Thanks David

A great poem.

Scratch the typical European Union activist and one will find large numbers of French who are still smarting that Dreyfus* got off

- and who hate America for helping liberate France twice.

And then there are many German speakers who hate America and see Israel as being too close to it.

* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dreyfus_affair

Regards

Pete

If you say so David.
Rhrosty.

Hi Rhrosty

Did you read the article first?

C'mon mate. Strain yourself to write something intelligent.

Why bother its just another Singer rave about how wonderful Israel is with a poem by a randomly selected all faith person carefully vetted by the organizers so no one who disagreed allowed,on what a great place it is,unless of course you are a Palestinian Arab.
Then of course you can be forcibly removed from your home in Jerusalem by a bunch of thieves who then claim it for Israel and themselves beats paying for it.
Unless of course if you live in Gaza, you will then be used as target practice by the IDF and bombed by the air force,then if you go and play Football at the beach the navy will shell you and kill you.
The propaganda is wearing a bit thin Dave,maybe you should return to Israel and get you old job back in the propaganda ministry,they can replace you then and maybe we will get a different type of the tedious BS, might even be better than your usual raving.

Why bother indeed, Mr. Ryan? Could it be because, without your obvious hatred and antisemitism, you would not have an identity?

Oh Gawd, 'ere we go again...

Nice poem David, shame it was spoilt by being part of your article.

LOL
You wont beat the boycott with articles like this singer.

Yes Pete, read the article!

I've never had much time for prose; but am not adverse to a bit of bush poetry.

I thought the "poem" was entirely out of place, as are far too many, Jews, living on patently purloined land; not in any way ceded by the Balfour mandate!

Certainly not armed to the teeth, squatting gul durned, quick draw Magraw, Americans!

To me the struggle for land and or domination, makes nearly as much sense as these pieces of fine following prose?

One fine day in the middle of the night,
Two dead men got up to fight.
Back to back they faced each other,
Drew their swords and shot each other.

Or, the night was dark and stormy,
The air was filled with beer.
Someone took the bridge away,
And left me standing there.

Or, he was a self made man,
Born on a bearskin rug, Hanrahan!
In the log cabin he built on desert sands,
With his own two scared n calloused hands.

An eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth,
He mutters feebly, forsooth.
Cane tap tap tapping to find,
He now walks behind the toothless and blind,
Who also follow tapping behind,
Given they're also toothless and blind,
And have known no other kind!

Ah, the thrill of the chase!?
Rhrosty.

Thankyou Brave Sir Rhrosty

Your poetry had me pirouetting like a prima ballerina.

The Oscar Wilde like brilliance of your poetry deserves a response - and here it is:

I love a sunburnt country
A land of sweeping plains
Of climate change deniers
Of droughts and flooding rains,
Of bleaching coral reefs
In oceans that are warming –
making cyclones rage through towns
and huge fires go a-storming.

I love her coal industry lobbyists,
I love her rightwing jocks –
either choosing wilful ignorance
or lying through their socks.
I love her weak politicians,
heads firmly in the sand –
‘the greatest moral challenge’
has pretty much been canned.

I weep for what will happen,
And wonder where it ends
Watching scenes of great destruction,
untold damage, death of friends.
I love her far horizons
with their burnt or ripped-up trees,
her vulnerability and our terror –
the wide-brown land for me.

Courtesy http://www.abc.net.au/news/2011-02-09/oldpoemvsmodernscience/43762

Regards

Pete

#RhRosty

You make the following claim:
"patently purloined land; not in any way ceded by the Balfour mandate!"

Misleading - on both counts - since your throwaway statement ignores the following facts:

1. The right to reconstitute the Jewish National Home in Palestine was granted to the Jews by unanimous endorsement of all 51 members of the League of Nations - who in promulgating the Mandate for Palestine (which incorporated the Balfour Declaration in its terms) confirmed the decisions taken at the San Remo Conference and the Treaty of Sevres in 1920.

2. In 1923 some 78% of the territory promised to the Jews under the Mandate was set aside by British fiat for the Arabs living in Mandatory Palestine. That territory is today's Jordan but had been the Ottoman Empire's for the previous 400 years.

3. The Arabs have never accepted that 1923 decision. They want 100% - not 78% - and have never moderated their claim.

4. Yes - this has been a 90 year struggle for 22% more land by the Arabs which they never owned - covering an area equal to one-third the size of Tasmania - to add to the vast tracts of the defeated Ottoman empire given to them at the same time as the Mandate for Palestine was created for the Jews.

Senseless indeed.

Yet it is senseless persons like you and the OLO Jew-haters who egg on such Arab demands.

6. Whilst the PLO continues to claim the Mandate for Palestine is null and void - as well as everything that has subsequently followed - the shoot out will continue.

7. Whilst Hamas claims Israel is an Islamic Waqf the shoot out is bound to intensify.

8. Whilst the PLO and Hamas want 100% and wish to give Israel 0% then you do have a sure recipe for a shoot out to the death.

9. A large number of Jews and Arabs have become - and are destined to become - victims of this sensleless shoot out.

Your throwaway statement only serves to inflame the conflict - not lead to its resolution.

In 1947 the UN proposed a partition of Palestine that gave the Arabs the majority of land with Jerusalem under UN control, the Jews accepted, but the Arabs declined. The same happened for several iterations proposed.

Eventually when UN withdrew every Arab state attacked and eventually in 1949 a cease fire was declared and the new state of Israel had the majority of the land and the Arabs the majority of Jerusalem including the old quarter where they set about expelling all the Jewish families that had lived there for centuries.

At No time from 1949 did either Jordan or Egypt who occupied the west bank and Gaza make any moves to give the Palestinians any independence. The two subsequent wars perpetuated by the Arabs openly tried to destroy Israel. While I have some sympathy for the Palestinians, I don't believe that they have left Israel with any other options with regards response.

Given the overtly anti Semitic nature of the BDS which targets all Jews, I personally will shop at any business they are trying to boycott.

#Shadow Minister

Thank you for your informative contribution.

One correction:

The 1947 UN Partition Plan gave the Jews 56% of the 22% set aside for them in 1923 and the Arabs were granted 43% - with the remaining 1% - Jerusalem - being internationalised.

The Jew-haters bleat at the unfairness of the Partition Plan because the Jews got more land than the Arabs.

They ignore the following facts:

1. The 56% allocated to the Jews contained the arid and uncultivated Negev desert - some 62% of the territory assigned to the Jews. The Jews have managed to breathe life into the Negev through sheer hard work and creative ingenuity.

2. Besides the 43% given to the Arabs by the UN Partition Plan they had already been given another 78% of Palestine in 1923 - taking their share of Palestine to about 87% of the territory originally promised to the Jews within which the Jewish National Home was to be reconstituted.

3. 87% of Palestine was still not enough for the Arabs who continued to hang out for 100% and sent six armies in from neighbouring Arab countries to try and take the rest by force in 1948.

You are spot on about 1948-1967.

What the Arabs say they are prepared to accept in 2015 was available to them between 1948-1967 with the stroke of an Arab League pen after they had driven every single Jew out of Judea and Samaria (renamed by the Arabs as "the West Bank" in 1950), Gaza and East Jerusalem.

They could have had a second state in Palestine - in addition to Jordan - in 100% of the West Bank and Gaza with its capital in East Jerusalem but chose to unify the West Bank and East Jerusalem with Transjordan and re-name that state Jordan.

Your grasp of events is welcome relief from the rubbish posted by OLO's rabid brand of Jew-haters - who will do anything to try and conceal the facts.

I challenge them to point out one fact above that is incorrect.

Keep contributing.

David,

My apologies, Jordan which was part of Palestine originally was carved off in '46.

Until the Palestinians and other Arabs recognize the right of Israel to exist, stop trying to kill Jews and genuinely try for peace, the BDS movement is nothing more than racism and bigotry.

#Shadow Minister

Spot on.

The Arab narrative wants everyone to forget that 78% of the area within which the Jews were to reconstitute their national home was taken away from them in 1923 and eventually became fully independent as the Arab state of Transjordan in almost four-fifths of Palestine in 1946 - without one Jew living there.

Not a bad result for the Arabs in 78% of the territory that had been originally promised to the Jews.

That is why the language of the conflict has been falsely labelled by the Arab propaganda machine as "the Israeli-Palestinian conflict" and not "the Arab-Jewish conflict" - to paper over the events of 1923 and 1946 when there was no "Israel" or "Palestinians".

The world has been suckered and conned by these Jew-hating propagandists creating the perception that the conflict only started in 1947 or 1948 - when in fact it had its origins at least in the Balfour Declaration in 1917 - if not earlier going back to the 1880's.

The Arabs gained independence in 78% of Palestine in 1946 - leaving the remaining 22% in limbo to be fought out between Arabs and Jews in an area less than one third the size of Tasmania.

That is the bottom line tha Arabs and Jew-haters want covered up.

Regrettably they have done a great job in pulling the wool over the eyes of a lot of people by leaving that critical 78% of Palestine out of the political equation when discussing how the current conflict in the remaining 22% can be resolved.

It can't wash - and it won't wash.

Jordan is 78% of former Palestine.

When that factual statement is understood - then ending the Jewish-Arab conflict in the remaining 22% - Israel, the West Bank and Gaza - becomes so much easier.

Direct negotiations between Israel and Jordan - the two successor States to the Mandate - still presents the best - and possibly the only - opportunity to peacefully resolve the conflict.

Time for this new horizon and new vision.

People are waking up.

Read the following article:
http://news.nationalpost.com/full-comment/clarfield-mansur-there-can-be-no-peace-in-jordan-until-the-world-appreciates-the-countrys-true-ethnography

People have the right to vote with their own dollars.
Just exactly how are you going stop people from spending their money wherever they choose?
And its really funny how Israel has the hypocrisy to want to fight this BDS when it itself organised an international boycott of Germany in 1933, 6yrs before the war began.

Israel provoked the war with Germany.
Why exactly do they deserve sympathy for it?

Another gem from Armchair Critic

Israel didn't exist in 1933.

Britain ran the non-country Mandate of Palestine's foreign policy.

Are you blaming non-Germans for the Holocaust?

//Israel provoked the war with Germany.//

What war with Germany? Israel and Germany have never been at war. Anti-semites say the darndest things.

Israel under siege from Antisemites? Jew haters? It’s not the first time that predators plan, carry out and try to justify a territorial grab by playing victim and demonising those who speak out against them. One of the best examples that I’ve seen of faux victimhood of a predator is at
http://www.germanvictims.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/05/1939_09_01-HitlerPoland_returning-fireAE.pdf
(dated 01.09.39).

EJ

" It’s not the first time that predators plan, carry out and try to justify a territorial grab by playing victim and demonising those who speak out against them. "

Yes Hamas has it down pat.

Hamas seems more like a Resistance than a predator - maybe it has set out territorial demands other than on conquered territory, if so they'll be recorded somewhere. I don't mean demands like the totally non-predatory demands of the Czech, the Polish, the Russian, the French, the Dutch, the Norewgian, the Yugoslav, the Greek and other wartime militants that the Third Reich get out and their occupation network be dismantled. Or the ANC with its core demand: No overlords. The Boers and Nazis labelled these activists as terrorists and predators but thankfully, in their blind arrogance, they lost even though for a time it didn't seem possible.

The solution for Palestine, whether one state or two states, is everybody born there to be included as an equal and no Übermenschen/Untermenschen chosen on race or religion. The bleats of being "hated" or "anti-ed" from anyone who wouldn't countenance equality of people in the land of their birth are not worth any consideration.

Reading through the comments on this thread convinces me that each human has several screws loose such that logical conclusions about any topic can never be reached.

Each person is filled with divergent views which have not been arrived at via careful, logical, reflection and discussion. Instead we have myriad viewpoints, attitudes, confused feelings, etc, which cover the whole spectrum of colors that exist in our mixed-up world.

We try to flog our intellects so as to try to make sense of it all, the confusion that surrounds us, the clamor, the hatred and small-mindedness, the horror of wars which, like perpetual motion, envelope us and consume us.

Now we have people saying that Russia is to be lauded and the U.S. must be condemned for its attempts to gain control of the world while pretending to be on the side of truth and justice.

We are surrounded by lies and liars. The MSM has become the tool of wealthy men and rich corporations. The man in the street continues to be shafted by the capitalist predators and by political parties that represent no one, only the carpetbaggers and the greed merchants.

The Churches, rich beyond comprehension, are filled with pedophiles who pray upon kids who have little enough anyway. Clerics promise life ever after to the gullible knowing that that it is a gigantic scam.

Each war is called the war to end all wars by those who are making huge profits to say nothing of the enslavement of the poor who are trafficed for sex and all manner of sexual depravity.

Our world is a sick place. Humans are at war with themselves and each other.

The advent of nuclear war may bring an end to the madness of humans but don't hold your breath.

Extinction may become our only saviour.

EJ,

Hamas executes more of its own civilians than it kills Israelis, mostly for belonging to Fatah an opposition party. Not forgetting its execution of minority groups.

If Hamas had any consideration for those it was supposedly representing, it would not constantly attack Israel whose justifiable response include blockading Gaza and striking back at those attacking it.

Hamas is more like a criminal enterprise than a resistance.

Each bunch of supremacists and its hangers-on bangs on incessantly about episodic atrocities ascribed to its rival bunch. People of good will get inadvertently diverted by these ain't-it-awfuls. The victims of these atrocities are the decent, non-supremacist, people of Palestine both inside and outside the Zionist enclave. And of course also the decent, non-supremacist people of the rest of the world who are fed up with attempts to corral them into supporting or including in their own culture racist or theocratic supremacist claims.

The circuit-breaker is to focus on what is wrong with supremacism and how to press for an enforceable two state or one state or other solution that acknowledges only human beings born in Palestine (in or out of enclave) and secures their right to live free of rule by self-proclaimed God-chosen supremacists of any stripe to whose overlordship they do not wish to submit.

Two states means separate but equal - and the "but equal" part has to be established as a mandatory condition of any solution. Who will baulk at that?

So EJ you consider Hamas, BDS supporters and the UN as supremacists?

Hamas attacks, Israel responds. The difference is that Israel is trying not to kill civilians.

Yeah yeah, it's always the other guys' fault. So the mealy mouthed excuse from the race supremacists, who seized the territory in the first place, goes on and on - and nothing ever gets solved. Would the race supremacists agree to two states in Palestine with neither able to dictate to the other about how they arrange their society, their travel, their choice of whom to allow in to be citizens, their trade, their alliances, their armaments - in short all the prerogatives of an independent state? Separate but equal. Repeat, but equal? Jewish racists not able to impose the claimed supremacy of their race on the the other state, Arab theocrats not able to impose the claimed supremacy of their superstitions on the other?

EJ,

Again, It looks like you are talking about Hamas.

Perhaps Hamas agreeing to Israel's right to exist should be a precondition?

Oh yes, and of course Hamas accepting Israel's right to exist would be part of any two state solution based on equality. Within its own borders of course. Actually Jews live as equals in many parts of the world already, including Australia, but racists to whom all these nations are non-racial homelands proclaim that they need a racial homeland. It's the "as equals" bit that sticks in their craw.

So the arabs living in Israel get the right to vote, but the Arabs living in Gaza don't.

Hamas is the really tyranny.

Honest elections in each state constitution might well be a negotiated condition for a deal. Do the Palestinians have adequate contiguous territory unobstructed by foreign check points to conduct an election? Each state would need that. I think it's the notion of equality between the two states that the racists would dig their heels in over. But first an equality proposal needs to be formulated and campaigned for - and a BDS for anyone who blocked it.

EJ,

Now you are grasping at straws. There were successful elections in Gaza until Hamas won, purged the opposition and cancelled further elections.

There is no way you can paint Hamas as a victim.

SM, I think I can stand by everything I have written here, e.g. from “Honest elections” to “blocked it”, as insisting that NOBODY’s claim to be God’s chosen – whether racist or theocratic – can form the basis of any solution that can be expected to work. Banging on about what awful people Hamas are clarifies nothing.

In two states within Palestine, even if one is racist like the Hasbara crew active on this site and the other is theocratic, each state would need to accept that the other is based, within its own borders, on something objectionable to decent people worldwide who are stuck with this mess created by racists and theocrats and orchestrated by powers foreign to any part of Palestine such as USA, Saudi Arabia and Iran.

There do however have to be proper elections. Israel conducts them (and unlike Palestine doesn’t have to ask anyone else’s permission to do so) but in the rest of Palestine they don’t exist, for reasons explained for example at http://www.al-monitor.com/pulse/originals/2014/10/palestine-presidential-parliamentary-elections-on-hold.html which doesn’t speak for any supremacists. If artificial states within Palestine are to be set up with world endorsement an electoral system of government is something the world has the right and responsibility to require. That and neither controlling the other.

EJ,

All I see is a litany of lame excuses. For Hamas in Gaza and Fatah in the West Bank, as elections were due in 2010 they are now operating without a mandate from those whom they purport to represent.

As even half arsed African countries can manage a ballot, there is no lack of capability, just a lack of will, and I believe that in the case of Hamas, having brought misery on Gaza, is at serious risk of losing. However, they have been systematically executing opposition members under the guise of "collaboration", there is hardly anyone left to stand against them.