Demo and Kang

What biased and inaccurate information you peddle.

Israel was not established by Jewish terrorists and half of its Jewish population is not European but middle eastern in origin. There were some terrorists on both sides but the Jewish gangs were at least of holocaust background and fighting for their existence. Some of them did bad things. So did the Arabs who attacked and slaughtered Jews who had lived there for hundreds of years.

The Jews applied western science and agricultural techniques allowing a tiny impoverished land to support a large population. The surrounding lands are not achieving anything remotely like the same results, suggesting some entrenched problems there. And don't blame Israeli occupation for that, I include oil rich countries which Israel has not attacked.

I know of no Islamic state that has ever given Jews or Christians completely equal rights in law or education with Muslims. Israel in common with all western democracies has given Muslims those rights. This does not mean social acceptance, no state can ensure that.

Regarding Israel's objection to a single state with a Muslim majority, who can blame them given the track record of such states? And regarding the question of force used by Israel what practical suggestions can any of you offer?

Get real!

Palestine: Peace, not Apartheid

It’s the title of a new book authored by former President Jimmy Carter.
Not surprisingly, some US politicians took issue with the book’s title before it was even released however more water is given to Jewish citizens than to Palestinians; non-Jewish Israelis cannot buy or lease land in Israel; Israel's policies have involved planning regulations prohibiting Palestinian building on 40 percent of Gaza, 70 percent of the West Bank and 80 percent of East Jerusalem. While restricting Palestinian development, Israel builds housing for its people in the occupied territories. Imprisonment without charge is commonplace for Palestinians, whereas this would be forbidden for Jews. There are also Jewish-only highways that cut through the West Bank .

A few years ago, the Israeli government was shown to have a 70:30 policy in the City of Jerusalem which to maintain a 70 percent Jewish population over 29 percent Muslim and 1 percent Christian minorities. This has been accomplished through home demolitions, denial of building permits, ID card confiscations, and residency revocations.

This year also saw many Palestinian-Americans denied entry by Israel to the Occupied Territories to visit families, or attend weddings and/or funerals. And then there’s the ugly concrete wall, built far into Palestinian territory under the guise of security, ruled illegal by the International Court of Justice in 2004. Laypeople who’ve seen it nickname it the Apartheid Wall or the Land-Grab Wall.

Nobody expects instant miracles to come from Carter’s book, but hopefully, it will spark the sort of robust discussions that even Israeli society and media already engage in – discussions that many are fearful to raise in our own country for fear of being labeled “anti-Semitic.”

Chad

Typical Arab propaganda. Make sure you are differentiating correctly between Israeli citizens who are Muslems or Christians and those in the occupied territories who are not Israelis. Rather than reading a book authorised by an ex-American President how about reading the Israeli legal code.

And regarding the wall it does in some places go into occupied territories which can be considered unjust but it is there to stop murderers from their nasty grizzly business of blowing up people. The Israelis find that distressing as would any Australian.

The reasons for limitations on movement are because of the habit of a number of outsiders of carrying explosives with them. No civilized society can tolerate that.

One book that appeals to your viewpoint, ignore all the rest. And don't throw in that carnard that anyone who objects to the Arab view belongs to a Jewish lobby or accusations of anti-semitism.

For as long as good followers of Islam try to apologise for the murderous fanatics within their ranks the rest of the world will suspect all of them. Lay off Israel it is a tiny piece of land do something good with all the rest. That means stop blaming others and get to work. Even Kofi Anan is getting tired of the Islamic governments.

Arab propoganda?

Perhaps South Africans who lived under a brutal apartheid regime would be offended by the title. Yet, interestingly, South Africa’s own Bishop Desmond Tutu and others have referred to the Israeli Occupation of Palestinian Christians and Muslims as 'Israeli apartheid.'

How are the situations similar? Well, in a 2002 speech in the United States, Tutu said he saw 'the humiliation of the Palestinians at checkpoints and roadblocks, suffering like us when young white police officers prevented us from moving about.' Back in 1999, former South African statesman Nelson Mandela told the Palestinian Assembly: 'The histories of our two peoples correspond in such painful and poignant ways that I intensely feel myself at home amongst my compatriots.'

South African author Breyten Breytenbach, who spent nine years in prison for resisting apartheid, wrote in 2002, "I recently visited the occupied territories for the first time. And yes, I'm afraid they can reasonably be described as resembling Bantustans , reminiscent of the ghettoes and controlled camps of misery one knew in South Africa ."

Chad

Carter has a long history of being anti-Israel.

It is time that Muslims took a good hard look at themselves and the left looked at the Israeli side.

The long history of Palestinian terrorism against Jews -- which began in 1929, when the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem ordered the slaughter of more than 100 rabbis, students, and non-Zionist Sephardim whose families had lived in Hebron and other ancient Jewish cities for millennia -- was motivated by religious bigotry. The Jews responded to this racist violence by establishing a defence force.

Christians were also targeted in most Arab lands. A one state solution as you would like would see would inevitably mean Jews and Christians treated as dhimies and classed officially as second class citizens and be encouraged to leave as they were in Egypt and Lebanon.

In Israel the equivalent does not occur despite your desperate search for authors who agree with your incorrect view. Bishop Tutu should look no further than Darfur to see how a people are really persecuted.

Face up to it, Israel is tiny, half its Jewish population has a middle eastern persecuted background and most of the fighting was started by hostile Muslims. The fact that Israel with its small population has had the maximum success, in living standards and technical progress as well as militarily is surely an indictment on Muslim leadership who use Israel as a scapegoat for their own short comings.

Loewenstein's article is a hodge-podge of unsupported and unrelated accusations, presented without any context, and strung together under a nonsensical headline, as if together they somehow form an intelligible argument -- Beit Hanun, negotiations with Syria, Lieberman, Diaspora Jewry, charges of rape, corruption, military solutions that have failed, blah blah blah. From this incoherent non-argument, Loewenstein draws an appropriately muddled conclusion: Israel must be pressured and brought to heel.

Pressured how? To do what? And how exactly will this vague pressure bring "leadership on both sides mature enough to negotiate with honesty"? Is Loewenstein satisfied with the current leaderships and governments of the Palestinians and Israel’s other neighbors, or should they also be pressured and brought to heel? Does he approve of their military and diplomatic policies? Is he satisfied with the activities and opinions of their diaspora populations? No word from Loewenstein.

I shouldn’t be surprised. Loewenstein’s website helpfully provides a link to this review of his book: http://www.ajn.com.au/news/news.asp?pgID=1311

Mr. Loewenstein, a 57-year old Muslim woman -- a perfectly innocent civilian just going about her life -- was recently killed before her husband's eyes in a horrendous attack close to Beit Hanun. She was simply crossing the street near her home -- a heavily populated area that is regularly shelled. Her body parts were found scattered over a 50-meter radius. Her murderers are the leaders of a nation in serious decline, whose peace movement is virtually non-existent, where corruption is rampant, and whose "military establishment" is addicted to such "military solutions", despite that they have failed miserably to achieve their aims.

There have been many such events. From what you write, I would expect you to consider growing militancy from the victims of such bombings, their families, their neighbors, and their people, to be justified.

But this Muslim woman, the mother of a colleague of mine, was Israeli, and she was killed in Sderot by Palestinians firing from Beit Hanun.