the USA double face

[Y's_habibitk 2]

How do you receive Radio Hamas???...I cant get it.

My US newspapers dont say anything along these lines nor the US TV broadcasts that I receive.

I dont speak Arabic, Hebrew or any other language that may be spoken in that part of the world. I have absolutely no interest in learning anything from the propaganda that originates from the middle east or Israel. But I manage to stay pretty much in tune as to what is happening in the world.

ETA:

Actually from the conditions that you describe would be more of a reason to get along with the neighbors.

I think what she meant by propaganda IS american media. Tune into a less bias channel and then you can see both sides of the story. You can stay "in tune" to what is going on in the rest of the world by reading US newspapers, but you will get what they want you to get. ALL countries have propaganda machines, and ours is on that list indeed.

[Y's_habibitk 2]

Wasn't this known in 1776 and written into the US Constitution??

yep, too bad it still influences desicion making in our country

[desert_fox 32]

How do you receive Radio Hamas???...I cant get it.

My US newspapers dont say anything along these lines nor the US TV broadcasts that I receive.

I dont speak Arabic, Hebrew or any other language that may be spoken in that part of the world. I have absolutely no interest in learning anything from the propaganda that originates from the middle east or Israel. But I manage to stay pretty much in tune as to what is happening in the world.

ETA:

Actually from the conditions that you describe would be more of a reason to get along with the neighbors.

I think what she meant by propaganda IS american media. Tune into a less bias channel and then you can see both sides of the story. You can stay "in tune" to what is going on in the rest of the world by reading US newspapers, but you will get what they want you to get. ALL countries have propaganda machines, and ours is on that list indeed.

That is true of any rag in any country. They are there to promote their own govt agenda....at least the press here is free although I seldom read it. I get my news from Public Radio as I find it the least bias.

Wasn't this known in 1776 and written into the US Constitution??

yep, too bad it still influences desicion making in our country

but not in the ME countries??

[PetraPerson101 0]

after a while the USA sent battleship close to Lebanon so i was wondering will the USA attack Iran ???

what battleship?

The Navy has no battleships in service. ( Man ... thanks to the Carrier Battle Group ... the juggernaut of the seas is dead. No more battleships. USS Missouri was the last active duty Battleship. ) They sent the USS Cole (A good ol' Arleigh-Burke class Destroyer, right?) to the Mediterranean to show "Support" for Lebanon.

Edited March 3, 2008 by KyanWan

[LynnandAhmed 0]

The Gaza onslaught has failed to protect southern Israel, where residents have faced repeated rocket attacks since 2001. Gaza militants fired more than 25 rockets at southern Israel Sunday, the military said, scoring direct hits on houses in the city of Ashkelon and the town of Sderot. Nine Israelis were injured, rescue services said.

Israel regularly clashes with Gaza rocket squads, but it intensified its operations last week after militants fired salvos into Ashkelon, a city of 120,000 11 miles north of Gaza. By targeting a center like Ashkelon, only 25 miles from the metropolis of Tel Aviv, Hamas raised the stakes and added pressure on Israeli leaders to respond.[/size]

In Sderot, the town nearest Gaza which has suffered most of the rocket attacks over the past seven years, daily life has become almost unbearable. The rockets have killed 13, wounded dozens and caused millions of dollars in damage.Egypt has cooperated with an Israeli blockade of Hamas in Gaza, but opened its sealed border crossing with the territory Sunday to allow some of the Palestinian wounded access to medical care.

[LynnandAhmed 0]

Since the destruction of the Second Jewish Commonwealth(1) by the Romans, the land referred to as "Palestine"(2) had been ruled by a series of foreign occupiers. Each successive ruler subdivided his conquest as he saw fit, though none, since the Romans, considered "Palestine" as having a separate administrative or geographic entity.

The Ottoman Turks, who ruled this area from the year 1516 to 1917, regarded it as part of Southern Syria. The land later referred to as "Palestine" was divided into three separate districts.

The area was underpopulated and remained economically stagnant until the arrival of the first Zionist pioneers in the 1880's,(3) who came to rebuild the Jewish land. The country had remained "The Holy Land" in the religious and historic consciousness of mankind, which associated it with the Bible and the history of the Jewish People. Jewish development of the country also attracted large numbers of other immigrants - both Jewish and Arab.

1. For the Second Temple period (332 BCE-70 CE), summary, see: Professor Menahem Stern, Israel Pocket Book Library, in "History Until 1880" (Jerusalem: Keter Books, 1973), pp.97-126.

2. The name "Palestine", from the Greek Palaistina, originally from the Hebrew Pleshet (Land of the Philistines): a small coastal strip north east of Egypt, also called Philistia. The Roman term "Syria Palaestina" in the 2nd century BCE referred to the southern third of the province of Syria, including the former Judea. The name "Palestine" was revived as an official title when the British were granted a mandate after World War I: Encyclopaedia Britannica ill, Micropaedia, vol. Vll, "Palestine."

3. Among the many descriptions of Palestine's desolation prior to the Zionist immigration: ". . . a desolate country whose soil is rich enough, but is given over wholly to weeds - a silent mournful expanse . . . A desolation is here that not even imagination can grace with the pomp of life and action . . . We never saw a human being on the whole route . . . There was hardly a tree or a shrub anywhere. Even the olive and the cactus, those fast friends of a worthless soil, had almost deserted the country:" Mark Twain, The Innocents Abroad, or The New Pilgrim's Progress (1869).

It was only after World War I, at the Paris Peace Conference(1), that the name "Palestine" was applied to a clearly defined piece of territory - the area which today comprises Israel and Jordan. It was agreed that "Palestine" was to become a League of Nations Mandate, entrusted to Great Britain.

Under the terms of the Mandate, Britain's principal obligation was to facilitate the implementation of the Balfour Declaration of November 2, 1917, which pledged "the establishment of a national home for the Jewish people."(2) No territorial restrictions whatsoever - neither east nor west of the Jordan River were placed on the Jewish National Home. In fact, the Mandate stipulated that Britain was to "facilitate Jewish immigration under suitable conditions and shall encourage close settlement by Jews on the land."(3)

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

1. The Paris Peace Conference was held in January-June 1919 and ended with the signing of the Treaty of Versailles on June 28, 1919. For a survey of the Paris Peace Conference's treatment of Middle Eastern issues, see Howard M. Sachar, The Emergence of the Middle East: 1914-1924 (New York: Knopf, 1969), pp. 252-290.

2. The following is the text of the Balfour Declaration:

"His Majesty's Government view with favour the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people, and will use their best endeavours to facilitate the achievement of this object, it being clearly understood that nothing shall be done which may prejudice the civil and religious rights of existing non-Jewish communities in Palestine, or the rights and political status enjoyed by Jews in any other country."

See J. C. Hurewitz (ed.), The Middle fast and North Africa in World politics: a Documentary Record, vol. 2 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1979), pp. 101-106.

3. For the full text of the British Mandate for Palestine, see ibid., pp. 305-309

Nevertheless, in July 1922, the British divided Palestine into two administrative districts. Note the black line on the map. Jews would be permitted only west of the black line. To the east, in what became known as "Transjordan", the British installed a Hashemite ruler named Abdullah, who had been expelled from the Arabian peninsula.(1) By making this division, the British reduced the area available for the Jewish National Home to only 22% of the entire area of Palestine.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

1. For the creation of Transjordan, see Sachar, op. cit., pp. 402-406

On the map making process (French officers in the 1930s realized their maps mistakenly put Shaba on the Syrian side of the border... for more )

In spite of this action, however, Transjordan remained in every way part of the Palestine Mandate. The Mandate laws remained in effect in Transjordan, and Palestine Mandate currency was the legal tender. Jews in western Palestine as well as Arabs in East and West Palestine carried Palestine Mandate passports (1). It was only 24 years later, in 1946, that Britain unilaterally granted Transjordan its independence. (2) With By granting Transjordan's independence, the British had partitioned Palestine and created an independent Palestine-Arab state east of the Jordan River.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

1. Article 7 of the Mandate for Palestine stipulated the "acquisition of Palestinian citizenship by Jews who take up their permanent residence in Palestine": Hurewitz, op. cit., p. 306.

2. For the text of Secretary Bevin's speech to the U.N. General Assembly proclaiming Transjordan's independence, see The New York Times, Jan. 18, 1946.

On November 29, 1947, the General Assembly of the United Nations voted with a 2/3 majority to partition western Palestine into a Jewish and an Arab state.(1) The Jews were to be granted what appears on the map in blue. Over 75% of the land allocated to the Jews was desert. Desperate to find a haven for the remnants of European Jewry after the Holocaust, the Jewish population accepted the plan which accorded them a diminished state. The Arabs, intent on preventing any Jewish entity in Palestine, rejected it.(2)

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

1. For the full text of the UN Partition resolution, see Walter Laqueur (ed.), The Arab-Israeli Reader; A Documentary History of the Middle east Conflict (New York: Bantam Books, 1969), pp.113-122

2. While the Jewish leadership and population in Palestine accepted partition, all of the Arab members states of the UN - Egypt, Iraq, Lebanon, Saudi Arabia, Syria, and Yemen- voted against it. Upon the resolution's adoption, the Arab delegates declared partition invalid: The New York Times, Nov. 30, 1947. Within two days, the Arab governments declared their opposition to partition: The New York Times, Dec. 1, 2, 1947.

The Arabs not only rejected the UN Partition Plan, but attacked Israel from all sides. On the day that Israel declared its independence, the Arab League Secretary, General Azzam Pasha declared "jihad", a holy war. He said, "This will be a war of extermination and a momentous massacre which will be spoken of like the Mongolian massacres and the Crusades".(1) The Mufti of Jerusalem, Haj Amin Al Husseini stated, "I declare a holy war, my Moslem brothers! Murder the Jews! Murder them all!" (2) The armies of Lebanon, Syria, Jordan, Egypt and Iraq invaded the tiny new country with the declared intent of destroying it.(3)

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

1. Howard M Sachar, A History of Israel (New York: Knopf, 1979), p. 333.

2. Leonard J. Davis and M. Decter (eds.). Myths and facts 1982; a Concise Record of the Arab-Israeli Conflict (Washington DC: near east report, 1982), p. 199

3. In a formal cablegram to the UN Secretary General on May 15, 1948, the Secretary general of the Arab League declared that the Arab states rejected partition and intended to set up a "United State of Palestine." For a full text of the cablegram, see John N. Moore (ed.), The Arab-Israeli Conflict; Readings and Documents (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, abridged and revised edition, 1977), pp. 938-943.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Approximately 720,000 Arabs, encouraged by their leaders to leave, fled from what is now Israel between April and December, 1948.(1) The Arab leaders promised them that they would soon be able to return following Israel's destruction. In some cases the Jews, including Israel's first Prime Minister, David Ben-Gurion, urged the Arabs to remain, promising that they would not be harmed.(2) Those who remained became full and equal citizens of Israel, while those who chose to leave went to neighboring Arab states. Instead of welcoming their Arab brothers, and integrating them into the mainstream of their societies, the Arab states kept them in squalid refugee camps and used these Palestinians refugees as political pawns in their fight against Israel.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

1. Irving Howe and Carl Gershman (eds.), Israel, the Arabs and the Middle East (New York: Bantam, 1972), p. 168.

2. See, for instance, The Economist, Oct. 2, 1948, for a description of Jewish efforts in Haifa to persuade the Arabs to stay.

During the war for Israel's independence, many Jewish villages were destroyed, synagogues and cemeteries desecrated, and fields and buildings burned. The Jewish quarter of the Old City of Jerusalem was besieged, and kept without food or water, and eventually the Jordanians expelled the Jews from the Old City.(1)

The gray area on the inset marks the Old City. The Jordanians took over East Jerusalem and a large portion of land on the west bank of the Jordan River, thereby narrowing Israel, seen here in blue, to approximately nine miles at its narrowest point. Egyptian troops overran the Gaza strip in the west as well as the southern outskirts of Jerusalem. Despite tremendous losses, the new Jewish state survived.

In 1949 Israel signed armistice agreements with Egypt, Syria, Lebanon and Transjordan,(2) which in April 1949 changed its name to Jordan.(3) One of the major consequences of this was Jordan's annexation of Judea and Samaria. This annexation was not recognized by the international community, with the exception of Britain and Pakistan.(4) This territory became a launching ground for constant terrorist attacks against Israel's civilian population. (5)

And soooooooooooooo it goes on and on and I am not going to keep printing all the history here but I start to feel that there will never be a solution..........because the younger generations now do not read the history of what happened to understand..........there is just violence and hate and revenge.

Ottoman Rule (Eve of WWI)

British Mandate 1920-1946

British Administrative Division 1922 - 1946

Britain's Partition 1946

U.N. Partition Plan 1947

The Arab Invasion 1948

The Arab Refugees 1948

Armistice Agreements 1949

The Jewish Refugees 1948 - 1972

Fedayeen Raids 1951 - 1956

The Sinai Campaign 1956

Position of Arab Forces 1967 Six Day War - June 1967

Cease Fire Lines 1967

The War of Attrition, 1969-1970

October War 1973

Pre-1967 Distances - North

Pre-1967 Distances - Center

Egyptian Attack 1973

Syrian Attack 1973

The Golan Heights

Cross-section: Golan-Galilee

Sinai 1967 - 1982

Judea and Samaria

Cross-section Herzliya-Nablus-Jordan River

Missile and Artillery Ranges

Flying Time to Israel

Peace with Egypt 1979

Operation Peace for Galilee, 1982

The Iraqi Nuclear Threat, 1982

The First Intifada, 1987-1993

The Gulf War, 1991

The Madrid Process, 1991

he Oslo Process, 1993

Peace with Jordan

The Wye Agreement - November 1998

Sharm Agreement 1999

Camp David 2000

The Second Intifada, 2000-

Israeli Withdrawal from Lebanon

Jerusalem 2000

Gilo 2000

Israel and the Iranian Nuclear Threat

The Security Fence, 2003

Gaza Disengagement, 2005 Northern Samaria Settlements, 2005

etc

etc

etc

[LynnandAhmed 0]

Anyone who is interested in knowing:

End of 19th century-1948

Before World War I, the Middle East, including Palestine, had been under the control of the Ottoman Empire for nearly 500 years. During the closing years of their empire the Ottomans began to espouse their Turkish ethnic identity, asserting the primacy of Turks within the empire, leading to discrimination against the Arabs.[6] The promise of liberation from the Ottomans led many Arabs to support the allied powers during World War I, leading to the emergence of widespread Arab nationalism. Jews also helped in the liberation the Holy Land from the Ottomans. [7] During this time tensions between the native Arab population of Palestine and the small, but growing, Jewish population in the area had begun to increase.

British Government was favorable to the establishment in the Holy Land of a national home for the Jewish people as stated under the Balfour Declaration of 1917. [8]

After World War I the area came under British rule as the British mandate of Palestine. Jewish immigration to Palestine increased. This, together with the worsening world wide economic situation and other internal factors, led to a large Arab immigration to the region and further increased tensions in the region.[9][10] By 1931, 17 percent of the population of Palestine was comprised of Jews, an increase of six percent since 1922.[11] Jewish immigration increased soon after the Nazis came to power in Germany, causing the Jewish population in Palestine to double.[12] Palestinian Arabs saw this rapid influx of Jewish immigrants as a threat to their homeland and their identity as a people. Moreover, Jewish policies of purchasing land and prohibiting the employment of Arabs in Jewish owned industries and farms greatly angered the Palestinian Arab communities.[13] Demonstrations were held as early as 1920, protesting what the Arabs felt were unfair preferences for the Jewish immigrants set forth by the British mandate that governed Palestine at the time. By 1936, escalating tensions led to the 1936–1939 Arab revolt in Palestine.[14]

In response to Arab pressure, the British Mandate authorities greatly reduced the number of Jewish immigrants to Palestine (see White Paper of 1939 and the Exodus ship). These restrictions remained in place until the end of the mandate, a period which coincided with the Nazi Holocaust and the flight of Jewish refugees from Europe. As a consequence, most Jewish entrants to Palestine were illegal (see Aliyah Bet), causing further tensions in the region. Following several failed attempts to solve the problem diplomatically, the British asked the newly formed United Nations for help. On 15 May 1947 the UN appointed a committee, the UNSCOP, composed of representatives from eleven states. To make the committee more neutral, none of the Great Powers were represented.[15] After five weeks of in-country study, the commission recommended creating a partitioned state with separate territories for the Jews and the Arabs in Palestine . This "two state solution" was accepted with resolution 181 by the UN General Assembly in November 1947 by 33 votes to 13 with 10 abstentions. The Arab states, which constituted the Arab League, voted against. On the ground, Jewish and Palestinian Arab were fighting openly to control strategic positions in the region. Several major atrocities were committed by both sides.[16]

The main differences between the 1947 partition proposal and 1949 armistice lines are highlighted in light red and magenta.On 14 May 1948, one day before the end of the British Mandate of Palestine, Israel declared its independence and sovereignty on the portion partitioned by UNSCOP for the Jewish state. The next day, the Arab League reiterated officially their opposition to the "two-state solution" in a letter to the UN.[17] That day, the armies of Egypt, Lebanon, Syria, Jordan, and Iraq invaded the territory partitioned for the Arab state, thus starting the 1948 Arab-Israeli War. The nascent Israeli Defense Force repulsed the Arab nations from part of the occupied territories, thus extending its borders beyond the original UNSCOP partition.[18] By December of 1948, Israel controlled all of the mandate Palestine except Jordan, which included what is now called the West Bank, and the Gaza Strip, controlled by Egypt. Prior and during this conflict, 711,000[19] Palestinians Arabs fled their original lands to become Palestinian refugees.[20] The War came to an end with the signing of the 1949 Armistice Agreements between Israel and each of its Arab neighbors. This 1949 armistice line, the so-called green line, is to this day the internationally-recognized border of the state of Israel. It is often referred to as the "pre-1967" border.

[edit] 1949-June 11, 1967

In 1956, Egypt closed the Straits of Tiran to Israeli shipping, and blockaded the Gulf of Aqaba, in contravention of the Constantinople Convention of 1888. Many argued that this was also a violation of the 1949 Armistice Agreements.[21][22] On July 26, 1956, Egypt nationalized the Suez Canal Company, and closed the canal to Israeli shipping.[23]

Israel responded on October 29, 1956, by invading the Sinai Peninsula with British and French support. During the Suez Canal Crisis, Israel captured the Gaza Strip and Sinai Peninsula. The United States and the United Nations soon pressured it into a ceasefire.[23][24] Israel agreed to withdraw from Egyptian territory. Egypt agreed to freedom of navigation in the region and the demilitarization of the Sinai. The United Nations Emergency Force (UNEF) was created and deployed to oversee the demilitarization.[25] The UNEF was only deployed on the Egyptian side of the border, as Israel refused to allow them on its territory.[26]

On May 19, 1967, Egypt expelled UNEF observers,[27] and deployed 100,000 soldiers in the Sinai Peninsula.[28] It again closed the Straits of Tiran to Israeli shipping,[29][30] returning the region to the way it was in 1956 when Israel was blockaded.

On May 30, 1967, Jordan entered into the mutual defense pact between Egypt and Syria. In response, on June 5 Israel sent almost all of its planes on what they believed to be a preemptive mission in Egypt. The Israeli Air Force (IAF) destroyed most of the surprised Egyptian Air Force, then turned east to pulverize the Jordanian, Syrian and Iraqi air forces.[31] This strike was the crucial element in Israel's victory in the Six-Day War.[28][30]

[edit] June 12, 1967-1973

In the summer of 1967, Arab leaders met in Khartoum in response to the war, to discuss the Arab position toward Israel. They reached consensus that there should be:

No recognition of the State of Israel.

No peace with Israel.

No negotiations with Israel.[32]

In 1969, Egypt initiated the War of Attrition, with the goal of exhausting Israel into surrendering the Sinai Peninsula.[33] The war ended following Nasser's death in 1970.

On October 6, 1973, Syria and Egypt attacked Israel on Yom Kippur, overwhelming the surprised Israeli military.[34][35] The Yom Kippur War accommodated indirect confrontation between the US and the Soviet Union. When Israel had turned the tide of war, the USSR threatened military intervention. The United States, wary of nuclear war, secured a ceasefire on October 25.[34][35]

[edit] 1974-2000

Egypt

Following the Camp David Accords of the late 1970s, Israel and Egypt signed a peace treaty in March, 1979. Under its terms, the Sinai Peninsula returned to Egyptian hands, and the Gaza Strip remained under Israeli control, to be included in a future Palestinian state.

Jordan

In October, 1994, Israel and Jordan signed a peace agreement, which stipulated mutual cooperation, an end of hostilities, and a resolution of other unsorted issues.

Iraq

In June, 1981, Israel successfully attacked and destroyed newly built Iraqi nuclear facilities in Operation Opera.

During the Gulf War, Iraq fired 39 missiles into Israel, in the hopes of uniting the Arab world against the coalition which sought to liberate Kuwait. At the behest of the United States, Israel did not respond to this attack in order to prevent a greater outbreak of war.

Lebanon

In 1970, following an extended civil war, King Hussein expelled the PLO from Jordan. The PLO resettled in Lebanon, whence it staged raids into Israel. In 1981, Syria, allied with the PLO, positioned missiles in Lebanon. In June, 1982, Israel invaded Lebanon. Within two months, the PLO agreed to withdraw thence.

In March, 1983, Israel and Lebanon signed a ceasefire agreement. However, Syria pressured President Amin Gemayel into nullifying the truce in March, 1984. By 1985, Israeli forces had mostly withdrawn from Lebanon, and Israel completed its withdrawal in May 2000, leaving behind a power vacuum which Syria and Hezbollah soon filled.[36]

Palestinians

In 1987, the First Intifada began. The PLO was excluded from negotiations to resolve it until it recognized Israel and renounced terrorism the following year. In 1993, Israel and the PLO signed the Oslo Accords, and their Declaration of Principles, which, together with the Road map for peace, have been loosely used as the guidelines for Israeli-Palestinian relations since.

[edit] 2000-present

As a response to the al-Aqsa Intifada, Israel raided facilities in major urban centers in the West Bank in 2002. Violence again swept through the region. Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon began a policy of unilateral withdrawal from the Gaza Strip in 2003. This policy was fully implemented in August, 2005.[37]

In July, 2006, Hezbollah fighters crossed the border from Lebanon into Israel, attacked and killed eight Israeli soldiers, and kidnapped two others, setting off the 2006 Lebanon War which destroyed Lebanese infrastructure and displaced more than one million people in Lebanon.[38] A UN-sponsored ceasefire went into effect on August 14, 2006, officially ending the conflict.[39]

On September 6, 2007, in Operation Orchard, Israel bombed a northern Syrian complex which was suspected of holding nuclear missiles from North Korea.[40]

And NOW we are here and pleaseeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee, let us not forget that there

are victims on BOTH sides..........

[PalestineMyHeart 1,897]

I'll be back to deal with the cut-and-pastey spambot.

[Yoink 7]

I'll be back to deal with the cut-and-pastey spambot.

One mans spam is another man's bread and butter. Anyone want an Israeli opinion?

[~Jackie~ 30]

waiting for WOM......

Jackie

[doodlebugg 10]

we need a lowcarb snack smiley.

[~Jackie~ 30]

Oh I had low carb cheezypoofs at the party last night.

WOM where are you ?

jJ

[doodlebugg 10]

two bloggers that I read are the following:

http://www.contemplating-from-gaza.blogspot.com/

http://www.a-mother-from-gaza.blogspot.com/

Here's yesterday's entry from the second link:

The Gaza Genocide

We celebrated Yousuf's fourth birthday today. We ate cake. And we counted the bodies. We sang happy birthday. And my mother sobbed. We watched the fighter jets roar voraciously on our television screen, pounding street after street; then heard a train screech outside, and shuddered. Yousuf tore open his presents, and asked my mother to make a paper zanana, a drone, for him with origami; And we were torn open from the inside, engulfed by a feeling of impotence and helplessness; fear and anger and grief; despondence and confusion.

"We are dying like chickens" said Yassine last night as we contemplated the media's coverage of the events of the past few days.

Even the Guardian, in a wire-based piece, mentioned the Palestinian dead, including the children, in the forth to last paragraph.

In fact, a study by If Americans Knew found that the Associated Press Newswire coverage of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict significantly distorts reality, essentially over-reporting the number of Israelis killed in the conflict and underreporting the number of Palestinians killed. The study found that AP reported on Israeli children’s deaths more often than the deaths occurred, but failed to cover 85 percent of Palestinian children killed. A few years ago, they found that the NY Times was seven times more likely to comment on an Israeli child's death than a Palestinian one's.

Is it only when Israeli deputy minister Matan Vilnai used "shoa" to describe what will come to Gaza that some media outlets took note. Here was an Israeli government official himself invoking the Holocaust, of his people's most horrific massacre, in reference to the fate of Gaza. But it was not necessarily because Gazans may suffer the same fate that they were perturbed, but rather that this event, this phrase-genocide or Holocaust- could be used with such seeming levity; that using such a loaded term may somehow lessen the true horror of the original act.

It is as though what has been happening in Gaza-what continues to happen, whether by way of the deliberate and sustained siege and blockade, or the mounting civlian death toll, is acceptable, and even encouraged

Illan Pappe has said that Genocide “is the only appropriate way to describe what the Israeli army is doing in the Gaza Strip” after much thought and deliberation.

But the real genocide in Gaza cannot or will not be assessed through sheer numbers. It is not a massacre of gas chambers. No.

It is a slow and calculated genocide-a Genocide through more calibrated, long-term means. And if the term is used in any context, it should be this. In many ways, this is a more sinister genocide, because it tends to be overlooked: All is ok in Gaza, the wasteland, the hostile territory that is accustomed to slaughter and survival; Gaza, who's people are somehow less human; we should not take note; need not take note; unless there is a mass killing; or starvation.

As though what is happening now was not a slow, purposeful killing; a mass strangulation; But the governments and presidents of the civilized world, even our own "president" (president of what?) are hungry for peace deals and accords; summits and states; so they say, “let them eat cake!” And we do.

The bolded part is so true. If you look at www.drudgerport.com right now you see two entries regarding what's going on, one is "Israeli City Shocked As Rockets Hit" and the other is "Long-range rockets fired from Gaza are Iranian: Israel army". Apparently drudge, et al could give two sh!ts about the Palestinian holocaust.

[PalestineMyHeart 1,897]

WOM where are you ?

jJ

I'm at work Sorry to keep y'all hanging.....

Nice point by Bridget. I will be expanding on this, but in short: the "official Israeli point of view" is overwhelmingly the narrative that has been reported by mainstream media in America, and is overwhelmingly the story that Americans have heard. The other side of the story -- the Palestinian side -- is what has been sorely missing.

Anyway, don't worry -- "I'll be back"

-MK

[Ban Hammer 13,551]

after a while the USA sent battleship close to Lebanon so i was wondering will the USA attack Iran ???

what battleship?

The Navy has no battleships in service. ( Man ... thanks to the Carrier Battle Group ... the juggernaut of the seas is dead. No more battleships. USS Missouri was the last active duty Battleship. ) They sent the USS Cole (A good ol' Arleigh-Burke class Destroyer, right?) to the Mediterranean to show "Support" for Lebanon.

thanks for ruining my fun.