"Gaza Island"

[PalestineMyHeart 1,897]

Excuses? No. Other side of the issue, yes.

And to WOM, reverse your logical question, how does attempting to illegally enter and perpetrate a bombing help with any of the problems you asked about?

We can agree they are problems though, and issues needing to be addresses.

I think you have stated that you believe the occupation and the settlements need to end. So there's hope

[ready4ONE 5,400]

I have stated that, and indeed in the end hoped for result of a workable and independant (not occupied or blockaded) Palestinian State we agree, even if we disagree on the specifics of the nature of the problem, and or the best solutions to getting there. :-) We also agree the settlements must not just stop, but a painful reversal of same will be needed.

[I AM NOT THAT GUY 5,715]

Excuses? No. Other side of the issue, yes.

More excuses. Everybody knows the solution. Israel is stalling until they can establish "more facts on the ground". In other words, when no Arabs live within Palestine, then, and only then, will Israel declare the occupation over.

Edited July 8, 2011 by Some Old Guy

[PalestineMyHeart 1,897]

More excuses. Everybody knows the solution. Israel is stalling until they can establish "more facts on the ground". In other words, when no Arabs live within Palestine, then, and only then, will Israel declare the occupation over.

This is exactly the situation - it has been the main driving force behind Israel's policies and actions over the past 6 decades.

And now we have the current Israeli Prime Minister on tape admitting it - there he is in the clip, actually bragging to a settler family about how he deceived both the Palestinian Authority and the Clinton administration and turned the Oslo agreement into a farce, how the most important thing is for the illegal settlements to stay there, and how he created a loophole for Israel to keep anything it wants. And how he "knows" the American government won't get in his way.

The settlers are not just Netanyahu's political power base (his administration would not survive for 1 minute if the settler parties left his coalition.) They are at the center of the ideology he learned at his father's knee. (I will save the ring story for another time...)

Anyway, this was HUGE news in Israel when the video hit the air about 6 months ago, but you heard nary a peep about it in the U.S. It was studiously ignored in this thread, too. The elephant in the room...

[Usui Takumi 1,562]

Um ok. And what's that got to do with the Flotilla, BDS, Israel's ethnic cleansing, illegal occupation or settlements ?

If Israel is committing ethnic cleansing then they REALLY suck at it. If Hitler was Mr. Clean than Israel is me (I'm not the tidiest of people you see).

[PalestineMyHeart 1,897]

If Israel is committing ethnic cleansing then they REALLY suck at it. If Hitler was Mr. Clean than Israel is me (I'm not the tidiest of people you see).

You might want to look up what ethnic cleansing means before you post about it.

[I AM NOT THAT GUY 5,715]

You might want to look up what ethnic cleansing means before you post about it.

It is a harsh term, but somewhat accurate. Not many places in the world are the melting pot/salad bowl that the US has tried to become. You can't have a Jewish state unless you are predominately Jewish, and there is the rub: You also can't have a viable state unless you have enough territory to be sustainable and defensible. There really isn't enough territory there for two countries, and somebody has to go.

[Usui Takumi 1,562]

You might want to look up what ethnic cleansing means before you post about it.

I understand the term quite well thank you.

Edited July 9, 2011 by Sousuke

[PalestineMyHeart 1,897]

It is a harsh term, but somewhat accurate. Not many places in the world are the melting pot/salad bowl that the US has tried to become. You can't have a Jewish state unless you are predominately Jewish, and there is the rub: You also can't have a viable state unless you have enough territory to be sustainable and defensible. There really isn't enough territory there for two countries, and somebody has to go.

However, that's not what Zionists promised Great Britain and the U.N. and the U.S. and the entire international community. Every document regarding the establishment of a Jewish homeland in Palestine explicitly stipulates that nothing shall be done which may prejudice the civil and religious rights of existing non-Jewish communities there. The State of Israel accepted these terms as part of the conditions of its establishment and acceptance into the U.N.

By the way there are quite a few "viable" states in the world that are smaller than Israel. For instance, its neighbor Lebanon - less than half Israel's size.

[PalestineMyHeart 1,897]

I understand the term quite well thank you.

Then consider that in a period of less than 2 years, Zionist terror gangs and militias and later the State of Israel managed to drive 75% of the indigenous Palestinian population out of what is now the State of Israel. So they didn't "suck" at ethnic cleansing at all; they were quite effective at it.

[I AM NOT THAT GUY 5,715]

However, that's not what Zionists promised Great Britain and the U.N. and the U.S. and the entire international community. Every document regarding the establishment of a Jewish homeland in Palestine explicitly stipulates that nothing shall be done which may prejudice the civil and religious rights of existing non-Jewish communities there. The State of Israel accepted these terms as part of the conditions of its establishment and acceptance into the U.N.

By the way there are quite a few "viable" states in the world that are smaller than Israel. For instance, its neighbor Lebanon - less than half Israel's size.

Lebanon seems to have its problems as well, seeming to lack that viability and autonomy...

Israel criticises UN probe on Lebanon clashes

Israeli officials have voiced anger at a United Nations probe into last month’s deadly clashes along the country’s border with Lebanon, in which Israeli soldiers shot dead pro-Palestinian demonstrators on Lebanese soil.

The UN report, which has been circulated among members of the UN Security Council in New York, accuses Israeli forces of using excessive force that was “not commensurate” with the threat faced by the soldiers. It says that seven people were killed and 111 injured in the cross-border violence on May 15.

The casualty figure is lower than suggested in earlier reports, which claimed that at least 11 protesters were killed.

According to the UN investigation, the situation escalated after some 1,000 Lebanese protesters broke away from a larger and peaceful demonstration, held near the border to commemorate the Palestinian refugee crisis of 1948. The protesters approached the border, unearthed 23 anti-tank landmines, and started throwing petrol bombs and stones across the fence, the report says.

In response, the Israeli soldiers gave oral warnings and fired shots into the air – before using live ammunition on the demonstrators massed on the other side of the border. According to the report, the actions of both the protesters and the Israeli soldiers violated UN resolution 1701, which demands an end to hostilities along the border, following the 2006 war between Israel and Hizbollah, the Lebanese Shia group.

Israeli officials have always maintained that the soldiers used legitimate and proportionate force in an attempt to prevent a breach of the border. The government’s anger is now directed in particular at Michael Williams, the UN’s special co-ordinator for Lebanon, who led the investigation.

One Israeli official said Mr Williams was not facing a “boycott” by the Israeli government, but would be cold-shouldered in the near future: “It is true that he knows that he should take his time before coming back to Israel, because no one will make haste to see him when he asks for an appointment.”

The officials also said that the Israeli government would soon be sending an official response to the report to the UN secretary-general, detailing its own version of events.

http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/618e1cf6-a958-11e0-bcc2-00144feabdc0.html#ixzz1RZmV0bGF

Edited July 9, 2011 by Some Old Guy

[PalestineMyHeart 1,897]

Lebanon seems to have its problems as well, seeming to lack that viability and autonomy...

Most of Lebanon's current problems are caused by Israel - after-effects of expelling all those Palestinians.

[IR5FORMUMSIE 850]

It was somewhat OT but tangentially related since it is yet another example of why Israel might be somewhat cautious about who and what enters areas they control. I know some can justify what this wonderful Canadian gent allegedly tried to do, since Israel is so horrible, but even the horrible (excluding suicide bombers of course) have an instinct for self preservation.

Good point. You just never can tell what a Canadian is, most CIA operatives have Canuckistani passports just in case and of course this...

My link

Mossad, the Israeli spy agency, has been hit with new allegations that its agents use Canadian passports to conduct foreign covert operations.

The allegations surfaced yesterday in a courtroom in Auckland, New Zealand.

The court heard that one of two men charged with participating in an organized crime group to obtain a false passport had earlier travelled into the country with a Canadian passport.

Urie Zoshe Kelman, 30, entered the country with Canadian documentation five years ago, on Feb. 2, 1999, the court heard. His stay lasted eight weeks and he left the country, headed for Melbourne, Australia, using a temporary replacement Canadian passport obtained while in New Zealand.

Senior government officials in New Zealand have told reporters there that Mr. Kelman and Eli Cara, his 50-year-old co-accused, are agents of Mossad, the Israeli foreign spy service.

"We're aware of the allegations, or the alleged information, that surfaced in the court case in New Zealand. Nothing else can be added at this time," said Reynald Doiron, a spokesman with Canada's Department of Foreign Affairs.

While the Canadian government is keeping a close eye on the Auckland court case -- it learned of the developments just two days ago -- there has been no official communication with the Israeli government.

Similar allegations have caused serious diplomatic problems in the past. In 1997, Canada pulled its ambassador from Israel after two Mossad agents were caught using Canadian passports during a failed assassination attempt on Khalid Mashaal -- a leading Hamas official -- in Jordan.

Israel assured Canada then that Canadian passports would no longer be used for covert purposes.

However, the National Post reported in 2002 that an informant had supplied information to Israeli agents posing as Canadians while on a mission to locate a senior Hamas leader in Gaza. Militant Palestinian leader Salah Shehadeh was later assassinated by Israeli forces in a July 23 missile attack that also killed 14 others, including nine children.

The informant claimed he was recruited by three agents who said they were Canadians and took him to the Canadian embassy in Tel Aviv before coercing him with promises of travel to Canada and threats to distribute fake photos showing him in sexual encounters.

"Mossad is, by tradition and culture, a rather singularly ruthless intelligence organization," said intelligence expert Wesley Wark, a professor at the University of Toronto. "It is one that sees its role as defending the survival of Israel. From conversations I've had with people in that world, it does take that mission very seriously. And Mossad, unlike some other Western intelligence agencies, is relatively unshackled by internal bureaucratic controls or Israeli legal restraint."

Mr. Doiron said it is too early to tell whether the co-accused in this case are linked to Mossad. "We cannot conclude that at this time," he said.

In fact, the passport numbers that have surfaced in court do not, at first glance, appear to be authentic. Mr. Kelman flew to Auckland from Los Angeles on Qantas Flight QF101 using Canadian passport CA PC 038241. He left March 30, 1999, flying to Melbourne, Australia on Qantas Flight QF36 with a replacement passport bearing the same number.

Authentic Canadian passports have only two letters -- signifying the year the document was issued -- and six letters.

A source said it would be surprising if Israel's meticulous intelligence agency had in fact botched a passport forgery.

Contacted by the Post yesterday, Ofir Gendelman, second secretary with the Israeli mission in Ottawa, said he was aware of the court case, but unfamiliar with the allegations one of the men had used a Canadian passport.

"That's news to me," he said. Mr. Gendelman refused to comment on how an apparently bogus Canadian passport came to be in the possession of an Israeli citizen. He would not answer charges that the men were Mossad operatives.

"We know nothing about it," he said.

Mr. Wark said Mossad has used Canadian passports in the past to avoid suspicion when travelling the world, particularly the Middle East.

"While we have a history of pretty high level of negotiations and very strong condemnations [from the Canadian government] in exchanges with the Israelis requiring them to stop this practice, there's no sign that those demarches have ever really had a serious effect," he said. "If it's an operational necessity they'll use it."

The alleged criminal enterprise to obtain New Zealand passports was discovered -- and charges laid against Mr. Kelman and Mr. Cara -- after Zev William Barkan, who is travelling on a U.S. passport, used the name of a man with cerebral palsy to obtain a passport. A customs investigator noticed an irregularity with the application and telephoned the applicant.

He said he was suspicious because the person had "a Canadian or American accent" according to the New Zealand Herald. Police launched an investigation, which resulted in the March 20 arrest of the two men and subsequent charges. Unusually, the case has been fast-tracked into court.

Mr. Barkan has gone missing but police allege surveillance operations linked him to Mr. Cara and Mr. Kelman.

It remains unknown why the men were in the country.

© National Post 2004

[IR5FORMUMSIE 850]

I have stated that, and indeed in the end hoped for result of a workable and independant (not occupied or blockaded) Palestinian State we agree, even if we disagree on the specifics of the nature of the problem, and or the best solutions to getting there. :-) We also agree the settlements must not just stop, but a painful reversal of same will be needed.

I'd like to think that's what most people want, no more bloodshed but of late I seem to think that there is too much money to be made by the military-industrial complex to allow any form of peace.

[IR5FORMUMSIE 850]