'Yassination' of Rantisi

by unreasonable demands Sun Apr 18, 2004 14:01

Imagine a Palestinian demanding:

1. That none of the Palestinian lands are kept by the foreigners who in 1948 came to their land murdering and driving the native Palestinians from their lands

2. No legitimation for a state created on Palestinian land, that is responsible daily for war crimes and which is based on the supremacy of one religion over all others, to the detriment of the local majority population.

3. That any solution of the problem created by the violent actions of settlers from before 1948 to the present day cannot be resolved by giving in to the de faco position that they have maintained by breaching the most basic international human rights safeguards and by the systematic genocide of the palestinian people.

4. That when all political rights are denied to Palestinian, when their right to live on their lands is met with expulsion, that when every semblance of a political opposition has been incarcerated or murdered, when children presenting hope for the future are killed before they can even begin to think about a political settlement, that when Isreal continue to push for a unilateral settlement and unilateral annexation of further lands contrary to international law - that violence is the only way to restore rights of a people.

And imagine speaking out against the execution of people supporting the above ideas without any trial, and the use of force that so often kills innocent bystanders.

Their methods may be counterproductive and be contrary to internationally accepted standards, but no less so than the actions carried out daily by the Israeli occupation forces. Who are we to tell people how to defend their most basic right not to be humiliated.

Thank you THE TRUTH for allowing us to be inspired by the story of yet another Hamas leader who when faced with such adversity was still able to find the resolve to continue the struggle against such evil.

by The Truth Sun Apr 18, 2004 14:44

Do we have to go over old ground again?
learn you history Jack!
Palestinian and native are not compatible

by Mike Sun Apr 18, 2004 15:10

A better way to describe the event would be to point out that after almost a month of relative calm, at around 4PM Hammas (claimed by them) set off a bomb at the Erez checkpoint killing at least one Israeli (too early to know if all the wounded will survive) and later that evening the Israelis bombed a Hammas leader.

You may indeed believe that hammas is fully justified in choosing to engage in deadly conflict agaisnt the Israelis. That only becomes peculiar if at the same time you imagine that the justification implies that the Israelis are thereby obligated to passivle allow themselves to be killed. Humans don't act that way.

See, this is NOT intended as any sort of justification of Israeli OR Palestinains actions. Rather it is intended as a guide to our own actions and expectations. This is a direct consequence of choosing violence. We may indeed feel ourselves justified in using violence but if we do so, we will make whomever we attack feel perfectly justified in using violence back at us. THAT'S THE WAY IT WORKS WITH HUMANS. Our original reasons, our justifications, become irrelevant once the cycle of violence has begun.

by unreasonable demands Sun Apr 18, 2004 16:15

Indeed - Rantisi was 'removed' because of the cycle of violence in which he chose to become involved.

Violence as a tool to fight oppression has its flaws, but when the choice becomes to either use violence or to be exterminated - i wouldn't want to be in the position of having to make that choice and i wouldn't seek to criticise those who when faced with that choice chose to fight.

All too often the arguments for non-violence are mooted in safety and comfort. To criticise (other than constructively) any resistance to the Palestinian extermination is to be complicit and to assist in its goal.

I'm sure Hamas would listen avidly to any plan to defend their people without blowing themselves up and subjecting their families to revenge attacks and collective punishment.

The reason for the cycle of violence isn't human nature (although it certainly assists in justifying the inevitable violent response), it is a strategic decision by those in power to ensure that any threat to their plans will result in more pain for those who stand up to them than those who quietly lie down and die. Those in power are threatened by violence because they are in power on its back, and that's why it is such a powerful weapon and why it is opposed in the way that it is.

If human nature was the only question, then there would never be any non-violent solution to any conflict. The truth is that most people, when it comes to it, are prepared to exit a cycle of violence if at all possible. Those who chose to perpetuate it are states and in this instance Israel, whose very creation (in 1948) and continued existance is so abhorrent that violence is the only way to maintain it.

by unreasonable demands Sun Apr 18, 2004 16:26

and just to be clear - when i referred to native, i was referring to those people born and living in Palestine in 1948 as opposed to those foreigners who subsequently flooded the country claiming an unsubstantiated claim to being native.

I'm all for open borders and freedom of immigration, but not by armed groups that destroy villages and drive an entire people from their homes and subsequently persecute them for the next 50 years.

get your history right - and forget about the oblique references to pre-history. 'THE TRUTH' could not be a less apt name.

by The Truth Sun Apr 18, 2004 16:42

I presume you are referring to Islamofacist Jew haters.

by historian Sun Apr 18, 2004 16:43

For information on what the Palestinian people went through in 1947/48, go to http://www.alnakba.org/

For an Israeli account of their struggle for a nation - see http://www.adl.org/ISRAEL/Record/index.asp


Then make up your mind

by The TRUTH Sun Apr 18, 2004 16:45

Murder is wrong whether it is by Palestine bombers at check points or the Israeli army assinating a Palestine leader.

Violence begets nothing but more violence. Both sides are culpable of incredible atrocity against innocent civilians.

An eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth is nothing but religious idiocy that ignites even more violence.

by The Truth Sun Apr 18, 2004 16:47

The big difference is that the PLO/Hamas/Islamic Jihad and the smaller Arab
terrorist groups operating in the Land of Israel DELIBERATELY target
children, babies, etc. For instance, Shalhevet Pas, a baby who lived in
Hebron, was shot dead while in her father's arms by an Arab sniper in the
Jewish quarter in Hebron. Bear in mind, that Jews in Hebron had to live in a
walled ghetto for hundreds of years, until the massacre of Jews there [67
Jews murdered in cruel ways] in 1929. The Arab murderers then had British
encouragement. After the massacre, British troops took all the surviving
Jews out of Hebron, saying that they could not protect them. The truth is
that the British did not want Jews living in Hebron close to the Tomb of the
Patriarchs [Cave of Machpelah], the second holiest Jewish holy place in
Israel after the Temple Mount. So they encouraged Arabs in Hebron [and
elsewhere] to murder Jews and drive out the survivors. This happened in the
Old City of Jerusalem where Jews lived close to the Temple Mount, and in
Tiberias and Safed which are also considered Jewish holy cities. In the
latter two places the Jews were able to hold out until the War of
Independence. In Hebron, the Jews were forced out jointly by Arabs and
British, as explained above. In the Old City of Jerusalem, the large Jewish
population living near the Temple Mount in the area called the "Muslim
Quarter" was driven out in 1936-37, again as a result of British complicity
with Arab pogromists/mass murderers.

_______________

by unreasonable demands Sun Apr 18, 2004 17:12

and does a number of massacres of jews in the 30s and 40s justify driving a million arabs from their homes and refusing to let them return.

The systematic genocide against the palestinians from 1948 to the present day cannot be justified and must be ended by any means possible

by Northern Eye Sun Apr 18, 2004 18:28

Hey 'The Truth' if you're looking to give the lands back to the native people why not go and seek out the ancestors of the native peoples who inhabited that area before the original Jews came and robbed them of it. Or is it because there are no ancestors as the Jews committed one of the first documented and celebrated acts of genocide in history.

by Frank Adam Sun Apr 18, 2004 18:44 FrrankADAM at AAOL dot com

Certain contributors should note that over half of Israel's Jewish population are in families that migrated from Arab countries that were daft enough to vent their hate on their Jewish communities instead of integrating them as equal citizens. This was a previous round of how to recruit Diaspora Jews to Zionism.

Secondly all the land that Jews owned pre Israeli independence was bought and the rest of the land allocated was approppriated by the UN after actually visiting as well as studying the maps. Remember that all the land for the UN Arab state in Palestine was arable or pasture and the land for the Jewish state included the Negev Desert . Given that the Jewish third of the population of the Mandate had paid two thirds of the taxes this was hardly an unfair "divorce" - inasmuch as a "fair" divorce exists.

Finally if the Arab World had accepted the UN 181 in November 1947 instead of starting bomb throwing and shooting at buses the next day there is an historically plausible "if " that the situation might have worked provided the British had handed over openly and clearly - but they scuttled with a nudge and a wink at the petrosheikhs. What cannot be denied from the Sep - Nov '47 Guardian files is that the Arabs were threatening to fight any partition that the UN might pass BEFORE the passage of 181; and they do keep their word on being violent. If Arabs especially Palestine Arabs wish to yelp about the UN they could start by a massive culpa for their precedent setting arrogance in 1947.

Arabs cannot blame Israel for the fact that the Arab parties in Palestine misjudged Arab power and conduct of Arab affairs and then by refusing to cut their losses with a peace treaty between 1949 and 1967 repeated their errors in 1967 and ever since: including the recent stirring up of anti-semitism against Diaspora Jews..

Since when have any refugees from an aggressive population and power eg Germans had any right to return to where they were when they attempted to ethnic cleanse. As in Yugoslavia and the partition of India the criminal attempt is its own punishment. The Arabs wanted to dump the Jews in the sea in 1947-49 and their cartoons said the same in 1967. The Hamas Charter and the PLO's still blatantly want to ethnic cleanse Jews - not Israelis but JEWS everywhere . What happens to Jews this decade happens to everybody else fairly shoirtly afterwards by precedent.
Yours ....

by The Truth Sun Apr 18, 2004 19:11

Dear Friends,
Pray tell why your logic does not extend to the 1.3 million Israeli Arabs who live in peace and prosperity inside Israel.
The quicker you cop on to the fact that some Arabs were ordered to flee their homes by their leaders in 1948 with the promise that the Jews will be liquidated overnight, the better.
They made their choices, they lost their homes.
if the descendents of the 1,000,000 who fled our shores during the Famine returned here would you give up your home to them?

by Northern Eye Sun Apr 18, 2004 19:23

Well its quite obvious that the Arab people had the right to resist the taking of their lands, whether by rich Zionists buying up all the good land or the UN trying to ease its guilt at a genocide of a oppressed people by helping to oppress another people.

At the end of the day it boils down to this: hundreds of thousands of armed forgeiners came to Palestine ( later turning into millions ) on the back of a bronze age and supremicist book of murder and myths, forced the citizens of that country to flee their homes, either to refugee camps in other parts of the country or to other countries even. Dam right the Arab people had a right to resist as did the countries who Israel threatened. Anyone talking about the arrogance of the Arabs in trying to defend themselves from this crime defies belief.

If people are talking about ethnic cleansing creating extremists, well how about looking at what the ethnic cleansing of the Palestinians has created. Israel has only itself and its dirty fascist creed to blame whenever a bomb goes off on a bus in Jerusalem. Any chance the Jews had of coming to Palestine and living in peace and respect with their Arab neighbours has been utterly destroyed by over 50 years of murder and robbery. Israel is a house built on sand and it will eventually go down in flames - taking it neighbours with it. It was a pig ignorant concept to begin with and has got even worse and more morally reprehesible as time goes by. Theres not much chance for peace as far as I can see but the UN should be sent in straight away to act as peace-keeper between the Palestinians (who are in danger of genocide) and their Zionist tormentors who are the masters of a rough state.

by Northern Eye Sun Apr 18, 2004 19:47

Ai, right 'The Truth', if a war starts and I leave my home to flee for safety from it, or indeed I am even driven out by the invader, and the invader then steals my property, then I don't have the right to reclaim it back with any moral justification at all?

Your comment about the families of people who suffered dispossession by the famine should more aptly be applied to the desendents of the people who were forced to flee from Palestine almost two thousand years ago and who then decieded to return to that mythical land via force of arms. Remember a lot of the Palestinians who were forced to flee still actually live and breath in this world.

by Katie Price Mon Apr 19, 2004 01:30

This really made my day!! Another positive step forward in the peace process by Ariel Sharon.

Considering that vermin like Rantissí want to drive every Jew out of their homeland the Israeli response is indeed apposite.

Let's hope Sharon goes all the way and wipes out the greatest terrorist godfather of the lot, the dirtbag Yassir Arafart.

by kokomero Mon Apr 19, 2004 10:09

As usual we get the zionist assertion that Hamas and the Palestinians want to drive them into the sea.

This is a lie and interviews with Seikh Yassin and other Palestinian leaders in the past supports this.

Another lie by the "Truth" is that Israelis do not target Palestinian babies and children directly.

This is an outrageous lie as numerous Palestinian children from days old to 18 years old have been killed by Israeli snipers in their homes, their classrooms or or the street and none of these soldiers has been brought to justice.

Do not insult our intelligence, we can see the racist, imperialist and brutal Israeli state for what it is.

The truth is that the Israelis are an uncaring nation who prefer to build a wall round a problem they themselves have created in the hope it will go away.

Too bad for you and your American paymasters it won't!

The 56 years of ethnic cleansing, occupation and butchery and murder you have visited on the Palestinians will come back to haunt you until you reach a just peace otherwise you should "enjoy" this temporary intermission while it lasts!

by Socialist Mon Apr 19, 2004 11:38

The Jewish capitalist state is exploiting the Islamic Palestinian underclass.
Religion is merely the superstructure.
What exists is a class divide.
Rantessi was a progressive revolutionary trying to bring down class antagonisms.
This can only be achieved by violence.
Afterwards the prolletairate state would gradually wither away.

by kokomero Mon Apr 19, 2004 15:07

whether Avi, the Truth or other Zionist excuseniks the refrain is always the same. If you canṫ win the argument then drag the forum into the gutter with personal insults, or better still accusations of anti-semitism.

by Eoin Dubsky Mon Apr 19, 2004 15:32

Oh I get it: "If Arabs especially Palestine Arabs wish to yelp about the UN they could start by a massive culpa for their precedent setting arrogance in 1947."

How arrogant of those selfish Arabs to say "wait a minute, I don't want a Jewish State on my doorstep" (or indeed "where my doorstep used to be" in the case of the Palestinians). After all they were the masterminds behind the Holocaust, and its only fair that they should have to forfeit their land to the Zionists. Western Europeans get the Marshall Plan, Arabs get a UN Resolution to make room for a brave new Jewish State. Yep, that's fair.

by Pamela Mon Apr 19, 2004 16:00

Israel feels it has cover now to escalate its war of attrition. The gloves are off Sharon because he has George covering his back.

But what a friend to have! Dubya believes that Jews must remain in charge of the Holy Land until the time of Tribulation. Waiting on his Rapture, George KNOWS that all Jews will have to become Christians at that time, or burn for an eternity in the fires of hell. You see the 'you are either with us or against us' mind-set has much broader applications than you may have anticipated.

Good friends - they deserve each other.

by Northern Eye Mon Apr 19, 2004 21:35

I seen last night on BBC News 24 a interview with the overall head of Hamas, Khaled Masha'l, who said that if Israel stops killing civilians then Hamas would do the same. He also said if Israel retreated back to the 1967 borders Hamas would stop all attacks and would only pursue their futures aims in a totally peaceful manner. Seems fair enough to me.

by Mael Sechnall Tue Apr 20, 2004 04:16

You can talk all you like about the rights/wrongs of foundation of israel but we have to deal with realities on the ground.

By your logic, all Unionists in NI would have to go back to Scotland. Also, by your logic, the Jews lived in the Holy Land until 79AD so the Arabs who took over their land were just squatters - the Jews simply returned to their rightful homeland.

The state of Israel exists and is internationally recognised and it has a right to defend itself against terrorism. The best way to deal with a group such as Hamas is to kill as many of them as possible.

by kokomero Tue Apr 20, 2004 11:22

Nobody suggested that Israel does not have a de facto right to exist within its pre-1967 borders (not even Hamas). Neither did anybody suggest that all Northern protestants return to Scotland (this was your suggestion).

Your comparison of the situation in Palestine to Northern Ireland is facile in the extreme as the ethnic cleansing of the Palestinians occured 56 not 2000 years ago! Furthermore, the Jewish diaspora occurred voluntarily as they left their homeland over centuries, they were not forced from their homes at gunpoint!

The Palestinians expelled from their homes and their children are entitled to return with full rights to their property or fair compensation as were West Germans who returned to East Germany post-1989. Even those responsible for the genocide in Rwanda have been allowed to return to their homeland by the survivors of those whom they killed so you people don't have a moral or legal leg to stand on!

Finally, bad and all as the Brits are in Northern Ireland I don't remember them ever attacking West Belfast with helicopter gunships with no regard for human life, or bulldozing Crossmaglen because of IRA attacks!

Let's face it, you and your countrymen and women are uncivilised blood-thirsty barbarians who have no right to call themselves democrats. Your regieme is every bit as racist as those of the very worst of your neighbours whom you so often decry, and quite often worse as in the way basic human rights such as the right to marry whom you choose are denied to your 1.3M of your own citizens on the basis of their religion.

You should thus be austracised by the civilised world until you comply with international law as were the Serbians in Kosovo until they were forced to come to their senses!

by freedom supporter Tue Apr 20, 2004 11:45

The actions of Sharon remind me very much of those adopted by the Nazi party in the early thirties. The theft of property, the murder of dissidents etc. Of course the Palestinians will fight back. They are being persecuted.