Opposition leader Shaul Mofaz (Kadima) told the The New York Times that he would “respond to 100% of the territorial demands of the Palestinians” if elected Prime Minister.
“I intend to replace Netanyahu,” Mr. Mofaz, 63, said. “I will not join his government.”
Mofaz said that he believed Israel should keep the main settlement blocs, but that he would give the Palestinian Authority as much land from sovereign Israeli ground as he kept from Judea and Samaria.
He added that he believes it is possible to reach an agreement on the borders and security within one year.
When asked about Israeli residents of Judea and Samaria living in communities he would cede to the Palestinian Authority, Mofaz said, “If they’re given the right incentives they will leave their homes. Those who do not, we would have to evacuate [them].”
“This is a wildly radical program that undermines our security and will lead the State of Israel into one hundred years of conflict rather than one hundred years of peace,” Ariel countered. “Mofaz should find another way of trying to achieve popularity for his [declining] party without undermining Israel’s security.”
Yesha Council Chairman Danny Dayan said, “A man who will give the Palestinians 100% of what they demand in a territorial power play and evict tens of thousands of Israelis is unfit to be prime minister of Israel.”
“But do not worry,” Dayan said. “Kadima will not be chosen to lead the nation again.”
Kadima is currently Israel’s largest party with 28 Knesset mandates. However, recent polls indicate Kadima would only win 12-15 seats if elections were held today. It may be an effort to gain Kadima voters from other left of center parties that is causing Mofaz to voice extremist views, sources have said. He has also made anti hareidi remarks.,
Likud, which has 27 Knesset mandates at present, is currently polling at 32 seats. Other rightist parties are also polling beyond their present numbers.
@ CuriousAmerican:
Yes.
Yes.
Yes.
Yes. and Yes. and Yes.
Granting all of the above — you make it sound like it was intended to hit them
— “for a crime they did not commit.”
Who said it was punishment for a ‘crime’?
It was war.
Innocents die in war, often despite the best of intentions.
Nor can you say there was “no reason” for going after the bridges
— frankly, judging from an earlier post of yours, you seem to have understood the reason quite well.
@ yamit82:
Yamit,
I could care less for this “curious american” bloke, and you’re pretty much on the mark here…BUT
On the subject of Lebanon, your ignorance and refusal to condemn the morally corrupted Israeli “leadership” since Begin speaks volumes.
The South Lebanese Army valiantly stood alongside the IDF in protecting the northern borders of Israel as well as their own villages. Even some elements of the Lebanese Army from 1982 till 2000 were loyal to Israel. I recall when an Israeli pilot was shot down over Beirut in November 1983 – at a time when the West was already pulling out of Beirut due to the Marine barracks massacre and the spinelessness of the Saudi-paid self-hater Weinberger – he was rescued by REGULAR Lebanese Army units. Afraid that he would be turned over to the PLO or even the Shi’ites, he remained mum until a Lebanese officer assured him that he would be transferred back to the IDF. In the short time he was in the hands of the Lebanese Army, he was treated with courtesy and respect.
Well, along comes this piece of crap, this traitor named ehud barak in 1999, and almost immediately he makes noises out of both ends of his arse. Taking his cue from the “Four Mommies”, the Code Pink of Israel, he tells Clinton he’s going to pull the plug on the South Lebanese Army. The same SLA that was fighting not just Hezbollah but Iranian and Syrian elements too. But first his then-erstwhile puppy, Eppie Sneh (since then they’ve broken on a few things), the DEPUTY defense minister of Israel assured the SLA that Israel would never betray their “brothers in blood” (go back to the J’Post’s of early 2000 and look it up), the SLA.
Six, seven months after Sneh, the son of the Communist Sneh, insisted that Israel would stand alongside the SLA, ehud barak gave an order IN THE MIDDLE OF THE NIGHT that sent the IDF scurrying like sacred rabbits back to Israel WITHOUT even a word to the SLA commanders. Thousands of pro-Israel Lebanese paid the price for the cowardice and treachery of ehud barak…thousands more ended up rotting in refugee camps alongside the Sea of Galilee while Hezbollah, victorious, armed itself to the teeth and began kidnapping and killing Israeli kids.
And since then not one so-called Israeli leader, the Patton of Israel, one Ariel Sharon, Olmert, Netanyahu has done anything about the Hezbollah takeover. Even two years ago, when Nasrallah, who ordered the murders of Goldwasser and Regev took over Lebanon, not one thing was done by the spineless bibi and his poodle, the same ehud barak responsible for the calamity.
barak should have been gracing a prison cell years ago. But hey, that’s Israel. And you, Yamit who talks big but does little, and those like you keep crap like him in power. You can’t blame the Lebanese people – you and your “leaders” left them helpless.
@ dweller:
For an entirely different view of what happened when the Jews bought land ad a tenant farmer might be dispossessed, see A”riyeh Avneri, “Claim of Dispossession”l The policy of the Jews was quite compassionate. By
Alyssa A. Lappen
Amazon Verified Purchase(What’s this?)
This review is from: The Claim of Dispossession: Jewish Land-Settlement and the Arabs, 1878-1948 (Paperback)
This exceedingly well-documented book lays bare the false claim that Jewish settlers dispossessed Arab people from their land in Palestine. The examination of records from 1830 onward will shock most readers.
In the first place, the book shows that Palestine’s population barely grew for 250 years–rising from 205,000 Moslems, Christians and Jews in 1554 to only 275,000 in 1800. In the second, records from 1830, 1863, 1878 and 1893 and 1917, among others, demonstrate that when the heaviest Jewish immigration began in 1880, a large proportion of the 425,000 to 440,000 Arabs in Palestine were themselves recent immigrants.
The book also carefully documents the origins of those immigrants. Many came from Egypt: The 1831 invasion by the Egyptian Khedive, Ibrahim Pasha, forced Palestine fellaheen, urban dwellers and Bedouin to permanently flee Ottoman military drafts and taxes. The 1837 Great Earthquake and epidemics that followed further cut their numbers. In their wake came Ibrahim Pasha’s Egyptian Arabs, who settled the empty land. In 1831 alone, 6,000 Egyptian Arabs settled in Akko. The Egyptian Arab-Hinadi, Ghawarna tribes settled in the Beit Shean and Hula Valleys and in the Jordan Valley towns of Ubeidiya, Delhamiya and Kafer-Miser. In the Hula Valley, the Egyptian ez-Zubeids later sold their land to Jewish settlers from Yessud-Hama’ala. According to an 1893 British Palestine Exploration Fund report, Egyptians made up most of the population in Jaffa.
Additionally, Avneri shows, Arab and Muslim immigrants also came from Algeria, Damascus, Yemen, Afghanistan, Persia, India, Tripoli, Morocco, Turkey and Iraq. The French conquest of Algeria, for example, led to the eventual rebellion and imprisonment of Abd el-Kadar el-Hassani, whose followers in 1856 fled to Syria and the Lower Galilee towns of Shara, Ulam, Ma’ader, Kafer-Sabet, Usha (near present-day Ramat-Yohanan), the Mount Atlas village of Qedesh and villages on Lake Hula and in the Upper Galilee, where they spoke Berber. In Ramle, immigrants spoke Qebili, a Mugrabi dialect. Circassian refugees from the Caucasus settled in Trans-Jordan and as far east as Caesarea.
Arab immigration continued to rise through World War I, as Avneri documents, despite locusts, the Ottoman draft and more epidemics. Egyptian laborers, contractors and businessmen flooded the country. By 1922, the Moslem population had more than doubled to 566,311, including 62,500 Bedouins. The 1931 Mandatory government census counted 693,147 permanent Moslem residents, including 66,553 Bedouins. It also gave the natural increase of the population as 132,211 — 57,125 less than the absolute increase. Only illegal Arab immigration explains this contradiction, Avneri shows.
The next census in 1948, as Avneri recounts, followed unprecedented economic growth, during which illegal Arab immigration continued. From April 1934 to November 1935, for example, 20,000 Haurani Arabs came to Palestine. These and thousands of other Arab immigrants worked on farms, construction projects (building roads, railroads and the Haifa port), and government and municipal jobs. Syrians and Lebanese Arabs were free to come with nothing but border passes, and they came along with immigrants from Somalia, Trans-Jordan, Persia, India, Ethiopia and the Hejaz. Mandatory government rules required the supervision of immigration, but Palestine’s borders remained porous to all but Jews. In all, Avneri shows that 35,000 to 40,000 illegal Arab immigrants came from 1931 to 1947 — on top of up to 20,000 other Arab immigrants who arrived from 1935 to 1945.
The book also carefully examines numerous historical descriptions of a desolate landscape, composed almost entirely of swamps and deserts, and sold to the Jewish people by absentee Arab landlords, appointed by the Ottoman government, at enormous profits. Dozens of sales are documented specifically, including some by the Egyptian el-Husseini family of Yasser Arafat.
Altogether, this book shatters the Arab claim of dispossession.
@ CuriousAmerican:
Hey Curios…
How old are you?
You are either a little boy or very very naive…History is full of wars and all were over territories, not over money.
You simply do not understand the humane nature, the Palestinians are no different. We will fight to the end to defend our country, and so will they.
They DO believe they have the right for the land of Israel. ALL the radical and not so radical Muslims will tell you to shove up your money, and those who will take it, how do you plan to control them? Yeh, I know you will take their word for it.
Look what they do to each other,10,000 syrian citizen (this is the official number) died so far. What do you think they will do to the Jews had they have the oportunity…
I guess you already made all the agreement with Argentina and Chile, they already told you to send those nice people to us and we will take it from there.
Or do you own these countries?
I am sure you are full of good intentions, but don’t forget, good intentions are a sure way to hell.
The best latine phrase for your theory is “Sancta Simplicitas…” or “Holy ignorance”
Ira.
This politician would sell out his country for votes? If there is no more Israel what would he be PM of?
@ CuriousAmerican:
Lebanon is a Frankenstein State made up of warring tribes who hate ea. other more than Israel. If Lebanon ceased to exist today would anyone notice or care?
In this part of the world Christians have no place and are becoming an endangered species.
The SLA was a mercenary force co-opted by Israel to police the Shia South against the PLO. In the beginning the Leadership were Christian and most of the force as well but year by year the Christian component was reduced and replaced by mostly Sunni Locals.
Israel should have and still should depopulate the South of Lebanon below the Litani River and annex that territory. It would provide a natural border and move those enemy forces back between 20-40 Km from the current border and Israeli towns and villages..
Every recognized government has a responsibility to control what goes on within it’s sovereignty. Lebanon was never willing or able to do that so the population is made to suffer in hopes they will apply enough pressure on their government to do what always should have been. Since they can’t or won’t they should be destroyed and whoever has the power will take control and they will be held responsible.
Lebanon reminds me a lot of that non country called Belgium.
@ CuriousAmerican:
NOt bogus.
Not denial.
Heard it all before. There’s more going on. This is all off-point.
Nor will I, but you don’t know what you’re dealing with; I do.
That’s not what you’re getting from me — but go ahead & delude yourself over it if you need to.
Water.
Duck’s back.
All that.
You’re barking up the wrong tree on this one.
Stop with the bogus denials. Your tactics are like the infantile child
who says “Prove it.”
The assassin was Avraham Tehomi. He admitted on Israeli TV.
I am NOT opposed to Israel.
I even agree Israel has a claim on Judea and Samaria.
What I won’t do is de-humanize the Palestinian.
I am opposed to arrogance and stupid intellectual thuggery masquerading as patriotism.
I ask questions.
Christians died as a result. And bombing their bridges upset them. They were innocent.
@ CuriousAmerican:
Could be PR-type prep for a future strike. ‘They couldn’t do it, so we had to, etc.’
I’m not aware of being ‘upset’ over it. Every govt deals with realpolitik as it can.
I recall your acknowledging that the ’06 TARGET was the bridges — not the Christian populace as such.
@ CuriousAmerican:
He also ate & slept that year.
But it is not established that he was assassinated because he ate or slept.
“Final,” in what sense of the word?
“Was attributed” by whom?
— told you, passive voice doesn’t make it.
Weizmann also favored a settlement with Arab leaders. His joint written & oral statements with the Emir Feisal leave no doubt about that.
— why wasn’t HE assassinated?
Look, Curious, De Haan was a deeply troubled individual.
I won’t go into a discussion of what became of him, or whether his death constituted an ‘assassination’ — or whether the killing was politically motivated, or even in any sense ‘just.’
I’ll merely say, here & now, that neither his life nor his death is germane to this discussion — rather, they are wholly a distraction from it.
Only that statement, right?
The answer is this: The Christians detest the Muslims.
My point is: Lebanon was poorly treated, especially by the Arabs, but also by Israel.
The Christians were pretty much powerless to stop Muslim raids, actions and attacks,
yet Israel held the government in Beirut (run by Christians until 1975) responsible for
something they could not control.
For example: After PLO raids, in 1968, rather than attacking the PFLP camps, home of the PFLP which hijacked an El Al Airliner, Israel attacked Beirut Airport and blew up 13 Lebanese MEA planes.
The problem is that Beirut was run by Maronite Christians, who had nothing to do with the PFLP. In fact, there is evidence that they did not mind if Israel went after PFLP offices. But blowing up planes for a crime the Maronite government did NOT commit.
Israel told the Maronite government to control the Palestinians.
But when the Maronites tried in 1975, a 15 year war started with the Maronites losing.
Right now, Israel tells Beirut it will hold Lebanon responsible for Hezbollah attacks.
So Lebanon is now obliged to flush out Hezbollah, even though Israel failed to flush out
Hezbollah in 2006.
This I do not understand.
The Christians are not hostile to Israel, but when Israel bombs their towns, and airliners because they do not flush out terrorists, which even Israel seems to be unable to flush out, they get upset.
You get upset that Lebanese Christians did not defy the Arabs in 1948.
They did in 1946 when the Maronite Patriarch welcomed the Jews to the Mideast in 1946.
And boy, did they get flack for that.
The Christians are damned if they do and damned if they don’t.
I support Israel’s right to exist; but take it easy on Lebanon.
There was no reason in 2006 to go bombing Christian areas for a crime they did not commit and were not party to.
Look to me that when Lebanon does not do what Israel wants, Israel attacks.
When Lebanon does do what Israel wants (like attacking the PLO in 1975) Lebanon is destroyed and the Maronites lose.
Either way they get hammered. So don’t tell them to act like men. When they do, they still get hammered.
@ CuriousAmerican:
A myth, largely attributable to the Passfield White Paper of 1930 — Lord & Lady Passfield (so much for revolutionary egalitarianism) were none other than Sydney & Beatrice Webb, heads of the British Fabian Society — and attributable also, in mixed degree, to the Hope-Simpson Report that was released on the heels of that White Paper. See also the very last sentence of this post — dw.
The tenant-sharecroppers who had worked the land of the large property holders, and were endlessly indebted to these effendi — typically paying 33 to 50 percent of their crop in rent, and frequently suffering from amoebic dysentery & bilharziasis (due to their lack of even the most rudimentary sanitary provision) — were often not merely not ‘displaced’ by the arrival of the Zionist purchasers of their rented plots, but were, in fact, frequently offered in lieu of their former misery: wages that they could live on, far superior working conditions, and greatly elevated living standards through their employment by or association with the kilab yahud [“Jew dogs”].
Moreover, as a general rule, Jews went to CONSIDERABLE lengths to avoid purchasing land in areas where Arabs might BE displaced. Writes Mitchell Bard on p. 44 of Myths & Facts: A Guide to the Arab-Israeli Conflict (A.I. C.E., Chevy Chase, MD, 2001), “They sought land that was largely uncultivated, swampy, cheap and — most important — without tenants.”
These lands were overwhelmingly the most commonly available — as they were so badly despoiled & neglected, and invariably infested with malaria, that no private landowners had evinced an interest in acquiring them. They had thus been left ultimately for the government — the Mameluke Sultan, the Ottoman Sultan, the Mandate Administration, etc — to hold them, effectively (and unwittingly) in trust, as it were. . . . for the Jews.
The pursuit of specifically untenanted land was a deliberate policy & pattern — an intentional practice. Bard pursues the point:
“In 1920, Labor Zionist leader David Ben-Gurion expressed his concern about the Arab fellahin, whom he viewed as ‘the most important asset of the native population.’ [He] said, ‘under no circumstances must we touch land belonging to fellakhs or worked by them.’ He advocated helping liberate them from their oppressors. “Only if a fellakh leaves his place of settlement,’ Ben-Gurion added, ‘should we offer to buy his land, [and then] at an appropriate price’.” [quoted in Shabtai Teveth, Ben-Gurion and the Palestinian Arabs: From Peace to War (Oxford Univ. Press, 1985), p. 32]
“It was only after the Jews had bought all of this available [i.e., uncultivated] land that they began to purchase cultivated land. Many Arabs were willing to sell because of the migration to coastal towns and because they needed money to invest in the citrus industry.” [Yehoshuah Porath, The Palestinian Arab Movement: From Riots to Rebellion, 1929-1939 (Frank Cass & Co, Ltd, London, 1977), Vol. 2, pp. 80, 84; both Porath & Teveth (above) cited in Bard, Ibid.]
The extent & earnest character of the Zionist determination to maintain an upright posture in dealing with the existing Arab populace cannot be overstated. Addressing the 14th Biennial Zionist Congress in Vienna in 1925, Chaim Weizmann adjured & admonished the assembled delegates in unequivocal language:
“Palestine must be built up without violating the legitimate interests of the Arabs — not a hair of their heads shall be touched. The Zionist Congress must not confine itself to Platonic formulae. It has to learn the truth that Palestine is not Rhodesia and that 600,000 Arabs live there, who before the sense of justice of the world have exactly the same right to their homes as we have to our National Home.” [cited in Christopher Sykes, Crossroads to Israel, 1917-1948 (The World Publishing Co., Cleveland, OH, 1965), p. 95]
Bard notes further that the Hope-Simpson Report ACKNOWLEDGED the willingness of the Jews to go the extra mile to honorably secure possession of the land: “They [the Jews] paid high prices for the land, and in addition they paid to certain of the occupants of those lands a considerable amount of money which they were not legally bound to pay.” [John Hope-Simpson, Palestine: Report on Immigration, Land Settlement and Development, Command Paper 3686 (London, Issued 20 Oct 1930) [“Hope-Simpson Report”], p. 51; quoted in Bard, Ibid.]
It really must be noted here that decorously couched phrases like “high prices” and “not legally bound to pay” hardly begin to communicate the dimensions of the reality thus referenced:
For Jews to pay quadruple the price at which the same land would have been sold to anyone else was by no means unusual.
Indeed, it has been broadly acknowledged that much of the clamor over the purported ‘displacements’ was encouraged & deliberately generated by landowners, for the intended purpose of artificially inflating prices.
@ CuriousAmerican:
Whom — specifically — do you hear offering ‘because they fled’ as an explicit reason for denying ‘return’?
— examples please, with cites & excerpts. If, as you assert, this was indeed the “official position,” you should have no trouble providing the appropriate quotations & sources.
I’ve tried, gently, to show you why — as utterly logical as the proposition might be — it remains a pipedream.
Invariably, subjects — followers, constituents, citizens, etc — are linked, willy-nilly, to their leaders, and vice versa; if not by conscious, deliberate choice, then by default.
All of the not-inconsiderable travails of the Palestinian Arab populace are directly traceable not to Israel but to the Palestine Arabs’ own unending & unquestioning responsiveness to leaders who, generation after mindless & malleable generation, have fostered, organized, and directed the most vicious, reprehensible savagery against their Jewish neighbors — and done so without cause or provocation. If ever indeed a party could be said — and seen — to languish under the burden of an entirely self-inflicted wound, that party would most assuredly be the Palestine Arabs.
In the case of the local ethnic Arabs (who, a couple decades later, have come to call themselves “Palestinians”), it is undeniable that both those who were ordered out, for military reasons by Haganah, AND the overwhelmingly larger component who left to get out of a war zone — and who often believed the stories of Jewish ‘atrocities’ because they knew (having seen with their own eyes) that comparable stories were DEFINITELY true re Arab atrocities against Jews, so presumably the Jews would respond in kind — left at the urgings or threats of their own leaders. This is the price that a people pays for the leadership which its culture & polity encourages, or permits, to rise to prominence.
What, you’re clairvoyant now, are you? — or maybe they told you this?
The TransJordanian Arab Legion siege & assault on the Old City in ’48 were followed by accompanying massacres of eastern Jerusalem’s Jews by Palestine Arabs. Sometimes the Arab Legion commanders stepped in to prevent it. Other times they didn’t.
Until the summer of 1967 — when Israel took the Golan — Syrian shells constantly rained down on the Huleh Valley, and attempts were made on Israeli vessels in Lake Kinneret (the Sea of Galilee) and on farming communities to the southeast. In some areas of the Galilee region whole generations of schoolchildren were prevented from such simple things as being able to regularly play out-of-doors because Syrian snipers & artillery emplaced on the Golan made that pastime a demonstrably lethal one for those kids.
If the Syrians & Jordanians could do THESE things, then why wouldn’t there have been a slaughter if they had won?
This is coming from out in left field. What are you talking about?
— You “don’t buy” what, exactly?
There was no Israeli state in the “early years of the Mandate” — it was part of the pre-State period. It’s absurd to speak of ‘discrimination’ in such a context.
Did individual farmers or business-persons, private persons with no govt authority, incline toward hiring Jews over Arabs (or others)? — Sometimes yes, sometimes no.
For one thing, Arabs would usually work for less, so there was clearly an incentive to hire Arabs.
On the other hand, part of the whole purpose of the Zionist enterprise was to “create a new Jew” (or, better, to re-create a millennia-long-forgotten one).
Jews had a history which had separated them from the Land, and from the fundamental physical reality of their own existences.
They were seen to be lost in their intellect, and sorely in need of reestablishing the connection between themselves and their bodies, between themselves and their own physical labor.
Pursuant to that, the Zionist movement encouraged the hiring of Jews (albeit occasionally without any appropriate experience) to perform the necessary manual labor that was intended to put them back in touch with themselves as whole persons. It was intended as a positive thing, not meant as harm against anybody.
Then too, it was thought — by many Jews coming out of the Yiddish labor movement — that the Jew must studiously avoid the occasion of exploiting the local Arabs by becoming bosses to them, etc.
I suppose one could call such a policy “discrimination,” but — again — only if one were already PRIMED to be thinking in those terms.
“Mofaz: Give the Palestinians 100% of Yesha” Why? Has he succumbed to a “poetic truth”? “Poetic truths like that are marvelous because no facts and no reason can ever penetrate. Supporters of Israel are up against a poetic truth. We keep hitting it with all the facts. We keep hitting it with obvious logic and reason. And we are so obvious and conspicuously right that we assume it is going to have an impact and it never does.”
Why not? These narratives, these poetic truths, are the source of their power. Focusing on the case of the Palestinians, who would they be if they were not victims of white supremacy? They would just be poor people in the Middle East. They would be backwards. They would be behind Israel in every way. So this narrative is the source of their power. It is the source of their money. Money comes from around the world. It is the source of their self-esteem. Without it, would they be able to compete with Israeli society? They would have to confront in themselves a certain inferiority with regard to Israel – as most other Arab nations would have to confront an inferiority in themselves and be responsible for it.
The idea that the problem is Israel, that the problem is the Jews, protects Palestinians from having to confront that inferiority or do anything about it or overcome it. The idea among Palestinians that they are victims means more to them than anything else. It is everything. It is the centerpiece of their very identity and it is the way they define themselves as human beings in the world. It is not an idle thing. Our facts and our reason are not going to penetrate easily that definition or make any progress.
The question is, how do they get away with a poetic truth, based on such an obvious series of falsehoods? One reason why they get away with it in the Middle East is that the Western world lacks the moral authority to call them on it. The Western world has not said “your real problem is inferiority. Your real problem is underdevelopment.” That has not been said, nor will ever be said – because the Western world was once colonial, was once racist, did practice white supremacy, and is so ashamed of itself and so vulnerable to those charges, that they are not going to say a word. They are not going to say what they really think and feel about what is so obvious about the circumstances among the Palestinians. So the poetic truth that Palestinians live by carries on.
International media also do not feel that they have the moral authority to report what they see. On the contrary, they feed this poetic truth and give it a kind of gravitas that it would never otherwise have.
Consequently, we need to develop a narrative that is not poetic, but literal and that is based on the truth. What would such a narrative look like?
It would begin with the presumption that the problem in the Middle East is not white supremacy but the end of white supremacy.” Shelby Steele, Robert J and Marion E. Oster Senior Fellow, Hoover Institute, member of the Working Group on Islamism and the International Order.
The foregoing is excerpted from a speech delivered September 22, 2011 in New York City at the conference “The Perils of Global Intolerance: The UN and Durban III,” sponsored by the Touro Institute on Human Rights and the Holocaust and the Hudson Institute. http://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/2586/palestinian-victimhood-narrative
@ James B – Montreal:My condolences. I have some in my family too. They were all raised to be good Democrats.
Both the “one state solution” and the “two state solution” pushers are guilty of false advertising. The one staters are really for a one [Arab Majority] state; the two staters, are for a [two state temporary solution] like the two tribe solution called the Peace of Hudibyah. Daniel Pipes had a couple of columns which note how often Arafat referred to the Treaty of Hudibyah when he was being criticized for negotiating with the Jews instead of killing them. http://www.danielpipes.org/316/al-hudaybiya-and-lessons-from-the-prophet-muhammads This was updated at http://www.danielpipes.org/blog/1999/09/arafat-and-the-treaty-of-hudaybiya-updates Mofaz, as well as Dershowitz, has forgotten a lot including what the Arabs did when the Jordanians had Judea, Samaria and East Jerusalem. They built a latrine against the Western Wall. They failed to honor their agreement to let Christians and Jews visit their holy sites. Mofaz forgot the grant of exclusive rights to the Jews at San Remo, and the Treaty of Hudibyah where those who entered into a two tribe solution lost their heads and of 500 more of their adult men tribesmen. The Arabs cut em off. It was actually a mitzfah as the left would have it. They didn’t have to see their wives being carted off to Arab harems and their kids being taken to raise as Muslims. My one lawful Jewish state West of the Jordan can be obtained by annexing Judea, Samaria and East Jerusalem now, and retaking Gaza and giving it home rule until the Jewish population grows more relative to the Arab Population. It would be lawful under the process verbal to the San Remo Agreement as the Arabs would not be surrendering any of their rights. The Honorable Yoram Ettinger suggests their population is low enough to annex both of them now without having an unduly low Jewish population majority now or in the future.
@ CuriousAmerican:
You make it all sound so rational.
The Israeli Left had the same idea during the pre-State era.
(‘Buy ‘em out, or just let them see how good we can BE for them & their interests; they’ll come ’round to reason when they see which side their bread is buttered on… etc, etc, etc…’)
Jabotinsky warned them that they were missing the forest for the trees; typically, though, they wouldn’t listen. . . .
Might as well be, given the people in question.
In 1972, near Gaza City, Israel built a model neighborhood — Sheikh Raduan — for camp dwellers to move into: to relieve a measure of their misery until an overall Arab-Israel peace settlement might be achieved. But the program’s success was, at best, limited, because of Arab opposition. Thus, although eight thousand families accepted the offer between 1976 & 1978, most of the area’s refugees remained stuck in their dangerously overcrowded camps.
Furthermore, when the General Assembly demanded — stridently & repeatedly [as if the G.A. had the authority to ‘demand’ anything] — that the Jewish state abandon that project, the PLO, true to form, took this as a go-ahead to follow-up by threatening to kill any refugee who would move out of the camps. Small wonder, then, that the endeavor presently collapsed altogether.
Until all the terrorist organizations are destroyed — thoroughly destroyed — all such plans will come to naught; I don’t care HOW much money anybody offers them.
First things first — take out the trash; then you can start thinking about how to remodel the kitchen.
@ CuriousAmerican:
Israel didn’t “make” Gaza a prison.
Gaza has never NOT been a prison as long as it has been dominated by Arabs.
The culture pretty much guarantees that.
Quite so. And ditto, the above.
All the withdrawal did was leave it to the worst of the scum to run the place.
Israel should never have left.
@ CuriousAmerican:
“Stay out of our face & we’ll stay out of yours” isn’t quite what I’d call a ‘plan’
— the one uppermost thought entertained by the Palestine Jews in ’47 was staying alive.
After a third of the world’s Jews had been treated to a perverse version of ‘The Rapture’ scarcely two-&-a-half years prior, the proposition of keeping body & soul together had a peculiarly effective way of concentrating their minds — and subordinating everything else. . . .
But who was condemning Jordan for holding the heartland? — is this some kind of straw man that you’re throwing forward here?
@ CuriousAmerican:
Yes, the same arrangement, was it not, wherein the Brits gave the Golan, Hermon, and the headwaters of the Jordan — all originally intended at Versailles as part of the Jewish National Home — into the loving care of the French Mandate? (Or maybe that was two years earlier?)
As a Jew I most certainly do regard the horse-trading by the Powers as regrettable & exasperating, though I don’t know that I’d characterize it as ‘arbitrary.’ They had their own, self-interested reasons; they didn’t just flip a coin. And it was their forces that had won the War; to the victor[s] go the spoils, and all that.
Such as?
(BTW, if this is more to do with my comment re Lebanon’s wishes to profit from the outcome of the Arab War against the Jews, I touched on it already in another post which, I assume, will be coming out of moderation sometime soon. Watch for it.)
Right. Better that he should’ve destroyed them; viz., the combatants. (Not that I’d regard Ben-Gurion as some kind of ‘hero’ of mine; far from it.)
As B-G asserted at a 15 June 1948 Cabinet meeting, a few days into what came to be known as “the first truce”:
“[w]ar is war… and those who declared war on us will have to bear the consequences after they have been defeated.” He talked a good game.
Quiet as it’s kept internationally, Israel’s error invariably turns not on any inclination to ‘disproportionality’ or ‘overkill’ — but rather on her failure to FINISH a job once she starts it. It always turns out to have been a myopic gambit. . . .
But then, as has been noted on subsequent occasions and in what has become an all-too-predictable pattern, “[t]he general theme [in international opinion] was that Arabs were ‘irrational’ and therefore could not be held responsible for the results of their passion.” [Abba Eban, My Country: The Story of Modern Israel (Random House, NY, 1972), p. 121]
Yes, agreed.
Baffled me as much as the failure to hit Damascus in ’06.
So why did you write, in an earlier post to another article (a week or so ago), that the Xtns were rooting for the Israelis in ’06 until the latter went after the bridges in No. Lebanon (& ended up hitting lots of Xtns)? After having been left in the lurch in ’00, why would they have been plugging for Israel six years later?
I had ASKED you about that, but you didn’t answer.
@ CuriousAmerican:
Yes, you said that in an earlier post.
The coastline in question was not overwhelmingly Muslim; in any event, Haifa is a deep-water port — commercially/industrially most desirable & had been a great provider of Arab employment.
A charming rhetorical flourish, howsoever untrue it might be from the standpoint of literal fact. (Actually 3000 Israeli troops did wonders in the War of Independence.)
But this is drifting off into the weeds. Back on-point:
I’ll grant you that the actual, Lebanese military contribution to the ’47-’49 war effort was largely pro forma, except for those units & individuals which served with the Syrian army or the ALA.
I do a good deal of that, but thanks for the suggestion. Ephraim Karsh (among other practitioners of the historian’s trade) is quite lucid, reasonably objective, and rarely sloppy. He quotes Azzam Pasha [1st-ever Sec-Gen. of the Arab League] for the comment about Lebanon’s intentions in the War of Independence, and he seems to be willing to take Azzam at his word, at least in this regard.
I would submit that your quarrel is perhaps with Dr Karsh, not with YoursEverTruly. (If you do broach the matter directly with him, I’ll be interested to hear/read his response.)
Be a big boy; be brave; take responsibility
— use the active voice: ‘The Lebanese govt, as part of the Arab League, declared war against the Jews.’
Passive voice [“a war was declared,” etc] should be — if properly applied — a rarity (except as reserved for diplomatic skullduggery and other limp-wristed habits acquired in the weasel world — where it’s as much a staple as peanut butter in the American home).
All this wrangling would be quite unnecessary if we would but realize that we are still suffering the effects of our forefathers not having cleaned out the land of the heathen whom we were supposed to replace in the land, especially for the sin of King Shaul when he saved Agag ben Amalek alive and the best of the cattle. If he had done that, they wouldn’t even BE in Yesha or anywhere else in the land, from the Nile to the Euphrates. There would be room enough not only for the Yahudim but also for the Ten Tribes that we considered lost, but El-Elyon kept track of them all this time! Now another fitly-named Shaul wants to give them 100% of Yesha. What a shame! It will take the return of the Moshiach whom we have denied to lead us out of this mess and end the galut/exile that we all have been in for over two millennia, and most over two and a half. Then will be the restoration of the Kingdom of Yisrael, no more to be troubled by our brother Esau in the land. Am Yisrael CHAI!
Here I agree fully, but that is not the usual, “because they fled” reason. It is the more honest “because you want a Jewish state” reason. All too often I hear the ridiculous, “because they fled” reason.
I do not recommend you take them all back.
I think that would be insane.
I recommend that you buy them a homeland in South America.
A lot of the Palestinians did not participate in any choice either way. They were not in the game at all. They just lost.
That is an hones response, I will grant that.
I am not sure I agree with everything you say.
If the Syrians or Jordanians had won, there would have been no slaughter. If the Egyptians or Hajj Amin al Husseini had won, there would have been a slaughter.
But as for the “purity of arms,” I don’t buy it … IN ANY ARMY
Israel’s policies even in the early years of the Mandate was to discrimate against Palestinians.
Herzl spoke of denying the Arabs employment. And when large tracts of land was bought from Turks or Arabs, the Arab tenant farmers would be tossed off the land in a method akin to the Highland Clearances of Scotland, where the tenant Highlanders were driven off in mass by English Lords.
When the Jewish writer Jacob Israel de Haan started to criticize aspects of Zionism he was assassinated in 1924.
I am not against Israel; but nothing is pure, not even the Zionist project.
@ CuriousAmerican:
No. Not necessarily more upset about what they say than what they do.
However, the slander and the attempt to reverse blame is an aspect to this that is frequently overlooked — and is allowed to set the stage for more such attempts. So I bring it up, again & again.
Reason cited by WHOM is “ridiculous”? — not by me. I’ve never given as a ‘reason’ for non-return the mere fact that they fled.
My quarrel was with your claim that the Arabs were “ethnically cleansed.”
— I’m sorry, but it’s simply a crock.
It was the Arabs who deliberately tried to do the ethnic cleansing, and failed. And there ought to be a price to be paid for such attempts.
That they fled is not a ‘reason’ for non-return; it is simply a reply to the specific charge of ethnic cleansing against the Jews — because there was never such an attempt on the part of the Jews.
Some of the Arabs were allowed back. And many Arabs never left, and became citizens.
But I see no reason to let the Arabs back in a general, blanket sense, because it would DESTROY the Jewish state.
And also because when you lose, you lose.
They made it a war; they went for double-or-nothing; they gambled; they lost.
Had it been the JEWS that lost, you know damned well what the consequence would’ve been. . . .
“Honest” enough to suit you?
South America has a history of absorbing a lot of Arabs and assimilating them well. Chile is 5% Arab, Argentina an astounding 9%, and Brazil almost 8%.
Almost all are Christians; with most of the Muslims either marrying into Christianity or converting.
It only has to be the Judean and Samarian Arabs, not those in camps in Lebanon, Syria, or Egypt.
2 million. These South America could assimilate and Christianize.
No one else has this track record of success.
The only other alternative is war.
Yeah you can buy them out. Polls show a massive amount of Arabs who want to just leave.
When 40% leave, the rest will panic.
As for guns, you do not give them the money until they land in the airport in Buenos Aires or Santiago.
Part of the deal is that they not return to Palestine, even to visit, for 10 years.
This isn’t rocket science.
You find a young landless couple and give them $200,000 (2 x $100,000) to leave. They go to Chile or Argentina.
With that money they could buy a nice starter house, a car, and have enough left to support themselves while they learn Spanish. Such money would cause a minor boom in South America, certainly in housing construction.
At no point, even in 2005 before the Hamas victory did Gaza EVER have open access to the Mediterranean Sea.
Now, I understand WHY ISRAEL DOES THIS.
And Israel has justifications.
But even so, even though justified, this make Gaza an open air prison.
Gaza has NO control over its borders, even to the neutral Mediterranean Sea.
This is a simple fact, NOT a buzz word.
Gaza was never free.
Israel did not so much withdraw in 2005, as merely withdraw from the interior to the borders to police the Gaza.
Gaza was never free.
Now Israel had justifications. A free Gaza would have been an armed camp.
But stil, Gaza was never free.
This is not criticism, it is fact.
The British officers under Jordan’s command were ordered to go NO FURTHER than the Palestinian areas of control according to the 1947 UN recommendation, by London. Abdullah knew this.
Only Jeruslam was really contested.
That being said: Acquiescence or agreement, Israel was party to the creation of the West Bank.
I am not saying the West Bank should not be Israeli. I am saying you cannot condemn Jordan for holding it when you were party to the plan.
You seem to be more upset about what they call you than what they did.
Let’s have sense of priority.
=====
I have no problem with Israel being a Jewish state.
Now maybe Israel should not take back the refugees; but the reason cited is ridiculous.
Reason #1: They fled.
Reply: Okay, they fled. Now let them return.
The real reason is that you want to have a Jewish state.
Just be honest about it.
The official explanation was weak and silly.
You refuse their return for demographic reasons, not because they fled.
I am NOT saying you are wrong; but the official reason for refusing the right of return … (they fled) … is not the real reason you refuse the right of return. The official reason is silly.
Just be honest.
No, the motive is that the America and Europe are broke.
Since Israel would be the chief beneficiary, and since America and Europe are broke,
and since the Arabs will not pay, who else is going to pay?
If you can get the Japanese to pay, I have no problems.
Lebanon is the most misunderstood of this debacle.
The Christian Maronites, who in 1948, ran the government, would never have wanted to add land and people who were Muslim. They had a bare majority of Christians in the government.
The Christians were a mere 51% of the population in 1948, and the Maronites were terrified of Muslim demographics.
In 1946, the Maronite Patriarch welcomed the Jews to the Mideast; something for which he was condemned by the Muslims.
Syria was furious that the French had divided Lebanon from Syria and refused to recognize Lebanon for years as anything but a rebel province.
In 1947, the Christians did not care too much about Israel, but were mildly happy that someone other than Christians would be the focus of Muslim rage. They were mildly pro-Israel
The Christians did NOT want a war with Israel; but the Muslim street was in an uproar demanding war.
At 49% of the population, the Muslim street could not be ignored. They might called in Syria to help them should a Civil War start. “The Christians have betrayed the Arab nation, help us Muslim victims, please Syria ….”
The Christians kept the Lebanese Army at a very low 3,000 troops to make sure no Muslim could take over the country. Ben Gurion knew Lebanon was no threat to anyone.
3,000 troops could not even take a kibbutz. Read your history.
But to keep the Muslim street happy, a war was declared, but the Lebanse Army (at that time, run by Christian officers) was sent to the border to keep up appearances but never crossed the border. The troops were issued rifles BUT NOT BULLETS. They were told to pretend so that the Muslim street would not accuse Christian Beirut of treason. Israel knew about this.
This was a charade, that’s all. The deal was worked out with Israel via the French.
This arrangement was worked out using Charles de Gaulle as an intermediary with the Israelis.
The Beirut government was too weak to prevent Muslims from volunteering,but they were attached to Syrian units. The Arab Liberation Army, which was attached to Syrian units.
Official Lebanese troops were not involved in the fighting. They had NO bullets. It was all appearance so the Muslims would not destroy Lebanon for betraying “the Arab nation.”
The only battle was for Al-Malkiyya, a town which had been historically Lebanese, but which France arbitrarily gave to the British in 1923, against the wishes of the Lebanese.
It is NOT clear if Lebanese Army troops fought in the battle. Seems to be irregulars attached to Syrian units or the Arab Liberation Army.
No land was taken from Lebanon in 1948, which sort of indicates that Israel and Lebanon had a deal of sorts.
After the war, when Syria, and Egypt refused to naturalize Palestinians, the Lebanese actually did naturalize ANY CHRISTIAN PALESTINIAN WHO WANTED IT, plus anybody from Al-Maliqiyya which was historically Lebanese.
This was more than Syria and Egypt did.
But Lebanon could not afford to naturalize the Sunnis. These they kept in camps.
Lebanon remained neutral in 1956, 1967, and 1973. Does this sound like a hostile power?
The Lebanese Army was too small to prevent the PLO from attacking Israel, but Israel attacked Christian Beirut to punish Lebanon which was really innocent; the Christians were not involved. The Christians were too weak to stop the PLO; yet Israel would counter attack against Beirut NOT the PLO camps in the South.
The PLO attacked Lebanese forces for not joining them in the war against Israel.
Isael attacked Beirut for not joining them in the war against the PLO.
Each side attacked the Christians who were not involved. For example: The Israel attack on then Christian run Beirut in 1968 for an attack NOT by Lebanon but by the PLO in the South.
When the Christians finally did try to stop the PLO, Lebanon went into a Civil War and the Christians LOST. Now you have something worse … Hezbollah.
So before you make ridiculous comments, read some histories.
The Christians in Beirut would never have wanted to grab land in Israel since it would have meant incorporating more Muslims into their state. They wanted Christians NOT Muslims.
Lebanon is a very sad case.
The once Christian country is now only 1/3 Christian. The Christians are fleeing in droves.
In the 50s and early 60s, when it was run by Christians, it outperformed and was richer than Israel.
This is what Beirut was in the early 1960s,when it was Christian run.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QHtixDCSB_w
So do not make idiotic comments.
The last thing a razor thin majority of Christians wanted was more Muslims in their state.
In the case of Lebanon, Israel and the Arabs both contributed to Lebanon’s destruction.
But not the way you think.
Israel’s contribution to Lebanon’s destruction was not in 1982 or 2006, as much as it was in 1948 when it refused to take back refugees and left them stuck in Lebanese camps, which eventually created the PLO and the Lebanese Civil War.
Many of these refugees were in Lebanon before war was declared in 1948.
Ben Gurion wanted an alliance with the Maronites, but he left the refugees in Lebanon who would eventually destroy the Maronite Christian state.
Then in the 1960s, Israel rather than attacking the PLO camps, in retaliation for mortars, would attack Beirut who was too weak to stop the PLO and who had nothing to do with the PLO.
Israel demanded that Lebanon police the PLO, in other words, do their fighting for them.
Was it really necessary to destroy all 13 of Mid East Airways airliners, the Lebanese National Fleet.
When Lebanon finally decided to fight the PLO, which is what Israel demanded, the Christians lost.
Israel then cut and run and left the Christians to the mercy of Hezbollah in the South in 2000.
The real victims in the Mideast were the Christians. Make no mistake about it.
@ CuriousAmerican:
“Agreement”? — more like acquiescence.
Abdullah wanted the heartland provinces with access to the Mediterranean at Gaza. Abdullah was an ambitious fellow hoping to make up for his family’s loss of the Hejaz, and his kid brother Feisal’s loss of Syria.
Abdullah was somebody who the Israelis realized could be an effective foil against the murderous Mufti, Hajj Amin al-Husseini. Letting Abdullah take areas that (at the time) had a sparse Jewish population was likely to keep the Mufti at bay; it was seen as wise. (That’s why the Mufti had him assassinated in 1951.) To characterize the understanding between Meir & the King as an “agreement,” however, would be stretching a point.
But it wasn’t just Abdullah who coveted chunks of the Land; all the invading Arab countries in 1948 wanted a piece of the Palestine action.
Egypt wanted the Negev. Syria wanted the Galilee. And Lebanon’s wish list included, if-Santa-would-be-so-kind, a chunk of Israel’s north coast as far south as Acre [Akko, at the northern extremity of Haifa Bay]. For ALL these governments, any solicitude for the well-being of Palestine Arabs — who didn’t even live in most of those areas — provided but the sheerest of pretexts for the assault.
@ CuriousAmerican:
Right. Jews, money — got it.
How could it be otherwise?
@ CuriousAmerican:
You make it sound like the second sentence constitutes proof of the first.
Sorry, no sale.
It’s true that not all Arabs who fled did so voluntarily.
But there was no plan of ethnic cleansing. That was the Arab plan in re the Jews (it backfired on them, however); it was not the policy of the Jews.
I repeat what I said in a post on this site last week:
I think they were referring to Jonah, and Isaiah 53, NOT to Hosea 6:2.
Christians understand the story of Jonah to be a prophetic presaging of the death and ressurrection of Jesus.
Just as Jonah was in the belly of the whale for three days, so Jesus was in the grave for three days.
I remember on TV here in NY that when Menachem Schneerson died, the Hasidim expected him to rise in three days.
So apparently the idea of a Messiah rising in three days is Jewish; the problem with the Hasidim is that they ignored Jesus Christ who was the real Messiah and thought it was Schneerson. Right idea but wrong man for the Hasidim.
The issue here is not Christianity per se, since your heart is too hard to accept it.
My point was what according to Scripture 2/3rds of the Jewish people will die before the Messiah comes BACK!
It is with this in mind, that I suggest moving Palestinians to South America.
@ CuriousAmerican:
“Made” it an “open-air prison”?
(BTW, beware of the buzz words put out there by the Israel-haters; that one’s a favorite of theirs, intended to establish an image and a mind-set conducive to delegitimization, not to discovery of truth.)
But when was it not an “open-air prison”?
The only part that was not an open-air prison while the Jews were present
— was the Jewish part.
Because IDF was not “policing” the Arab part.
The Jews hired lots of Palys and they paid top wages.
It’s a lot more of a prison now, because it’s ruled by Hamas & Islamic Jihad, etc.
You have it precisely ass-backwards. The violence escalated because Israel left.
In fact, the stepped-up assault began with a near sextupling of the rate of rocket launchings in the first year alone [2005-06], following the withdrawal — to add to the previous five years of such attacks. Hardly surprising, as the Islamic Republic of Iran paid a premium for each-&-every rocket launched, and mortar shell fired, by Hamas & Islamic Jihad into Israel since the disengagement. The Islamic Republic continues to fund PIJ in Gaza. In June 2011, however, Tehran cut off her subsidy to Hamas, as the latter had been deserting the sinking Syrian ship under the buffetings of the “Arab Spring.”
The Turkey of Recep Tayyip Erdo?an, eager to challenge the Iranian Mullahs’ claim to regional Islamic leadership (even at the expense of Ankara’s erstwhile, strategic quasi-alliance with Jerusalem), moved to fill the Hamas funding gap, while seeking, as well, to end Israel’s lawful maritime blockade of the Gaza coastline.
There’s not a smidgeon of evidence to suggest that the Paly violence would have increased had Israel remained. It’s obviously far more organized, better funded, and better supplied from the standpoint of weaponry NOW than it was before Israel left.
@ CuriousAmerican:
Good for you. Go to the head of the class.
Wrong. The demographic bomb was discovered — long ago — to be a dud. Actually, it turned out that the Palys had double-counted their people in the heartland provinces and Gaza. Yoram Ettinger (former Israeli Ambassador to UN) http://www.theettingerreport.com has written on it extensively; you may wish to explore that. What’s more, the Palys’ factor of increase has actually diminished and is very close to stabilizing, while the fertility rate of Israeli Jews has been sharply increasing.
Only to those who find that a convenient brush with which to tar the Jewish state. A twenty-minute walk down the main street of any Israeli city will quickly dispel all — and I mean ALL — of the politically-correct images of Israel as a “racist,” “apartheid” state. The proposition is a steaming pile of sticky, malodorous pig-plop from beginning to end.
You certainly are correct to say that Sharon’s decision to evacuate Gaza was not ‘altruistic.’
But your presumed demographic ‘reasons’ are ALSO strictly far-kakh’d. (I could translate, but I’m sure you won’t need me to.) Mr Sharon, who had led his Likud party to victory over his electoral opponent, the Labor Party’s Amram Mitzna (who had campaigned on a promise to evacuate the Jews from Gaza) — Sharon’s own platform incorporating a plank explicitly rejecting unilateral withdrawal — proceeded to reverse himself 180 degrees within ten months of his victory, and instead embrace his defeated opponent’s position.
You think this abrupt pirouette-on a-dime had something to do with the sudden discovery of a demographic problem? — c’mon, fella, get real.
The reversal was intended to relieve pressure on Mr Sharon from his ruling coalition’s leftish Attorney General, Menachem Mazuz — who favored the hitnatkut [an impersonal designation for the self-expulsion, that translates as “disengagement”], and who was targeting Mr Sharon (and his son, Gil’ad) for investigation on charges of financial corruption, bribery and influence peddling [the “Greek Island Affair”] — this amidst persistent rumors of impertinent tampering by the US State Dept.
On 14 June 04, Mazuz elected to close the case without criminal proceedings, for “lack of evidence.”
Suddenly now — with, in fact, the most curious abruptness — the PM was startlingly hell-bent on evacuating all Jews from Gaza (and northern Samaria), by-gum-&-by-golly, and by-hook-or-by-crook: indeed by any means necessary, and without a moment’s delay. A referendum of his own party revealed 65 percent rejection of the proposition. So, undaunted, Mr Sharon simply proceeded to dismiss enough opposed cabinet ministers & committee members to end up with a parliamentary majority of supporters.
The overwhelmingly left-leaning, Israeli news media promptly went into overdrive cranking out pronouncements assuring all-&-sundry that there was now “massive” popular support for giving the gentle, dignified revenants the bum’s rush — while Mr Sharon insisted that there was just “no time available” for a popular plebiscite on such a matter of existential national import. Nor, incidentally, has there ever been a plebiscite to this day — seven years hence — in regard to any other proposed withdrawals; though we’re constantly told that the Israeli populace ‘favors’ such further self-banishments.
All of which just goes to show that there’s never time “available” to do it right — but there’s always time available to do it over.
It also goes to show that there’s corruption — and then there’s corruption. And that Arab culture (notorious though it be for the phenomenon) hardly has the market ‘cornered’ in that department.
Curiously too, no sooner did Sharon make the announcement of his dramatic turnabout than the relentless media stories about his suspected corruption ceased. Indeed the media plainly had made a decision that, at least until the disgraceful withdrawal was complete, the PM would be, in the words of TV commentator Amnon Abramovich, protected “like an etrog” (a citron fruit native to the Holy Land, whose fitness for ceremonial use on the holiday of Sukkot/Tabernacles requires that it be cushioned from blemish or bruise) — this as noted in further detail in “Reforming Israel,” a trenchant essay on the Israeli economy by journalist Evelyn Gordon, Commentary, Oct 2011.
Then, too, as Martin Sherman has argued, there is a pattern to be noted in Israeli politics, wherein such reversals as Sharon’s have resulted from “a brutal, unrestrained assault on those elected to office, along with a coordinated common front embracing legal, media and academic related components, designed to subvert the will of the people as expressed at the polls. It was an assault that distorted the facts, suppressed the truth, silenced dissent and ridiculed dissenters.” [Martin Sherman, “Into the Fray: Distorting democracy,” Jerusalem Post, 28 July 11]
@ CuriousAmerican:
different opinions on this prophesy some say the Jews others all of mankind but try this on for size.
1/3 of the Jews died in the Holocaust another 1/3 are in Israel and the rest if trends continue will disappear thru assimilation.
Hosea 6:2 ? The Christian Bible has the authoress of Luke (24:46-47) telling that Jesus rose on the Third Day: “Thus it is written, and thus it behooved Christ to suffer and to rise from the dead the third day and that repentance and remission of sins should be preached in his name among all nations, beginning at Jerusalem.” This could have only been designed to satisfy a prophecy in Hosea 6:2. The New Testament has Paul writing in I Corinthians, “and Jesus was buried and that he rose again the third day according to the scriptures.” Further 1 Corinthians 15:4.says “After two days will he revive us: in the third day he will raise us up and we shall live in his sight.” Which Hebrew Scriptures are these authors talking about?
As usual, the source documents, The Hebrew Scriptures, say something entirely different:
Hosea 6:1-2 “They will say, Come let us return to God for He (God) has mangled us and He (God) will heal us; He (God) has smitten and He (God) will bandage us. He (God) will heal us after two days; on the third day He (God) will raise us up and we will live before Him. ‘We’ refers to the nation of Israel.
The last verse in Chapter 5 sets the scene and explains the situation very clearly: “I (God) will go, I will return to My place until they will acknowledge their guilt and seek My face; in their distress they will seek Me (Hosea 5:15). Hosea explains in verse 5 that God sent a clear-cut message to Israel through My prophets; you heard and refused to repent, so My offer resulted in your death sentence. How could I vindicate you after such defiance? Then Hosea explains: “Come let us return to God”!
Does this refer to Jesus?
Answer: No.
If Judaism is like a tree, the importance of The Messiah is as important as a small twig R. Joseph Albo.
When my grandmother (The Messiah) returns. 🙂 This is just for you, have fun!!!
KADIMA AND ITS WHOLE MEMBERS ARE NOTHING BUT PACK OF THUGS AND CRIMINALS ALL THEYRE INTERSTED IN THIER POLITICAL POWER THEY COULD CARE LESS ABOUT THE JEWISH PEOPLE IF THEY LOVE THE ARABS SO MUCH THEY THEN THE SO CALLED KADIMA PARTY NEED TO MOVE TO THE ARAB COUNTRYS AND STAY THE HELL THERE ISRAEL DONT NEED THAT KIND OF GARBAGE
Strap Mofats, Livney, and Oldmart (ehud barak and eli yishai (the nasrallah without guts of Israel) too) to a couple of nuclear bombs and drop ’em all on Iran. For Mofats it’ll be an appropriate homecoming to the Islamo garbage dump he came out of and deserves to go to, not a Jewish state.
Zecharyah 12:3 tovia singer@ CuriousAmerican:
Illogical. The verse must be understood in context.
Zechariah 12:2-3
2 Behold, I will make Jerusalem a cup of staggering unto all the peoples round about, and upon Judah also shall it fall to be in the siege against Jerusalem.
3 And it shall come to pass in that day, that I will make Jerusalem a stone of burden for all the peoples; all that burden themselves with it shall be sore wounded; and all the nations of the earth shall be gathered together against it.
4 In that day, saith the LORD, I will smite every horse with bewilderment, and his rider with madness; and I will open Mine eyes upon the house of Judah, and will smite every horse of the peoples with blindness.
5 And the chiefs of Judah shall say in their heart: ‘The inhabitants of Jerusalem are my strength through the LORD of hosts their God.’
6 In that day will I make the chiefs of Judah like a pan of fire among the wood, and like a torch of fire among sheaves; and they shall devour all the peoples round about, on the right hand and on the left; and Jerusalem shall be inhabited again in her own place, even in Jerusalem.
———————————————————————————————-
The Israeli left is dead; long live the Israeli left.
@ CuriousAmerican:
Psalms are not prophesy in Judaism.
The psalm is a hymn expressing the yearnings of the Jewish people in exile following the Babylonian conquest of Jerusalem in 586 BC. The rivers of Babylon are the Euphrates river, its tributaries, and the Tigris river (possibly the river Habor, the Chaboras, or modern Khabur, which joins the Euphrates at Circesium). In its whole form, the psalm reflects the yearning for Jerusalem as well as hatred for the Holy City’s enemies with sometimes violent imagery. Rabbinical sources attributed the poem to the prophet Jeremiah, and the Septuagint version of the psalm bears the superscription: “For David. By Jeremias, in the Captivity.”
A time to love and a time to hate; a time for war and a time for peace.
A time to love: (Deut. 7:13): “and He will love you.”
and a time to hate: (Hos. 9:15): “All their evil is in Gilgal; therefore (sic) I hated them
. He has made everything beautiful in its time; also the [wisdom of] the world He put into their hearts, save that man should not find the deed which God did, from beginning to end. Kohelet – Ecclesiastes – Chapter 3
Go crying to You? Why would I do that?
THREE WARNINGS FROM THE G-D OF ISRAEL TO HIS PEOPLE:
“‘Beware of what I command you Today: Behold, I will drive out before you the Amorite, the Canaanite, the Hittite, the Perizzite, the Hivvite, and the Jebusite. Be vigilant not to seal a covenant with the inhabitants of the Land to which you are coming, since they will be a fatal trap for you.'” (Exodus 34:11-12)
“HaShem spoke to Moses in the plains of Moab, by the Jordan [River], at Jericho, saying, ‘Speak to the Children of Israel and say to them, “When you cross the Jordan [River] to the Land of Canaan, you shall drive out all the inhabitants of the Land from before you; and you shall destroy all their prostration stones; all their molten images shall you destroy; and all their high places shall you demolish. You shall possess the Land, and you shall settle in it; for, to you have I given the Land to possess it. … But if you do not drive out the inhabitants of the Land from before you, those of them whom you leave shall be pins in your eyes and thorns in your sides, and they will harass you upon the Land in which you dwell. And it shall be that what I had meant to do to them, I shall do to you.”‘” (Numbers 33:50-56)
“They [Children of Israel] provoked Me with a non-god, angered Me with their vanities; so shall I provoke them with a non-people, with a vile nation shall I anger them.” (Deuteronomy 32:21)
A MESSAGE FOR THOSE WISHING TO KNOW HOW THE G-D OF ISRAEL REQUIRES US TO TREAT SHEDDERS OF JEWISH BLOOD:
“So Samuel returned after Saul, and Saul prostrated himself before HaShem. Samuel then said, ‘Bring me Agag, king of Amalek.’ And Agag went to him submissively. And Agag said, ‘Surely, the bitterness of death has passed.’ And Samuel said, ‘As your sword made women childless, so shall your mother be childless among women.’ And Samuel cut Agag into pieces before HaShem in Gilgal.” (I Samuel 15:31-33)
I so much agree with you, Shem. It has always disturbed me that nations and people from all over the world seem to be turning against Israel. I, for one, don’t want to be found guilty by my Heavenly Father. My husband and I pray for Israel almost every day, and I know beyond a shadow of doubt that G-d Almighty will have the last word,and my sincere prayer is that all of Israel will see the Light, and turn to Him for their survival.
G-d Bless Israel.
It is rather even handed, and it is not clear if it warns only Jerusalem’s enemies or even includes those who support a Zionist Jerusalem as well.
Clearly anyone (pro-Israel or pro-Arab) will have trouble if he gets involved with Jerusalem.
I have pondered that warning. It seems to say: ANYONE WHO GETS INVOLVED WITH JERUSALEM – WHATEVER POSITION THEY TAKE – WILL GET HURT.
What a pleasant thought. Anything other than consider the Palestinians as humans.
It won’t alway go in your favor.
There is prophecy in the Jewish portion of Scripture that 2/3rds of the Jewish people will die before the Messiah comes
BACK FOR THE SECOND TIME.
Until the Jewish people acknowledge their offense (Hosea’s words, not mine), the Messiah will not return.
But in their afflication (of Armageddon) they will earnestly seek him.
Those are Hosea’s words, not mine.
So do not count on continued Jewish military supremacy.
I am just trying to minimize the number of Jewish casualties by making sure the Palestinians aren’t in the fray.
At that time, if the Palestinians are in South America, they can’t harm you; or it might go worse for the Jewish people.
You, it seems, labor under an unbiblical assumption of continued military excellence. Vengence will not always be an option for the Israelis. SADLY, at one point, according to Hosea, survival will not be an option either, until they acknowedge their offense (Hosea’s words NOT MINE)
@ CuriousAmerican:
Curious…
6 years in the Gaza strip and you haven’t learned a thing?
You can’t buy peolple for money, Not even Arabs. They are apearently much smarter than you are.
They will happily take the money and buy AK-47’s and Grads with it.
I do agree however,that vengence is not the answer…”He who seeds clouds, will harvest storms”
Instead of humiliate them treating them like baggers, give them weapons, train them, help them to get rid of the Doll King Abdullah And take over what is realy theirs, Jordan. Jordan is Palestine.Israel IS Israel.
Think about it.
Ira.
BTW: I live in South America, Please don’t send them here. There are already too many of them at large .
@ CuriousAmerican:
Our alternative is not WAR.
and we can live with the level of conflict with the Arab vermin for generations and btw our conflict is far from being a War. When they can match us in firepower and inflict serious loss of life then that is War. Till now they are a pain in our asses and we can deal with it. We just need to even out the kill ratio of a thousand for them for every one of ours even when we have no fatal casualties. For every rocket that falls on Israel we take aout a neighborhood of theirs and OFF one of their leaders.
We could go on like this and still thrive for another 500 years if need be.
Just for starters, who is speaking in Zecharyah 12:3, saying, “…in that day I will make Yahrushalayim a burdensome stone for all nations; all who burden themselves with it shall be cut in pieces…”? Doesn’t that “ALL” include both the enemies of Israel and those Israeli politicians who would bargain it away in a futile attempt to gain peace, or at least an uneasy truce? Do they think that they can outsmart the One quoted here, or that He will go back on His Word? As He tells us through Yeshayahu (Isaiah) 55:11, His Word has gone out, and it will accomplish what He sends it to do. Halleluyah!