The "Hitlerization" of Hamas is the title of an article published by Palestinian author and thinker Nawaf Al-Zarou on Aljazeera website. I thought to translate it from Arabic (English is not a target language for me, my colleagues will forgicve my many errors), since it gives a large panorama from the Palestinian point of view of the bloody Israeli wars on Palestinians, civils and fighters altogether.

The article tries to understand through a thourough reading the ideology behind the rulers of the State of Israel. Those governments that are 'democratically elected' and chosen by a majority of Israelis.

Part 1 -

The Israeli agendas behind Israel's wars on Palestinians.

Nawaf al-Zarou (Palestinian thinker)

Eretz Israel in the thought of Olmert

The basement of the political agenda

The hidden agenda behind the hitlerization of Hamas

An eathquake in Middle East

The Army plans to destroy Hamas Institutions and the Palestinian Authority

The story of the hidden plans, intentions and agendas

As we have seen in the Sharonian case a dialectic and organic combination between idelogy, strategies, political programs and military plans and campaigns including all kinds and levels of butcheries and horrible crimes against all Palestinians; today in the Olmertian case, we see the same combination standing in front of us and visible on the ground.

Olmert started his rule by stating clearly the ideology of "Eretz Israel", he also announced the basements of his political agenda and the borders of the Jewish State he wants, packing it with the philosophy of "separation, enclosure and gathering"; which at the ends fulfills his political project bearing the contents and the goals of Sharon.

But considering that fulfulling the political and strategic goals from the Isareli point of view, is not possible unless they break the Paletinian will and force them to accept any political deal offered by Israel;

And considering that the Palestinian situation has seen democratic and evident evolutions that brought Hamas to the government and the Legislative Council, giving thus power and decision to Hamas;

And since all the secret Israeli attempts to undermine from the inside the Palestinian centre of power, failed in rising intestine fight among Hamas and Fatah;

And considering that the national palestinian dialogue ended in finding compromises and united formula, that the Israelis did not account for;

For all this, they brought out of their bags those military plans that have been lying for a long time, and whose implementation was just a question of time.

Al-Qassam missiles were a strong pretext, from the media point of view (public opinion). The "Vanishing illusion" operation and the sequestration of the Israeli soldier came in time to bring the right justifying context, to launch the campaign of "the summer rain", that hides behind it a sum of malign strategic goals, as weakening or impeaching Hamas government and its Legislative Council, and the total political cancellation of the Palestinian Authority, in the intent of creating the appropriate context to continue the project of "separation, enclosure and gathering".

But before the planned deterioration of the situation leading to "the summer rain", the Israeli security and political institution was preparing the local, regional and world context through the launching of intensive media campaigns against Hamas and the Palestinian Authority.

It has used its falsening and usual pretext that "Hamas is a terrorist movement and the Hams Government is terrorist". It can only accept the Israeli and Internationl conditions, otherwise it will be empeached".

The inciting Israeli media campaigns were volontary and had hidden intentions. They had conditions, basements, lines and political as well as strategic goals at the service of the Israeli agendas, and that stand behind the open Israeli wars against the Palestinian people.

The first of them is the ideological approach conccected to "Eretz Israel".

Eretz Israel in the thought of Olmert

We read this Olmertian period of the Palestinian-Israeli conflict as an extension of the Sharonian period, that was never stopped, and because Olmert –as he declared himslef- is an extension of that period and the continuator of Sharon road.

We can therefore state firmly that the same Sharon political/strategic and ideologic/Toratic dimensions stand also behind the policies and the wars of Olmert against the Paletinian people.

Exactly as Sharon would launch his wars according to his idelogical pretentions about "Eretz israel from the sea to the river" and that "the Jews have the right to colonize any place, and that therfore they have the right to defend themselves when fighting the Goliaths", Olmert was showing day after day that he's not less extremist, fundamentalist, and bloodthirsty and not less holding the classic Sionist fundamentals as his predecessor the Bulldozer (Sharon).

Salaam,

Ouadoud

Part 2

The declarations given by Olmert in front of "the Noble Peace Meeting – Petra 2006" that took place in Wadi Moussa in South Giordania 22/6/2007, may give an eloquent expression of the contents and ideological fundaments of this Olmertian war, crowned by the terrorist missile "Summer rain", and the butcheries bleeding there in Gaza.

When Olmert was asked during this Meeting about the volume of his regional withdrawal, he answered: "We, Israeli Jews state firmly that Historic israel extending from the Giordan River to the Mediterranean Sea is our land and our heritage, and we, the Jews possess the historic rights. The monuments on the ground belong to the Jews not to the Palestinians".

This means, according to their concrete practices "that the roles partition between America and Israel in the region fits in the frame of fulfilling the old legend consisting of opening the space separating the Mediterranean Sea and the Red Sea and the Gulf to Israel, so that it moves as it wants, as an introduction to control it from the security, economics and military point of view".

The basements of the political agenda

Starting from the above-cited, we can read the fundamentals and the true contents of the strategic political agenda of the coaltion government of Olmert – Perez – Peretz that declared the "Summer rain" war against the Palestinian people. (note of the translator: after the article was written, the extremist zionist Avigdor Lieberman-widely regarded as an outright racist- joined the Olmert government after that Israel army could not reach its goals in its August war against Lebanon).

Concerning the land of the alleged historic Israel, and concerning the drawing of the borders of the State of Israel, and contrary to the zionist movement and the continuous avoiding of the Israeli State to draw the borders of the zionist state, we have heard many Israeli declarations and analysis, in the period of Olmert, that speak about the drawing of borders of the State of Israel in the next two years. Can you imagine that ?

So let's read then, in the useful summary, what Olmert intends for us in his program and his fake political declarations.

We say: here's the Sharonian Olmert who brings things back to the departure case, and who inaugurates his rule by "the summer rain" and comes back to the language of helicopetrs, missiles, assassinations, collective butcheries against Palestinian women, children and elder, and who threatens of invading and re-colonising Gaza.

The hidden Agenda behind the hitlerization of Hamas

It seems as if the the State of the Israeli occupation was waiting those legislative elections, to declare that the Palestinian Authority has changed from now on to a terrorist enemy body.

The former Head of Israeli General Security Apparel "Shapak", Avi Dikhter, compared the Covenant of Hamas to Hitler's "Mein Kampf" (note of the translator: dear Scott, as you can see, you did not invent your comment, 'somebody' else said it before you!).

The current head of Shapak, Yoval Disken said "that Hamas tries to show itself as pragmatic and moderate, but from the popular point of view, it saved its ideology in the Palestinian street, it speaks about the borders of 1967 and its ambition are those of 1948".

Disken considered that Hamas was a strategic threat to Israel, and Dan Halutz, head of the Israeli Armed Forces said "that Israel should decide from the first day and draw its policies, because our fundamental hypothesis is that Hamas will not change, and will continue to be a threat to Israel".

Ehud Olmert reaches the summary and the conclusion that they want, and that is as he declared himself "that the ability to reach an agreement between Israel and the Palestinians is finished and over".

And this is the most important fact for the Israeli policies since the bulldozer Sharon started his unilateral invasion war and the unilateral steps that have proved the saying: "There is no Palestinian partner we can negociate with", succededing thus to mobilize the American Administration.

The political, Media and diplomatic Israeli institutions adopted a sum of inciting slogans against the Palestinians with the intent of accusing them of incapacity and failure and inability to be partners in the negociations, and in order to hitlerize Hamas and al-Qaidaze the Palestinians, and I mean to accuse them to become part of al-Qaida, and to convince thus the American and European world of the legitimacy of the Israeli wars against them.

Part 3 will follow

Salaam,

Ouadoud

Original Arabic article:

http://www.aljazeera.net/NR/exeres/16376FCA-1ECB-48A3-B794-BBB38C4322C5.htm

ROBERT FISK, the famous Journalist has published an article called: "Journalists' Coverage of Middle East Shallow and Distorted" that starts as follow:

"DEARBORN, MI – Journalists in the "West" should feel a burden of guilt for much that has happened in the Middle East because they have, with their gullibility, sold a fictitious version of events.

Their constant references to a "fence" instead of a wall, to "settlements" or "neighborhoods" instead of colonies, their description of the West Bank as "disputed" rather than occupied, has bred a kind of slackness in reporting the Israeli-Palestinian conflict..."

Then he continues his open-eyes journalism and he asks this question

"Much worse, however, is the failure to enquire into the real policies of governments. Why, for example, was there no front-page treatment of this year's Herzliya conference, Israel's most important policy-making jamboree? Most of the important figures in the Israeli government - they had yet to be electe - were in attendance..."

But thanks God, we know something of what happened in this jamboree, R. Fisk tells us:

"The conference was the place where Ehud Olmert first suggested handing over slices of the West Bank: "The choice between allowing Jews to live in all parts of the land of Israel" - the "land of Israel" in this context included the West Bank - "and living in a state with a Jewish majority mandate giving up part of the land of Israel. We cannot continue to control parts of the territories where most of the Palestinians live."

However, most speakers agreed that the Palestinians would be given a state on whatever is left after the huge settlements had been included behind the wall. Benjamin Netanyahu even suggested the wall should be moved deeper into the West Bank. But the implications were obvious.

A Palestinian state will be allowed, but it will not have a capital in East Jerusalem nor any connection between Gaza and the bits of the West Bank that are handed over. So there will be no peace, and the words "Palestinian" and "terrorist" will, again, be inextricably linked by Israel and the U.S."

And as a honest American "journalist, he asks some crucial questions:

"All these details are available in the Arab press - and of course, the Israeli press, but are largely absent from our own. Why? Even when Norman Finkelstein wrote a damning academic report on the way Israel's High Court of Justice "proved" the wall – deemed illegal by the Hague - was legal, it was virtually ignored in the West. So, for that matter, was the U.S. The academics' report on the power of the Israeli lobby, until the usual taunts of "anti-Semitism" forced the American mainstream to write about it, albeit in a shifty, frightened way. There are so many other examples of our fear of Middle Eastern truth."

He concludes, with irony:

"It's always been my view that the people of this part of the earth would like some of our democracy. They would like a few packets of human rights off our supermarket shelves. They want freedom. But they want another kind of freedom - freedom from us."

http://news.newamericamedia.org/news/view_article.html?article_id=ee76423b8455640d0e7e168675751cab

Salaam,

Ouadoud

Hi Ouadoud

I am proud to say that Robert Fisk is actually British, not American - and more important, his principal employer is The Independent, one of the top 3 UK newspapers. The Independent (وفقا لإسمها) does not follow the rest of the British press in its non-committal Middle East reporting and frequently gives Fisk the entire front page - as in today's edition:

http://www.independent.co.uk/

It could be said that the Independent is biased against Israel but at present it is the only serious UK newspaper that presents an alternative view to the status quo. Sometimes it is like صوت صارخ في البرية - "a voice crying out in the wilderness..."  

Ahlan Colin,

Thanks so much for the info. You may legitimately indeed be proud of That guy. An exceptional journalist who didn't sell his soul. There are still people defending the weak and the poor.

BTW, you're a perfect witness for me, you have command of English and Arabic. Thanks again and salaam!

Ouadoud

I would like to introduce you a maestro: Gilad Atzmon.

"Born in Israel on 9th June 1963

Instrument: Soprano, Alto, Tenor and Baritone Saxes. Clarinet, Sol, Zurna and Flutes.

Musical Training: Rubin Academy of Music, Jerusalem (Composition and Jazz).

Raised as a secular Israeli Jew in Jerusalem, Gilad Atzmon witnessed and
empathised with the daily sufferings of Palestinians and spent 20 years
trying to resolve for himself the tensions of his background. Finally
disillusioned, he moved away from Israel and went to England to study
philosophy. Yet when he met Asaf Sirkis, a drummer from his homeland, Atzmon
recovered an interest in playing the music of the Middle East, North Africa
and Eastern Europe that had been in the back of his mind for years. Atzmon
founded the Orient House Ensemble in London and started re-defining his own
roots in the light of political reality. He now regards himself as a devoted
political artist."

Well. I think you see the relation with our thread. Not yet ? Here's more:

"Gilad Atzmon's music moves more and more towards a cultural hybrid. On his latest album, "Exile" (ENJA/TIPTOE), Atzmon and his colleagues try to
tell the story of Palestine, a country that was stormed by radical Zionists
in the 20th century. Asking himself how the Jewish - who themselves have
suffered so much and for so long - can inflict so much pain on the Other,
Atzmon takes up Israeli traditional and nationalistic melodies and turns
them around deliberately. For instance, "Al-Quds" is an Arabic
interpretation of an Israeli tune that became the anthem of the '67 War.
Beside other guests (like Tunisian singer Dhafer Youssef), "Exile" features
the moving voice of Palestinian lady singer Reem Kelani. This thrilling
vocalist will also be featured in concert with the band."

If you want to have a healthy idea about what zionism looks like, explained by a Jew who was born in Israel and left it: just read Gilad's articles ("Deconstructing Grossman" is particularly interesting. It just shows what the rising star, the left-wing soft-zionist Grossman is in reality)

http://www.gilad.co.uk/html%20files/politics.html

Salaam To Gilad first and then to all of you, and enjoy the music too!

Ouadoud

I think so, according to this forum where Palestinians discuss their matters, the moderator writes:

في هذه الحلقات إن شاء الله تعالى ستكون المنهجية على النحو التالي:
أولا: سأضع فقرات الميثاق بشكل تدريجي كما وردت في الطبعة الاولى علم 1988م مع إرفاق فقرة معدلة في إحدى مواد الميثاق وردتنا من المصدر وأدرجت في الطبعة الثانية ...

Tr: The methodology in these episods, God willing, will be as follow:

one: I will post the paragraphs of the Covenant progressively, as they were published in the first edition 1988, and I will attach an emended paragraph on The Covenant article as we received it from the font and that was published in the second edition...

http://www.palestinianforum.net/forum/showthread.php?t=17636&pp=20

Salaam,

Ouadoud

US vetos at the UN Security Council (Shamelessly granting immunity to Israel over International Law)

List of UN Security Council resolutions condemning Israel and vetoed by the USA, 1972 - 2006

(Russia has used their veto TWICE in resolutions other than those condemning Israel)

Year: Resolution Vetoed by the USA

·  1972 Condemns Israel for killing hundreds of people in Syria and Lebanon in air raids.

·  1973 Afirms the rights of the Palestinians and calls on Israel to withdraw from the occupied territories.

·  1976 Condemns Israel for attacking Lebanese civilians.

·  1976 Condemns Israel for building settlements in the occupied territories.

·  1976 Calls for self determination for the Palestinians.

·  1976 Afirms the rights of the Palestinians.

·  1978 Criticises the living conditions of the Palestinians.

·  1978 Condemns the Israeli human rights record in occupied territories.

·  1979 Strengthens the arms embargo against South Africa.

·  1979 Calls for the return of all inhabitants expelled by Israel.

·  1979 Demands that Israel desist from human rights violations.

·  1979 Requests a report on the living conditions of Palestinians in occupied Arab countries.

·  1979 Offers assistance to the Palestinian people.

·  1979 Discusses sovereignty over national resources in occupied Arab territories.

·  1979 To include Palestinian women in the United Nations Conference on Women.

·  1980 Requests Israel to return displaced persons.

·  1980 Condemns Israeli policy regarding the living conditions of the Palestinian people.

·  1980 Condemns Israeli human rights practices in occupied territories. 3 resolutions.

·  1980 Afirms the right of self determination for the Palestinians.

·  1981 Condemns Israel's treatment of the Palestinians, human rights policies, and the bombing of Iraq. 18 resolutions.

·  1982 Condemns the Israeli invasion of Lebanon. 6 resolutions (1982 to 1983).

·  1982 Condemns the shooting of 11 Muslims at a shrine in Jerusalem by an Israeli soldier.

·  1982 Calls on Israel to withdraw from the Golan Heights occupied in 1967.

·  1984 Condemns Israel for occupying and attacking southern Lebanon.

·  1985 Condemns Israel for occupying and attacking southern Lebanon.

·  1985 Condemns Israel for using excessive force in the occupied territories.

·  1986 Condemns Israel for its actions against Lebanese civilians.

·  1986 Calls on Israel to respect Muslim holy places.

·  1986 Condemns Israel for sky-jacking a Libyan airliner.

·  1987 Calls on Israel to abide by the Geneva Conventions in its treatment of the Palestinians.

·  1987 Calls on Israel to stop deporting Palestinians.

·  1987 Condemns Israel for its actions in Lebanon. 2 resolutions.

·  1987 Calls on Israel to withdraw its forces from Lebanon.

·  1988 Condemns Israeli practices against Palestinians in the occupied territories. 5 resolutions (1988 and 1989).

·  1989 Opposing the acquisition of territory by force.

·  1989 Calling for a resolution to the Arab-Israeli conflict based on earlier UN resolutions.

·  1990 To send three UN Security Council observers to the occupied territories.

·  1995 Affirms that land in East Jerusalem annexed by Israel is occupied territory.

·  1997 Calls on Israel to cease building settlements in East Jerusalem and other occupied territories. 2 resolutions.

·  2001 To send unarmed monitors to the West Bank and the Gaza Strip.

·  2001 Condemns Israel for acts of terror against civilians in the occupied territories.

·  2002 Condemns the killing of UK worker for the United Nations by Israeli forces. Condemns the destruction of the World Food Programme warehouse.

·  2003 Condemns a decision by the Israeli parliament to "remove" the elected Palestinian president, Yasser Arafat.

·  2003 Condemns the building of a wall by Israel on Palestinian land.

·  2004 Condemns the assassination of Hamas leader, Sheik Ahmad Yassin.

·  2004 Calls for an end to Israeli military incursions and attacks on Gaza.

·  2006 Calls for an end to Israeli military incursions and attacks on Gaza.

·  November 2006 Condemns the Israeli killing of civilian children and women in Beit Hanun.

Sources:

http://www.krysstal.com/democracy_whyusa03.html

http://www.phon.ucl.ac.uk/home/geoff/UNresolutions.htm

Salaam,

Ouadoud

Question: do you think it's still possible to build peace between Arabs and Israel ?

Poll ends tomorrow.

Answers until now: Total voters = 19077

YES = 8.5%

NO = 91.5%

مدة التصويت: من12/11/2006 إلى 15/11/2006

موضوع التصويت:

هل تعتقد أنه ما زال بالإمكان صنع سلام بين العرب وإسرائيل؟

الخيارات النسبة عدد الأصوات نعم 8.5% 1622 لا 91.5% 17455

إجمالي المصوتين 19077

نتيجة التصويت لا تعبر عن رأي الجزيرة وإنما تعبر عن رأي الأعضاء المشاركين فيه.   Source: http://www.aljazeera.net/Portal/

From http://www.nytimes.com/2006/11/14/washington/14israel.html?em&ex=1163653200&en=26d498c7e13f22f3&ei=5070:

WASHINGTON, Nov. 13 — As Israeli bombs fell on Lebanon for a second week last July, the Rev. John Hagee of San Antonio arrived in Washington with 3,500 evangelicals for the first annual conference of his newly founded organization, Christians United For Israel.

At a dinner addressed by the Israeli ambassador, a handful of Republican senators and the chairman of the Republican Party, Mr. Hagee read greetings from President Bush and Prime Minister Ehud Olmert of Israel and dispatched the crowd with a message for their representatives in Congress. Tell them “to let Israel do their job” of destroying the Lebanese militia, Hezbollah, Mr. Hagee said.

He called the conflict “a battle between good and evil” and said support for Israel was “God’s foreign policy.”

The next day he took the same message to the White House.

Many conservative Christians say they believe that the president’s support for Israel fulfills a biblical injunction to protect the Jewish state, which some of them think will play a pivotal role in the second coming.

[...]

Praised be God, the Everpresent and the Lord of the Judgement Day.

So many small devils have accused Him of so many acts that do not belong to Him. Those who pretend these stories aren't any bigger. There's not a single sentence in any revealed Book that tells to kill women, children or elders; unless sentences are added, edited according to human passions.

Oh! I'm getting too religious! let me stop here.

Salaam,

Ouadoud

Agreed, but that's just minor collateral damage in a greater scheme of things which is the only thing that counts.

Jacek

Yes dear Jacek,

I c your humour.

Except that the greater scheme of all times is "human life". You know that human that God has so much dignified that He even ordered the angels to prostrate to him, well one didn't. And it's that one who leads the game in so many places. One of the games is just to sell bullshit, since people are ready to accept bullshit, he does not force anyone, he just suggests and soooooooooooooooo many follow. One bullshit: the Jewish state that will play a pivotal role in the second coming.

Salaam,

Ouadoud 

Hi Abdelouadoud and all other readers,

I think it is really scary that there is an unholy (literally) alliance between Israel and the Christian Right in the US. These Christians fully believe that the second coming is imminent, and will be heralded by the restoration of the Land of Israel to its Biblical size. Then there will be the battle of Armageddon, the end of the world, and all good Christians will be swept up to Heaven in the 'Rapture' to live eternally. (Presumably the rest of us will just be annihilated.)  No wonder the Christian Right in the US is supportive of the state of Israel- that is the Zionist plan too. Though I don't think the Israelis believe that the end of the world will rapidly follow their annexation of the entire Middle East. I don't know which are more frightening- Israel's policies, or the loony beliefs of these so-called Christians. Let us hope that the Democrats might force Bush to change his policies-  Insh'allah

Hi Jacek,

I know what you mean by belief. Let me guess: it's the same belief that so many US citizen had when colin Powell was talking in the UNO about the weapons of mass destruction held by Saddam and even showing the photos. The same belief that US citizens had in Bush words, that encouraged them to vote for him. Very strong belief indeed.

But i really prefer mine.

And welcome Karen!

Salaam

Ouadoud

All the contemporary problems stand in that famous "irrational behaviour", mon cher Jacek,

Salaam,

Ouadoud

On the off-topic of "irrational behaviour", can someone explain why the Sunni and Shiite Muslims are killing each other in Baghdad. 

http://www.slate.com/id/2154477

Nanna

RE: 'Rationality'

The German sociologist Max Weber made a useful distinction between two types of rationality: (1) means-ends rationality, wherby people make choices that they believe are the best ones for achieving their aims, and (2) value rationality, where the action can be explained in terms of people's values, beliefs or emotions. People often cloak type (2) reasons behind an apparent type (1) rationale. The Shia-Sunni conflict is rooted in real historical grievances, but is fuelled by religious/cultural beliefs, which are only 'rational' in sense (2). But the same could be said of most conflicts between groups: Sunnis and Shias don't have a monopoly here. Was the original invasion of Iraq 'rational' in sense (1)? I think not.

I can only add to your post Karen, that such problems were almost inexistent before. Shia and Sunni lived in harmony in Iraq, there were so many mixed marriages that you could not distinguish anymore the shia from the sunni.

Iraq's invasion and the consequent stupid management of the country developped the sectarian situation we're observing now in Iraq. It's also worth noting that many British/US secret services agents (Bassora/Sadr City/Najaf..) were caught while preparing attacks against sunni or shiite targets.

To have a complete panorama of this sectarian division, consider that the shiite Hezbollah was supported by 99 pc of the sunni public opinion throughout the Muslim world. There's not a real shiite/sunnite problem in the Islamic world, unless it's artificially pushed to come out.

Salaam,

Ouadoud

I think that any religious or other for that matter, difference, however trivial, once politicized is likely to become a bone of contention. Now, if the question is why in a battle for power two tribes are killing each other, I think the answer is that this is exactly what we have seen throughout the entire human history--until mechanisms of (mostly economic) cooperation were put in place here and there, thus locally stopping the haemorrhage. What truly amazes me, though, is how people can ever cooperate considering that the name of the game between them is only and exclusively competition. Thank God that at least in some parts of the world the modifier "cutthroat" is no longer used literally.

Jacek

Originally written by Abdelouadoud El Omrani on November 24, 2006 8:28 PM Iraq's invasion and the consequent stupid management of the country developped the sectarian situation we're observing now in Iraq.

Obvious, it seems.

Originally written by Abdelouadoud El Omrani on November 24, 2006 8:28 PM I can only add to your post Karen, that such problems were almost inexistent before. Shia and Sunni lived in harmony in Iraq, there were so many mixed marriages that you could not distinguish anymore the shia from the sunni. To have a complete panorama of this sectarian division, consider that the shiite Hezbollah was supported by 99 pc of the sunni public opinion throughout the Muslim world. There's not a real shiite/sunnite problem in the Islamic world, unless it's artificially pushed to come out.

I've some doubts but I may be wrong. It seems to me Saddam Hussein (Sunni) started the Iraq-Iran war over support of Kurds in Iraq by Shia Iran and worries over the influence of majority Shias over Iraq with support from Iran.

Hi Shiong-Fong,

I think Jacek gave an answer to your doubts when he talked about politicizing any differences. That's also what's meant in my previous post by: "unless it's artificially pushed to come out".

Note that Saddam's soldiers fighting Iran were also shiites. That's a good proof that it's not a religious but rather (again) a "politicized stuff"..

salaam,

Ouadoud

Back to the thread:

Is a security fence or a wall barrier against peace ?

French René Beckmann is the Chief Editor of the Foreign section in French magazine Le Nouvel Observateur.

He published this manifesto against the wall condemned BTW by the International Community.

Salaam,

Ouadoud

Israeli Settlers or silent terrorists ?

Settlers to Christians in Hebron: "We killed Jesus, and we'll kill you too"

IMEMC & Agencies - Monday, 20 November 2006, 23:57

I have not written in roughly one week-we've simply been too busy to get to an internet connection and sit still long enough to send out updates on our activities here in Palestine. To be brief, we've been picking olives, escorting local farmers through checkpoints, making friends and harvesting olives. For most of Palestine, the obstacles and hardships we witnessed and encountered in doing these activities with our local hosts highlight the inhumanity of the situation and the day-to-day humiliation of living under a military occupation where, at its most benign, the native population, daily, must submit to the authority of heavily armed teenagers to access their own villages, towns, farmlands, etc. Here in the West Bank, the native population can rarely travel throughout their own territory without procuring permits from their conquerors. I and three Swedish colleagues have spent the last three days with olive farmers in a small village near Tulkarem--this was the slice of life i intended to write about, but today's events have forced me to change my story and show some of the sheer brutality of the occupation. I just got back from a hospital in Jerusalem, where one of my Swedish colleagues lies with her left cheekbone broken and here eye swollen shut. ... Immediate inside the Tel Rumeida checkpoint stood a crowd of roughly 100 settlers; within moments of passing through this checkpoint, several human rights workers were confronted by a group of settlers who demanded, "why are you here?! where do you come from?!" To which one replied "we're here o visit a friend." Immediately the crowd of settlers started chanting "JESUS WAS GAY!" in Hebrew and English, and then someone from the back of the crowd yelled, "THEY LOVE THE PALESTINIANS!" As the crowd began to spit on and kick the the human rights workers, The chants continued and then changed to, in Hebrew, "WE KILLED JESUS AND WE'LL KILL YOU, TOO!" All the while more settlers arrived and joined in the chanting. The whole time this was happening, where were the police? RIGHT THERE CASUALLY WATCHING ALL THIS. The police did not even move until AFTER a settler bashed a bottle across the face of human rights worker Touve Johansson, a 19-year-old Swedish woman. As the crowd around them cheered, Touve fell to the street with a lacerated face and a broken cheekbone. As Touve's friends tended held her head and wiped away blood--In fact, as the soldiers stood by--settlers took turns crouching down and giving "thumbs up" by the bloodied woman's face. After the first medic, also a settler, arrived on the scene with his medical supplies and refused to treat Ms. Johansson, an Israeli military medic arrived, and she was eventually taken to a hospital in Jerusalem. Three of the assailants were detained (but not arrested) and released moments later (also to cheers by crowds of settlers); moreso, the Israeli police did not take the detainees' names, but they did threaten Touve Johansson's companions with arrest. ... As I mentioned before, many of these settlers came to Hebron from all over Israel, Europe and the United States. They came not only to celebrate *Genesis* Chapter 23 but also to terrorize the natives and assert Jewish dominance over this predominantly non-Jewish city. On this day an international was hospitalized. This specific occasion may have been special, but * c*onsider this very simple fact: if you're a Palestinian, and if you live in Hebron, this story is not exceptional, for these settlers are your neighbors; they can do anything they want, and you can do nothing about it. For a blow-by-blow chronicling of today's events in Hebron, please visit  http://www.palsolidarity.org/main/2006/11/18/hebron-day-06/ For more info about at Tuwani, visit  http://tuwani.org/  Excerpts from: http://www.imemc.org/content/view/22740/1/ Salaam, Ouadoud

you know Karen,

Those activists are from all over the world, the one whose face was smashed with a bottle is a 19 year old Swedish. You probably remember Rachel, the American activist who was killed by a bulldozer...

So this 19 year old Swedish woman left the comfort of her country, her parents, her university, her boy-friend (perhaps...) and she is there picking olives with the humble and the oppressed. She probably doesn't eat enough, doesn't sleep comfortably and doesn't feel secure.

I like to translate into Arabic such stories just to let Arabs understand what is humanity. Beeing oppressed, colonized, humiliated... many young Arabs feel so frustrated and they probably feel grudge and put all the West in a single basket. Such stories, as well as a story that a Palestinian colleague: Musab, told us about doctors from different countries who used to help and assist his Palestinian refugee family in Syria, remind us that there is and there will be forever seeds of good, sincerity and brotherhood between all human beings. Such guys are what the French call "garde-fou" and if they weren't where they are to show us what they are, we would have turned crazy, completely crazy...

Salaam

Ouadoud

Abdelouadoud,

I promise that on Monday (when the banks are open) I will make a donation of £25 to MAP (Medical Aid for Palestinians). At least this will be a gesture of solidarity to support the brave doctors who are working in Palestine.

Thanks Karen. If we consider that one liter of milk costs half a dollar, you just offered around 100 milk bottles. That is useful. And the intention remains the most important.

Salaam,

Ouadoud

Hi Karen and all,

Gilad Atzmon is an Jewish artist (and I'm proud to say, a friend of mine) (see Post #103431). He wrote this article and forwarded me the following email, that I wanted to share with you in this Palestinian thread:

"PLEASE FORWARD

 Palestinians are the Priority

& Please Sign the Petition http://www.petitiononline.com/grosveno/petition.html 


 What is to be Done? Palestinian Solidarity in a Time of Massacres  By GILAD ATZMON
http://www.counterpunch.org/atzmon11222006.html"

Salaam and cheers to Gilad

Ouadoud

Her name is Tali Fahima, she's Israeli jew and used to work in lawyers office until...

Tali Fahima was detained on 8 August 2004 and has since been held in prison under torture and in isolation. Following two months of interrogation by the General Security Services (GSS) and after approximately three months of administrative detention, ridiculous and baseless charges were filed against her. Tali is being persecuted because she challenged the walls and checkpoints, the very system of separation being built between Jews and Arabs in this country; because she came out against the policies of illegal assassinations; because she made contact with Palestinians based on solidarity and struggle against the occupation, and in the framework of humanitarian-educational activities.

In the 90's, Tali's mother: Arna Mer Khamis founded a theatre for Palestinian children in Jenine, and Tali thought she could continue her mother's humanitarian tradition...

http://www.freetalifahima.org/eng.php?lang=en

Note: the site content is available in Hebrew, Arabic, English and French is you also want to check your translation ability, and to remain in the linguistic topic that seems to be an obsession somewhere somehow 

Salaam,

Ouadoud

A veeeery long Anatomy of a Civil War: http://www.bostonreview.net/BR31.6/rosen.html

When I first met the term "Orwellian" I had to go digging around to understand plainly its meaning.

Orwellian – George Orwell

Orwellian describes a situation, idea, or condition that George Orwell identified as being inimical to the welfare of a free-society. Often, this includes the situations depicted in his fictional novels, particularly his political novel Nineteen Eighty-Four.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orwellian

A practical example from "everyday" life by Edward S Herman, USA writer on the Middle East:

"Thus, instead of having to leave the occupied territories Israel continues to push out the locals by force, uproot their trees, steal their water, beggar them by 'closures' and endless restrictions, and it suffers no penalties because it has USA approval, protection, and active assistance. The partners also deny Palestinians any right to return to land from which they were expelled, so 140+ contrary United Nations votes, and two Security Council Resolutions (both vetoed by the United States) have no effect; and in a remarkable Orwellian process of doublethink - and double morality - Israel is free to expel more Palestinians in the same time frame in which their protector spent billions and great moral energy in a campaign to return worthy victims in Kosovo."

"Another remarkable Orwellian process is this: the abused and beggared Palestinian people periodically rebel as their conditions deteriorate and more land is taken, homes are demolished, and they are treated with great ruthlessness and discrimination. Many are among the hundreds of thousands expelled earlier, or who have still not forgotten their relatives killed and injured by Israeli violence over many years - and Palestinian deaths by Israeli arms almost surely exceed Israeli deaths from 'terrorism' by better than 15 to 1. And after this long history of expulsion and murder they are still under assault. In this context, if they rise up in revolt at their oppressors this is not 'freedom fighters' or a 'national liberation movement' in action, it is 'irrational violence' and a return to 'terrorism,' and both Israeli and USA officials (and therefore the mainstream USA media) agree that the first order of business is to stop this terrorism."

"But in the definitional system of oppressor and patron this is TERRORISM, horrifying and intolerable…"

http://www.krysstal.com/democracy_whyusa03.html

 Yes, Now I know what it means

Salaam

Ouadoud

In my presentation of Gilad Atzmon, I mentioned the name of an exceptional Palestinian singer: Reem Kelani. (Let translators know first that Reem in Arabic is one of the names of the elegant "gazelle", one of the finest parables Arab men make about female elegance, refinement and beauty!). I referred to Reem being "featured in concert with the band".

I'd like to add now, that Reem is no longer working with the Orient House Ensemble, founded by the great Gilad Atzmon. Indeed, she only toured with the band between February to July 2003.

Now, to tell you the truth, I just discovered this exceptional Palestinian artist born in Manchester, and I was literally charmed: the voice, the lyrics, the digging in the ancient Palestinian folklore, the tutti frutti jazz, blues, Arab poetry and rythms...

Just two examples:

1- A song she called 12+1. Reem heard it for the first time from an old woman rolling "cuscus" in her kitchen and following a tempo of 1,2,3 - 1,2,3 - 1,2,3,4 - 1,2,3. More than a song, it's a rythm and a tempo

2- Jammali is another song. The heartbreak that a lover felt when her lover decided to travel, is here a pretext to talk about the destination (where is the heartbreaker going to ?). Note that the man travels on camelback, not a jumbo

With her deep voice, Reem expresses what the woman felt when he decided to quit, and:

she told him that she wanted to go with him; he answered that his journey was too long;

she told him that she could travel on his camelback; he answered that he was overloaded;

she told him that she could walk alongside with him; he answered...

Finally she wants to know where he's going to and he says: "to my country, Palestine."

Something peculiar to her music is that some lyrics are both in English and Arabic, try the one called: hardship doesn't last forever...

http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio3/womad2004/reem_kelani.shtml#top

Salaam, and enjoy the musicians too

Ouadoud

Yes, George Orwell works "1984" and "Animal Farm" depicted totalitarian systems.  Orwell was thinkng at Stalin but nowadays it applies perfectly to several systems and societies.

http://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Orwell

Ouadoud, have you seen V.for Vendetta? It has a very Orwellian touch.....

oh...and remember, remember, the 5th of November.

Right. It's just the old formula used by then yankees in El Salvador, Korea, Nicaragua, Vietnam, Kosovo, Chile, t al.

First, they arrive like God's envoyees and they creat death squads. Then, bombings and division becomes a constant, artificial fights using a manichaean language to distort other's speeches. Rethoric is rampant and disinformation an obsession. When things are rotten, they leave. The total fiasco is called a "human response to the international community laments".

They leave but their boys remains. And the wounds last decades... I hope Irak will survive as a free nation.

Salaam

Who moderates immoderate use of veto when it becomes an abuse?

This is a point that should be reformed in the UN.

Hi Yaotl,

Nice to see you around

I didn't see V. for Vendetta. But I've read and thought often about what Vendetta is about; even in my fresh years, with Western films, Indians, cow-boys ecc

salaam,

Ouadoud 

Ex US president Jimmy Carter published recently: Palestine: peace not Apartheid.

The book is interesting since Jimmy Carter knows well the roots of the conflict, and the protagonists whereabouts.

But it's interesting also to see how some US critics welcomed the book, by taxing it of anti-Israeli and anti-Jewish. I really don't know how or why should Carter be anti-Jew.

It's of course clear that the propaganda machine that's blinding US public opinion is in motto, doing its job.

salaam,

Ouadoud

Selling the idea that there's need to kill women, children and innocents, so that Armageddon happens cannot be accepted by any healthy faith. Once manipulated, people accept anything...

I can suggest this reading about Armageddon, end of the world and overall about Antichrist from Harun Yahya point of view. Unfortunately it's available only in French for now:

http://www.harunyahya.com/fr/articles/article90_l_Antechrist.php

...L'Antéchrist va tenter de persuader les chrétiens que son idéologie perverse et corrompue est "véridique et légitime", dans le seul but de les inciter à ignorer les enseignements des Evangiles. Si les chrétiens qui attendent avec impatience la venue du messie Jésus (psl***) (notamment les évangéliques) sont trompés par les mensonges de l'Antéchrist et qu'ils décident de suivre ce dernier, ils éprouveront alors un terrible sentiment de honte et de regret pour avoir participé aux massacres lorsque enfin le Prophète Jésus (psl) reviendra...

Salaam,

Ouadoud

Well, "Armageddon" is John Bolton's nickname.

http://search.yahoo.com/search?p=John+%22Armageddon%22+Bolton&fr=yfp-t-501&toggle=1&cop=mss&ei=UTF-8

1 - 10 of about 121,000 for John "Armageddon" Bolton - 0.19 sec. (About this page)

More than 120,000 hits testify it And his rethorical and hyper-extremist and radical speeches at UN too.

The Israel lobby debate

In March this year the London Review of Books published John Mearsheimer and Stephen Walt's essay 'The Israel Lobby'. The response to the article prompted the LRB to hold a debate under the heading 'The Israel lobby: does it have too much influence on American foreign policy?'. The debate took place in New York on 28 September in the Great Hall of the Cooper Union. The panellists were Shlomo Ben-Ami, Martin Indyk, Tony Judt, Rashid Khalidi, John Mearsheimer and Dennis Ross, and the moderator was Anne-Marie Slaughter. The event was greatly oversubscribed, so we are delighted to announce that a video of the event, produced by ScribeMedia, is now available to view online. Click here to view the debate.

 http://www.lrb.co.uk/v28/n06/print/mear01_.html

Nanna

A review of two books: http://www.nybooks.com/articles/19993

Palestine Peace Not Apartheid

by Jimmy Carter

Simon and Schuster, 264 pp., $27.00

Prisoners: A Muslim and a Jew Across the Middle East Divide

by Jeffrey Goldberg

Knopf, 316 pp., $25.00

Hello Friends ,

I have seen your arguments regarding this book but some thing else came to my mind i.e. the idea of translating that book into Arabic . How do you see that idea and  where can I find that original book  ?

Looking forward to hearing from you ,

Dr. Jamal Makhamreh .  

Welcome to the group Dr. Makhamreh,

The book is on Amazon,

http://www.amazon.com/Palestine-Peace-Apartheid-Jimmy-Carter/dp/0743285026

Most of the time, publishers own the right of translation. The best thing to do is to contact the publisher if you are interested in translating the book.

Best wishes

Salam

Lamis

I'll bet that someone has already done so, but you never know.  I'd also write directly to the Carter Center with your proposal.

One book was translated by 3 different people/groups in the Middle East. First because no one knew of the other; second, because of the lack of respect for publishing rights. So, I agree with you Scott, it is better to check well first.

Lamis

Speaking of books: http://www.archaeologynews.org/story.asp?ID=229530&Title=Controversy%20Erupts%20at%20NY%20College%20Over%20Tenure%20for%20Palestinian%20Professor

Another controversy involving Mideast politics has erupted on the Columbia University campus, and this time it is over whether to grant tenure to an anthropology professor of Palestinian descent.

Critics of Barnard College professor Nadia Abu El-Haj are trying to block Columbia from granting her tenure, while supporters worry that the controversy over her scholarship represents an attempt to stifle academic freedom.

Abu El-Haj, an assistant professor of anthropology, has been teaching at Barnard, Columbia's women's college, since 2002. Her book, Facts on the Ground: Archaeological Practice and Territorial Self-Fashioning in Israeli Society, looks at the importance of archaeology in forming Israel's national identity.

The 2001 book discusses how archaeological discoveries have been used to defend Israel's territorial claims and contributed to the idea of Israel as the ancient home of the Jewish people. She argues that Israel has used archaeology to justify its existence in the region, sometimes at the expense of the Palestinians.

The book has garnered both praise and criticism, with opponents challenging her conclusions and her research. The dispute has also spilled onto the Internet.

A Barnard alumnus Paula Stern, who lives in a Jewish settlement on the West Bank, is starting an online petition against granting Abu El-Haj tenure or a permanent position on the faculty. The petition says her “claim to scholarly recognition is based on a single, profoundly flawed book” that fails to meet the university's standards of scholarship. ...

I found only one previous case (if that's called a controversy), that of Edward Said:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/3140570.stm (September 2003) As a professor of comparative literature at Columbia University in New York, Mr Said engaged with a huge range of subjects, including classics of English literature such as the works of Jane Austen. In Orientalism, he argued that the entire Western academic discipline of oriental studies was based on imperialist and racist myths about the Middle East. When Yasser Arafat signed the Oslo peace accords with Israel, Mr Said criticised the Palestinian leader for, as he put it, "collaborating with military occupation".

Nope. "If Edward Said hadn't been pulling all the strings on Morningside Heights, [Joseph] Massad probably would have ended up teaching in a community college": http://sandbox.blog-city.com/martyrs_get_tenure_at_columbia.htm (This is actually a Jewish point of view to keep things in balance.)

Meanwhile, in Europe, they give as good as they get:

Originally written by Jacek Krankowski on June 15, 2006 4:35 PM Britain's largest lecturers' union yesterday voted in favour of a boycott of Israeli lecturers and academic institutions who do not publicly dissociate themselves from Israel's "apartheid policies": http://education.guardian.co.uk/higher/worldwide/story/0,,1785634,00.html

And, meanwhile in U.S., The American Association for Palestinian Equal Rights reports (quoting The New York Times, August 2007) that:

http://americansforpalestine.org/aaper/575.shtml JERUSALEM, Aug. 10 — Israel is constructing a road through the West Bank, east of Jerusalem, that will allow both Israelis and Palestinians to travel along it — separately. There are two pairs of lanes, one for each tribe, separated by a tall wall of concrete patterned to look like Jerusalem stones, an effort at beautification indicating that the road is meant to be permanent. The Israeli side has various exits; the Palestinian side has few.

The website of the Palestinian Society for the Study of International Affairs (PASSIA of Jerusalem) names Sharif Hussein as the one that designed the current Palestinian flag back in 1916 intended as the flag of the Arab Revolt. http://www.passia.org/palestine_facts/meaning_of_flag.htm

Wikipedia says that Sharif Hussein entered into alliance with UK and France in 1916 against the Ottoman governemnt in exchange for the promise of land between Egypt and Persia. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arab_Revolt

Some of the results obtained in the public opinion survey conducted jointly by The Palestinian Center for Policy and Survey Research (PSR) in Ramallah and the Harry S. Truman Research Institute for the Advancement of Peace at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem between March 8 and 13, 2005:

http://www.pcpsr.org/survey/polls/2005/p15ejoint.html (1) 59% of the Palestinians prefer immediate return to final status negotiations on all issues in dispute at once, and 31% prefer a gradual step by step approach. Among Israelis, 57% prefer a gradual a step by step approach and 34% prefer a final status solution of all issues at once. (2) 55% among Israelis and 79% among Palestinians believe that the US should increase its involvement in trying to solve the Israeli Palestinian conflict, while 37% of the Israelis and 15% of the Palestinians say it should decrease its involvement. (3) 51% of the Israelis and 13% of the Palestinians will support adoption of a school curriculum that recognizes the sovereignty of the other state and educates against irredentist aspirations. In June 2004 41% of the Israelis and 4% of the Palestinians thought so. (4) 70% of the Israelis and 73% of the Palestinians support joint economic institutions and ventures compared to 66% and 66% respectively last June. (5) 75% of the Palestinians see Sharon’s plan to evacuate the Israeli settlements from Gaza as a victory for the Palestinian armed struggle against Israel, while 23% do not see it as such. Among Israelis, 44% see Sharon’s plan to evacuate the Israeli settlements from Gaza as a victory for the Palestinian armed struggle against Israel, while 50% don’t think it is a Palestinian victory.

Deborah J Gerner in "One Land Two Peoples: The Conflict Over Palestine" wrote on the beginnings of Palestinian nationalism:

http://www.israelipalestinianprocon.org/bin/procon/procon.cgi?database=5-C-Subs-Q3.db&command=viewone&op=t&id=9&rnd=992.4420262623495 Initially, Palestinians were part of the general movement of Arab nationalism that engulfed the Levant. With the breakup of the Ottoman Empire and the division of the Levant into areas of French and British control, Arab hopes of a Greater Syria encompassing the entire Levant region were quashed, and a separate Palestinian national identity, which was already present, began to flourish."

The website of PalestineRemembered quotes Israeli journalist Tom Segev in his book on what Ben-Gurion said might have been different with the six million Jews in Europe:

http://www.palestineremembered.com/Acre/Palestine-Remembered/Story448.html "Had partition [referring to the Peel Commission partition plan] been carried out, the history of our people would have been different and six million Jews in Europe would not have been killed---most of them would be in Israel"

And, Wikipedia's Peel Commisssion partition map (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Peel_map_pd.png):

Israel declares Gaza a hostile entity.

it seems just a detail, but it's not since it allows it legally to cut electricity, water and all kind of subsidies.

Crazy world where you just need a media declaration to make a law. and you just need a law to kill people.

salaam in Ramadan,

Ouadoud

Source:

Israël a déclaré aujourd'hui Gaza "entité hostile". En conséquence, l'électricité, le gaz vont être coupés à Gaza.

Originally written by Chani D on September 24, 2007 11:45 AM Bon Ramadan malgré tout, Ouadoud Chani

Merci beaucoup Chani, c'est apprécié. la nouveauté de ce Ramadan, c'est qu'Achraf le fait aussi -il a 10 ans- jusqu'ici il ne l'a pas fait pendant 3 jours -3 sur 13- parce que je l'ai obligé à manger; il fallait bien parce qu'il devenait transparent et invisible de maigreur . Mais il ne démord pas, parce qu'il veut vraiment le faire...

Salaam

Ouadoud

Originally written by Ann-Christine Nassar - Pateffoz on September 24, 2007 12:18 PM ... By the way, Gaza used to be very known for its excellent oranges, once upon a time.

and its olive oil of course Ann-Christine

Originally written by Chani D on September 25, 2007 8:57 AM Bon courage à Achraf, Ouadoud! About what age approximatively are you supposed to follow the rules of the Ramadan? From which age are you an adult for these things? Or does it rather depend on the health, the physical condition of a person rather than his/her age? (Mieux vaut s'arrêter avant de devenir transparent ) Chani

The puberty is the starting point (of other things too, not only Ramadan, that's nature). So it's clear that some (boys or girls) are early and precocious and others are late.

About early and precocious people. My mother told me that she married when she was 14, and she had her first child (that was me) at the age of 16. She is now in her late sixties and in very good health. may God bless her and love her deeply.

salaam

Well. It's completely crazy to see how US administration is trying to clean its very dirty image by giving the impression that it helps Mideast peaceful solution.

But on the ground, what's going on? This:

"..Expressing his anger and frustration at the fast-deteriorating human rights situation in Gaza and the West Bank, John Dugard, the UN special rapporteur on human rights for the Palestinian territories since 2001, has suggested that the world body quit the Middle East Quartet..."

Full article: Another Mideast envoy fed up with quartet
Haider Rizvi, The Electronic Intifada, Oct 16, 2007

Another anti-Semite with a record? (see also sections "United Nations" and "Dugard's 2007 Report" of http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Dugard)

Jacek

Originally written by Chani D on January 4, 2008 1:27 PM We Europeans consider it normal to travel around the world and spend holidays in exotic countries. But at the same time, we have made of Europe a fortress

Je l'ai lu il y a quelques jours dans un excellent numéro de Libération de la fin d'année : 

En Cisjordanie, le fleuret pour remplacer les armes
Un escrimeur polonais a mis en place un plan d’aide aux sportifs palestiniens.
http://www.liberation.fr/actualite/societe/le_libe_des_solutions/300801.FR.php

Scott, trying to introduce some analysis into this interminable & embarrassing pity party...

Of Braveheart and Bush

President Bush will travel to the Middle East next week, where he will become the latest U.S. president, going back to the 1940s, to make a major push to achieve peace between Israel and the Palestinians. It is hard to see what in the current situation -- with the Gaza Strip in the hands of a rabidly anti-Israel group and the West Bank in the hands of only a mildly less anti-Israel group -- makes him think he will succeed where his predecessors failed.

Those who insist on pursuing the "peace process," notwithstanding the low probability of success, claim that we have no choice. "What is the alternative?" they ask. "Perpetual war?"

Well, yes.

To be skeptical of the peace process is not to suggest that such never-ending strife is desirable, but merely to acknowledge that it may be inevitable. The contrary view -- that even a conflict as intractable as this one should end soon -- rests on a sunny, if ahistorical, Enlightenment faith that peace is the natural order of things and war a temporary aberration.

There is also a uniquely American perspective at work here: We normally fight short wars overseas, with even our longest conflict, Vietnam, lasting less than a decade (1965-1973) if measured by the deployment of ground forces. Win or lose, we are used to having the shooting end within a few years. Given this outlook, many Americans believe that the Palestinian-Israeli conflict, which has been raging in one form or another for 60 years, is overdue for resolution.

But if measured by the length of other tribal and territorial disputes throughout history, there is no reason to think that the Arabs and Jews will soon beat their swords into plowshares. Consider just one such conflict, pitting the Scots against the English. The divide between the two nationalities -- with similar religions (first Catholic, then Protestant), ethnic origins, languages and political systems -- should have been easily bridged. But the Scots and English spent centuries killing one another.

War broke out in 1296 after King Edward I of England tried to claim the empty throne of Scotland. This sparked a prolonged resistance led first by William Wallace and then, after his execution, by Robert Bruce. Both the Scots and the English resorted to terrorist tactics, with frequent burning, looting and killing on both sides.

This savagery was evident early on: In 1297 William Heselrig, the English sheriff of the small town of Lanark, burned down a house belonging to Wallace's wife or girlfriend, Marion Braidfute, killing her and everyone else inside. Wallace's riposte is recorded in a medieval chronicle: "Gathering together a band of desperate men, he fell by night on the sheriff and his armed guard, hewed the sheriff into small pieces with his own sword and burned the buildings and those within them."

Some scholars have cast doubt on elements of this traditional tale (which was dramatized in Mel Gibson's 1995 film, "Braveheart"), but there is no doubting the ferocity or frequency of such small-scale clashes. There were also some major battles -- the Scots prevailed at Stirling Bridge (1297) and Bannockburn (1314), the English at Falkirk (1298), Halidon Hill (1333) and numerous later battlefields -- but none proved decisive. Scotland was too small and poor to defeat England. And English monarchs lacked the resources or the will to pacify the prickly Scots. So the war ground on, century after century, interrupted occasionally by truces and treaties.

The accession of a Scottish monarch to the throne of England in 1603 as King James I might have been expected to end the strife. Yet the two realms clashed again during the English Civil War in the 1640s. The conflict did not truly end until 1745, when a revolt by mainly Scottish supporters of the Stuarts (descendants of James I), was put down -- 449 years after the start of Anglo-Scottish hostilities.

It is instructive to contemplate the virulence and length of the English struggles with the Scots (and also the similar, more recent battles with the Irish), given that their cultural and religious differences are trivial compared to those separating Israelis and Arabs. Attempts to end such conflicts before both sides are thoroughly exhausted are likely to have no more success than the Treaty of Northampton, which was supposed to end the Anglo-Scottish dispute in 1328. The only exception is if outside powers commit massive military force to bring peace, as happened in Bosnia and Kosovo in the 1990s. But that's unlikely to happen in the Holy Land.

While there is plenty of evidence that most Israelis are tired of today's war, there is little sign that their enemies are likely to give up anytime soon. Jihadists speak of their struggle to eliminate the "Zionist entity" as the work of centuries. Even if many ordinary Palestinians privately long for peace, their preferences are unlikely to prevail over those of the gunmen. Hard as it may be to accept, we have to confront the possibility that the Arab-Israeli conflict may not have a "solution," at least not in the foreseeable future, and that trying to create one represents a triumph of hope over experience.

Mr. Boot is a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations and author of War Made New: Weapons, Warriors, and the Making of the Modern World (Gotham, 2006).

I'm merely trying to offer some different (and more adult) perspectives. 

As I've said before, I don't give a damn about the Middle East; my patch is the West Indies.  (Notice that West Indians, even the Muslims among them, don't efface the identities of their women by shoving them into burqas.)  West Indians aren't puritans and fanatics, and don't live their lives in a state of sexual prepubescence (obsession with virgins etc.) and self-abnegation.

In that spirit, I send all TC'ers a virtual glass of Barbancourt Réserve du Domaine rum, and some classic '70s Caribbean funk (sorry, no video; but great fidelity).

Originally written by Jacek Krankowski on January 6, 2008 5:45 AM Unlike the "short" war in Iraq which antagonized just about the whole world while having a clear answer from day one: invasions should not happen, I don't know how to solve the Israeli-Palestinian conflict at this point. All I know is that this requires a more innovative approach than the American historicism viz. drawing lessons from man's history rather than getting complacent in celebrating the fact that a war is a war and simply has to last a hundred years exactly as it did in the Middle Ages.

A little more than two centuries ago, the French peasants rose against the aristocrats (which the novellist Charles Dicken's in his "Tale of Two Cities" attributed to land grabs, high taxes, and mass hunger). Heads fell under the guillotine by the thousands. Napoleonic wars eventually involved the European continent as the monarchies in neighboring countries weren't happy seeing their blood relations getting decapitated.

Leaving aside George Bush and his divine inspirations, Mike Huckabee, the Republican candidate for presidency of the United States “related his rising popularity to what he said caused the miracle that fed a crowd of 5,000 people with just five loaves and two fish: “There literally are thousands of people across this country who are praying that little would become much, and it has.” …

Burqa, hijab, chador...truly, I wish not to know the distinctions between these and any other garments whose purpose seems to be to segregate and oppress women.  I wish that there was no such thing as female genital mutilation, or that rape was not used as a way of punishing "recalcitrant" females.  I wish there were no "honor" killings of the same.  Yet I know those activities exist, and that West Indians don't engage in them.  (Nota bene...there are high registered levels of intrafamiliar violence in the West Indies, as, unfortunately, is the case in much of the so-called developing world.)

Now, you might find those remarks "judgmental"....

My larger point is that all these ME threads seem largely about self-pity, which is a trait I don't care for.

I'd rather spend time liming at the rum shop than listening to the apocalyptic conspiracy-mongering of some bearded reactionaries, but, well to each his own, right?

Originally written by Jacek Krankowski on January 5, 2008 4:45 PM Unlike the "short" war in Iraq which antagonized just about the whole world while having a clear answer from day one: invasions should not happen, I don't know how to solve the Israeli-Palestinian conflict at this point. All I know is that this requires a more innovative approach than the American historicism viz. drawing lessons from man's history rather than getting complacent in celebrating the fact that a war is a war and simply has to last a hundred years exactly as it did in the Middle Ages. Jacek

Um...were we reading the same article?

Dunno, mate, and can't say I care.

Re the first: I associate monomania, narcissism and self-pity with adolescence.  It's hard to avoid those traits during the teenage years, and perfectly forgivable to display them.  But when adults do so, it's, well, embarrassing.

Oh, oh, don't tell me that ...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joan_of_Arc Joan asserted that she had visions from God which told her to recover her homeland from English domination late in the Hundred Years' War.   http://archive.joan-of-arc.org/joanofarc_short_biography.html With the French divided into warring parties and negotiations to renew the truce with England a failure, ... After providing her with a suit of armor "made exactly for her body" (in the words of one eyewitness), and a banner with a picture of "Our Savior" holding the world "with two angels at the sides", ... ...partly as a disguise in case the group was captured (as a woman might be raped if her identity were discovered), and partly because such clothing had numerous cords with which the long boots and trousers could be tied to the tunic, which would offer an added measure of security.  ...manifest malice against the Roman Catholic Church, and indeed heresy". The Inquisitor and other theologians consulted for the appeal therefore denounced Cauchon and the other judges and described Joan as a martyr,

I wish that there was no such thing as female genital mutilation, ...

.... live their lives in a state of sexual prepubescence (obsession with virgins etc.) and self-abnegation.

I guess it all takes time. See "As the regime cracks down, life goes on behind closed curtains" at http://www.guardian.co.uk/iran/story/0,,2236359,00.html. Personally, I find very interesting the faces in Post #62922. For more explicit sex one can always go to the Bahamas...

As for the female circumcision, as any procedure done without the subject's consent, and often by force, it is repulsive. It is to a large extent cultural. Note that the Royal Australasian College of Physician (RACP) and the British Medical Association (BMA) observe that controversy also exists on the issue of male circumcision which is widespread in some cultures but not in others (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bioethics_of_neonatal_circumcision). The BMA insists that a male circumcision must not go ahead without the consent of both parents and the competent child.

Then there is a wide variation in the use of electroshocks between different countries, different hospitals, and different psychiatrists. International practice varies considerably from widespread use of the therapy in many western countries to a small minority of countries that do not use ECT at all, such as Slovenia. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electroconvulsive_therapy)

On a controversial use of drugs until this day see Post #116996, Post #126624.

Then think of all the medieval medical procedures that it took a very long time to ban in the West. Even the procedures used to treat President Lincoln after he got shot were very different from what would have been done today. "From the start his doctors were probably doing more harm than good. Dr. Leale’s comment about first inserting his finger into the wound—"I believe that he would not have lived five minutes longer if the pressure on the brain had not been relieved and if he had been left that much longer in the sitting posture"—reveals a total misunderstanding of the pathophysiology of brain trauma. Although intracranial pressure may have been high, the sort of probe Leale delivered could have easily ruptured blood vessels that had not been hit by the ball. The blood that “oozed out” almost certainly resulted from fresh bleeding. After this type of low-velocity missile enters the brain, the tissue behind the ball will swell, closing up the track of the ball. A probe of this sort will therefore cause an increase in intracranial pressure, adjusting to the sudden increase in volume. When the finger is removed, whatever oozes out has been caused by a broken clot or perhaps a broken blood vessel.

When Lincoln’s doctors again entered the wound with a porcelain Nelaton’s probe to locate the ball, the surgeon general encountered a foreign object about two and a half inches down the track that was “easily passed” until the tip of the probe came in contact with the ball itself. More damage could easily have been incurred here. Furthermore, it was not necessary to remove the missile. Today the ball would have been left alone, unless it was easily accessible." (http://www.americanheritage.com/articles/magazine/ah/1995/1/1995_1_63.shtml)

It all takes time and it will all eventually change. Bombings do not help at all in this process.

Jacek

Re your first assertion: not proven.

Re your second: we agree here. In fact...referring again to my adopted part of the world...I suspect it would take a West Indian with an imbecile-level IQ and a dozen glasses of rum in him to be talked into wrapping himself in dynamite and blowing himself up.  (But, you know, West Indians are known for their common sense and lust for life.)  So what, indeed, would bombing accomplish?

One love...

Btw I was hoping you'd match my last link with one of your own.  Which group recorded the definitive version of "Funky Warsaw"...?

While extending a local Jewish graveyard in Elat (this is the Israeli name given to the original Palestinian village of Um al-Rashrash south of Palestine), the workers discovered an area of around 10 x 10 mt with a huge amount of buried human bones. There was also rest of clothes, ropes, pages of books... They kept the affair top secret and let Israeli archeologists work on it.

A local worker, an Arab of course, revealed the findings to the head of a Muslim association in the village. When he was allowed to visit the graveyard, he discovered that it was a collective grave of soldiers who were killed with bullets or hanged with ropes, and the pages were pages of the Holy Koran. He succeded to have an order from a local court to stop the excavations. And he presumes that it's a collective tomb for "hundreds of Arab soldiers killed in 1949". In fact, there is an inscription in one of the houses of the village relating the fights and the arrival of Zionist fighters in Um al-Rashrash during the foundation of Israel.

Egyptians say that Um al-Rashrash was a Palestinian village under the jurisdiction of Egypt until 1949.

to be continued...

Salaam

Ouadoud

Originally written by Ann-Christine Nassar - Pateffoz on January 8, 2008 8:50 AM ....Don't talk about the corrupted Arab regimes the US supports, it is self-pity. Don't say there is a boiling civil society in Palestine, groups of brave Egyptian women like Shayfeen.com, groups of Lybian alternative news, like libya- alhora.com, amanjordan.org, it is self-pity. ...

Thank you, Ann-Christine, for you input, although it is indeed hard to forget under whose 'leadership' this region has to operate, despite all the Hollywood make-up...

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Originally written by Ann-Christine Nassar - Pateffoz on January 8, 2008 2:50 AM There are things, that we, on the weak side, are not allowed to talk about, if we don't want to hear that all we are doing is self-pity.  [snip] ...and don't forget to drink some rum while doing it, like this, all you say is a heroic act, and not self-pity.

Re point #1: Yes, I suspect having been crushed by the wheel of history is distressing, though I'd point out that your people cannot claim a monopoly on suffering.  For instance, I don't believe that Palestinians were, for four centuries, dragged from their homes, clapped in irons, branded, loaded into the holds of ships, transported across an ocean, auctioned like chattels, and worked to death on plantations. And had their noses or ears lopped off if they attempted to escape from the same.

Re point #2: You perhaps prefer some arak...?  Or kryddat brännvin...?  I think the best West Indian rums are as fine as cognac, but I don't want to force my tastes on you.

"Emancipate yourself from mental slavery; none but ourselves can free our minds." — Robert Nesta Marley 

While flying from Toronto to CPH with an East European airline, I was struck by some cultural behavioural differences that I have never encountered before. It was evening and just before take-off, the flight attendants turned off all the cabin lights.

Since I like to read, I turned my personal overhead light back on. Before I knew it, the flight attendant came round, reached into the armrest and turned off my light with a snap of her wrist. I looked at her and turned the light back on. She tried to reach the armrest, and I became annoyed and said, " Leave my light turned on." She left! Several people on the plane were notably annoyed by the totally dark cabin, but no one said a word.

I am not a world traveller, but I have flown many, many times and with many different airlines and have never before been treated to the ' turn off the light' take-off routine before. Does that make it wrong or just different? Or? Was it important? Does it really matter?

We often get too caught up in nonessential differences that mean nothing.

Nanna

Originally written by Jacek Krankowski on January 9, 2008 8:41 PM Originally written by Nanna Mercer on January 9, 2008 7:53 PM I turned my personal overhead light back on. Before I knew it, the flight attendant came round, reached into the armrest and turned off my light  Is this a Polish joke or something? I have never heard of or seen anything like that!

It sure didn't seem like a joke to the flight attendants who, prior to the light's off routine, also pulled down ALL the shades. This happened on all four flights. Didn't bother me in the daytime, though. At first, I thought it was a 'green' thing, saving fuel or something...but I dunno....

Nanna

I asked a Palestinian friend of mine about his opinion -virtually- and this is his answer:

In my personal point of view, and from my perspective I can compare this to the guards in the Israeli jails who turn off the lights at a given time.

there's still one differnce: in the airplane you can complain, but if you complain in the Israeli jails, they put you in a dark cell for a long time, and the light is turned off all the time.

salaam,

Ouadoud

Originally written by Ann-Christine Nassar - Pateffoz on January 10, 2008 6:27 AM OT to answer Scott's question: I don't find it appropriate discussing alcohol in the Arabic forum. A little respect to our Muslim colleagues doesn't hurt.

Oh, I'm sure they are grown-up enough to read the word "rum" in this space w/o suffering lasting psychological or spiritual damage.

Originally written by Chani D on January 10, 2008 5:23 AM But rhum is not only an institution, but also a plague there.

That is certainly true, and it is also true that many people in the region live in insecurity in terms of employment and personal safety.  Now, I have walked the streets of Denham Town (western Kingston), Albouystown (Georgetown) and Cité-Soleil (Port-au-Prince) — and not only those places, and not only once.  Have you?

What did you see when you visited the Caribbean?  How much time, calculated in years, have you spent there?

I guess I have a different definition of "suffering" than many of the people who visit this site, all of whom seem reasonably comfortable and educated.

Originally written by Ann-Christine Nassar - Pateffoz on January 10, 2008 6:27 REMEMBER, what I have said about other people's suffering.

Fine.  Q: Do you think that what the Palestinians have endured is comparable to what black Africans endured through the trans-Atlantic slave trade?  Or the trans-Saharan slave trade, if that's a subject you're more familiar with.

Too complicated a question, perhaps.  An easier Q: Do you think that way Jews/Israelis have treated the Palestinians is comparable to the Germans' treatment of the Herero and Namaqua?  Why or why not?

Who knows what she has in her backyard?  All we can say as linguists is that it may be unlikely that she has such a device.

Originally written by Ann-Christine Nassar - Pateffoz on January 10, 2008 6:27 AM People from the West Indies don't blow their lives away with a belt of explosives, sure, but then alcoholism is almost non-existent in Palestine.

I'm sure that's true.  But it also seems to be true that the very notions of constitutional legality and freedom of expression (in the press, in the "public square") are almost non-existent in Palestine, and throughout the Arab world.  The West Indian record respecting those two key civilizational markers is pretty good, all told.

Damn right! 

And those two statements aren't (necessarily) self-cancelling.

Now I'm confused, professor.  I thought you posted the Lancet link because you cared about totals.

Btw I never click on those internal links to your own posts.  But if you supply them for the benefit of others, well, great.

Depends.  Don't care much for the NYT.

Redskins...now you're presuming expertise in American football too...?

For a clean record: Do you care about the estimated totals (cumulative) of war dead in Iraq?

http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Middle_East/JA11Ak04.html

This is a splendid example of what is fundamentally wrong with US foreign policy, like a giant whale self-stranding in a maze of contradictions yet breathing as if exuding fresh air. Washington's Captain Ahab, in the garb of President George W Bush, setting foot in the Middle East, holds the olive branch of Middle East peace in one hand and the Damocles sword of Iran-bashing in the other, a twin agenda in complete disharmony. It's no way to catch Moby Dick.* 

* "All that most maddens and torments; all that stirs up the lees of things; all truth with malice in it; all that cracks the sinews and cakes the brain; all the subtle demonisms of life and thought; all evil, to crazy Ahab, were visibly personified, and made practically assailable, in Moby Dick. He piled upon the whale's white hump the sum of all the general rage and hate felt by his whole race from Adam down; and then, as if his chest had been a mortar, he burst his hot heart's shell upon it." - Moby Dick, Herman Melville

Originally written by Ann-Christine Nassar - Pateffoz on January 11, 2008 10:40 AM (with sugar and cardamom, just like in Palestine)

Thank you, Ann-Christine!

I am mostly familiar with cardamon from the Indian masala chai (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chai), so I welcome the Palestinian version!

Jacek

Originally written by Ann-Christine Nassar - Pateffoz on January 11, 2008 4:40 AM Originally written by Jacek Krankowski on January 11, 2008 10:16 AM Originally written by Jacek Krankowski on January 8, 2008 1:15 PM <script language=Java­Script>   http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Middle_East/JA11Ak04.html This is a splendid example of what is fundamentally wrong with US foreign policy, like a giant whale self-stranding in a maze of contradictions yet breathing as if exuding fresh air. Washington's Captain Ahab, in the garb of President George W Bush, setting foot in the Middle East, holds the olive branch of Middle East peace in one hand and the Damocles sword of Iran-bashing in the other, a twin agenda in complete disharmony. It's no way to catch Moby Dick.* * "All that most maddens and torments; all that stirs up the lees of things; all truth with malice in it; all that cracks the sinews and cakes the brain; all the subtle demonisms of life and thought; all evil, to crazy Ahab, were visibly personified, and made practically assailable, in Moby Dick. He piled upon the whale's white hump the sum of all the general rage and hate felt by his whole race from Adam down; and then, as if his chest had been a mortar, he burst his hot heart's shell upon it." - Moby Dick, Herman Melville Thank you, Jacek. Thank you very much indeed. (with sugar and cardamom, just like in Palestine). It seems like I'm gonna need a big one, to endure all the nonsense I have been reading. Ann-Christine

I find that entire quotation straining, and a bit pathetic.  It's meant to appeal to people who've never read Moby Dick, or at all events to people who've done a superficial reading of the book.

I'm still waiting to hear from the experts on the uniqueness of the suffering of the Palestinians.  Here's my hunch: no-one living in those territories, squalid though the conditions may be there, suffers like the Haitian slum-dweller, with 70% illiteracy rates and a life expectancy of about 50.  Now, I doubt whether "the Jew" is behind the Haitians' plight, but I'm sure someone in the Arabic forum will sooner or later construct some baroque theory to explain to me that that's indeed the case....

Btw what is the position of the Palestinians toward the fact that the Jordanians once claimed the West Bank as sovereign territory and annexed it, w/o conferring Jordanian citizenship on the population?  (That is true?)  Why don't the Egyptians do more to help the Gazans today?  Why do they treat Gaza like a toxic-waste dump?  What is the condition of the Gazan Christians today?  Are they free to practice their religion openly? 

Do you think that any of the Palestinian/Arab resentment toward Israel may be traceable to more than the dispossession of the Palestinian population per se?  Even discarding the prevalence of anti-Semitism in the Arab world...I wonder whether the fact that the Israelis have bested the Palestinians and the Arab neighbors by almost every indicator might have induced a generalized rage among both groups.  The Israelis have created a high-tech society with a free press, and an independent judiciary.  Israeli women are emancipated.  Israel's military has four times seen off invading Arab armies, when these were more powerful (even when armed to the teeth by the Soviet Union etc.).  Israel is reported to have between 100 and 200 operational atomic weapons, meaning any real attempt to follow a Hamas-style "existential struggle" with the Jews would place the Arabs at a "severe disadvantage" — to use DoD parlance.  Taken together, all the preceding facts might cause a high degree of collective psychological dislocation. 

Just some idle thoughts for a Friday.  I wouldn't drink your tea, but would happily stand you a Turkish coffee.

Hi Scott,

I'll vote for Jacek point of view and attitude. Killing human beings is drama and trauma.

Your point of view is more questionable. It seems to me a specie of deconstruction technique. One person died: never mind, so many others died too.

There are differences: (1) we're talking about the present and not the history. (2) there is a generalized solidariety with Holocaust victims. There's even more: a national day to remember them, and the obligation to study holocaust in schools, and fordbidden to discuss it + money paid to victims and more.

Palestinians are suffering daily, surrounded by a huge silence. This voice here in TC is a voice that tries to be humane and sustain them with posts, words, discussions and explanations.

Do you know how many Palestinians died in Gaza because they had no medicines, thanks the embargo? Many children

Salaam

Ouadoud

Hello everybody,

Please allow me to share your discussion.

I have been living in France for more than 5 years, I know very well what Europeans and Westerners in general think about this "sensitive" topic. I say "sensitive" because nobody can deal with it completely without some kind of "emotion". Westerners always start this issue from the crucial point: the Holocaust! Look how a crime is justified by another crime. What disturbs me a lot in this, is not considering the Holocaust as a crime against humanity, but the double dealing regarding another crime against humanity and even protesting against talking about the suffering of Palestinians! How can we explain, for example, and this is the real starting point of the issue, that the Palestinian people is expelled from his land so that another people is "imported" from all over the world? I think this is not the case of the Haitian people (Well, to some extent may be, but this is another story).

Now, at the moment I am writing my message in my comfortable place and you dear colleagues reading, there are more than 1,5 million Palestinians besieged and deprived from all necessities, with the complicity of the civilized world, just because they didn't choose the suitable "ruler" according to the democratic lessons' givers.

Lyes 

The suppresed life in Palestine aside (which of course can be intolerable), I do wonder how many of those in Gaza voted Hamas not for its charter that lauds the "destruction of Israel" but for the public service, and its religious and less-western orientation?

I also wonder how far the attack of the Arab states on Israel in 1948, 1967, 1973, etc were driven by the plight of Palestinians and how far were it simply because they couldn't tolerate a Jewish state amid the Arab world?

I also wonder if and when the Palestinian state rises (thus ending the raison d'être for going against Israel, unless of course the struggle extends to the destruction of Israel), how many of the Palestinians with Jordanian citizenship would return to Palestine?

Hello Lyes,

You're most welcome in this forum and in TC

Salaam,

Ouadoud

Thank you Ouadoud

salam

Lyes

Re point 1: The Haitians, and West Indians, are "legacy" peoples: of 4 centuries of the trans-Atlantic slave trade.  They were "imported" in irons, sold like chattels, and worked to death.  This history is perhaps not taught in the Arab world?

Re point 2: You have been writing from a comfortable place, perhaps or the past decade, during which time 4 million Congolese, most of whom non-combatants, have been killed.  Many tens of thousands of survivors have been raped and maimed.  All this with the complicity of the civilized world.  Have you ever lost any sleep over the matter? 

As Mandela said: Black lives are cheap.

This is an interesting take for me as a cosmoPole who is equally sensitive to various people’s suffering. But that’s only possible from the perspective of a peaceful, comfortable place where one lives, and if this place gets too annoying, the cosmoPole can move back to his second homeland (after the elections, of course). In the case of Poland, such a comfortable universal feeling was not lately the case for one and a half centuries of foreign occupation and insurrections. That’s why I can relate so well to whoever is invaded by foreign troops and has to fight to maintain his identity. What troubles me is that even in times of peace, when people have put the past like WWII behind them and have made cooperation their primary goal (like in the EU), there are those who insist that their identity is different (better?). It would have never occurred to me, when I lived in the US, to join any Polish associations there. Although I hear that Polish Harvard students or alumni have their club, that makes some sense though because of their language, which is different from the one they are immerged in. But why would Poles in Poland who are of Jewish origin establish an association of Jewish students? I mean, very few of them speak any  Hebrew! It’s to forge and maintain our identity, said a friend. So far so good, people have various needs when living in a place. But I am very much afraid that too much forging and maintaining, also illustrated by the book I linked to at the end of Post #136541 (sorry about an internal link, Scott), can have opposite effects, particularly if 60 years after WWII, when we all want to move on, someone keeps pontificating that both during WWII, after it, and basically throughout the history, there has been just one ethnic group constantly victimized.

Re point 1: The Haitians, and West Indians, are "legacy" peoples: of 4 centuries of the trans-Atlantic slave trade.  They were "imported" in irons, sold like chattels, and worked to death.  This history is perhaps not taught in the Arab world?

Re point 2: You have been writing from a comfortable place, perhaps or the past decade, during which time 4 million Congolese, most of whom non-combatants, have been killed.  Many tens of thousands of survivors have been raped and maimed.  All this with the complicity of the civilized world.  Have you ever lost any sleep over the matter? 

As Mandela said: Black lives are cheap.

Hello,

Mandela is right, I agree with him and his argument is in my favour, simply because it's not Arabs who are responsible for this situation. You are simply trying to divert us from the issue.  In Haiti, Congo, Rwanda, South Africa, Palestine, Irak, Tchetchenia... people who are involved are very well known. The double dealing is coming from your side my friend and not ours! Just switch on your TV and shift from a channel to another, you will find out how everybody is protesting against the Chinese government because a "virtual" dissident is harassed, while 5 seconds -from which, 3 are dedicated to justify the barbaric action of Israel - are given to more than 30 paletinians, among them children and women, killed during less than a week. So, my friend, it's you who should learn history not us.

Regards,

Originally written by Ann-Christine Nassar - Pateffoz on January 19, 2008 12:39 PM Yes, Scott, this is suffering. True, real, on time suffering, that you simply don't have the right to compare or to judge.

I may be wrong, of course, but it seems to me that suggesting to anyone that they do not have the right to compare or to judge what suffering is or is not, is equal to passing judgment.

Nanna

FIRST PHOTO (source: Aljazeera TV) - One Million and five hundred thousand persons are living in a ghetto totally closed, impossible to get in or out. No food, no medicine, no electricity is allowed to enter the ghetto. Long queus to buy bread, since there's also no fuel to heat the ovens. No heating in the hospitals and medical machines are stopped since there's no electricity.

No it's not in Auschwitz, it's not 1943. It's GAZA JANUARY 2008.

SECOND PHOTO: a nice young boy (looks 13 or 14) is lying on his hospital bed. His sickness is that his lungs do not work, and he benefits from artificial respiration. In the hospital there's no electrivity, so the machine doesn't work, and he may die. The only solution: his mother, his father and relatives and friends have to press manually a small pump to give him oxygen. If they stop, he suffocates immediately and dies. They pump, pump, pump... and they also pray God.

It's in GAZA CENTRAL HOSPITAL, and We're in JANUARY 2008.

My comment:  A DISGUSTING WORLD IN THE HANDS OF DISGUSTING BEASTS.

Salaam

Ouadoud

Salam,

You are right Ouadoud, A DISGUSTING WORLD IN THE HANDS OF DISGUSTING BEASTS, there is nothing more to add.

May Allah be with our people in Gaza, they are abandoned to their fate. I am very angry.

Lyes

Is there any chance that Hamas is using the Palestinian people for political gain?

Is there any chance that Hamas doesn't care what happens so long as they are in power?

Nanna

Hello,

1. Hamas is a part of the Palestinian people

2. Isreal is punishing 1.5 million people, which is described in the International Law "if there is any" as a crime against humanity, excepting if Arabs are not considered as human beings.

3. The point is not political gain or power, it's rather the art of transforming the CRIMINAL AND BARBARIC STATE OF ISRAEL into a victim.  

Thank you for reading,

Lyes

Dear Ann-Christine and dear Lyes,

My questions are bonafide - is there any chance...

This discussion goes back a long way, at least two years, and my view on the matter is here, somewhere.  I just don't have the time to do a search.

Nanna

Originally written by Ann-Christine Nassar - Pateffoz on January 22, 2008 2:08 PM I have been around for a while now, so I know this thread is old.

Thank you, Ann-Christine,

There are other threads in the Arabic forum. Try The Story of a Smart Village.

Nanna

For those who can read French, I found this article in le Courrier international of 22.01.08 (article published first in Ha'Aretz):

BANDE DE GAZA • Une population sans électricité, sans eau et sans espoir

http://www.courrierinternational.com/article.asp?obj_id=81707

Thank you for this article Chani

http://www.radiofrance.fr/franceinter/chro/geopolitique/

For those who speak French, a very interesting 3-minutes analysis of the situation in Gaza, by Bernard Guetta, a journalist at France Inter.

Ann-Christine

Correspondant à Varsovie puis à Gdansk, il reçoit le prix Albert Londres en mai 1981. Il en tire un livre, Pologne (Arthaud, 1982). (http://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bernard_Guetta))

Thank you, Jacek. I had no idea he is a Jew. Now that I know, I respect him even more. This is another example of French Jews, journalists (at Radio France), who are worth to be respected for their ideas and fairness, not mixing past with present, and reporting things as they really are. Another examples are Pierre Weille and Charles Enderlin, (the latter works for the French TV).

And for you, Jacek, a coffee with sugar and cardamom.

Ann-Christine

Thank you, Ann-Christine, for the link.

Today in Le Courrier international:

Gaza. "C'est comme si les portes de la prison s'étaient ouvertes!"

http://www.courrierinternational.com/article.asp?obj_id=81866

I've seen some "interesting" posts in the Arabic forum, but this one wins the prize.  You're also involved in the ugly legacy of African dispossession, from the trans-Saharan slave trade to the East African slave trade, centered in Zanzibar.  Who's involved in the ethnic cleansing of Darfur today?  In the ethnic cleansing of the former Spanish Sahara?  And what religion did the aforementioned salve-traders profess?

Anyway, I can't expend too much time on placing things in their correct places, since these posts seem rather fluid as to subject matter.  So, I post the following, from the current US News.  I guess I'd also mention the review in a recent Times Literary Supplement of a work called Islamic Imperialism.  Haven't read the book, of course, but the reviewer's opinions seem to chime with today's events.

[pasted:]

Seeing the World as It Is
By Fouad Ajami
January 17, 2008

During that seminal election of 1960, John F. Kennedy's campaign promised to close the "missile gap" with the Soviet Union. It was a stirring call, and of course as we now know, a great inversion of things. The United States had 2,000 missiles, the Soviets only 67. Today's equivalent of that liberty with the truth is the talk of America's standing abroad. Virtually all the presidential campaigns promise to fix the problem. We are alone, the contenders tell us, having squandered the respect of others. This is an old American tradition of self-flagellation, but after 9/11 and Iraq it has acquired the status of undisputed truth.

The new canon has even made it into Republican ranks of late. Here is former Gov. Mike Huckabee, writing in the journal Foreign Affairs: "The Bush administration's arrogant bunker mentality has been counterproductive at home and abroad. My administration will recognize that the United States' main fight today does not pit us against the world but pits the world against the terrorists." In the circles associated with the Democrats and with liberal opinion, the canon of America's embattled isolation is fierce and uncompromising. We had been multilateralists once and are now loners; we had been skilled and now we ride unprepared into swaths of the world we barely know. There are the Pew global opinion surveys, essential to this canon: The Turks once loved us but now have a dread of America, and only 9 percent of them have a favorable opinion of the United States. We are unloved in Cairo and Karachi, and candidates Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton and John Edwards will close that "credibility gap." They will cast Pakistani ruler Pervez Musharraf adrift, and they will bring an end to our isolation from the lands of Islam and from multilateralist opinion in Europe.

But this narrative is defective; news of our demise in foreign lands is greatly exaggerated. The world of the 1990s had come to a catastrophic end on 9/11. It was the luck of the new custodians of American power to come into that inheritance. And truth be known, in its final year in office, this administration can boast of having measured up to some great challenges abroad. In Europe, the tide has turned against Islamic radicalism; America had emboldened the Europeans with its refusal to relent in the face of Islamism. Consider Germany and France: The leaders who traded on anti-Americanism are gone, replaced by a new generation of men and women who know a deeper truth about order and radicalism. For Gerhard Schroeder—a quintessential panderer—there is now Chancellor Angela Merkel, reared in East Germany, who is much closer to the zeitgeist of the Bush administration with its emphasis on freedom versus tyranny. Instead of Jacques Chirac in Paris, there is President Nicolas Sarkozy. Last November, before a joint session of Congress, he spoke movingly of those Americans who had fallen on the beaches of Normandy in World War II. France will never forget their sacrifices, Sarkozy said; it is to them that the French "owed the fact that we were free people and not slaves."

Conventional wisdom. It is the fate of those who provide order and protection in the world to be needed by others and to be resented at the same time. The conventional wisdom of this moment assumes that the Arab-Muslim world has been poisoned by America's military campaigns. But in these lands, anti-Americanism is at once a condition that can never be healed and a pose. It is claimed that America under George W. Bush has made its own poor bed among the Arabs by taking up the cause of freedom in Arab lands; we are damned for this interventionism. But America had been denounced the day before for befriending autocrats. Such sentiments about America are not amenable to reason. So we are hated in Turkey, what of it? It could be that we sinned against the Turks; conversely, it could be that Turkey today is an unhappy land, that the cultural war between the secularists and the Islamists has become fierce and intolerable and that the Turks are looking for a scapegoat. There is no way of conciliating anti-Americanism in Cairo; it infects even the men and women standing in line at the U.S. Embassy, dreaming of visas and green cards.

Presidential campaigns never take up painful truths. Otherwise, we would have a serious debate about our imperial burdens, and interests, abroad. We would look with appropriate irreverence and skepticism at the numbers given us by pollsters who pretend to know the mood and attitudes on foreign shores.

I've seen some "interesting" posts in the Arabic forum, but this one wins the prize.  You're also involved in the ugly legacy of African dispossession, from the trans-Saharan slave trade to the East African slave trade, centered in Zanzibar.  Who's involved in the ethnic cleansing of Darfur today?  In the ethnic cleansing of the former Spanish Sahara?  And what religion did the aforementioned salve-traders profess?

Anyway, I can't expend too much time on placing things in their correct places, since these posts seem rather fluid as to subject matter.  So, I post the following, from the current US News.  I guess I'd also mention the review in a recent Times Literary Supplement of a work called Islamic Imperialism.  Haven't read the book, of course, but the reviewer's opinions seem to chime with today's events.

Hello,

First of all, I do not allow you to make mockery of me or the Arabic forum. If you don't like it, just go elsewhere or, at least, respect yourself. 

The debate here is about the Palestinian problem and not Zanzibar or Darfur, which you used to divert us from the main topic, or may be you want your part of oil there?

Now my question is: how and when can the international community, if there is any, curb the barbaric and criminal so-called State of Israel? and why Palestinians have to pay for something they are not responsible for?

Thank you,

Lyes

I'm sure my remarks don't sit well with your "victimization narrative", but...well...deal with it.

I know, vicariously, your mentality well, since I've read Les damnés de la terre.  (I've even met members of FF's extended family in Martinique.)  The powerless, having no power, can only talk and obfuscate.

Btw...can you plausibly represent yourself as someone who translates into English?  I find your use of our language abominable.

Originally written by Ann-Christine Nassar - Pateffoz on January 19, 2008 6:39 AM Etc.

Ann-Christine, I had some very specific questions that I wanted you, a sensitive soul, to try to answer.  I didn't see in your remarks an attempt to do so, but maybe I was missing something...?

[Inappropriate "expression of disagreement" deleted. Please use appropriate language in the forums - see forum rules]

This is the picture of ABU TRIKA, an Egyptian famous football player.

NB: this picture has been removed by GOOGLE after israeli pressures. I remember how a player from Ghana, John Paintsil, was celebrating goals during the last world cup in Germany.

NO COMMENT.

Attached file : Abu Trika.jpg (9 KB - 41 downloads)

Attached file : USA.jpg (16 KB - 35 downloads)

New Israeli crimes against women and children:

http://english.aljazeera.net/NR/exeres/38D843CC-4209-4643-A04A-F755BDCC01C7.htm

Where are lesson-givers and supporters of democracy and freedom of speech. We did not hear any condemnation, while everybody is shouting when one person is "allegedly" threatened.    

Yes, justify.

Originally written by Sarah L on February 28, 2008 5:26 PM How about the 8-year-old Israeli kid who lost a leg last week when a kassam hit his house in Sderot? Did we hear any "condemnation" on al jazeera or on this forum?

Hello,

You justify the Isreali action against children and civilians. The so-called "moderate" Arab governments condemned missile launching and they are the allies of the "civilized" world. Isn't that enough for you?

I guess not. The only thing that would be "enough for me" would be no more rockets and no more suicide bombers. In other words, they should leave Israel alone.

I do not recall justifying any Israeli action against children and civilians, probably because they do nothing of the sort? Hamas is launching Kassams on the civilian population of Sderot while Tsahal is going after the missile launchers. I don't believe for a second that they hit a truck carrying soft drinks or peaceful civilians on their way to a picnic. Oh yes, Hamas is always asking children to retrieve their missile launchers, that's right.

laila sa3ida

Sarah

You know what is the best and funniest part in your reply: "they should leave Israel alone". Anybody who has no historical background about the issue would believe that the poor Israelis were living peacefully in their land until Arabs came from another planet to disturb them! The art of deceit is making much progress in Western countrie. 

laila sa3ida enti qazalik    

Well, Jews were living peacefully in that part of the world until other people made most of them flee: Romans, crusaders, etc.

I have been studying the history of Israel for 5 years or so, so I think I know more or less what I am talking about. Yes, the country itself in only 60 years old -happy birthday by the way- but no sovereign country existed in that sliver of land in 1948. It's not like Jews arrived from another planet and shooed away the citizens of a sovereign country.

Anyway, I have to get back to work. Let's continue this discussion some other time.

ila lliqa'!

Majid Djaradat is 13. An Israeli military court condemned him to one year jail term because he attacked Israeli soldiers with a "slingshot". The judge addressed the child : "Don't you know that the small David killed the great Goliath with a slingshot?".

Instead of providing Israelis with missiles and weapons to kill and horrify children, the West should better send psychiatrists to heal them.