"Gaza Island"

[웃 910]

And I even put smiley faces on my posts trying to be friendly...

What's up with the sig? There is no link to your original essays, comments, and personal photographs....Can I see?

Copyright © 2011 by Wife_of_Mahmoud™. Original essays, comments by and personal photographs taken by Wife_of_Mahmoud™ are the exclusive intellectual property of Wife_of_Mahmoud™ and may not be reused, reposted, or republished anywhere in any manner without express written permission from Wife_of_Mahmoud™.

[PalestineMyHeart 1,897]

What's up with the sig? There is no link to your original essays, comments, and personal photographs....Can I see?

My original comments and essays are all over this board. Some personal photos may still be in the archives...

[PalestineMyHeart 1,897]

We all have ideas or beliefs or perceptions about things, based on our life's experience - what we've observed, been taught, experienced, etc.

However, we are sometimes confronted with conflicting information that clashes with our established beliefs or expectations. This can cause an uncomfortable feeling known in the study of social psychology as "cognitive dissonance," and can prompt a very emotional reaction. It is a fascinating phenomenon.

[ready4ONE 5,400]

IAF strikes targets in Gaza in response to rocket attacks

IAF aircraft bomb two weapons manufacturing sites in northern Gaza Strip early Wednesday morning.

By Haaretz

Tags: Gaza Gaza rockets IAF IDF

The IDF responded to rocket fire from the Gaza Strip with strikes on weapons manufacturing sites in Gaza early Wednesday morning.

IAF aircraft targeted two sites in the northern part of the Gaza Strip, according to a statement released by the IDF Spokesperson's Unit. Direct hits were confirmed.

An Iron Dome missile outside Ashkelon responding to a rocket launch from the Gaza Strip in April 2011.

Photo by: AFP

The IDF statement said that the strikes were a response to rocket fire on Israel from Gaza on Tuesday that caused damage to civilian structures.

Two rockets were fired from Gaza into southern Israel on Tuesday night, causing minor damage to a house.

One rocket landed in an open area in the Sha'ar Hanegev Regional Council, while the other landed in Sdot Negev Regional Council, causing minor damage to a house. An alarm sounded throughout both areas prior to the explosion of the rockets.

On Sunday, the IDF launched an attack on a Gaza tunnel used by terrorists to infiltrate into Israel, in response to rocket fire from Gaza on Saturday. Three Qassam rockets were fired into southern Israel, landing in open fields in the Hof Ashkelon municipality.

[PalestineMyHeart 1,897]

IAF strikes targets in Gaza in response to rocket attacks

IAF aircraft bomb two weapons manufacturing sites in northern Gaza Strip early Wednesday morning.

By Haaretz

Tags: Gaza Gaza rockets IAF IDF

The IDF responded to rocket fire from the Gaza Strip with strikes on weapons manufacturing sites in Gaza early Wednesday morning.

IAF aircraft targeted two sites in the northern part of the Gaza Strip, according to a statement released by the IDF Spokesperson's Unit. Direct hits were confirmed.

An Iron Dome missile outside Ashkelon responding to a rocket launch from the Gaza Strip in April 2011.

Photo by: AFP

The IDF statement said that the strikes were a response to rocket fire on Israel from Gaza on Tuesday that caused damage to civilian structures.

Two rockets were fired from Gaza into southern Israel on Tuesday night, causing minor damage to a house.

One rocket landed in an open area in the Sha'ar Hanegev Regional Council, while the other landed in Sdot Negev Regional Council, causing minor damage to a house. An alarm sounded throughout both areas prior to the explosion of the rockets.

On Sunday, the IDF launched an attack on a Gaza tunnel used by terrorists to infiltrate into Israel, in response to rocket fire from Gaza on Saturday. Three Qassam rockets were fired into southern Israel, landing in open fields in the Hof Ashkelon municipality.

And everything had been so quiet for the past week ! Now the peace has been shattered...

Israeli air strike kills two in Gaza Strip

Three Injured As Army Bombards Gaza

Medics: Palestinian shot at Hebron checkpoint

2 Border Guards indicted for assaulting Palestinians

Israeli forces detain teen in Jenin camp

270 Palestinians kidnapped last month including 33 children

The Israeli Military arrested 50 civilians from Hebron in June including 17 children

Israel expropriates Palestinian land in order to legalize West Bank settlement

05 July '11: Video documentation: Settler sets fire to field in Burin

Israeli troops raid village in Jenin, detain 2 locals

Aliyah arrivals destined for Palestinian areas of Israel

ICJ Ruling on Illegal Wall: Seven Years On

Al-Khalil (Hebron): Mekorot Water Company again destroys Jaber family irrigation pipes

Israeli Army destroys nine water tanks in Palestinian village

Israeli occupation forces destroy water wells and confiscate pumps

Israel dig more water wells in the Jordan Valley

IOF soldiers arrest 8 Palestinians, beat up others

Israeli Army, Settlers Attack Palestinian Properties

Study: Israel's wall segregates 13 percent of West Bank

IOA endorses new road in Silwan, serves demolition notice in same village

Israel Demolishes Six Structures in Area C, Destroying Livelihood of Palestinian Refugee Families

Israeli Authorities Uproot, Confiscate 450 Olive Trees in Salfit

Teen arrested as village faces continuous raids

West Bank rabbi calls for annexing West Bank to Israel

Israeli soldiers blocked Icelandic FM’s car with rocks Read more: http://www.icenews.is/index.php/2011/07/11/israeli-soldiers-blocked-icelandic-fms-car-with-rocks/#ixzz1RzqLMdHx

American Jew refused entry to Israel on suspicion of converting to Islam

Israel arrests Gaza man crossing borders for treatment

IOF soldiers round up 30 Palestinian children in Bethlehem village in two month

[IR5FORMUMSIE 850]

IAF strikes targets in Gaza in response to rocket attacks

IAF aircraft bomb two weapons manufacturing sites in northern Gaza Strip early Wednesday morning.

By Haaretz

Tags: Gaza Gaza rockets IAF IDF

The IDF responded to rocket fire from the Gaza Strip with strikes on weapons manufacturing sites in Gaza early Wednesday morning.

IAF aircraft targeted two sites in the northern part of the Gaza Strip, according to a statement released by the IDF Spokesperson's Unit. Direct hits were confirmed.

An Iron Dome missile outside Ashkelon responding to a rocket launch from the Gaza Strip in April 2011.

Photo by: AFP

The IDF statement said that the strikes were a response to rocket fire on Israel from Gaza on Tuesday that caused damage to civilian structures.

Two rockets were fired from Gaza into southern Israel on Tuesday night, causing minor damage to a house.

One rocket landed in an open area in the Sha'ar Hanegev Regional Council, while the other landed in Sdot Negev Regional Council, causing minor damage to a house. An alarm sounded throughout both areas prior to the explosion of the rockets.

On Sunday, the IDF launched an attack on a Gaza tunnel used by terrorists to infiltrate into Israel, in response to rocket fire from Gaza on Saturday. Three Qassam rockets were fired into southern Israel, landing in open fields in the Hof Ashkelon municipality.

This should be be good for a Phosphorus drop or two. Their silly gestures of defiance are no match for our military firepower.

[mawilson 2,133]

"Colonialism typically ends, whereas settler colonialism lasts forever"

[mawilson 2,133]

It's interesting that as the Arab spring brings the promise of freedom and democracy for oppressed peoples in the region, the self-proclaimed "only democracy" in the Middle East is swinging further and further away from the concept.

Do you have any evidence that Israel is swinging "further and further away" from democracy, other than the misguided Boycott Law which will probably be overturned?

And since you put "only democracy" in quotes, what other real democracies are there?

[I AM NOT THAT GUY 5,715]

what other real democracies are there?

None that I have found, except a few zoned out hippie communes until the drugs ran low.

ETA: Socialism and Democracy work good in theory, but never in practice.

Edited July 13, 2011 by Some Old Guy

[Usui Takumi 1,562]

None that I have found, except a few zoned out hippie communes until the drugs ran low.

ETA: Socialism and Democracy work good in theory, but never in practice.

The only pure democracy I know of is (was) Athens.

Edited July 13, 2011 by Sousuke

[Sofiyya 1,687]

Is Israel a Democracy?

Ending the occupation and discrimination against Arab citizens within its borders will alter our perception of whether Israel began as an imperfect democracy or a false one.

GERSHOM GORENBERG | December 4, 2009

Infant mortality among Arab citizens of Israel is two and a half times higher than it is among Jewish citizens. One out of two Israeli Arab college graduates is out of work. Arabs make up 6 percent of the civil service, though they are over 15 percent of the country’s citizens. National testing shows Arab fifth- and eighth-graders trailing Jewish pupils in math, science, and English, and the gap is widening. That’s not surprising, since Arabs suffer much more poverty, and the national education system spends considerably more per Jewish child than per Arab child.

This a just a selection from the last few weeks’ news reports on the ethnic gap in Israel—not that inequality is big news. The most clichéd phrase in Israeli political discourse is that the country is a “Jewish and democratic state.” The phrase is overused precisely because of the tension between the two adjectives, because of the majority’s insecurity over whether both can be achieved at the same time. (The minority generally presumes it can’t.)

The standard line of the country’s boosters is that it’s the only democracy in the Middle East. The most concise criticism is that it is an “ethnocracy,” as Israeli political geographer Oren Yiftachel argues in his 2006 book of that name. An ethnocracy, he explains, is a regime promoting “the expansion of the dominant group in contested territory … while maintaining a democratic façade.” Looking at this debate in light of two new books by Israeli scholars and of a faded and remarkable document that I’ve just read in the Israel State Archives, it seems both sides could be right.

The document is from late April 1948, a few weeks before Israeli independence. It’s the blueprint for the administration of the Jewish state, detailed down to the location of regional health offices and the budget for day-care centers to be opened in large Arab villages. An Emergency Committee of top Zionist political leaders produced the plan, according to the unpublished doctoral dissertation of Israeli political scientist Jonathan Fine. (Fine’s dissertation on the transition from colonial rule to independence is what led me to the blueprint.) The committee had begun work the previous October, after a U.N. panel recommended dividing British-ruled Palestine into a Jewish and an Arab state. In the territory assigned to them, Jews were only a slight majority. Partition didn’t turn out that way, of course. . Most of the Arabs residents fled or were expelled from what became Israel. Among those who say the exodus was premeditated ethnic cleansing, one argument is that Zionist leaders had to know that a Jewish state with such a large Arab minority wasn’t viable.

What’s striking about the Emergency Committee’s blueprint is that it assumes that Israel will include that large Arab minority. The planned Education Ministry, for instance, is expected to take responsibility for schools in the “248 Arab villages” that would be in the Jewish state according to the U.N. partition. Likewise, the ministry would be responsible for Arab schools in Tiberias, Safed, and Beit She’an—towns whose Arab populations left during the war. Various branches of the civil service would have Jewish directors with Arab deputies.

So how did Jews expect to have self-determination—political control as an ethnic collective—in a country where they barely formed a majority? The leadership may have expected Jewish immigration to create a more solid majority. An October 1947 cable from the Zionist movement’s “foreign minister,” Moshe Shertok, suggests that he hoped that many Arab residents of the Jewish state would opt for citizenship in the Arab state. Israel, that is, would provide their schools and health care—but they wouldn’t be part of the electorate. It would be a relatively soft ethnocracy.

In early May of 1948, as fighting intensified, , Shertok described the growing Arab exodus as “quite unprecedented and unforeseen.” By June, as Israel’s first foreign minister, he was pushing for a policy of not letting refugees return. At times he argued that stable peace could not be reached if Israel had a large, potentially hostile national minority. At times, his argument was more visceral. “Had anyone risen among us and said that one day we should expel all of them—that would have been madness,” he said in a Cabinet meeting (as quoted by Benny Morris in his book 1948. But after the fact, the exodus was “one of those revolutionary changes” that could not be reversed. “The aggressive enemy brought this about and the blood is on his head,” he said, adding that abandoned land and houses were the “spoils of war.” In September 1948, the Cabinet decided to bar a return until a formal peace treaty. In practical terms, that was the decision that made the exodus permanent.

After the war, the 156,000 Arabs remaining in Israel were about 15 percent of the population. They became Israeli citizens, with the right to vote and be elected. But most Arab towns and villages remained under restrictive military government. “The Israeli authorities viewed the Arab population as hostile and potentially seditious,” as Hillel Cohen writes in Good Arabs: The Israeli Security Agencies and the Israeli Arabs, 1948-1967, an Israeli best seller that has just come out in English. Cohen’s title is ironic. It refers to the web of collaborators and informers that security agencies built among the Arab minority. The network’s purpose, Cohen writes, was not only to uncover hostile groups and agents of enemy countries. It was also to control political life down to the village level and to “reshape Arab consciousness and identity,” divorcing Arab citizens from Palestinian nationalism.

Using previously classified documents, Cohen charts in fascinating and disturbing detail how collaboration shaped life among Israeli Arabs. Pro-regime Arabs tried to keep wedding singers from performing communist and Arab nationalist songs. Teachers in Arab-language schools were hired or fired based on political loyalties. “Naturally, this affected the quality of teaching,” especially since educated Arabs were more likely to have Arab nationalist leanings, Cohen writes. The military government over Israeli Arabs was dissolved in 1966. The Arab parties set up as satellites of Jewish ones have vanished. Arab citizens now vote mainly for parties that outspokenly demand their rights. “State supervision of political speech has lessened” but not disappeared, Cohen writes. Yet alongside (frustratingly slow) progress within Israel, a far more blatantly ethnocratic regime has developed in the territories that Israel conquered in 1967. Israel’s democratically elected governments rise and crumble based on their position on the occupation.

So is Israel a democracy or an ethnocracy? A direction for an answer comes out of philosopher Avishai Margalit’s brief, provocative new work, On Compromise and Rotten Compromises. Margalit, I should note, spends little space explicitly discussing Israel. He addresses a universal question: At what point does a political compromise become morally indefensible? The brief answer is that “rotten compromises” are taboo, meaning agreements that “establish or maintain an inhuman regime, a regime of cruelty and humiliation … a regime that does not treat humans as humans.”

The Munich agreement is one of Margalit’s test cases. Another is the compromise on slavery struck by the framers of the U.S. Constitution, which allowed slavery to continue, permitted the continued import of slaves for 20 years, and required the extradition of fugitive slaves. To create a union, Northern delegates to the constitutional convention sacrificed black people to ongoing cruelty and humiliation. It’s possible, he notes, that the framers believed that slavery was economically unsustainable and would wither away. They couldn’t know that the invention of the cotton gin would make the slave economy flourish. Nonetheless, “my tentative answer is that the Constitution was based on a rotten compromise,” Margalit writes.

Here is the problem: The newborn United States was “a settling ethnocracy,” to use Yiftachel’s term. It enslaved black people and steadily pushed Native Americans from their land. Yet it was also a revolutionary experiment in democracy that inspired revolutionaries elsewhere. It seems that a polity can be born as both a democracy and an ethnocracy, its politics built forever after around the contradiction between the two.

And we base our judgment of which side of a country’s character is the fundamental one on what happens later—just as the meaning of a novel’s first chapter changes with each successive chapter one reads. Judged in March 1857, after the Dred Scott decision, the United States looked like a country created as an ethnocracy with a democratic false front. Judged on Nov. 5, 2008, it looked like a fundamentally democratic nation. As much as history helps us make sense of the present, the present constantly alters the meaning of the past.

Israel has become more democratic and more ethnocratic since its birth. Its democracy is sometimes seen as a model by Palestinians seeking their own independence. Whether it ends the occupation and discrimination against Arab citizens within its borders will alter our perception of whether the nation began as an imperfect democracy or a false one. Today’s political battles, strangely enough, will determine not only its future but also its past.

Edited July 13, 2011 by Sofiyya

[mawilson 2,133]

Infant mortality among Arab citizens of Israel is two and a half times higher than it is among Jewish citizens. One out of two Israeli Arab college graduates is out of work. Arabs make up 6 percent of the civil service, though they are over 15 percent of the country’s citizens. National testing shows Arab fifth- and eighth-graders trailing Jewish pupils in math, science, and English, and the gap is widening. That’s not surprising, since Arabs suffer much more poverty, and the national education system spends considerably more per Jewish child than per Arab child.

It's a problem to be sure, but you could say the same things about African Americans or other minorities in the US - it doesn't make this country any less of a democracy.

[I AM NOT THAT GUY 5,715]

It's a problem to be sure, but you could say the same things about African Americans or other minorities in the US - it doesn't make this country any less of a democracy.

We are not dropping phosphorus bombs on the reservations, are we? At least these days, we let them open casinos to take money away from old white people.

Edited July 13, 2011 by Some Old Guy

[mawilson 2,133]

We are not dropping phosphorus bombs on the reservations, are we? At least these days, we let them open casinos to take money away from old white people.

Israel is not dropping any bombs on *Israeli* Arab citizens who live in *Israel* either.

P.S. American forces dropped phosphorus bombs on Fallujah in November 2004; yet we're still a democracy.

Edited July 13, 2011 by mawilson

[I AM NOT THAT GUY 5,715]

Israel is not dropping any bombs on *Israeli* Arab citizens who live in *Israel* either.

You don't know very much about American Indian sovereignty, do you?