Army Incursions in Nablus, West Bank

by Aron Baker Wed Oct 22, 2003 10:57 baker_aron at hotmail dot com Balatta Refugee Camp Nablus 087 2895036

Attempts to harvest olives during approved DCO dates in Awwarta village and problems encountered
Monay 20th Oct
Up at 5.15am, at Huwwara checkpoint for 5.45. Apparently the checkpoint dosen’t opne until 6am. Between 70-100 people waiting, men women and children, all walks of life, baggage and luggage. Nobodies actually queueing, everyone is hanging back, waiting. People edge forward a little, still behind the queueing area as the time drawers to 5 to 6. Soldiers shout and push people back, arbitrarily declaring it will not open till 7 am because people dare to arrive or attempt to queue before it opens. At 6 or so it is declared open and there is a stampede of people, a small child is knocked to the ground, I think by a large suitcase. People know from years of experience the difference between the front of the queue and the back could mean anything from at least 1 hour to several hours or more waiting in line, as soldiers do whatever they please. There’s vehicles impounded already and a group of 15 people being detained, I think they arrived from a road which is now settler only, eventually leading to an illegal settlement on the hill top, but I’m not sure. We are in a hurry and so skip the queue and after some negotiation get through, foreign privileges.
On arrival at the olive groves at Awwarta we find soldiers and a jeep already shouting and sending people home. They declare that this is a closed military zone and everyone must go home. The mayor of the village negotiated with the DCO (District Coordinating Officer, also army) to change picking dates so as not to be in Ramadan, but lost a day in the process, giving them 2 days, today and tomorrow. This is meant to be enough time to hand pick several hundred dunums or maybe 100 acres or so. We went to meet the soldiers and attempt to explain that this was supposed to be heir picking dates. The soldiers had brought and additional DCO and DCO jeep with them. Between them they told us no, it wasn’t the right dates and we had to leave. At first they tried to claim it was last Friday and next Friday, a complete fabrication as the days are consecutive. We realized the commanding soldiers was an asshole who had thrown us off the fields of Beit Furik village, declaring an illegitimate closed military zone, and tried to take our cameras and camcorders (illegally), he was the same soldier who screamed at me that we would never pass Beit Furik checkpoint when I refused to handover my passport so he could detain or arrest me. They’d already brought us up specially to tell us that we couldn’t pass the checkpoint and all villages past that checkpoint were closed to us. I don’t make this shit up, they do.
He managed at first to refrain from shouting, as his norm, which worried me more personally. The villagers had a letter from the Palestinian office which coordinates with the DCO but the commanding officer said it was lies. They cleared people off the land, several ISMers in conjunction with some farmers attempted to negotiate and resist again. The soldiers declared we had 1 minute to leave the area before he would arrest some of the internationals (and had already threatened this to others). The situation didn’t look good. We kept attempting to get the DCO office on the phone and finally did but it didn’t seem to achieve anything. Then an Israeli peace group arrived, Rabbis for Human Rights, with a TV camera, then an additional DCO jeep and another army jeep and more negotiations began.
I spoke with 1 of the soldiers with the first group, well away from the commanding officer. I’d seen him several times at various bad encounters, in Beit Furik, when we evicted and here possibly when I was arrested, he stood apart from the group, sullen, he declared to me, like he was defending his or his fellow IOF boys, that he didn’t want to be doing, “this shit”, that he was a medic and anted to save lives. I asked if he did operations in Nablus and he said he did. I told him I’d heard the soldiers taunting people in Balata Refugee camp to come out and fight them, over the mega phone, deriding Arabs etc. He said they were stupid. I asked did he realize that the farmer’s only income came from these olives. I didn’t push the issue, perhaps I should of, but I sensed his issues about being there stemmed from unhappiness at not doing what he wanted or doing something he didn’t want to do, not from any real moralistic grounds, his noisy and bullying commander is probably a right zealous pain to put up with anyway.
The first group of soldiers left, leaving 2 DCO jeeps and a regular army jeep, with more mature or senior soldiers. We were instructed to pick while the mix up was sorted out, only from the jeep back, about half the area, so we again started harvesting, taking the opportunity to advance our position also. Finally the cock up and miscommunications between DCO and army was sorted and they agreed these were the picking dates. After still further negotiations we were able to pick to within 2 olive tree rows of the fence, which when the army wasn’t near we attempted to pick anyway. (Theres watch towers, the settlements atleast 500m away, security road being patrolled by security, army and zealous settlers, 8ft barbed wire topped fence with electronic sensor, but picking olives within a few metres of the fence is a big security risk?)
At 3.20 the DCO asked what time the farmers were finishing, they wanted to pick till 6, they were told to finish at 4. At 3.35 the soldiers turned up and aggressively told us to go. These were a different bunch, equally as ignorant though, after their initial round of threats and shouts 1 started picking olives, and 1 started playing with the donkey, as if it was all just a big game laughing and joking as they idly enforced their will. These boys don’t understand or care about the callousness or repercussions of their actions.
During the day 2 settler children stole 2 donkeys, not sure how they managed this but they could be seen later riding them inside the settlement fence, we were all powerless to do anything, and Palestinians are too frightened to report such things to the Israeli police.
Tues 21st Oct
We returned today for the second DCO picking date, we encountered problems at the checkpoint forcing us to go to another checkpoint, we arrived late, but some internationals had stayed overnight, today the army first tried to keep everyone back 100 metres, as if isolating hundreds of trees from the harvest was nothing. Then 50 metres and as far as I know we mostly ignored that too and harvested to within a few metres of the fence. At 1 stage after I had been asleep under an olive tree, 100 meters from the fence, I awoke to the shouting of soldiers and running down found my favourite commanding officer shouting a middle aged woman and small girl, they were about 15 metres from the fence and he was trying to clear them away and was accusing them of touching the fence. On sight of us he called us over and started shouting at us, saying we had touched the fence, that there were cameras and they had pictures of us touching the fence, there was no reasoning with him. He then whipped out a camera and photographed us as we covered our faces, personally not because I mind being photographed but because I am deeply suspicious of his motives (building up a false case about us), and because I wouldn’t give him the pleasure of photographing us, he had previously tried to take our cameras.

by robbie Wed Oct 22, 2003 11:54

the war is for israel not oil.

by kokomero Wed Oct 22, 2003 12:39

olive oil which people are not allowed the dignity of extracting from their own olive trees as they have done for centuries, by US-financed ethnic cleansing colonists who come from Brooklyn to Finglas who have no connection with the land.

They are prevented from carrying on a normal life by a brutal colonising force from what claims to be the only "civilised" country in the Middle-East and aims to starve them off their land by depriving them of food, water, health-care and education.

True civilisation can be seen in the small things in life and if this is "civilisation" no wonder the Palestinians reject it totally.

by avi H. Wed Oct 22, 2003 13:03

A brutal colonizing force - yeah right.

Unlike Judaism, Islam is a frightening culture, with a record of dictatorship and oppression everywhere. Islam is not a religion of peace and does not claim to be one. It is a religion of war (jihad).

Islam is a religion of war. Thus, the Palestinian self-pitying narrative is just a ruse of war, a con trick from start to finish; and most people, being ignorant and gullible, drink it all in.

So drink, everyone, drink deep !! But be warned, you are all drinking poison.

by avi H. Wed Oct 22, 2003 14:26

Let's dispose of this colonisation fallacy once and for all. Most Israelis (56% at the last survey in 2002) are from Arab countries and were thrown out or escaped persecution and genocide there. More Jews were refugees from Arab countries than the total number of Palestinian Arabs ever became refugees at the outset (and the Palestinian definition of what is an Arab refugee is very dubious, in any case.) Israel could absorb its refugees. Why didn't the Arab world, with infinitely more resources at its disposal, do the same?

Moreover, the Jews have had a far longer, far more consistent connection with the land of Israel than the Arabs ever had; and it was the Jews, not the Arabs, who rescued the entire area from a state of total desolation and neglect in modern times.

Bet you didn't know any of that, folks, did you?

by Canteen Kevin Wed Oct 22, 2003 17:04

No Avi we did not know that because it is a crock of shit. You are giving new life to the old imperial excuse for stealing other peoples land with the lie that they did nothing to improve it. This is no justification for murder and land grabbing even by the low standards of neo-liberalism.

As for your lies about Palestinian refugees, Israel allows anybody of jewish descent immediately to take up citizenship while native arabs are being daily disenfranchised to cater for this crude colonialism. You didnt mention the disgusting law recently adopted in Israel which requires any jewish person marrying an arab to leave the country.

Anyway, I am probably wasting my time responding to a bigot like you but shame on you anyway, you are defiling the memory of the original Israeli pioneers.

by kokomero Wed Oct 22, 2003 17:17

Crude Zionist propaganda and downright lies cannot negate the widely known fact that under the British mandate as recently as 1922, 90% of the population of Palestine was Muslim, and a mere 10% Jewish and other minorities.

This means that only 50,000 or so Israeli Jews can trace their historical roots in Israel back for more than 80 years as they and their families arrived since 1948, not much of a connection to the land of Palestine an anyones book (a small percentage of the population of present-day Israel)!

During the Jewish campaign of terror against the Palestinians leading up to the establishment of the state of Israel in 1948 some 800,000 Palestinians were driven from their homes to make room for colonisation by Jewish settlers from outside Palestine, ie they had no connection with the land of Palestine prior to their arrival post-1948.

Mossad's precursor orchestrated pogroms against Jews resident in Iraq and elsewhere, followed by the transport of these same populations to Israel post-1948.

It doesn't matter where the Jewish colonisers came from as they would have had nowhere to go had it not been for the ethnic cleansing of the 800,000 Palestinians from their homes in the first place.

Nothing excuses the violence and injustice meeted out to the Palestinian people by the Israeli colonisers, as the Palestinians had no part in the expulsion of others from their own lands and homes. Two wrongs do not make a right, end of story!

The Israelis must either allow the expelled Palestinians to return to their homes or compensate them financially, this is what they've been waiting for since 1948 and why should they be forced to give up their birthright and assimilate into another Arab country just because it suits the Zionists.

Many of the people on the receiving end of Israeli state-terrorism in the West Bank had in fact already been assimilated into Jordan when the Israelis illegally occupied their land for a second time in 1967.

The Israelis are now in the process of a second land grab in th eWest Bank so what should these people do, uproot again to suit the Zionists or stand and fight. Hardly surprisingly to anybody apart from the most brain-dead Zionist the Palestinians have no intention of making the same mistake twice and are fighting back!

As for the Israelis being a civilising force, Islam a violent creed etc. etc. this is Zionist hogwash not worthy of attention nor space on this site, it is the Israeli insistence on an eye-for-an-eye that has led to the present situation and ensures its continuation.

Get out of the West Bank and back to the pre-1967 borders leaving all of your illegal settlements and then you'll have peace.

by avi H. Wed Oct 22, 2003 18:54

In Jordan, it is illegal to be a Jordanian citizen and Jewish at the same time. The PA is campaigning to expel all Jews from the West Bank. Israel has one million Muslim citizens.

Think about it !

The colonial slur is long since discredited, and my argument above effectively disposes of it. Nevertheless, that doesn't stop dickheads like you repeating it. Try getting some brain cells: you'd be amazed how much it can help.

by avi H. Wed Oct 22, 2003 19:08

Wasn't it Goebbels who said that, if you just repeat a lie often enough, people will inevitably start to believe it?

The elaborate lies that the Palestinian propaganda machine has invented are simply spewed out over and over again - all for the benefit of the Great Unwashed.

And by the way, if you think Islam is a kindly, peaceful, progressive religion, tell that to the Berbers, the Copts, the black African slaves in Mauritania, the women shot to death in Pakistan instead of being divorced, the women denied an education and forced to wear the burka all over the muslim world, the little boys in the brothels of Saudi and all the inmates of Iran's extensive, vicious prison system.

by avi H. Wed Oct 22, 2003 19:21

It's not me who's racist, it's you. By denying at a stroke the proven reality of Arab persecution of the Jews, you are as anti-Semitic as they come.

by kokomero Wed Oct 22, 2003 19:22

Israel has 1M Muslim second-class citizens who can't marry whom the wish owing to racist Israeli laws.

Only a fool would expect Jordanians or any of Israels other neighbours to welcome Zionists onto their territory where their maxim of given an inch take a mile would doubtless apply, and any such move would be taken as license to grab land in Jordan and elsewhere by Zionist loonies.

Apart from humiliation, abuse (verbal or otherwise), torture and murder Zionists have nothing to offer Muslims or anybody else.

You have learned nothing from your experience and despite a continuous stream of Zionist hogwash mantra repeated ad infinitum like a broken record on this site nobody is convinced by it.

Zionazi insults will not silence right-minded people who support Palestinian liberation from the Israeli terror-regieme.

Get out of the illegally occupied territories and comply with UN resolutions!

by avi H. Wed Oct 22, 2003 19:51

Get a life, my friend.

Get yourself deprogrammed from your Jew-hate.

by kokomero Wed Oct 22, 2003 19:59

Israel defies UN over 'security fence'

Agencies
Wednesday October 22, 2003

Israel today said it would ignore a resolution passed by the general assembly of the UN calling on it tear down its West Bank "security fence".

The deputy prime minister, Ehud Olmert, claimed that the body, in which all the UN's member states have a vote, had "always acted against Israel", and insisted that the building of the barrier would not stop.

Israel says it needs the structure to protect it from suicide bombers, but Palestinians say that the sprawling network of fences and concrete barricades on the occupied West Bank amounts to a land grab.

"The fence will continue to be built. We have to worry about Israel's security, and it is clear that we will not act according to the instructions of a hostile, automatic majority," Mr Olmert told Israel Radio.

The vote was carried 144-4, with 12 abstentions. Unlike the 15-nation security council, the general assembly does not have the power to make its resolutions legally binding under the UN charter. However, it is an important indicator of international opinion.

The resolution was backed by the EU, one of the sponsors of the current road map peace plan, in return for Palestinian supporters substituting a statement calling the barrier "illegal" with one saying it was "in contradiction" of international law.

They also dropped a demand for the international court of justice, in the Hague, to deliver an opinion on the legality of the barrier.

The US, however, voted against the resolution. Its deputy ambassador, James Cunningham, said that it still made a legal judgement and objected to it not naming Palestinian groups carrying out suicide bombings in Israel.

The resolution, which condemned attacks on Israelis, "demands that Israel stop and reverse the construction of the wall in the occupied Palestinian territory, including in and around east Jerusalem, which is in departure of the armistice line of 1949 and is in contradiction to relevant provisions of international law".

The chief Palestinian negotiator, Saeb Erekat, called the vote a victory for peace.

"The world has just sent a powerful message that the shortest way to peace is not through settlements and walls, but rather through a meaningful peace process that will end the Israeli occupation that began in 1967," he told the Associated Press.

The resolution calls on both the Israelis and Palestinians to fulfil their obligations under the road map peace plan drafted by the EU, the UN, the US and Russia.

It says that the Palestinians should "undertake visible efforts on the ground" to stop attacks on Israelis, while Israel should halt attacks on civilians and "extrajudicial killings" of militant leaders.

by avi H. Wed Oct 22, 2003 20:16

1) You are such a dickhead that you have distorted the recent Israeli legislation on the subject of marriage. It doesn't prevent Israeli citizens from marrying Arabs from the West Bank, it just prevents them from living together inside Israel. This is because at least 40 recent atrocities in Israel were committed by terrorists gaining entry to Israel that way. The purpose is to save lives, not to discriminate: if such spouses want to live together, there is nothing stopping them from going to the West Bank or anywhere else, for that matter.

2) Everyone knows the UN General Assembly always votes against Israel, no matter what. It has been hijacked. And yes, most of the world is anti-Semitic. We Jews are the most universally and viciously persecuted ethnic minority in the world. Remember the Nazi concentration camps, the Tsarist pogroms, the Arab terror, the European expulsions and murders, to name but a few...?

In this case, the barrier is not a land grab, it is a protective measure against modern day random Jew killing. This has been made clear over and over. Again, if you actually had a brain cell and were not the fascist you pretend you aren't, you would admit that if we were trying to grab land, we would certainly be grabbing more than just one or two miles inside the 67 ceasefire line, which is where the fence is actually situated. Everything else is just bs: if there were no terrorism, no fence would be necessary, would it?

D'oh

by jabotinsky Wed Oct 22, 2003 21:25

When this anti-semitic Swedish U.N. Diplomat caused problems for the Zionists they just blew him away ...

So who really cares what the U.N: has to say about the Middle East .....?

When they get out of hand they can be dealt with easily enough .....

by Irwin Arieff and BTselem Wed Oct 22, 2003 21:42

…. Blatantly Seizes More Palestinian Land.
Arab-Israelis and Palestinians Seem Constantly Punished for their Existence
UNITED NATIONS (Reuters) - A top U.N. official said on Tuesday that Israel had accelerated construction of a barrier across Palestinian land in recent weeks even as the UN urged it to halt the project and tear down the 90-mile section already built.

"These steps would begin to address the Palestinian concerns about the viability of the future Palestinian state and assist in building support among the Palestinian people for the peace process," U.N. Undersecretary-General Kieran Prendergast said in a briefing to the U.N. Security Council.
His remarks came hours before an expected vote in the 191-nation U.N. General Assembly on two Palestinian resolutions opposing the Israeli barrier -- a fence with electronic sensors or in spots a concrete wall up to 25 feet high that is flanked by trenches, barbed wire and a patrol road.
One of the texts, identical to a resolution vetoed by the United States last week in the 15-nation U.N. Security Council, would declare the barrier a violation of international law that "must be ceased and reversed."
The second would seek an advisory opinion from the International Court of Justice on whether Israel was legally obligated to dismantle the barrier. The court, a branch of the United Nations (news - web sites), judges disputes between countries and is based in the Netherlands.
The assembly had been expected to vote around 3 p.m. but Arab governments requested a short delay to explore whether they could broaden support for the measures by adopting changes suggested by some European Union
Arab nations, at the urging of Palestinian U.N. envoy Nasser al-Kidwa, took the resolutions to an emergency session of the General Assembly after last week's U.S. veto.
The Palestinians enjoy strong support in the assembly and the United States, Israel's closest ally, has no veto there.
MILITARILY CLOSED AREA
Israel insists it is building the second phase of the barrier to keep out militants and prevent suicide bombings.
But the Palestinians argue that building it deep into West Bank territory would constitute a land grab aimed at heading off any possibility of an eventual Palestinian state.
Israeli defense forces this month declared the lands between the wall and Israel's 1967 border with the West Bank to be militarily closed areas, which anyone other than an Israeli must have a permit to enter.
Prendergast said the declaration applied to 25,000 acres, "where as many as 12,000 Palestinians would be left in enclaves."
"This order marks an unacceptable deepening of restrictions against the Palestinians caught between the barrier and the Green Line (1967 border)," he told the Security Council.
During General Assembly debate on Monday, al-Kidwa said the U.S. veto meant the barrier's construction would continue unless the assembly and U.N. court intervened.
"It is either the wall or peace, for it is impossible to have both," he said.
U.S. Deputy Ambassador James Cunningham contended that Israeli-Palestinian disputes should be resolved only through negotiations between the parties, and Israeli Ambassador Dan Gillerman accused the Palestinians of pursuing their resolutions only to evade their obligation to end terror attacks on Israel

And according to www.Btselem.org :
In early September, Israel began the groundwork for construction of another section of the separation barrier in the Jerusalem area. Construction of two other sections of the Jerusalem Envelope, north and south of the city, comprising a total of some twenty kilometers, was recently completed (except for a small section adjacent to Rachel's Tomb, in Bethlehem).
The barrier's new route, which was approved by the Political-Security Cabinet on 20 August 2003, has not yet been made public. The relevant land requisition orders issued by the IDF and the Ministry of Defense indicate that a fifteen-kilometer section of the barrier will be built from the eastern edge of Beit Sahur, in the south, to the eastern edge of al-Izariya, in the north. Two-thirds of the barrier will run along the eastern border of Jerusalem. The rest of the route will run east of the city and weave through al-Izariya to the Ma'ale Adumim settlement.
Following the Six Day War, Israel annexed extensive areas of land into the jurisdictional area of Jerusalem. A number of Palestinian towns ("suburbs") are situated east of the new border: al-Izariya (15,900 residents), Abu Dis (11,000), Sawahrah a-Sharqiya (4,700), a-Sheikh S'ad (2,200), and parts of Tsur Baher (700), comprising a total of 34,500 residents. West of the border (in areas annexed into the city) lie Palestinian communities containing 128,000 residents, more than one-half of Jerusalem's Palestinian population: a-Tur (20,000), Sheikh Jarakh (2,700), Wadi Joz (7,100), the city center and adjacent areas (6,800), the Old City and adjacent areas (31,200), Silwan (9,600), Abu-Tur (13,600), Ras al-'Amud (12,500), Jabal Mukhaber (13,500), Tsur Baher and Umm Tuba (11,200).
Until recently, Jerusalem's municipal borders did not significantly affect the daily lives of residents on both sides.
Over the years, Palestinian building expanded on both sides, creating a contiguous urban bloc.
• Many residents moved from East Jerusalem to the (West Bank) suburbs because they were not allowed to build in East Jerusalem. However, they continued to hold Israeli ID cards.
• Many children living in the suburbs go to schools in East Jerusalem and many college students from East Jerusalem study at Al-Quds University, which is located in Abu Dis.
• A large percentage of residents of the suburbs receive medical services in al-Moqassad Hospital and Augusta Victoria Hospital, both located in East Jerusalem.
Many residents of the suburbs work in East Jerusalem. Also, merchants and businesspeople from the suburbs make a living from customers who come from East Jerusalem.


Residents maintain close family and social ties with residents on the other side of the municipality's border.

Establishment of the barrier's route along the eastern border of Jerusalem completely ignores this reality. In the past few months, Israel has put up physical obstructions along the municipal seam line. These roadblocks restrict the freedom of movement of residents on both sides. The most conspicuous obstruction stands two meters high and runs along a street between Abu Dis and Ras al-'Amud. However, these physical obstructions do not prevent most of the residents from crossing the border in either direction, either by climbing over or going around them by foot.


The planned separation barrier is composed, for the most part, of an electronic fence, barbed-wire fences, and trenches. The width of the barrier ranges from sixty to one hundred meters. In a small number of areas, including the current wall in Abu Dis, the barrier will be composed of a wall six to eight meters high. Unlike the current obstructions, the barrier will completely seal the municipal seam line and destroy the existing fabric of life.


To date, the Ministry of Defense has not clarified whether it intends to place crossing points along the barrier to enable Palestinians to pass.However, even if it does, the barrier will restrict the residents' movement, and even prevent it altogether in many cases, because crossing will be contingent on obtaining movement permits. In the past, Israel has arbitrarily denied, time after time, the requests of many Palestinians to obtain movement permits in the West Bank. In any event, these permits become invalid whenever Israel imposes a comprehensive curfew on the Occupied Territories.

American officials: > President George W. Bush COMMENTS:
202-456-1111 FAX: 202-456-2461 Email: [email protected]

Secretary of State Colin L. Powell: phone: (202) 647-7098 email
[email protected]

* * * * * * *
UN Secretary General Kofi Annan : [email protected] or: [email protected]
United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights [email protected] or Fax: +(41-22) 917-9016

* * * * * * *
Romano Prodi, President of the European Commission: [email protected]
Council of the European Union: [email protected]

For other e-mail addresses see internet sites:

US Congress:
http://www.congress.org/congressorg/dbq/officials/directory/directory.db
q?command=congdir US Senate

http://www.senate.gov/general/contact_information/senators_cfm.cfm

Contact information for European Governments
http://europa.eu.int/abc/governments/index_en.html

Permanent Missions to the United Nations
http://www.un.int/missions/webs.html

Many of e-mail addresses of UN missions are formatted as follows:
[email protected], [email protected], [email protected]
[email protected]. [email protected], [email protected], etc.

Embassies in different countries: www.mfa.gov.il/

Committe of struggle against barbarism & arbitrary,
777 bd des nations unies,
13300 SALON, france
www.ifrance.com/CLBA-laconscience
maito : [email protected]

by avi H. Wed Oct 22, 2003 21:48

The fence is purely a security measure.

If it were a land-grab, it wouldn't be situated just 1-2 miles inside the 1967 ceasefire line, it would be on the Jordan river.

The UN Gen. Assembly ALWAYS votes against Israel, regardless of the issue. It has been hijacked.

by jabotinsky Wed Oct 22, 2003 22:05

Let the article speak for itself .....

Death Threats in Berkeley
"Close Your Organization or Die"
By ALISON WEIR

http://counterpunch.org/weir10182003.html

by erich honecker Wed Oct 22, 2003 22:14

Repressive states that engage in megalomaniac wall-building exercises usually have rather limited life spans .... remember the DDR ......

Jos 6:20 So the people shouted when the priests blew with the trumpets: and it came to pass, when the people heard the sound of the trumpet, and the people shouted with a great shout, that the wall fell down flat, so that the people went up into the city, every man straight before him, and they took the city.

Jos 6:21 And they utterly destroyed all that was in the city, both man and woman, young and old, and ox, and sheep, and ass, with the edge of the sword.

by Big John Thu Oct 23, 2003 01:57

"And they utterly destroyed all that was in the city, both man and woman, young and old, and ox, and sheep, and ass, with the edge of the sword."

That's the trouble with religious zealots, they don't stop with just taking the town - they go completely overboard and slaughter everyone, young and old alike - then, just to make sure they are secure, they insist on laying into the wildlife (can't allow dissident sheep, they might turn out to be dangerous)

Would we not all be better off without organised religion?

by David C. Thu Oct 23, 2003 02:32

The UN General Assembly is the international representation of all of the legitimate governments of all the peoples of this planet. It has not been hijacked (well, the UN votes of Micronesia and the Marshall Islands have been hijacked to disguise that Israel and the US are alone - they are the other 2 of the 4 no votes). Everyone is wrong except the likudniks, huh?

Avi - Your people (i.e. Likudnik racists, not Jews) are responsible for great evil, and they are inevitably planning much, much greater evil.

Please speak plainly about this. What is the end-game for the likudniks? Is it extermination of 4 million people? Is is ethnic cleansing? Please tell us how you see the situation in 20 years.

by Dan Thu Oct 23, 2003 09:13

http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?pagename=JPost/JPArticle/ShowFull&cid=1066799672944&p=1008596981749

Oct. 22, 2003
Palestinians support armed struggle even after statehood - poll
By JANINE ZACHARIA
WASHINGTON

Fifty-nine percent of Palestinians believe that Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad should continue their armed struggle against Israel even if Israel leaves all of the West Bank and Gaza, including East Jerusalem, and a Palestinian state is created, a new survey shows.

Similarly, 80 percent of Palestinians say that, under those circumstances, the Palestinians should not give up the "right of return."

The poll of Palestinians, Israeli Jews, and Israeli Arabs was released in Washington on Wednesday by Itamar Marcus, founder of Palestinian Media Watch and written by pollster Frank Luntz. It was conducted by two polling firms, the Public Opinion Research of Israel and The Palestinian Center for Public Opinion.

The poll also examined Israeli and Palestinian attitudes towards the US and towards terrorism.

Nintey-six percent of Israeli Jews say the people who piloted the planes on September 11 were terrorists, while 37 percent of Palestinians share that view.

Slightly more than one in four - 26 percent - of Palestinians believe Israelis planned the 9-11 attacks.

Forty-two percent of Palestinians and 61 percent of Israeli-Arabs stated that they support the people who are attacking Americans in Iraq. Zero percent of Israeli Jews said they did.

Marcus said he believes such opinions are "not coming from a vacuum" and that the survey demonstrates a "connection between Palestinian media and education and Palestinian beliefs and opinions."

During the Iraq war, Palestinian Authority-sponsored television glorified the killing of American soldiers, a theme that has continued until now in various media, Marcus said.

by Sean Hannity Thu Oct 23, 2003 09:17

Check out poll
http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?pagename=JPost/JPArticle/ShowFull&cid=1066799672944&p=1008596981749

Oct. 22, 2003
Palestinians support armed struggle even after statehood - poll
By JANINE ZACHARIA
WASHINGTON

Fifty-nine percent of Palestinians believe that Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad should continue their armed struggle against Israel even if Israel leaves all of the West Bank and Gaza, including East Jerusalem, and a Palestinian state is created, a new survey shows.

Similarly, 80 percent of Palestinians say that, under those circumstances, the Palestinians should not give up the "right of return."

The poll of Palestinians, Israeli Jews, and Israeli Arabs was released in Washington on Wednesday by Itamar Marcus, founder of Palestinian Media Watch and written by pollster Frank Luntz. It was conducted by two polling firms, the Public Opinion Research of Israel and The Palestinian Center for Public Opinion.

The poll also examined Israeli and Palestinian attitudes towards the US and towards terrorism.

Nintey-six percent of Israeli Jews say the people who piloted the planes on September 11 were terrorists, while 37 percent of Palestinians share that view.

Slightly more than one in four - 26 percent - of Palestinians believe Israelis planned the 9-11 attacks.

Forty-two percent of Palestinians and 61 percent of Israeli-Arabs stated that they support the people who are attacking Americans in Iraq. Zero percent of Israeli Jews said they did.

Marcus said he believes such opinions are "not coming from a vacuum" and that the survey demonstrates a "connection between Palestinian media and education and Palestinian beliefs and opinions."

During the Iraq war, Palestinian Authority-sponsored television glorified the killing of American soldiers, a theme that has continued until now in various media, Marcus said.

by kokomero Thu Oct 23, 2003 10:05

It's just that the Zionist ethnic cleansers are not stupid and have found that they can get away with colonisation on a massive scale by doing it incrementally and then keeping their heads down for the inevitable UN resolutions and criticism to blow over.

Be under no illusions however that this is not Zionist Lebensraum at work, just a subtler but nonetheless just as violent and repressive as in Tibet or hundreds of other countries and peoples throughout history.

Of course the Palestinians having been brutalised and ethnically cleansed do not intend to be passive victims again, no more than the Jews would take Nazi oppression lying down.

The difference this time is that the Zionists colonisers are the facists and are most clearly in the wrong as a series of UN resolutions testifies!

by kokomero Thu Oct 23, 2003 10:08

Delete!

by kokomero Thu Oct 23, 2003 10:13

Itamar Marcus runs the Center for Monitoring the Impact of Peace (CMIP). In recent years Marcus has been making a living translating and disseminating defamatory communications against Israel, extracted by his staff from Palestinian publications. Marcus, a settler, used to work for David Bar Illan, Benjamin Netanyahu's PR chief, and served on the Joint Israeli Palestinian Anti-incitement Committee. Marcus's center routinely feeds the media with excerpts from "Palestinian" textbooks that call for Israel's annihilation. He doesn't bother to point out that the texts quoted in fact come from Egypt and Jordan.

In an executive summary he published for Thursday's seminar, Marcus makes a report of the 14 new textbooks published by the PA's "Center for Developing the Palestinian Curricula," replacing the old books. Marcus concedes there were "a few changes," like the fact that "The open calls for Israel's destruction found in the previous books are no longer present" and that "references defining Jews and Israelis as 'treacherous' or 'the evil enemy,' common in the previous books, are likewise not present." But this, to Marcus, is not enough. He complains that the new books "continue to teach non-recognition of Israel," and that the maps portray greater Palestine, with no boundaries separating the territories and Israel (just like the official textbooks and maps used by most Israeli institutions).

"A chapter in 'National Education for Grade Six' is dedicated to 'Tolerance.' Yet the PA schoolbook does not mention Jews or Israelis in the entire chapter. A prominent picture shows a Christian shaking hands with a Muslim," Marcus complains.

Firer's co- researcher, Prof. Sami Adwan, of Bethlehem University, can't make up his mind whether to laugh or cry at Marcus's grievances. "How does he expect my child to interpret a Jew's handshake, the same hand that causes my child daily suffering. Textbooks become a dead letter if the message is too far removed from reality. The teacher has to be able to answer a child's question, 'Why should I love Israelis?' Can your textbooks decree that you must love Germans? I know it isn't the same, but suffering is suffering. What am I supposed to tell my kids after settlers attack us on the way to visit their 85-year-old grandfather? Kids can't be duped."

The educator from Beit Jala says that what children see on the street, on TV and on the Net has a far greater impact than any textbook. "How can a Palestinian write in a textbook that Israelis or Jews should be loved, while what he is experiencing is death, land expropriation, demolition of homes and daily degradation? Give us a chance to teach loving. [That will happen] when they stop seeing Israelis as soldiers or bulldozer operators. Let us breathe. Give us a chance to love you."

Adwan will not be attending the seminar on Mount Scopus. His village is under closure. Only Israelis will be speaking at the seminar on the image of the other, and all the presentations will be in Hebrew

by Simon the pieman Thu Oct 23, 2003 10:23

I recently ran a poll too! But my results show that almost 100% of jews are solidly behind the illegal stealing of land belonging to Palestinians. Polls can show anything you want them to.

by kokomero Thu Oct 23, 2003 10:26

Itamar Marcus runs the Center for Monitoring the Impact of Peace (CMIP), will be speaking about how Palestinians perceive Jews.

In recent years Marcus has been making a living translating and disseminating defamatory communications against Israel, extracted by his staff from Palestinian publications.

Marcus, a settler, used to work for David Bar Illan, Benjamin Netanyahu's PR chief, and served on the Joint Israeli Palestinian Anti-incitement Committee.

Marcus's center routinely feeds the media with excerpts from "Palestinian" textbooks that call for Israel's annihilation.

He doesn't bother to point out that the texts quoted in fact come from Egypt and Jordan.

by kokomero Thu Oct 23, 2003 10:30

Ali Abunimah, The Electronic Intifada, 8 July 2002

A new Israeli army 'study' charges that Palestinian school textbooks contain 'systematic education to delegitimise the existence of the state of Israel, fanning the flames of hatred and violent revenge to destroy the country' ('Palestinian schoolbooks fan the flames of hatred,' Haaretz, June 28, 2002).

Such claims, which have been made by Israel and its extremist supporters in the United States for years, are simply an attempt by Israel to find some alternative explanation to the understandable rage felt by Palestinians who have suffered through decades of continuing dispossession, occupation, disenfranchisement, violence, torture and humiliation at the hands of Israel.

An independent study of Palestinian textbooks by Professor Nathan Brown of George Washington University in Washington, DC, notes that "virtually every discussion in English on Palestinian education repeats the charge that Palestinian textbooks incite students against Jews and Israel". Brown states that: "It may therefore come as a surprise to readers that the books authored under the PNA are largely innocent of these charges. What is more remarkable than any statements they make on the subject is their silence -- the PNA-authored books often stubbornly avoid treating anything controversial regarding Palestinian national identity, forcing them into awkward omissions and gaps."

Brown, while not uncritical of the Palestinian textbooks, concluded that "the Palestinian curriculum is not a war curriculum; while highly nationalistic, it does not incite hatred, violence and anti-Semitism. It cannot be described as a peace curriculum either, but the charges against it are often wildly exaggerated or inaccurate." (Democracy, History and the Contest over the Palestinian Curriculum, an independent report prepared for the Adam Institute, 2002) Nationalism, whatever its drawbacks, underpins almost every country's school curriculum, not least in the United States and Israel.

How can we explain the glaring discrepancy between Brown's findings and those of the Israeli army propaganda unit?

According to Haaretz, the Israeli study claims that the Palestinian textbooks "express a lack of recognition of Israel, not even according to the 1967 borders, alongside adamant claims to Palestinian rule of all the land between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea." Another complaint is that the books mention that Israel has "exploited" and "degraded" Palestinians "by changing the names of Arab villages and cities, and by defacing and stealing Arab manuscripts". The Israeli reviewers are outraged that in one book there is a story of a Palestinian girl visiting her family's original home in the city of Jaffa which is now in Israel. Their biggest complaint is perhaps that there are maps which show "Palestine" as it once was, covering land that is now in Israel. Hence, even an historically accurate map showing where major Palestinian population centres actually were prior to their destruction in 1948, constitutes for Israel "an adamant claim to rule" the whole country. Referring to Israel's systematic effort to erase Palestinian history in Israel prior to 1948 (something very well documented by Israeli geographer Meron Benvenisti in his book `Sacred Landscape', 2000) is taken as a "desire for revenge". Anything short of total amnesia about Palestinian history and complete devotion to Zionism's official mythology constitutes "hatred". Only people who are in neurotic denial could indulge in such absurdities.

Yet, let us accept, only for the sake of argument, that the Israeli claims are true and that they constitute some form of "incitement". Why should Israel complain that Palestinians do not respect the 1967 borders on their maps, when it has been Israeli policy since 1967 to erase those borders on the ground, using extreme violence to confiscate Palestinian land and implant Jewish-only colonies everywhere Palestinians live? You need only go to the "Israel Map", on Israeli Ministry of Tourism's official website, to see the Golan Heights and the West Bank depicted as part of Israel (the latter being labelled "Judean Desert" and "Shomron" [Samaria], while the Palestinian city of Nablus is given only the Hebrew name "Shechem").

Why should Palestinians express unconditional recognition of the legitimacy of the state of Israel and its historic claims when Israel has not recognised a Palestinian state, and its officials and many of its academics deny the undeniable -- that nearly three quarters of a million Palestinians were expelled or fled from their homes so that Israel could rise on the ashes of Palestinian society? Of course, the fact that the Palestinian leadership has explicitly recognised Israel -- repeatedly and formally -- and that Palestinian policy is to seek a state within the 1967 borders does nothing to blunt the constant Israeli charges. This is because the purpose of the accusations is not to produce more friendly school curricula but to justify Israel's own refusal to recognise the 1967 borders, to provide cover for the continued colonisation of the occupied territories and to blame the Palestinians for all the violence resulting from this colonisation.

Even without Brown's commendable study it should be obvious that the constant Israeli refrain that textbooks are responsible for the violence is ridiculous on its face. Are we to believe that if Palestinian textbooks were written by the Israeli Ministry of Education, Palestinian children would be happy to live under the brutal foreign military dictatorship that is the Israeli occupation, to see their parents and friends killed and humiliated, their houses demolished and their land seized for Jewish-only settlement? If Palestinian youths were to read from Israeli textbooks, would they greet invading Israeli troops with showers of rose petals instead of stones? If Palestinian students could actually get past the roadblocks, curfews and gunfire to reach their schools in order to read Israeli-approved books, would they feel less hostility towards Israel?

And, perhaps Israel would be in a better position to lecture Palestinians about what they should do in their classrooms if Israel had not constantly shelled school buildings and used Palestinian schools as detention camps for thousands of men and boys rounded up during "Operation Defensive Shield", when they were forced to strip, and lie for hours and days on cold, concrete floors, sometimes with numbers written on their arms.

Indeed, for decades, Palestinian citizens of Israel ("Arab Israelis") have studied from textbooks written by the Israeli Ministry of Education, they stood to attention in front of the Israeli flag and sang the Israeli national anthem. And yet, despite their "good behaviour", their simmering and growing discontent is caused not by an insufficiently Zionist school curriculum but by the constant and increasing discrimination against them in every possible sphere of life by Israeli government and society. This discrimination reached the breaking point in October 2000 when thirteen Palestinian-Israeli youths protesting in solidarity with Palestinians in the occupied territories were shot dead by Israeli police. Such casual brutality is entirely unheard of against Jewish citizens.

Israel is further marginalising its own Palestinian citizens by cutting payment of child benefits to Arab, but not Jewish, citizens. Arab Knesset members are being persecuted: Azmi Bishara is on trial for making a speech, and Ahmed Tibi's parliamentary freedom of movement was recently revoked by a vote of his own Knesset colleagues. This discrimination cannot but produce anger and resentment, and making the textbooks more Zionist is not going to assuage it.

So if this is the situation inside Israel, what can one expect in the occupied territories, where the repression is infinitely greater, and where hundreds of unarmed Palestinian children have been shot dead by the Israeli army since October 2000? The Israeli occupation clearly does not need any help from textbooks to incite against itself. With all this, one can easily find ugly expressions by Palestinians both about Israelis and Jews, but these are exactly mirrored by frequent statements from Israeli cabinet ministers, rabbis and others, calling for the ethnic cleansing or annihilation of all the Palestinians, and other all too frequent expressions of racial hatred. These expressions on both sides are symptoms and not causes of the conflict. When the gross and real injustices that fuel the conflict are removed, then they will begin to disappear and messages of hatred will not resonate as they do today.

Only those who want the conflict to continue will maintain the lie about Palestinian textbooks and find in them non-existent excuses to continue the oppression and dehumanisation of the Palestinian people while what little is left of their country is stolen from under their feet.

Related links:

# Special report: Israeli Textbooks and Children’s Literature Promote Racism and Hatred Toward Palestinians and Arabs, by Maureen Meehan, Washington, Report on Middle East Affairs, September 1999, pages 19-20.
# A campaign against 'incitement', by James J. Zogby, Arab American Institute, 9 July 2001.
# The Politics of Palestinian Textbooks, by Fouad Moughrabi, Journal of Palestine Studies, Col. XXXI, No. 1, Autumn 2001, Issue 121.

by MG Thu Oct 23, 2003 10:43

http://www.state.gov/secretary/rm/2003/22200.htm

http://www.renewamerica.us/archives/media/interviews/03_08_19hannity.htm

http://www.cbn.com/CBNNews/News/030606a.asp

http://www.hannity.com/

http://www.rockmusicmp3s.com/hannityrag.htm

by avi H. Thu Oct 23, 2003 14:54

You're such a depraved idiot, it's not worth wasting any more powder and shot on you. However, discerning readers, who are the real audience, will draw their own conclusions about the garbage you post.

It is sad that a lot of people with your dysfunctional, racist attitudes can only be taught the error of their ways at the hot end of an M16.

by kokomero Thu Oct 23, 2003 16:02

This is pretty typical of hysterical Israeli overreaction to criticism.

It is hardly surprising that you threaten with Galils or M16s those with whom you have a verbal disagreement, given you kill little Palestinian boys for sport.

This is not a sign of civilisation contrary to Zionist opinion.

I suggest you either moderate your language and learn to debate rationally (if you can) or absent yourself permanently, with your Galil, from this forum.

by Declan Thu Oct 23, 2003 16:44

Palestinian schools often use Egyptian and Jordanian textbooks, most of which are extremely anti-Semitic.

by Dan Thu Oct 23, 2003 20:50

Arafat announces retirement.

Arafat to Retire to Miami Beach; Claims Land Held by Jewish Retirees

(Miami)--In a move that has significantly altered the political landscape of the Middle East, PLO Chairman Yassir Arafat on Saturday announced his retirement and quickly moved to Miami, Florida. Almost immediately, Arafat claimed 39% of the land owned by Hillel House on the campus of The University of Miami, as well as land occupied by the Moses Mendelssohn Community Retirement Center situated in the trendy South Beach section of the city.

Arafat, however, got more than he bargained for when he attempted to occupy the Retirement Center land. His incursion was met with fierce resistance by members of the South Beach Jewish Women International Chapter who were meeting in the Center at the time. Reports are still sketchy, but it appears that Arafat and his forces sustained serious casualties and had to abandon their attack when elderly JWI members hurled Mah Jong tiles at the Palestinian terrorists. Uri Averny immediately went to Florida to act as a human shield for Arafat.

The European Parliament quickly denounced the JWI group's inflammatory use of Mah Jong tiles, and decided to consider a proposal to send peacekeeping troops to Miami Beach to establish "safe zones" for Palestinians. Arafat is going to appear before the General Assembly of the United Nations to urge the passing of Resolution 843, making ALL Jewish settlements in Florida illegal.

Palestinian activist Hanan Ashwari has been invited by twenty American universities to discuss the historic right of Palestinians to all the land now held "illegally by the Jews in Florida." She says that the Palestinians have been forced out by the Jews since the 1940s, and the land rightfully belongs to them.

Ashwari blames the Jews for converting the Florida swamps into settlements, housing developments and malls that have destroyed the historic evidence for Muslim /Palestinian existence in Florida since 1000 BCE, 1600 years before Muhammad

by Dan Thu Oct 23, 2003 20:53

Whose the instigators of terror.
The "cycle" in practice works like this: Palestinian terrorists conduct random, murderous attacks targeting Israeli civilians. Palestinian terrorists attack Israeli woman and children in buses, shopping malls, cafe's, restaurants, disco's, sbarro's pizzeria's, Bar Mitzvah's, shoe stores and schools. The Israeli military pursues strikes against military or terrorist targets in response, attempting to disable terrorist networks that Arafat won't stop himself, since he is no different from them.

In the one case, Palestinian terrorists set out to murder as many Israeli civilians as possible. Israel responds to these terrorists acts, by targeting Palestinian terrorists who sponsor these murderous acts against Israeli civilians. The Palestinians then hide these terrorists in civilian areas, wanting Israel to fire back, so civilians are killed, so this looks good on TV.

The attempt to draw a moral equivalence between the Palestinians' deliberate attempts to kill innocents and inspire terror and Israel's military responses to these attacks is not far different from describing the U.S. airstrikes on Afghanistan as "perpetuating the cycle of violence between al Qaeda and the United States." There is no equivalence between terrorist attacks designed to maximize the deaths of innocents and military strikes designed to limit the ability of terrorists to carry out future strikes.

Terrorism is the DELIBERATE targeting of innocent civilians and noncombatants for political or religious purposes.

Pretty simple!

The Palestinians are terrorists because they deliberately target innocent Israeli men, women and children going about their daily lifes

The Israelis do not deliberately target Palestinian civilians/non combatants. Israelis Defence Forces only target Palestinian terrorists who are engaged in the execution and commissioning of terrorist acts. The IDF goes to amazing lengths to reduce Palestinian "collateral damage" but this is often hampered by the terrorists usage of civilian human shields.

The poverty of such comparisons was made painfully clear last week by a statement from Ahmed Abdel Rahman, secretary of the Palestinian cabinet, who blamed a recent Israeli raid on a Palestinian bomb factory in Nablus for the current spate of attacks. If one side is making the bombs ( destined to be strapped to suicidal terrorists to massacre Israeli civilians) and the other side conducting raids to prevent their manufacture, there is little room to question who is in the right. Is it any wonder, why Palestinians find moral equivalence, between Palestinian terrorists who blow up Sbarros pizzeria's and discos filled with teenagers and Israeli commandos, who preemptively kill terrorist ringleaders, before they send their suicide bombers into Israel on a mission to kill Jewish civilians.

by Dan Thu Oct 23, 2003 20:55

http://opinionjournal.com/extra/?id=110001901

Outbidding Saddam
I'll buy Palestinian children for $30,000 each.

BY SCOTT MILLER
Thursday, June 27, 2002 12:01 a.m. EDT
(I read your editorial about how the home video of Palestinian mother Naima al-Obeid and her 19-year-old son, Mahmoud, was made public, celebrating his decision to carry out a homicide mission, in which he was successful in being killed, while killing two Israelis. I submit the following letter, hoping to reach Naima al-Obeid.)

To Naima al-Obeid:

I want to buy your children. As I understand it, you have seven children still alive (your son Mahmoud killed himself, I'm sorry to hear). I'll offer more than Saddam Hussein has offered; he'll pay $25,000 each, if they are willing to turn themselves into human bombs, but I'll pay $30,000 each.

I want to buy them away from the god of death you worship. Perhaps I can help them convert to traditional Islam, a religion that abhors murder and suicide. Maybe they'll wish to become Christian or Jewish or Buddhist or atheist. That will be their choice, if I can raise them as Americans.

If you sell your children to Hussein, instead of me, they are guaranteed to die young, to die blown to bits, to die while perhaps killing innocent women and children. I can't guarantee them immortality (neither can that god of death you worship, I can assure you), but I can guarantee to try to keep them safe and allow them to live long, healthy and productive lives. That's our dream in America.

I will pay top dollar for your children. I will top the offer of Hussein, of the Saudis, of Hamas, or the Palestinian Authority put together.

For a long time my wife and I have wondered what we might do to help in the war on terror. In buying your children, I see an opportunity for us to save countless innocent lives, among them your seven children.

Contact me. I'll pay.

Mr. Miller lives in Atlanta

by Dan Thu Oct 23, 2003 20:57

www.carylmatrisciana.com/main/movieguide_review.php

THE NEW BARBARIANS: Training Children to Kill.
A MovieGuide® Review

SUMMARYTHE NEW BARBARIANS tells the horrible story of the radical Jihad movement within Islam, which incites children to hatred, violence and killing. Movieguide® recommends that you get a copy of THE NEW BARBARIANS and that you share it with the adults in your church REVIEW.

THE NEW BARBARIANS is one of those video documentaries that you’d like to show to every person you know. It is that timely and profound. It tells the horrible story of the radical Jihad movement within Islam, which incites young children to hatred, violence and to kill. It tells this story through Palestine Authority (Arab) television programming, Internet news footage produced by the BBC and documentary footage shot in the US, of the Jihad training camps, including camps in the U.S. In these camps, children as young as five-years-old are taught not just to use guns, but also to hate Jews, Americans and "infidels" (all non-believers in Islam), but especially Jews.

These children say some horrible things on camera. It is difficult to comprehend the violence children are taught: the suicide bombers, the young students carrying human entrails, and the children cheering the destruction of the twin towers on September 11, 2001.

Yasser Arafat and other Arab leaders call on the children to kill and be martyrs. Even Muslim mothers say that they want their little children to become martyrs; that is, to commit suicide and die as genocide and homicide human bombs for the Jewish-Muslim conflict. It breaks your heart. Over and over again Jesus’ words come to mind when he said, "And whosoever shall offend one of these little ones that believe in me, it is better for him that a millstone were hanged about his neck, and he were cast into the sea."

THE NEW BARBARIANS makes its case relentlessly, carefully, and intelligently. What’s worse is that these training camps are here in the U.S.Movieguide® recommends that you get a copy of THE NEW BARBARIANS and that you share it with the adults in your church. God’s word tells us to expose the fruitless works of darkness. Before we can deal with this heinous threat, we need to understand it and to understand the Christian response, which is presented so eloquently in this video.

by Dan Thu Oct 23, 2003 21:00

Facts about Arab and Jewish Refugees from 48.

Were these two refugee crises a simple 'exchange' of population and therefore 'equal'?

Without Equal.
The exchange of Arab and Jewish populations in and around Israel's War of Independence cannot be equated, as the circumstances perpetuating the refugee movements prove vastly different. The record shows the bulk of Palestinian refugees left their homes on their own accord and at the strong insistence of Arab leadership at the time. None were forcibly deprived of their wealth, and most expected to return to their homes after invading Arab armies crushed the nascent Jewish state.

In contrast, the Jewish residents of Arab countries were, almost without exception, forcefully expelled from their homelands and robbed of their wealth and livelihoods by government-planned, anti-Semitic campaigns meant to eliminate from their midst the "pariah" Jewish presence. Using tactics of terror, Arab/Islamic leaders effected a plan to expel their Jewish citizenry, indifferent that its execution would mean the death of thousands, gleeful of the untold wealth it would transfer into their coffers.

The Arab leaders never wanted peace. They used the refugee issue to encourage continuing belligerency. It became an excuse for not making peace - for not accepting the reality that the ancient land of Israel-Palestine could be populated by two peoples and divided into two nations. It should be recalled that between 1948 and 1967, Israel posed no barrier to the establishment of a Palestinian state on the West Bank and Gaza. There was no Palestinian state because the Arab leaders did not want a Palestinian state alongside a Jewish state. Their collective goal was the total destruction of the Jewish state. The Palestinian refugees would better serve that goal if they were kept in camps as a homeless people than if they were allowed to move out of the camps and establish their own state.

Among many who have made this observation is Col. Richard Henry Meinertzhagen, a British Middle East expert. He asked an Arab official at the home of a British diplomat, "Why do not you Arabs, with all your resources from oil, do something for those wretched refugees from Palestine?" The Lebanese replied, "Good God, do you really think we are going to destroy the finest propaganda we possess? It's a gold mine!" When Meinertzhagen observed that this view was unkind and immoral, the Lebanese replied, "They are just human rubbish, but a political gold mine!" In slightly different language referring to the same attitude about the usefulness of Palestinian refugee camps, Meinertzhagen notes in his book, "I received identical views from other Arabs."

What happened during the war of 1948 that caused the Palestinian refugee problem? Did the Jews expel the Arabs?

The British had wrestled Palestine away from the Ottoman Turks in 1917, and they occupied Palestine until 1947, and shortly thereafter, the United Nations voted to divide western Palestine into separate Jewish and Arab areas. The Jews accepted this plan, and the Arabs rejected it. Not only did they reject the UN partition plan, but 7 Arab nations decided to attack the fledgeling Jewish microstate with public proclamations of Jewish extermination. It was surrounding these events that the Palestinian Arab refugee problem was born:

"According to official records of the League of Nations and Arab census figure 539,000 Arabs left Israel at the urging of 7 converging Arab armies so that they would not be in the way of their attack. They promised the fleeing Arabs they would return and move into the Jews' houses after the anticipated successful annihilation of the Jews.
"We know that 800,000 Jews were ejected from the Arab countries where they had lived for hundreds of years. This included successful people whose property and assets, including community assets were immediately confiscated. 800,000 penniless Jews from Arab countries fled to Israel.

"This was a virtual exchange of population. The Jewish refugees were immediately accepted by the new State of Israel. They were provided with shelter (albeit temporary tents) food and clothing.

"The Arab refugees who had migrated to various Arab nations were not similarly well received. They were regarded not as Arab brothers but as unwelcome migrants who were not to be trusted. Squalid refugee camps were set up as showpieces to induce the West's sympathy and kept that way. The UN through UNRWA (UN Relief Agency) provided assistance to the camps when the host country could not or would not. These camps became a training ground for terrorist youth to be targeted at Israel. The host country, like Syria, would provide training, weapons and explosives, but refused to absorb the Arab refugees as equal citizens. Keeping them in misery made them valuable and irreplaceable as angry front line terrorists attacking Israel as proxies for the Arab armies who lost to the Jews on the field of battle in declared wars. The Twin Pillars supporting Arab Muslim society are "Pride and Shame". Losing to the Jews on the battlefield time and again in 6 wars shattered the self perception of the Macho Man.

THE HISTORICAL EVIDENCE:

"Even amidst the violent attacks launched against us for months past, we call upon the sons of the Arab people dwelling in Israel to keep the peace and to play their part in building the State on the basis of full and equal citizenship and due representation in all its institutions, provisional and permanent.
"We extend the hand of peace and good-neighborliness to all the States around us and to their people, and we call upon them to cooperate in mutual helpfulness with the independent Jewish nation in its Land. The State of Israel is prepared to make its contribution in a concerted effort for the advancement of the entire Middle East."

- David Ben-Gurion, in Israel's Proclamation of Independence, read on May 14, 1948, moments before the 6 surrounding Arab armies, trained and armed by the British, invaded the day-old Jewish microstate, with the stated goal of extermination.

On March 1 1944, the Palestinian leader, Hajj Amin Al Husseini who was in Cahoots with Hitler. Husseini said in a broadcast from Berlin: "Arabs Rise as one and fight for your sacred rights. Kill the Jews wherever you find them. This pleases God, history, and religion. This saves your honor."

After the 5 Arab Armies attacked Israel in 48, the Arab League Secretary General, Azzam Pasha said, "This will be a war of extermination and a momentous massacre which will be spoken of like the Mongolian massacres and the massacres of the Crusades". Hajj Amin Al Husseini stated, "I declare a holy war, my Moslem brothers! Murder the Jews! Murder them all!" The armies of lebanon, Syria, Jordan, Egypt and Iraq invaded the tiny new country with the declared intent of destroying it.

"The 15th May, 1948, arrived ... On that day the mufti of Jerusalem appealed to the Arabs of Palestine to leave the country, because the Arab armies were about to enter and fight in their stead."
– The Cairo daily Akhbar el Yom, Oct. 12, 1963.

"For the flight and fall of the other villages it is our leaders who are responsible because of their dissemination of rumors exaggerating Jewish crimes and describing them as atrocities in order to inflame the Arabs ... By spreading rumors of Jewish atrocities, killings of women and children etc., they instilled fear and terror in the hearts of the Arabs in Palestine, until they fled leaving their homes and properties to the enemy."
– The Jordanian daily newspaper Al Urdun, April 9, 1953.

"The Arab armies entered Palestine to protect the Palestinians from the Zionist tyranny but, instead, THEY ABANDONED THEM, FORCED THEM TO EMIGRATE AND TO LEAVE THEIR HOMELAND, imposed upon them a political and ideological blockade and threw them into prisons similar to the ghettos in which the Jews used to live in Eastern Europe, as if we were condemmed to change places with them; they moved out of their ghettos and we occupied similar ones.

The Arab States succeeded in scattering the Palestinian people and in destroying their unity. They did not recognize them as a unified people until the States of the world did so, and this is regrettable".
- by Abu Mazen, from the article titled: "What We Have Learned and What We Should Do", published in Falastin el Thawra, the official journal of the PLO, of Beirut, in March 1976.

"The first group of our fifth column consists of those who abandon their houses and businesses and go to live elsewhere. . . . At the first sign of trouble they take to their heels to escape sharing the burden of struggle."
- Ash Shalab (Jaffa newspaper), January 30, 1948

"The Arab streets are curiously deserted and, ardently following the poor example of the more moneyed class there has been an exodus from Jerusalem too, though not to the same extent as in Jaffa and Haifa."
- London Times, May 5, 1948

"The refugees were confident that their absence would not last long, and that they would return within a week or two. Their leaders had promised them that the Arab armies would crush the 'Zionist gangs' very quickly and that there was no need for panic or fear of a long exile."
- Monsignor George Hakim, Greek Catholic Bishop of Galilee, in the Beirut newspaper Sada al Janub, August 16, 1948

"Of the 62,000 Arabs who formerly lived in Haifa not more than 5,000 or 6,000 remained. Various factors influenced their decision to seek safety in flight. There is but little doubt that the most potent of the factors were the announcements made over the air by the -Higher Arab Executive, urging the Arabs to quit.. . . It was clearly intimated that those Arabs who remained in Haifa and accepted Jewish protection would be regarded as renegades."
- The London weekly Economist, October 2, 1948

"It must not be forgotten that the Arab Higher Committee encouraged the refugees' flight from their homes in Jaffa, Haifa, and Jerusalem."
- Near East Arabic Broadcasting Station, Cyprus, April 3, 1949

"This wholesale exodus was due partly to the belief of the Arabs, encouraged by the boasting of an unrealistic Arab press and the irresponsible utterances of some of the Arab leaders that it could be only a matter of some weeks before the Jews were defeated by the armies of the Arab States and the Palestinian Arabs enabled to re-enter and retake possession of their country."
- Edward Atiyah (then Secretary of the Arab League Office in London) in The Arabs (London, 1955), p. 183

"The mass evacuation, prompted partly by fear, partly by order of Arab leaders, left the Arab quarter of Haifa a ghost city...By withdrawing Arab workers their leaders hoped to paralyze Haifa.".
- Time, May 3, 1948, p. 25

The Arab exodus, initially at least, was encouraged by many Arab leaders, such as Haj Amin el Husseini, the exiled pro-Nazi Mufti of Jerusalem, and by the Arab Higher Committee for Palestine. They viewed the first wave of Arab setbacks as merely transitory. Let the Palestine Arabs flee into neighboring countries. It would serve to arouse the other Arab peoples to greater effort, and when the Arab invasion struck, the Palestinians could return to their homes and be compensated with the property of Jews driven into the sea.
- Kenneth Bilby, in New Star in the Near East (New York, 1950), pp. 30-31

I do not want to impugn anybody but only to help the refugees. The fact that there are these refugees is the direct consequence of the action of the Arab States in opposing Partition and the Jewish State. The Arab States agreed upon this policy unanimously and they must share in the solution of the problem, [Daily Telegraph, September 6, 19481
- Emil Ghoury, Secretary of the Arab Higher Committee, the official leadership of the Palestinian Arabs, in the Beirut newspaper, Daily Telegraph, September 6, 1948

The Arab States encouraged the Palestine Arabs to leave their homes temporarily in order to be out of the way of the Arab invasion armies.
- Falastin (Jordanian newspaper), February 19, 1949

We will smash the country with our guns and obliterate every place the Jews seek shelter in. The Arabs should conduct their wives and children to safe areas until the fighting has died down.
- Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri Said, quoted in Sir Am Nakbah ("The Secret Behind the Disaster") by Nimr el Hawari, Nazareth, 1952

The Secretary General of the Arab League, Azzam Pasha, assured the Arab peoples that the occupation of Palestine and of Tel Aviv would be as simple as a military promenade. He pointed out that they were already on the frontiers and that all the millions the Jews had spent on land and economic development would be easy booty, for it would be a simple matter to throw Jews into the Mediterranean. . . Brotherly advice was given to the Arabs of Palestine to leave their land, homes, and property and to stay temporarily in neighboring fraternal states, lest the guns of the invading Arab armies mow them down.
- Habib Issa, Secretary General of the Arab League (Azzam Pasha's successor), in the newspaper Al Hoda, June 8, 1951

Some of the Arab leaders and their ministers in Arab capitals declared that they welcomed the immigration of Palestinian Arabs into the Arab countries until they saved Palestine. Many of the Palestinian Arabs were misled by their declarations.... It was natural for those Palestinian Arabs who felt impelled to leave their country to take refuge in Arab lands . . . and to stay in such adjacent places in order to maintain contact with their country so that to return to it would be easy when, according to the promises of many of those responsible in the Arab countries (promises which were given wastefully), the time was ripe. Many were of the opinion that such an opportunity would come in the hours between sunset and sunrise.
- Arab Higher Committee, in a memorandum to the Arab League, Cairo, 1952, quoted in The Refugee in the World, by Joseph B. Schechtman, 1963

"The Arab governments told us: Get out so that we can get in. So we got out, but they did not get in."
- from the Jordan daily Ad Difaa, September 6, 1954

"The Arab civilians panicked and fled ignominiously. Villages were frequently abandoned before they were threatened by the progress of war."
- General Glubb Pasha, in the London Daily Mail on August 12, 1948

"The Arab exodus from other villages was not caused by the actual battle, but by the exaggerated description spread by Arab leaders to incite them to fight the Jews"
- Yunes Ahmed Assad, refugee from the town of Deir Yassin, in Al Urdun, April 9, 1953

"[The Arabs of Haifa] fled in spite of the fact that the Jewish authorities guaranteed their safety and rights as citizens of Israel."
- Monsignor George Hakim, Greek Catholic Bishop of Galilee, according to Rev. Karl Baehr, Executive Secretary of the American Christian Palestine Committee, New York Herald Tribune, June 30, 1949

"Every effort is being made by the Jews to persuade the Arab populace to stay and carry on with their normal lives, to get their shops and businesses open and to be assured that their lives and interests will be safe. [However] ...A large road convoy, escorted by [British] military . . . left Haifa for Beirut yesterday. . . . Evacuation by sea goes on steadily. ...[Two days later, the Jews were] still making every effort to persuade the Arab populace to remain and to settle back into their normal lives in the towns... [as for the Arabs,] another convoy left Tireh for Transjordan, and the evacuation by sea continues. The quays and harbor are still crowded with refugees and their household effects, all omitting no opportunity to get a place an one of the boats leaving Haifa.""
- Haifa District HQ of the British Police, April 26, 1948, quoted in Battleground by Samuel Katz

"The Arabs did not want to submit to a truce they rather preferred to abandon their homes, their belongings and everything they possessed in the world and leave the town. This is in fact what they did."
- Jamal Husseini, Acting Chairman of the Palestine Arab Higher Committee, told to the United Nations Security Council, quoted in the UNSC Official Records (N. 62), April 23, 1948, p. 14

"the military and civil authorities and the Jewish representative expressed their profound regret at this grave decision [to evacuate]. The [Jewish] Mayor of Haifa made a passionate appeal to the delegation to reconsider its decision"
- The Arab National Committee of Haifa, told to the Arab League, quoted in The Refugee in the World, by Joseph B. Schechtman, 1963

"...our city flourished and developed for the good of both Jewish and Arab residents ... Do not destroy your homes with your own hands; do not bring tragedy upon yourselves by unnecessary evacuation and self-imposed burdens. By moving out you will be overtaken by poverty and humiliation. But in this city, yours and ours, Haifa, the gates are open for work, for life, and for peace, for you and your families."
The Haifa Workers' Council bulletin, 28 April 1948

"...the Jewish hagana asked (using loudspeakers) Arabs to remain at their homes but the most of the Arab population followed their leaders who asked them to leave the country."
The TIMES of London, reporting events of 22.4.48

" The existence of these refugees is a direct result of the Arab States' opposition to the partition plan and the reconstitution of the State of Israel. The Arab states adopted this policy unanimously, and the responsibility of its results, therefore is theirs.
...The flight of Arabs from the territory allotted by the UN for the Jewish state began immediately after the General Assembly decision at the end of November 1947. This wave of emigration, which lasted several weeks, comprised some thirty thousand people, chiefly well-to-do-families."

- Emil Ghory, secretary of the Arab High Council, Lebanese daily Al-Telegraph, 6 Sept 1948

Khaled al-`Azm, who served as Prime Minister of Syria in 1948 and 1949, wrote in his memoirs (published in Beirut, 1973), that among the reasons for the Arab failure in 1948 was"the call by the Arab Governments to the inhabitants of Palestine to evacuate it and to leave for the bordering Arab countries. Since 1948 we have been demanding the return of the refugees to their homes. But we ourselves are the ones who encouraged them to leave...We were the ones who pleaded with them to leave (Part 1, pp. 386-387

"Since 1948 it is we who demanded the return of refugees... while it is we who made them to leave... We brought disaster upon... Arab refugees, by inviting them and bringing pressure to bear upon them to leave... We have rendered them dispossessed... We have accustomed them to begging... We have participated in lowering their moral and social level... Then we exploited them in executing crimes of murder, arson, and throwing bombs upon... men, women and children - all this in service of political purposes..."
- Khaled al Azm, Syria's Prime Minister after the 1948 war [note: same person as above]

According to a research report by the Arab-sponsored Institute for Palestine Studies in Beirut, the majority of the Arab refugees in 1948 were not expelled and "68%" left without seeing an Israeli soldier.

"As early as the first months of 1948 the Arab League issued orders exhorting the people to seek a temporary refuge in neighboring countries, later to return to their abodes in the wake of the victorious Arab armies and obtain their share of abandoned Jewish property."

- bulletin of The Research Group for European Migration Problems, 1957

One morning in April 1948, Dr. Jamal woke us to say that the Arab Higher Committee (AHC), led by the Husseinis, had warned Arab residents of Talbieh to leave immediately. The understanding was that the residents would be able to return as conquerors as soon as the Arab forces had thrown the Jews out. Dr. Jamal made the point repeatedly that he was leaving because of the AHC's threats, not because of the Jews, and that he and his frail wife had no alternative but to go.
Commentary Magazine -- January 2000, http://www.commentarymagazine.com/0001/letters.html

How many Palestinian Arabs left their homes, how many are still listed as refugees now?

Estimates of the number of Arabs who fled the newly-created State of Israel in 1948 (i.e. from the area inside Israel's pre-1967 borders) vary from 430,000 to 957,000, depending on who you ask. The most reliable figure appears to be 539,000.
In the 1967 Six Day War, between 125,000 (Israeli estimate) and 250,000 (UNRWA estimate) Arabs fled from Judea, Samaria and Gaza, which came under Israeli administration. Of these, say some researchers, close on two-thirds were first-time refugees, the others were refugees from 1948 who fled once again.

According to the United Nations Relief Works Agency (UNRWA), in 1996 the number of refugees stood at 3.3 million, located as follows:

Jordan: In 10 camps - 242,922. Not in camps - 1.1 million

West Bank: In 20 camps - 147,302. Not in camps - 385,136

Gaza: In five camps - 378,279. Not in camps - 338,651

Lebanon: In 12 camps - 182,731. Not in camps - 169,937

Syria: In 10 camps - 89,472. Not in camps - 257, 919

TOTAL: In 57 camps - 1.04 million. Not in camps - 2.26 million.

- Middle East Digest - October 1998

The refugee problem was created in 1947-48, when the Palestinians and their Arab allies rejected United Nations Resolution 181 and tried to prevent by force implementation of the partition plan that called for the creation of a Jewish state alongside an Arab state in Palestine. During the fighting, 600,000 to 700,000 Arabs fled or were driven out of areas that eventually became the state of Israel. (There were also about 17,000 Jewish refugees who fled or were driven out of areas that came under Arab, i.e., Jordanian, control.) Israel's record in this chain of developments was far from spotless. But the major reason for the displacement of people was the war itself, which the Arabs imposed on Israel in an attempt to abort its birth.

The Palestinian refugees were but one example among many of the large-scale involuntary population displacements that took place during and after the First World War. Most of the other refugee problems, involving tens of millions of Karelian Finns, Sudeten Germans, and Muslims and Hindus in the Indian subcontinent, faded away as displaced populations were absorbed in countries of similar religious and/or national character. The one glaring exception was the Palestinian refugees, who found shelter but few civic or political rights in neighbouring Arab countries (Jordan being the main exception).

The refugee status of the Palestinians was perpetuated by the host countries and the Palestinian leadership, and by the international community, through the UN Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA), the only UN body dedicated to a specific refugee group (all other refugees in the world are the responsibility of the Office of the UN High Commissioner for Refugees). As a result, refugee status was passed down from father to son to grandson over 50 years, so that, today, they number three million to four million. That is why the Palestinians now account for about one-fourth of the world's refugees -- an impressive figure until one imagines how many refugees there would be if all the Finns and Germans and Indian Hindus and Muslims and European Jews who were made refugees after the Second World War (not to speak of the Greeks and Turks and Armenians who were made refugees during and after the First World War) were still considered refugees in the year 2000.

- Mark Heller, co-author of No Trumpets, No Drums: A Two-State Settlement of the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict

With regard to the Palestinian refugees today, according to the "Report of the Commissioner-General of the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East - 1 July 1997 - 30 June 1998" there were 3,521,130 refugees as of June 30, 1998 (Table 1). However, the report (available at http://www.unrwa.org) also states that:

UNRWA registration figures are based on information voluntarily supplied by refugees primarily for the purpose of obtaining access to Agency services, and hence cannot be considered statistically valid demographic data; the number of registered refugees present in the Agency's area of operations is almost certainly less that the population recorded.
Moreover, not only does the UN admit the figures are of doubtful accuracy, there being obvious reason for families to claim more members and thereby receive more aid, the UN also admits that the total includes 1,463,064 Jordanian citizens, who cannot by any stretch be considered refugees.
- Alexander Safian, PhD, CAMERA (The Committee for Accuracy in Middle East Reporting in America)

Who qualifies for Palestinian refugee status?

Any Arab who entered Israel up to two years prior to the rebirth of the Jewish state could claim to be a Palestinian refugee, even if he and his ancestors had lived elsewhere for generations before and he owned no land or property in Palestine. [Editor's note: the UNRWA collected information from 'refugees' on an 'honor basis' without checking even the above absurdly minimal requirements]
- Middle East Digest - October 1998

Why are there still refugees from 1948, still living in refugee camps generations after the original displacement?

"The Arab states do not want to solve the refugee problem. They want to keep it as an open sore, as an affront to the United Nations and as a weapon against Israel. Arab leaders don't give a damn whether the refugees live or die."
- Ralph Galloway, former head of the UN Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA), in Amman, Jordan, August 1958

"In general, one can say that Arab governments regarded the destruction of the State of Israel as a more pressing matter than the welfare of the Palestinian refugees. Palestinian bitterness and anger had to be kept alive. It was clear that this could best be done by ensuring that a great many Palestinians Arabs continued to live under sub-normal conditions, the victims of hunger and poverty. No Arab Government preached this as a defined policy; most Arab Governments tacitly put it into practice."
- Terrence Prittie and Bernard Dineen, in "The Double Exodus: A Study of Arab and Jewish Refugees in the Middle East"

The decision to sacrifice them [the Palestinian Arab refugees] to the cause of Israel's destruction was clearly enunciated in the aftermath of 1948-49 (keep them in camps so they can learn hate and seek revenge), and no action by Arab elites has shown evidence of a change of heart.
- David S. Landes & Richard A. Landes, The New Republic, September 8, 1997

The Palestinians are the only refugees who cannot and must not be absorbed elsewhere; their fate is to be played up as the mirror image of the Wandering Jew.
- Jacques Givet, "The Anti-Zionist Complex"

In the 1967 Six Day War, under the threat of being "pushed into the sea" by Egypt, Syria and Jordan, Israel actually liberated the "occupied territory" of Jerusalem and granted free access to Jews, Christians and Moslems to worship at their respective holy sites. Israel also liberated the "West Bank" and Gaza. How easily recent history is forgotten. By comparison, Israel's administration, despite its faults, has been much more humane. The realities of the Jordanian and Egyptian occupation are conveyed in the following quote from HARSH REALITIES:

For 19 years, until 1967, Jordan occupied the renamed "West Bank" with its 20 UNWRA refugee camps.... And when western Palestinians rioted in December '55, April '57, April '63, Nov. '66 and April '67, King Hussein sent in tanks which shelled city streets and machine gunned people at random, killing hundreds of men, women and children.

The Gaza Strip, as it was known for the 19 years of harsh Egyptian occupation, had 8 UNWRA refugee camps in which the Palestinians were forced to live in overcrowded squalor. Egypt refused to absorb any refugees; kept them stateless, denied passports, and forbade them to travel or work in Egypt. [On the other hand, Palestinians were permitted to work in Israel after 1967.]

For 19 years of brutal occupation of their fellow Arabs, Jordan and Egypt kept these areas in a deliberate state of economic stagnation and severe unemployment. Average unemployment in the early Sixties ran between 35-45%, and refugee unemployment hit a high of 83%. Yet during this entire period, the world was silent. Only after Israel's seizure of these territories in a defensive war in 1967, did anyone discover the "legitimate rights and national aspirations" of the Palestinian Arabs.

From a humanitarian viewpoint, their situation improved immeasurably under Israeli administration. Unemployment hovers around a mere 1% (1989) and per capita gross income tripled in less than 20 years; infant mortality rates dropped from the pre-1967 140 per 1,000 to only 30 per 1,000 today - at a time when the rest of the Arab world is still at 80 per 1,000; 7 Arab colleges and universities were established under Israel "occupation," where none existed before 1967. Yet it is Israel that is now being attacked.

Had the Arab countries any true intentions of helping their beleaguered brethren from western Palestine, they would and could have absorbed them easily 4 decades ago, as the Israelites did of an even greater number of Jewish refugees from Arab lands. The Palestinian Arabs share the same language, religion and culture, and for 70% of them, the same countries of origin just 3 generations before when their grandfathers emigrated for economic reasons to Palestine from surrounding Arab lands. But the 22 Arab countries, uninterested in aiding in Palestinian brothers, preferred to use them as a political weapon to wield against Israel, and the U.N. supported this heartless human manipulation.

In the mid-1970's Israel attempted to give the Palestinian Arab refugees in Gaza new and better housing. The U.N. General Assembly, at the urging of the Arab states, passed Resolution 32/90 condemning Israel for trying to relocate these refugees and demanded they be returned "to the camps in which they were removed." And yet, a senior U.N. official came to Gaza in January 1988 accompanied by 10 TV crews on a fact-finding visit and laid the entire blame for the situation at Israel's feet. As if the U.N.'s own complicity in the matter didn't exist!

When the six Arab nations invaded Israel at Israel's birth, many claim 600,000 Arabs were displaced in that war. What is not well known is that approximately 800,000 Jews, who were living in those six Arab nations, had to flee for their lives because of Arab hatred. The solution to this refugee problem was simple - a fair exchange.

Israel, at a terrible economic cost, absorbed the 800,000 Jewish refugees But the Arab nations refused to accept these Arab refugees - their Arab brethren. Rather, they placed them in refugee camps, which became dark holes of hate and misery, models for propaganda to turn world opinion against Israel. They succeeded. How well they succeeded....

Refugee Camps
When Israel inherited Judea and Samaria (the "West Bank") and Gaza in the 1967 War, Israel also inherited the Palestinian refugee camps that were administered by a United Nations agency. Israel wanted to negotiate both the refugee problem and a peace settlement, but the Arabs refused. One cannot help but agonize for the poor refugee pawns in this ploy. The deplorable condition of the Palestinian refugees is especially pitiful because the situation was designed and perpetuated by their own Arab brothers. No wonder the "intifada" erupted. Many claim the Arab nations refused to alleviate the refugee problem both in 1948 and in 1967.

The Palestinians who have taken to the streets, spoiling for trouble, are the new generation-spawned in the refugee camps. From earliest childhood, they have been taught hate.

Who is responsible for their condition, who should absorb them and compensate them?

"Statements have been made on the Arab refugee question, but why should the State of Israel be blamed for the existence of that problem? When seeking to determine responsibility for the existence of the problem of the Arab refugees, we cannot fail to mention the outside forces ... They pursue their own selfish interests ..., which have nothing in common either with the cause of peace and international security or with the interests of the Arab and Jewish peoples, and which only correspond to the aggressive designs of the leading circles of some states."
- Soviet delegation, UN Security Council on 4 March 1949

"Since 1948 Arab leaders have approached the Palestine problem in an irresponsible manner. They have not looked into the future. They have no plan or approach. They have used the Palestine people for selfish political purposes. This is ridiculous and, I could say, criminal."
- Jordan's King Hussein, Associated Press, Jan 1960

Many castigations of Israel for her alleged responsibility for the suffering of Arab refugees have been terribly one-sided and unfair. Why is so little attention paid to the fact that the original refugees in the situation were Jews fleeing the Nazi terror, people who were barred from other lands and then denied access to the one place that could give them hope? Why do we hear almost nothing of the oppression in Arab countries since 1948 of indigenous Jewish populations or of the thousands of Jewish refugees from Arab lands? Why is it hardly ever pointed out that the original and continuing cause of the Arab refugee problem and its recent aggravation has been Arab intransigence and hostility: the refusal to recognize Israel and the pledge to annihilate the Jews? There would be no refugee problem at all if the Arabs had not defied the United Nations' partition. The Arabs started the war in 1948 that forced the refugees to leave -- not to be banished from -- their homes. Israel tried to convince them to stay. Arab leaders frightened them into fleeing, with dire warnings that the Jews would persecute and destroy them.

We are frequently advised that Israel's recent military victory [the six-day war, 1967] is the reason for the increase in refugees, but we are seldom reminded that the latest Arab campaign to destroy Israel was the sole incitement for that victory. An Arab triumph would have left not Jewish refugees but Jewish corpses. Any help Israel now grants to Arab refugees -- and she is already giving succor and beginning to offer resettlement, despite unabated Arab belligerency -- is largely a matter of either prudence or charity. The moral debt is primarily that of the Arab powers, who have callously manipulated these uprooted people to the end of a devious program to exterminate Jews.

- by A. Roy and Alice Eckardt in "AGAIN, SILENCE IN THE CHURCHES", The Christian Century, August 2, 1967

The Arabs blame Israel for creating the Refugee problem while it was the Arabs who insisted to keep the camps in Jordan, Syria, and Lebanon, to use the Palestinians for political exploitation. In 1982: 65,425 Palestinian refu gees put in camps in Syria, 123,442 in Lebanon, 192,392 in Jordan, this was reported by UNRWA, while the Arabic propaganda lied and inflated the number to 4,000,000, and ALL who fled on their own will and without any force. Now, please compare with 850,000 Jews actually expelled from the Arab lands, forced to leave to Israel.
- Walid, a Palestinian Arab defector.
quoted at "Answering Islam"

One of the throw-away lines in Bat Yeor's book, "the Dhimmis" is the observation in passing that the Palestinians are the longest-lived group in history who have been considered "refugees" while living in the land of their countrymen.
Lets expand on that a bit. It is a topic I have written about before. UNRWA (the United Nations Relief and Works Agency) was created in 1949. It exists solely for the purpose of "nurturing" Palestinian refugees, to the exclusion of all the other refugees in the world. 25% of its budget comes from American taxpayers (which includes me). There were 750,000 of these guys in 1949, and there are 3.3 MILLION of them now. And here's where it gets even weirder: 1.2 MILLION of the "refugees" LIVE IN YASSER ARAFAT'S PALESTINIAN AUTONOMY, mingled with their fellow Palestinians, where they actually CONSTITUTE HALF THE POPULATION!

Does that strike anyone else as strange? How can you have people living for 50 years among their brothers, 30 miles down the road from where they started, and still consider them refugees? Will it ever end? Can it ever end? Obviously not as long as the UN continues to pay them money.

And what about their Arab brothers? Ask an Arab to tell you about the five pillars of Islam, of which he is so proud, and he will tell you about "charity to your fellow Muslim". And yet the Arabs forbid the "refugees" from integrating into their host countries. That's because they consider them "a disgrace to Islam, who are responsible for the loss of holy Muslim land to the infidel Jews".

I guess this is just one more example of Shimon Peres' "New Middle East".

- Samuel Fistel

It is important to note that the world has seen hundreds of millions of refugees. It's a natural and expected end result of wars. All have resettled, begun new lives and made the best of their situation. Tens of millions of refugees were created in the aftermath of both World Wars. During the 1948-49 Arab-Israeli War, 860,000 Jews living in Arab countries were thrown out on their ears! We don't hear about them anymore because they were absorbed by their fellow Jews within Israel. So while the Arabs throughout the Middle East cry crocodile tears for their poor suffering Palestinian brothers and sisters, none of these countries has opened their arms to them. The ones that were allowed in were placed into more refugee camps for the world to see. Ironically, the Arabs who remained in Israel and became citizens have fared far better than those in Arab countries! What makes the Palestinian Arabs stand out among the world's refugees is that they created their own pathetic situation or were misled by their leaders. That is their tough luck! What was offered to them in 1947 cannot be offered once again. The world has far more important things to concern itself with other than their constant belly-aching! As they say, "Get a Life, Already!"

The surrounding Arabs states called for the Arab population to leave Israel and fight in the 1948 war ( Arab secretary general said after the Arabs attacked Israel in 48. This will be a war of extermination and a momentous massacre"). Those that left were told that they could come back and take all the Jews possesions. Those that stayed were told they would be killed with the Jews. This is not to say that during the war, the Jewish forces did not expel any Arab groups, even villages, who were thought to be involved in the "war of extermination" of the Jews. Many Arabs resisted the call to kill Jews - they and their descendants make up 14% of Israel's population, as full citizens. So if there was an organized effort at "ethnic cleansing", as the antisemites allege, the Jews failed miserably. The "Palestinian refugees" of today are those who expected to return after the Arab victory to find Jewish corpses. The descendants of those Arabs are kept in refugee camps/villages by the United Nations and by other Arab governments as a propaganda tool and as a constant source of soldiers in their long war against Israel. Who should absorb these Arabs, as full citizens, compensate them for their losses, house them, feed them, teach them? Should it be Israel, the intended victim of the massacre? Or should it be their fellow Arabs who, because of their hatred and violence, caused this mess in the first place? Or should this just be a valuable lesson to the world that when you attempt the extermination of another group, be prepared to lose land and property, and expect never to get it back again. Only when such violence is rewarded, by the UN, Jimmy Carter, the USSR, is there a material incentive to try again.
- The Society for Rational Peace

Even if Israel is not the cause of the Arab refugee problem, didn't they do anything to compensate those people?

As a goodwill gesture during the Lausanne negotiations in 1949, Israel offered to take back 100,000 Palestinian refugees prior to any discussion of the refugee question. The Arab states, who had refused even to negotiate face-to-face with the Israelis, turned down the offer because it implicitly recognized Israel's existence.

Despite this, on humanitarian grounds Israel has since the 1950's allowed more than 50,000 refugees to return to Israel under a family reunification program, and between 1967 and 1993 allowed a further 75,000 to return to the West Bank or Gaza. Since the beginning of the Oslo process Israel has allowed another 90,000 Palestinians to gain residence in PA-controlled territory.

Arabs who lost property in Israel are eligible to file for compensation from Israel's Custodian of Absentee Property. As of the end of 1993, a total of 14,692 claims had been filed, claims were settled with respect to more than 200,000 dunums of land, more than 10,000,000 NIS (New Israeli Sheckels) had been paid in compensation, and more than 54,000 dunums of replacement land had been given in compensation. Israel has followed this generous policy despite the fact that not a single penny of compensation has ever been paid to any of the more than 500,000 Jewish refugees from Arab countries, who were forced by the Arab governments to abandon their homes, businesses and savings.

- Alexander Safian,

What has been the longest refugee situation in recorded human history?

The Diaspora, the Jewish Exile, the Golah. 1,900 years - between 80 and 100 generations.

Another refugee situation also resulted from Israel's independence. It was larger in numbers and in property lost than the Palestinian Arabs, yet we never hear about it, why?

"This is hardly the place to describe how the Jews of the Arab States were driven out of the countries in which they lived for hundreds of years, then how they were shamefully deported to Israel after their property had been confiscated or taken over at the lowest possible price.
"It is plain that Israel will air this issue in the course of any serious negotiations that might be undertaken one day in regard to the rights on the Palestinians.

by David C. Fri Oct 24, 2003 05:15

Dan, you are entitled to your own opinions, but I'm afraid you're not entitled to your own facts!

There are basicaly only 3 facts here:

FACT #1: The Palestinians have land.

FACT #2: 'Greater israel' zionists want the Palestinian's land, and use force to steal it.

FACT #3: The Palestinian's fight back, because (and pay attention here because this gets complicated) *they want to keep their land*.

Advanced students of the situation may be capable of absorbing an additional 2 facts:

ADDITIONAL FACT #1: Palestinians will outnumber Jews in the zionists "greater israel' by 2010.

ADDITIONAL FACT #2: Considering their current polocies, the only possible future response to 'Additional fact #1' by the 'Greater israel' zionists is to exterminate or ethenicaly cleanse 4 million people.

There. That's it. It's very simple, really.

A new Holocaust is coming...

by kokomero Fri Oct 24, 2003 10:15

In the morasse of Zionist standard cut & paste rebuttal essays posted in attempt to drown debate in hogwash, one of the central tennets is that the 750,000 ethnically cleansed from their homes in 1948 are actually the bad guys, and they have no rights and they should simply accept that the Israeli facists have stolen their land and gotten away with it.

Exactly what planet do these Ziofacists inhabit?

Not only that but the Palestinians should be happy to roll over and take it up the arse again as they are expelled from the West Bank where they fled having been ethnically cleansed in 1948!

Next stop the Red Sea?

Finally we are supposed to believe that the UN are their accomplices in this axis of evil against the Israelis.

Actually the rest of the world has better things to be doing than wasting its time in a worldwide conspiracy against the Israelis, and only the chronically paranoid would believe otherwise!

It is also claimed that the US taxpayer actually funds 25% of this axis of evil (when did the US actually pay any of their bills to the UN? Bail-out by private individuals or corporations doesn't count).

Is this the same US that at the same time paid out $90 Billion to the Israelis over the past 50 years to repress the same Palestinians, most recently arming them with nuclear tipped cruise missiles aboard their submarines?

One of the absolute "gems" in this stream of hogwash is:

"Does that strike anyone else as strange? How can you have people living for 50 years among their brothers, 30 miles down the road from where they started, and still consider them refugees? Will it ever end? Can it ever end? Obviously not as long as the UN continues to pay them money."

If this were true, which it isn't, them why did the "free" world form an alliance to kick Saddam out of Kuwait when he occupied it in 90-91?

Why weren't the Kuwaitis happy to join their brothers 30 miles down the road in Saudi Arabia and stay there for 50 years while the Iraqui regieme colonised their land?

Because it wasn't right, that's why!

No matter how undemocratic the Kuwati regieme was, the Kuwaiti people have the right to self-determination and no amount of propaganda, lies and window dressing by Saddam could change that.

Exactly the same goes for the Israeli colonisation of the Palestine, Gaza and the West Bank and oppression of its people.

Damn right they shouldn't stand for it!

They have the right under international law to defend their country against the colonisation and repression by the Israeli facist regieme.

Israel is in the wrong, the Palestinians are in the right, end of story!

Give them back their land, and reach a financial settlement with them for the stolen land, murder and torture.

Scrapping your over-large army and your unnecessary Nuclear/chemical/biological programmes would more than fund retribution and still leave lots of money to rescue your economy which is in dire straits.

Then and only then can you sit back and be content with the land ethnically cleansed in 1948!

by Declan Fri Oct 24, 2003 10:58

Don't waste any more of your time. You are dealing with poorly educated twits who write incoherent rubbish. It's obvious which side of this debate has won.

by kokomero Fri Oct 24, 2003 12:25

but Dan and Avi are not poorly educated twits as you put it.

Nobody on this site should sink to the level of calling them a dickhead or threatening them with automatic weapons because they cant prove their point by other means, but I guess the Israelis are used to killing their unarmed opponents and getting away with it!

It all just goes to show that the pen (or keyboard) is indeed mightier than the sword.

I don't think they need your protection or advice either (unless the Declan alias is a vehicle for posting on the Sabbath?).

If they have any convincing arguments for continued Israeli ethnic-cleansing, occupation, murder, torture and humiliation of the Palestinian people, and to date there have been none, only half-baked excuses and attempts to deflect the blame which lies squarely at the Zionists door, we and all of the other visitors to this site will see them in due course?

Israel 0 vs Palestinans 1!

by David C. Fri Oct 24, 2003 20:42

I think that the 'greater israel' zionists tend to produce huge volumes of opinions, myths, irrelevant facts, etc in an effort to convince people who don't have the time or inclination to wade through it that they actually have an argument.

Clarity and simplicty works against the 'greater israel' zionists.

Let me pose 2 simple questions as an examples.

QUESTION #1: In 3 words or less, what is the source of the greater israel zionists claims on Palestinian land? (Is it 'god'?, law? force?)

QUESTION #2: In 3 words or less, how will the greater israel zionists deal with the projected population dominance by palestinians? (Is is democratic assimilation? Extermination? Ethenic cleansing?)

I expect a 3000 word rant filled with vague and irrelevant nonsense in response to these questions. To answer simply would force the zionists to articulate things which they would rather not articulate...

by cabhog - ~ Fri Oct 24, 2003 20:54

Here is one word, unfortunately explained, but hopefully not a rant

Possesion

The Isreali claim to the Palestine, is the same claim that the Palestine's once had on it (possession). Possession is 9/10th of the law. What claim does anyone have on any soil, nothing but possession, normally quailified by a historical possession, although this rarely goes back more than five generations.

Suppression

Isreal will suppress the Palestinians, until such time as they accept the Jewish occupation of Isreali land (much like the vikings did in Dublin). The isrealis are unfortunate as large scale migrations have gone out of fashion, and people forget their role in human development

by cabhog - ~ Fri Oct 24, 2003 20:59

What claim do the Palestinians have on the land? Surely its merely to do with history????

by David C. Fri Oct 24, 2003 21:07

Good points.

I agree on possession as the main claim - northern ireland is a good example, as is israel proper (ie pre-1967). But it is the rights of possession that forces the palestinians to fight back in any way possible. For them it's now or never.

I disagree with suppression, becasue supression is merely a temporary solution. The Likudniks are very, very smart people, and they have some kind of 'final solution' in mind for both the land and its population. What is it?

by cabhog Fri Oct 24, 2003 21:15

Suppression is an option.

All it requires is for the palestians to be repressed long enough for them to leave the middle east. Once the 3-5 million refugees live the middle east and settle down elsewhere, the issue will be resolved and reduced to the levels of the Armenian issue.

The biggest difficulty isn't however Isreal with regard to re-settlemtn it is theother Arab nations. Why haven't they give the Palestininas the oppurtunity to settle in other Arab nations? If arab fraternity counted for anything it would mean allow a Palestinian to settle and live in Saudi like a Saudi(if the same cirizenship laws applied in the Arab world, as do in Ireland/USA there would only be f-all refugees). The palestians have to realise one day that the have lost it all, the UN & Arab nations hould stop financing the impossible dream of returning to Isreal, and finance the dispersal and integeration of Palestines to the US, Europe and tht other Arab nations.

bit inchorent unfortunatel

by long john Fri Oct 24, 2003 22:53

Times are hard for the IDF you know ....

"The Israeli army's Winter 2004 collection will feature second-hand long johns bought from the US military, the Israeli daily Ma'ariv reported yesterday.

The second-hand merchandise will naturally be washed before being handed over to the men, an Israeli army official told the paper, stressing there was no shame in wearing used clothing and saving cash.

The defence budget underwent deep cuts this year as part of an overall austerity plan adopted by the Israeli government."

by David C. Sat Oct 25, 2003 01:28

The fact that the palestinians haven't given up and gone away is heroic. They are morally right and they have refused to back down to evil and theft. Expecting them to pack up and leave is like expecting the catholics in northern ireland to pack up and leave after the 17th century plantations (BTW 'plantations' is irish for 'settlements'. The english word is 'colonies').

But all this is academic. The palestinians are obviously not going anywhere of their own free will - although they may be cleansed away or sent to the gas chambers by the greater israel zionists...

by David C. Sat Oct 25, 2003 01:35

Maybe they should sell a nuke to Kyrigistan - like they did to their ideological brothers in aparthied South Africa. That should raise the cash for nice new woolies...

Or maybe just hold back on a few subsidies to the colonists in the occupied territories...

Or maybe they should ask (sorry - I meant *tell*) the Americans to send more cash...

The EU should have a total economic blockade on Israel.