It looks like you're using an Ad Blocker.
Please white-list or disable AboveTopSecret.com in your ad-blocking tool.
Thank you.
Some features of ATS will be disabled while you continue to use an ad-blocker.
Israel: We Know Were They Live.....
page: 2share:
Jakomo said:
"And yeah, maybe even a couple in Syria. Chunky-Chick-Soup made an EXCELLENT point about that, though. If they were 100% certain, they would have given the Syrian government and even the UN the evidence. The ironclad "intelligence". Case closed, but that didn't happen, so there's got to be an ulterior motive."
It's apparent that you don't accept the disclosure of the "alleged" locations as evidence by Israel? You are aware Israel knew the camp was abandoned and hit it to make a point? I read, as you probably did, the same sources saying that the camp was abadoned....Syria and Palestinian authorities "claimed" this, too. That's cool and acceptable....being "proof" is always in the eye of the beholder. In any case, the US then, a few days or a day later, comes out and says and shows that they have sat. photos showing the same "camp" being rebuilt and that it was used very recently despite claims that it was abandoned........ironic?
Syria has again made it known that:
"Syria reserves right to retaliate against Israeli attacks"
(This is the second time it has sayed this in as many days)
Link:
www.spacewar.com...
Excerpt:
"DAMASCUS (AFP) Oct 11, 2003
Syria reserves the right to retaliate "by all means at its disposal" against any attack by Israel, a foreign ministry spokeswoman said Saturday, a week after an air strike by the Jewish state on an alleged Palestinian militant training camp near Damascus.
"Syria reserves the right to retaliate by all means at its disposal," Bushra Kanafani told a press conference at the foreign ministry.
"We hope that the Israelis will not repeat their attacks," she said, but said "the right to self defense is recognized by all states.""
More irony? Has not Israel "claimed" and reserved the same right? Oh....thats right, the difference is that one 'action' is seen as "illegal" verses Syria's defending and acting as being "legal"......regardless of "proof"........
Here's what's even more baffling and ironic........check this out:
"UN Israeli Ambassador Gillerman: Israel Has A Right to Defend Her Citizens"
Link:
www.israelnewsagency.com...
Excerpt:
"Israel's UN ambassador defended the IDF attack on Islamic terror bases in Syria, saying that Syria was harboring and supporting terrorists. The U.N. Security Council is presently meeting at Syria's request to discuss the Israeli air raid on a Palestinian terror training base near Damascus on Sunday.
Syria's U.N. Ambassador Fayssal Mekdad called on the council to adopt a resolution condemning the attack as "military aggression."
Syria's draft calls for Israel to stop acts that could threaten regional security. It was unclear when the council would vote on the resolution, but a decision appeared unlikely Sunday.
Israeli Ambassador Dan Gillerman, speaking after Mekdad, accused Syria of providing "safe harbor, training facilities, funding, logistical support" to terrorist organizations. He said the strike was a "measured defensive response" and an act of self defense that did not violate international law.
He said it was ironic that Syria which Israel accuses of harboring terrorists, should call for a meeting to condemn the attack and compared it to Osama bin Laden demanding a Security Council meeting after the Sept. 11 attacks.
"Israel is at the forefront of the fight against terrorism [while] Syria is at the forefront of terrorism."
- Israeli Ambassador Gillerman
Gillerman said Israel acted in accordance with Article 51 of the U.N. Charter, which allows nations the right to self-defense. Syria has "put itself in the dock" by calling for Sunday's meeting, he said."
More irony?:
"U.S. Criticizes Syria After Israeli Raid"
Link:
news.yahoo.com.../nm/20031006/ts_nm/mideast_dc&printer=1
Excerpt:
"Bush said he had told Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon (news - web sites) by telephone on Sunday that Israel should not feel constrained in defending itself although he denied giving a green light for the air raid near Damascus.
"I made it very clear to the prime minister, like I have consistently done, that Israel's got a right to defend herself, that Israel must not feel constrained in terms of defending the homeland," Bush said in Washington."
regards
seekerof
[Edited on 11-10-2003 by Seekerof]
"And yeah, maybe even a couple in Syria. Chunky-Chick-Soup made an EXCELLENT point about that, though. If they were 100% certain, they would have given the Syrian government and even the UN the evidence. The ironclad "intelligence". Case closed, but that didn't happen, so there's got to be an ulterior motive."
It's apparent that you don't accept the disclosure of the "alleged" locations as evidence by Israel? You are aware Israel knew the camp was abandoned and hit it to make a point? I read, as you probably did, the same sources saying that the camp was abadoned....Syria and Palestinian authorities "claimed" this, too. That's cool and acceptable....being "proof" is always in the eye of the beholder. In any case, the US then, a few days or a day later, comes out and says and shows that they have sat. photos showing the same "camp" being rebuilt and that it was used very recently despite claims that it was abandoned........ironic?
Syria has again made it known that:
"Syria reserves right to retaliate against Israeli attacks"
(This is the second time it has sayed this in as many days)
Link:
www.spacewar.com...
Excerpt:
"DAMASCUS (AFP) Oct 11, 2003
Syria reserves the right to retaliate "by all means at its disposal" against any attack by Israel, a foreign ministry spokeswoman said Saturday, a week after an air strike by the Jewish state on an alleged Palestinian militant training camp near Damascus.
"Syria reserves the right to retaliate by all means at its disposal," Bushra Kanafani told a press conference at the foreign ministry.
"We hope that the Israelis will not repeat their attacks," she said, but said "the right to self defense is recognized by all states.""
More irony? Has not Israel "claimed" and reserved the same right? Oh....thats right, the difference is that one 'action' is seen as "illegal" verses Syria's defending and acting as being "legal"......regardless of "proof"........
Here's what's even more baffling and ironic........check this out:
"UN Israeli Ambassador Gillerman: Israel Has A Right to Defend Her Citizens"
Link:
www.israelnewsagency.com...
Excerpt:
"Israel's UN ambassador defended the IDF attack on Islamic terror bases in Syria, saying that Syria was harboring and supporting terrorists. The U.N. Security Council is presently meeting at Syria's request to discuss the Israeli air raid on a Palestinian terror training base near Damascus on Sunday.
Syria's U.N. Ambassador Fayssal Mekdad called on the council to adopt a resolution condemning the attack as "military aggression."
Syria's draft calls for Israel to stop acts that could threaten regional security. It was unclear when the council would vote on the resolution, but a decision appeared unlikely Sunday.
Israeli Ambassador Dan Gillerman, speaking after Mekdad, accused Syria of providing "safe harbor, training facilities, funding, logistical support" to terrorist organizations. He said the strike was a "measured defensive response" and an act of self defense that did not violate international law.
He said it was ironic that Syria which Israel accuses of harboring terrorists, should call for a meeting to condemn the attack and compared it to Osama bin Laden demanding a Security Council meeting after the Sept. 11 attacks.
"Israel is at the forefront of the fight against terrorism [while] Syria is at the forefront of terrorism."
- Israeli Ambassador Gillerman
Gillerman said Israel acted in accordance with Article 51 of the U.N. Charter, which allows nations the right to self-defense. Syria has "put itself in the dock" by calling for Sunday's meeting, he said."
More irony?:
"U.S. Criticizes Syria After Israeli Raid"
Link:
news.yahoo.com.../nm/20031006/ts_nm/mideast_dc&printer=1
Excerpt:
"Bush said he had told Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon (news - web sites) by telephone on Sunday that Israel should not feel constrained in defending itself although he denied giving a green light for the air raid near Damascus.
"I made it very clear to the prime minister, like I have consistently done, that Israel's got a right to defend herself, that Israel must not feel constrained in terms of defending the homeland," Bush said in Washington."
regards
seekerof
[Edited on 11-10-2003 by Seekerof]
From the Bush 9/11 "playbook":
Today....Israel re-affirms the principles that:
"Israel: Those that harbor terror are 'legitimate targets'"
Link:
www.jpost.com.../JPArticle/ShowFull&cid=1065862091980&p=1008596981749
Excerpt:
"The Foreign Ministry deputy director of communications, Gidon Meir, said Saturday that Israel views countries that provide shelter and assistance to terrorists as legitimate targets.
Meir was responding to a Syrian Foreign Ministry statement which warned that Syria would exercise self-defense in case of a repetition of the Israeli aggression, a reference to the Israeli airstrike of an Islamic Jihad training base in Syrian territory last Sunday."
Let's see.....more irony.....
Syria, Iran, Saudi Arabia, etc.,......not only "harbor terrorists", they, in all truth and actuality, actively encourage, subsidize, train, arm, and enable them, the terrorists/militants, to attack Israel and any other 'target' deemed "appropriate"! These nation's are not merely "harboring" but they are participating accomplices, and, in truth, partners in the very "crimes"committed!!
regards
seekerof
[Edited on 11-10-2003 by Seekerof]
Today....Israel re-affirms the principles that:
"Israel: Those that harbor terror are 'legitimate targets'"
Link:
www.jpost.com.../JPArticle/ShowFull&cid=1065862091980&p=1008596981749
Excerpt:
"The Foreign Ministry deputy director of communications, Gidon Meir, said Saturday that Israel views countries that provide shelter and assistance to terrorists as legitimate targets.
Meir was responding to a Syrian Foreign Ministry statement which warned that Syria would exercise self-defense in case of a repetition of the Israeli aggression, a reference to the Israeli airstrike of an Islamic Jihad training base in Syrian territory last Sunday."
Let's see.....more irony.....
Syria, Iran, Saudi Arabia, etc.,......not only "harbor terrorists", they, in all truth and actuality, actively encourage, subsidize, train, arm, and enable them, the terrorists/militants, to attack Israel and any other 'target' deemed "appropriate"! These nation's are not merely "harboring" but they are participating accomplices, and, in truth, partners in the very "crimes"committed!!
regards
seekerof
[Edited on 11-10-2003 by Seekerof]
So their countries should be invaded or bombed? Their governments overthrown? As decided on by the US and Israel?
Frontier justice.
Frontier justice.
Skadi, Irael bulldozes empty homes, the homes of those who kill their children. There's a big difference.
There is a significance to what they do. The houses are built on, as the family grows. Generations will live under the same roof. Generations who teach their kids hate, pass along the lies they were taught, and foment the deaths of innocent women and children. The destruction of the houses is spitting in the faces of those who torment them.
Comparing the actions of Israel to the actions of the terrorists and their supporters cannot be done.
There is a significance to what they do. The houses are built on, as the family grows. Generations will live under the same roof. Generations who teach their kids hate, pass along the lies they were taught, and foment the deaths of innocent women and children. The destruction of the houses is spitting in the faces of those who torment them.
Comparing the actions of Israel to the actions of the terrorists and their supporters cannot be done.
Originally posted by Jakomo
So their countries should be invaded or bombed? Their governments overthrown? As decided on by the US and Israel?
Frontier justice.
No Jakomo....but this is the "War on Terrorism", supposedly, anyhow, right? Do you claim that Syria is not aiding, enabling, training, supplying, and harboring terrorist/militants?
I understand what you are saying, in light that many feel that all governments work with, train, intiate terrorism, in it's many forms....but the subject is Syria and the ongoing Arab/Israeli Conflict.
Solution? I don't know if there is one really....no one really seems to want to resolve this....
I did find this particular article interesting and you might also.....
"The Big Picture"
Link:
mason.gmu.edu...
What I find very ironic about this whole deal is that Syria harbors, supplies, trains, enables, aids, etc. terrorist/militants YET :
"Syria on UN Counter-Terrorism Commitee Mocks the Civilized World"
Link: is dead but was reported by The Wall Street Journal on October 8, 2003
Article:
"Syria on UN Counter-Terrorism Commitee Mocks the Civilized World
The Wall Street Journal
Self-Defense Sans Frontieres
By RUTH WEDGWOOD
If you can't enjoy a good laugh, you shouldn't serve as a diplomat at the United Nations. One source of amusement is Syria's current membership on the U.N. Counter-Terrorism Committee.
There are, of course, widely circulated reports that Syria has offered safe haven and training camps to groups such as the Islamic Jihad, Hamas and the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine-General Command.
Any succor to terror groups that seek out noncombatant civilians for mayhem and maiming for "political" purposes might seem to be inconsistent with the Counter-Terrorism Committee's program.
The post-September 11 legal standard set by the Security Council requires that all member states "refrain from providing any form of support, active or passive, to entities or persons involved in terrorist acts."
The U.N. Security Council has extended the lesson taught to the Taliban in Afghanistan. States are no longer at liberty to serve as a landlord or a supply house in aiding terrorist groups. Under the mandate of Security Council Resolution 1373, they must shut down terrorist financing and training, and arrest or exclude the actors who seek to maim and kill civilians as a political technique.
Unembarrassed by its obligations of membership on the Security Council, Syria has announced a rather different standard. In a little-remarked September 2002 Counter-Terrorism Committee filing, Syria reported that it could not regard as terrorism any acts committed in a "legitimate struggle against foreign occupation."
More particularly, Syria has elevated the Arab League convention on terrorism, adopted in Cairo in April 1998, above its obligations to the United Nations. The 1998 convention says that "all cases of struggle by whatever means, including armed struggle, against foreign occupation and aggression for liberation and self-determination, in accordance with principles of international law, shall not be regarded as an offense."
Yet Syria and the Arab League are in a legal cul-de-sac. The international law of armed conflict does not permit the deliberate targeting of civilians by suicide bombings, no matter what the occasion or cause for struggle.
The unwillingness of the Arab world to acknowledge this limit to their grievances may explain Israel's recent decision to mount a pinprick attack on a training camp northwest of Damascus. Syria's ambassador to Washington insisted after the attack that there could be no terrorist groups afoot in his country, under the watchful eye of President Bashar Assad. (In the same BBC broadcast, when asked if Syria had chemical weapons, the ambassador said he couldn't hear the question.)
One supposes that once again Syria has founded its idiosyncratic definition of terrorism on the Arab League's political dictionary.
Fighting terrorism in a purely reactive way won't work. That view was embraced, at least intellectually, by President Clinton, who understood early on that terrorist training camps should not be permitted to flourish. In August 1998, after al Qaeda destroyed our embassies in East Africa (killing hundreds of civilians and wounding 4,000), the United States mounted a limited air strike against al Qaeda training camps in Afghanistan.
Unfortunately, the U.S. action was largely symbolic, and we did not succeed in dislodging al Qaeda from its Afghan rookery in time to prevent the devastating September 11 attacks.
In the wake of Israel's strike against the Ain Saheb military training camp, the U.S. has now asked both Syria and Israel to "avoid actions" that "could heighten tensions." On Monday, however, President Bush told reporters that "Israel must not feel constrained in defending the homeland."
Damascus must understand that it is not safe or sane to allow guerrilla leaders to set up command posts or training camps on its territory. Sovereign borders will not serve as a one-way valve for guerrilla attacks abroad. September 11 has changed the standards of state responsibility, and pro forma denials will not suffice.
To seize higher ground, Syrian President Bashar Assad should lead the Arab League by acknowledging that all civilians, Israeli and Palestinian alike, deserve protection against suicide attacks. Terrorism is the deliberate use of force against protected persons. It is not defined by the political objectives of the actor.
The standards of international humanitarian law and the law of armed conflict are set by treaty and international custom. They make no exception for passionate liberators who wish, for an instrumental purpose, to target seaside cafes crowded with Arab and Jewish civilians.
The identity of the suicide bomber points out the tragedy of this intellectual and moral confusion. The bomber was a young Palestinian woman, with a life ahead of her. She was also a lawyer.
Ms. Wedgwood is a professor of international law and diplomacy at Johns Hopkins and a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations."
Some good reading:
"Jihad and Terrorism Studies Project"
Link:
www.memri.org...
Focus on:
Special Dispatch Series - No. 570 - Jihad and Terrorism Studies, September 10, 2003
Syrian Foreign Ministry Spokeswoman Glorifies Martyrs and Martyrdom
and.......
Special Dispatch Series - No. 555 - Jihad and Terrorism Studies, August 21, 2003
Syrian Government Daily Celebrates Hamas Military Wing Namesake � Izziddin Al-Qassam
Good ole' United freakin' Nation's........
More?
"Shalom to UN: Supporting Arafat contradicts Mideast peace efforts"
Link:not working but reported by the Jerusalem Post on September, 22nd, 03
Article:
"Speaking before the United Nations' international conference on counter-terrorism, Foreign Minister Silvan Shalom on Monday denounced the recent UN resolution demanding Israel retract threats to remove Palestinian Authority Chairman Yasser Arafat.
"Ten years have passed since Arafat vowed to put a peaceful end to the conflict with Israel," Shalom said to the some 20 heads of state attending the conference. "In those ten years, 1126 Israelis were murdered in over 19,000 terror attacks, including 102 suicide bombings.
"This is equivalent to the death of 56,000 Americans This massacre has got to stop."
Shalom stressed: "Supporting Arafat contradicts all Mideast peace efforts, as well as the global battle against terrorism. Instead of uniting in support of Arafat, the international community must unite in support of the Palestinian interest to end terrorism and work with Israel to create a better future."
Last week's resolution, which passed by a vote of 133 to 4 with 15 abstentions, was described by sources in the Palestinian Authority as a 'slap in the face to Israel.'
Israel, however, dismissed the resolution as irrelevant. 'There is no need to get alarmed,' Prime Minister Ariel Sharon said Sunday. 'There is no need to be swept away by every UN resolution. The UN is not a body where there is... friendship to Israel or a balanced approach.'"
I guess it very safe to assume that a Arab/Israeli Peace Solution WILL NOT come from the UN, eh?
regards
seekerof
[Edited on 12-10-2003 by Seekerof]
Just in case no one wants to admit that Syria has connections to any terrorist groups, organizations, etc....
"Syria's Ties To Al Qaeda and Other Terrorists"
Link:
www.imra.org.il...
www.kokhavivpublications.com...
Excerpts:
"I. Introduction
Syria's links to terrorist groups have received widespread public attention
in recent weeks......
II. Syria's Support for Al Qaeda......
III. Syrian Support for Iraqi Terrorists......
V.Syria Support for Hezbollah......
VI. Hezbollah's Links to Al Qaeda....."
"U S� Syria, A Conflictive Relation"
Link:
www.paktoday.com...
"TERROR FROM DAMASCUS, PART II:
HIZBALLAH AND AL-QAEDA TERRORIST ACTIVITY IN SYRIA"
Link:
www.washingtoninstitute.org...
Hezbollah
Link:
www.terrorismanswers.org...
No comments........?
No rebuttal?
No 'and', 'if', or 'but'?
regards
seekerof
"Syria's Ties To Al Qaeda and Other Terrorists"
Link:
www.imra.org.il...
www.kokhavivpublications.com...
Excerpts:
"I. Introduction
Syria's links to terrorist groups have received widespread public attention
in recent weeks......
II. Syria's Support for Al Qaeda......
III. Syrian Support for Iraqi Terrorists......
V.Syria Support for Hezbollah......
VI. Hezbollah's Links to Al Qaeda....."
"U S� Syria, A Conflictive Relation"
Link:
www.paktoday.com...
"TERROR FROM DAMASCUS, PART II:
HIZBALLAH AND AL-QAEDA TERRORIST ACTIVITY IN SYRIA"
Link:
www.washingtoninstitute.org...
Hezbollah
Link:
www.terrorismanswers.org...
No comments........?
No rebuttal?
No 'and', 'if', or 'but'?
regards
seekerof
The only way to stop terrorism is to strike at its' root causes.
You can kill as many terrorist leaders as you want, they become martyrs to their brethren, and it only serves to increase recruitment. For every "senior Hamas leader" and "Jihad official" that Israel assassinates, five jump up and take their place.
But Israel is uninterested in taking care of the root causes, otherwise they would withdraw settlements and stop throwing their weight around. Did you realize that ever since the beginning of the Jewish holiday that the Gaza Strip and West Bank have been completely closed down by the IDF? COMPLETELY SHUT DOWN, nobody allowed to leave or come in.
You reap what you sow. If Israel's Arab neighbors start acting all belligerent and pigheaded, it's because they've learned that that's the way Israel acts to its neighbors, and even though they are constantly censured by the UN, they continue their crimes.
What's good for the goose is good for the gander.
How many Jewish terrorist groups are in Israel?
jakomo
You can kill as many terrorist leaders as you want, they become martyrs to their brethren, and it only serves to increase recruitment. For every "senior Hamas leader" and "Jihad official" that Israel assassinates, five jump up and take their place.
But Israel is uninterested in taking care of the root causes, otherwise they would withdraw settlements and stop throwing their weight around. Did you realize that ever since the beginning of the Jewish holiday that the Gaza Strip and West Bank have been completely closed down by the IDF? COMPLETELY SHUT DOWN, nobody allowed to leave or come in.
You reap what you sow. If Israel's Arab neighbors start acting all belligerent and pigheaded, it's because they've learned that that's the way Israel acts to its neighbors, and even though they are constantly censured by the UN, they continue their crimes.
What's good for the goose is good for the gander.
How many Jewish terrorist groups are in Israel?
jakomo
Great thread with loads of information and decent commentary. I also like how the thread is somewhat balanced between the views. So here is my
personal view since you asked.
Both sides are right and wrong. There cannot be peace as long as there are retaliations by either side. As Bush so accurately put it...
"These terrorist acts and the responses have got to end" --Bush Rmks To Travel Pool, 8/13/01
Well said Mr. Prez.
Now terrorism is defined as the unlawful use or threatened use of force or violence by a person or an organized group against people or property with the intention of intimidating or coercing societies or governments, often for ideological or political reasons.
All parties involved are guilty of the above. Syria, Iraq, Iran, Egypt, U.S.A and Israel (and some others). So it's basically just a bunch of terrorists fighting it out. In the end, taking sides becomes moot. The outcome was already decided back in the 1800s by Darwin. The strongest terrorist will win.
Both sides are right and wrong. There cannot be peace as long as there are retaliations by either side. As Bush so accurately put it...
"These terrorist acts and the responses have got to end" --Bush Rmks To Travel Pool, 8/13/01
Well said Mr. Prez.
Now terrorism is defined as the unlawful use or threatened use of force or violence by a person or an organized group against people or property with the intention of intimidating or coercing societies or governments, often for ideological or political reasons.
All parties involved are guilty of the above. Syria, Iraq, Iran, Egypt, U.S.A and Israel (and some others). So it's basically just a bunch of terrorists fighting it out. In the end, taking sides becomes moot. The outcome was already decided back in the 1800s by Darwin. The strongest terrorist will win.
Jakomo said:
"But Israel is uninterested in taking care of the root causes, otherwise they would withdraw settlements and stop throwing their weight around."
Well, I would certainly beg to differ Jakomo. Acts against Israel were happening long before those "settlements". As to Israel "throwing it's weight around"....hmmm, whats the problem with that? Seems Syria or any other can "throw their weight around" when they so please....oppps, thats right....as long as it is 'aimed' at Israel, it's ok!? Then when Israel takes the bat out and clobbers one, they go bagging azz to the UN and cry: "condemnation."
Jakomo said:
"You reap what you sow. If Israel's Arab neighbors start acting all belligerent and pigheaded, it's because they've learned that that's the way Israel acts to its neighbors...."
Sorry to break that lovely sentence you had going there but you had two distinct idea's or thought's going there that needed to be answered.
Try this one Jakomo: You reap what you sow. If the Arab nation's that wish and plan for the destruction of the nation of Israel would stop acting belligerent and pigheaded; stop supporting, aiding, supplying, training, encouraging, harboring, and enabling terrorists/militants groups and/or organizations.....that would certainly be a a great start! Besides, Israel has learned that thats the way most Arab nation's act towards their neighbor.......
Your right Jakomo...."you" reap what you sow.....try this one:
"THE ARAB-ISLAMIC MIDEAST TERROR FROM 1929 TILL TODAY"
Link:
www.almidfarah.fanspace.com...
"Hizbollah warns: We'll open new front on Israel"
Link: (posted 10/12/2003)
[url]http://news.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2003/10/12/wmid12.xml&sSheet=/news/2003/10/12/ixnewstop.html/news/2003/10/12/wmid12.xml[/ur l]
Excerpt:
"Syrian-backed terrorists have vowed to escalate attacks on Israel from Lebanon, describing last Sunday's raid near Damascus as the "first round in a new Middle East war".
Senior leaders of the Lebanese-based Hizbollah group warned that the raid, on an alleged Palestinian training camp, would inflame a border that had been relatively quiet for 30 years.
Syrian president Bashar Assad said that the raid was an Israeli attempt to provoke war "It is wrong to bear an attack without a response."
Question: Isn't Hezbollah backed by Syria? Why is NOT Syria reigning in Hezbollah? Obvious......
Jakomo said:
".....and even though they are constantly censured by the UN, they continue their crimes.
What's good for the goose is good for the gander."
Yes, Israel is constantly censored by the UN. When those neighbors continue to harbor, aid, supply, train, fund, and enable terrorists/militants in attacking Israel's citizen's.....two things happen:
1) Israel turns around and militarily 'slams' them one and then they go bagging azz to the UN claiming "innocence" and asking for condemnation. The UN is, in essence, a supporter of "terrorism" or could even be considered pro-terrorists. The UN is nothing more than an ineffective tool and most everyone knows this, including the terrorists and those nation's who are involved with them. I mean, geez Jakomo, Syria sits on the UN Counter-Terrorism Commitee!!!! Like wtf? Whats that mean? Syria and other nations that support, harbor, etc, etc, etc, etc, etc, terrorists/militants can do what they wish and want against Israel and also help in the "war on terrorism" also?! Hypocrisy on a UN level...thats what it is...plain and simple! And then you have the nerve to label what Israel does as a "crime'?! No....I don't see it that way nor buy that line of BS.....Israel is acting under Article 51 of the U.N. Charter, which allows nations the right to self-defense....the "crime" being committed is those "that actively encourage, subsidize, train, arm, and enable them, the terrorists/militants, to attack Israel and any other 'target' deemed "appropriate"! These nation's are not merely "harboring" but they are participating accomplices, and, in truth, partners in the very "crimes"committed!!" Your right Jakomo......whats necessarily good for the goose is diffently good for the gander!
Jakomo said:
"How many Jewish terrorist groups are in Israel?"
Tell me. As much as you side with the terrorism and the terrorists act perpetuated against Israel, I would have figured you would have known this. It's quite obvious to me and others that you feel that Israel or the IDF, is the terrorists here and everyone else around (ie: the neighbors) are the victims.
How about define "victims"? The whole conflict issue between the Arab's and Israelis is a "victim". Those that have lost their lives unjustly and innocently, on both sides, are "victims". But, as to this topic between Israel and Syria, who is the "victim" this time around?
I know this much.....Israel has taken the gloves off and IS, very much, serving notice to it's "neighbors."
regards
seekerof
[Edited on 13-10-2003 by Seekerof]
"But Israel is uninterested in taking care of the root causes, otherwise they would withdraw settlements and stop throwing their weight around."
Well, I would certainly beg to differ Jakomo. Acts against Israel were happening long before those "settlements". As to Israel "throwing it's weight around"....hmmm, whats the problem with that? Seems Syria or any other can "throw their weight around" when they so please....oppps, thats right....as long as it is 'aimed' at Israel, it's ok!? Then when Israel takes the bat out and clobbers one, they go bagging azz to the UN and cry: "condemnation."
Jakomo said:
"You reap what you sow. If Israel's Arab neighbors start acting all belligerent and pigheaded, it's because they've learned that that's the way Israel acts to its neighbors...."
Sorry to break that lovely sentence you had going there but you had two distinct idea's or thought's going there that needed to be answered.
Try this one Jakomo: You reap what you sow. If the Arab nation's that wish and plan for the destruction of the nation of Israel would stop acting belligerent and pigheaded; stop supporting, aiding, supplying, training, encouraging, harboring, and enabling terrorists/militants groups and/or organizations.....that would certainly be a a great start! Besides, Israel has learned that thats the way most Arab nation's act towards their neighbor.......
Your right Jakomo...."you" reap what you sow.....try this one:
"THE ARAB-ISLAMIC MIDEAST TERROR FROM 1929 TILL TODAY"
Link:
www.almidfarah.fanspace.com...
"Hizbollah warns: We'll open new front on Israel"
Link: (posted 10/12/2003)
[url]http://news.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2003/10/12/wmid12.xml&sSheet=/news/2003/10/12/ixnewstop.html/news/2003/10/12/wmid12.xml[/ur l]
Excerpt:
"Syrian-backed terrorists have vowed to escalate attacks on Israel from Lebanon, describing last Sunday's raid near Damascus as the "first round in a new Middle East war".
Senior leaders of the Lebanese-based Hizbollah group warned that the raid, on an alleged Palestinian training camp, would inflame a border that had been relatively quiet for 30 years.
Syrian president Bashar Assad said that the raid was an Israeli attempt to provoke war "It is wrong to bear an attack without a response."
Question: Isn't Hezbollah backed by Syria? Why is NOT Syria reigning in Hezbollah? Obvious......
Jakomo said:
".....and even though they are constantly censured by the UN, they continue their crimes.
What's good for the goose is good for the gander."
Yes, Israel is constantly censored by the UN. When those neighbors continue to harbor, aid, supply, train, fund, and enable terrorists/militants in attacking Israel's citizen's.....two things happen:
1) Israel turns around and militarily 'slams' them one and then they go bagging azz to the UN claiming "innocence" and asking for condemnation. The UN is, in essence, a supporter of "terrorism" or could even be considered pro-terrorists. The UN is nothing more than an ineffective tool and most everyone knows this, including the terrorists and those nation's who are involved with them. I mean, geez Jakomo, Syria sits on the UN Counter-Terrorism Commitee!!!! Like wtf? Whats that mean? Syria and other nations that support, harbor, etc, etc, etc, etc, etc, terrorists/militants can do what they wish and want against Israel and also help in the "war on terrorism" also?! Hypocrisy on a UN level...thats what it is...plain and simple! And then you have the nerve to label what Israel does as a "crime'?! No....I don't see it that way nor buy that line of BS.....Israel is acting under Article 51 of the U.N. Charter, which allows nations the right to self-defense....the "crime" being committed is those "that actively encourage, subsidize, train, arm, and enable them, the terrorists/militants, to attack Israel and any other 'target' deemed "appropriate"! These nation's are not merely "harboring" but they are participating accomplices, and, in truth, partners in the very "crimes"committed!!" Your right Jakomo......whats necessarily good for the goose is diffently good for the gander!
Jakomo said:
"How many Jewish terrorist groups are in Israel?"
Tell me. As much as you side with the terrorism and the terrorists act perpetuated against Israel, I would have figured you would have known this. It's quite obvious to me and others that you feel that Israel or the IDF, is the terrorists here and everyone else around (ie: the neighbors) are the victims.
How about define "victims"? The whole conflict issue between the Arab's and Israelis is a "victim". Those that have lost their lives unjustly and innocently, on both sides, are "victims". But, as to this topic between Israel and Syria, who is the "victim" this time around?
I know this much.....Israel has taken the gloves off and IS, very much, serving notice to it's "neighbors."
regards
seekerof
[Edited on 13-10-2003 by Seekerof]
Seeker: "As to Israel "throwing it's weight around"....hmmm, whats the problem with that? Seems Syria or any other can "throw their weight
around" when they so please....oppps, thats right....as long as it is 'aimed' at Israel, it's ok!? "
I am saying that if Israel launches a missile strike into Syria to take out a "suspected" terrorist base, what is to stop Syria from pre-emptively launching missiles into Israel in order to take out missile batteries that are aimed at Syrian soil.
Nothing. Nothing is to stop them, because if Israel doesn't respect Syria's borders, why should Syria respect Israel's? Answer : they don't have to. Israel changes the rules as it suits them.
"You reap what you sow. If the Arab nation's that wish and plan for the destruction of the nation of Israel would stop acting belligerent and pigheaded; stop supporting, aiding, supplying, training, encouraging, harboring, and enabling terrorists/militants groups and/or organizations.....that would certainly be a a great start! Besides, Israel has learned that thats the way most Arab nation's act towards their neighbor....... "
Okay, let's try this again. Most of these terrorist organizations use the Palestinian state of affairs as their lynchpin, their prime example as to how Israel mistreats Arabs. The only way to stop that perception is to start treating the Palestinians with respect. As in, GIVE THEM THEIR COUNTRY BACK AND GIVE THEM THE RIGHT OF RETURN TO PEOPLE ILLEGALLY STOPPED FROM RE-ENTERING PALESTINE.
Until that happens, nothing can be fixed. Israel refuses to do this, and it's well-documented. So they are the main culprit.
They are the aggressors and the Palestinians are the victims. You have a captive civilian populace fighting against the 5th largest army in the world. Tell me who's the victim in that fight. The guys in the armored tanks or the 10 year old kids throwing rocks at them? Do rocks really hurt a tank? Do 40mm shells hurt kids?
"And then you have the nerve to label what Israel does as a "crime'?! No....I don't see it that way nor buy that line of BS.....Israel is acting under Article 51 of the U.N. Charter, which allows nations the right to self-defense....the "crime" being committed is those "that actively encourage, subsidize, train, arm, and enable them, the terrorists/militants, to attack Israel and any other 'target' deemed "appropriate"! "
Explain to me how Syria can't use Article 51 to validate a massive Arab army moving in and wiping Israel from the map. "We are sure they are planning to attack their neighbours, and they have nukes, so we are going to pre-emptively destroy them."
As far as I'm concerned, Israel is bringing down ruin upon it's own citizens by acting belligerently and in opposition to WORLD OPINION.
The biggest threat to Israeli national security is Ariel Sharon and Zionism.
jako
I am saying that if Israel launches a missile strike into Syria to take out a "suspected" terrorist base, what is to stop Syria from pre-emptively launching missiles into Israel in order to take out missile batteries that are aimed at Syrian soil.
Nothing. Nothing is to stop them, because if Israel doesn't respect Syria's borders, why should Syria respect Israel's? Answer : they don't have to. Israel changes the rules as it suits them.
"You reap what you sow. If the Arab nation's that wish and plan for the destruction of the nation of Israel would stop acting belligerent and pigheaded; stop supporting, aiding, supplying, training, encouraging, harboring, and enabling terrorists/militants groups and/or organizations.....that would certainly be a a great start! Besides, Israel has learned that thats the way most Arab nation's act towards their neighbor....... "
Okay, let's try this again. Most of these terrorist organizations use the Palestinian state of affairs as their lynchpin, their prime example as to how Israel mistreats Arabs. The only way to stop that perception is to start treating the Palestinians with respect. As in, GIVE THEM THEIR COUNTRY BACK AND GIVE THEM THE RIGHT OF RETURN TO PEOPLE ILLEGALLY STOPPED FROM RE-ENTERING PALESTINE.
Until that happens, nothing can be fixed. Israel refuses to do this, and it's well-documented. So they are the main culprit.
They are the aggressors and the Palestinians are the victims. You have a captive civilian populace fighting against the 5th largest army in the world. Tell me who's the victim in that fight. The guys in the armored tanks or the 10 year old kids throwing rocks at them? Do rocks really hurt a tank? Do 40mm shells hurt kids?
"And then you have the nerve to label what Israel does as a "crime'?! No....I don't see it that way nor buy that line of BS.....Israel is acting under Article 51 of the U.N. Charter, which allows nations the right to self-defense....the "crime" being committed is those "that actively encourage, subsidize, train, arm, and enable them, the terrorists/militants, to attack Israel and any other 'target' deemed "appropriate"! "
Explain to me how Syria can't use Article 51 to validate a massive Arab army moving in and wiping Israel from the map. "We are sure they are planning to attack their neighbours, and they have nukes, so we are going to pre-emptively destroy them."
As far as I'm concerned, Israel is bringing down ruin upon it's own citizens by acting belligerently and in opposition to WORLD OPINION.
The biggest threat to Israeli national security is Ariel Sharon and Zionism.
jako
Jakomo said:
"I am saying that if Israel launches a missile strike into Syria to take out a "suspected" terrorist base, what is to stop Syria from pre-emptively launching missiles into Israel in order to take out missile batteries that are aimed at Syrian soil.
Nothing. Nothing is to stop them, because if Israel doesn't respect Syria's borders, why should Syria respect Israel's? Answer : they don't have to. Israel changes the rules as it suits them."
Your correct in one sense and off in another. Your correct that Syria has the right to act under Article 51 of the UN Charter. What's stopping them or preventing them is two fold:
1) they have numerous terrorist/militant groups and organizations that they support, harbor, enable, etc, etc, that will do the "under-the-table" fighting for them....the Syrian military has to do nothing.....just as they did when those F-16's roared in and bombed that "abandoned" supposed "terrorist/militant camp". Syria didn't react militarily...why?
Maybe this can answer that question:
"ISRAEL: Why Syria Can't Stop the Israeli Air Force"
Link:
www.strategypage.com...
2) As to "nothing" stopping Syria from launching a reprisal strike back or firing missiles.....it's a matter of Syria knowing it would get its azz whipped and the sad thing is that as defiant and as much bravado Bashir wishes to spout, he knows it as well! Btw....Syria has no rules to play by, except their two favorite's: Baggin' azz to the UN when Israel looks cross-eyed at them.....and ask for condemnation.....looks great for world opinion...wouldn't you say? ANd the use of the terrorist/militants.....
Jakomo said:
"The only way to stop that perception is to start treating the Palestinians with respect. As in, GIVE THEM THEIR COUNTRY BACK AND GIVE THEM THE RIGHT OF RETURN TO PEOPLE ILLEGALLY STOPPED FROM RE-ENTERING PALESTINE.
Until that happens, nothing can be fixed. Israel refuses to do this, and it's well-documented. So they are the main culprit."
With all due respect Jakomo....I again beg to differ. People keep saying that Israel illegially took the Palestinian state away from the Palestinian when in all truth, it was the UN. Seems to me the "beef" is with the UN and that would also make the UN the "main culprit."
You have never answered this question when it was posed to you before...I will pose it again.....Why, does not the Arab nations get together and give the Palestinian people a state? I'm sure that many, by now, have asked themselves the same question.....
Jakomo said:
"They are the aggressors and the Palestinians are the victims. You have a captive civilian populace fighting against the 5th largest army in the world. Tell me who's the victim in that fight. The guys in the armored tanks or the 10 year old kids throwing rocks at them? Do rocks really hurt a tank? Do 40mm shells hurt kids?"
"Aggressors" can be defined a number of ways...depends on who you ask.....you ask a Palestinian and he/she will probably say Israel......you ask an Israeli and he/she will probably say the Palestianian's. You ask Syria, in regards to a couple Sundays ago, and they will say Israel....ask the Israeli's after the suicide bombing and the connections found....and they will say everyone around them including Syria....so the point about "aggressors" is mute...it's in the eye of the beholder.
You have a militants....not civilians....being trained, armed like a military, supplied, given refuge, etc......if you want to play and act like the big boys....you get hammered like the big boys. Besides...if you insist on calling them "civilians" and they always attack (ie:suicide bombings) civilian targets.....it seems natural that the military for that nation will act in appropriate kind. Again, you talk "victims"....on behalf of the Palestinian cause(s).....what about those civilian's, men, women, kids, that get blown to bits...thats right....mute point huh? Thats not the same as "the guys in the armored tanks or the 10 year old kids throwing rocks at them? Do rocks really hurt a tank? Do 40mm shells hurt kids?".................Whats the difference Jakomo...really....?
Jakomo said:
"Explain to me how Syria can't use Article 51 to validate a massive Arab army moving in and wiping Israel from the map."
I never claimed Syria couldn't use Article 51.....as to the "massive Arab army".....are you refering to Syria's "massive military might" or the combined Arab world? Syria won't and can not do it alone....maybe Eygpt will join...doubtful....maybe Suadi Arabia....maybe....hey, what about Iran? Btw....Israel might have the 5th largest military/army, but they are ranked 3rd most effective fighting force on this planet. Don't mean much, but be assurd, it will require more than Syrai to take on Israel in a fight.....Bashir also knows this.....Iran don't want none of Israel either....from what I have been reading.......
Numbers are deceptive.....the books and sources online always quote numbers and types of equipment....never talk of training and monies invested in such....theirs the difference....bet on it.
Jakomo said:
"The biggest threat to Israeli national security is Ariel Sharon and Zionism"
I can agree with the first half.....get rid of Sharon and get a better, more respectable leader in Israel would be helpful. As to Zionism....I think that it is here to stay.....not much to be done about that but changing the "mind-set."
Here's what Zionism says:
"1. The Jewish Problem and Its Solution
ZIONISM is a national liberation movement, identical in most ways to other liberation movements that leftists and progressives the world over -- and in virtually every case but this one -- fervently support. This exceptionalism is also visible at the reverse end of the political spectrum: In every other instance, right-wingers like Patrick Buchanan oppose national liberation movements that are under the spell of Marxist delusions and committed to violent means. But they make an exception for the one that Palestinians have aimed at the Jews. The unique opposition to a Jewish homeland at both ends of the political spectrum identifies the problem that Zionism was created to solve.
The "Jewish problem" is just another name for the fact that Jews are the most universally hated and persecuted ethnic group in history. The Zionist founders believed that hatred of Jews was a direct consequence of their stateless condition. As long as Jews were aliens in every society they found themselves in, they would always be seen as interlopers, their loyalties would be suspect and persecution would follow. This was what happened to Captain Alfred Dreyfus, whom French anti-Semites falsely accused of spying and who was put on trial for treason by the French government in the 19th Century. Theodore Herzl was an assimilated, westernized Jew, who witnessed the Dreyfus frame- up in Paris and went on to lead the Zionist movement.
Herzl and other Zionist founders believed that if Jews had a nation of their own, the very fact would "normalize" their condition in the community of nations. Jews had been without a state since the beginning of the diaspora, when the Romans expelled them from Judea on the west bank of the Jordan River, some 2,000 years before. Once the Jews obtained a homeland � Judea itself seemed a logical site -- and were again like other peoples, the Zionists believed anti-Semitism would wither on its poisonous vine and the Jewish problem would disappear.
Here is what happened instead.
2. The Beginnings
In the 1920s, among their final acts as victors in World War I, the British and French created the states that now define the Middle East out of the ashes of the empire of their defeated Turkish adversary. In a region that the Ottoman Turks had controlled for hundreds of years, Britain and France drew the boundaries of the new states, Syria Lebanon and Iraq. Previously, the British had promised the Jewish Zionists that they could establish a "national home" in a portion of what remained of the area, which was known as the Palestine Mandate. But in 1921 the British separated 80 percent of the Mandate, east of the Jordan, and created the Arab kingdom of "Transjordan." It was created for the Arabian monarch King Abdullah, who had been defeated in tribal warfare in the Arabian Peninsula and lacked a seat of power. Abudllah�s tribe was Hashemite, while the vast majority of Abdullah�s subjects were Palestinian Arabs.
What was left of the original Palestine Mandate � between the west bank of the Jordan and the Mediterranean Sea � had been settled by Arabs and Jews. Jews, in fact, had lived in the area continuously for 3,700 years, even after the Romans destroyed their state in Judea in AD 70. Arabs became the dominant local population for the first time in the 7th Century AD as a result of the Muslim invasions. The Arabs were largely nomads who had no distinctive language or culture to separate them from other Arabs. In all the time since, they had made no attempt to create an independent Palestinian state west or east of the Jordan and none was ever established.
In 1948, at the request of the Jews who were living in Palestine, the United Nations voted to partition the remaining quarter of the original Mandate to make a Jewish homeland possible. Under the partition plan, the Arabs were given the Jews� ancient home in Judea and Samaria � now known as the West Bank. The Jews were allotted three slivers of disconnected land along the Mediterranean and the Sinai desert. They were also given access to their holy city of Jerusalem, but as an island cut off from the slivers, surrounded by Arab land and under international control. Sixty percent of the land allotted to the Jews was the Negev desert. Out of these unpromising parts, the Jews created a new state, Israel, in 1948. At this time, the idea of a Palestinian nation, or a movement to create one did not even exist.
At the moment of Israel�s birth, Palestinian Arabs lived on roughly 90 percent of the original Palestine Mandate � in Transjordan and in the UN partition area, but also in the new state of Israel itself. There were 800,000 Arabs living in Israel alongside 1.2 million Jews. At the same time, Jews were legally barred from settling in the 35,000 square miles of Palestinian Transjordan, which eventually was renamed simply "Jordan."
The Arab population in the slivers called Israel had actually more than tripled since the Zionists first began settling the region in significant numbers in the 1880s.The reason for this increase was that the Jewish settlers had brought industrial and agricultural development with them, which attracted Arab immigrants to what had previously been a sparsely settled and economically destitute area.
If the Palestinian Arabs had been willing to accept this arrangement in which they received 90 percent of the land in the Palestine Mandate, and under which they benefited from the industry, enterprise and political democracy the Jews brought to the region, there would have been no Middle East conflict. But this was not to be.
Instead, the Arab League � representing five neighboring Arab states � declared war on Israel on the day of its creation, and five Arab armies invaded the slivers with the aim of destroying the infant Jewish state. During the fighting, according to the UN mediator on the scene, an estimated 472,000 Arabs fled their homes to escape the dangers. They planned on returning after an Arab victory and the destruction of the Jewish state.
But the Jews -- many of them recent Holocaust survivors -- refused to be defeated. Instead, the five Arab armies that had invaded their slivers were repelled. Yet there was no peace. Even though their armies were beaten, the Arab states were determined to carry on their campaign of destruction, and to remain formally at war with the Israeli state. After the defeat of the Arab armies, the Palestinians who lived in the Arab area of the UN partition did not attempt to create a state of their own. Instead, in 1950, Jordan annexed the entire West Bank.
3. Refugees: Jewish and Arab
As a result of the annexation and the continuing state of war, the Arab refugees who had fled the Israeli slivers did not return. There was a refugee flow into Israel, but it was a flow of Jews who had been expelled from the Arab countries. All over the Middle East, Jews were forced to leave lands they had lived on for centuries. Although Israel was a tiny geographical area and a fledgling state, its government welcomed and resettled 600,000 Jewish refugees from the Arab countries.
At the same time, the Jews resumed their work of creating a new nation in what was now a single sliver of land. Israel, had annexed a small amount of territory to make their state defensible, including a land bridge that included Jerusalem.
In the years that followed, the Israelis made their desert bloom. They built the only industrialized economy in the entire Middle East. They built the only liberal democracy in the Middle East. They treated the Arabs who remained in Israel well. To this day the very large Arab minority, which lives inside the state of Israel, has more rights and privileges than any other Arab population in the entire Middle East.
This is especially true of the Arabs living under Yasser Arafat�s corrupt dictatorship, the Palestine Authority, which today administers the West Bank and the Gaza strip, and whose Arab subjects have no human rights. In 1997, in a fit of pique against the Oslo Accords, Palestinian spokesman Edward Said himself blurted this out, calling Arafat "our Papa Doc" � after the sadistic dictator of Haiti � and complaining that there was "a total absence of law or the rule of law in the Palestinian autonomy areas."
The present Middle East conflict is said to be about the "occupied territories" � the West Bank of the Jordan and the Gaza strip � and about Israel�s refusal to "give them up." But during the first twenty years of the Arab-Israeli conflict, Israel did not control the West Bank. In 1950, when Jordan annexed the West Bank, there was no Arab outrage. Nor did the Middle East conflict with the Jews subside.
The reason there was no Arab outrage over the annexation of the West Bank was because Jordan is a state whose ethnic majority is Palestinian Arabs. On the other hand, the Palestinians of Jordan are disenfranchised by the ruling Hashemite minority. Despite this fact, in the years following the annexation the Palestinians displayed no interest in achieving "self-determination" in Hashemite Jordan. It is only the presence of Jews, apparently, that incites this claim. The idea that the current conflict is about "occupied territories" is only one of the many large Arab deceits -- now widely accepted -- that have distorted the history of the Middle East wars.
4. The Arab Wars Against Israel
In 1967, Egypt, Syria and Jordan attacked Israel for a second time and were again defeated. It was in repelling these aggressors that Israel came to control the West Bank and the Gaza strip, as well as the oil-rich Sinai desert. Israel had every right to annex these territories captured from the aggressors � a time honored ritual among nations, and in fact the precise way that Syria, Lebanon, Iraq and Jordan had come into existence themselves. But Israel did not do so. On the other hand, neither did it withdraw its armies or relinquish its control.
The reason was that the Arab aggressors once again refused to make peace. Instead, they declared themselves still at war with Israel, a threat no Israeli government could afford to ignore. By this time, Israel was a country of 2 or 3 million surrounded by declared enemies whose combined populations numbered over 100 million. Geographically Israel was so small that at one point it was less than ten miles across. No responsible Israeli government could relinquish a territorial buffer while its hostile neighbors were still formally at war. This is the reality that frames the Middle East conflict.
In 1973, six years after the second Arab war against the Jews, the Arab armies again attacked Israel. The attack was led by Syria and Egypt, abetted by Iraq, Libya, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait and five other countries who gave military support to the aggressors, including an Iraqi division of 18,000 men. Israel again defeated the Arab forces. Afterwards, Egypt � and Egypt alone -- agreed to make a formal peace.
The peace was signed by Egyptian president, Anwar Sadat, who was subsequently assassinated by Islamic radicals, paying for his statesmanship with his life. Sadat is one of three Arab leaders assassinated by other Arabs for making peace with the Jews.
Under the Camp David accords that Sadat signed, Israel returned the entire Sinai with all its oil riches. This act demonstrated once and for all that the solution to the Middle East conflict was ready at hand. It only required the willingness of the Arabs to agree.
The Middle East conflict is not about Israel�s occupation of the territories; it is about the refusal of the Arabs to make peace with Israel, which is an inevitable by-product of their desire to destroy it.
5. Self-Determination Is Not The Agenda
The Palestinians and their supporters also claim that the Middle East conflict is about the Palestinians� yearning for a state and the refusal of Israel to accept their aspiration. This claim is also false. The Palestine Liberation Organization was created in 1964, sixteen years after the establishment of Israel and the first anti-Israel war. The PLO was created at a time the West Bank was not under Israeli control but was part of Jordan. The PLO, however, was not created so that the Palestinians could achieve self-determination in Jordan, which at the time comprised 90 percent of the original Palestine Mandate. The PLO�s express purpose, in the words of its own leaders, was to "push the Jews into the sea."
The official charter of the new Palestine Liberation Organization referred to the "Zionist invasion," declared that Israel�s Jews were "not an independent nationality," described Zionism as "racist" and "fascist," called for "the liquidation of the Zionist presence," and specified, "armed struggle is the only way to liberate Palestine." In short, "liberation" required the destruction of the Jewish state. The PLO was not even created by Palestinians but by the Arab League -- the corrupt dictators who ruled the Middle East and who had attempted to destroy Israel by military force in 1948, in 1967 and again in 1973.
For thirty years, the PLO charter remained unchanged in its call for Israel�s destruction. Then in the mid-1990s, under enormous international pressure following the 1993 Oslo accords, PLO leader Yasser Arafat removed the clause while assuring his followers that its removal was a necessary compromise that did not alter the movement�s goals. He did this explicitly and also by citing a historical precedent in which the Prophet Muhammad insincerely agreed to a peace with his enemies in order to gain time to mass the forces with which he intended to destroy them.
6. The Struggle to Destroy Israel
The Middle East struggle is not about right against right. It is about a fifty-year effort by the Arabs to destroy the Jewish state, and the refusal of the Arab states in general and the Palestinian Arabs in particular to accept Israel�s existence. If the Arabs were willing to do this, there would be no occupied territories and there would be a Palestinian state.
Even during the "Oslo" peace process -- when the Palestine Liberation Organization pretended to recognize the existence of Israel and the Jews therefore allowed the creation of a "Palestine Authority" -- it was clear that the PLO�s goal was Israel�s destruction, and not just because its leader invoked the Prophet Muhammad�s own deception. The Palestinians� determination to destroy Israel is abundantly clear in their newly created demand of a "right of return" to Israel for "5 million" Arabs. The figure of 5 million refugees who must be returned to Israel is more than ten times the number of Arabs who actually left the Jewish slivers of the British Mandate in 1948.
In addition to its absurdity, this new demand has several aspects that reveal the Palestinians� genocidal agenda for the Jews. The first is that the "right of return" is itself a calculated mockery of the primary reason for Israel�s existence -- the fact that no country would provide a refuge for Jews fleeing Hitler�s extermination program during World War II. It is only because the world turned its back on the Jews when their survival was at stake that the state of Israel grants a "right of return." to every Jew who asks for it.
But there is no genocidal threat to Arabs, no lack of international support militarily and economically, and no Palestinian "diaspora" (although the Palestinians have cynically appropriated the very term to describe their self-inflicted quandary). The fact that many Arabs, including the Palestinian spiritual leader -- the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem -- supported Hitler�s "Final Solution" only serves to compound the insult. It is even further compounded by the fact that more than 90 percent of the Palestinians now in the West Bank and Gaza have never lived a day of their lives in territorial Israel. The claim of a "right of return" is thus little more than a brazen expression of contempt for the Jews, and for their historic suffering.
More importantly it is an expression of contempt for the very idea of a Jewish state. The incorporation of five million Arabs into Israel would render the Jews a permanent minority in their own country, and would thus spell the end of Israel. The Arabs fully understand this, and that is why they have made it a fundamental demand. It is just one more instance of the general bad faith the Arab side has manifested through every chapter of these tragic events.
Possibly the most glaring expression of the Arabs� bad faith is their deplorable treatment of the Palestinian refugees and refusal for half a century to relocate them, or to alleviate their condition, even during the years they were under Jordanian rule. While Israel was making the desert bloom and relocating 600,000 Jewish refugees from Arab states, and building a thriving industrial democracy in its allotted sliver, the Arabs were busy making sure that their refugees remained in squalid refugee camps in the West Bank and Gaza, where they were powerless, right-less, and economically destitute.
Today, fifty years after the first Arab war against Israel, there are 59 such refugee camps and 3.7 million "refugees" registered with the UN. Despite economic aid from the UN and Israel itself, despite the oil wealth of the Arab kingdoms, the Arab leaders have refused to undertake the efforts that would liberate the refugees from their miserable camps, or to make the economic investment that would alleviate their condition. There are now 22 Arab states providing homes for the same ethnic population, speaking a common Arabic language. But the only one that will allow Palestinian Arabs to become citizens is Jordan. And the only state the Palestinians covet is Israel.
7. The Policy of Resentment and Hate
The refusal to address the condition of the Palestinian refugee population is � and has always been -- a calculated Arab policy, intended to keep the Palestinians in a state of desperation in order to incite their hatred of Israel for the wars to come. Not to leave anything to chance, the mosques and schools of the Arabs generally -- and the Palestinians in particular -- preach and teach Jew hatred every day. Elementary school children in Palestinian Arab schools are even taught to chant "Death to the heathen Jews" in their classrooms as they are learning to read. It should not be overlooked, that these twin policies of deprivation (of the Palestinian Arabs) and hatred (of the Jews) are carried out without any protest from any sector of Palestinian or Arab society. That in itself speaks volumes about the nature of the Middle East conflict.
All wars -- especially wars that have gone on for fifty years � produce victims with just grievances on both sides. And that is true in this one. There are plenty of individual Palestinian victims, as there are Jewish victims, familiar from the nightly news. But the collective Palestinian grievance is without justice. It is a self-inflicted wound, the product of the Arabs� xenophobia, bigotry, exploitation of their own people, and apparent inability to be generous towards those who are not Arabs. While Israel is an open, democratic, multi-ethnic, multicultural society that includes a large enfranchised Arab minority, the Palestine Authority is an intolerant, undemocratic, monolithic police state with one dictatorial leader, whose ruinous career has run now for 37 years.
As the repellent attitudes, criminal methods and dishonest goals of the Palestine liberation movement should make clear to any reasonable observer, its present cause is based on Jew hatred, and on resentment of the modern, democratic West, and little else. Since there was no Palestinian nation before the creation of Israel, and since Palestinians regarded themselves simply as Arabs and their land as part of Syria, it is not surprising that many of the chief creators of the Palestine Liberation Organization did not even live in the Palestine Mandate before the creation of Israel, let alone in the sliver of mostly desert that was allotted to the Jews. Edward Said, the leading intellectual mouthpiece for the Palestinian cause grew up in a family that chose to make its home in Egypt and the United States. Yasser Arafat was born in Egypt.
While the same Arab states that claim to be outraged by the Jews� treatment of Palestinians treat their own Arab populations far worse than Arabs are treated in Israel, they are also silent about the disenfranchised Palestinian majority that lives in Jordan. In 1970, Jordan�s King Hussein massacred thousands of PLO militants. But the PLO does not call for the overthrow of Hashemite rule in Jordan and does not hate the Hashemite monarchy. Only Jews are hated.
It is a hatred, moreover, that is increasingly lethal. Today, 70 percent of the Arabs in the West Bank and Gaza approve the suicide bombing of women and children if the targets are Jews. There is no Arab "Peace Now" movement, not even a small one, whereas in Israel the movement demanding concessions to Arabs in the name of peace is a formidable political force. There is no Arab spokesman who will speak for the rights and sufferings of Jews, but there are hundreds of thousands of Jews in Israel � and all over the world � who will speak for "justice" for the Palestinians. How can the Jews expect fair treatment from a people that collectively does not even recognize their humanity?
8. A Phony Peace
The Oslo peace process begun in 1993 was based on the pledge of both parties to renounce violence as a means of settling their dispute. But the Palestinians never renounced violence and in the year 2000, they officially launched a new Intifada against Israel, effectively terminating the peace process.
In fact, during the peace process -- between 1993 and 1999 -- there were over 4,000 terrorist incidents committed by Palestinians against Israelis, and more than 1,000 Israelis killed as a result of Palestinian attacks � more than had been killed in the previous 25 years. By contrast, during the same period 1993-1999 Israelis were so desperate for peace that they reciprocated these acts of murder by giving the Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza a self-governing authority, a 40,000 man armed "police force," and 95 percent of the territory their negotiators demanded. This Israeli generosity was rewarded by a rejection of peace, suicide bombings of crowded discos and shopping malls, an outpouring of ethnic hatred and a renewed declaration of war.
In fact, the Palestinians broke the Oslo Accords precisely because of Israeli generosity, because the government of Ehud Barak offered to meet 95 percent of their demands, including turning over parts of Jerusalem to their control -- a possibility once considered unthinkable. These concessions confronted Arafat with the one outcome he did not want: Peace with Israel. Peace without the destruction of the "Jewish Entity."
Arafat rejected these Israeli concessions, accompanying his rejection with a new explosion of anti-Jewish violence. He named this violence -- deviously -- "The Al-Aksa Intifada," after the mosque on the Temple Mount. His new jihad was given the name of a Muslim shrine to create the illusion that the Intifada was provoked not by his unilateral destruction of the Oslo peace process, but by Ariel Sharon�s visit to the site. Months after the Intifada began, the Palestine Authority itself admitted this was just another Arafat lie.
In fact, the Intifada had been planned months before Sharon�s visit as a follow-up to the rejection of the Oslo Accords. In the words of Imad Faluji, the Palestine Authority�s communications minister, "[The uprising] had been planned since Chairman Arafat�s return from Camp David, when he turned the tables on the former U.S. president [Clinton] and rejected the American conditions." The same conclusion was reached by the Mitchell Commission headed by former U.S. Senator George Mitchell to investigate the events: "The Sharon visit did not cause the Al-Aksa Intifada."
9. Moral Distinctions
In assessing the Middle East impasse it is important to pay attention to the moral distinction revealed in the actions of the two combatants. When a deranged Jew goes into an Arab mosque and kills the worshippers (which happened once) he is acting alone and is universally condemned by the Israeli government and the Jews in Israel and everywhere, and he is punished to the full extent of Israeli law. But when a young Arab enters a disco filled with teenagers or a shopping mall or bus crowded with women and children and blows himself and innocent bystanders up (which happens frequently), he is someone who has been trained and sent by a component of the PLO or the Palestine Authority; he is officially praised as a hero by Yasser Arafat; his mother is given money by the Palestine Authority; and his Arab neighbors come to pay honor to the household for having produced a "martyr for Allah." The Palestinian liberation movement is the first such movement to elevate the killing of children � both the enemy�s and its own � into a religious calling and a strategy of the cause.
It is not only the methods of the Palestine liberation movement that are morally repellent. The Palestinian cause is itself corrupt. The "Palestinian problem" is a problem created by the Arabs, and can only be solved by them. In Jordan, Palestinians already have a state in which they are a majority but which denies them self-determination. Why is Jordan not the object of the Palestinian "liberation" struggle? The only possible answer is because it is not ruled by Jews.
There is a famous "green line" marking the boundary between Israel and its Arab neighbors. That green line is also the bottom line for what is the real problem in the Middle East. It is green because plants are growing in the desert on the Israeli side but not on the Arab side. The Jews got a sliver of land without oil, and created abundant wealth and life in all its rich and diverse forms. The Arabs got nine times the acreage but all they have done with it is to sit on its aridity and nurture the poverty, resentments and hatreds of its inhabitants. Out of these dark elements they have created and perfected the most vile anti-human terrorism the world has ever seen: Suicide bombing of civilians. In fact, the Palestinians are a community of suicide bombers: they want the destruction of Israel more than they want a better life.
If a nation state is all the Palestinians desire, Jordan would be the solution. (So would settling for 95 percent of one�s demands.) But the Palestinians also want to destroy Israel. This is morally hateful. It is the Nazi virus revived. Nonetheless, the Palestinian cause is generally supported by the international community, with the singular exception of the United States (and to a lesser degree Great Britain). It is precisely because the Palestinians want to destroy a state that Jews have created -- and because they are killing Jews -- that they enjoy international credibility and otherwise inexplicable support.
10. The Jewish Problem Again
It is this international resistance to the cause of Jewish survival, the persistence of global Jew-hatred that, in the end, refutes the Zionist hope of a solution to the "Jewish problem." The creation of Israel is an awe-inspiring human success story. But the permanent war to destroy it undermines the original Zionist idea.
More than fifty years after the creation of Israel, the Jews are still the most hated ethnic group in the world. Islamic radicals want to destroy Israel, but do so Islamic moderates. For the Jews in the Middle East, the present conflict is a life and death struggle, yet every government in the UN with the exception of the United States and sometimes Britain regularly votes against Israel in the face of a terrorist enemy, who has no respect for the rights or lives of Jews. After the Al-Qaeda attack on the World Trade Center, the French ambassador to England complained that the whole world was endangered because of "that #ty little country," Israel. This caused a scandal in England, but nowhere else. All that stands between the Jews of the Middle East and another Holocaust is their own military prowess and the generous, humanitarian support of the United States.
Even in the United States, however, one can now turn the TV to channels like MSNBC and CNN to see Ariel Sharon who is the elected Prime Minister of a democracy equated politically and morally with Yasser Arafat who is a dictator, a terrorist and an enemy of the United States. One can see the same equivalence drawn between Israel�s democracy and the Palestine Authority, which is a terrorist entity and an ally of America�s enemies Al Qaeda and Iraq.
During the Gulf War, Israel was America�s staunch ally while Arafat and the Palestinians openly supported the aggressor, Saddam Hussein. Yet the next two U.S. Governments � Republican and Democrat alike � strove for even-handed "neutrality" in the conflict in the Middle East, and pressured Israel into a suicidal "peace process" with a foe dedicated to its destruction. It is only since September 11 that the United States has been willing to recognize Arafat as an enemy of peace and not a viable negotiating partner.
The Zionists� efforts created a thriving democracy for the Jews of Israel (and also for the million Arabs who live in Israel), but failed to normalize the Jewish people or make them safe in a world that hates them. From the point of view of the "Jewish problem," which Herzl and the Zionist founders set out to solve, it is better today to be a Jew in America than a Jew in Israel.
This is one reason why I myself am not a Zionist but an unambivalent, passionate American patriot. America is good for the Jews as it is good for every other minority who embraces its social contract. But this history is also why I am a fierce supporter of Israel�s survival and have no sympathy for the Palestinian side in the conflict in the Middle East. Nor will I have such sympathy until the day comes when I can look into the Palestinians� eyes and see something other than death desired for Jews like me.
David Horowitz is editor-in-chief of FrontPageMagazine.com and president of the Center for the Study of Popular Culture."
regards
seekerof
[Edited on 13-10-2003 by Seekerof]
"I am saying that if Israel launches a missile strike into Syria to take out a "suspected" terrorist base, what is to stop Syria from pre-emptively launching missiles into Israel in order to take out missile batteries that are aimed at Syrian soil.
Nothing. Nothing is to stop them, because if Israel doesn't respect Syria's borders, why should Syria respect Israel's? Answer : they don't have to. Israel changes the rules as it suits them."
Your correct in one sense and off in another. Your correct that Syria has the right to act under Article 51 of the UN Charter. What's stopping them or preventing them is two fold:
1) they have numerous terrorist/militant groups and organizations that they support, harbor, enable, etc, etc, that will do the "under-the-table" fighting for them....the Syrian military has to do nothing.....just as they did when those F-16's roared in and bombed that "abandoned" supposed "terrorist/militant camp". Syria didn't react militarily...why?
Maybe this can answer that question:
"ISRAEL: Why Syria Can't Stop the Israeli Air Force"
Link:
www.strategypage.com...
2) As to "nothing" stopping Syria from launching a reprisal strike back or firing missiles.....it's a matter of Syria knowing it would get its azz whipped and the sad thing is that as defiant and as much bravado Bashir wishes to spout, he knows it as well! Btw....Syria has no rules to play by, except their two favorite's: Baggin' azz to the UN when Israel looks cross-eyed at them.....and ask for condemnation.....looks great for world opinion...wouldn't you say? ANd the use of the terrorist/militants.....
Jakomo said:
"The only way to stop that perception is to start treating the Palestinians with respect. As in, GIVE THEM THEIR COUNTRY BACK AND GIVE THEM THE RIGHT OF RETURN TO PEOPLE ILLEGALLY STOPPED FROM RE-ENTERING PALESTINE.
Until that happens, nothing can be fixed. Israel refuses to do this, and it's well-documented. So they are the main culprit."
With all due respect Jakomo....I again beg to differ. People keep saying that Israel illegially took the Palestinian state away from the Palestinian when in all truth, it was the UN. Seems to me the "beef" is with the UN and that would also make the UN the "main culprit."
You have never answered this question when it was posed to you before...I will pose it again.....Why, does not the Arab nations get together and give the Palestinian people a state? I'm sure that many, by now, have asked themselves the same question.....
Jakomo said:
"They are the aggressors and the Palestinians are the victims. You have a captive civilian populace fighting against the 5th largest army in the world. Tell me who's the victim in that fight. The guys in the armored tanks or the 10 year old kids throwing rocks at them? Do rocks really hurt a tank? Do 40mm shells hurt kids?"
"Aggressors" can be defined a number of ways...depends on who you ask.....you ask a Palestinian and he/she will probably say Israel......you ask an Israeli and he/she will probably say the Palestianian's. You ask Syria, in regards to a couple Sundays ago, and they will say Israel....ask the Israeli's after the suicide bombing and the connections found....and they will say everyone around them including Syria....so the point about "aggressors" is mute...it's in the eye of the beholder.
You have a militants....not civilians....being trained, armed like a military, supplied, given refuge, etc......if you want to play and act like the big boys....you get hammered like the big boys. Besides...if you insist on calling them "civilians" and they always attack (ie:suicide bombings) civilian targets.....it seems natural that the military for that nation will act in appropriate kind. Again, you talk "victims"....on behalf of the Palestinian cause(s).....what about those civilian's, men, women, kids, that get blown to bits...thats right....mute point huh? Thats not the same as "the guys in the armored tanks or the 10 year old kids throwing rocks at them? Do rocks really hurt a tank? Do 40mm shells hurt kids?".................Whats the difference Jakomo...really....?
Jakomo said:
"Explain to me how Syria can't use Article 51 to validate a massive Arab army moving in and wiping Israel from the map."
I never claimed Syria couldn't use Article 51.....as to the "massive Arab army".....are you refering to Syria's "massive military might" or the combined Arab world? Syria won't and can not do it alone....maybe Eygpt will join...doubtful....maybe Suadi Arabia....maybe....hey, what about Iran? Btw....Israel might have the 5th largest military/army, but they are ranked 3rd most effective fighting force on this planet. Don't mean much, but be assurd, it will require more than Syrai to take on Israel in a fight.....Bashir also knows this.....Iran don't want none of Israel either....from what I have been reading.......
Numbers are deceptive.....the books and sources online always quote numbers and types of equipment....never talk of training and monies invested in such....theirs the difference....bet on it.
Jakomo said:
"The biggest threat to Israeli national security is Ariel Sharon and Zionism"
I can agree with the first half.....get rid of Sharon and get a better, more respectable leader in Israel would be helpful. As to Zionism....I think that it is here to stay.....not much to be done about that but changing the "mind-set."
Here's what Zionism says:
"1. The Jewish Problem and Its Solution
ZIONISM is a national liberation movement, identical in most ways to other liberation movements that leftists and progressives the world over -- and in virtually every case but this one -- fervently support. This exceptionalism is also visible at the reverse end of the political spectrum: In every other instance, right-wingers like Patrick Buchanan oppose national liberation movements that are under the spell of Marxist delusions and committed to violent means. But they make an exception for the one that Palestinians have aimed at the Jews. The unique opposition to a Jewish homeland at both ends of the political spectrum identifies the problem that Zionism was created to solve.
The "Jewish problem" is just another name for the fact that Jews are the most universally hated and persecuted ethnic group in history. The Zionist founders believed that hatred of Jews was a direct consequence of their stateless condition. As long as Jews were aliens in every society they found themselves in, they would always be seen as interlopers, their loyalties would be suspect and persecution would follow. This was what happened to Captain Alfred Dreyfus, whom French anti-Semites falsely accused of spying and who was put on trial for treason by the French government in the 19th Century. Theodore Herzl was an assimilated, westernized Jew, who witnessed the Dreyfus frame- up in Paris and went on to lead the Zionist movement.
Herzl and other Zionist founders believed that if Jews had a nation of their own, the very fact would "normalize" their condition in the community of nations. Jews had been without a state since the beginning of the diaspora, when the Romans expelled them from Judea on the west bank of the Jordan River, some 2,000 years before. Once the Jews obtained a homeland � Judea itself seemed a logical site -- and were again like other peoples, the Zionists believed anti-Semitism would wither on its poisonous vine and the Jewish problem would disappear.
Here is what happened instead.
2. The Beginnings
In the 1920s, among their final acts as victors in World War I, the British and French created the states that now define the Middle East out of the ashes of the empire of their defeated Turkish adversary. In a region that the Ottoman Turks had controlled for hundreds of years, Britain and France drew the boundaries of the new states, Syria Lebanon and Iraq. Previously, the British had promised the Jewish Zionists that they could establish a "national home" in a portion of what remained of the area, which was known as the Palestine Mandate. But in 1921 the British separated 80 percent of the Mandate, east of the Jordan, and created the Arab kingdom of "Transjordan." It was created for the Arabian monarch King Abdullah, who had been defeated in tribal warfare in the Arabian Peninsula and lacked a seat of power. Abudllah�s tribe was Hashemite, while the vast majority of Abdullah�s subjects were Palestinian Arabs.
What was left of the original Palestine Mandate � between the west bank of the Jordan and the Mediterranean Sea � had been settled by Arabs and Jews. Jews, in fact, had lived in the area continuously for 3,700 years, even after the Romans destroyed their state in Judea in AD 70. Arabs became the dominant local population for the first time in the 7th Century AD as a result of the Muslim invasions. The Arabs were largely nomads who had no distinctive language or culture to separate them from other Arabs. In all the time since, they had made no attempt to create an independent Palestinian state west or east of the Jordan and none was ever established.
In 1948, at the request of the Jews who were living in Palestine, the United Nations voted to partition the remaining quarter of the original Mandate to make a Jewish homeland possible. Under the partition plan, the Arabs were given the Jews� ancient home in Judea and Samaria � now known as the West Bank. The Jews were allotted three slivers of disconnected land along the Mediterranean and the Sinai desert. They were also given access to their holy city of Jerusalem, but as an island cut off from the slivers, surrounded by Arab land and under international control. Sixty percent of the land allotted to the Jews was the Negev desert. Out of these unpromising parts, the Jews created a new state, Israel, in 1948. At this time, the idea of a Palestinian nation, or a movement to create one did not even exist.
At the moment of Israel�s birth, Palestinian Arabs lived on roughly 90 percent of the original Palestine Mandate � in Transjordan and in the UN partition area, but also in the new state of Israel itself. There were 800,000 Arabs living in Israel alongside 1.2 million Jews. At the same time, Jews were legally barred from settling in the 35,000 square miles of Palestinian Transjordan, which eventually was renamed simply "Jordan."
The Arab population in the slivers called Israel had actually more than tripled since the Zionists first began settling the region in significant numbers in the 1880s.The reason for this increase was that the Jewish settlers had brought industrial and agricultural development with them, which attracted Arab immigrants to what had previously been a sparsely settled and economically destitute area.
If the Palestinian Arabs had been willing to accept this arrangement in which they received 90 percent of the land in the Palestine Mandate, and under which they benefited from the industry, enterprise and political democracy the Jews brought to the region, there would have been no Middle East conflict. But this was not to be.
Instead, the Arab League � representing five neighboring Arab states � declared war on Israel on the day of its creation, and five Arab armies invaded the slivers with the aim of destroying the infant Jewish state. During the fighting, according to the UN mediator on the scene, an estimated 472,000 Arabs fled their homes to escape the dangers. They planned on returning after an Arab victory and the destruction of the Jewish state.
But the Jews -- many of them recent Holocaust survivors -- refused to be defeated. Instead, the five Arab armies that had invaded their slivers were repelled. Yet there was no peace. Even though their armies were beaten, the Arab states were determined to carry on their campaign of destruction, and to remain formally at war with the Israeli state. After the defeat of the Arab armies, the Palestinians who lived in the Arab area of the UN partition did not attempt to create a state of their own. Instead, in 1950, Jordan annexed the entire West Bank.
3. Refugees: Jewish and Arab
As a result of the annexation and the continuing state of war, the Arab refugees who had fled the Israeli slivers did not return. There was a refugee flow into Israel, but it was a flow of Jews who had been expelled from the Arab countries. All over the Middle East, Jews were forced to leave lands they had lived on for centuries. Although Israel was a tiny geographical area and a fledgling state, its government welcomed and resettled 600,000 Jewish refugees from the Arab countries.
At the same time, the Jews resumed their work of creating a new nation in what was now a single sliver of land. Israel, had annexed a small amount of territory to make their state defensible, including a land bridge that included Jerusalem.
In the years that followed, the Israelis made their desert bloom. They built the only industrialized economy in the entire Middle East. They built the only liberal democracy in the Middle East. They treated the Arabs who remained in Israel well. To this day the very large Arab minority, which lives inside the state of Israel, has more rights and privileges than any other Arab population in the entire Middle East.
This is especially true of the Arabs living under Yasser Arafat�s corrupt dictatorship, the Palestine Authority, which today administers the West Bank and the Gaza strip, and whose Arab subjects have no human rights. In 1997, in a fit of pique against the Oslo Accords, Palestinian spokesman Edward Said himself blurted this out, calling Arafat "our Papa Doc" � after the sadistic dictator of Haiti � and complaining that there was "a total absence of law or the rule of law in the Palestinian autonomy areas."
The present Middle East conflict is said to be about the "occupied territories" � the West Bank of the Jordan and the Gaza strip � and about Israel�s refusal to "give them up." But during the first twenty years of the Arab-Israeli conflict, Israel did not control the West Bank. In 1950, when Jordan annexed the West Bank, there was no Arab outrage. Nor did the Middle East conflict with the Jews subside.
The reason there was no Arab outrage over the annexation of the West Bank was because Jordan is a state whose ethnic majority is Palestinian Arabs. On the other hand, the Palestinians of Jordan are disenfranchised by the ruling Hashemite minority. Despite this fact, in the years following the annexation the Palestinians displayed no interest in achieving "self-determination" in Hashemite Jordan. It is only the presence of Jews, apparently, that incites this claim. The idea that the current conflict is about "occupied territories" is only one of the many large Arab deceits -- now widely accepted -- that have distorted the history of the Middle East wars.
4. The Arab Wars Against Israel
In 1967, Egypt, Syria and Jordan attacked Israel for a second time and were again defeated. It was in repelling these aggressors that Israel came to control the West Bank and the Gaza strip, as well as the oil-rich Sinai desert. Israel had every right to annex these territories captured from the aggressors � a time honored ritual among nations, and in fact the precise way that Syria, Lebanon, Iraq and Jordan had come into existence themselves. But Israel did not do so. On the other hand, neither did it withdraw its armies or relinquish its control.
The reason was that the Arab aggressors once again refused to make peace. Instead, they declared themselves still at war with Israel, a threat no Israeli government could afford to ignore. By this time, Israel was a country of 2 or 3 million surrounded by declared enemies whose combined populations numbered over 100 million. Geographically Israel was so small that at one point it was less than ten miles across. No responsible Israeli government could relinquish a territorial buffer while its hostile neighbors were still formally at war. This is the reality that frames the Middle East conflict.
In 1973, six years after the second Arab war against the Jews, the Arab armies again attacked Israel. The attack was led by Syria and Egypt, abetted by Iraq, Libya, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait and five other countries who gave military support to the aggressors, including an Iraqi division of 18,000 men. Israel again defeated the Arab forces. Afterwards, Egypt � and Egypt alone -- agreed to make a formal peace.
The peace was signed by Egyptian president, Anwar Sadat, who was subsequently assassinated by Islamic radicals, paying for his statesmanship with his life. Sadat is one of three Arab leaders assassinated by other Arabs for making peace with the Jews.
Under the Camp David accords that Sadat signed, Israel returned the entire Sinai with all its oil riches. This act demonstrated once and for all that the solution to the Middle East conflict was ready at hand. It only required the willingness of the Arabs to agree.
The Middle East conflict is not about Israel�s occupation of the territories; it is about the refusal of the Arabs to make peace with Israel, which is an inevitable by-product of their desire to destroy it.
5. Self-Determination Is Not The Agenda
The Palestinians and their supporters also claim that the Middle East conflict is about the Palestinians� yearning for a state and the refusal of Israel to accept their aspiration. This claim is also false. The Palestine Liberation Organization was created in 1964, sixteen years after the establishment of Israel and the first anti-Israel war. The PLO was created at a time the West Bank was not under Israeli control but was part of Jordan. The PLO, however, was not created so that the Palestinians could achieve self-determination in Jordan, which at the time comprised 90 percent of the original Palestine Mandate. The PLO�s express purpose, in the words of its own leaders, was to "push the Jews into the sea."
The official charter of the new Palestine Liberation Organization referred to the "Zionist invasion," declared that Israel�s Jews were "not an independent nationality," described Zionism as "racist" and "fascist," called for "the liquidation of the Zionist presence," and specified, "armed struggle is the only way to liberate Palestine." In short, "liberation" required the destruction of the Jewish state. The PLO was not even created by Palestinians but by the Arab League -- the corrupt dictators who ruled the Middle East and who had attempted to destroy Israel by military force in 1948, in 1967 and again in 1973.
For thirty years, the PLO charter remained unchanged in its call for Israel�s destruction. Then in the mid-1990s, under enormous international pressure following the 1993 Oslo accords, PLO leader Yasser Arafat removed the clause while assuring his followers that its removal was a necessary compromise that did not alter the movement�s goals. He did this explicitly and also by citing a historical precedent in which the Prophet Muhammad insincerely agreed to a peace with his enemies in order to gain time to mass the forces with which he intended to destroy them.
6. The Struggle to Destroy Israel
The Middle East struggle is not about right against right. It is about a fifty-year effort by the Arabs to destroy the Jewish state, and the refusal of the Arab states in general and the Palestinian Arabs in particular to accept Israel�s existence. If the Arabs were willing to do this, there would be no occupied territories and there would be a Palestinian state.
Even during the "Oslo" peace process -- when the Palestine Liberation Organization pretended to recognize the existence of Israel and the Jews therefore allowed the creation of a "Palestine Authority" -- it was clear that the PLO�s goal was Israel�s destruction, and not just because its leader invoked the Prophet Muhammad�s own deception. The Palestinians� determination to destroy Israel is abundantly clear in their newly created demand of a "right of return" to Israel for "5 million" Arabs. The figure of 5 million refugees who must be returned to Israel is more than ten times the number of Arabs who actually left the Jewish slivers of the British Mandate in 1948.
In addition to its absurdity, this new demand has several aspects that reveal the Palestinians� genocidal agenda for the Jews. The first is that the "right of return" is itself a calculated mockery of the primary reason for Israel�s existence -- the fact that no country would provide a refuge for Jews fleeing Hitler�s extermination program during World War II. It is only because the world turned its back on the Jews when their survival was at stake that the state of Israel grants a "right of return." to every Jew who asks for it.
But there is no genocidal threat to Arabs, no lack of international support militarily and economically, and no Palestinian "diaspora" (although the Palestinians have cynically appropriated the very term to describe their self-inflicted quandary). The fact that many Arabs, including the Palestinian spiritual leader -- the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem -- supported Hitler�s "Final Solution" only serves to compound the insult. It is even further compounded by the fact that more than 90 percent of the Palestinians now in the West Bank and Gaza have never lived a day of their lives in territorial Israel. The claim of a "right of return" is thus little more than a brazen expression of contempt for the Jews, and for their historic suffering.
More importantly it is an expression of contempt for the very idea of a Jewish state. The incorporation of five million Arabs into Israel would render the Jews a permanent minority in their own country, and would thus spell the end of Israel. The Arabs fully understand this, and that is why they have made it a fundamental demand. It is just one more instance of the general bad faith the Arab side has manifested through every chapter of these tragic events.
Possibly the most glaring expression of the Arabs� bad faith is their deplorable treatment of the Palestinian refugees and refusal for half a century to relocate them, or to alleviate their condition, even during the years they were under Jordanian rule. While Israel was making the desert bloom and relocating 600,000 Jewish refugees from Arab states, and building a thriving industrial democracy in its allotted sliver, the Arabs were busy making sure that their refugees remained in squalid refugee camps in the West Bank and Gaza, where they were powerless, right-less, and economically destitute.
Today, fifty years after the first Arab war against Israel, there are 59 such refugee camps and 3.7 million "refugees" registered with the UN. Despite economic aid from the UN and Israel itself, despite the oil wealth of the Arab kingdoms, the Arab leaders have refused to undertake the efforts that would liberate the refugees from their miserable camps, or to make the economic investment that would alleviate their condition. There are now 22 Arab states providing homes for the same ethnic population, speaking a common Arabic language. But the only one that will allow Palestinian Arabs to become citizens is Jordan. And the only state the Palestinians covet is Israel.
7. The Policy of Resentment and Hate
The refusal to address the condition of the Palestinian refugee population is � and has always been -- a calculated Arab policy, intended to keep the Palestinians in a state of desperation in order to incite their hatred of Israel for the wars to come. Not to leave anything to chance, the mosques and schools of the Arabs generally -- and the Palestinians in particular -- preach and teach Jew hatred every day. Elementary school children in Palestinian Arab schools are even taught to chant "Death to the heathen Jews" in their classrooms as they are learning to read. It should not be overlooked, that these twin policies of deprivation (of the Palestinian Arabs) and hatred (of the Jews) are carried out without any protest from any sector of Palestinian or Arab society. That in itself speaks volumes about the nature of the Middle East conflict.
All wars -- especially wars that have gone on for fifty years � produce victims with just grievances on both sides. And that is true in this one. There are plenty of individual Palestinian victims, as there are Jewish victims, familiar from the nightly news. But the collective Palestinian grievance is without justice. It is a self-inflicted wound, the product of the Arabs� xenophobia, bigotry, exploitation of their own people, and apparent inability to be generous towards those who are not Arabs. While Israel is an open, democratic, multi-ethnic, multicultural society that includes a large enfranchised Arab minority, the Palestine Authority is an intolerant, undemocratic, monolithic police state with one dictatorial leader, whose ruinous career has run now for 37 years.
As the repellent attitudes, criminal methods and dishonest goals of the Palestine liberation movement should make clear to any reasonable observer, its present cause is based on Jew hatred, and on resentment of the modern, democratic West, and little else. Since there was no Palestinian nation before the creation of Israel, and since Palestinians regarded themselves simply as Arabs and their land as part of Syria, it is not surprising that many of the chief creators of the Palestine Liberation Organization did not even live in the Palestine Mandate before the creation of Israel, let alone in the sliver of mostly desert that was allotted to the Jews. Edward Said, the leading intellectual mouthpiece for the Palestinian cause grew up in a family that chose to make its home in Egypt and the United States. Yasser Arafat was born in Egypt.
While the same Arab states that claim to be outraged by the Jews� treatment of Palestinians treat their own Arab populations far worse than Arabs are treated in Israel, they are also silent about the disenfranchised Palestinian majority that lives in Jordan. In 1970, Jordan�s King Hussein massacred thousands of PLO militants. But the PLO does not call for the overthrow of Hashemite rule in Jordan and does not hate the Hashemite monarchy. Only Jews are hated.
It is a hatred, moreover, that is increasingly lethal. Today, 70 percent of the Arabs in the West Bank and Gaza approve the suicide bombing of women and children if the targets are Jews. There is no Arab "Peace Now" movement, not even a small one, whereas in Israel the movement demanding concessions to Arabs in the name of peace is a formidable political force. There is no Arab spokesman who will speak for the rights and sufferings of Jews, but there are hundreds of thousands of Jews in Israel � and all over the world � who will speak for "justice" for the Palestinians. How can the Jews expect fair treatment from a people that collectively does not even recognize their humanity?
8. A Phony Peace
The Oslo peace process begun in 1993 was based on the pledge of both parties to renounce violence as a means of settling their dispute. But the Palestinians never renounced violence and in the year 2000, they officially launched a new Intifada against Israel, effectively terminating the peace process.
In fact, during the peace process -- between 1993 and 1999 -- there were over 4,000 terrorist incidents committed by Palestinians against Israelis, and more than 1,000 Israelis killed as a result of Palestinian attacks � more than had been killed in the previous 25 years. By contrast, during the same period 1993-1999 Israelis were so desperate for peace that they reciprocated these acts of murder by giving the Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza a self-governing authority, a 40,000 man armed "police force," and 95 percent of the territory their negotiators demanded. This Israeli generosity was rewarded by a rejection of peace, suicide bombings of crowded discos and shopping malls, an outpouring of ethnic hatred and a renewed declaration of war.
In fact, the Palestinians broke the Oslo Accords precisely because of Israeli generosity, because the government of Ehud Barak offered to meet 95 percent of their demands, including turning over parts of Jerusalem to their control -- a possibility once considered unthinkable. These concessions confronted Arafat with the one outcome he did not want: Peace with Israel. Peace without the destruction of the "Jewish Entity."
Arafat rejected these Israeli concessions, accompanying his rejection with a new explosion of anti-Jewish violence. He named this violence -- deviously -- "The Al-Aksa Intifada," after the mosque on the Temple Mount. His new jihad was given the name of a Muslim shrine to create the illusion that the Intifada was provoked not by his unilateral destruction of the Oslo peace process, but by Ariel Sharon�s visit to the site. Months after the Intifada began, the Palestine Authority itself admitted this was just another Arafat lie.
In fact, the Intifada had been planned months before Sharon�s visit as a follow-up to the rejection of the Oslo Accords. In the words of Imad Faluji, the Palestine Authority�s communications minister, "[The uprising] had been planned since Chairman Arafat�s return from Camp David, when he turned the tables on the former U.S. president [Clinton] and rejected the American conditions." The same conclusion was reached by the Mitchell Commission headed by former U.S. Senator George Mitchell to investigate the events: "The Sharon visit did not cause the Al-Aksa Intifada."
9. Moral Distinctions
In assessing the Middle East impasse it is important to pay attention to the moral distinction revealed in the actions of the two combatants. When a deranged Jew goes into an Arab mosque and kills the worshippers (which happened once) he is acting alone and is universally condemned by the Israeli government and the Jews in Israel and everywhere, and he is punished to the full extent of Israeli law. But when a young Arab enters a disco filled with teenagers or a shopping mall or bus crowded with women and children and blows himself and innocent bystanders up (which happens frequently), he is someone who has been trained and sent by a component of the PLO or the Palestine Authority; he is officially praised as a hero by Yasser Arafat; his mother is given money by the Palestine Authority; and his Arab neighbors come to pay honor to the household for having produced a "martyr for Allah." The Palestinian liberation movement is the first such movement to elevate the killing of children � both the enemy�s and its own � into a religious calling and a strategy of the cause.
It is not only the methods of the Palestine liberation movement that are morally repellent. The Palestinian cause is itself corrupt. The "Palestinian problem" is a problem created by the Arabs, and can only be solved by them. In Jordan, Palestinians already have a state in which they are a majority but which denies them self-determination. Why is Jordan not the object of the Palestinian "liberation" struggle? The only possible answer is because it is not ruled by Jews.
There is a famous "green line" marking the boundary between Israel and its Arab neighbors. That green line is also the bottom line for what is the real problem in the Middle East. It is green because plants are growing in the desert on the Israeli side but not on the Arab side. The Jews got a sliver of land without oil, and created abundant wealth and life in all its rich and diverse forms. The Arabs got nine times the acreage but all they have done with it is to sit on its aridity and nurture the poverty, resentments and hatreds of its inhabitants. Out of these dark elements they have created and perfected the most vile anti-human terrorism the world has ever seen: Suicide bombing of civilians. In fact, the Palestinians are a community of suicide bombers: they want the destruction of Israel more than they want a better life.
If a nation state is all the Palestinians desire, Jordan would be the solution. (So would settling for 95 percent of one�s demands.) But the Palestinians also want to destroy Israel. This is morally hateful. It is the Nazi virus revived. Nonetheless, the Palestinian cause is generally supported by the international community, with the singular exception of the United States (and to a lesser degree Great Britain). It is precisely because the Palestinians want to destroy a state that Jews have created -- and because they are killing Jews -- that they enjoy international credibility and otherwise inexplicable support.
10. The Jewish Problem Again
It is this international resistance to the cause of Jewish survival, the persistence of global Jew-hatred that, in the end, refutes the Zionist hope of a solution to the "Jewish problem." The creation of Israel is an awe-inspiring human success story. But the permanent war to destroy it undermines the original Zionist idea.
More than fifty years after the creation of Israel, the Jews are still the most hated ethnic group in the world. Islamic radicals want to destroy Israel, but do so Islamic moderates. For the Jews in the Middle East, the present conflict is a life and death struggle, yet every government in the UN with the exception of the United States and sometimes Britain regularly votes against Israel in the face of a terrorist enemy, who has no respect for the rights or lives of Jews. After the Al-Qaeda attack on the World Trade Center, the French ambassador to England complained that the whole world was endangered because of "that #ty little country," Israel. This caused a scandal in England, but nowhere else. All that stands between the Jews of the Middle East and another Holocaust is their own military prowess and the generous, humanitarian support of the United States.
Even in the United States, however, one can now turn the TV to channels like MSNBC and CNN to see Ariel Sharon who is the elected Prime Minister of a democracy equated politically and morally with Yasser Arafat who is a dictator, a terrorist and an enemy of the United States. One can see the same equivalence drawn between Israel�s democracy and the Palestine Authority, which is a terrorist entity and an ally of America�s enemies Al Qaeda and Iraq.
During the Gulf War, Israel was America�s staunch ally while Arafat and the Palestinians openly supported the aggressor, Saddam Hussein. Yet the next two U.S. Governments � Republican and Democrat alike � strove for even-handed "neutrality" in the conflict in the Middle East, and pressured Israel into a suicidal "peace process" with a foe dedicated to its destruction. It is only since September 11 that the United States has been willing to recognize Arafat as an enemy of peace and not a viable negotiating partner.
The Zionists� efforts created a thriving democracy for the Jews of Israel (and also for the million Arabs who live in Israel), but failed to normalize the Jewish people or make them safe in a world that hates them. From the point of view of the "Jewish problem," which Herzl and the Zionist founders set out to solve, it is better today to be a Jew in America than a Jew in Israel.
This is one reason why I myself am not a Zionist but an unambivalent, passionate American patriot. America is good for the Jews as it is good for every other minority who embraces its social contract. But this history is also why I am a fierce supporter of Israel�s survival and have no sympathy for the Palestinian side in the conflict in the Middle East. Nor will I have such sympathy until the day comes when I can look into the Palestinians� eyes and see something other than death desired for Jews like me.
David Horowitz is editor-in-chief of FrontPageMagazine.com and president of the Center for the Study of Popular Culture."
regards
seekerof
[Edited on 13-10-2003 by Seekerof]
And the "Achilles Heel" of the Bush Administration, and other prior administrations, has been brought forth.....:
""any Israeli aggression on Syria and Lebanon is an aggression on Saudi Arabia""
Link:
www.imra.org.il...
Excerpt:
"Lebanese Foreign Minister Jean Obeid has called the forthcoming Islamic
Summit , scheduled to be held in Kuala Lumpur , to condemn the Israeli
aggression on Syria and Lebanon as well as the US threats against them .
Before his departure to Malaysia to take part in the Organization of Islamic
Conference's foreign Ministers' meetings , Obeid said that Israel violates
the International law and the international legitimacy resolutions by its
aggression on Syrian lands and by its daily brutal practices against
Palestinians .
Meanwhile , Saudi Ambassador to Lebanon Fouad Sadeq Mufti said that any
Israeli aggression on Syria and Lebanon is an aggression on Saudi Arabia."
Hmmm, seems today was the Arab Summit.....
Hostorically....the city of Medina comes to mind. Medina used to be a major Jewish city until the advent of Muhammed, who massacred them because they wouldn't acknowledge him as their one and only prophet. Story has it, that this is the beginning of the Arab/Muslim world's hatred and blood-lust for murder of the Jews themselves. Interestingly, the Baha'is, who were followers of the 19th century Persian prophet, Bah�'u'll�h, have an ancient prophecy that says that Muslims will become the most hated poeple on the face of the Earth.
"Bah�'u'll�h (1817-1892)"
Link:
www.bahai.org...
What I find 'ironic' in this correllation with Saudi Arabia, is that Saudi Arabia, like Syria, and others, funds the terrorist groups Fatah, Hamas, Islamic Jihad, and Al Qaeda (also per Israel). I wouldn't be the least bit surprised if they funded Hezbollah and some others, also, nor would I exclude training, harboring, supplying, etc. Lebenon is nothing more than a staging ground for Syria.....an ATM machine (the drugs grown there), and a puppet nation for Syria....who took it over anyhow.....
And look who seems to think there is a major profit in the business which is occuring between Syria and Israel........
"RUSSIA VOWS TO ADVANCE ISKANDER MISSILE FOR SYRIA & IRAN"
Link:
www.imra.org.il...
Nothing new since both Syria and Iran are "proxies" of Russia anyhow.
Let's see...Russian dealing missiles to Syria.....nuclear reactors to Iran.....oh well, I guess it counter-balance's the US and who they 'supply'.
Btw Jakomo....what you have to say on this:
"23:08 Lebanese parliament speaker prevents debate over proposal to allow Palestinians to acquire property in Lebanon"
Link:
www.haaretz.com...
No UN condemnation? No EU condemnation? No Arab condemnation? Isn't this discrimination or more proof of the fact that the Palestinian people are nothing to the Arab world other than cannon-fodder for their own causes with Israel.....what? No land to give....? Kinda expected when the Arab world wouldn't and don't set land aside for the Palestinian's to have a state. More of that "it's Israels fault for taking their lands, etc."......which is all BS when the UN is the one who made the proclaimation.....
regards
seekerof
[Edited on 13-10-2003 by Seekerof]
""any Israeli aggression on Syria and Lebanon is an aggression on Saudi Arabia""
Link:
www.imra.org.il...
Excerpt:
"Lebanese Foreign Minister Jean Obeid has called the forthcoming Islamic
Summit , scheduled to be held in Kuala Lumpur , to condemn the Israeli
aggression on Syria and Lebanon as well as the US threats against them .
Before his departure to Malaysia to take part in the Organization of Islamic
Conference's foreign Ministers' meetings , Obeid said that Israel violates
the International law and the international legitimacy resolutions by its
aggression on Syrian lands and by its daily brutal practices against
Palestinians .
Meanwhile , Saudi Ambassador to Lebanon Fouad Sadeq Mufti said that any
Israeli aggression on Syria and Lebanon is an aggression on Saudi Arabia."
Hmmm, seems today was the Arab Summit.....
Hostorically....the city of Medina comes to mind. Medina used to be a major Jewish city until the advent of Muhammed, who massacred them because they wouldn't acknowledge him as their one and only prophet. Story has it, that this is the beginning of the Arab/Muslim world's hatred and blood-lust for murder of the Jews themselves. Interestingly, the Baha'is, who were followers of the 19th century Persian prophet, Bah�'u'll�h, have an ancient prophecy that says that Muslims will become the most hated poeple on the face of the Earth.
"Bah�'u'll�h (1817-1892)"
Link:
www.bahai.org...
What I find 'ironic' in this correllation with Saudi Arabia, is that Saudi Arabia, like Syria, and others, funds the terrorist groups Fatah, Hamas, Islamic Jihad, and Al Qaeda (also per Israel). I wouldn't be the least bit surprised if they funded Hezbollah and some others, also, nor would I exclude training, harboring, supplying, etc. Lebenon is nothing more than a staging ground for Syria.....an ATM machine (the drugs grown there), and a puppet nation for Syria....who took it over anyhow.....
And look who seems to think there is a major profit in the business which is occuring between Syria and Israel........
"RUSSIA VOWS TO ADVANCE ISKANDER MISSILE FOR SYRIA & IRAN"
Link:
www.imra.org.il...
Nothing new since both Syria and Iran are "proxies" of Russia anyhow.
Let's see...Russian dealing missiles to Syria.....nuclear reactors to Iran.....oh well, I guess it counter-balance's the US and who they 'supply'.
Btw Jakomo....what you have to say on this:
"23:08 Lebanese parliament speaker prevents debate over proposal to allow Palestinians to acquire property in Lebanon"
Link:
www.haaretz.com...
No UN condemnation? No EU condemnation? No Arab condemnation? Isn't this discrimination or more proof of the fact that the Palestinian people are nothing to the Arab world other than cannon-fodder for their own causes with Israel.....what? No land to give....? Kinda expected when the Arab world wouldn't and don't set land aside for the Palestinian's to have a state. More of that "it's Israels fault for taking their lands, etc."......which is all BS when the UN is the one who made the proclaimation.....
regards
seekerof
[Edited on 13-10-2003 by Seekerof]
Seems some of my assumptions were correct in that I thought Israel was sending a warning/message....."time to kick the tires and light the
fires".....or Israel is "serving notice"....
"Educating Bashar-Was Israel's raid on terrorist camp in Syria a one-time warning"
Linkrequires registration)
www.jpost.com.../P/Member/Entry&finish=ContentServer%3Fpagename%3DJPost%2FJPArticle%2FShowFull%2526cid%3D106 5689778483
Excerpt:
"Last week, however, Israel launched a rare raid against a terrorist training camp on Syrian territory.
The more usual practice after major provocations or terrorist attacks aided by Damascus is just to hit Syrian or Syrian-protected targets in Lebanon. This time, though, Israel was sending a signal as to how angry it is at continued Syrian bad behavior.
It does not seem a good moment for Syria to engage in an aggressive policy. The country is relatively weak militarily since the USSR's collapse deprived it of a superpower ally and supplier of advanced weapons. In relative terms to Israel, Syrian power is probably at the greatest strategic disadvantage in the last half-century.
The diplomatic balance of forces is also unfavorable. While Arab states would talk loudly about supporting Syria in a crisis against Israel, they are unlikely to do anything to help. Nor would the Europeans take active measures to assist a Syrian dictatorship for which they have no political taste and which lacks the money or trade opportunities to woo them toward a more supportive stance.
What especially stands out is the fact that Syria, along with its satellite state, Lebanon, is nearly surrounded by forces it views as adversaries. It turned down a chance to make peace with its southern neighbor, Israel, and get back the whole Golan Heights in 2000. Turkey, to the north, is a powerful state which pressed Syria into expelling the leader of the Kurdish terrorist group by threatening an all-out attack a few years ago. Jordan is friendly to the West and has itself suffered from Syrian subversion........
But what stands out most is an absolutely startling new development: Syria has become a state-sponsor of anti-American terrorism. There are recruiting offices and training camps on Syrian soil for terrorists seeking to kill Americans in Iraq. They are armed, transported, and probably subsidized by the Syrian government......
Syria is in a poor position to respond openly. Its retaliation comes, as has been true for so long, by covert means, mainly through more terrorism. The continuation of Syria's radical policy will lead to that country's on-going strategic weakness and economic stagnation.
But the Syrian government is quite willing to pay that price as long as it remains in power. And unless directly overthrown by outside forces, as the experience with Iraq shows, regime survival in the Middle East is not at risk no matter how badly it manages the country.
Still, one wonders whether there might not be a point where the pressure is high enough that Assad, perhaps at the insistence of his powerful, older advisers, decides that a bit more caution is a worthwhile strategy."
Just yeaterday, 10/13....Syria was still sending messages of it's own....for which I can't put my finger on to post but went something like this:
Syrai calling up reserves........
regards
seekerof
"Educating Bashar-Was Israel's raid on terrorist camp in Syria a one-time warning"
Linkrequires registration)
www.jpost.com.../P/Member/Entry&finish=ContentServer%3Fpagename%3DJPost%2FJPArticle%2FShowFull%2526cid%3D106 5689778483
Excerpt:
"Last week, however, Israel launched a rare raid against a terrorist training camp on Syrian territory.
The more usual practice after major provocations or terrorist attacks aided by Damascus is just to hit Syrian or Syrian-protected targets in Lebanon. This time, though, Israel was sending a signal as to how angry it is at continued Syrian bad behavior.
It does not seem a good moment for Syria to engage in an aggressive policy. The country is relatively weak militarily since the USSR's collapse deprived it of a superpower ally and supplier of advanced weapons. In relative terms to Israel, Syrian power is probably at the greatest strategic disadvantage in the last half-century.
The diplomatic balance of forces is also unfavorable. While Arab states would talk loudly about supporting Syria in a crisis against Israel, they are unlikely to do anything to help. Nor would the Europeans take active measures to assist a Syrian dictatorship for which they have no political taste and which lacks the money or trade opportunities to woo them toward a more supportive stance.
What especially stands out is the fact that Syria, along with its satellite state, Lebanon, is nearly surrounded by forces it views as adversaries. It turned down a chance to make peace with its southern neighbor, Israel, and get back the whole Golan Heights in 2000. Turkey, to the north, is a powerful state which pressed Syria into expelling the leader of the Kurdish terrorist group by threatening an all-out attack a few years ago. Jordan is friendly to the West and has itself suffered from Syrian subversion........
But what stands out most is an absolutely startling new development: Syria has become a state-sponsor of anti-American terrorism. There are recruiting offices and training camps on Syrian soil for terrorists seeking to kill Americans in Iraq. They are armed, transported, and probably subsidized by the Syrian government......
Syria is in a poor position to respond openly. Its retaliation comes, as has been true for so long, by covert means, mainly through more terrorism. The continuation of Syria's radical policy will lead to that country's on-going strategic weakness and economic stagnation.
But the Syrian government is quite willing to pay that price as long as it remains in power. And unless directly overthrown by outside forces, as the experience with Iraq shows, regime survival in the Middle East is not at risk no matter how badly it manages the country.
Still, one wonders whether there might not be a point where the pressure is high enough that Assad, perhaps at the insistence of his powerful, older advisers, decides that a bit more caution is a worthwhile strategy."
Just yeaterday, 10/13....Syria was still sending messages of it's own....for which I can't put my finger on to post but went something like this:
Syrai calling up reserves........
regards
seekerof
Seekerof said:
"Just yeaterday, 10/13....Syria was still sending messages of it's own....for which I can't put my finger on to post but went something like this:
Syrai calling up reserves......."
And here is the article:
"Syria Calls up Reserves, Fears US-Israeli Military Pincer"
Link:
debka.com...
Excerpt:
"Monday, October 13, the New York Times revealed that the first Israeli air raid inside Syria in three decades had altered �a crucial convention of the Arab-Israeli conflict.� The raid took place Sunday October 5 over Ain Sahab, 15 km northeast of Damascus, the day after a savage Palestinian suicide attack in Haifa claimed 20 Israeli lives. The paper quotes western diplomats and Arab analysts as predicting that �the Sharon administration now plans to treat the Syrian regime in Damascus much as it has treated the Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat: subjected to military attack, �� cut off and ultimately isolated.�
According to one Damascus source, Syria is meeting this threat by secretly calling up 300,000 reservists to beef up its standing army of roughly the same number. This figure, in the view of DEBKAfile�s military sources, is implausibly high. A large call-up was certainly staged after the Israeli raid. But in Syrian terms, 50,000 men would be the more realistic figure, plus standby orders to tens of thousands more.
In general, the attempt to depict Syria as another of Ariel Sharon�s victims fails to take account of the �victim�s� proactive role in the Iraq war in support of Saddam Hussein. It ranges from the asylum granted Iraqi political and military elite to the smuggling of Iraqi weapons of mass destruction out of the country several weeks before the war in March and after it began. In between, Bashar Assad has deployed thousands of Syrian combatants in Iraq as well as Hizballah, Palestinians and any other Arabs willing to fight American troops in Iraq......"
regards
seekerof
"Just yeaterday, 10/13....Syria was still sending messages of it's own....for which I can't put my finger on to post but went something like this:
Syrai calling up reserves......."
And here is the article:
"Syria Calls up Reserves, Fears US-Israeli Military Pincer"
Link:
debka.com...
Excerpt:
"Monday, October 13, the New York Times revealed that the first Israeli air raid inside Syria in three decades had altered �a crucial convention of the Arab-Israeli conflict.� The raid took place Sunday October 5 over Ain Sahab, 15 km northeast of Damascus, the day after a savage Palestinian suicide attack in Haifa claimed 20 Israeli lives. The paper quotes western diplomats and Arab analysts as predicting that �the Sharon administration now plans to treat the Syrian regime in Damascus much as it has treated the Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat: subjected to military attack, �� cut off and ultimately isolated.�
According to one Damascus source, Syria is meeting this threat by secretly calling up 300,000 reservists to beef up its standing army of roughly the same number. This figure, in the view of DEBKAfile�s military sources, is implausibly high. A large call-up was certainly staged after the Israeli raid. But in Syrian terms, 50,000 men would be the more realistic figure, plus standby orders to tens of thousands more.
In general, the attempt to depict Syria as another of Ariel Sharon�s victims fails to take account of the �victim�s� proactive role in the Iraq war in support of Saddam Hussein. It ranges from the asylum granted Iraqi political and military elite to the smuggling of Iraqi weapons of mass destruction out of the country several weeks before the war in March and after it began. In between, Bashar Assad has deployed thousands of Syrian combatants in Iraq as well as Hizballah, Palestinians and any other Arabs willing to fight American troops in Iraq......"
regards
seekerof
Seeker: How about some mainstream media sources for your "points"? You constantly rail on me when I use ANY source from ANY site that even
includes the word Palestine in it's URL (Palestinemonitor, Intifada, etc). I am doing the same and taking everything the Jerusalem Post and Debka
and others say with a big fat grain of salt.
". People keep saying that Israel illegially took the Palestinian state away from the Palestinian when in all truth, it was the UN. Seems to me the "beef" is with the UN and that would also make the UN the "main culprit." "
Congrats on the lamest excuse I've yet to hear. "Well, it's not Israel's fault if we took Palestinian land (and CONTINUE to take it), the UN gave it to us.
So let me get this straight, the UN is an ineffectual body when it comes to everything else, EXCEPT the fact that they somehow sanction settlements? Show me where the UN doesn't condemn the illegal Israeli occupation of Palestinian land. Show me.
"You have never answered this question when it was posed to you before...I will pose it again.....Why, does not the Arab nations get together and give the Palestinian people a state? I'm sure that many, by now, have asked themselves the same question..... "
Answer: WHY SHOULD THEY? Palestine is their HOME, by setting them up in, say, Syria, as a province, they would be inadvertently lending creedence to Israel's war crimes.
"You have a militants....not civilians....being trained, armed like a military, supplied, given refuge, etc......if you want to play and act like the big boys....you get hammered like the big boys. Besides...if you insist on calling them "civilians" and they always attack (ie:suicide bombings) civilian targets.....it seems natural that the military for that nation will act in appropriate kind. Again, you talk "victims"....on behalf of the Palestinian cause(s).....what about those civilian's, men, women, kids, that get blown to bits...thats right....mute point huh? Thats not the same as "the guys in the armored tanks or the 10 year old kids throwing rocks at them? Do rocks really hurt a tank? Do 40mm shells hurt kids?".................Whats the difference Jakomo...really....?"
Do you REALLY see no difference between Abrams tanks lobbing shells at crowds of people and children throwing ROCKS at armored personnel carriers? I am not talking about suicide bombers, I am talking about KIDS.
Do rocks really hurt a tank? NO.
Do 40mm shells hurt kids? DUH. YES.
As for "what about those civilian's, men, women, kids, that get blown to bits"... I would say they can thank Israel for killing them.
I blame the suicide bombers when an attack occurs, but I also blame Israel for causing the WHOLE ENTIRE PROBLEM in the first place. They push and push and provoke every chance they get.
Next suicide attack is Israel's fault for raiding Gaza, because that's what Hamas et al will say they are protesting against. Do you think the Israeli government doesn't know that? Of course they do, but they don't care. More dead Israelis means more chances for them to go on "incursions" and destroy Palestinian livelihoods.
Cause and effect. Israel is the cause, suicide bombers are the effect.
jakomo
". People keep saying that Israel illegially took the Palestinian state away from the Palestinian when in all truth, it was the UN. Seems to me the "beef" is with the UN and that would also make the UN the "main culprit." "
Congrats on the lamest excuse I've yet to hear. "Well, it's not Israel's fault if we took Palestinian land (and CONTINUE to take it), the UN gave it to us.
So let me get this straight, the UN is an ineffectual body when it comes to everything else, EXCEPT the fact that they somehow sanction settlements? Show me where the UN doesn't condemn the illegal Israeli occupation of Palestinian land. Show me.
"You have never answered this question when it was posed to you before...I will pose it again.....Why, does not the Arab nations get together and give the Palestinian people a state? I'm sure that many, by now, have asked themselves the same question..... "
Answer: WHY SHOULD THEY? Palestine is their HOME, by setting them up in, say, Syria, as a province, they would be inadvertently lending creedence to Israel's war crimes.
"You have a militants....not civilians....being trained, armed like a military, supplied, given refuge, etc......if you want to play and act like the big boys....you get hammered like the big boys. Besides...if you insist on calling them "civilians" and they always attack (ie:suicide bombings) civilian targets.....it seems natural that the military for that nation will act in appropriate kind. Again, you talk "victims"....on behalf of the Palestinian cause(s).....what about those civilian's, men, women, kids, that get blown to bits...thats right....mute point huh? Thats not the same as "the guys in the armored tanks or the 10 year old kids throwing rocks at them? Do rocks really hurt a tank? Do 40mm shells hurt kids?".................Whats the difference Jakomo...really....?"
Do you REALLY see no difference between Abrams tanks lobbing shells at crowds of people and children throwing ROCKS at armored personnel carriers? I am not talking about suicide bombers, I am talking about KIDS.
Do rocks really hurt a tank? NO.
Do 40mm shells hurt kids? DUH. YES.
As for "what about those civilian's, men, women, kids, that get blown to bits"... I would say they can thank Israel for killing them.
I blame the suicide bombers when an attack occurs, but I also blame Israel for causing the WHOLE ENTIRE PROBLEM in the first place. They push and push and provoke every chance they get.
Next suicide attack is Israel's fault for raiding Gaza, because that's what Hamas et al will say they are protesting against. Do you think the Israeli government doesn't know that? Of course they do, but they don't care. More dead Israelis means more chances for them to go on "incursions" and destroy Palestinian livelihoods.
Cause and effect. Israel is the cause, suicide bombers are the effect.
jakomo
Israel have the policy of "you kill, we kill" which is causing alot of the problems.
Israel needs to stop going in Gaza and killing people who have done NOTHING wrong. Their shoot protesters and children who are harmless. They even killed some press members!OMG!, how low those Israel want to go??
Israel needs to stop going in Gaza and killing people who have done NOTHING wrong. Their shoot protesters and children who are harmless. They even killed some press members!OMG!, how low those Israel want to go??
"Show me the money Jakomo......!".......Show me where this is ALL Israel's fault!! Show me!
You bet I put this on the UN....
You talk a good game about "rocks being thrown at tanks"....about "40 mm rounds", etc....
Dude....you don't even admit what the Palestinian's do by killing INNOCENT Israeli civilains...!!! Just those damn "rocks" and all........geezus...
The Arab-Israeli conflict dates to biblical times.....took shape and form in the modern world since the partition of Palestine on November 27, 1947......by the United Nation's with UN Resolution 181. The partition was first rejected by the Arabs/Palestinians and was accepted by the Israelis, and 'they' have been involved in conflict since. Israel's fault?!? Right......
Tell you what........
1) Dismantle the Palestinian Authority, which obviously is an umbrella for the terrorist groups of the "Martyr Brigade, an offshoot of al-Fatah, Tanzim, etc.
2) Hold Arafat accountable for sponsoring, harboring, etc., etc. terrorism!!! This is pretty self-evident, if one cares to research, in the forgotten Arafat Accountability Act.....H.R. 4693 Bill.
3) The immediate end to or eradication of ALL other terrorist organizations, groups, and infrastructures....namely Hezbollah, Islamic Jihad, Hamas, etc., etc........this would be done with no negotiations!! Bye...cya....gone!
Do this...and perhaps the world won't have to sit back, day-by-day, and watch/observe this never-ending 'cycle' of "The Arab-Israeli Conflict" continue.....
"All Israel's fault"?......................
regards
seekerof
[Edited on 15-10-2003 by Seekerof]
You bet I put this on the UN....
You talk a good game about "rocks being thrown at tanks"....about "40 mm rounds", etc....
Dude....you don't even admit what the Palestinian's do by killing INNOCENT Israeli civilains...!!! Just those damn "rocks" and all........geezus...
The Arab-Israeli conflict dates to biblical times.....took shape and form in the modern world since the partition of Palestine on November 27, 1947......by the United Nation's with UN Resolution 181. The partition was first rejected by the Arabs/Palestinians and was accepted by the Israelis, and 'they' have been involved in conflict since. Israel's fault?!? Right......
Tell you what........
1) Dismantle the Palestinian Authority, which obviously is an umbrella for the terrorist groups of the "Martyr Brigade, an offshoot of al-Fatah, Tanzim, etc.
2) Hold Arafat accountable for sponsoring, harboring, etc., etc. terrorism!!! This is pretty self-evident, if one cares to research, in the forgotten Arafat Accountability Act.....H.R. 4693 Bill.
3) The immediate end to or eradication of ALL other terrorist organizations, groups, and infrastructures....namely Hezbollah, Islamic Jihad, Hamas, etc., etc........this would be done with no negotiations!! Bye...cya....gone!
Do this...and perhaps the world won't have to sit back, day-by-day, and watch/observe this never-ending 'cycle' of "The Arab-Israeli Conflict" continue.....
"All Israel's fault"?......................
regards
seekerof
[Edited on 15-10-2003 by Seekerof]
Originally posted by Jakomo
So let me get this straight, the UN is an ineffectual body when it comes to everything else, EXCEPT the fact that they somehow sanction settlements? Show me where the UN doesn't condemn the illegal Israeli occupation of Palestinian land. Show me.
I�m a little vague on how the �occupation� is illegal.
1) The only international document that ever assigned sovereignty over the West Bank is the League of Nations Mandate for Palestine, which assigned it to the future state of Israel
2) The later 1947 Partition Resolution that called for a Palestinian state in the area was rejected by the Palestinians.
3) Resolution 242 called for Israel to withdraw �from territories occupied in the recent conflict� but did not say �all the territories occupied��. This language was not accidental, but was purposefully chosen by the sponsors of the resolution (Britain and the U.S.) to allow for Israel to keep some of the land under a future peace agreement.
4) Those lands had no recognized sovereign in 1967. They were occupied by Jordan, but their sovereignty was never recognized by the UN. Since then, Jordan has released all claims.
5) There is no international agreement that recognizes this land as Palestinian-Arab territory. Ever.
If you want to get legal, then look at the laws.
[Edited on 15-10-2003 by Mycroft]
[Edited on 15-10-2003 by Mycroft]
Damn, well it looks like Syria is going to have a lot of damn craters in its grounds if these suspected terrorist sites are real. I know Israel can be
crazy as #, so I wouldn't doubt it if Israel says they're watching those sites and may bomb the # out of them.
By the way, whatever happened with this whole Israel against the whole Middle-East thing that everyone thought was going to happen soon?
I haven't really heard any new news on the situation so I'm not sure.
By the way, whatever happened with this whole Israel against the whole Middle-East thing that everyone thought was going to happen soon?
I haven't really heard any new news on the situation so I'm not sure.
Mycroft: You wrote "I�m a little vague on how the �occupation� is illegal... If you want to get legal, then look at the laws."
Let me clear things up for you.
International law is CRYSTAL clear on two basic principles:
1) the inadmissibility of the acquisition of territory by war
2) the absolute prohibition of transfer of civilians of the occupying Power to the occupied territory.
These principles are to prevent expansionism and the "colonization" of occupied territories. They go hand in hand with another basic principle, the right of a people to self-determination. It's also a right that an occupying Power is obliged to respect. Look it up.
Let's say Israel is 0 for 3 on that one.
And it has NOTHING to do with any land that Israel occupied in the war in 1967. It's because here, right now, in 2003, they are STILL occupying it. Not only that but they've suppressed Palestinian statehood and deprived them of their right to self-determination.
Read up a bit on the 4th Geneva Convention (It deals with the "protection of civilian persons in time of war", and has the rules of occupation in it).
Security Council resolution 242 is supposed to be following the spirit of those principles, so whether resolution 242 called for Israel to withdraw �from territories", but not "the territories" is semantics. The French version DID have the word "the" by the way.
The UN General Assembly has adopted frickin dozens of resolutions on the illegal practices and policies of the Israeli Occupation (most vetoed by the US), and also on the necessity for the Palestinian people to have the right to self-determination.
And that, Mycroft, is how the Israeli Occupation of Palestine is illegal, according to the United Nations.
It's all here.
www.un.org
Seeker: Would you let them vote after dismantling parts of their social structure or just let them fend for themselves? What if they elect Arafat?
j
[Edited on 15-10-2003 by Jakomo]
Let me clear things up for you.
International law is CRYSTAL clear on two basic principles:
1) the inadmissibility of the acquisition of territory by war
2) the absolute prohibition of transfer of civilians of the occupying Power to the occupied territory.
These principles are to prevent expansionism and the "colonization" of occupied territories. They go hand in hand with another basic principle, the right of a people to self-determination. It's also a right that an occupying Power is obliged to respect. Look it up.
Let's say Israel is 0 for 3 on that one.
And it has NOTHING to do with any land that Israel occupied in the war in 1967. It's because here, right now, in 2003, they are STILL occupying it. Not only that but they've suppressed Palestinian statehood and deprived them of their right to self-determination.
Read up a bit on the 4th Geneva Convention (It deals with the "protection of civilian persons in time of war", and has the rules of occupation in it).
Security Council resolution 242 is supposed to be following the spirit of those principles, so whether resolution 242 called for Israel to withdraw �from territories", but not "the territories" is semantics. The French version DID have the word "the" by the way.
The UN General Assembly has adopted frickin dozens of resolutions on the illegal practices and policies of the Israeli Occupation (most vetoed by the US), and also on the necessity for the Palestinian people to have the right to self-determination.
And that, Mycroft, is how the Israeli Occupation of Palestine is illegal, according to the United Nations.
It's all here.
www.un.org
Seeker: Would you let them vote after dismantling parts of their social structure or just let them fend for themselves? What if they elect Arafat?
j
[Edited on 15-10-2003 by Jakomo]
new topics
-
Angela Merkel is terrified of dogs
Politicians & People: 1 hours ago -
Will all hell break out? Jersey drones - blue beam
Aliens and UFOs: 7 hours ago -
Should be BANNED!
General Chit Chat: 9 hours ago
top topics
-
Signing back up
Introductions: 17 hours ago, 5 flags -
Should be BANNED!
General Chit Chat: 9 hours ago, 4 flags -
Will all hell break out? Jersey drones - blue beam
Aliens and UFOs: 7 hours ago, 3 flags -
Angela Merkel is terrified of dogs
Politicians & People: 1 hours ago, 1 flags
active topics
-
Drones over New Jersey
Aliens and UFOs • 33 • : LSU2018 -
Nathan Wade conspiring with Biden admin
US Political Madness • 14 • : WeMustCare -
Petition Calling for General Election at 564,016 and rising Fast
Political Issues • 153 • : gortex -
Fani Willis served subpoena by the U.S. Marshals Service
US Political Madness • 326 • : WeMustCare -
Fani Willis photo found on Thomas Matthew Crooks' cell phone
Politicians & People • 14 • : WeMustCare -
United Healthcare Shooting Suspect Nabbed in Pennsylvania
Mainstream News • 120 • : Thoughtful3 -
And Here Come the Excuses!!
General Conspiracies • 114 • : PorkChop96 -
President-Elect DONALD TRUMP's 2nd-Term Administration Takes Shape.
Political Ideology • 294 • : Oldcarpy2 -
Salvatore Pais confirms science in MH370 videos are real during live stream
General Conspiracies • 217 • : Lazy88 -
-@TH3WH17ERABB17- -Q- ---TIME TO SHOW THE WORLD--- -Part- --44--
Dissecting Disinformation • 3608 • : angelchemuel