Great post, cutter. I have been to the site and also took issue with its attempt to establish parity between Israelis and Palestinians. Your insight, especially the abuser/abused analogy is right on target.
On the site's forum, someone from a Catholic Church in the US wrote requesting names of Israeli mothers who'd lost children to suicide bombers so that the church could remember these grieving Jerusalem mothers at the eighth station of the cross.
In a similar vein, I saw David Aaron Miller of Seeds of Peace on CNN today. He did not miss any opportunity to remark every other sentence that "Palestinians must meet their obligations, also." I also remember a school librarian dismissing me years ago when I expressed reservations about Oslo, "Don't you want peace?"
Cutter, although I must respect your take on the situation, the stereotypes you use outright legitimizes it. Although Israel is the only sovereign nation in Palestine, that does not make its Jewish residents The Powerful and Wealthy and its Palestinian residents The Powerless and Downtrodden. Why? Simple. The Soviet Union was bankrolling them for 40 years until its collapse. Problem is, of course, the bankrolling came mostly in the form of katyushas and kalashnikovs. Put the firepower of an army in the hands of radical non-sovereign militias, and you get ... the bloodshed we see today.
Moreover, you cannot say that the Palestinians are acting out of downtrodden-ness when they blow up schoolbuses and shopping malls. Why? Because there are a lot of desperate and downtrodden people in the world. Take the Tibetans. Take Egypt's Coptic Christians. Take the lower castes of India. Take even the Kurds. Each of these groups individually outnumber the Palestinians. They don't receive any of the municipal autonomy given to the Palestinians. Yet the world has not lifted a finger to help them, and not one of them has taken to blowing themselves up.
The answer really does lie in reconciliation. But Palestinian schoolbooks still picture Palestine as encompassing all land between the River Jordan and the Mediterranean. Their Ministry of Education still sends memos to teachers that read "it is necessary to instill in the student's heart the desire to die the death of a martyr for the sake of Allah".
Meanwhile, Israeli schoolbooks clearly outline the greenline, and point to eventual coexistence as an inevitability.
Again, the answer lies in reconciliation.
joe, as long as you keep on peddling that misinformation, there certainly will be reconciliation.
Nice one thecutter. He talks total tosh !
It depends on which downtrodden people you want to highlight doesn't it ? ie - the anti-colonial pro-nationalist FLN in Vietnam, the FLN in Algeria, Sandinistas in Nicaragua, Guatamala, Cuba, ANC in South Africa - not to mention the anti-Nazi Resistence of Occupied Europe, which is who the Palestinian Resistence Movement should be compared with.
As Tariq Ali said recently about the Iraqi Resistence Movement - given the nature of the illegal Israeli occupation, you cannot expect the Palestinian Resistence to look like an oil painting.
If you don't like what the Palestinain Resistence Movement get up to, then fine (I don't like or agree with a lot of what they do, the same as in any occupation-resistence conflict, it is all horrible). If you don't like what the Resistence get up to, do something about it - GO HOME, back to Israel and stay there. Simple really when you think about it.
Until such times, the blame for all atrocities lies squarely with the current War Criminals of the Israeli Regime (War Crimes are greater in importance than mere terrorism) and those that bankroll them, the US Taxpayer and their legal political representatives.
The "go back to Israel" ploy is a seasoned one, and I appreciate the opportunity to discuss it.
Although the PLO was thrust into the spotlight in the early 1990s when Arafat formally extended his hand to finally "recognize" that a Jewish state has a right to exist in Palestine, no one ever "got around" to modifying the original charter that it created in 1964 - before Israel even occupied Gaza and the West Bank - which called for its total destruction.
That is ultimately the breach in understanding. For the Arabs, there exist dozens of countries they can "return" to. For example, 60% of Jordan's population identify themselves as Palestinian Arab. The country is simply ruled by a non-Palestinian monarch.
Meanwhile, when Jews in Israel fight for their homeland, they have no place to return to. Hence their reluctance to compromise with Arabs that call for their destruction. Although there exist a few countries where, if Jews are accepted as citizens, they could live while suffering minimal discrimination and bigotry, the pervasiveness of WWII-era anti-Semitism - from chants of "kill the Jews" in Johannesberg, to the synagogue burnings in Marseilles, to the Community Center bombings in Buenos-Aires, to the synagogue bombings in Istanbul, to the desecration of cemeteries everywhere - is unignorable.
These events and others largely suggest that Israel represents far less the "global threat" it is made out to be, and far more the demonstrated question of whether the world will finally accept that the Jewish people is here to stay.
Protest to this will, naturally, continue. However Israel is a country. Not a poodle.
sure, the Jewish people are here to stay, and I think that is great. But, if you say, they have No place to return to, you are saying a bunch of bullcrap.
Jews have no place to go to? When they come from all corners of the earth and can freely come and go as they wish. There is no rule saying they cannot immigrate to other countries, unless perhaps Iran, but I would have to check on that, (not that Iran is on anyone's wish list), whereas Palestinians are not "arabs" coming from all over the place. They come from Palestine. Palestinians can't come and go as they wish, especially not to their homeland.
Is that fair? Why would you, who support Jewish immigration to Israel, the land where Palestinans lived for millenia, not permit such a thing for the people who were cast out by the Jews? This is a double standard, it is racist.
Indeed, palestinian jews lived there for millenia. And it is a proven fact that palestinain Arabs have come from all over the Arab world.
As for permitting immigration of Arabs into Israel, talk about it to the arab antions who forbid immagration of both palestinian jew and arab into their nations. Why take tiny Israel to task for what the entire arab world forbids? Are you claiming Jews are better than muslims and should act accordingly? How racist!
However, Palestinian arabs are allowed to fester in refugee camps in most arab nations. But Palestinian Jews are not even allowed that.
The Apartheid Arab world has a lot to answer for.
ibraham, don't you ever suffer on account of all the blatant lies you spew?
'The go back to Israel ploy is a seasoned one' , as well as being a relevant one.
I notice this waste of spacee has to dig all the way back to 1964 to dish dirt on the PLO, who I am not even sure actually existed then (?).
At least since the early 1970s there has been repeated and continouos attempts to try to get Israel to accept peace and integration with its neighbours in the region. The peace rejectionists are the US-Israeli regime.
The great palestinain people have even renounced any efforts to try to retrieve any of the 78% of their former homeland, now popularly referred to as 'Israel'. They have accepted to live in peace and quiet with their neighbour, on the remaining 22%. This has been the official Palestinian position since the Palestinians National Congress in 1988. And this still isn't good enough for the Ethnic Cleansers-Genocidists that run the 'war-criminal breeding ground' of Israel.
As for that gush about how vulnerable Jewish folk are. It didn't stop the current Israeli Regime having dealings with neo-Nazis in Guatemala, South Africa, or Lebanon. Indeed it didn't stop the friendliest of relations with the former Generals in Bueonos Aires who murdered 1,000 jewish folk.
It doesn't stop US Jewish folk from going about their everyday life.
Hi Joe90. On November 19, 1977 Sadat became the first Arab leader to officially visit Israel when he met with Israeli prime minister Menachem Begin and spoke before the Knesset in Jerusalem. He made the visit after receiving an invitation from Begin and he sought a permanent peace settlement (much of the Arab world was outraged by the visit and in turn expelled Egypt from the Arab League). In 1978, this resulted in the Camp David Peace Agreement, for which Sadat and Begin received the Nobel Peace Prize. The only subsequent Arab leader to do this was King Hussein of Jordan, who did so in 1994, for which he immediately received a signed treaty from Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin.
It was the Begin-Sadat accords that Clinton tried to imitate when he called Prime Minister Ehud Barak and PLO Chief Arafat (who, yes, did found the PLO in 1964 ... before the occupation), at which Barak offered every inch of occupied territory except for the Old City of Jerusalem - a city mentioned 722 times in the Jewish Bible and 0 times in Koran. Arafat walked away, which was no surprise, seeing as he had become popular by hijacking planes (the Entebbe incident) and gunning down Olympic Athletes (Munich, 1976).
Another thing, Joe90. Refer back to my previous posts regarding your misguided perceptions on the agreement of voices calling for Israel's destruction. If you don't believe that the "moderate" PLO is representative of this, then refer to the "moderate" leader Abu Mazen's doctoral thesis, in which he attempts to argue that the Holocaust did not actually happen.
And as for your misgivings on American Jews living their lives ... God help me. I don't even know where to start telling you what's wrong with trying to connect nationalized citizens who've lived in a country for generations with a population that prior to the vast migration from Arab countries to Israel in 1950, were in danger of re-living the European Jewish experience under Nazi rule. Here's a start though.
Yemen. Yemeni persecution of Jews prompted a trickle of Jewish emigration to Palestine from the third quarter of the nineteenth century on. Heykal Pasha's speech merely added momentum to the longstanding Yemeni policy of discrimination against and degradation of Jews, based on a particularly pedantic interpretation of the Islamic law. A bribe from the American Joint Distribution Committee to Yemen's ruler, Imam Ahmad ibn Yahya, led to his agreeing to the mass exodus of Jews to Israel in 1949-50 by airplane via Aden, an operation known as "On Eagle's Wings" (or, in journalistic lore, "Magic Carpet"). The Jews of Yemen, relying on their own means, sufferng losses of life and deprivations, traversed the desert to Aden by foot and on donkeys. There, the Jewish Agency lodged them in camps and eventually boarded them onto planes that took them to Israel. In this way, some 50,000 Yemeni Jews reached Israel during the two-year period.
We lack information about the Yemeni government's decision-making process. But this case provides the clearest example of Jews' being persecuted and expelled for reasons having to do with Islamic law.
Libya. In Libya, as in Yemen, the exodus of the Jews began even before Heykal Pahsa's declaration at the United Nations. Attacks on Jewish quarters in Tripoli and other cities occurred in 1945, leading to a death toll the British put at 130 Jews. In other words, Jews began leaving Libya three years before the establishment of Israel and seven years before Libya gained independence. Their departure turned into a mass exodus as soon as Israel gained independence and the gates opened to Libyan Jewry. As in Iraq, internal policy appears to be the reason both for the Jews' expulsion and for later rhetoric inviting them back.
Syria. In Syria, too, the majority of Jews departed before independence in 1946, and long before Heykal Pasha's statement and the establishment of Israel. As in Yemen and Libya, crude pressure on the Jews of Syria-such as the 1947 pogrom in Aleppo and the rape and murder of four Jewish girls who allegedly tried to smuggle themselves out of Syria-caused a substantial emigration.
While Syria is distinguished from o
The very first part of your dis-information leaves out the bit where the Egyptian government repeatedly made peace overtures and peace offers to the overtly racist US-Israeli regime at the time. So full of themselves were they the US-Israeli Regime were only interested in making fun of these good-for-nothing sub-human Arabs.
The US-Israeli Regime's big wake up call came when the Egyptians attacked the Israeli forces illegal occupying and ethnically cleansing Occupied Egypt.
With no air support or air cover to speak of, Egypt just about wiped out the glorious race of Sharon IDF Supermen. The glorious IDF were only saved form utter and complete destruction by the intervention of the US on the side of the IOF. Effectively, Egypt was fighting both the Israeli Forces of Occupation (and Ethnic Cleansing) and the Pentagon. Sadat called off his campaign and the Kissinger campaign of deniel and re-buff towards Egyptian peace efforts took a 180 degree U turn.
That is only a 'for instance' refutation in the rubbish you come awy with. The rest of you're output is of the same standard of pro US-Israeli Regime propaganda - utter tosh.
Donkey's, Bibles, Korans, Magic Carpets !
What next - 'Jewish Mysticism' perhaps!
The hijacking passenger airliners was pioneered by our old pals in the Israeli Regime, don't you know.
Not much word about the neo-Nazi links between the current Israeli Regime and other Neo-Nazi Regimes around the world.
Not much on the US preventing Jewish emigrating to its shores - indeed deliberately having them emigrate to Israel as part of strategy of having a cheap Israeli conscript supply of enthusaistic Pentagon bullet stoppers.
So now Israeli soldiers are Pentagon bullet stoppers? Pick an opinion and stick to it.
In any case, "tosh" this stuff all you want. The reason I'm not getting worked up about it is because I've been there, met with more Arabs, talked to more Jews, and found common ground with more people than you've probably ever met. And frankly, given the nature and content of your posts, I'm leaving this blog with little respect.
However, I'll leave you with this word of advice. Peace will happen, and in the end, Israel will still be there. Not because Palestinians are not so disposed to accept Orwellian propaganda as you are. But because for Israel, this battle isn't about control. It's about survival.
Ultimately, however, your decision to get red in the face about this stuff is your own to deal with. I'm not a psychiatrist, so my prognosis stops there. Good luck, though.
I have lots of opinions.
What's the matter are you confused about what it means to have a conscience that actually works ?
You are nothing but a serial compulsive liar.
Anything you say is suspect and not worth the bother of even reading, never mind thinking about.
Of course is Israel will be there, who ever said it won't, Moron.
Survival ! The fourth largest military in the world doesn't suggest survival but continued expansion, war crimes, theft, expulsion, racism, theocratic fundamentalism US Christian and Israel's own home-grown version, aggression, ethnic cleansing confrontation, violence etc
Goodbye Mr Cool Guy Liar, don't come back!
Cutter,
Since I'm not lying, there is no reason for me to suffer. It does appear that joe90 is suffering.
I don't know why he keeps denying the truth, but one clear message was his blurb regarding his ignorance of the year that the PLO was founded. Since that is basic knowledge in the history of the conflict, it makes you wonder what he actually knows.
But back to the post - the Church has every right to attempt reconciliation using the terms they are most familiar with, and if the Palestinians refuse to recognize their sin, the Church can not act as an honest broker.
I knew that would hook them in. Who cares for dates except obssessive geeks!
Also the double act continues - one out, one in
'Since I am not lying'- but so far this psuedo-Buddhist Activist who claims to be concerned with Free Tibet has yet to realise or acknowledge this blog is about 'palestine' not Tibet.
Where is your Free Tibet blog, or has that went the way of the rest of your on the spur of the moment junk propaganda, O Mystical One?
He has yet to be relied upon to utter a single sentence that doesn't have a lie, an obfuscation, or a piece of propaganda in it - well, obviously the question is, if he is a the practicing Buddhist of whatever sort he claims to be, why does he suffer from such delusions about the real world ?
I thought Free Tibetans were able to penetrate the veil of the world of real appearances.
Why do you think we suffer from the same kind of weak mind as yourself, O Grasshopper ?
It does make you wonder indeed!
Now he's an expert on Catholic Sin, as well as the Libyan Economy, Budhism, you name it.
Is there no end to this mans's talents!
Who cares for dates? Only those to whom truth and facts matter.
If you don't care about what actually happened and when it happened, then you're free to make up what ever you want, toss reality and history out the window. All that is important is your agenda which is based on your feelings and not facts.
Oh Lord!
Ibraham.
You are mischievous. I know all about sin young one. You wouldn't recognise sin if it fell on your head.
Tell me, what sin should the Palestinians be recognising???
Please dispense with the finger pointing.
Have you not been listening to any of the posts?
Palestinians simply want to feel human again.
To be reunited with their loved ones, their promised land.
They do not engage in finger pointing.
You are consumed with so much hatred for Palestinians.
Please do not speak for all us Jews.
Can’t you see you are confusing politics with theology?
Can you not separate the two?
Can you not abandon these tired old grooves and put you record down?
Why don’t you invest in an mp3 player?
You say, “Back to the post…” and then go off on a tangent.
Please get a grip on yourself.
Try to broaden your arguments, think things through once in while instead repeating known and well-established propaganda.
I am sorry cutter, please forgive this one.
I have been monitoring his posts.
He fails to see the simplicity of colonial survivalism.
He fails to understand that this is not about the Jewish faith or its people.
It is about acquiring and maintaining a strong hold over world resources.
He fails to appreciate how vulnerable Israel is to the US, and if Israel is to survive, then surely its Arab neighbours would be the ones who she should be listening to, for they know this region far better than we do.
They have seen many Empires and endured far greater crimes than 1000 Israels strung together.
Doesn’t this tell us something as Jews who wish to survive as Jews, Ibraham?
I want a land for the Jews. Why not?
But not like this.
I am sorry for turning this in to a speech.
But your posts are truly horrifying.
Feel free to visit this little monster,
http://smoothstone.blogspot.com/
note the charming disclaimer at the bottom.
joe90 you are a fine advesary.
I am glad you pointed out this lamb's faux pas.
I'm sure he didn't mean to expose himself as "Joe". How original. Planning to usurp joe90's name where you, Ibraham?
"Meanwhile, Israeli schoolbooks clearly outline the greenline, and point to eventual coexistence as an inevitability."
Since this little nugget of falsity seems to come up on a regular basis, I thought a reality check might be in order.
The following is from a December 2004 Ha'aretz (Israeli daily) article on Israeli textbooks:
Dr. Nurit Peled-Elhanan of the Hebrew
University School of Education recently
completed an in-depth study of six Israeli
textbooks published in the past few years.
Some of them received official approval by
the Ministry of Education’s curricular division,
while others were adopted by numerous
teachers even without ministry app
r o v a l .
One of the prominent findings in her
study is the blurring of the Green Line. The
book “Israel – Man and Expanse” published
by the Center for Educational Technology
features a map of Israel’s institutions of
higher learning, with colleges in Ariel,
Elkana, Alon Shvut and Katzrin, along with
colleges in Safed, Jezreel Valley and
Ashkelon. No border is demarcated, nor is
any mention made of a single Palestinian
university. Nor do the book’s maps show
Nazareth or any other Arab city in Israel,
although holy sites in the West Bank are
presented as an integral part of the State of
I s r a e l .
A chapter on the ultra-Orthodox community
states that they live in settlements
that were established specifically for
them: Kfar Chabad, Emmanuel, Elad and
Beitar Illit. The message, says Peled-Elhanan,
is that the settlements are an inseparable
part of the State of Israel.
On most of the maps appearing in the
books examined by Peled-Elhanan, Ariel
and Katzrin are marked as part of the State
of Israel. A map of the national parks shows
no sign of a Green Line, but does show
Ma’aleh Efraim. Peled-Elhanan contends
that this is merely a sophisticated way of
ensuring that the pupil will espouse certain
basic political assumptions."
The article goes on to illustrate some of the bias in Israeli testbooks and ends with these two paragraphs.
"As for maps, he says that the [Israeli] government’s
cartographic department does not
mark the Green Line as an official border
of the State of Israel, and that so long as the
Palestinian Authority has not been recognized
as a sovereign state, it should not be
represented as a state on maps.
This last response is identical practically
word for word with the Palestinian position,
according to which marking the border
will come with the permanent
settlement of the border between Israel and Palestine."
I recommend reading the whole article.
http://www.nswas.com/media/textbooks.pdf
They do not engage in finger pointing? Of course not. I understand. The medication. Of course 
Back to the post. Part of it dealt with the catholic Church attempting to be a peace maker, but with the Palestinians having little desire for honest dealing, the Church can not act.
Hello treeplanter,
Yes.
This is a major problem.
Education is being used as a weapon, and instead of enlightening people it is dimming their vision;
producing numbskulls, the likes of our beloved regular moron Ibraham.
I have not read the whole article, but I will.
Thank you.
Ibraham,
goodnight.
rubber duck, brilliant name!
Oh I wasn't suggesting for a minute 'I' and 'J' were the same person but it is an interesting concept.
Is it possible to have two people alive at the same time, who actually share the same high 'Pointless Quotient' (PQ) as our 'two' resident experts here (who, I am sure you find as convincing as I do), surely 'they' have to be the same person ?
Stupidness of this magnitude is no serious matter. Should you take it lightly then who can blame you ? Cetainly not I, or even me (did I just say that). Be thorough in your findings.
This is the Mekon from Mars until next time Telurians, and remember a moron is not just for christmas but neither is he for real. I have to go now and cool down my over-wrought brain-pod before I start to take myself seriously again.
PS I just made up the PQ scale of assessment (in case you're starting to get all worried) as I detest with a passion, the overblown over-hyped and frankly rather stupid 'IQ'. What this rubbish exercise in futility is supposed to measure I have never worked out (does that mean I automatically fail the test?).
It leaves out just about everything that is important ie creativity, empathy, sensitivity, compassion, presence-of-mind, humour, affection for cats and long baths, lazing around on couches eating grapes out of the hand of...etc etc. In fact what it does leave in isn't worth even talking about it is so mind-numbingly boring!
PPS A high PQ probably means you're either George Bush or Tony Blair, or worse, a western mainstream journalist.
Touche!
You believe education has a dumbing down effect. How brilliant. But Israel is a state and palestine is not.
I think you are dumb Iby,
shame you are not deaf and blind too!
Hi guys.
Just so you know the kind of organism Iby is.
You may remember yesterday this donkey was preaching something about "flames on this site".
Well, I have an answer to this.
You may also remember cutter put up an article by Zaki Boulos.
Forget the article, and checkout Iby's comments near the end.
We have found your inner beauty sir.
Since this post is about reconciliation, his comments to that essay give you the shit Palestinians have to put up with.
Thanks Iby for the demonstration of Israeli xenophobia. Everything you say Iby is suspect.
Well done for shooting yourself in the face.
Merely an opinion, of course. On the other hand, a careful examination of the comments concerning Zaki's post are quite revealing as to the degree that the Palestinians must come before reconciliation can take place.
If it exposes any xenophobia, it is on the Arab side.
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