Palestinians to seek full UN membership Sept. 23

[mawilson 2,133]

The folks in refugee camps are really thrilled about their circumstances, too.

Why are there still Palestinian refugee camps in Jordan, Lebanon and Syria?

There haven't been any refugees since the 1948 Arab-Israeli War.

[PalestineMyHeart 1,897]

Yes, the people of Sderot, Beer Sheva, Ashkelon simply love the weaponry raining down upon them. They cheer every inbound launch and smile as the ambulances race the wounded to hospitals and the dead to the morgues.

Sderot.

This city is built on lands belonging to the ethnically cleansed Palestinian village of Najd, which was located inside the territory that the UN Partition Plan had designated as part of the Arab state.

On May 13, 1948, before Israel was declared as a state and before any Arab army entered Palestine, Najd was attacked and occupied by a Zionist militia called the Negev Brigade, as part of Plan Dalet.

Its residents were loaded on trucks and expelled to Gaza. Their property was seized and distributed to Jewish immigrants.

Beersheba.

This city was also inside the territory designated as part of the Arab state under the UN Partition Plan.

The Egyptian army was stationed there after the war began on May 15, 1948, to try to protect it from Israeli attacks. David Ben-Gurion ordered "the conquest of Beersheba, occupation of outposts around it [and] demolition of most of the town." When the Israelis started bombing raids in October 1948, most of the civilian population fled.

When it was over, the remaining residents were loaded onto trucks and dumped across the Gaza border. Their property was seized and distributed to Jewish immigrants.

Ashkelon.

This city is built on the lands belonging to the ethnically cleansed village of al-Jura. It was also inside the territory designated as part of the Arab state under the UN Partition Plan. The Egyptian army occupied the area after the war began on May 15, 1948, to try to protect it from Israeli attacks. It was repeated shelled by the Israelis, and captured on Nov. 4, 1948.

At first, the residents of the town were kept in a caged-off area surrounded with barbed wire. After about a year and a half, they were loaded into trucks and expelled, mostly to Gaza but some to points beyond. Their property was seized and distributed to Jewish immigrants.

Others weren't so lucky - they were massacred. These scenes were repeated over and over in hundreds of towns and villages across Palestine in 1948 - some 400,000 Palestinians ethnically cleansed before the war even "officially" started, and before any Arab armies entered Palestine.

At least 3/4 of the population of Gaza are refugees - families who were driven from their homes in what is now Israel. Do Israelis who live in Sderot and Beersheba and Ashkelon have any fricken clue at all why people in Gaza might be slightly pissed off ?

[Usui Takumi 1,562]

This quote always rings in my head regarding the 1947/48 War. Its regarding an April 1948 truce agreement in Haifa:

You have made a foolish decision. Think it over, as you'll regret it afterward. You must accept the conditions of the Jews. They are fair enough. Don't permit life to be destroyed senselessly. After all, it was you who began the fighting, and the Jews have won.

- General Hugh Stockwell

[Sofiyya 1,687]

Why are there still Palestinian refugee camps in Jordan, Lebanon and Syria?

There haven't been any refugees since the 1948 Arab-Israeli War.

Oh, yea? I'm a refugee.

House demolitions in the West Bank resume after suspension

8 September 2011

Jerusalem

Facing an uncertain future: home demolitions resume in the West Bank

The Israeli authorities have resumed home demolitions in the West Bank after a month-long suspension.

In the early hours of 8 September five residential structures in the Um al Khayr Bedouin community near Hebron in the southern West Bank were demolished, displacing 20 people and severely affecting the 145-strong community.

A two-year-old boy, abandoned accidentally as the bulldozers moved in, was severely traumatised.

Young Bedouin girl surveys her demolished home at Um al Khayr 8.9.2011

On the same day demolitions also reportedly resumed at An Nassariya Village north east of Nablus in the northern West Bank where three water cisterns were destroyed; and in the community of As Samu, south of Hebron, in the southern West Bank, where the Israeli authorities reportedly demolished electrical infrastructure.

Demolitions, drought and displacement in West Bank

More than 700 people have been displaced in the West Bank this year alone, surpassing the entire number displaced during all of last year (594 people).

Israeli soldiers and bulldozers prepare to demolish Samir Muhammad Hasan Younis' home in the West Bank village of Azzun Atma near Qalqilia on January 11. Areas of the village near the barrier and settlements come under Israeli civil and military jurisdiction. [MaanImages/Khaleel Reash]

RAMALLAH (IRIN) -- Demolition of livelihood structures and drought are hitting already impoverished Palestinian communities living in Area C of the West Bank hard this year, according to UN agencies and international aid organizations working in the occupied Palestinian territory.

Demolition of livelihood structures - including commercial structures, educational facilities, wells, water cisterns, water storage tanks, farmland and animal pens - by Israeli authorities in the West Bank and East Jerusalem increased by about 85 percent in 2010 and so far in 2011, the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs told IRIN.

"Over 12,500 Palestinians were affected by the demolition of livelihood structures in the West Bank and East Jerusalem in 2010," Ramesh Rajasingham, head of OCHA in Jerusalem, told IRIN, and "the majority of people effected, were impacted by the demolition of water cisterns in Area C."

During 2010, 21 cisterns were demolished by the Israeli army, of which 9 were built thanks to funding from international donors. Of those demolished, 20 were in Hebron and one in Bethlehem, and two were built before 1948, OCHA says.

Cisterns - used to collect rainwater - are the only water source for livestock in these herding communities and the demolitions create economic hardship for thousands of people. During summer cisterns are also a domestic water source.

Forced to buy costly fodder, water

The West Bank is facing a rainfall shortage this season (September-March), which decreases grazing pastures and water levels in cisterns, forcing herders to purchase costly fodder and water from private tanks to sustain their animals, said the Palestinian Authority agricultural ministry.

About 150,000 Palestinians and 300,000 Israeli settlers - out of the West Bank's 2.5 million people - live in Area C, according to UN estimates, while a total of 500,000 settlers live in occupied Palestinian land in the West Bank.

"My cistern was bulldozed by Israeli authorities without warning in December," said goat herder Saleem Hadaleen, 32, from Khashem Ad-Daraj in south Hebron. About 1,200 people live in his herding community.

"The Israelis claim they tacked a demolition order to the cistern, but I did not receive it," he said, "and now the animals have to walk twice as far to reach a water source."

Saleem and his flock have been forced to return home, struggling to support his family of eight.

Saleem and many community members say their proximity to the construction of Israel's barrier to the southeast and the expansion of the Israeli settlement Karmel to the northwest account for the demolitions which are forcing them to relocate.

Livelihood structures demolished

Israeli authorities demolished 294 livelihood and service structures in the West Bank in 2010, including 240 in Area C and 54 in Jerusalem, said OCHA.

UN Humanitarian Coordinator Max Gaylord told IRIN some 3,000 outstanding demolition orders remain for various residential and livelihood structures across the West Bank and East Jerusalem.

"There is a clear increase in the demolition of livelihood structures in 2010 and 2011. This is happening mostly in the Jordan Valley, Area C, and in areas adjacent to settlements and the 'barrier' and in occupied East Jerusalem," said Ghassan Al-Khatib, an official from PA Prime Minister Salam Fayyad's office in Ramallah.

"Israel is trying to prevent economic and infrastructure development in these areas to reduce the Palestinian presence on the land to allow for further settlement expansion, and construction of the barrier," said Al-Khatib.

Maj Guy Inbar, the Coordinator for [israeli] Government Activities in the Territories, told IRIN: "In 2010, 172 warrants for the dismantling of structures [including houses] belonging to Palestinians were issued in Area C, an almost identical figure to the number of structures belonging to Israelis that were dismantled in the same time period."

Another 150 such structures were removed from firing (closed military) zones, said Inbar.

"The legal standing of the firing zones is exactly the same for both Israelis and Palestinians," he said.

Areas A, B and C

The 1995 Israeli-Palestinian Interim Agreement on the West Bank and Gaza Strip (also known as Oslo II) categorized land in the West Bank into areas A, B and C.

According to the agreement, Area A is under the control of the PA, and Area B under the joint control of Israel and the PA. About 95 percent of the Palestinian population live in these two areas, though they make up only 40 percent of the land area.

About 70 percent of Area C is classified as a firing zone, settlement areas, or nature reserves, and is inaccessible to Palestinians, said OCHA's Rajasingham.

Yousef Hadaleen, community leader of Khashem ad-Daraj in south Hebron since 1979, said only two families and the elementary school are connected to a water network in his community located 3-4 kilometers from where the barrier will be constructed.

"The movement of our community is restricted within a master-plan given to us by the Israeli authorities in 2008," he said.

"Herders move seasonally, and we are continuously fined 750 shekels [about $200] by Israeli authorities for being in areas near the barrier," he added.

However, even structures within the "master-plan" are not guaranteed security from demolitions, said Rajasingham.

OCHA is monitoring displacement risks for the population in Area C through community profiling exercises with other agencies.

Eight cisterns in Area C recently received verbal demolition orders; six of them were funded by the Canadian Representative Office through the UN Food and Agriculture Organization.

NGO dilemma

International NGOs working in Area C are struggling to find a compromise between meeting the emergency needs of the population, and building within the legal framework outlined by the Israeli Civil Administration, according to a recent study published by Italian NGO GVC.

NGOs want to rebuild livelihood structures, but fear they will be re-demolished.

UN agencies and aid organizations view Area C as one of the biggest humanitarian concerns in the West Bank due the threat of demolitions, lack of access to basic services, particularly water and sanitation infrastructure, and movement restrictions.

An inter-agency assessment in February 2010 found that 79 percent of the herding population in Area C is food insecure, citing the erosion of livelihoods due to a lack of access to land, and water scarcity, as the main contributing factors.

[Sofiyya 1,687]

Let's not forget why Israel is there in the first place - European hatred and White Guilt. Why Europeans didn't have to pay for what they did by giving up their land and property to displaced Jews is what a lot of us wonder about.

This quote always rings in my head regarding the 1947/48 War. Its regarding an April 1948 truce agreement in Haifa:

You have made a foolish decision. Think it over, as you'll regret it afterward. You must accept the conditions of the Jews. They are fair enough. Don't permit life to be destroyed senselessly. After all, it was you who began the fighting, and the Jews have won.

- General Hugh Stockwell

[Bad_Daddy 2,209]

Let's not forget why Israel is there in the first place - European hatred and White Guilt. Why Europeans didn't have to pay for what they did by giving up their land and property to displaced Jews is what a lot of us wonder about.

[Sofiyya 1,687]

Ah, displaced European Jews, displaced by non-Jewish Europeans, from their European homes in Europe. Are you seeing a pattern yet?

Edited September 18, 2011 by Sofiyya

[Usui Takumi 1,562]

Let's not forget why Israel is there in the first place - European hatred and White Guilt. Why Europeans didn't have to pay for what they did by giving up their land and property to displaced Jews is what a lot of us wonder about.

This mentioned alot but I don't really see it except in one item - the UN vote for the partition. Much of the framework for a Jewish State occurred after world war 1 and before the holocaust. After the second world war, Britain tried to restrict Jewish immigration.

Edited September 18, 2011 by Sousuke

[Bad_Daddy 2,209]

I'm sure women's rights along with reducing the amount of honor crimes will be high on the list of Palistine. I mean look at their Muslim neighbors in Jordan, Southern Lebanon, Egypt, and Syria. All living high on the hog in a 21st century civilized fashion while furthering science and medicine.

[Boiler 45,513]

The thing that always amused me is that most if not all Palestinians if they trace their family tree will find out that they are actually Jewish.

But as the US proved, Civil Wars are often the nastiest.

[Sofiyya 1,687]

This mentioned alot but I don't really see it except in one item - the UN vote for the partition. Much of the framework for a Jewish State occurred after world war 1 and before the holocaust. After the second world war, Britain tried to restrict Jewish immigration.

There has been rampant anti-Semitism in Europe for pretty much forever. Italy, being the seat of Catholic authority, was among the worse offenders. In 1550, Jews were exiled from Genoa and Venice. In 1555, Pope Paul IV issued a canon (papal law), Cum nimis absurdum, by which the Roman Ghetto was created. Jews were then forced to live in seclusion in a specified area of the rione Sant'Angelo, locked in at night, and he decreed that Jews should wear a distinctive sign, yellow hats for men and veils or shawls for women. They were not allowed to own property outside the ghetto. Living conditions were dreadful: over 3,000 people were forced to live in about 8 acres of land.

Does some of that sound familiar from Nazi Germany?

The first sentence of Pope Paul IV’s edict states that one reason for segregating the Jews is that their “guilt has consigned them to perpetual servitude.” It goes on to say that the Jews “should recognize through experience that they have been made slaves while Christians have been made free through Jesus.” The Latin and English text of this edict may be found in Kenneth R. Stow, Catholic Thought and Papal Jewry, 1555-1593 (New York: The Jewish Theological Seminary of America, 1977), pp. 291-98.

That is a mere snippet from their sorry history.

Arabs have nothing on Europeans when it comes to anti-Semitism. They've been at it far longer and their body count is far higher. Who wouldn't want to get away from that? Now, that they've exported their "problem" to the ME, they act like they're saints for supporting a Jewish state in the first place.

[Usui Takumi 1,562]

There has been rampant anti-Semitism in Europe for pretty much forever. Italy, being the seat of Catholic authority, was among the worse offenders. In 1550, Jews were exiled from Genoa and Venice. In 1555, Pope Paul IV issued a canon (papal law), Cum nimis absurdum, by which the Roman Ghetto was created. Jews were then forced to live in seclusion in a specified area of the rione Sant'Angelo, locked in at night, and he decreed that Jews should wear a distinctive sign, yellow hats for men and veils or shawls for women. They were not allowed to own property outside the ghetto. Living conditions were dreadful: over 3,000 people were forced to live in about 8 acres of land.

Does some of that sound familiar from Nazi Germany?

The first sentence of Pope Paul IV’s edict states that one reason for segregating the Jews is that their “guilt has consigned them to perpetual servitude.” It goes on to say that the Jews “should recognize through experience that they have been made slaves while Christians have been made free through Jesus.” The Latin and English text of this edict may be found in Kenneth R. Stow, Catholic Thought and Papal Jewry, 1555-1593 (New York: The Jewish Theological Seminary of America, 1977), pp. 291-98.

That is a mere snippet from their sorry history.

Arabs have nothing on Europeans when it comes to anti-Semitism. They've been at it far longer and their body count is far higher. Who wouldn't want to get away from that? Now, that they've exported their "problem" to the ME, they act like they're saints for supporting a Jewish state in the first place.

Indeed, I think the Catholic Church openly persecuted Jews because foolishly they held them responsible for the crucifixion, and frankly the 1940s furthered that notion.

[PalestineMyHeart 1,897]

The thing that always amused me is that most if not all Palestinians if they trace their family tree will find out that they are actually Jewish.

But as the US proved, Civil Wars are often the nastiest.

Well... most Palestinians today are Muslim, with a sizeable minority of Christians. Of course many Palestinians can count Jews and even the ancient Hebrews among their direct ancestors... this is no secret and it is no shame to Palestinian people - why should it be ? They are proud of their heritage which includes many peoples, including the original Canaanites. For centuries, Palestine has been a major intersection at the crossroads of Europe, Asia and Africa, and many different peoples have left their mark on the ethnic mix of the Palestinian population.

However their birthright is rejected by Zionism.

[Sofiyya 1,687]

The thing that always amused me is that most if not all Palestinians if they trace their family tree will find out that they are actually Jewish.

But as the US proved, Civil Wars are often the nastiest.

Islam was revealed among pagans in Arabia. No doubt some Jews and Christians converted, but it's doubtful that most Palestinians are descended from Jews.

I know it's true of some Christians in Europe whose Jewish ancestors were forced to convert to Christianity or die.

As Christianity became the dominant religion in the Roman Empire, large numbers of Jews were forcibly baptized. The earliest detailed account is on the island of Minorca in 418. Other major campaigns of forced conversions spread through Europe, one in 614 when Emperor Heraclius forbade Judaism in the Byzantine Empire, and another in 873, launched by Basil I.

However, Pope Gregory I (d.604) decided that baptism should be accepted willingly and not imposed by force. This became, on the whole, accepted practice, but “willingly” was subject to interpretation. Was conversion under threat of death now acceptable, or should the anticipated violence be more remote? If so, how subtle must the insinuation be? Take the advise given by the bishop of Clermont-Ferrand to the Jews on May 14, year 576, after a mob had destroyed the synagogue in his town: “If ye be ready to believe as I do, be one flock with us, and I shall be your pastor; but if ye be not ready, depart from this place.” About 500 Jews of Clermont converted, and the Christians celebrated -“candles were lit, the lamps shone...” The other Jews left for Marseilles. Was this “willingly”? Well, in 938 the pope told the archbishop of Mainz he should expel local Jews if they refused to convert... willingly (he claimed force should not be applied).

Children were another dilemma. At what age was a baptism “willing,” as opposed to a gesture cheaply bought in return for some trivial compensation? The aforementioned Agobard assembled the Lyons children who had not been sent out of harm’s way by their parents, and baptized all those who, according to his judgment, appeared to be agreeable. One of the clauses in the “Constitutio pro Judaeis” issued by successive popes between the 12th and 15th centuries, declared categorically that no Christian should use violence to force Jews to be baptized. What it did not say was what should happen if the forced conversion actually took place, whether it was valid regardless of the illegal process, or if the victim was free to return to his former faith.

The answer to these questions is that, on the whole, the church condemnation of forced baptism remained unchanged, but its attitude regarding post facto problems became tougher over the centuries.

In a letter of 1201, Pope Innocent III stated that a Jew who submitted to baptism under threat of force, expressed a conditional willingness to accept the sacrament, and so was not allowed to renounce it thereafter. For medieval Christianity the backsliding of faith was heretical, punishable by death according to the code later elaborated by the Inquisition. As late as 1747 Pope Benedict XIV decided that once baptized, albeit illegally, a child was to be considered a Christian and be thus raised.

Later waves of forced baptisms include one which swept through the kingdom of Naples in the last decades of the 13th century, and one in Spain from 1391, which started with the riots led by the archdeacon Ferrant Martinez. Hundreds of Jews were massacred and entire communities forcibly converted, and it left in its wake the phenomenon of the Marranos (a derogatory term for the ”New Christians” and their descendants). These people continued to live an underground Jewish existence until after the 18th century. The most dramatic case was in Portugal, where thousands of Jews settled, having been expelled from neighboring Spain in 1492.

King Manuel of Portugal found that it was unnecessary to expel his Jewish subjects, who were valuable economic assets, in order to purge his realm of heresy. Instead he embarked on a systematic campaign of forced conversion initially directed against the children, who were seized and dragged from their parents’ arms in the hope that the adults would follow suit, and later against the entire population. This explains both why by the end of 1497 not a single professing Jew remained in Portugal, as well as the greater tenacity of Marranism in this country, up to the present day.

A new chapter in the history of forced baptism began in 1543, with the establishment of the House of Catechumens in Rome, which rapidly took hold in other cities. Any person who, by whatever casuistry, could be considered to have shown an inclination towards Christianity, could be immure in the House of Cathecumens “to explore his intention,” all the while being submitted to unremitting pressure. A popular superstition which claimed that any person who secured the baptism of an unbeliever was assured of paradise, lead to a spate of such procedures throughout the Catholic world.

In the mid-18th century the Jesuits were the main enforcers of this practice. Several cases became infamous. In 1762 the son of the rabbi of Carpentras was pounced upon and baptized in ditch water, and thereafter lost to his family. The kidnapping for baptism of Terracina children in 1783 caused a revolt in the Roman ghetto. In 1858, Edgardo Mortara, aged six, was abducted by papal police from his family in Bologna, and taken to the House of Catechumens. The boy had been secretly baptized five years previously by a domestic servant who thought he was about to die. The parents tried in vain to get their child back. Napoleon III, Cavour and Franz Joseph were among those who protested and Moses Montefiore traveled to the Vatican in an unsuccessful attempt to release the child.

The founding of the Alliance Israélite Universelle in 1860 “to defend the civil rights of the Jews” was partly in reaction to this case. The pope rejected all petitions and by 1870, when his secular power came to an end, the boy had ceased to be Edgardo. He had taken the pope’s name (Pius), and had become a novice in the Augustinian order and an ardent conversionist in six languages. Mortara’s tragic end was his death in Belgium in 1940, weeks before the Nazi invasion, in this way narrowly avoiding an unwilling return to his Jewish roots.

In the Russian Empire during the second quarter of the 19th century, the institution of the Cantonists was introduced. This involved the virtual kidnapping for military service of Jewish male children from the age of 12, or even 8, with the explicit intention of compelling them to abandon Judaism.

[Sofiyya 1,687]

Indeed, I think the Catholic Church openly persecuted Jews because foolishly they held them responsible for the crucifixion, and frankly the 1940s furthered that notion.

The notion among Christians that Jews killed Jesus is still in play today. Christianity is no friend of Judaism. The Bible teaches that their going to hell since they don't accept Jesus Christ as their Savior. The Qur'an doesn't even do that.

You have to think what happened to the Chosen People that God turns on them after coming by for a visit on planet Earth, leaving them the ones who don't believe that He, a Jew, is really God.