In the USA 80% of Jews voted for Obama who does not back Netanyahu in an attack on Iran.Only 20% of Jews see Israel as being important to the survival of Jewish identity.

Only the Zionists with their nukes,control the West with their lust for power at all costs.

The point of Pilger's article is that the BBC is not even handed in its selection of News and exactly the same criticism should be applied to Australian media. I can't help wondering if SBS is now subsidised by the USA government. Items about USA inanity often take up more time than local news. and the rest of the world is deemed irrelevant. The opinions and segments of news reflect the USA line with no criticism, and we are left with the impression that Gazans have stolen Israeli land and are waging war on the poor suffering Israelis. No mention of the fact that Israel will not allow any reconstruction of buildings, will allow few medical supplies, have effectively prevented Gazans from fishing in their waters, have destroyed ancient vineyards, olive groves and other market gardens, stolen all their fresh water, have kept them locked in a concentration camp on minimal rations for over forty years. Have flouted over a hundred UN demands for change, kill roughly a hundred Gazan citizens for every Israeli soldier killed, and maim thousands more while reducing their homes to rubble that they are forbidden to rebuild...
Israel has no intention of making peace with their neighbours, Their 'holy book' promised they would occupy all the lands of the Middle East, and they are determined to fulfil that prophecy. Israel provokes a response and then brings in the big guns - in the same way as the USA has always made war. They are unholy bedfellows. The tragedy for us is that our PM in her acceptance speech said that she would unquestioningly do whatever was demanded of her by our great and glorious 'friends' the USA and Israel - because we share similar values! She wasn't speaking for me.

fungus:

“Despite being about a third of the population of British-Mandated Palestine… the UN allocated over 50% of the land to the Zionists”

Actually the original Palestine Mandate was far larger and included Trans Jordan. That land, about 75% of the total area of the original mandate, was already given to Palestinian Arabs by 1947. The area allocated to the Jews - 55% of the remainder, is around 15% of the original Mandate.

“Zionists committed an ethnic cleansing of Palestinians in 1947-1948 to steal their land”

According to historian Benny Morris, "There was no Zionist 'plan' or blanket policy of evicting the Arab population, or of 'ethnic cleansing'… the demonisation of Israel is largely based on lies—much as the demonisation of the Jews during the past 2,000 years has been based on lies."

It’s important to note that there are far more Arabs in Israel and the Palestinian territories today, than in 1947. A far better example is the ethnic cleansing of Jews in Arab lands, where Jewish population has dropped by a factor of 100.

Israel wasn’t the aggressor in 1967. It was Egypt’s president Nasser, who closed the straights of Tiran to Israeli shipping, assembled massive armies on the Israeli borders, and expelled the UN peace keeping force (why do that if you’re not interested in war?)

“If Israel has been willing to give up Palestinian and Syrian land for peace, then what are the Israeli settlements for? The Palestinians HAVE been willing to have peace in exchange for land.”

Israeli settlements in Gaza were removed by Israel, sometimes forcibly. If the Palestinians are indeed willing to trade land for peace as you say, how come the return of the Gaza territory led to daily rockets instead of peace?

“Both Israel and Hamas are guilty of targeting civilians”

Wrong. Hamas target civilians. Israel targets terrorist installations deliberately set up next to civilians.

“After Israel won the Six Day War it did not allow the Palestinians to exercise self-determination.”

What did they have before Israel captured the territories? What level of self-determination did they exercise under Egypt and Jordan?

David G:

“…it was difficult to make the case that this was a 'War' between equals. Nothing could be further from the truth.”

This is not a war between equals. It’s a war between right and wrong. It’s a war between Hamas - a fanatic, terror regime, bent on the complete destruction of its neighbour, targeting civilians in daily terror attacks, and Israel, a democratic country, defending itself by targeting the terrorist regime and its infrastructure.

Actually the ABC often presents views that conflict with that of the government, as it is required to do. Here’s an extract from the ABC charter:

“The ABC Act guarantees its editorial independence... By law and convention, neither the Government nor Parliament seeks to intervene in editorial and program decisions”

The fact that the ABC published the article we are commenting on, as well as your own comment, proves that they do not necessarily “mirror the attitude of the Government”, as you say.

“the Rogue Nations of America and Israel are the greatest dangers the world is faced with.”

At the top of your list of Rogue Nations you don’t have North Korea or Iran, who are doing all they can to acquire nuclear weapons so they can intimidate and threaten their neighbours. Not Syria, where before taking a break to kill his own citizens, Assad was regularly subverting his Lebanese neighbours through his Hezbollah proxy. You don’t have Somalia, where things are totally out of control and international shipping is threatened daily. You certainly don’t include Hamas, where terror attacks are sent daily as rockets towards its neighbour. These states are dictatorships where elections have either been suspended indefinitely or are occasionally staged for political purposes. Their citizens have no say in the running of the country.
According to you, the top Rogue Nations do not include any of them. That honour is reserved for Israel and the US.
Where would you place Australia? Surely we must also be in your top 5 as we often support the top two Rogue Nations.

Can you detect a slight lack of credibility in your argument?

Fungus, the Jews were a majority in the areas partitioned by the UN for a Jewish State. In terms of land, the Jewish portion included the Negev desert which was deemed uninhabitable and uncultivable. If the Negev desert is excluded or discounted, the usable land allocated to the Arabs was larger than that allocated to the Jews. Furthermore, much of the land allocated to the Jews was originally swamp and desert land that had been irrigated and made fertile by Jewish labour and Investment.

It is irrelevant what Begin may have said of the Partition Plan, and it is irrelevant what some may believe the Zionist intentions were in accepting the Plan. The facts remain that the Jews accepted the plan, and the Arabs rejected it. The fact is that had the Arabs accepted the plan, they would have had a large contiguous Palestinian State alongside a Jewish State.

You write that "it is illegal to acquire territory by war anyway". International law distinguishes between territory acquired in an aggressive conquest and territory acquired following a war of self-defence. Former State Department Legal Advisor Stephen Schwebel, who later headed the International Court of Justice in the Hague, wrote in 1970 regarding Israel’s case: “Where the prior holder of territory had seized that territory unlawfully, the state which subsequently takes that territory in the lawful exercise of self-defense has, against that prior holder, better title.”

Fungus, you state that the Six Day War was not a defensive war on Israel's part.
Although Israel fired the first shot against Egypt (although not against Jordan) virtually everyone acknowledges that Egypt, Syria and Jordan started the war. All along the 1948 armistice lines, Arab armies engaged in an enormous military build-up. Egypt ordered United Nations peacekeepers stationed in the Sinai to leave. Shortly before the start of the war, Israel was confronted by an Arab force of some 465,000 troops, over 2,880 tanks and 810 aircraft. The armies of Kuwait, Algeria, Saudi Arabia and Iraq were also contributing troops and arms to the Egyptian, Syrian and Jordanian fronts. Egypt then chose to further escalate hostilities. The narrow Straits of Tiran were closed by military force to Israeli shipping creating a naval blockade, preventing Israeli ships from reaching the port of Eilat – in violation of international law and an act of war