to go, they won't come here.:
Exactly. Did you see my comment above? Why did they not give them Delaware (for example)?
I saw it after I wrote it, but it's an opinion I've had for years.
When I see the new comment box come up I click on it, but can no longer find the red squares identifying the newbies.
I actually heard something like your suggestion when Mahmoud Ahmadinejad was interviewed on 60 Minutes. When questioned about his disbelief in the Holocaust he basically changed the subject but interestingly suggested that if the Germans harmed the Jews, why wasn't portions of Germany set aside for them to create a new state, and not Palestine, that had nothing to do with the Holocaust.
You are quite right. If someone comes to your property and says God has given him title to it, you pack your bags and wish them a happy stay?
Under their truce, Palestinians have the right to remain silent while the occupation starves them, kills them and continues to violently colonize their land.
http://electronicintifada.net/v2/article10055...
CNN is basically equating (in size and emphasis) the Israeli massacre and military might with Hamas bottle rockets.
Targeting and massacring defenseless citizens and killing innocent scores right after Christmas is a SHAME AND A CRIME.
on Christmas with mercifully unguided but shrapnel laden rockets is quite alright is it?
are in apartment complexes, the cowards will achieve exactly this.
Conflict:
http://www.wrmea.com/jews_for_justice/index.html
.....Targeting and massacring defenseless citizens and killing innocent scores right after Christmas is a SHAME AND A CRIME......
Yes it is a shame and a crime, particularly after Christmas, as Palestinians recognize Christ and celebrate Christmas, not to mention the fact that Palestine does have a sizeable Christian population.
Israeli's fought Palestinians during Easter week 2002 and desecrated the Church of the Nativity. Of course, they blamed the desecration on the Palestinians. However, Christians ARE aware that Palestinians recognize Christ and his birthplace, so why would we believe Israeli lies? Note: Easter Week. This time: Christmas Week.
Can't forget that one...kind of deflates the conspiratorial idea that Israel is out to kill Christian holidays.
The 21st was Chanukah and it actually began on Saturday, the 20th, so no, the Israeli's did not commence their attacks during Chanukah week. Let's not try to deliberately confuse the people here, ok?
It was Europe's "God Given" right to dispossess the people who lived here in America. Wars are fought with "God on Our side". and God always gives the Winner the spoils.
From the Sumerians through the Babylonians and throughout the Ages, God has been a Real Estate Agent.
So, my dear friend, if you are living anywhere in the Americas: South, Cnetral or North, I suggest you remove yourself hence and hie thee back to the land of your antecedents be it Europe or Africa. You are not native to this place, and if you have Native blood, you are the descendant of rape.
what's that you say? thought so.
.. who is alive now?
The Native Americans who are alive now should and, by and large do, have their rights to Life Liberty & Pursuit of Happiness protected just as much as the rest of us.
But not so the Palestinians.
That's the difference.
a reservation in say, North Dakota. You can search a long time there for happiness without much luck. There isn't enough population to justify a casino. More's the pity.
My Granddad was half BlackFoot.
part Ojibway on my fathers side. It doesn't mean I can't see the truth. And just so you don't feel my attack is personal or directed solely against the US I'm a Canuck and most of our reservations are no better.
I'm mostly Celtic-American (Welsh/Scottish), but my maternal grandfather thought he had some Cherokee in him.
Since I have a huge chunk of Huron Indian in me.
Sure nuf know I'm not Shinnecock (which is the tribe who live about 3 blocks from here in the Hamptons).
Hope you never get kicked in the Shinns.
o
Who started this little blow-up. Oh right it was Hamas firing over a hundred mortars and the ususal ball-bearing laden missiles into Israel a couple of days ago. I couldn't help but notice the order was reversed in Mr Perr's article. Tit for tat indeed. Now I live on the border of the US and I wonder what the consequences would be if I started firing similar weapons at say, Detroit. I suspect the response would not be from the Sate Department.
They wish they had mortars, these are homemade rockets that have not killed a single person and often miss. For every action there is a reaction - When you plant fear, hunger and hopelessness to a people than all you will reap is terror.
The Palestinians are trying to SURVIVE - their vital supplies are cut off and they are being STARVED. You too would be throwing stones and firing rockets at the oppressor.
On the other hand I wouldn't pretend to any moral high ground if my chief ambition was to wipe my neighbor off the face of the planet.
.....On the other hand I wouldn't pretend to any moral high ground if my chief ambition was to wipe my neighbor off the face of the planet......
Your neighbor COULD have been a GOOD neighbor for the past sixty years but chose not to be. Likewise Madoff COULD have been an HONEST broker but chose not to be.
for you isn't it? That Madoff comment was a dead giveaway.
self sufficient...with hydroponic farms
so what happened???
simple...the palestinians care more about killing their enemies then they do with taking care of themselves
wake up...you are backing the wrong horse
Ack, ack, ack... Yes, it is all that simple isn't it???????
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Qassam_r... I think you'll find a few casualties have occurred. Not eactly bottle rockets are they?
They have mortars.
http://tinyurl.com/95zqnf
Seriously, you can make a mortar with a piece of pipe and a set of hand-carried metalworking tools.
why are you defending terrorists? You approve of people walking on buses and blowing themselves up?
They would let Detroit burn. Not that this is a time for schadenfreude.
From Sara Roy, Harvard Center for Middle-Eastern Studies:
"Israel’s siege of Gaza began on 5 November, the day after an Israeli attack inside the strip, no doubt designed finally to undermine the truce between Israel and Hamas established last June. Although both sides had violated the agreement before, this incursion was on a different scale. Hamas responded by firing rockets into Israel and the violence has not abated since then. Israel’s siege has two fundamental goals. One is to ensure that the Palestinians there are seen merely as a humanitarian problem, beggars who have no political identity and therefore can have no political claims. The second is to foist Gaza onto Egypt..."
So who broke the truce?!...
Let me know when the Americans take our land, and force us to live in a ghetto, without food and electricity, and I'll get back to you, you betcha! (But, I kinda think I might be making rockets too.)
(signed, another Cannuck)
By the way, they are Jews, just as I am Canadian, and the Koreans are Korean. It's up to you if you choose to add negative connotations to it.
and killed lots of people in order to settle these united states
including canadians...who chose to fight alongside indians...who indeed were the subject of genocide
Connie Rice did nothing but bring messages and play the piano as she served as Serectary of State I guess that just didn't do it for peace.
What's interesting about the Israel conflict is it started in 1947 when Jewish People who had long ago left Israel come back and decided they wonted that land back. We have read the history of Hitler and how many Jewish people lived in Germany and all over the World. Those blessed to live continue to make their homes in other countries. Russia with it's conflcts still have Jewish people living there. Now I'm older then Israel as they celebrated their 60th anniversity but to hear the Israel Leaders tell it they were given the land by the word of God in the bible. Now if they were to be the way things work, the United States should give the land back to the Indians since it was stolen and then give Calfornia back to Mexico because it was stolen. Israel was given bombs by the United States to attack their enemy while they try to kill of Palistan. History has a way of explaining the way things really happen if we read it. In 1948 the UK/USA went to the United Nations to ask if the land in Israel could be given to Israel, because at the time Israel/Palistan people were living together in peace but as more Jewish people came back that wonted control of all the land. As we read the corruption and robbery of the US Treasury look only the some of the names involved to see just how much involvement Israel played in the last 8 years.
Now Syria who was attacked by Israel is working with Russia to get a bomb to protect themselves from the next attack. India was given weapons by the United States too. With the illegal invasion of Iraq done by the United States every country was put on notice it is possible at any time that you can be attack for a made up reason. It is very wise for every country in the World to do what they have to as they have to protect they people. That's something Obama/Biden can't change as Bush/Cheney have made it Policy and Fear.
condi would play a violin while the world burns, but its figure reminds her too much of women, and turns her on.
on this or other progressive blogs...liberals turn into stormfronters?
wondered that myself.
There are no good guys.
The BIG army acts like a bunch of thugs.
The teeny army acts like a bunch of thugs.
That makes me an asshole...
if it does then I'm in the same boat with you.
Basically that's what I've been arguing all along. Only the very immature seen white hats and black hats in situations like this.
you never have a problem wholesale smearing palestinians as cold-blooded killers, so i wouldn't talk any. if you can't see the difference between stormfront and c&l, why not just stay over there?
Instead of leveling the same, tired accusations either way from the respective choirs...I wonder what people think Israel can do here when confronted with an intransigent HAMAS that looks the other way as Islamic Jihad and others continue to launch rockets against Israel. Granted, these attacks are mostly benign, but they are an underlying symptom of the state of affairs in Gaza's/Palestine's political scene. Why did HAMAS not want to continue the ceasefire? Why did HAMAS not work to stop the rocket firing seeing that it is a convenient excuse for Israel to use in retaliatory strikes?
Of course, I am sad to see the cycle of violence continue, but people need to start singing a different tune if things are ever to change.
I think it's worth adding here that, so far, Israel has done a good job of targeting only HAMAS targets and HAMAS militia. Yes, some civilians have died, but that is what happens with modern weaponry regardless of who is firing it. Pressure waves from explosions are impossible to control. Still, it's obvious that these strikes don't help Israel and they definitely don't help HAMAS...and the people caught in between get it the worst (seems like the status quo for the last 100 or so years in this area of the world).
is a much more realistic assessment of the situation.
Isreal is doing SUCH a good job.
Illegal settlements despite the truce.
Emabargoes despite the truce.
Electrical cutoffs despite the truce.
Water cutoffs despite the truce.
Total Isreali death toll from hundreds of rockets attacks in the last weeks in retaliation for Isreal's breaking of the truce:
1
Is definitely appreciated, but I'm not sure how it helps.
Illegal settlements have nothing to do with Gaza; although HAMAS surely looks at them as another reason to 'resist' so there may be a worthwhile tangent to follow there. The embargo is definitely a bad thing, but why has Egypt also closed its doors to Gaza (until today)? One would think that all of the pro-Palestinian rhetoric from Mubarak would translate into actual help/assistance/aid. Electrical cutoffs are also not helpful, obviously, but what can HAMAS do to end all of this? We can blame people all day, but my point here is that one of these days someone will have to be the bigger person again if anything is to change. Rabin and Arafat were able to do that, but we know how that ended.
The death toll from Qassam rockets is a non-factor here. No state on the planet would openly tolerate such a cross-border action. In that sense, Israel is justified in doing far more than it has. The death toll is never fun to read, regardless of who has died because it never helps anything. Maybe killing militants provides a brief spell for Israel, but only while others are being trained.
I will say that I think that this attack has been VERY intense, but against HAMAS targets only. I do wonder why Israel abandoned its earlier strategy of going after rocket launchers as they launch or just before...that would be more effective but admittedly more difficult. HAMAS has more control here too, and they are letting others erode any foundation of legitimacy they have attempted to build in the last few years...well, others and themselves.
It has to be difficult to transition from resistance and war to government and providing for people. Hezbollah has been far more successful here, but HAMAS is terrible at it. A real identity crisis it seems...
Keep it up.
"...but what can HAMAS do to end all of this?"
They honored the truce, until Israel broke it.
They held a rally to mark the end of the truce and reiterated their plan to drive the Israelis into the sea and then proceeded to launch their rocket attacks. There is no nation on earth that would not have responded to a military attack.
The end of the truce has nothing to do with the current situation other than to give the Israelis an excuse to attack again and say "See? We didn't do ANYTHING until the truce expired." When in fact they have been strangling Gaza for quite some time.
The bottome line is that the oppressor, Israel, MUST make the major concessions. Simply put, they have refused to make any concessions over the past 40 years. And if anyone thinks that a "withdrawal" from Gaza was a concession, then they are either completely biased, misinformed, or both!
The withdrawal of Gaza was a way to create a prison-like blockade around 1.5 million people, so they could control every aspect of life and collectively punish whenever wanted (as is the case today). Remember, as they "withdrew" from Gaza, they expanded settlements in the West Bank. Think about it...
yeah, but isn't Mubarak just an American puppet? I think its thanks to the good 'ole USA that he even stays in power.
Would any state in the world tolerate its territoy being occupied by somebody else?????
By this same measure please tell me what the Palestinians should do to get the occupying power out?
Should they obtain and use enough arms, of whatever nature to do the job?
Poor Israel, they are forced to have to do all these retaliations and take into account the limits of modern technology. Darn those illegal cluster-bombs they've dropped since 82 in Beirut, they just aren't precise enough! And all those helicopter gunships and military marvels against stonethrowers in the first Intifada - why weren't they more precise. And why stop at weapons, let's look at their State control of Gaza over decades, where soldiers could go where they want and impose curfew whenever, on demand, with shoot on sight rules. And all that limited modern technology Israel has for diverting water-resources from a society under their occupation, as well electricity, as well borders, and so on... Yeah, the problem is just now, with Hamas, right...sure... and the unfortunate part is military technology isn't clean enough. If anyone wrote that the other direction, about Palestinian attacking Israel, would it be as justified? Of course not. What is it about Israeli occupation since decades that isn't being mentioned here - oh, just EVERYTHING.
I'm not trying to justify anything here, but I am trying to take a more realistic and rational look at a very irrational situation. So, thanks again for the sarcasm, but it still isn't helping.
most of the land under Israeli control isn't occupied. It is Israel. The parts that are occupied got that way as a result of attempts by their neighbors to wipe out Israel.
Most of Iraq is not occupied either.
You can't count Kurdish territories here because the Pesh Merga control them and have controlled them for going on two decades (thanks to the No Fly Zone). After that, you have urban centers, most of which have some sort of occupation presence. Rural areas, not so much, but it's not as if the occupation forces ignore them.
I don't know why I'm arguing this though. :)
But if I were to buy MerandaJ's argument that Israel's behaviour constitutes a willful attempt at genocide I would also have to conclude that this is American policy in Iraq. And much more successful too! I don't buy either argument.
The whole genocide accusation is just lame and baseless...and twisted in on itself. It's the same thing that some people do when they accuse another party of being a Nazi or like Hitler or something like that. It's a claim that immediately strips any argument (that may have merit) of its credibility. Same goes for the accuser.
I'm reading the Arabic Al-Jazeera and they mentioned that Israel carried out the attack only after coordinating with several Western and Arab countries. I wonder how well that little nugget will go over in Palestine...
Same for their mention of HAMAS leadership issuing orders to escalate the resistance (as they fled to safety no less).
Actually, you can look at how Olmert is handling this with his statements to Gazans and others and see that he's trying to mitigate what he knows the fall out will be. The Arabic coverage is actually very fair; although what gets most people amped up about them is that they publish REAL photos of the effects of war...
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