The National Forum   Donate   Your Account   On Line Opinion   Forum   Blogs   Polling   About   
The Forum - On Line Opinion's article discussion area



Syndicate
RSS/XML


RSS 2.0

Main Articles General

Sign In      Register

The Forum > Article Comments > A country lost in its own region > Comments

A country lost in its own region : Comments

By Antony Loewenstein, published 17/11/2006

Only international pressure on Israel can bring a nation addicted to violence to heel.

  1. Pages:
  2. 1
  3. 2
  4. 3
  5. 4
  6. 5
  7. Page 6
  8. 7
  9. 8
  10. All
Chad, President Carter explicitly stated that the "apartheid" in the title of his book refers not to Israel but Palestine. Carter: "Inside Israel, there is no semblance of apartheid, it's a wonderful democracy with everyone treated the same. Arabs and Jews both have the same privileges; there's no allegation of any kind of discrimination."

Thus, your accusation that "non-Jewish Israelis cannot buy or lease land in Israel" is mistaken, and simply not true.

What President Carter won't tell you, although it's perfectly true, is that the most apartheid-like practices in the West Bank and Gaza are those of the Palestinians, themselves. For example, under Palestinian rule, selling land to a Jew is a crime carrying the death penalty. And many sectors of the Palestinian population, including Christians; political dissidents; Muslims who oppose fundamentalist rule; and those judged too friendly to Israel, Israelis, or Jews, are regularly persecuted by their own government.

To answer some of your other accusations:

-Jews as well as Arabs can be subject to administrative detention without charge, thanks to the draconian security regulations we inherited from the British.

-There is no 70:30 policy in Jerusalem; Jews constitute less than 70%, and since 1967 the Arab population has grown faster than the Jewish population. And recall that when eastern Jerusalem was under Jordanian occupation, there was a strict 100:0 policy – Jews could not live in Arab-ruled Jerusalem then, and Jews cannot live in Arab-ruled Palestine today. If portions of Israel’s capital are given to a Palestinian state, the situation there will be the same. Even official Palestinian negotiators have concluded that the large Jewish neighborhoods in eastern Jerusalem must remain under Israeli rule in any peace agreement: Palestine, with its apartheid-like policies, does not want to incorporate a significant Jewish population.

-97% of the security barrier is not a concrete wall but a fence, it is not built "far into Palestinian territory" (most of it closely follows the Green line), and it is unfortunately necessary due to the Palestinian suicide bombings, which are war crimes and crimes against humanity. See http://www.idf.il/media/fence-eng.wmv
Posted by sganot, Sunday, 3 December 2006 8:12:46 PM
Find out more about this user Recommend this comment for deletion Return to top of page Return to Forum Main Page Copy comment URL to clipboard
Did you know that Palestinian license plates in Zionist entity are color-coded to distinguish Jews from non-Jews?

Did you know the United States awards "Israel" $5 billion in aid each year?

Did you know that yearly US aid to "Israel" exceeds the aid the US grants to the whole African continent?

Did you know that "Israel" is the only regime in the Middle East that refuses to sign the nuclear non-proliferation treaty and bars international inspections from its sites?

Did you know that "Israel" currently occupies territories of two sovereign nations (Lebanon and Syria) in defiance of United Nations Security Council resolutions?

Did you know that high-ranking military officers in the so-called "Israeli" Defense (read Offense) Forces have admitted publicly that unarmed prisoners of war were executed by the IDF?

Did you know that "Israel" refuses to prosecute its soldiers who have acknowledged executing prisoners of war?

Did you know that "Israel" routinely confiscates bank accounts, businesses, and land and refuses to pay compensation to those who suffer the confiscation?

Did you know that the second most powerful lobby in the United States, according to a Fortune magazine survey of Washington insiders, is the Jewish AIPAC?

Did you know that "Israel" stands in defiance of 69 United Nations Security Council Resolutions?

Did you know that it was not until 1988 that "Israelis" were barred from running "Jews Only" job ads?

Did you know that four prime ministers of "Israel" (Begin, Shamir, Rabin, and Sharon) have taken part in either bomb attacks on civilians, massacres of civilians, or forced expulsions of civilians from their villages?

Did you know that the "Israeli" Foreign Ministry pays American public relations firms to promote "Israel" to Americans?

Did you know that "Israel`s" settlement-building increased in the eight years since Oslo?

Did you know that settlement building under Barak doubled compared to settlement building under Netanyahu?

Did you know that Palestinian refugees make up the largest portion of the refugee population in the world?

And finally do you know who the terrorist is now?
Posted by Chad, Monday, 4 December 2006 9:46:32 AM
Find out more about this user Recommend this comment for deletion Return to top of page Return to Forum Main Page Copy comment URL to clipboard
I came across an interesting video today

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-7594290623147041732&q=Crimes+of+Zionism&hl=en

You can’t deny the truth.
Posted by Chad, Monday, 4 December 2006 11:01:35 AM
Find out more about this user Recommend this comment for deletion Return to top of page Return to Forum Main Page Copy comment URL to clipboard
Chad
"Did you know that Palestinian license plates in Zionist entity are color-coded to distinguish Jews from non-Jews? "

Stop this nonsense. Sganot has explained how you misquoted Carter. Can you really expect any more credibility?

A problem with UN declarations is that voting is largely based on the number of countries voting and not the number of people in them. There are a large number of small Islamic nations so they have voting rights way out of proportion to the numbers of people they represent, and they vote in a block. Most of them are lead by despots.

The reason that Israel occupies foreign territories is because their inhabitants, or rather their leaders threatened to destroy them, attacked them and fired roockets at them. They continued this even after they were defeated in their hideous aims. They then brainwashed children to kill themselves while they killed Israelis in total disregard of international stsndards of morality and of the Koran.

Even Kofi Anan is getting fed up with them.

If the Arabs in Israel want to leave for other Arab countries there is nothing to stop them. I notice that they don't. I also notice you don't live in these Islamic countries prefering to enjoy the better way of life that we have established. Do you think the Israelis don't want to preserve the same standards for themselves?
Posted by logic, Monday, 4 December 2006 3:29:56 PM
Find out more about this user Recommend this comment for deletion Return to top of page Return to Forum Main Page Copy comment URL to clipboard
Chad,

1) False. Jews and non-Jews in Israel use the same yellow plates. The PA is a different jurisdiction, and has its own plates.

2) False. Currently, annual US aid is ~$2.6 billion.

3) False. US aid to Africa exceeds US aid to Israel.

4) False. Pakistan declined to sign. Iran signed, but what good did it do?

5) False. Israel withdrew from Lebanon completely.

6) Prisoners of war? It happened to terrorists in the Bus 300 hijacking. As a result, the head of the Shin Bet was forced to resign.

7) Whom?

8) False. (Where do they come up with this stuff?)

9) Yaaawn… 7-year-old “news”…. BTW, AIPAC isn't "Jewish". And gosh, the most powerful lobby is the menacing, nefarious American Association for Retired Persons.

10) Name them. If this is true, it is a damnation of the Security Council, not of Israel.

11) Do you have some reference for this claim?

12) You may have missed a few...

13) Good.

14) Oslo didn't include a settlement freeze, it's been more than eight years (you are regurgitating old propaganda) and the period since Oslo also saw unilateral withdrawal from all 21 settlements in Gaza and 4 in the West Bank.

15) False. Netanyahu was PM for ~3 years, during which the settlement population grew by an annual average of ~7.8%. Barak was PM for <2 years, during which the settlements grew by ~7.9% annually. You forgot to mention that Barak put forward peace plans that would have put ~97% of the disputed territories under Palestinian sovereignty, done away with most of the settlements and normalized the situation of the rest. From that point, there would be no more settlements or settlement growth. Arafat turned it down.

16) Palestinians are of course a minority among the world's refugees. But because of the unique way in which the UN defines Palestinian refugees, as opposed to all other refugees throughout the word, and the unique way in which their situation has been artificially maintained as a weapon against Israel, their refugee status has persisted grotesquely and numbers have grown unnecessarily.

17) Yes.
Posted by sganot, Monday, 4 December 2006 10:47:46 PM
Find out more about this user Recommend this comment for deletion Return to top of page Return to Forum Main Page Copy comment URL to clipboard
Chad

Do you know that the Prime Ministers of Iran and Palestine are calling for the destruction of a complete state recognized by the UN? What other governments are doing such a thing?

Do you know that the Palstinian refugees are the only war time refugees not rehoused by friendly nations elsewhere?

Do you know that some middle eastern nations are publishing anti-semitic filth including quite sick cartoons and even the naive hoax "Protocols of Zion."

Do you know that recent refugee problems in the world are largely occuring as a result of regimes claiming (falsely) to be Islamic?

Stop feeling sorry for yourself. The Islamic world has made its own bed and only they themselves can change that. The Americans mistakenly thought they could solve the problem by getting rid of the evil Saddam. Initially the citizens rejoiced but then the Sunnis and the Shi'ites started killing each other.

Blaming others just means that the real problem is ignored and gets worse and worse.
Posted by logic, Tuesday, 5 December 2006 8:03:28 AM
Find out more about this user Recommend this comment for deletion Return to top of page Return to Forum Main Page Copy comment URL to clipboard
  1. Pages:
  2. 1
  3. 2
  4. 3
  5. 4
  6. 5
  7. Page 6
  8. 7
  9. 8
  10. All

About Us :: Search :: Discuss :: Feedback :: Legals :: Privacy