Media Distort Mideast Debate

[_Simpson_ 250]

No, Palestinian people are not pawns in a bigger scheme to destroy Israel. They are pawns in a scheme to dispossess them of their property, for the benefit of foreign colonialists.

Are you referring to the remaining fragment of the indigenous population who weren't driven out ?

Please define "good life," and as compared to what. Compared to the sort of life Palestinians had before the Zionist invasion ? Or compared to entirely different people in entirely different countries ?

The only way the conflict will end is with a just and fair agreement that addresses the core issues - including the borders, the settlements, the status of Jerusalem, and the refugees.

Can you dispute anything in the post. I directly asked you questions and you ignored them.

Simpson, honey, you posted this article coz you like the guy's views on Israel and its neighbors. I don't agree with them and I know there is nothing redeemable in his Zionist partisanship. Partisanship is what's wrong with this article and with the history of US policy in the region.

Nonsense, he has been very critical of Israel in the past. He tells it how it is and I ask you to read the article and tell me how he went astray or where he is wrong and why.

I was not commenting on his party partisanship or lack of it, and I made that clear.

You said right wing so my head went to politics but OK then I refer you to the above.

As far as the comparison between Shalit and Medved, Shalit was a lot better critic.

As I thought, nothing really relevant.

Forgive them Simpson, by just and fair they do indeed appear to mean "goodbye Israel." certainly neither wife nor Sof have even hinted at the merest recognition Palestinians bear any responsibility for their plight, or much less ever done anything that wasn't wholly justified by Israeli actions.

The merest hint of admitting the truth in your OP runs entirely counter to Palestinian historical and current immutable orthodoxy. Everything is Israels fault. Everything is justified in reaction to Israels sins.

The truth lies somewhere in between.

It frustrating. They also have not been able to dispute anything in the article. I asked wife a question and she totally ignored it. Also to the writers defense, he has been very critical of Israel in the past.

Edited June 4, 2011 by _Simpson_

[Sofiyya 1,687]

It frustrating. They also have not been able to dispute anything in the article. I asked wife a question and she totally ignored it. Also to the writers defense, he has been very critical of Israel in the past.

First of all, you guys think you misguided types post articles that agree with your point of view, then expect the token Muslims on the board to show up and jump through your hoops, answer your lame questions again and again so you can use our responses to try again to show us how incorrect we are not to agree with your views and that of the articles author. There is no point to that except that it makes you feel in control. That's gotten old.

If you can't even accept that the token Muslims have a right not to be Zionists, to disagree with your pro-Israel stances, to ignore your leading questions and to roll our eyes and move on when you demand that we point out the glaring biases of your articles, than we are not even starting out as equals in the debate, but as tools for you to spread your propaganda.

Until you recognize those points, we won't get very far.

[Sofiyya 1,687]

As a part of your education, I will show you what I see that your biases refuse to let you see in this sad piece of work that you admire so much.

Careless language, reflexively recycled from Palestinian propaganda, contributes to contemporary confusion about the stalled Middle East peace process. In the wake of Bibi Netanyahu’s tense sit-down with President Obama, it’s worth examining how certain words and phrases distort the debate.

This is the set-up paragraph. Immediately, I notice that it is "Palestinian propaganda" that is full of "careless language". There is not admission of the existence of Israeli propaganda in the media or of careless language on both sides, when I know that terms like "jihad", "Islamic terrorist", etc. have been part of the careless language in the non-Muslim press. So, early on, I am warned that MM is the source of this supposed wisdom and that this will be another pro-Israel/anti-Palestinian piece. Those are a dime a dozen in the western press. Why should even continue to read it?

But, I will, at least a little bit more for your education.

Major media, for instance, regularly cite Israel’s “creation” in 1948—as if the Jewish state came into existence like an oddball lab experiment—through a sudden, arbitrary top-down process, rather than emerging through gradual, bottom-up development, like every other new nation.

Commentators also frequently mention the “displacement” or “uprooting” of Palestinians, suggesting that the return of the Jews to their ancient homeland resulted in ethnic cleansing of the indigenous inhabitants—rather than recognizing the dramatic increases in the area’s Arab population due to the economic development and improved living standards that the new Jewish immigrants brought with them.

Wow, just wow. Here, he wants us to ignore the displacement of not just Palestinians, btw, but Jews, as well, in 1948 (and before) to focus on propaganda about the subjugated happy Arabs in Israel's midst today. Reminds me of the slave owners' lament about how abolishionists refused to focus on how well slaves were treated in the south in contrast to their lives in Africa.

He also refers to Israel as the "ancient homeland", an appeal to Biblical imagery used to set up the "justification" that European Jews were simply entitled to it, despite the fact that it's been an ancient homeland for others for far longer. But, hey, those folks aren't the heroes of the OT.

Are "God gave us this land" and "we take good care of 'our' Arabs" really serious arguments against creating a Palestinian homeland? Do you really believe that "their" Arabs wouldn't want a homeland that they can control to their interests rather than capitulate to Jewish interests?

Both these mindless distortions appeared in the same sentence of an Associated Press report about bloody demonstrations on Israel’s borders on the weekend of May 15, described as “a sign of rising tensions on the eve of Palestinian commemoration of their uprooting during Israel’s 1948 creation” (italics added).

In truth, Israel was no more “created” in 1948 than the United States was created in 1776. The patriots who gathered in Philadelphia represented a robust, fully functional society with its own economic, political, educational, and even military institutions. They hardly assembled their new nation out of nothing, but looked back to a courageous history of growth, development, and self-defense that, for the oldest colonies, stretched back more than 150 years.

I'm not sure what his argument is here, so I read on.

By the same token, when Israeli leaders declared their own independence in 1948, it represented a culmination of their nation-building efforts, not their initiation. More than 650,000 Jews already lived in a vibrant, dynamic, surprisingly cohesive civilization spread through several major cities (including the new metropolis of Tel Aviv, constructed on empty sand dunes in 1909) and scores of agricultural communities built on previously unoccupied land purchased from absentee owners. Intensive Jewish immigration began in the 1880s, more than two generations before independence, and produced distinctive political parties, labor unions, universities, newspapers, theater companies, and even symphony orchestras. This nation in formation also managed to defend itself against murderous Arab riots in 1921, 1929, 1936, and 1939, giving rise to the Haganah (“The Defense” in Hebrew), a militia that averaged 30,000 members over 30 years pre-independence, ultimately developing into the Israel Defense Forces. Like the Minutemen who gave rise to the Continental Army, these citizen soldiers fought a bloody struggle after formal independence, combating formidable foes determined to exterminate their new nation.

". . . agricultural communities built on previously unoccupied land purchased from absentee owners." The terms "unoccupied land and absentee owners" conjures up the idea that nobody was here anyway, so we bought the land fair and square and made use of it.

Well, gee, if that's how it went, why all the fuss now? The land was acquired fair and square from those who didn't want it. Hmm, I suppose that the early South African settlers could make the same argument about why they deserved control over the Africans they encountered. Oh, wait! They did! It's less messy than the truth about pre-1948 Jewish terrorism and war, which is a history that is lost, even to Mr. Medved.

I mean, everyone knows that Europeans are always fair, and that no one else is capable of creating dynamic cities with theaters and political parties like they are. An appeal to European cultural superiority works, at least for a while for some.

Greater care and clarity in describing the history of the conflict will encourage policymakers and the public to grasp its essential contours, and to recognize the absence of any real equivalence in the goals or strategies of the two sides.

Maybe so, but Zionist arguments don't do it for me. So far, what I read is that European Jews are entitled to Israel because their imported culture is superior to anything that existed, that they came there and bought out the place from folks who didn't want it, and that any other media position is Palestinian propaganda.

His crapola revisionist history may work for you, but it's not worth my time.

Edited June 4, 2011 by Sofiyya

[ready4ONE 5,400]

Nobody expects you to completely agree with the OP Sof, nor are you expected to suddenly come to the realization that Palestinians and their Arab backers have had anything to do with the fact there is still no Palestinian state.

Admitting there are valid claims to the above and OP opinion however might be a great first step in getting to the creation of a Palestinian state in my view however. You are under no obligation to agree.

[Sofiyya 1,687]

When you admit that the creation of Israel owes a lot to Jewish terrorism, then we can discuss what I believe about why there is no Palestinian state.

Odd, for an atheist, you sure easily swallow the Biblical line on an Israeli homeland. That you see valid claims in the article shows how little you know about the reality. You just WANT to believe it. That takes no real effort.

Nobody expects you to completely agree with the OP Sof, nor are you expected to suddenly come to the realization that Palestinians and their Arab backers have had anything to do with the fact there is still no Palestinian state.

Admitting there are valid claims to the above and OP opinion however might be a great first step in getting to the creation of a Palestinian state in my view however. You are under no obligation to agree.

[PalestineMyHeart 1,897]

An interesting choices of phrases.

I largely agree with your last statement. I DO agree that an end to the conflict will need just and fair agreement to the very issues you mention. I also happen to think it requires an unequivocal recognition of the state of Israel by Palestinians, and a clear and unequivocal renunciation of violence and terrorism against Israel - including the launching of rocket attacks from Gaza into sovereign Israel.

The Palestinian Authority has already recognized the State of Israel within the 1967 borders and has reaffirmed this recognition repeatedly, since 1993 at Oslo. Since we’re on the subject…. when has Israel recognized the Palestinian state?

Demands for an end to violent resistance as a pre-condition for a peace agreement sound very reasonable to the casual observer.

However, at the same time it demands "quiet" from the other side, Israel is continuing its own belligerent and extremely violent military occupation and expanding its illegal settlements. These are the main provocations for continuing violent resistance.

Under international law, an occupied people have every right to resist their occupiers by any means necessary. So it’s both hypocritical and also arrogant for Israel to demand that Palestinian resistance end while Israel’s own illegal occupation continues.

And even if you don't agree that both sides have an equal "right" or "non-right" to violence - you have to admit that decades of devastating strikes from Israel’s world-class military have not been able to stop violent resistance. So it’s anyone’s guess how Israel can demand that a de-militarized Palestine somehow do the job - and before even beginning peace negotiations.

The only way to change the situation is to address the root causes of the conflict - by sitting down at the negotiating table. However, this is not the Israeli government's objective - it figures it has everything to gain by continuing the status quo. By continuing to stall final negotiations on one pretext or another, it believes it is buying time to seize more and more Palestinian land.

I have a question for you in that regard. You mention agreement upon borders. Just what are borders that you are willing to accept?

It is up to the Palestinian people (through their elected representatives) to decide what agreement they will accept.

Personally, I thought a two-state solution based on the 1967 lines was still “do-able” until a few years ago. But it is becoming increasingly clear that the Israeli government never intends to willingly give up control of enough of the West Bank to make a viable Palestinian state possible - in fact, it doesn’t want a viable Palestinian state and is dong everything it can to prevent it.

So there are now various international efforts underway to change that status quo - BDS, UN actions, etc. But if Israel does not change its path, I think it will ultimately result in a one-state situation. However, it won't be the one the Zionists had hoped for.

Israel may indeed manage to end up with all the land of historic Palestine. But another mass ethnic cleansing a la 1947-1948 will probably no longer be tolerated by the world community.

So Israel would end up with all those Palestinians.

With current demographic trends, Arabs will again outnumber Jews between the Jordan and the Mediterranean by 2020. At that point, Israel will have to choose between being a Jewish state or being a democratic state, because it won’t be able to be both. It will either have to give Palestinians full Israeli citizenship including the right to vote - meaning that Jews would no longer hold the political majority in Israel - or embrace a South Africa-style Apartheid state with one ethnic group enjoying rights and privileges that are denied to another. That would likely bring South Africa-style international sanctions.

So, one way or another, Palestinians will get their rights.

Since by your own words Israel is nothing more than a "Zionist invasion" -- presumably in your views not a legitimate entity, not a legal entity -- then just what are these borders of which you speak? If they are in fact the shores of the Mediterranean, then just what sort of "just and fair" negotiation do you expect of Israelis? National suicide?

That's not at all what I said. Do not presume to embellish my words with your own fanciful presumptions and then expect me to argue a point of view that isn’t even mine.

But hmmmm “national suicide” paranoias in a group that was willing to destroy another people in order to wrest their home from them.... is this Freudian or what ?!

[PalestineMyHeart 1,897]

Forgive them Simpson, by just and fair they do indeed appear to mean "goodbye Israel."

Standard hasbara line - implying that Israel’s very existence depends on it being allowed to illegally attack, invade, occupy and colonize its neighbors with impunity, and implying that this is a "good" thing. Please. If the only way a country can exist is as a criminal rogue nation, then it no longer has any legitimacy at all.

certainly neither wife nor Sof have even hinted at the merest recognition Palestinians bear any responsibility for their plight, or much less ever done anything that wasn't wholly justified by Israeli actions.

It’s not Palestinians bulldozing each others’ homes and croplands, dropping one-ton bombs on each other’s apartment buildings, shooting each other’s kids on the way to school, or forcing pregnant women to give birth in the dirt at checkpoints. It’s not the Palestinians being condemned at the U.N. for their illegal occupation and their illegal assault on Gaza. It's not the Palestinians who have to be constantly shielded from international sanctions for their behavior by their BFF. It's not the Palestinians who have been told repeatedly and in no uncertain terms by the U.N. and other world bodies to END their occupation immediately and pull their soldiers and their settlers back behind the 1967 lines.

The merest hint of admitting the truth in your OP runs entirely counter to Palestinian historical and current immutable orthodoxy. Everything is Israels fault. Everything is justified in reaction to Israels sins.

The truth lies somewhere in between.

The OP is a bunch of Zio hooey. I've already pointed out 2 glaring errors... but if that's not enough, I can point out plenty more.

[Pooky 3,849]

It’s not Palestinians bulldozing each others’ homes and croplands, dropping one-ton bombs on each other’s apartment buildings, shooting each other’s kids on the way to school, or forcing pregnant women to give birth in the dirt at checkpoints.

Obviously the guided anti-tank missile Hamas fired at an Israeli school bus doesn't count in your world, then.

Just one example under the thousands out there that you choose to ignore.

[PalestineMyHeart 1,897]

Can you dispute anything in the post. I directly asked you questions and you ignored them.

Huh ? I gave you specifics in my very first post in this thread:

This piece is just a laundry list of Zionist myths presented as "history" - denying that Israel was artificially created by colonialists from Europe, denying the Nakba, and on and on and on - which have long been debunked by Israel's own historians. I think he got every ridiculous old fairy tale in there except "land without people for a people without land."

Medved should go back to trying to be the next Gene Shalit.

[PalestineMyHeart 1,897]

Can you dispute anything in the post. I directly asked you questions and you ignored them.

I answered your questions in Post #24 of this thread.

If you are not even going to pay attention, there is no point in trying to have a discussion with you.

[Sofiyya 1,687]

I've already pointed out why it's pointless to discuss this issue with people who are so brainwashed that they can't see the biases and racism in the OP article. If South African apartheid or the British occupation of India had gotten the kind of positive PR for the colonialism that Israel also practices, Gandhi, Mandela and Bishop Tutu would be labeled terrorists today instead of the rightful heroes they are. I can't wait for our heroes to take their rightful place for our liberation.

[PalestineMyHeart 1,897]

I'd like to address some more of the ridiculous tripe from the OP:

Nor did these efforts in any way “uproot” or “displace” Palestinian society. During the years of intensive immigration between World War I and World War II, the Jewish population west of the Jordan increased by 470,000 while the non-Jewish population swelled by 588,000. According to respected British census figures, the number of Palestinian Arabs exploded on the eve of Israeli independence, increasing 120 percent between 1922 and 1947. These figures prove that the rise of the Jewish state (with its greatly heightened economic development) drew more Palestinians into the area, rather than driving them away.

The ethnic cleansing of Palestine did not begin until the latter part of 1947. So his figures (unsourced, by the way) "prove" nothing.

The rest is a recycling of a myth first introduced for mass consumption by Joan Peters in her notoriously amateurish attempt at historical revision, "From Time Immemorial." By this time, the original fairy-tale “Land without people for a people without land” had become too obvious a lie, so this new myth was intended to try to explain away all those pesky Palestinians hanging around Palestine and somehow justify denying them the right to their own homeland.

Unfortunately for Peters (and Medved,) her "research" has been thoroughly debunked, discredited and even laughed out of the halls of Hebrew University. Scholars who picked her book apart include Israeli historian and right-wing Zionist Yehoshua Porath, who concluded, just as British authorities had documented, that the Arab increase in Palestine for at least the last 200 years was overwhelmingly due to “natural increase.”

As British census officials noted, Palestinians have one of the highest birth rates in the world, sustained since at least the middle of the 19th century. The average number of children born to a Palestinian woman who has lived through her childbearing years is slightly more than 7. (The birth rate is generally somewhat higher among Palestinian Muslims than among Palestinian Christians, due to various factors.)

"out of a total number of 360,822 immigrants who entered Palestine between 1920 and 1942, only 27,981 or 7.8% were Arabs."

- Anglo-American Survey of Palestine (1946) Chapter VII, p. 195

[PalestineMyHeart 1,897]

Here's another steaming pile of Hasbarashite:

Palestinians became refugees only after fighting began in the War of Independence, especially after five Arab states with well-equipped armies invaded the fledgling Jewish state, pledged to achieve its total annihilation.

Q: When did the government of Israel declare its establishment?

A: On May 14, 1948

Q: When did the Arab states declare war?

A: On May 15, 1948.

Seems simple enough.

However, that was not the beginning of the war. Beginning more than 6 weeks before the Arab armies attacked, the Zionists had already launched mass assaults on areas designated for the Arab state.

"Plan Dalet" was formally adopted by Zionist leaders on March 10, 1948. Its stated objective was to "gain control of the areas of the Hebrew state and defend its borders" and that "it also aims at gaining control of the areas of Jewish settlement and concentration which are located outside the borders."

Read that again.

"...which are located outside the borders."

Plan Dalet was implemented between April 1, 1948 and May 14, 1948. By the time it was over, Zionist militias had seized control of much of the territory outside the land allotted to the Jewish state - including the western part of Jerusalem, the Jaffa district, the entire Acre region, the northern Galilee, and a swath of the northern Negev from Beersheba to the Dead Sea - ultimately driving more than 750,000 Palestinians out of their homes.[/b]

April 1, 1948 - Operation Nachshon carved a corridor from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem

April 27, 1948 - Operation Hametz captured Jaffa

April 28, 1948 - Operation Yiftach - consolidated control of all the eastern Galilee

May 3, 1948 - Operation Matateh - took Tiberias and the eastern Galilee

May 14, 1948 - Operation Ben'Ami - took Acre

May 14, 1948 - Operation Kilshon - took the New City of Jerusalem

Other Plan Dalet operations drove most of the Palestinian population out of the coastal plain, as well as from Lydda, Ramla, Tiberias, Safed, Beersheba, Beisan and West Jersualem. The only Palestinian towns to remain intact in the areas seized by the Zionists were Nazareth and Shafa'amr in the Galilee.

The Arab League waited until the end of the British Mandate to take action to stop the aggression against the Palestinians. U.N. Charter Article 52 gave them the right and duty to do so, to protect the lands which were designated for the Arab state from being invaded and seized by hostile foreign forces.

This is the reason there are no U.N. resolutions condemning the actions of the Arab states.

As the Arab League announced in their statement:

...the only solution of the Palestine problem is the establishment of a unitary Palestinian State, in accordance with democratic principles, whereby its inhabitants will enjoy complete equality before the law, [and whereby] minorities will be assured of all the guarantees recognised in democratic constitutional countries...in accordance with the provisions of the Covenant of the League of Nations and the Charter of the United Nations.

...

Security and order in Palestine have become disrupted. The Zionist aggression resulted in the exodus of more than a quarter of a million of its Arab inhabitants from their homes and in their taking refuge in the neighbouring Arab countries.

[ready4ONE 5,400]

"There are no differences between Jordanians, Palestinians, Syrians and Lebanese. We are all part of one nation. It is only for political reasons that we carefully underline our Palestinian identity... yes, the existence of a separate Palestinian identity serves only tactical purposes. The founding of a Palestinian state is a new tool in the continuing battle against Israel".

- Zuhair Muhsin, military commander of the PLO and member of the PLO Executive Council -

"You do not represent Palestine as much as we do. Never forget this one point: There is no such thing as a Palestinian people, there is no Palestinian entity, there is only Syria. You are an integral part of the Syrian people, Palestine is an integral part of Syria. Therefore it is we, the Syrian authorities, who are the true representatives of the Palestinian people".

- Syrian dictator Hafez Assad to the PLO leader Yassir Arafat -

"As I lived in Palestine, everyone I knew could trace their heritage back to the original country their great grandparents came from. Everyone knew their origin was not from the Canaanites, but ironically, this is the kind of stuff our education in the Middle East included. The fact is that today's Palestinians are immigrants from the surrounding nations! I grew up well knowing the history and origins of today's Palestinians as being from Yemen, Saudi Arabia, Morocco, Christians from Greece, muslim Sherkas from Russia, muslims from Bosnia, and the Jordanians next door. My grandfather, who was a dignitary in Bethlehem, almost lost his life by Abdul Qader Al-Husseni (the leader of the Palestinian revolution) after being accused of selling land to Jews. He used to tell us that his village Beit Sahur (The Shepherds Fields) in Bethlehem County was empty before his father settled in the area with six other families. The town has now grown to 30,000 inhabitants".

- Walid Shoebat, an "ex-Palestinian" Arab -

Excerpts from: http://www.imninalu.net/myths-pals.htm

[PalestineMyHeart 1,897]

And more Tired Talking Points regurgitated from the Fallacy Factory:

He neglects to mention that the Palestinian leaders themselves (led by the grand mufti of Jerusalem, a close Hitler ally during the war) rejected the U.N. partition and made no effort to set up a Palestinian state, either before or after the War of Independence. Between 1949 and 1967, Arabs (the Egyptians and Jordanians) controlled every inch of territory that Abbas now seeks for his new state—all of the West Bank, Gaza, and East Jerusalem. They could have established a Palestinian homeland at any point during those 18 years and, incidentally, continued denying Jews any access to their holy sites. With scant protest from Palestinians, the Arab states made no effort to “fulfill the promise” because they concentrated all their attention and effort on destroying Israel rather than building Palestine. They cared far more about expelling Jews than they did about re-settling Palestinians.

#1 - The Mufti

The claims about the Mufti being Hitler's Henchman in Palestine recruiting anti-Semitic Arabs to kill Jews are cut and pasted on countless Zio propaganda sites.

The facts:

Haj Amin al-Husseini was sentenced to 10 years in prison by the British for inciting riots in 1920. He was given amnesty by the high commissioner of Palestine, a British Jew named Herbert Samuel, who then appointed him as Mufti of Jerusalem in 1921. Samuel was also responsible for creating the Supreme Muslim Council, which al-Husseini was appointed to lead in 1922.

He was not elected, and the Palestinians had no say in his appointment to the Supreme Muslim Council or the Arab Higher Committee.

The British eventually declared the Arab Higher Committee illegal and al-Husseini lost his presidency of the Supreme Muslim Council and went into exile in Syria. He never returned to Palestine.

By the time he met Hitler in 1941, he was no longer the Mufti of Jerusalem and no longer even an appointed official representative of the Palestinian people. The volunteer Muslim forces he controlled were not Palestinian and they did not operate in Palestine.

http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/biography/mufti.html

#2 The Rest -

Palestine has not declared a state because it's been under non-stop occupation, beginning with the British and now the Israelis. Jordan's occupation was a non-belligerent one; it did announce it had annexed the West Bank and East Jerusalem in 1950, but it didn't expel Palestinians from their property or disrupt their lives; to the contrary, it gave them all Jordanian citizenship.

But most of the world considered Jordan's claim to be illegal (including the Arab League and Israel) - only Great Britain (and reportedly Pakistan) recognized it. And at any rate, in 1988, Jordan ceded its claim to the West Bank to the Palestinian people.

(By the way, during its occupation Jordan refused to allow any Israeli - no matter what their religion - into the Old City - not just Jews, but Israeli Muslims and Christians were also prevented from entering.)

Many of the older folks in Palestine still have valid Jordanian passports, and the Jordanian dinar - along with the Israeli shekel and the Yankee dollar - is still accepted as common currency.