Good Ted. Let's address those Arab threats first.


Here is the text of the official translation of the Saudi-proposed peace initiative adopted at the annual Arab summit in Beirut, Lebanon in 2002.

http://www.al-bab.com/Arab/docs/league/peace02.htm

Check out the relevant UN resolutions No's 194, 242, 338. They are not unreasonable.

Now you quoted three individuals from Iran and Palestine. Those you quote as issuing threats would have a snowballs chance in hell of carrying out those threats without the support of all the Arab League Governments. That's realism. The threats of those individuals are unrealisable posturing.

The offer made by the Arab League Governments ('see above') is a statement from the Governments of the Arab states, not individuals. Considering two of those nations, Egypt and Jordan, already have a proven peaceful existance alongside Israel there is no reason why other Arab Governments could not endorse and carry out similar peaceful coexistance. That would mean the rest of Israel's immediate neighbours Palestine, Syria, Lebanon, and Saudi Arabia would recognise and sign peace treaties with Israel. Any threat to Israel would need to cross those countries to pose any serious threat. Realistically that won't happen unless by nuclear attack from Iran. I doubt any such Iranian suggestion would be supported by Israel's immediate neighbours, or the Arab League.

The proposal by the Arab League guarantees Israel's security. So where is the problem?

The crux of the problem is that Israel will have great difficulty in meeting the requests for the return of lands (The illegal settlements) in the West Bank and East Jerusalem, compensation as called for in the UN resolutions, and the return of land to any Palestinian refugees returning to former lands in the state of Israel.

And yet the Israeli Government continues to sell dispossessed Palestinian land? Why are they auctioning further Palestinian land if all they want is peace?

I'll need another post to address Taba and Clinton. You may respond to this before I move on if you wish.

Ted,

You either didn't read my post, or more likely you've resorted to the stock-in-trade Zionist tactic of pedantic obfuscation.

I didn't deny Australia was a target before the Iraq war, and my post wasn't about chronology. The point was that just because a small minority of Muslim fanatics’ hate us doesn't mean we should encourage a large one to hate us. In simple terms, we should follow policies that improve the situation not make it worse. I'm sorry less bloodshed, violence and militarism doesn't coincide with Israel's interests, but we're not an appendix of Israel yet.

eet
"You either didn't read my post, or more likely you've resorted to the stock-in-trade Zionist tactic of pedantic obfuscation."

kang
"The trouble is that the Zionist lobby is so rich and influential that Australian politicians fall over themselves to be of service."

Was it Mein Kampf or Protocols of the Elders of Zion that you guys just read?

eet (again)
"We're not as hysterical as Israelis are - we don't believe in putting fuel on the fire in the hope that it will burn out quicker. We have boundries. We won't do whatever it takes. And, thank God, we value all human life."

Are you refering to Galipoli ot the Boer War?

Also I fail to see how obfuscation can be pedantic. Please explain if you can find time away from your predjudices.

Marilyn
You always address Ted Lapkin as "Teddy boy." May I address you as Little Miss Marilyn? Actually I am far too ethical and decent to do that, I was just joking.

Ted, I am pleased by the good sense and humanity of many who have. responed to you. The lessons most of us are drawing from the Lebanon invasion are not your "Lessons from Lebanon". Maybe there is hope for Australia not becoming part of a rump US-UK-Israel-Australia "Us against the world" alliance yet.

When did I become radicalised? In Cambodia from about 1996 onwards, I realised that the West's cold war politics had victimised the vulnerable Cambodian people. I urged changes in those misdirected policies and mindsets. To some extent, I succeeded. The fact that Prime Minister Hun Sen is coming to Australia this week as the Australian Government's guest suggests I had it right. To give Alexander Downer some credit, his pragmatism on Cambodia was a good response to the crisis created in 1996-97 by the breakdown of the fragile coalition of post-Communists and royalists.

My radicalisation starting in 2001-2002 was more fundamental. It went to issues of ends and means as employed by the Australian government and its security agencies which I used to trust but trust no longer.

Am I anti-American ? No, just anti-Bush policies. I like a lot of Americans and admire much of American culture.

Ted, I am not trying to drive you out of Australia - but maybe you should consider another kind of job ? Car salesman, maybe? Where you can employ your skills in gilding the lily and turning sows' ears into silk purses less destructively? In your present line of work, Ted, a lot of innocent people are dying.

As to cricket - go for it .. I prefer rugby or basketball or football. Play on, Ted ! But if you want to really be Australian, a good place to start would be to show some sympathy for the gross unfairness of what is being done to David Hicks. I somehow think that is an Australian values test you would fail.

KEITH –

1) On the one hand you seem to be arguing that might makes right: “They [Hizbullah] won. They don't have to disarm.” But you don't apply the same privilege to Israel, which captured the West Bank in a defensive war. Why the double standard?

2) The people I quoted are not “individuals,” but senior government officials. And given the Iranian nuclear program, it is ill-advised to dismiss Teheran’s belligerence as “unrealisable posturing.”

3) The Arab League offer that you so admire cites UN GA resolution 194 as a basis for resolving the Palestinian refugee issue. This is unacceptable because 194 serves as bedrock for the Palestinian claim to a ‘right of return.”

This so-called "right" of return is a euphemism for the demographic eradication of the Jewish state through an influx of 4-5 million Palestinians into Israel’s heartland. While proponents of return veil themselves in the cloak of a "two state solution,” their true agenda is the creation of a single Arab majority state of Palestine. Jews in such a nation, at best, would meet the bitter fate of other oppressed non-Muslim minorities who suffer under Arab despotism.

But any such proposal is categorically rejected by a wall-to-wall majority of Israeli Jews, who correctly see it as a thinly camouflaged demand for the dissolution of their country. When Israelis look around, they see an Arab world dominated by corrupt and repressive dictators, economic backwardness, illiteracy and other ills copiously documented by the 2002 UN Human Development Report. And Israelis have no desire to see their progressive, modern, hi-tech democracy transformed into yet another failed Arab backwater.

After other 20th century wars, millions of Greeks (1923) and Germans (1945-47) were expelled from places where they had lived for centuries. But no one is claiming a "right of return" for these other dispossessed groups. Why should the decendents of Palestinian refugees be eligible for a return that is not being mooted for the decendents of ethnic Germans and Greek wartime refugees? And I don't even mention for now the 800,000 Jews expelled after 1948 from Arab countries.

Keith,
'Well that's just evidence you are often prone to manipulating your genitalia in the manner widely undertaken in adolescence' -I think you may be well practice in this yourself -which may explain your severe myopia.

Interesting that you mention the point about the return of Palestinian refugees and the restoration of their rights.-is your camp really concerned about the welfare of the refugees?

Why is it that the Arab countries in which these refugees are currently residing do not allow the full citizenship & the right to live permanently?
The Arab League issued instructions barring the Arab states from granting citizenship to Palestinian Arab refugees (or their descendants) supposedly to protect right of return
According to their own commentary many Palestinians would d be happy to settle where they currently are -but are not permitted to. It seems the Arab states have vested interest in keeping the pressure cooker boiling

( If right of return is such an important principle - and this practice justified -perhaps Australia needs to consider applying it to Indochinese, Tian Amen Refugees & West Irian refugees-what do you think?)